ALAIN GIRAUD @ THE TEST KITCHEN: ALL POP UP RESTAURANTS SUCK. DISCUSS

Mmmm, pop up restaurants?

I have railed against them for as long as this blog has been up and running.  I have yet to have anything more than a mediocre experience at any I have visited and, I am afraid to say after Thursday night’s visit to The Test Kitchen, that sorry record remains very much intact.

The Test Kitchen is predicated on an interesting if fundamentally flawed concept.  Its kitchens are watched over by a series of regarded chefs who are either between jobs or working towards the opening of a new restaurant. It is, if you will, a restaurant that operates within a Groundhog Day like loop of permanent soft opening.

Except that is, for one fact, the prices at The Test Kitchen are really not terribly soft at all.  They are easily the equivalent of most mid level restaurants in L.A and, once wine and the 18% service charge are added to the tab, $100 per person becomes a distant sight in the rear view mirror.  Most normal restaurants on the other hand, well those in London at least, do offer reduced prices in the first weeks as they find their feet.  If they don’t then, as here, they must perish in the first burst of fire.  If you charge me full whack, then you must deliver the full experience, no excuses.  It’s quite simple.

Even if you would not expect to be dazzled at such a price, you should at the very least expect to be satisfied.  However, when faced with a series of chefs not given enough time to get used to a kitchen or hone their menu, what you inevitably experience is a procession of adequate to poor dishes, which rarely reach the lower rung of the expectation ladder.

What you also get is the sort of cooking you might be pleasantly surprised to receive at a wedding, but leaves you very less than whelmed in a restaurant.  Lots of pre-prepared and composed dishes that require little or no cooking to order and leave you wondering if any chefs have been harmed in the preparation of your supper.

Thursday’s meal, a birthday celebration for a friend, could and should have been so much better.  The Chef in charge, Frenchman, Alain Giraud, has an excellent provenance having cooked previously at Citrus, Bastide and at the recently closed Anisette. He is also, I was told, in the midst of preparation for the opening of a new place in Pacific Palisades.  That such an accomplished chef could then serve up such a lacklustre meal makes the experience all the more disappointing.

It began well enough.  The bar at The Test Kitchen was manned by Julian Cox and Brian Summers and the well executed drinks they made for our party of seven marked them down as some of the best I have found in LA.  The positive vibes kept coming when we sat down and were presented with a basket of excellent breads including a warm and crumbly brioche.

The amuse very much set the scene for what was to follow.  A small sliver of “fennel cured” salmon with thin slices of apple and a smear of fennel cream.  A light and pleasant enough beginning but one that required little thought or attention to plate and even less as it passed from there to the stomach.

The next dish was not badly prepared.  Well, half of it wasn’t, which I guess makes it a real curate’s egg of a dish.  A “Duo of Farm Eggs” (FFS) comprised two cut shells (good to see that fancy Japanese egg shell cutting machine getting a run out) one filled with a terrific truffled egg mousse and the other with a herbed scrambled egg that had been cooked until it became grainy and slightly unpleasant.

Next up a straight up flop of a dish.  A tepid broth poured on top of over cooked pre-prepared vegetables and an basil and Almond Pistou, which was remarkable in that it both overpowered the whole dish yet still left everyone at the table asking for salt. Think about it, it’s quite an achievement. 

Coquilles Saint-Jacques is one of those rich, indulgent dishes that remind me, with one taste, of month long Summer holidays spent on the coast of Brittany.  I would always order it at every opportunity and still recall the pleasure I felt when it was brought to the table, the sauce of wine and cream bubbling out from beneath a topping of potato and Gruyere.  While there was none of that pleasure with this dish, it did at least show that the kitchen could cook when they turned their mind to it.  The scallops were a perfect medium and the juices lightened suitably with a touch of Meyer lemon juice. Hardly epiphanal, but in the context of a largely disappointing meal, a welcome high point.

Unfortunately, more lows followed all too rapidly with the meat course. If you are doing relatively little cooking to order during a meal, then you need to be sure that what you do is spot on, especially if that includes the main protein of the evening. Add that to the undeniable truth that a dish of veal with mushrooms and a truffle sauce is not the most taxing of dishes for a chef of this level and it makes the fact that we all thought the meat was “dry” and “tough” and “stringy” all the more annoying.

Dessert was a pleasant enough diversion of strawberries, malt ice cream and vanilla cream, but again smacked of pre-preparation and did little to lift my opinion of the experience. Nor too did the gourmandises, which included quite the worst Madeleines I have tasted since I last tried to make them myself.

With drinks and a service charge, the tab reached a slightly gasp inducing $120 a head (£75 to the folks back home) for which I think we could all, quite rightly have anticipated a meal better than one where I expected someone to cut a cake and give a speech at the end of it.

As we left, one of my companions said “Well, at least the cocktails and bread were good” which reminded me of the infamous Variety review of a poor musical “the audience left whistling the scenery”

Well, I left Alain Giraud @ The Test Kitchen whistling the bread and cocktails, which only goes to reinforce my view that pop up restaurants are always lousy.

Discuss

CASA MALEVO: CRIMINAL

Connaught Village? Who knew eh? Not me and I know everything.

Take an otherwise ordinary street, chuck in a few posho shops and you’ve got yourself a Village. Believe me, Village is the new City. Marylebone Village, Pimlico Village, I wouldn’t be surprised if pretty soon there was one round DH way (when planning permission for a tall building in our nabe was recently blocked the reason given was it would spoil the unique village atmosphere of the Old Street roundabout area – yes, really).

Along with all these villages there seems to be an equally rapid rise in the number of Argentinian restaurants although I’m pretty certain there’s no causal link. The majority of these are parrillas and it’s not surprising to find that most of the staff have worked at one time or another at Santa Maria Del Buen Ayre, which used to be a big favourite of Dos Hermanos back in the day.

Casa Malevo, a new gaff in the aforementioned Connaught Village has just such a CV. So what’s different about this new gaff which promises to showcase “the very best that Argentine cuisine has to offer” ?

Well, not much really. The old favourites are present and correct: Empanadas, Provoleta, Morcilla, Mollejas and a small range of Steaks; a modest parillada and a wine list of big, headache-inducing Argentinian Reds with equally big (300% plus) mark-ups. Dulce de Leche for pud. The black and white photos of the old country adorning the walls. All quite unassuming really, which just about sums up the cooking.

One of the joys of the parrilla is just the pure visceral pleasure of them, primarily the smell of thick steaks and other meaty delights slowly cooking on the open grill. At Casa Malevo the pleasure seems to have been sucked right out.

Starters were a mixed bag. Some marinated Ox Tongue was let down by tasteless, chewy meat. Of the trio of Empanadas the Beef one was nice: flaky pastry and some decent filling. The Veggie and Chicken ones were eaten without comment. Morcilla and Chorizo were fine. One thing I did discover is that Argentinians love their Rocket – it was used with a generosity bordering on profligacy.

The best of the starters were the Sweetbreads which, once I had cleared all the greenery, had been cooked so they had a bit of char on the outside and were soft and melting on the inside.

The Steaks should really have been the highlight here. My Rib Eye had more flavour than the Sirloin and they were all properly cooked but it was all a bit polite: so much so you could probably serve them to a rabid Vegetarian without any comeback.

I was told by the restaurant that the chips were triple cooked but they were so poorly done I would have been happier with double cooked. They were dry, almost desiccated. I suspect they were cut too thin but in any case the kitchen may want to pay a visit to say Goodman or Hawksmoor to see how chips should be made.

To accompany my meat I ordered Criolla sauce. You may know it as a simple mixture of onion, tomatoes, peppers etc. Everything you know is wrong - it’s actually a very rare commodity, not far behind Truffles in the price stakes.

Please examine Photo 11 and you may notice an odd blemish in the middle of my Steak. Yes, dear reader, that is my Salsa Criolla. I can only feel sorry for the poor sods who order Pepper corn (sic). Unsurprisingly, after this experience, my appetite for flan was very dulled.

So aside from this exhibition of breathtaking cynicism what’s left? Well you have a tidy-looking restaurant serving unoriginal and unexciting food that is probably just good enough to keep the nobs from Connaught Village happy. But as a dispiriting, soulless experience it was up there with the Sky 3D Football I saw in the pub we visited afterwards.

A FLYING VISIT TO NYC & THE KABAB CAFE

I had planned to remain in London for at least another couple of weeks, until I received a call asking if I could attend some important meetings in NYC. So, I brought forward my flight to LA and rerouted it through The Big Apple. No great hardship to spend a couple days in one of my favourite cities, but a great shame to have to cancel catch ups with so many of my good chums back in Blighty. I trust they can find it in their hearts to forgive me.

It was an all too fleeting visit. Any visit to New York is too short, of course and I was there for work, not pleasure. However, amongst all the meetings, I did at least have a couple of nights to hang out with family and some of my close friends who live in the city.

I often get e-mails asking me which restaurants I recommend in New York and, while I can trot out the familiar names with the best of them, people seem most surprised when I tell them that my favourite place of all is a small Egyptian restaurant, The Kabab Cafe, in Astoria, Queens.

I have written about The Kabab Cafe and its owner, Ali El Sayed, before on the blog. I even dedicated a small part of the NYC chapter of Eat My Globe to a meal I enjoyed there in 2007. Tight schedules had meant I had not been able to fit in a trip to Queens since that visit.  So when my good friends, Cathy, Alan and Sandy suggested that we make it our venue for supper, I had no hesitation in agreeing to meet them in the tiny fifteen seat restaurant on Steinway Street.

A meal with Ali is not like any meal you will have ever experienced. It is not just that the food is exceptional, which it is (more of that in a moment) Nor is it just that a meal there costs about $40 if you are showing off, which it does. A meal at The Kabab Cafe is pure performance art as Ali gives you the benefit of his encyclopaedic knowledge and forthright opinions while delivering plate after plate of astonishing food from a kitchen the size of a small dining table.

There is a menu at The Kabab Cafe, I am told. But, I have never seen one. Ali knows that I am a man who is inordinately fond of my offal and had made plans in advance. As we arrived, we found assorted pots and pans bubbling away on the stove and the man himself decanting braised sheep heads into a bowl to remove the meat from when they had cooled.

Once we had all settled and opened a few bottles of wine (from which Ali, of course, helps himself to a liberal chef's share) the meal began in earnest with hot breads and an even hotter dipping sauce. I could describe the meal in detail, but there is little point as, if you were to visit, he would prepare something entirely different for you. In fact every table on our visit received an entirely different array of dishes to ours from the extensive catalogue he keeps in his head.

We began with a plate of sweetbreads with deep fried kale and thick hummus, followed by roasted beets with apples and zatac, dumplings stuffed with pumpkin in a yoghurt and basil sauce, lambs tongues with olives, crisp fried calves brains, artichoke hearts in lemon juice, whole roasted sea bass and gurnard, fried whitebait and, best of all, a dish Ali called Gavede, a stew of minced lamb served with a raw egg which he mixed into the bowl at the table.

Finally, as we all waved away the suggestion that we should attack a plate of braised lamb shanks, he relented his assault and let us finish off with a plate of home made Egyptian desserts and a cup of hot hibiscus tea to aid our digestion. It was another stunning effort from Mr El Sayed and confirmed the status of The Kabab Cafe as one of my favourite places to eat anywhere on earth.

I'll be back soon.

Just in case any of you are wondering about the first picture, it is of the excellent lobster roll served at the Grand Central Oyster Bar. A little treat to myself in a small gap between meetings at lunchtime. A bit over the top given how much food I knew we were going to be presented with that evening, but, hey, this is NYC after all.

DINE WITH DOS HERMANOS: HAWKSMOOR @ SEVEN DIALS

Four years ago, DH decided to celebrate one year of posting about our eating experiences in words and blurry pictures by holding a small supper at one of our favourite restaurants.  We posted about it on the blog and managed to rustle up a little over a dozen willing souls to join us for memorable meal at Hawksmoor in Shoreditch.

Move on to 2010 and DINE WITH DH has become, people tell me, one of the more popular dining events in the capital with  hundreds of people requesting a place for meals at such notable restaurants as Casa Brindisa, Bentley's Indian Zing, Forman & Field, Vinoteca and The Bull & Last.

It is hard to believe we have hosted a dozen of the things to date, but the combination of a fixed price and great venues seems increasingly popular.  So much so that our latest event on Monday 25th could easily have seen ten times the number of people attending as the thirty lucky few whose names I pulled out of a hat.
Mind you, while the numbers may well reflect the popularity of DWDH, they also reflect the fact that our chosen venue for the night was the new Covent Garden Location for Hawksmoor's new restaurant.

DH and Hawksmoor go back a long way.  HP was one of the first people to walk through the door of the Shoreditch branch in 2006 and it has become a regular haunt for us ever since.  Given that these events may be more spaced out in future with my relocation stateside, I wanted to do something a little bit special for my all too brief return to Blighty and was delighted when Will & Huw said they would be up for hosting a bunch of us during their soft opening.

Unsurprisingly, the new space on Langley Street is stunning.  Huw tells me it is a converted brewery and both the bar area (always a vital part of the whole Hawksmoor offering) and main dining area are built around the supporting columns in the cellar space.  In the kitchen too, they have done things properly with about ten times the space of the original restaurant and a Josper Grill very much in effect.

After a welcoming cocktail provided by the good people of Ketel One we made our way to a long table set up for us down the spine of the main dining room and left the rest up to restaurant manager, Tim, Will, Huw and the rest of the excellent staff who were using the opportunity to feel their way around their new working space.

There was, of course, plenty of food.  There always is at DWDH.  The one thing we insist on is that people come away feeling like they have had fantastic value for money.  No one has let us down yet and Hawksmoor kept us well on track to some serious meat sweats with a menu that far surpassed even the impressive one they had promised.

I don't have pictures of everything because, quite frankly, I was a little bit pissed and too busy enjoying myself to remember to snap everything with my little point and shoot.  Particular mention, however, should go to the Hawksmoor chipolatas made with beef, pork & mutton, the T-bone steak which is still hard to beat as the best steak in London and a collection of stunning sides. Alongside all of that, there were oysters, Tamworth pork ribs, smoked salmon and a couple of exemplary desserts.

As well as the pre-supper cocktail, there was also enough good red wine splashing around to have a bath in and, for those that like that sort of thing, an espresso Martini.  All enough to send people out into the chill night air of Central London four hours later pledging to return again and again.  Quite right too.

One sour note of the evening, given the number of people who clamoured for tickets, was an e-mail from one pair of diners an hour before the event to say that they were not coming because they were ill.  These bugs that hit you an hour before you have to shell out £50 are a bitch aren't they?  Perhaps they should, as I reach my sixth decade, but the ill manners of some people never cease to amaze me.

All I can say is Amy Lu and friend, you don't know what you missed.

I am likely to be away from the UK for the next few months as I ponder on matters immigration.  However, I am already working on some ideas for next year.  So keep 'em peeled. Dine with DH will be back before you know it.