October Round Up

Round up time.  Looking back, it's been a pretty busy month....

Finally made it to Janetira for lunch one day to try their famed Khao soi (£9.50) and I wasn't disappointed.  It consists of chicken on and off the bone, a rich coconut soup, boiled and crispy fried noodles.  Look at the sides you get with it!!  Knew it was going to be seriously good when I clapped eyes on that side plate.  Will definitely be back to try more.  Much more of interest here than you see on typical Thai menus in London.

I wished my friend Suz farewell at The Eagle one evening (she's gone home to Mexico City).  I was chuffed at the choice of venue as I'd been wanting to visit for a long time.  I had a lovely bowl of linguini with mussels and a ton of garlic.

Nibbles of olives and bread were good and the house red was very well received by our table of 6 ladies.  Lola, Suz's dog got a pork chop bone to chew so everyone was happy!

It has a very loyal following and The Eagle is widely considered to have been the trigger of the gastropub revolution when it opened in 1991.  I loved it and will be back to try more.  Open kitchen situation.  Relaxed and fun.  My dish was under a tenner, as is a bottle of house wine.

Early in the month I was invited to a brilliant event at Fish Market to mark the launch of this year's vintage of Cloudy Bay sauvignon blanc.  Hannah (Crump Eats) and I teamed up to create (rather, watch the restaurant chefs scramble something together from the fruits of our lacklustre Borough Market haul) this.

It was a cooking competition to see who could come up with a dish the judges (head chef Barry Macmillan and Nick-Blampied-Lane, one of the winemakers) deemed the best match for the 2013 sauvignon.  Needless to say we came last but after the cooking we got to enjoy a 3 course meal in the restaurant.  Beginning with Barry's creation to pair with the wine, scallop ceviche with chilli and lemon zest.  I'll leave the professionals to it in future!

I enjoyed my first visit to Honey & Co early in October too.  I knew I'd enjoy the meal, many friends and bloggers rave about it.  Middle Eastern in flavours, the place is tiny, so it's advisable to book ahead, we did and they lost the reservation so the first round was on them, yay!

Barry Macmillan

Barry Macmillan

Standout dish on the night for me was the slow cooked lamb with saffron rice, almonds and raisins.  We were all sharing and I was happy this dish was close to me, it was really moreish, a sweet creamy sauce with plenty of lamb lurking in the rice.  So good.  We went for the set menu which allows you a selection of mezze style starters and a main dish each for £26. 

I was also quite taken with the pistachio cake which at first look appeared to be a bit dry but was moist and sticky and everything I want in a dessert with a big dollop of cream.  We were given a freebie of chicken liver baklava as they messed up our starter and omitted some of the dishes, I was pleasantly full though and they dealt swiftly with the couple of gripes we had.  

Onto brunch with the Kid at The W Hotel.  You get slippers and bottomless bloody mary's so with those 2 boxes ticked I was happy.  Food wasn't great but it's a fun vibe and a good place to read the Sunday papers and people watch.  For £25 you get granola and fruit followed by this starter platter, between 2.

Not sure who in their right mind would think it's a good idea to pipe cream cheese onto a mini bagel, but that's what they do.  Welsh rarebit was the highlight of this selection.  This is followed by roast beef in a yorkshire pud with veggies and truffle mac & cheese, without any truffle.  I doubt I'd return here to eat, but it is a fun place to hang out.  There's a DJ, at 10am.  Fun times.  Oh and you get unlimited sweet shop style sweets.

Final treat to report is a little local find, recommended by my friends Bel and Lee, Rossella.  It's a small family run restaurant in Kentish Town, nothing fancy, a few doors down from The Southampton Arms, where a half rounded off our night nicely.  I had this special, some kind of beef stew with veggie risotto, portion sizes are ridiculous and costs are insanely low.  We ate a lot, had a bottle of house red and paid something silly like £20 each.  A starter of fried calamari was very impressive.

I should also mention London Cocktail Week.  I went for various evenings of fun and ate this at the Portobello Road gin pop up Parlour in the Seven Dials Club, where we could still smell the paint, they'd prepped the dining room earlier that day!

This was a rose veal cottage pie and it was very nice indeed.  For £15 you got this, a cocktail (Tom Collins) some bread and a little smoked salmon starter.  Bargain.  Check here next year for details of London Cocktail Week events and to get your wristband.  £4 cocktails people.

Janetira Eat Thai
26 Brewer St
Soho W1F
7/10



The Eagle
159 Farringdon Road
EC1R
9/10



Fish Market
16b New ST
Liverpool St
EC2M



I dined as a guest of Fish Market

Honey & Co
25a Warren St
W1T
8/10



W Hotel 
10 Wardour St
Chinatown
W1D
6/10



Ristorante Rossella
103 Highgate Road
NW5
8/10

Nid Ting, Holloway Road

Clichéd Saturday evening entertainment = dinner and movie.

I did exactly this a couple of weekends ago with a visit to Nid Ting on Holloway Road followed by the Inbetweeners. Both proved to be underwhelming.

The restaurant was pretty busy with a steady flow of diners, it's a handy location for pre or post cinema dining just along the road from the Odeon. Which is perhaps the only positive thing I can find to say about the spot. Service was efficient and friendly, we'd not booked and were deftly accommodated.


Starters were solid yet unimaginative, prawn toast, dim sum-esque dumplings and spring rolls all prettily presented and generous in portion. The table dining next to us asked for 'spring rolls for 3' to start and got the giggles when 3 of the below (minus the arm) were presented, rookie error and spring roll overload.


I opted for the lamb massaman curry from the specials for main course. I really liked the sauce, mild and sweet, sprinkled with red chilli and peanuts and bulked up with potatoes but the lamb was tough and would have benefited from a longer slower cook.


Other mains were well received, the red chicken curry and a fiercely hot chicken stir fry with tonnes of chilli. There seemed to be a contingent of faithful regular diners appearing throughout the evening to a rapturous reception, Nid Ting is a safe but not out of the ordinary local find. They have an extensive menu, which I found it very tricky to select from, and prices are average (between £7 and £12 for mains).

I'll probably stick to Charuwan in future.

Nid Ting
533 Holloway Road
N19
5/10

Tuk Tuk

I rarely have lunch out during the week this being mostly due to work commitments, I usually end up grabbing something quickly to eat at my desk, sob! This is normally always a salad. Some days this just won't do.

Last week Thomas suggested we lunch at Tuk Tuk in Soho (previously Tuk Tuk Noodle Bar, Charing Cross Road), somewhere he used to regularly frequent, mostly when hungover. He recommended the Laksa.


This had chunks of chicken, a few prawns, some tofu and heaps of glass noodles. The laksa sauce was spicy and creamy and very satifying, portions are generous and prices are low. It's by no means the best laksa I've had, the quality of ingredients is certainly not their main concern but for something quick and bargainous this does the trick.

This place looks fairly unappealing but the service was swift and helpful, with a glass of tap water this came to £4.50 each and I was back at my desk within 45 minutes.

Tuk Tuk
Old Compton Street
WC2
6/10

Busaba Eathai

As an early Christmas present Thomas purchased tickets for us to see Josh Hartnett in Rain Man at the Apollo Theatre. The play was very enjoyable, Josh seemed somewhat distracted, perhaps by thoughts of Alison Mosshart who the next day was rumoured to be his latest conquest, and, to my surprise, the star of the show turned out to be Adam Godley who played Raymond.

Anyway, I digress. Following the show we fancied a bite to eat and head to Busaba Eathai on Wardour St. We regularly eat at the Store Street Busaba in Bloomsbury but have in the past been put off of this one due to the often lengthy queue.

Feeling particularly hungry I opted for the Thai Calamari followed by the Tom Kha Chicken Soup. I was mightily impressed upon first trying the calamari however, the portion is quite large and by the end of the dish I found it got a bit sickly. One to be shared perhaps, or, at least, eaten as an accompaniment (as it is intended in their defence) rather than as a first course. The soup was tasty and the lemongrass chicken very succulent but it was served with egg noodles rather than glass as advertised because they had run out. This made the dish heavier than anticipated and I was unable to finish which annoys me. I found the overpowering flavour of galangal didn’t enhance the taste of the broth at all and could have been omitted, I find it quite unpleasant. It looks rather like ginger in its unprepared state but, unlike ginger, it is quite offensively aromatic and, in my opinion, quite unappetizing.


Thomas had chicken wings then ginger beef with sticky rice. The chicken wings were undercooked so reluctantly were sent back which was not at all well received by the waiter. I don’t have picture but it wasn’t particularly pretty!

In summary this busier of the Busaba outposts is not one that I will hasten to return to but I would say you should not be put off as they usually serve a far higher standard of food in a buzzy and lively environment. I particularly recommend the Green Chicken Curry and the Char-Grilled Duck.

Busaba Eathai
106-110 Wardour St, London
5/10

The Black Orchid, Muswell Hill

Last Friday night Thomas and I returned to The John Baird in Muswell Hill, a pub which has a thai restaurant attached to it.

For starters we chose Tempura prawns with sweet chilli dip and pork dumplings which were amazing! Both dishes were well executed and flavoursome, the only downer being that we ate them too quickly, next time three between the two of us perhaps?

I had the jungle curry with chicken for main course, something that I was inspired to try out by a former housemate who loved extremely spicy food. I have dramatically increased my tolerance for hot food over the last year or so and now I adore it. I was not disappointed by the Black Orchid’s version of this curry but I do think that having become accustom to Indian curries I found the sauce to be a little on the thin side. Though it certainly warmed me up on one of the coldest nights of the winter so far!

Thomas had the cashew nut curry with which he was particularly impressed and likewise with the chicken wings he had whilst waiting for me to arrive. With 2 sides of rice the total bill was £35. Incredibly good value and well worth the visit further North.

I must say though in Thai restaurants I hate that the waiting staff swoop as soon as you place your knife and fork down, even if your companions are still eating. This never equals good manners in my book but the waitresses here were very efficient and it's all part of the deal. The down side to the evening was that we had to sit in the bar as the restaurant was full and spent the entirety of the meal listening to a group of drunken teachers moaning about their pupils. One of whom, a languages teacher, was particularly loud and evidently angry at one point yelling “what’s French for I don’t fucking care?” Charming. We tried to numb the pain with tequila, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!

8.5/10