Boo in Paris - Septime la Cave

One of the most hyped restaurants in Paris right now is Septime.  Having not planned ahead we stood no chance of getting a table during our 4 day trip, so didn’t even attempt it, but we were lucky enough to have lunch on our last day at the newly opened Septime Cave.

The Cave, just across the road from the main restaurant is a little wine cellar with 3 stools at a bar, offering a small menu of wines by the glass and a few bar snacks.  We propped up the bar for a few hours ahead of our train back to London and were so impressed with the wines (bringing plenty home with us) and the food.  It’s not really marketed as a foodie destination, more a place to buy some good wines and perhaps crack open a bottle right there, or sample some others whilst grazing on some snacks.  

The place is stacked with wines from floor to ceiling, on each wall.  They also sell a bunch of other drinks and whilst it's a tiny room, they've really made the best of the space they have to work with.

We ordered pretty much 1 of everything between the 3 or us.  The toasted bread was replenished literally about 10 times without even having to ask.  

  

In this first picture is the foie gras with anguille fume (€10) which was great.  Even Art, not the biggest fan of fish, was taken with the smoked eel stuffed in the centre.  Great with the bread, from a local bakery.

Next to arrive was the saucisson salamino (€8) and the house smoked duck breast, magreb fume ici (€7).

Final batch of plates we ordered were the saint nectaire cheese (€8) the lombatello di cinta senese (€8) an Italian proscuitto type ham and, what was for me the best dish of the day, the ricotta anchois (€8).  The combo of anchovies with the creamy cheese topped with toasted bulghar wheat and plenty of Occhipinti extra virgin olive oil.  The oil was also left with us for regular top ups and I got a bottle to take away.  So good.  It’s from a small family run estate where some of the wines on offer are also produced. 

Onto the wines, the biggest hit of the day was probably the P.U.R BBQ 2011 which Bel took a few bottles of.  A full bodied red from the Chavanay region of France made with Syrah grapes.

I preferred the Bourgogne Aligote from Naudin-Ferrand, a fruity and smooth white.  Glasses of these to drink in range from 5-8 Euros and the bottles can be purchased for around 7-15 Euros.  And that is really all I should say about wine, because I know so little, but everything we tried was excellent.  So cheap and it really was the best way to spend the final few hours of our trip.  I had a cider too for €3.

I can’t think of anywhere similar to it here in London, it’s a brilliant idea.  There was a steady stream of visitors coming in to pick up a bottle or 2, and the lovely lady working there that day was so sweet and helpful.  It's a casual vibe and really ended our holiday on a high note.

Septime La Cave

3 Rue Basfroi, 75011 (Charonne)

Paris

8.5/10

Boo in Paris - Le Chateaubriand

No exaggeration, I've been trying to dine at Le Chateaubriand for about 4 years. My previous visits to Paris always coinciding with their summer and Christmas closures, so this time, the girls and I were determined not to miss out.

This and this report of how to bag a table came in really handy as we'd not managed to make a reservation. So we took up residence in sister restaurant Le Dauphin and kept an eye on the queue situation to ensure we were able to be relatively close to the front.

At Le Chateaubriend, the first sitting from 6pm allows organised diners to book in advance. As the tables turn, those who queue are able to try the tasting menu on a first come first served basis. There is no all night queue, it forms from about 9pm to reduce potential waiting times which seems like a much better way of doing it than the constant queues we see here in London.

We waited inside at the bar from just gone 9, drinking champagne for about an hour. Tables of 2 were seated ahead of us, bigger groups will need to wait for longer.

Once we were seated, we enjoyed the best meal of the whole trip and I now see what all the fuss is about and why for many Le Chateaubriand is still offering some of the best food that Paris has to offer.

There is a set tasting menu only, which changes on a daily basis and costs €60. A wine matching menu is also offered for €120 but we were already pretty merry.

First up came the amuse bouches.

 Cheese puffs - not particularly memorable, and we spotted some nearby diners

being served 2 each.  Only 1 each for us, boring start.

 Liqueur de tomates. Almost like a bloody Mary, a salty cold liquid with a 

chunk of avocado in the centre. This was seriously impressive and 

I annoyed everyone by banging on about how much I loved it.

 I still can't decide what fish this was but I think it was

monkish with horseradish and walnuts.  Nice textures.

 Octopus salad with asparagus and yoghurt. Another wow dish.

 Amuses done, a celery soup palate cleanser which was way better than it looked.

Some nice bread and butter arrived at this point along with the starter of boudin noir, choux de pointoise (cabbage from a suburb in the Northwest of Paris) and pimentón (paprika). This was the dish of the day for all of us who agreed that we would never have ordered it, but were thoroughly blown away by the combination. The boudin noir was the nicest blood sausage I have ever tried and the additions of grapefruit pulp and cabbage were genius. LOVED IT.

 Next up was our least favourite dish. Monkfish with carrots and bitter leaves. 

The sauce was a bit wishy washy and it lacked the flavour present in all the other dishes.

 Guinea fowl with squid cubes and beurre noisette. Another really brilliant dish. 

Lovely cooked meat with a nice tang from the onion and herb topping. 

Pre dessert of mandarin ice cream with rum soaked raisins. I didn't expect to 

like this but it provided a nice freshness and the raisins really packed a punch.

We shared 2 cheese plates and had an extra 2 desserts as concino del ciolo cannot be shared. How do you slice a runny egg yolk?! These split the table really. The Spanish sweet dish of pastry with toffee sauce topped with an egg yolk. Eaten in 1 mouthful the yolk pops and is only slightly sweet, blowtorched sugar forming a hard top and resuting in a gag reflex from half of our table. Certainly fun to eat.

The fromage, I forget which as the menu didn't specify, was a fine selection.

More bread was delivered with it.

To finish, we were given a plate of mango pieces topped with cumin and fennel seeds with what could have been other candied seeds but I can't be sure (the colourful balls pictured). We shared a bottle of red through the meal and by this point we were all flagging slightly having been on the 7:30am Eurostar from St Pancras that morning. A 1:30am finish to the meal took its toll on us and I was struggling to see straight!

To say we enjoyed this experience would be an understatement. The service and atmosphere was lively and fun. We paid €90 each and left full and happy, all boudin noir converts and I will certainly be back next time I'm in Paris. The wait we had feared was a non issue and the food some of the most innovative and interesting I've ever had.

Le Chateaubriand

129, Avenue de Parmentier

Paris

70011

9/10

Bob Bob Ricard

This has been a long time coming.  I finally had dinner at Bob Bob Ricard last weekend and have to say up front that it was one of the best meals I've had in a long time.

I think I'll leave the pictures to do the talking as they more than do the experience justice.  If I add more words, there is a danger I might be embarrassingly gushing.  Suffice to say that the lighting and ambience, the glassware, the service and the food more than lived up to the hype and I happily parted with £90 at the end of the evening. 

Clear bloody Mary with homemade essence of tomato (£13.50)

Slightly murky due to tabasco and worcester sauce additions

Fillet medallions rossini, served with seared fois gras, fois gras

crouton, truffle gravy (not yet poured) and spinach (£28.50)

Pressed roasted belly of suckling pork with red cabbage

and truffle gravy (£22.25)

Lobster burger with marie rose sauce (£27.75)

Lobster mac & cheese (£6.50)

Sides of fries, tomato salad, parsnips & carrots (£4.50 each) 

3 bird burger lurking in the background (£21.50)

Eton mess en perle (£8.25)

Striped strawberries and cream soufflé (£6.25)

Warm chocolate fondant with pistachio ice cream (£8.25)

Trio of brulées, chocolate, passionfruit and earl gray tea (£7.50)

Now, I'm not usually crazy about desserts but each one of these was magnificant, and I also wanted to try the rice pudding brulée and the signature chocolate sundae dessert.  It's rare that I'm so torn when it comes to deciding what to have, but at BBR, everything is done so perfectly that it's a real dilema.

I genuinely loved everything about it.  If I had to find a negative, it would be that the butter served with the bread was hard and unspreadable, but it was a mere blip in an otherwise faultless evening.  It is a venue for wanton extravagance and abandon, it's positively encouraged and I hope to be back many many times.  And yes, we pressed for champagne! 

Bob Bob Ricard
1 Upper James St
Soho
W1F 9DF
9.5/10

Electric Diner

 

I brunched this weekend at Electric Diner, which has been almost universally praised since it's late 2012 reopening, following a kitchen fire earlier last year.

It's totally changed, I went for brunch about 6 years ago, pre blog, and returned with the girls (minus Noy, who's sunning herself in Oz) last Saturday.  We arrived at 2, put our names down (no reservations) and were called about 20 minutes later as our booth was ready.  You only get an hour which means they're pretty swift at turning tables.  I didn't feel particularly rushed, but post meal lingering is certainly off limits.

I tried the bloody mary (£8), which really whacks you around the head with a hefty punch of all the usual trappings and many in addition to what you'd expect.  Sliced pickles, lots of lemon and olives giving it quite a tang.  Very good and did the job on on my hangover.

I ate the ham and gruyere open sandwich topped with a fried egg (£9) with a side of hash browns (£4).  This came with brioche bread with butter (room temperature so spreadable - an important note), jam and marmalade.  The fried egg was cooked how it should be and the cheese fondue ws lovely, essentially a bechamel with loads of cheese resulting in stringiness (a good thing) and there was a nice scattering of smoked ham, all topped with parsely.  I was pleased with my choice and the hash browns, whilst not what I was expecting were good.  They were more like rostis really.

Both the girls had the full English (£11) which they seemed more than happy with.  The thick cut bacon is particularly impressive.  I thought cynically that most of this would be fat but it was actually mostly pork and I heard no complaints from the girls.  In a thoughtful way the baked beans are ensconced in a little pot, albeit an overflowing one.  I know many a person who objects to bean juice infiltrating where it's not wanted.

I liked the meal but I can't see me returning any time soon, it's been 6 years since my last visit.  Nice location mind.  The no bookings policy will no doubt put many off, if the market happens to be on, it's obviously not a problem, but at other times, hanging around waiting for a table will be a bit boring.  Also, with all the chaos of primetime, people were not respecting the queue situation, behaviour which I absolutely cannot tolerate.

Electric Diner
191 Portobello Road
W11 2ED
7/10

 

Lucky Fried Chicken

For a very limited time Lucky Chip have popped up at The Grafton in Kentish Town.  They're offering Lucky Fried Chicken Tuesday-Saturday, and roast dinners of a Sunday.

I expected the place to be packed out but we ordered a drink at the bar and sat straight down at 7:30 last Thursday evening.

There were 3 of us and we ordered the bucket o' chicken (£28.50) from the small but perfectly formed menu.  It supposedly serves 5-7 but we were hungry and only just beaten.  Think Colonel Sanders but with really succulent and not in the least bit dry chicken.  The crumb had a fine kick to it but unfortunately the bucket, whilst being a fun play on the KFC family deal, is not an ideal vessel for piping hot chicken pieces as they're stacked right on top of each other and the coating got a bit soggy and damp.

Accompaniments of dinner rolls and gravy, coleslaw and fries were excellent but I was really beating myself up at the end of the night when I realised I'd missed out on the mash, apparently it's well worth the visit for that alone.

If you can, get yourself down there sharpish, it's a really nice pub to boot.  Also available are sandwiches (chicken burgers), Wednesday only livers and gizzards (I'm intrigued) and desserts of the apple and cherry pie persuasion.  We were way too full for those.  I'm actually not mad keen on fried chicken, weird I know, but this is good, and a fine way to spend a cold February evening. Careful not to burn yourselves though, it's v. hot.

Lucky Fried Chicken
The Grafton Arms
20 Prince of Wales Road
Kentish Town
NW5
7/10

And, I'm moving to the area soon, woo!  Hopefully more of the same to come.

The Jugged Hare

I've had a couple of work lunches at the Jugged Hare.  I was tempted to revisit last week while I'm still in the area because of the recent release of the top 50 gastropub list for 2013.

Special mention here to the pub coming in 2nd place, The Sportsman, my top meal of 2012.  Representing Kent, go guys!

So The Jugged Hare is 24th on the list, in general London pubs did very well, see a run down here.  I'm not entirely sure this place should technically be classified as a gastropub, but I have only eaten in the restaurant area.  There is a small front pub section and a larger formal dining room at the rear.  The decor is reminiscent of Goodman, Mayfair, lots of dark wood and leather.

The menu is meaty, there are plenty of daily specials, hawked on twitter.  There's also a lot of fish and a pie of the day.  I liked the sound of the majority of the menu and could happily eat my way through the lot.  I tried the fish pie on one occasion which was small but perfectly formed.   Generous amounts of salmon, haddock, prawns and scallop with a nice crispy mash potato topping.

Once seated, you are given a small sourdough loaf with salted butter. I really like the bread, there's no cover charge but the dishes don't come cheap with mains between £16 and £30.  When I sat down, somebody had a laptop bag sprawled across the seat I'd been allocated, nobody volunteered to move it, so I moved it myself, an act which was treated with general disdain from both the neighbouring table and the waitress.

I had the special of braised herdwick lamb shank with mash and savoy cabbage.  I drank water which was topped up once from a jug closely guarded by the wait staff, and was never seen again.  The lamb was lovely though.  So tender, off the bone served on top of the mash and veg.  There was the slightly bizarre appearance of baby spinach leaves, I ate them but it seemed unnecessary.  In all I was very happy with my choice.

Thomas had the Tamworth pork shoulder with caramel apple sauce.  Some of the specials come with sides and others do not which is strange.  Thomas' did not so he also ordered a green salad and some suede mash.  The pork was ok, not particularly mindblowing but the apple element was pretty great, sweet and tangy it livened up and otherwise average dish.  More inexplicable foliage to decorate. 

The whole thing is a bit stuffy and not in keeping with what a gastropub is all about for me.  The food is good, but expensive (we paid about £30 a head for 1 dish each) and I'd much rather go to the Bull & Last, recent find The Pig & Butcher, or back to The Sportsman, quite possibly my favourite pub anywhere in the world!

The Jugged Hare
49 Chiswell St
Barbican
EC1Y
6/10

The Longroom

It may sound like I have done little but blow the trumpet for EC1 of late, and thinking about it, there is actually a lot of good food to be eaten around the Old St/Clerkenwell/Farringdon area, despite my initial trepidation when accepting a job there.  One of the newer openings, is The Longroom.

It is indeed a rather long room with a central open kitchen where the limited menu is prepared and served.  Their schtick is quality meat and beer, as it's still early days they are rarely full yet and the room feels a tad vacuous.  There's been minimal buzz surrounding the place on twitter and I'm yet to read a review.  I was keen to try before I leave the area and head back to Soho for work.

The short and sweet menu reads well.  Home cured salt beef is the star, in sandwich or sharing board form, the menu bolstered by some home made soups and cheese toasties.  As long as the beef is good, what's not to like?

And I did like the beef.  It bared the requisite characteristics, in that it's suitably salty, stringy and tender.  It's Keevil and Keevil brisket, sourced from around the corner at Smithfield market.  It was the accompaniments I was not 100% sold on.  The bread, sourdough from Gail's Bakery, is very good bread, but I wasn't sure of it's place in this context.  I'm not certain why they've veered from the traditional and shied away from rye.  It is nice bread though. 

The house pickles were very generous, onions and gherkins and other crunchy vinegary specimens, vying for your attention and rendering the beef all but tasteless in the sandwich.  I had the Reuben with swiss cheese, thousand island dressing, english mustard and sauerkraut also thrown into the mix. Ideal to soak up the many beers on offer.  I felt there was something missing but can't be sure what, or perhaps it's that the sandwich isn't perfectly in harmony with a bit too much going on.  It's not quite up there with the Mishkin's Reuben for me, but they are completely different beasts.

That said, I'll be heading back later this week for my leaving lunch, and I'll be trying a cheese toastie next time.  I love the idea of the place, perhaps it's early days and things will develop with time, what they are doing right, is the drinks.  I had a pint of the London Fields Hackney Hopster pale ale.  All citrusy and light, I forget that I'm not keen on beer when I drink this!  As well as the multiple draught options, there are plenty of imported bottled beers on the drinks menu.  Of particular interest, the Little Creatures pale ale all the way from Oz.  (Imported by Aspalls, but still craft, right?! Hmm.)

Prices are reasonable, £5-9 for the sandwiches, with a lunch special available of half a serving of soup with half of any sandwich for £7.50.  The beers are available in quarter, half and pint measures, which is handy for me as I'm in lightweight form at the moment since my pathetic attempt at #dryjan.

The Longroom
18-20 St John Street
EC1M 4AY
6/10