Belgo

This week I was tasked with selecting a venue for a work lunch, the suggestion of a colleague that we go to Nando's did not appeal and we ended up eating at Belgo. I used to go here quite often when the girls and I were going through a moules phase and we were able to leave work early enough to catch the beat the clock offer where you pay the monetary value equivalent to your time of arrival (before 7pm) for your meal.

Nothing much has changed, I've not been to any of the various other locations around London, always the Covent Garden outpost which is their largest and for me, most conveniently located close to my office. It's always busy but I've not once made a reservation and have been seated within 5 minutes. The room is large, split into two with the kitchen in between and consists of mostly bench style communal type seating.

I shall not rave about this place because the food is fairly ordinary, I had the goats cheese salad and it was tasty but unexceptional, I did feel a little hard done by, this being the least generous of the express lunch options. Those opting for mussels or chicken did much better in terms of portion sizes, they both come with chips. I felt the 3 tiny slices of cheese on toast (essentially what this dish is) sitting on top of a bed of rocket with roasted peppers (from a jar most likely) was an utter letdown, seriously, Pret's salads are better. The 3 strips of cucumber, which I'm assuming appear for decorative purposes, were slimy and warm.


The good thing about it is the inclusion of walnuts doused in honey, again 3 of those, and the glass of white wine. I'd definitely not choose this again but selected it because it's the only non carb heavy choice. With the service charge that is added to the bill, this came in at a little under £10 each, I resented paying it to be honest, usually spending around a fiver on lunch and feeling that I'd not doubled up on quality, only price. We asked for tap water and this was forgotten, we asked again and it arrived shortly before the bill.

Belgo's thing is value for money (or the variety of Belgian beer if that's your bag), the lunch deal is good in that a glass of house wine, cristal lager or a soft drink is included but you do have to choose carefully from the limited menu. Also available is a beef casserole, salmon with mash or sausages. They also have a deal on lobster over the coming months. Go here if you're in need of a simple, unfussy and speedy meal but don't expect to vowed.

Belgo Centraal
50 Earlham St, WC2H 9LJ
5/10

Rambling Restaurant

One cannot fail to have noticed the recently increasing number of secret or 'underground' restaurants popping up all over London. Having said that many (non foodie) folk have not the foggiest idea what I'm talking about when I mention them in passing. Up until this weekend I was yet to visit one but have been intrigued and eager to experience the thrill of dining somewhere 'illegal' for sometime now.

The inaugural night of the Rambling Restaurant in Camden was a first for me as a diner and a first for fellow blogger and host Foodrambler.

Upon arrival we were each served a delicious elderflower and mint cocktail. The dining room was at the very top of Foodrambler's lovely home and our meal came complete with a pretty, dusk lit view. Sitting at one of the shared tables gave me the opportunity to meet some fellow bloggers, Helen of Food Stories fame and Chris from Cheese and Biscuits. We sat following a brief period of mingling and were served the starter of liver and bacon.


This was a course liver pate with two crispy pieces of bacon and a shot glass filled with vibrantly coloured layers of minted peas, tomato and yoghurt. Also served was some dense toasted home made bread. This dish looked very pretty and allayed the fears of one fellow diner who was a little apprehensive about the prospect of being given a starter of liver and bacon in the form she remembered it from school. Thankfully for her, this was a twist on the classic liver and bacon and was a well thought out, beautifully presented start to the meal, very seasonal and fresh.

The main course was trout, a fish with a somewhat delicate flavour, which was cooked perfectly and sitting skin side up atop a nicely crisp potato rosti with rocket and fennel. I'm not usually a fan of fennel, I find it's fragrant taste to be overpowering but here it was less potent than I recall from prior encounters and it really worked. This turned out to be my favourite course of the evening.


Again, I liked the presentation, this time a colourful stack of pink fish and the green peppery rocket. I love the kick rocket provides, i'd have it with every meal given the chance. The sauce containing the fennel was fairly thin and light meaning it combined well with all the other flavours, something heavier might have been too much for the trout.

There was an interlude whilst dessert was finished off in which I drank far too much of the byo wine and regretted it the following morning. Dessert was a wickedly oozing chocolate fondant which had the perfect consistency in the centre and the ice cream, flecked with lavender, was a triumph. The flower, which pairs particularly well with chocolate, lifted an otherwise plain vanilla ice cream with its relaxing scent and flavour, this was a welcome round off to the meal.



To run a restaurant from your living room is an incredibly brave undertaking. I feel sure I would panic and fail miserably, Foodrambler, however, remained calm and composed throughout the evening, politely greeting her guests once the cooking was out of the way and bringing around coffee before taking a well earned breather. As expected, I very much enjoyed the experience, finding it refreshing to not have to concern yourself with choosing what to order, as well as paying a mere £15 for the priviledge of dining here with interesting people and getting to nose around someone elses house (not that I snooped of course). I would highly recommend it at such a bargain price and I'd like to wish Foodrambler the best of luck in her new venture.

The Rambling Restaurant
Sssssh, somewhere in Camden but may ramble elsewhere in London
Sundays

here's a rundown of the evening from the lady herself.
For bookings see the Rambling Restaurant facebook page

Chopped salad

I had lots of salady bits to use up in the fridge and decided to make a chopped salad for lunch, something light and nutritious but tasty.

Obviously there's no recipe as such, just throw together whatever ingredients you have, season well and chop it all up. Here's what I used:

chicory
1 tomato
cucumber
a handful of basil leaves
red onion
lemon
olive oil/ balsamic dressing

I especially liked the citrus hit and will make this again as a side to accompany fish or chicken. I would have added avocado and/or feta if I'd had any in, these additions would make the dish more of a main event in itself. In any case, minus these, it still tasted great, incredibly fresh and so light that it made me feel quite virtuous.

Hummus Bros

We went to see Terminator Salvation last night and pre cinema wanted something for tea that was quick, cheap and kinda light, in the Leicester Square area. Hummus Bros was the venue of choice, I've been wanting to go for aaaaages and can't believe it's taken me this long to finally get round to it.

So the concept is hummus, with pitta, toppings and side salad type dishes. I went for the chickpea topping with a side order of greek salad


I loved the smooth texture of the hummus which is different to most others I've tasted, it's usually grainier. Also it was great with a dusting of smoked paprika on the top, it really added a depth of flavour. The chickpeas were good, a little warm which was nice. I swapped the pitta for carrot sticks. The greek salad was good, mild feta and lots of cucumber, it could perhaps have benefitted from a little more red onion but it was delicious.

Thomas went for the chicken and sundried tomato topping with some additional feta, jalapenos and an egg. The egg was a bizarre colour, the white was more of a dark yellow but it tasted good. I'm not sure how one would go about achieving this, it tasted as it should. It's nice that they also serve everyone some chilli and a garlic and lemon dressing which one can add as they wish (seen on the near side in the picture below).


Thomas felt that the chicken was a bit scarce but really loved it here having felt less enthused than I as we made our way there. Perhaps this is more of an ideal lunch place, I think most would want something a bit more substantial come dinner time and they don't serve any booze, but we both were suprised by just how much we enjoyed the meal, I was craving the hummus when I woke up this morning! It was very busy, there was a queue at times, service was very polite and speedy and we had a great seat at the window, observing the goings on on Wardour Street.

To some it might seem a bit gimmicky and if you don't like hummus you're a bit screwed but I loved this place. I'll definitely return and there's a branch in Holborn closer to my work, how convenient.

Hummus Bros
88 Wardour St
8/10

Chilli Cool

I've been very keen to try Szechuan food in London for some time now and recently spent the evening in Bloomsbury sampling the delights of a student union bar, a little over £2 a pint, can't argue with that. After a few of those I thought at last, a chance to sample the delights of Chilli Cool.

I'm not a big fan of chinese food but had high hopes of this place. When we arrived there were several large groups and a few couples, it was refreshingly busy for a fairly out of the way location and I was delighted to find an area of Bloomsbury where all of the streets have the names of towns and villages in my home county of Kent, it all felt like it was meant to be!

Rob, Thomas and I each selected a couple of dishes from the menu, first to arrive was a chicken dish with lots of chilli and some aubergines with a heavily aromatic garlic sauce.


I loved the aubergine and being a fan of chilli the heat of all of the dishes was more than welcome. What is clear from this picture and is one of the things I found less appealing was the amount of oil. It all tasted good, and I was very hungry so greedily gobbled away but after a few bowls full it all got a bit much.

Another rather ovewhelming element of the meal was the amount of salt. Thomas and I actually downed 2 steins full of water when we got home. The shredded potato with chilli was a particularly bad offender but it has a really interesting flavour, I actually like very salty tasting food, feta cheese, capers etc and so I really liked the potato. The chillis did envoke a bit of fear due to the sheer size and quantity of them but I indulged and they were surprisingly fragrant and granted very fiery but not crazily so.


My favourite dish was the belly pork. The meat was so tender and the sauce mild and sticky, the fat was as it should be, soft and full of flavour, and this was a mild dish, no chilli, instead decorated with large slices of cucumber. I loved it.


This is how I wish it had been done at The Warrington where the belly pork had been so disappointing at the weekend, Chilli Cool's was a much tastier version.

I also ordered the dan dan noodles which were good, chopped spring onion and minced pork were sprinkled over the top and the noodles were delicious, nicely coated in soy based sauce and brilliantly long. Again rather salty due to the soy but really delicious.


Although the flavours hit the spot while we were dining, I felt like it had all been a bit heavy and most dishes were virtually swimming with grease. I liked the atmosphere of the place but am unlikely to return, this kind of food, for me, is certainly enjoyable but an occasional forray suffices. I'm certainly not brave enough to opt for the more adventurous offerings of intestines or tripe, I do wish I had gone for one of the fishpots which were the slightly pricier options on the menu. Chilli Cool is extraordinarily good value for money, our bill came in at just over a tenner each though we drank only tap water.

I know that many folk love this place but it's not really my cup of tea and my tummy was decidedly dicky for the rest of the night, not suggesting anything was amiss just that my palate is more accustomed to fresher lighter food, or perhaps we ordered unwisely?

Chilli Cool
15 Leight St, WC1H
6.5/10

The Warrington

The event of my Dad's 50th birthday brought about a celebratory lunch in Maida Vale this weekend. The venue (selected by my sister) was The Warrington a Gordon Ramsey restaurant/pub.

Service was good, the restaurant is nicely decorated and it was a beautiful day, following the meal we had a few drinks downstairs in the large garden, many of our fellow drinkers were munching on a pint of prawns, which looked very good, but we were full from our lunch.

The bread rolls were served swiftly after we sat down, nice they were too but what's with the no side plate thing? It seems a bit inappropriate to make a mess of the table but surely the point of the bread (when served so quickly) is to provide something to nibble on pre starter?


Anyhow, they were good rolls and it was nice for me and Sven to wait and have the roll with our starter of French onion soup. This was really very good, plenty of chunks of onion in the bowl, it was perhaps a tiny bit too hot and required careful eating to avoid tongue burn and it was such a hot day. There was no topping of bread and gruyere either which I heard a neighbouring chap loudly expressing diappointment about. It would have been a nice touch but the soup itself was delicious, good choice I thought.


Thomas and Lee both opted for the country pork pate with sourdough and pickles. I thought all elements of this dish were a bit on the stingy side, the accompanying 'sourdough' looked remarkably like regular sliced white bread to me. Thomas said it tasted like regular white bread too. There was with little pot of 2 types of rather boring looking pickles. I thought they could have done a lot better with this.


The Kid fared well with her choice of starter opting for the bubble and squeak with a poached egg. The egg was cooked perfecty and when broken had that satisfying golden run of yolk. The bubble and squeak was nicely charred on the outside and this was the most visually pleasing of the starters we sampled.



Onto mains and of the 5 of us, 3 went for the chicken and mushroom pie. A nicely golden flaky pastry sat atop each individual serving of chicken and mushroom. The Kid's pie was mostly chicken while Lee's had a lot more mushrooms but the filling was rustically simple and nicely done, although I didn't try it I can say it went down very well, everyone cleaned their bowl.


I went for the whole plaice with lemon and parsley butter. Their plaice is sourced from Rye, a beautiful little bay town in East Sussex where a fishing fleet lands fish daily, and I loved the subtle intensity of this fish. This was cooked very well and the parsley sauce was a beautiful complemeting flavour. I've been opting for whole fish a lot lately when dining out and this was one of the better I've had. I ordered a side salad and some green beans which were pretty expensive for the measly portions but were good.


Thomas ordered the pork belly. A dish he'd never before tried and he felt that the fat hadn't rendered out of it adequately. I remember the first time I had the same cut in a restaurant and I was rather overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of fat and the relatively poor fat to meat ratio. But it is a belly. The crackling was good and the bramley apple and onion puree was a nice partner. Sides of chips and mashed potato were also good.


There's a seasonal set menu offered here, 3 courses for £22.50. Some of us went for this option and most of us wanted to try the puds. I had the rhubarb and frangipane tart with creme fraiche. This was nice, soft pastry and flavoursome fruit but the frangipane element was barely recognisable, it was more discernable as a texture than as a taste.


Thomas had the steamed treacle pudding with custard, a heavy choice for a hot summer day but it was wickedly good. This classic dessert was spot on, very good quality custard and a sticky and deeply sweet pudding which, whilst being a hefty dessert, remarkably manages to remain reasonably light due to the steaming, if done properly. That said, Thomas was beaten but very happy with it.


Sven and Lee both went for the apple crumble and custard which actually arrived with ice cream instead. Rather a small portion but both were happy, another british classic cooked well.


So, Gordon might not be doing so well as reported here, but we all enjoyed almost everything we ate here and I would venture back were I in the area, I like Maida Vale and the atmosphere of The Warrington is welcoming and unstuffy. They also have my favourite white wine Cloudy Bay on the restaurant menu, at £40 a bottle I didn't partake this time but the house white was adequate. It's worth mentioning that the same menu is offered for lunch and dinner but I think this was brilliant value at a little over £30 a head including wine and service.

Do excuse the quantity of images in this post - I got a new blackberry and have been a bit snap happy.

The Warrington
93 Warrington Crescent
Maida Vale
7.5/10

Bento Cafe 2

Another trip to the flicks, another attempt to snag a table at Bento Café in Camden. This time we booked to avoid disappointment, but after arriving bang on time we still had to wait for a good 15 minutes. I think we needn’t have booked at all really.

Anyway, the sushi here is exceptional but I decided to be adventurous and try a main course that I wouldn’t usually order. I had the hotate mentaiko (grilled scallops in a fish roe sauce).


These came served in the shells, grilled with seafood sticks. The appearance of seafood sticks (or crabsticks as they were known to me as a girl when I got them ‘fresh’ from the seafood van at the food market in my hometown every Saturday) in restaurants always delights but puzzles me somewhat. I feel guilty for liking these but here in a Japanese restaurant they serve them unabashed alongside fresh salmon, tuna, mackerel, octopus etc. I’m all for it actually.

To accompany my scallops I had a green salad which arrived first with a portion of edamame.


I loved the scallops but they were pretty rich, the roe sauce had crisped nicely on the top under the grill and the couple at a neighbouring table had serious food envy asking what it was I’d ordered. I was very pleased with this dish, the scallops were perfectly cooked and it looked impressive. The salad had a great mix of leaves, seaweed, sesame seeds and carrots and was well dressed with both sweet and tangy notes to it. I was pleased to be served a spoon with which to eat the scallops having sustained an injury to my right hand on the previous evening, chopsticks were proving a little tricksy and I was saved the embarrassment of asking for cutlery.

Thomas chose the grilled spicy beef for main with some egg fried rice and we shared some of the kinoko yaki (baked mushrooms in foil) that we always order here, the buttery sauce is delicious.


Thomas’ beef tasted good, it had a nice char, there was plenty of sliced red chilli (always a good thing) and the bbq sauce gave it a nice flavour but it was perhaps a bit too chewy.

On the way in I cast my beady eye over the table near the entrance before we were led to the back and I saw a bowl of ice cream. We have never sampled dessert here so I asked what flavours they have and we went for one each of the green tea and sesame. These are the only favours they offer.


They’re very interesting. The green tea one has a deep and changeable flavour. By that I mean at first it’s bitter, then creamy and then aromatic before returning to bitter. The sesame had a different texture, more like a paste and didn’t melt like ice cream usually does. It had an earthy flavour, I liked this one best and I like the way that in your head you imagine there will be a sweet element coming through but it never comes. This didn’t leave me disappointed and I’m glad to have tried them.

Again I was pleased with my meal here, the only downside being the wait and the fact that we ordered a salmon sashimi and they forgot it, when they remembered we were half way through the other dishes and didn’t want it anymore. Best to come here when it’s less busy, i.e. not on a Saturday night at 8pm but I love the sushi and a movie combination and their dishes are consistently good hence, I think them worthy of a second post.

Bento Café
9 Parkway, Camden NW1
8/10