The End of the Endless Summer

November 5, 2014, 2:58 pm

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I remember being given a menu when in a Fuller’s pub a couple of years ago emblazoned with ‘summers were longer when we were younger’ across the front. Despite this only being the late spring Bank Holiday, I already felt the wistful nostalgia that it may as well be November already and time for lost scarves and log fires and chipping frost off the car window.

Of course, our perception does change as we get older. Birthdays seemed aeons away when I was growing up, and for good reason; the gap between my fifth and sixth year, for example, being 20% of my life lived up to that point. As a kid that's a mighty long time.

This summer - contrary to the feeling that sees us all hurtling toward old age with the belief that nine out of ten days are overcast with a hint of drizzle (no matter what the time of year) while the remaining few veer from blistering hot to drifts of snow – was perfect, and not just because of the weather.

Of course by perfect, I mean flawed in the way that life is. There were high days and holidays and all-nighters and early bedtime; there were new friends and old friends and fantastic family gatherings; lots of laughter, a few cross words and a big loss. Stealth and I learnt how to rock a party while the Ewing’s allotment blossomed with scotch bonnets, artichokes and more marrows than seemed humanly possible.

Which is why I didn’t have that usual pang of autumnal regret thoughts of dark nights and gloom descending – I was summered out. The thought of digging out a scarf and eating soup and sausages and baked potatoes and putting my socks on the radiator in the morning, just like my mum used to do before I got dressed for school, suddenly seemed very appealing. And also, what better time to slip in a nice summery photo montage.

As she had accompanied me through most the fun parts of the summer, and most the bad bits too, it was only fitting I should spend the last of the dying light with Stealth, who was suffering from yet another romance-induced malady.

Despite my attempted efforts to plan an adventure further afield, I knew that after we had woken up eaten all the Chocolate Orange and prawn crackers (due to lack of any other food) washed down with black coffee (due to lack of milk) we would end up in the Old Red Lion in Kennington, a five minute stagger from Stealth’s doorstep.

To be honest, I’ve got rather a soft spot for the ORL and there are certainly far worst places to find yourself on a Sunday afternoon.  For a start the beer selection is very good, with plenty of hand pulled ales and stouts and a good choice of canned and bottled beers, especially American brewers such as Rouge and Flying Dog. On my last visit, in the sweaty height of summer, I enjoyed a few Modus Hoperandis in the beer garden.

This time we started with pints of Twickenham Brewery's Naked Ladies, as if they knew and were ready to taunt the love lorn Stealth, followed by a couple more pints of whatever porter and stout were on tap. Remissly, I have know idea of what they actually were, but all were well kept and went down rather too easily.

I also started with a bloody mary, which was one of the best I have had for a long while. The tomato juice was nicely spiced with a good slug of horseradish and pepper and was pepped up even further with pickled cherry tomatoes, lemon and celery. Sadly there wasn't much vodka kick and it was served in a glass little bigger than a thimble and so necessitated several beer chasers.

Obviously Sunday equals a roast dinner (luckily as there isn't much else on the menu on the seventh day of the week) I have to be fair and say I didn't have high hopes for the food; roasts eaten anywhere but home (or someone else's home) are notoriously difficult to nail and are are often wanting. At least the food is well priced, pitching in between the sub tenner (danger, Bisto gravy you can stand a spoon in and beef like sawdust) and over fifteen quid (the meat's probably going to be rare but the veg still crunchy and served with 'jus' instead of gravy) offerings that make choosing a pub roast such a minefield.

Hands up, this was a admirably commendable effort with very little to criticize. I had gone for the chicken, needing something soothing after the previous late night and feeling that gnawing on a nice juicy drumstick may just sort things out. A decision that I soon regretted when I saw the hulking great supreme of meat that was placed in front of me.

Thankfully, I was proved wrong. I'm not sure if the breast had been brined or not but the chicken was fantastic; lots of flavour (they use free range birds) and with the perfect amount of lubrication. The bed of roasties the meat perched on were fair, if not really very crispy, but as a bonus there were roast carrot and parsnips buried at the bottom of the heap.

Alongside the chciken star prize had to go to the yorkie. Normally I'm a bit of a traditionalist and wouldn't choose a batter puddings to accompanying anything but beef (or sausages), but they come alongside all roasts here, and I'm very glad they do. While I appreciate that the squidgy yorkshire pudding wouldn't suit all tastes, to me they are far better than the airy domes that shatter as you put a fork in them, and these were just perfect.

With her eating irons poised, Stealth attempted to take on her roast topside with all the trimmings. Another good effort with meat that, while not being particularly pink, was big in flavour and nicely cooked. Lots of decent gravy, too; and often overlooked but essential part of any good roast. A mention for the carrots and broccoli, too, which were on the right side of al dente.

A roast dinner isn't a roast dinner without cauli cheese in my house and a side order of the aforementioned had an admirably un-waterlogged veg with a decent, if probably not quite fromage-filled enough, beachamel sauce.

Pudding came in the form of chocolate mousse served with lashings of cream and another pint of stout. The mousse itself was the squidgy, sweet almost chewy type rich with egg whites and sugar that you could imagine being served in a dingy backstreet Paris bistro, rather than the light fluffy rich kind that is more familiar. I enjoyed it, even if the texture was a little bit gluey in texture; for three quid however, it would be churlish to complain.

In fact it would be churlish to complain about much (except perhaps the company). A very decent drinking spot and no with a good roast upits sleeve. They also sometime have an awseome homemade Guinness cake on the bar to boot. Surely a perfect trilogy in pub terms.

Of course I had my whole extra hour to kill, so after waving farewell to Stealth (not mentioning how she dumped me by the E&C roundabout instead of gallantly walking me to the station) I decided to make the most of the newly dark early evenings by taking a stroll around the bright lights of the West End, which is how I ended up at Shake Shack in the bowels of Hell Covent Garden.

It was worth braving the crowds, though for a chance to try a couple of their seasonal specials. Firstly the bacon wrapped chhpped chilli and cheese doused Smoke Dog which was accompanied by one of their famed concrete ice creams, this time with the addition of a slice of London bakery Cocomaya's pumpkin pie for good measure. Refreshment came in the form of an Arnold Palmer, sadly so seldom seen on these shores.

Despite the fact I was still digesting the last remnants of Yorkshire pudding and choccy mousse I had no problem devouring both of these. The combo of cherry peppers, their legendary cheese sauce and bacon could hardly fail, and the pumpkin pie concrete was both spicy and sweet without being cloying, the chunks of pie crust adding buttery crunch.

Taking a postprandial stroll to nowhere, soaking up the atmosphere while enjoying the twinkling lights of the Big City and breathing in the top notes of roasting chestnuts and diesel fumes, I thought that, not for the first time, John Lennon was right; time you enjoy wasting is time not wasted. Amen to that (and roll on 29th March...).

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(Mostly) Raw Fish

November 11, 2014, 2:01 pm

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While originally becoming popular across South East Asia as a way to preserve fish in fermented rice so it would last longer, also see zabasushi below, Hanaya Yohei is generally credited as the inventor of today's Tokyo-style nigiri sushi, at the end of Japan's Edo period, circa 1850. And what would a trip to Japan be without scarfing down huge amounts of possibly their most famous export, mercury poisoning and fishing quotas be damned.

The fish sold during this time would often be salted or marinated in soy as lack of refrigeration caused the catch (mostly from Tokyo Bay) to spoil very quickly. Skip forwards a century and sushi with raw fish, roe and seafood was becoming more easily available and could be found for sale on the streets of most Japanese cities.

Come the 1980s and the west coast of America bought a charge with the introduction of fusion sushi including California rolls stuffed with all sorts of weird and wonderful things including mayo, avocado and crabsticks and spicy tuna, quickly followed by the excitement of kaiten (conveyor) belt restaurants and the ensuing sushi saturation of the 2000s where you could find boxes to takeaway in every Tescos in every town.

So here we are in 2014 and while it doesn’t look like we are going to get the hoverboards or pizzas that grow in the microwave that we were promised, you can order sushi on an iPad that is bought to your table on a robotic train; which is how we came to find ourselves at Genki Sushi for a little birthday lunch of raw fish and rice.

Of all the stops planned out on our two week itinerary sadly I think this is the one I was most looking forward to; as with the best of Japanese culture it demonstrates the perfect blend of ancient tradition with technology and it also meant I could stuff myself silly with sushi for a ridiculously small amount of Yen.

The premise is simple; on entering you are given a small electronic tag corresponding to a seat in the restaurant, on finding said seat activate the ipad that is mounted above it (thankfully there is an English option) and begin ordering your food and drink. When you have finished ‘checkout’ on the iPad then take your tag to the counter at the entrance to settle up.

Of course the real fun comes when you have placed you order. As soon as the kitchen has freshly prepared your food they load up the little robotic trains before sending them out to you via a double set of tracks that run around the restaurant like a miniature railway enthusiasts wet dream. On receiving your order, grab the food then press the flashing ‘Genki’ button to send the train back; rinse, lather, repeat.

I had been avidly watching Youtube videos on Genki etiquette (and other strange Japanese things) before our trip including one,from American video bloggers in Japan, Eric and Kyde, that showed them, on Eric’s birthday, eating at the same Shibuya branch of Genki. I decided to commemorate this auspicious coincidence on the anniversary of my birth by ordering Eric’s two favourite dishes to start, maguro (tuna) and pepper ebi (prawn) plus a special plate called ‘fatty trio’, because with a name like that how could I resist.

The tuna was good, the prawns great – they had been topped with Kewpie mayo and sprinkled with plenty of black pepper  before being blowtorched– and the fatty trio totally Genki (trans. happy, energetic or feeling well and still my favourite word of the moment).

The Ewing started with crab miso soup (189 Yen) which looked like it contained the creature from the Blue Lagoon, plus a basket three plump panko’d oysters served with a poky tartare sauce and a dish of her favourite edamame beans.

Throughout the meal we tried, amongst others, tuna mayo and creamed corn gunkan, a little odd but strangely moreish; a crispy grilled pork rib nigiri, served hot with lemon; bonito, looked great but a touch chewy; ama ebi (raw sweet shrimp) that lived up to the name; salmon roe gunkan, my nightmare but one of the Ewing's faves; and salmon with raw onions and mayo, that was highly inauthentic but a delight.

To give you a rough idea of the cost, the basic nigiri - tuna, salmon, prawn etc. - come as two pieces per plate and cost 189 Yen (about a pound) while the specials, like the fatty trio and oysters, are about 350 Yen (about two pounds). Matcha tea is free and each seat comes equipped with a hot water spigot, cups and powdered green tea so you can make and drink as much as you like through your meal. We also had a bottle of ice cold sake, come on, it was my birthday. Total damage just over 3,000 Yen or £18; yes, this place is cheap.

Of course, all of this jiggery pokery may alarm the purist but for this price the sushi, certainly for these two Gajin, was unbeatable value and tasty, too. Halfway through our meal, probably corresponding to the ridiculous amount I had been ordering, I got to play rock, paper, scissors with the animated girl who popped up on my ipad. Defeating her meant a 10% off token for our next visit. How could we resist?

 

Before we went back we made time for a flying visit to Genki’s even cheaper brother, Uoebi, a few streets away in Shibuya. Uoebi’s basic plates come in at 100 Yen, plus tax, a laughably small amount of money that would blow 90% of the sushi here out the water. The premise of the restaurant is the same, although the layout isn’t maze-like as in Genki, but configured as rows of seats with parallel tracks running from the kitchen along each wall.

The menu is pretty similar and the food just as good.  One different item they did offer (alongside battered chicken gristle, which I declined) was cheeseburger sushi, an abomination of an idea that actually tasted pretty damn fabulous. They also had unagi (broiled eel with a sweet sauce) and toro (tuna belly) for 189 Yen a piece. At that price, how could I say no.

There was also minced tuna with green onions and salt; crab brain gunkan for the Ewing; Pacific sauray (an autumn specialty); scallop sashimi; a trio of tuna ranging from lean to fatty; and pepper salmon which was good but not quite up to the dizzy heights of the shrimp.

Our last visit to Genki saw me trying out some of the non-raw options with rolled chicken breast stuffed with perilla leaves and deep fried (crispy, sweet and sour) and huge chunks of tuna coated in a tempura batter (a delight, but in need of an extra bit of lubrication to help them down. Where’s the mayo when you need it?).

I also had my favourite dish from the first visit, sweet shrimp topped with burnt leeks and Kewpie, but this time with raw scallop and then, because it was so good, with boiled octopus too. The scallop version was possibly the single most delicious thing I put in my mouth on the whole trip; the combination of soft, sweet, bitter and crispy being unbeatable. The salmon with spicy red oil and shredded raw leeks was also rather good.

There’s also a dessert menu available, although I can only comment on the slices of fresh pineapple, which made a welcome relief after all the fat and salt and were mercifully cheap compared to most Japanese fruit we encountered. Luckily the Ewing was far more up to the job and managed during her two visits the sweet potato cheesecake, the chestnut sponge cake and the green tea pudding, pictured. On our visit to Ueobi a group of four young American backpackers put away 16 bowls of cake and ice cream between them, which I had a sneaking amount of admiration for.

Kyoto, lying inland, doesn't share the same nigiri history as Tokyo. What it does, however specialize in, is sabazushi. Saba (mackerel) was originally bought to Kyoto over the so-called Saba Kaido, the "Mackerel Highway" between Kyoto and the fishing port of Obama in Fukui. To preserve them, the fillets of mackerel are lightly salted, then vinegared, before being pressed with sushi rice in a wooden mould before traditionally being wrapped in kelp.

To try the zabazushi we went for an early dinner at Izuju, which is handily located opposite the Yasaka Shrine. Inside is pretty tiny - the sushi being made at the front, leading through to five tables in the middle and a small kitchen out the back - but the traditional decor (the restaurant is nearly 100 tears old), with its curved wooden walls and sliding doors, is well worth checking out.

As well as the saba zushi they also offer inari pockets; deep fried tofu skin (another Kyoto specialty) stuffed with sushi rice and simmered vegetables. We chose a set which included the mackerel and tofu alongside hako (literally box) sushi which, quelle surprise, is pressed in box shaped moulds, and maki (roll) sushi.

Shortly after our beautiful platter of sushi was delivered to our table the chef quickly raced after the waitress jabbing his finger at something on the menu and gesticulating at us. While I politely nodded while carrying on attempting to eat my food  the Ewing  was more astute, noticing the warning 'please remove kelp before eating' and saving me the ignominy of battling my way through the tough and stringy band of seaweed that was wrapped around the mackerel.

The fish was god, although they recommend it without soy and overall I found it a little lacking next to my favourite nigiri sushi. The maki was beautiful, stuffed with strange shaped mushrooms and rolled omelette, something which also turned up in the hako. Other options for the box sushi include prawns and pike eel, that look like beautiful mosaics.

My favourite, surprisingly, was the inari pockets which featured a sweet tofu layer stuffed with a lemony rice and some strange little seeds that looked a little like cumin, but had a far more subtle, nutty flavour.

As well as a beautiful dinner we also got this beautiful view of the Yasaka Shrine, under a harvest moon, as we left the restaurant. This was followed by a nightime DIY tour of the back streets of the Kyoto, ably guided by the Ewing, that included the Gion district and the Potochino. A fglorious and beguiling city that deserves to be on any traveller's must see list.

Being the world’s biggest fish eaters, some 80kg each per year, and with only twenty four hours in the day to fit it all in, you know fish is going to feature in some way at the breakfast table. Alongside miso soup, traditionally with a bonito based stock, and the ever present rice there is often a pick‘n’mix of rolled omelette, pickles, natto (fermented soya beans) and salted fish.

I had seen a poster in the window of Matsuya, a famous Japanese chain of restaurants, while we were walking around Kyoto, but somehow the feat of making it back there before 11 am seemed beyond us. Thankfully I found a branch near the post office in Shinjuku, a five minute walk from our hotel, and we made it there for 10.50 on our penultimate morning.

Like many casual places the vending machine is king and all meals are ordered and paid for before you are seated. Helpful pictures helped us locate the breakfast set meals and we both chose the salmon collar- beef gyudon and fried sausage and eggs are also available – for 450 Yen (£2.50).

After sitting down at the horseshoe shaped counter and handing tickets over top the waitress several more baffling choices of additional extras quickly followed, although the laminated picture cards helped a little, and five minutes later our meals were in front of us.

If you haven’t yet had your eyes opened to the delights of slated salmon in the morning, I can highly recommend it, what I would struggle to recommend however was the hulking great block of tofu, supplemented with yet more fish in the form of bonito flakes, that came as my chosen side dish. No one deserves to eat that much tofu, especially before midday.

My pale and wobbling block of coagulated soya was nothing compared to the Ewing’s choice of grated yam, which turned up looking a little like American style grits but with the texture of ectoplasm. The other options included natto, a fermented soya bean that’s equally slimy and also smells like an unwashed gym kit. An eastern Marmite, perhaps?

Trying to watch the Ewing battle with the yam and a pair of chopsticks (alongside her stringently tasting every one of the five mystery condiments on the bench) was probably the highlight of my meal. I would also like to thank her for not only eating all the yam but also 93% of my tofu.

We also had time for a late night fishy interlude at another popular chain restaurant, Yoshino. Yoshino are most well known for their beef gyudon, a sort of thinly sliced beef and onion mix that’s simmered in dashi stock and served on rice. Due to BSE found in US cattle at the beginning of the century Yoshina stopped their beef imports and so couldn’t find enough short plate (the cut needed) to make their gyudon bowls for the first time since the first restaurant opened in 1899.

Despite the introduction of pork bowls (butadon) instead, the public’s love didn’t waiver. As the years went by beef bowls were reintroduced for special occasion, such as 2006’s one day the ‘beef bowl revival festival’ and occasionally during limited serving times, but it wasn’t until 2008 that the guydon was permanently back on the menu around the clock (most restaurants are open 24 hours).

Back to the fish and the Ewing went for their unagi bowl, served with pickles and miso soup. At 700 yen (£4.20) for one eel fillet on rice and sides, this represented an extravagant blow out (multiple eel fillets are also available but we were running out of the cold hard cash, at least  until we could find an international ATM, and so showed some restraint) but was worth every penny.

I had to try the mythical gyudon, served in a set with a side of corn salad and sesame dressing for a frankly laughable 350 Yen (2.20). Many around me were eating theirs with a raw egg stirred in, but I just went for lashing of beni shōga (pink pickled ginger) and a dash of soy. Despite its rather average appearance I suddenly understood the appeal of queuing up for this stuff during the dark days of the beef shortage, it truly was supreme and one of the few dishes from the trip I really long for since being back home. Forget another ramen restaurant, the Big smoke needs beef bowls!

A blog about fish (and, it seems, gyudon) wouldn't be complete without the jewel in Japan’s crown, Tsujiki fish market. This place is legendary, and for a reason. Every year it handles over 600,000 tonnes of seafood or 1 in every 5 fish caught. While you can find over 480 types of fish, tuna is king with the most expensive specimen selling for over a million US dollars.

Access to the tuna auctions has been restricted to tourists since a charmingly inebriated Brit licked the head of a frozen tuna and another tourist turned up naked in a wooden handcart used for making deliveries, but that doesn't stop hundreds of people queuing up from three o'clock every morning for a chance to pick up one of the 120 fluorescent tabards that allow you to see some action live for yourself.

Sadly we weren't one of the lucky few - to be fair we were still deep in a slumber as the hypnotic bell ringing and frantic nodding and shouting began, and didn't arrive until a far more civilised hour. If you want to see a slice of the fascinating action in full flow and cant get to the Chuo District anytime soon try YouTube, where you can also see the sheer size of some of the magnificent fish that are up for grabs.

Although we missed the main action the market was still a swarming mass of activity come mid-morning. While many of the fish had been bought and sold we still saw endless barrels of eels, buckets of fish heads and piles of crushed ice topped with everything from the finest fillets to brains and fins. Electric band saws hummed as they made light work of huge hunks of frozen tuna but, even at that time of the day, watch out for the fleet of motorised vehicles that whizz up and down through the impossibly narrow walkways at a demon speed. This is the most cutthroat I saw the placid Japanese throughout my visit; these guys won't stop for anyone.

Following on in the Japanese tradition, and despite all the blood and guts, everything remained relatively spotless. Oddly the market itself didn't smell at all fishy, with the strongest piscine whiff coming when we got off the metro and were walking through the underground station. With most the catch being sold we had the opportunity to see the grand cleaning down process - wear old clothes if your worried about being hosed down as you wonder through - which is far more fascinating than you may think, alongside some wonderful displays of knife sharpening. 

After the buzz of the market we moved to the out warren of streets, which by this point on a Saturday afternoon were postively thronging with people.Top sushi joints around the market, and there are a few, include Daiwa Sushi and Sushidai which, with only one small counter in each, often have crouds of three otr four hours plus. While I don't mind a wait for my lunch, breakfast seemed like a long way away so we picked the slightly less daunting queue outside Sushi Zanmai's flagship branch. A quick wait and we were soon seated at their upstairs counter for lunch.

As time goes on I realise more and more that, despite all the endless varieties of fish and seafood in the sea, my heart really belongs to tuna. I'm far from a fussy eater, and enjoy most types of sushi, but there are always a few that come and crash the party. Crunchy fish roe leaves me cold, sea urchin makes me shudder, surf clams are often like chewing gum and raw oysters, what ever anyone says about 'growing to like them', are awful.

The Ewing indulged her love for the weird and wonderful by choosing their second set, a mixture of assorted fish and crustaceans. Alongside a huge strip of unagi and a ginat prawn, complete with eyes on stalks, there was tuna, squid wrapped in perilla, sea urchin, crab with a topping of crab brains, salmon roe, chines chives and tamago.

While my wife went with her crazy underwater pick'n'mix ere I was free indulge my love of maguro with the special tuna set; maki rolls, blow torched tuna, freshly minced tuna gunkan and a selection of akami, chutoro and otoro, of which my favourite was probably the middle. Not too fatty, not too lean, just right. 

In fact it was all perfect; nothing squidgy, crunchy, slimy or bitter; nothing that popped unexpectedly as you bit in to it, and nothing that wriggled or writhed. It just like my own imagining of my favourite scene in Home Alone (that's fast becoming a theme on the blog) where Kevin orders the cheese and tomato pizza. The king of the sea, all for me, and my perfect plate of (mostly) raw fish.

Deep Fried Things and Drinking

November 19, 2014, 1:17 pm

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One of my favourite sayings remains, much the the Ewing’s chagrin, if you’re going to get wet then you may as well go swimming; a motto that perfectly encapsulates drinking while on holiday. Or how a lunchtime ‘lite’ beer can quickly escalate to a dinner time bottle of sweet potato sochu (firewater would probably be too kind a word) followed by some late night drunken sausage eating. No euphemism intended.

The best way to start any lash up has got to be with a visit to Tokyo’s famed ‘Piss Alley’ or Omoide Yokocho (Memory Lane). Set amongst the ultra-modern skyline of Shinjuku this tumble down warren of alleys by the railway station remains untouched by the bulldozers of modernity.  Which is a jolly good thing as these tiny drinking dens, thick with the smoke from charcoal grilled yakatori skewers, remain one of the most exhilarating places in the city for a jar or two.

We got their early doors on a Saturday, just as the sun was going down. Despite my intention to stay cool and wander up and down for a bit checking things out, we were commandeered almost immediately by a friendly lady beckoning us to sit at her tiny bar; with most of the establishments being of a similarly bijou size we took the opportunity to get settled down in a friendly spot.

Feeling fearless, I commandeered the menu and ordered two sticks each of gizzards, chicken skin, tsukune (chicken meatballs), cartilage, chicken and Japanese spring onion, pork tongue and garlic. These can all be ordered with tare (sweet glaze) or shiro (salt). We just pointed and hoped.

First up was the skin, burnished and crisp from the hot coals, followed by the cartilage (bordering on distressingly crunchy) meatballs (good, but still full of cartilage) chicken (a safe, but tasty choice), tongue (surprisingly good, if a little offaly) garlic (potent enough to dissuade an army of vampires) and gizzards (the Ewing finally gave up, calling them ‘chewy pebbles’ and made me finish them).

The following day was my birthday and after a sake lunch at Genki sushi, before a restorative matcha frappucciono at the Starbucks overlooking the famous crossing in Shibuya we made like Bill Maurray and headed up to the 52nd floor of the Park Hyatt Tokyo for cocktails in the New York Bar.

In an interesting quirk of the changeable Japanese weather, Typhoon Phanfone, the first of our brief visit, had rapidly descended and you would have been lucky to see your hand in front of your face let alone the glittering lights of the big city. While we had been rather spilt with our visit up the Government Tower the day before, where we had seen Mount Fuji at sunset, the swirling gloom outside only served to make it more exciting at night time.

Clearly there was only one drink I could have ordered, the Suntory Hibiki 17 Japanese whisky. ‘For relaxing times, chose Suntory times’, to borrow a phrase. It was very nice, as were the little rice crackers that they dished out to each table, which I gobbled up to take the sting out of the fact my single finger of whisky cost more than lunch for two had earlier.

Of course, it was worth it, even with the labyrinth like route to the top that involved walking through a library and two restaurants before taking two lifts and three sets of stairs and even involved one poor lady at reception running out ion to the road to steer us back in the right direction. If you’re there yourself I can recommend the French 75, made with both gin and ‘proper’ fizz to see you right.

In the miracle that was actually escaping without incident we decided to head down into the bowels of the building, there is also a food court, shops and offices at the same location, for some late night supper. We chose BLAH, primarily because of the bewitching plastic food in the window (still one of my favourite Japanese quirks) and had soon both chosen a set meal of pork cutlets and other deep fried things with rice, white cabbage and various other accoutrements.

Tonkatsu is a big deal in japan and the shredded cabbage also bought with it a ridged dish of black and white sesame seeds alongside a wooden pestle. Here the object was to pulverise the seeds with the wooden object, before adding ladles of sweet tonkatsu sauce from the crock on the table. 

What you did with it next was anyone’s guess as in the intervening time we had ordered and made serious inroads, into a large bottle of sweet potato sochu, a kind of fortified rot gut that feels like such a good idea the night before.

Of course, there were also the cutlets themselves; a straight pork number and a rolled cutlet, made of wafer thin curls of meat that resembled a porcine cigar. These were served alongside alongside giant crispy shrimp, a croquette of minced chicken and vegetables and a chicken breast stuffed with umboshi sour plums. Add rice and miso soup and it was a proper, pissed feast.

Needless to say we had a wonderful evening that was, thankfully, curtailed when we were thrown out in the politest way possible. No because of any terrible transgressions, merely they were trying to close for the evening. We still managed to have lots of fun recording the automatic flush noises in the loo outside, before ’comically’ riding the escalators for a bit, though.

Of course the evening couldn’t end there and so we found an off licence near our hotel that was crammed to the gills with all sorts of weird and wonderful (native and imported) goodies. First up was the huge choice of Japanese whiskeys, including a bottle of Nikka from the barrel we picked up for under a tenner (there were four litres of cheapo whiskey available for about 12 quid) sake and sochu (wisely declined). They also had a full range of Hachiko Japanese craft ale as well as the biggest range of Brew Dog beer I have seen anywhere, including most of their bars (they do have one in Tokyo, which may be a clue to how they were so well stocked).

After walking around for a while in an inebriated daze we left with our whiskey, reserves of crazy flavoured Pringles, amazing snack sausages and some ales including a Hitachino Espresso Stout and Suiyoubi No Neko Yona Yona Ale, a wheat beer the Ewing coverted as it had a cat on the label. Definitely a place to check out if there’s any room in the suitcase, or if you just want the party to carry on a little longer.

Of course a big night before means a morning after but I knew I could always get through the day knowing I could come back to my massage chair, and the prospect of a vending machine beer from the hotel lobby.

Another great drinking accompaniment are dumplings. Like ramen, Japanese gyoza (or, originally, jiaozi) are a Chinese import; and like ramen, the Japanese have taken to them like the proverbial duck to water (and a very many ducks have ended up in these dumplings). One of the best spots in town to enjoy some gyoza is Harajuku’s Gyozaro, a nondescript place just off the main drag that can be identified by its yellow and red sign advertising (I presume) the two types of dumpling on offer there.

Alongside the dumplings there’s not much else, just a two side dishes, chicken soup and rice and drinks. To start we had a round of frosty Kirin beer and the sides; firstly a utilitarian bowl of sliced cucumber with miso followed by bean sprouts with a meat sauce.  Both sounded rather uninspiring but tasted superlative, reminding me of the benefits of a small menu where everything has to earn its place.

After the appetisers I worried the dumplings would disappoint. Thankfully I needn’t have worried, the main draw, ordered by the half dozen - either pan fried or steamed and filled with a choice of pork or pork and garlic chives (nira) - were spot on. We had a portion of each, both with chives, and I can highly recommend both the crisp gossamer skins of the fried version and the chewy, succulent steamed snacks; especially good with lashings of rice vinegar, soy and blazing chilli oil, and icy beer, of course.

Everyone loves a train beer and thankfully Japanese beers, like most beers, are getting more sophisticated. No longer is cheap, gassy lager going to cut it (although low malt, low flavour brews are still popular thanks to the low tax they attract from the government).

The beverage I chose for my trip on the Shinkansen was a Aooni pale ale, an pale ale touted as 'a taste of magic', which went down a storm with my tonkatsu sando (yes, that is a breaded cutlet sandwiched between yet more bread) and pickle flecked potato salad. And one of the most gratifying meal I had on the whole trip, enjoyed as the plains of Honshu whizzed past at nearly 200 km an hour.

The return trip was a little more restrained. This time I enjoyed an Asahi autumn lager (bizarrely I had been drinking the winter edition while in Kyoto) alongside some short and crumbly matcha biscuits.

Of course, there is always a place for a cold lager, and so we headed for a Sunday brewski at the pop-up Kirin beer garden in Shibuya. After sitting through the (mercifully short) promo video before we could actually gain access, we were lead to the bar where we chose one of their special frozen beers. The Ewing going with the brown one (stout) which I later described on Instagram as being Mr Hankey-esque, while I chose the curious, orangey one.

The lack of English made me slightly concerned, but hey, it was beer, right. And yes it was beer, only with the addition of long life orange juice. It was as harrowing as it sounded; God only knows what was in the red one…Of course, I drank it anyway, as quickly as I could and with a sad look on my face all while trying to desperately convince myself it was merely a Calippo with a faintly ‘adult’ flavour...  

After I had successfully sunk it I rewarded myself with a ‘proper’ frozen Kirin, still rather weak and watery (as is most crowd-pleasing lager), but rather fun and refreshing on a muggy day. To be fair a deuce of these was all I needed in the heat of the afternoon to mean a restorative trip to Genki was needed for a fix of maguro nigiri. Any excuse…

Stealth's Dark Sugars (aka the Blog is Invaded)

November 25, 2014, 6:44 am

≫ Next: Naan and Grandad @ Mr Chilly

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Clearly Pies and Fries’ loyal readers are primarily interested in updates about Stealth’s life and long for more pictures of her to be uploaded to the blog.  So, as a special November treat, I, Stealth, have written a guest blog…

Too early for Christmas cheer, too late for the evenings to have any light, winter had engulfed everyone’s psyche. Flu stalked the office, passing from desk to desk until it returned to its original host and began its relentless crawl again. The minutes were physically moving towards the weekend but the Friday feeling eluded us all.

So the blog begins in a soulless office, where pasty faces peer into multi-coloured spreadsheets and colleagues argue over the merits of karaoke as entertainment.  Our hero, Stealth, decides to make her escape and so she creeps from her desk, keen that her absence is noticed at the latest possible moment, and starts her cycle to the East End.  With every revolution of her pedals she can feel the footsteps of those who have gone before her: Dickens, Defoe, Cromwell, Wilde ...

The reality is that I could keep this up forever, and it would be forever because I don’t know how to end it.  So, I’ll stop now and get to the point, because today my heart was warmed by a lovely chocolate shop: Dark Sugars.

In order to ingratiate myself into The Ewing’s favor and in an attempt to usurp the cat ‘Pusskins’ from his bed so that I had somewhere to sleep, I had headed to Brick Lane to get her a salmon bagel. As I locked up my bike, I was delighted to stumble across Dark Sugars.  The shop is set out as a homage to chocolate and, given The Ewing’s well documented penchant for cacao, the perfect place to pick her up a treat.

I could write about how truly charming and passionate the chap who served me was.  Or I could mention that the chocolate is laid out on Ghanian wood so that customers have a sense of where their food has come from.  Or I could tell you that in a beautiful London twist the shop was opened on Brick Lane during Black History Month because the owner wanted to bring some African diversity to what is already one of the most diverse places in the world.  Or I could tell you about how absolutely delicious every truffle is. Truth be told, though, I couldn’t do any of it justice. Suffice to say that the fact I’m writing this and took photographs of the place is a testament to what a pleasure it is to go.

Naan and Grandad @ Mr Chilly

November 29, 2014, 2:09 pm

≫ Next: Foxlow and Craft Beer Co.

≪ Previous: Stealth's Dark Sugars (aka the Blog is Invaded)

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Throughout life I've so far mostly ignored the many well intentioned warnings about peaking too early; hence why I was always a sprinter not a cross-country-er (that, and a complete lack of endurance and stamina). But I do fear that giving my best joke up to the title of this post can mean only an anticlimax. The one secret weapon I do have, however, is Grandad. And like babies and fluffy kittens, everyone loves old people; unless they are ahead of you, in the queue at the supermarket, on your lunch break....

At the ripe old age of 88 Grandad shows little signs of losing his sense of humour and spirit of adventure, meaning he was the ideal person to accompany us to North Harrow's Mr Chilly for a Saturday night curry. Possibly a little too enthusiastic as he and the Ewing ploughed their way through the plate of poppadoms like hungry locusts as I was distracted with ordering the food and snapping a few (pretty bad) pics on my phone.

Sadly he didn't make any inroads on my drink which was advertised as 'Fresh Passion' but didn't float my boat, having the strange sweet and salty flavour that reminded me of the electrolyte drinks you get given when ill (or, more likely, hungover).

Dishes feature fairly typical Pakistani fare - grilled lamb chops, kebabs and 'turbo' wings to start with grilled paneer, pakoras and mogo chips for the veggies, followed by the familiar role call of breads, rice and curries, although ingredients such methi (fenugreek leaves), burjee (scrambled eggs), haleem (wheat, meat and lentil stew), and paya (braised feet) give things a both a more homely and more exotic twist compared the Bombay Palace identikits found on most high streets.

We shared a selection of mains including a beautifully tender and fragrant spring lamb spiked with fresh ginger, a decent bhindi bhaji (fast becoming my favourite vegetable side dish) and a, slightly dry, jeera chicken with huge amonts of smoky roasted cumin seeds. Vegetable biryani appeared in what looked like a glass butter dish, but was no worse for that while garlic naans, like the spicy poppadoms, seemed to be very popular across the table, although the crusts I managed to snaffle were very good.

Standout was probably the prawn karahi, which featured a subtle onion and tomato based sauce with a decent lick of coriander and garlic in the background that came studded with about a dozen impossibly large and sweet crustaceans.

There's a definite utilitarian vibe about the place; sauces - one white and one red - come in squeezy bottles, the plates look like something from you Nan's wedding service and the decor is fairly sparse (one of the few pictures actually fell off the wall while we were there), but it has an endearing charm and friendly staff who all dutifully laughed at Grandad's jokes. The food was freshly prepared and with enough distinctive spicing to make each dish stand out; and at £10 a head for a huge amount of food (including a couple of the most expensive dishes on the menu) the bill was pleasingly small.

Of course, despite my not being very good at building to a climax, there always has to be a little anticipation and this time I really have saved the best until last. My two favourites, and that elusive garlic naan.

Foxlow and Craft Beer Co.

December 9, 2014, 1:30 pm

≫ Next: Pints and Pancakes, Chesham Style

≪ Previous: Naan and Grandad @ Mr Chilly

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Foxlow is the baby sibling of the much loved Hawksmoor, and whilst there has always been a pricking curiosity to try their famed smoked beef ribs and soft serve sundaes, with something as perfect as Hawksmoor already existing it seemed destined to remain the overlooked runt of the litter.

Anyway, they now do brunch and who doesn’t love brunch (while this question may sound rhetorical, I emphatically did not like brunch as a child, not being able to overcome the confusion of missing a meal).  But with a half price soft launch on food through November weekends to test the new menu, it was time to overcome distrust of condensing two meals into one and book a table for Sunday lunch.

First things first though, and after arriving a little early for our table we walked down to Gray's Inn Road to Bottledog, Brewdog's dedicated beer shop, to stock up on a few bevvies.

Wintery stouts and porters were very much the order of the day, with a Mikkeller Cointreau barrel aged stout for the Ewing; the Mikeller brunch Weasel stout; Brewdog/Victory's U-Boat, a smoked porter; and Stone Brewery's Milk Stout being pick of the bunch. There may also be a bottle of the Black Tokyo Horizon underneath one lucky girl's Christmas tree...

I started brunch with a green juice, and also a red juice as our waiter eschewed anything so sensible as a pad and paper and so originally bought the wrong colour. I also had a glass of Prosecco, safe in the knowledge that the celery and apple elixir was stealing a march on my liver and ergo neutralising the brunch cocktails. The Ewing went with the wonderfully camp Miami Dolphin, a neon mashup of rum, lime and strawberry.

While we waited for our mountains of fried food to descend we enjoyed a rather sophisticated - and rather pungent - nibble of anchovies, goat's butter and raw onion on rye crisps. This is one serious, and seriously good snack. They also have a butternut squash version of baba ghanoush topped with sesame brittle. Yes, please.

The Montecristo (ham and cheese stuffed cronut) was sadly off the menu, so we compensated with the fried chicken on a croissant waffle topped with a fried egg and side of sausage gravy. Swap bacon for egg and double the waffle size and you may just have found my perfect brekkie.

I also promised the Ewing the basket of fried chicken, served with habanero vinegar and green slaw, alongside sides of fried tdusted with chicken salt and cavlo nero with lemon, garlic and chilli.

The chicken was everything you dream about when you order a family sized bucket (but usually end up with fowl that is both dry and greasy and pretty foul), crisp, juicy and perfectly pimped by the heat and tang of the vinegar. Fries – or what I saw of them – passed the Ewing’s stringent quality control with flying colours and cavlo nero is surely one of God’s ways of making up for the downsides of winter.

Despite eager over ordering (although far better than a recent trip to Hawksmoor) to skip pud would have been unthinkable, especially with soft serve sundae on the menu. In the end I chose the Elvis sandwich; slices of fried bread stuffed with soft serve, banana and peanut butter before being swamped in crispy bacon and caramel. As outrageous as it sounded, although the too icy ice cream turned out to be the bum note in the dish and, (quelle surprise), it was enormously rich after so much fried food.

The Ewing’s chocolate and hazelnut pot was no less indulgent but, being comprised mostly of her favourite foodstuff, didn’t prove much off a challenge.  Like Nutella on steroids and more acceptable to sit and eat from the jar with a spoon.

Whilst it was always going to be a hard gig to match up to such an eminently cool older brother, Foxlow is a lot of fun. With plenty of salt, smoke and sugar on the menu, a great drinks list - the six quid negroni slushies are certainly worth a punt - and fried chicken that passed the Ewing's stringent tests with flying colours, the young upstart has plenty of its own merits to recommend it.

While any sensible person with work the next day may have decided that this was the perfect adjunct for returning home for Antiques Roadshow and an early night, the eminently less sensible would take the opportunity to drag Stealth out east for a few beverages at the nearby Leather Lane branch of the craft Beer Co.

This branch of the expanding mini chain is very much a city boys’ pub, with the down stairs being set up for the maximum amount of ‘vertical drinking’ – high, narrow  tables and stools running around the side of the room and a long bar to stand at. Thankfully they also have an upstairs lounge area which is much comfier, although you do have to navigate the stairs every time you want a drink, increasing tricky as the evening wears on. Full marks too, to the lovely staff, who bought our drinks up on trays for us and kept us in pints of iced water throughout the hours we managed to while away

A quick glance at the menu – known for its range of rare and interesting brews, although keep an eye on the keg prices as they are quoted in half pints and can get pretty pricey pretty quickly - had me squeaking with delight (literally) when I saw the Beavertown/Napabier ‘Bone King’ DIPA collaboration was available on cask. 

This poured a golden orange, with a thick hazy look about it with an Um Bungo undercurrent; a funky, skunky, gum watering collision of peach and pineapple and passion fruit. The flavour didn’t disappoint, with bitterness from the hops and a tropical note that bellied its 8.5 percent abv.

Tempting as it was to just stick with the Bone King, my liver thanked me for swapping to a half of the Kent Brewery's Altered States, followed by two dark and brutish bruisers – a keg Yin from the Evil Twin and a cask Teleporter from the Summer Wine Brewery and a Calypso from Dugges.

Remaining memories were a little hazy; I know my wife loved the elderflower saison from Kent enough to order it twice and, at some point, Stealth had a scotch egg to go with her pint of Devil's Rest Burning Sky IPA. I also know that the Ewing (happily) acquiesced to partake in a selfie as we stood on the platform at Farringdon waiting for the tube home and, knowing her as I do, you can’t get a more ringing endorsement of fun (or certainly drunkenness) than that.

Pints and Pancakes, Chesham Style

December 13, 2014, 1:46 am

≫ Next: XT Brewery and the Eight Bells

≪ Previous: Foxlow and Craft Beer Co.

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Recently, at the fifth time braving the concentric circles of hell, aka IKEA - I did get to eat lots of meatballs, though – we bought a new bed. This turned out to be rather more fortuitous than I imagined, as two weeks later I was consigned to it with a rather nasty bout of ‘flu.

Whist I had all the extra cushions I had ever craved, a fluffy duvet and a memory foam mattress that pushed sleeping right back up to the top of my list of recreational activities, I was also undeniably ill. This was proved when I didn’t even venture downstairs into the kitchen for a whole weekend and even turned down dinner. Twice. 

It wasn’t all bad news, however. After a week of consignment I had dropped a notch on my belt, and although we had to cancel plans to visit the London Brewers market at Spitalfields, a trip to the supermarket to restock the cupboards took us perilously close to the Brewery Shop in Chesham…

Before my fortifying and well deserved drink, we popped in to the main reason for this blog post, Poppins. Poppins is a Southern-based chain of restaurant/cafes whose Canterbury branch retains somewhat legendary status in my mind as a regular place of salvation, providing fry ups and strong tea after nights on the tiles whist at uni.

Inside is formica heaven. In fact everything is shiny, from the laminated menus to the fried eggs. It’s the comforting kind of place that you don’t really see any more – the sort of place where you can have a deep fried burger with your all day breakfast (chips are pretty much compulsory) or mash-topped shepherd’s pie with a baked potato on the side, or toasted teacakes and beans on toast, and everything, well most things, come with lashings of squirty cream. My kinda place.

My first choice, lamb chops with all the trimmings, was off so I switched to the pork instead. It’s not actually an exaggeration to say that Poppins’ lamb chops are some of the best I have eaten, although I wasn’t holding out the same hopes for the porcine variety. Thankfully, whist being a little dry, they passed my stringent, Homer Simpson-esque, test. 

If there's any sight more comforting than grilled tomato, fried mushrooms, chops chips and peas, especially when one has crawled off their death bed to eat it, I haven’t yet made its acquaintance, and this was my perfect plate of comfort food. Oh, yeah, and it's all yours for £6.45.

The Ewing, unsurprisingly, was in her culinary heaven, choosing the three egg omelette with cheese and mushroom as a paean to the homely cooking of her Mum, whose childhood offering of ‘yellow fish with mash and peas’ remains her favourite dish, regardless of how many Michelin stars are on the menu.

With a pudding list like the one above, how could you resist (although I'm not sure if the Ewing's look is joy or trepidation)? Of course, we couldn’t and soon we were staring down a silver platter of pancakes heaped with hot cherries and a can of cream. If you want to look at the reasons behind the hole in the Ozone layer, Poppins is probably a good place to start.

CFCs aside, this is England set in aspic, the kind of place everyone remembers visiting with their grandparents - and still does, judging by the clientele. Come for lunch, stay for heart disease and diabetes, although they do have an on trend smoothie menu and even a selection of salads (prominently featuring cheese, mayo and coleslaw, obviously). The staff are also lovely, although the music – Muse interspersed with Nat King Cole – was possibly an acquired taste.

Next up it was time for a fortifying beer at The Chesham Brewery Shop, the Brewery tap for the Red Squirrel Brewery in Berkhampstead. As well as there own brews they also offer a selection of other ales, beer, cider and wine to drink in or take out.

While you can’t move around Bermondsey, Beavertown or Brixton for fear of disturbing another nest of beer drinking bead wearers huddled in a railway arch somewhere, this is a little piece of beer geek heaven transported to the end of the Metropolitan line.

They have a decent, regularly changing, selection on keg, including the lovely Gadds number 3 on our visit, of which I sampled the sweet and creamy Red Squirrel Milk Stout, an appropriate choice as the extra lactose in the brew meant it was often given to convalescents. 

We also grabbed a few bottles of the Red Squirrel Best Bitter for Christmas alongside a trio from Great Heck - the Amish Mash, a heavily hopped weisse hybrid, being particularly good – and a couple of oyster stouts from Redemption and Arbor.

No trip to Chesham would be complete without a visit to Darvells and Sons the bakers which, like Poppins, remains a place preserved time. Here you can buy old fashioned delights such as the barrel loaf - round toast anyone – wonky-eyed chocolate chip footballers, lardy cake, bath buns and cream horns. There’s even a nod to the contemporary with whoopee pies, and Syrian onion loaf, macaron and chia bread.

Our haul contained Viennese whirl topped mince pies, the gold standard of mince pies, a seasonal stilton and pear cobb and, my favourite, the ‘Battenberg Bookend’; a slice of strawberry jam filled cake covered in marzipan and then dipped in chocolate. As the lady behind the counter said, ’we can’t have that sponge drying out…’ 

Needless to say, after a week of snuffling, coughing and ineffective pill-popping, the best way to aid my recovery was with a slice of this chocolate covered delight and a cuppa - that good old English panacea - when we got home.

XT Brewery and the Eight Bells

December 20, 2014, 4:12 am

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≪ Previous: Pints and Pancakes, Chesham Style

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Saturday sun came early one morning

In a sky so clear and blue

Saturday sun came without warning

So no-one knew what to do

Well, that last line wasn’t completely true. When the winter sun shines then what better than a brewery visit to stock up on festive supplies, followed by a boozy afternoon at the pub.

The brewery in question was XT, based at Notley farm way up in the wilds of North Bucks. We normally manage to make at least one visit at this time of year, as our Christmas guests have become rather partial to their beers; and I don’t mind a drop, either.

While our last visit was so foggy you could barely see past the pint in your hand, this time we were blessed with one of those glorious December mornings – brilliant blue skies, a crisp frost on the green fields – that made driving through the chocolate box villages, with their thatched cottages and wood smoke curling from the chimneys, an utter joy (save for the resurfacing argument about who had last seen the Cure CD that I wanted to listen on the drive, and the bit where the Ewing clipped someone’s wing mirror in one of the aforementioned  villages).

To get us in the mood we started off with half pints (quite the bargain at pound each) of their standard Xmas brew, the 25, a decent enough red AltBier. We also tried the 8, a rich dark beer brewed four different malts. The good weather meant we could sup these out in the sunshine, although it also meant the Ewing spied their sign offering free broken pallets alongside a help yourself hop compost heap – although I suppose further repeat visits will have to involve the purchase of beer, too.

As well as brewing beers under the XT moniker, they also offer a range of Animal beers, which allow them to experiment with a few more quirky flavour combinations. This time they had the Christmas-themed Gobble on cask (this version especially cellared in oak barrels), a rich dark stout brewed with roasted cacao nibs and a hint of orange, a beer the Ewing (and I) was so fond of we also picked up a two litre bottle straight from the keg for drinking later.

Next up was a visit to the Eight Bells - a pretty pub dating from 1607 in the nearby village of Long Crendon and perennial star in Midsommer Murders  - where I was very much looking forward to a long and lazy lunch and a prime spot in front of the log fire; circumstances which, alongside the Saturday papers made a very warm (literally) welcome. They also had the XT’s 25 on cask, so I settled for another pint of that.

Starters we decent enough; the crab pate was great, but the bread to crustacean ratio was a little off (too many carbs not enough crab) while the advertised and anticipated smoked garlic aioli was either absent or (possibly?) the dressing on the side salad.

The duck rillettes, served with granary bread, befell the opposite problem of too little bread – clearly not really a problem, who minds scooping up tender shreds of confit meat straight from plate to mouth? While the duck was nice enough the clementine marmalade, freshly made in the kitchen, was outstanding; a perfect bittersweet counterpoint to the fatty meat.

Sadly the mains fell as flat as the pizzas. Normally pub pizza is best avoided, but a whole section dedicated to their thin crust Italian bases and seasonal toppings including blue cheese and mushrooms and the ‘Porky Pig’, including chorizo, black pudding and pulled pork, were too tempting to turn down.

While the toppings -especially the glorious black pudding and mushrooms - were good, the base was far too thick and pallid and the intriguing ‘pork veloute’, replacing the familiar metallic tang of tomato, just bland. Add the fact that the extra pineapple salsa (the Ewing made me do it) looked suspiciously just like something tipped out of a can by the man from Del Monte and it was rather underwhelming.

That said, the remaining pizza that they boxed up for us to take home made a great post drinking snack after being  given a further crisp up in the oven the following evening, so it wasn’t without salvation. Prices, at around eight quid a pop, are also fair for a product that is often given astronomical mark ups.

Restraining ourselves from getting too pizza-logged also meant we had room for pud, which for me was the standout part of the menu. Despite not having a hugely sweet tooth, and often not being very excited by deserts when eating out, there was nothing here I wouldn’t have happily buried my face in – literally or figuratively.

In a very strange turn of events, confirmed chocoholic the Ewing turned down the chocolate bundt cake with Mexican hot chocolate sauce and coffee ice cream; which meant, with that description, I was almost duty bound to order it. It was pretty much perfect; gooey cake, subtly spiced sauce set off by the creamy and caffeinated accompaniment. The only thing I rued being that by choosing it, I missed the opportunity to order the spotted dick and fresh custard or the apple and custard millefuille.

The Ewing, thankfully, wasn’t disappointed with her choice. A butternut squash bavavois served with red wine poached pears and homemade amaretti biscuits. The bavavois was particularly noteworthy; smooth, sweet and slightly claggy - like the best sort of cheesecake, but this time served with the biscuits on top.

I liked the Eight Bells; while the cooking could do with a little work, the menu’s interesting without being too outré -  there’s still plenty of room for lunchtime baguettes and staples such as fish and chips and steak pie – the greeting is friendly and there’s plenty of local ales and cider to slake a thirst.

While it might not all have been perfect, to get through a few drinks at lunch followed by Saturday afternoon visits to both Waitrose and Lidl (to stock up on the all important reserves of marzipan and stollen) on the way home and avoid a murder, Misdsommer related or otherwise, seemed like a pretty good result. Pass me the bottle opener.

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Festive Fun, St Albans

December 22, 2014, 10:30 pm

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Anyone (or the one) who has read this blog with any regularity will know my perfect Sunday roast criteria; red meat should be rare, white meat not dry; yorkies should be both crisp and squidgy, there should be plenty of suitable condiments; a dish of bronzed cauliflower cheese and roast parsnips. Always roast parsnips.

For our lunch at The Fighting Cocks, I wasn’t really expecting any of the above. For a start I had chosen it primarily because I knew it and it was central, meaning we could go for a wander around the lake beforehand and Christmas market by the cathedral afterwards; and while I was curious about its claim to be the oldest pub in England, it also made me more doubtful it would actually be any good.

Unusually, however, I was completely unperturbed about the idea of tough beef and lumpy Bisto as the real reason for our visit was to see the lovely Maz, wedding witness, and the less lovely Stealth (only joking Mrs, P). When you’ve already got a good amount of juicy gossip to digest you tend to care far less about what’s actually on your plate.

One way the Cocks immediately impressed was with the snack menu, a list so appealing I had to send a picture to my crisp fiend sister, banished in almost completely decent potato-snack free Sydney. Any pub that offers Quavers, peanuts, posh crisps and pickled Onion Monster Munch is already onto a winner.

They also had Great Heck Treasure, on cask – a brewery whose beers I’ve recently been enjoying – and this thumping IPA was no different. Perfect with our selection of pizza flavoured crisps and pork scratchings. Whilst Stealth got stuck in to her first of five gins and everyone else battened down the hatches for the long afternoon ahead…

By now I’ve accepted that ordering roast beef in a pub means an assumption of overcooked (at least for my liking). This is not always based on surroundings, previous experience or even prices – downward of a tenner and expects sisal carpet- but by employing the pessimist is never disappointed approach. Grey beef? Well, that was to be expected. Rare beef? Well, what a lovely surprise.

I don’t know if it was because we were eating early, whether it was because we specified ‘as rare as you’ve got’ or if the Cocks just always nails the crowning glory of an Englishman’s Sunday dinner, but the meat was spot on. As, indeed, was everything else from the roasties to the yorkie, via the blob of fearsomely hot horseradish adorning each plate. The belly, with its shard of crackling (no, Maz didn’t share, despite a pleading look or two) went down equally well.

After a surfeit of gin, another beer, two - surprisingly poky with the festive spirit (there was certainly some in there…) - mulled wines and the unbridled excitement of seeing the picture that hung in my childhood bathroom in their loos, it was time for my promised reward for being so well behaved, a visit to the, snappily monikered, Beer Shop on the London Road.

Like the Chesham Brewery Shop – I’m seeing a theme with the names here – they offer a range of four or five keg beers to drink in or take away, alongside a big selection of bottles and cans. Stealth and I raced ahead and got in a round of Moor Brewery Revival (big hops, low ABV, very nice), while the drivers lingered behind, making do with digesting more gossip.

The range of beers here is pretty special; there are local beers from breweries including Leighton Buzzard and Tring, alongside a good UK showing, including a vast selection of Marbles, Buxton and Dark Star as well as a whole wall of well-chosen Belgians and Americans, with the odd Kiwi and Dane thrown in for good measure.

A few quid lighter and with a haul including Flying Dog Gonzo porter, Green Flash Triple IPA (an invalubale help when wrapping presents the following week) and a bottle of Sorachi Ace for Stealth’s New Year celebrations, we decamped for a delayed pudding, in the form of an ‘ultimate’ hot chocolate from the Hatch stall at Christmas market in the Cathedral gardens.

While not normally a big fan of hot chocolate, preferring my cocoa in cakes, cookies or ice creams, and despite the absence of mini marshmallows on top, this was perfect sugary salve for frozen fingers and burgeoning hangovers; providing the metaphorical (and literal) whipped cream that topped a lovely day.

While I take a break to sit about eating Toblerone and drinking sherry in my dressing gown, here's to a very Merry Christmas to all. Eat, drink and tolerate your in-laws and I'll be back deliberating, cogitating and digesting some more in the New Year.

January Blues

January 12, 2015, 2:02 pm

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For last year's words belong to last year's language

And next year's words await another voice.

― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

There’s something relentlessly dull about January. All the on the wagon hashtags and pictures of kale smoothies and running shoes that flood social media. As well as the physical interventions, usually staged after a solid month of eating Quality Street and mainlining Baileys in front of the Christmas tree, I also find there’s a horrible mental malaise to overcome, too. While it’s the perfect opportunity to look forward to the future, as you get older it seems harder to see past the past.

in an attempt to conquer this malaise, and in sheer defiance of abstinence I started 2015 with a healthy dose of alcohol salt and saturated fat in the form of the limited edition return of the McRib, washed down with a bottle of Lanson that had been overlooked at New Year. A promising start, but I still needed a little fillip to perk up what had dawned as a particularly grim and rainy Saturday morning, even the view of the Shard had disappeared from Stealth’s balcony. This little piggy was going to Borough Market (with a reluctant Ewing trailing behind).

After a row about finding the bus stop, than a row at the bus stop and another disagreement after alighting from the bus, the restoration of matrimonial bliss (Stealth had wisely stayed at home napping) the situation demanded a doughnut. Not just any doughnuts but those baked at the Bread Ahead Bakery - founded by Matt Jones of Flour Power and Justin Gellately formerly of St John fame. The very doughy orbs that spurt their custard and jam obscenely over my Twitter feed every weekend.

It seems that the apprentice has indeed surpassed the master as the doughnuts we tried – mine the honeycomb topped and salted caramel custard-stuffed and the Ewing’s cacao nib-dusted chocolate velvet – were both bigger and fluffier than the recent St John incarnations I’ve eaten. While I still appreciate the simplicity of the originals, there is something pretty special about these pretenders to London's doughnut throne

Passing time with a couple of these is probably the most fun you can have with your clothes on a Saturday morning, although with your clothes off it may be even better (watch out, though, for any errant sugar in the the cracks). Mercifully for everybody else we stayed fully clothed, although with the thick fog still descending I’m not sure anyone would have noticed either way.

 

Because the Ewing had both forgotten her hat and gloves and was nursing the hangover from a bad ankle sprain from before Christmas (as well as the vestiges of a hangover of the more traditional kind), I thought it infinitely wise to leave the plethora of warm eating places with plenty of seating around Borough and make her traverse the foggy streets of Bermondsey to Jose, Jose Pizarro’s bijou tapas and sherry place.

In a benevolent stroke of luck a couple of stools at the bar opened almost as we arrived and soon we were drinking cold glasses of Estrella Damm accompanied by a plate of hand carved pig, and not just any pig but ‘the most excellent Maldonado Ibérico bellota pig’. It was lovely, of course, but the heathen in me still has a lot of love for the leg of cured ham from Lidl that I spend all Christmas surreptitiously standing by the fridge scoffing.

Alongside we enjoyed some punchy bocerones , with a gum tingling dose of vinegar, an ethereal spinach tortilla that just missed oozing in the middle and some of the finest, paprika dusted, crisp calamari fresh from the fryer. A crust or two of bread, a perfect sop for some of the fishy juices, was sadly absent, but they do serve very good pam amb tomate if you’re in the need of a few carbs.

Jose isn’t especially cheap - the price of small plate eating can sky rocket swiftly, especially if you’re making use of their Spanish wine and sherry list - but as I sat there on a leaden January afternoon, holding court with my lovely and long suffering wife with a plate of pig and glass of beer at my side, I couldn’t have felt more satisfied.

These little piggies soon went back to market, this time to fetch an indoor picnic for Stealth (who, in a fortuitous stroke of luck had meanwhile ordered a Japanese takeaway, meaning more for us to take back and snaffle later).

From the almost overwhelming section of cheese and charcuterie we chose a heady mixture of 15 month aged Comte, a hunk of Altesse des Vosges - a washed cheese, somewhere between a Reblochon and a Munster from the Lorraine -and a very nice donkey salami (well, it was just after Christmas) that the Ewing refused to eat. There was also a huge veg box, -with beefsteak tomatoes, frisee, peppers and fennel – picked up for two quid and a giant avocado for a pound.

Top prize went to the loaf of the Borough White from the Flour Station. Anyone who thinks that four quid is too much for flour and water needs to try some of this. A few slices, with its smoky, burnished crust and a wonderfully chewy, light crumb, slathered with butter and the stinky, sticky Altesse des Voges and eaten while tucked up in bed made the perfect welcome back home to our empty house after all the festive excitement. A very happy New Year indeed.

Cupcakes, Carciofi Fritti and Capitalism

January 21, 2015, 1:04 pm

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As has been established in the previous post, my way of dealing with any lingering New Year malaise is not the gym and Dry January, but more carb-loading and pub crawls. In a concession to the fact we had been slowly vegetating in Elephant and Castle, with just a box set of Getting On, take away noodles and modular origami for company, Stealth and the Ewing acceded to my demands to leave the flat and even allowed me to choose wherever I wanted to go for lunch.

What I wanted was pizza, and while the local Italian gaff in Walworth was closed - thwarting me for the second time and dashing my hopes for an Americana topped with homemade chips and sausage – Pizza Pilgrims (fairly) new second branch stepped in to satiate my need (with the potential for cupcakes from the recently opened Crumbs and Doilies next door proving somewhat of an added bonus).

After a sightseeing adventure on the number 12 bus - over Westminster Bridge, past the Houses of Parliament and around Trafalgar Square – followed by a dice with death on Regent Street we eventually reached our final destination of Carnaby’s new Kingly court complex, ’ a three story al-fresco food and dining destination in the heart of London's West End’.

This branch of PP is also a Friggitoria alongside a pizzeria, an exotic (and faintly erotic) sounding way of saying that they deep fry things, too. These things include carciofi fritti (fried artichokes) which were hot and crisp but a little underpowered in the seasoning department and some nice little arancini rosso, the breadcrumb covered tomatoey rice cradling a molten smoked mozzarella core.

Greedy as we are, we sadly had to miss out on trying the pizza fritta, which, as the name suggests are ‘pizza fritters’ featuring a deep fried calzone, stuffed with a variety of filling – and the deep fried Italian mac’n’cheese with Parmesan, beef ragu & buffalo mozzarella (you didn't tell me that was on the menu, I would have had it - TE). A mini tragedy, but there’s always next time and I would like to try and see in 2016 without dangerously high cholesterol levels.

 

The main draw, of course, is the pizzas, made in the Neapolitan style. These tend towards the ‘soupy’ side in the middle (which the Ewing doesn’t rate) with beautifully chewy, puffy and charred crusts (which Stealth does). I think they make pretty great pie, although the floppy base (fired the traditional way for 30-60 seconds at fearsome temperatures) means they are a proper knife and fork job.

Stealth, who can be seen above modelling her dinner, chose a pizza topped with N'duja, the fiery Calabrian salami. While I used the advantage of eating pie with the Ewing to create a red/white hybrid Frankenpizza. This time we shared a Smoked Neapolitan; a Margarita with smoked anchovies, capers, black olives & oregano, and the day's special pie, La Mimosa; a porchetta, fior di latte, sweetcorn, Parmesan, double cream and basil pizza bianca. Both were good, but the La Mimosa just shaded it, sweetcorn haters be damned.

 

As always, I was too full to contemplate the Nutella and ricotta stuffed pizza ring (one day...) but the meal was nicely rounded off with shots of Sohocello; a Pizza Pilgrim and Chase Distillery collaboration that sees potato spirit distilled by the latter being infused with Amalfi lemons. I wouldn't like to say if it was as good as my beloved Ewing's clemencello (made at Christmas with clementines), but it is rather nice. 

As promised, we called into the Crumbs and Doilies new Soho store after lunch to stock up on some cupcakey goodness. Alongside regular cupcakes they also have mini cakes in all the regular flavours alongside a large cake of the day, available by the slice (see below), and a regularly changing flapjack/brownie/cookie type offering. All goodies are baked upstairs on the premises and there's also coffee from Grind, teas by Suki Tea and sodas from All Good. Don't listen to anyone who tells you cupcakes are over without trying one of these first.

There then followed crisps and stout, eaten in the English fashion with the bags split and laid in the middle for sharing – followed by more beer and discussions over the difference between lightly salted and ready salted (and how many disgruntled customers it had taken for the barman to think it necessary to state multiple times they were LIGHTLY SALTED - TE) and the evil/genius of capitalism – a topic that it is wiser left after several pints of Brewdog’s, very tasty, Red A.M Ale (surely a socialist drink, judging by the colour).

I also still had the delights of my Crumbs and Doilies haul – featuring another red offering, perfect for the Marx in me - for when I got home. Alongside the doorstep of Red Velvet cake – enormous in both size and sugar content sweet and not for sharing (sorry, the Ewing) and there were also a salted caramel pretzel number, a banoffee and, my favourite, a cookies and cream cupcake studded with Oreos.

When the (terribly middle-class) Borough sourdough had all been eaten, as was famously (not) said by Marie-Antoinette: Qu'ils mangent de la brioche.

Rams, Kenton

January 26, 2015, 2:03 pm

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Dear old Grandad’s taken a tumble and as a consequence has been banged up at the NHS’s pleasure for the last few weeks. While it’s unlikely many of us would ever choose to be in hospital, the care he’s been receiving - at Northwick Park, the auspicious site of my own birth, and latterly Central Middlesex - has been first rate and even the (notorious) catering has had the thumbs up. If the Ewing’s ever admitted she’s hoping it will be on a Thursday, for corned beef and pickle sandwiches followed by jerk chicken and sponge pudding. 

The frequent dashes made up the Western Avenue have meant things have been a bit slack on the domestic front, so luckily there are plenty of decent choices for dinner nearby when visiting hours are over.

Fortuitously Northwick Park is a stone’s throw from Kenton, the home of Ram’s Pure Vegetarian, and somewhere I’ve wanted to visit for a while. While most things with veggie in the title may scream of mung beans and tofu, here you can be assured of plenty of deep frying, liberal helpings of cheese and ghee, and cold beers to wash it all down with.

Speaking of the beer, Kingfisher is £2.00 a bottle, and only £3.80 for a 660ml bomber. So I had two. The Ewing enjoyed a cup of sweet, spicy chai.

The menu is bewilderingly large and is split into many different sections reflecting various different types of Indian cuisine. These include Surti Khajana (a state in Gujarat), Mumbai Chatpata (classic street food such as idli and dosa)  - Panjabi  dishes - South Indian Dishes and Indian Mirch (an Guajarati word meaning pepper or chilli) Masala dishes - This is then subdivided into starters and mains, with a few extra accompaniments, rice and daal dishes and Hindustani Breads thrown in for good measure.

To kick things off we had a plate of Pani Puri, the crisp shells being served with a lurid, spiced potato and chickpea mixture and a thin tamarind chutney. Preparing these is almost as much fun as eating them. Crack open the top of the shell -rather like a boiled egg - stuff with the potato mixture, top with a spoonful of tamarind liquid and down in one before it all disintergrates. A great start.

Of course, we were obliged to order a dosa. This time the Mysore version, the crisp, lacy crepe being stuffed with spicy garlic and chilli masala paste, before being folded and served with a decent vegetable sambal and an unmemorable coconut chutney (well I liked it - TE).

Next came a plate of Banana Methi Bhajiya - banana and fenugreek pakoras served with two different chutneys. These were the Ewing’s favourite dish of the day, the sweet, slightly spongy fried nuggets pairing well with the grassiness (a bit too 'compost' like for my tastes) of the green coriander chutney and the tang of the red tomato.

I have recently been flicking back through Simon Hopkinson’s latest book, Cook, and have been tempted by the rather 70’s simplicity of a recipe for a tomato curry, with the whole fruit simmered in a delicately spiced sauce; this craving lead to me choosing the, curious sounding, Tomato Sev.

While I normally associate tomato in a curry with the brackish, metallic and smoky flavours of Northern India and Pakistan, this was clean, light and tangy with a searing heat from a good thwack of fresh chilli. I expected the sev (chickpea noodles) to have been sprinkled on top of the finished dish, but they has been simmered into the curry, giving it a pleasing, if slightly odd, texture and a nutty back note.

The Vengan na Ravaiya, a peanut and gram flour stuffed aubergine that's a a Surti specialty, was equally fiery. The slippery, finger sized, baby baingan being simmered in a rich, oily tomato and onion sauce that reminded me of one of my favourite curries from Tayyabs (minus the lentils).

Our final main, from the Punjab, was the the Ewing’s favourite ‘cheesy peas’. This version of muttar paneer was rich and soporific while still showcasing the delicate sweetness of the legumes. The paneer, always a favourite, was pleasingly bouncy and with a smoky edge from a tumble in the hot kahari before being added to the sauce.

From the Hindustani breads section shared a Puran Poli, a Guajarati bread usually eaten during festivals and times of celebration and a speciality of the restaurant. The standard puri is stuffed with jaggery (palm sugar) and daal before being fried in ghee. Unsurprisingly, it was exceptionally good, if very rich, the sweet, butteriness providing a foil for the heat and astringency of the vegetable curries.

Tempted as we were by the homemade pistachio kulfi and the butter and sugar laden pastries and sweetmeats that sold from their adjoining sweet shop, dessert was far more restrained and refreshing, coming in the form of fresh mango and blueberries bought from the Lebanese grocers a little further up the road. And whilst the fruit might not have counteracted all our previous dinnertime transgressions, hopefully it will go some way towards keeping us out of the inpatients.

Hospital Food

February 3, 2015, 2:01 pm

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Recent research has suggested that, far from being a sign of being stuck in the past, nostalgia can actually be good for you. Of course, we’re not talking about the mawkish and sentimental clinging on to the ‘good old days’, but more the ability to use positive memories to confront fears of our own mortality. Deep stuff.

Recently I was able to put this theory into practice when visiting dear old Grandad, who was still in Northwick Park hospital after a fall. Arriving straight from work and feeling pretty ravenous we headed straight to the canteen. And, even more joyfully, they had crumble and custard on the menu.

Everything about NHS custard screams nostalgia to anyone that ever went to school in the UK. At once managing to be  gloopy, thick, lumpy and watery; like a kind of fifth matter that exists like a rogue plasma in a state somewhere between liquid and solid. Whist some (most) people may baulk at the thought, to me it was some sort of culinary nirvana – although it should be noted that at my first parent’s evening my Mum and Dad were amused to hear a glowing report from my teacher on my burgeoning appetite. My particular lunchtime favourites being plum cake (and, of course, custard) and cheese ‘pie’ (nothing like a pie).

Underneath this liquid with a life of its own was a particularly fine apricot crumble. Sweet and sour fruit with an oaty rubble on top that still remained mysteriously crisp despite the torrents of yellow gunge. Just £1.21 for the custard and 33p extra for the magnificent custard. Add in a plate of Cajun chicken and some of the finest chips I have had for a while (although it felt kind of counter intuitive to be eating them in a hospital) and that’s institutionalised cuisine at its finest.

Sadly our culinary trip down memory lane was thwarted when Grandad was soon transferred to Central Middlesex hospital; although of course much better for him. CMH is a much spiffier gaff, but their canteen had sadly closed before we arrived in the evening. Thankfully Beirut Nights @cafe, restaurant and shisha lounge' is to be found adjoining the hospital entrance at the corner of Abbey Road, and provided the perfect pit stop before visiting hours.

Starting our visit by being seated in the restaurant, we were soon relegated to the outdoor shisha lounge as, curiously, the pitta wraps we had chosen - alongside  a couple of mezze dishes to start - aren’t served inside. This turned out to be no bad thing; the shisha lounge was lovely and warm due to a plethora of heaters that kept the temperature raised (along with their energy bills). There was also some attention diverting cricket which pleased me, the Ewing less so.

The food was very good. Our mezze of Houmous Kawarma - the familiar chickpea and tahini dip, topped with sizzling cubes of grilled lamb and pine nuts - was exemplary. The tabouleh was equally good -a thicket of freshly chopped parsley, interspersed with just enough bulgar wheat and topped with diced tomatoes and a good squeeze of lemon juice.

These were followed by a chicken and salad schwarma wrap, enlivened by a healthy dose of fiery chilli chutney and garlic sauce (the doctors would be pleased that we were thinking of our hearts, even if our colleagues the next day disagreed) and a soujouk wrap. The soujouk being spicy little homemade beef sausages -shaped rather like the ones that come in tins with beans, but far more reputable. Delicious but rather tricky to stop the odd stray escaping from the confines of their pitta blanket, though.

All the custard obviously had the right effect on Grandad, as a couple of weeks later he was being discharged back home, shiny new Zimmer frame in tow. After a comical scenario on the first evening (with the joy of hindsight) when the district nurses didn’t turn up, I stepped in to the breach as chief cook and bottle washer whilst the Ewing battled valiantly with a medicine chart ‘for the fridge’ (it would have papered the whole kitchen) and dispensed his pills and potions. At least we now know why Grandad rattles.

After our evening’s entertainment settling him back home there was no better place for some much needed soul soothing than the nearby B&K Salt Beef Bar in Hatch End. I’ve written about this place before, but with Jewish deli food this good it bears repeating.

First up was a bowl of good old chicken soup. Here you can have it with lokshen (noodles) kneidlach (Matzo balls), or kreplach (turkey and garlic ‘ravioli’). We both chose a mix of balls and noodles, served with a plate of their caraway spiked rye bread to mop up every last drop.

Of course this esteemed dish is not called Jewish penicillin for nothing, and nothing seemed quite so welcome when it was placed in front of us.

Next up was the main draw, mountains of hand carved salt beef sandwiched between the aforementioned rye bread. Cured brisket - along with bacon and ketchup on a Sunday morning and turkey post-Christmas - remains one of my very favourite sarnie fillings. Here the meat has just enough wobbly fat at its edges (ask for it lean if you prefer) to keep things lubricated and is served with an optional schmear of poky yellow mustard and a crunchy sweet and sour dill pickle.

Latkes, crunchy little discs of deep fried of potato and onion, are a must order, even if we did end up taking most of ours home for later.

I couldn't resist a homemade desert to go, in this case lokshen pud, a homemade sweet noodle pudding made with orange juice and raisins. Yes, it sounds pretty grim, no, it really isn’t - the overall effect being something rather like a baked bread pudding, with its mixture of crunchy topping and comforting starchiness and sweet fruit underneath.

The Ewing had a giant doorstop of sticky chocolate cake - what else? - which, despite its gargantuan size, I still missed snaffling a picture of. Reports are that it was comforting and sweet, which rather perfectly describes my own little Florence Nightingale herself. Well, at least until I hear of a stubborn and forgetful kind of cake…

Greed in the Temple (sung to the tune of the Prince song)

February 10, 2015, 2:11 pm

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As you may now have gathered the last few weeks has seen Grandad becoming ever more lithe and sprightly, as he starts to zip about again after his recent broken hip, whilst we become ever poorer and fatter as we eat our way around Middlesex on route to visiting him.

On this occasion I decided it would be nice to try and fit in a dose of culture before lunch, and where better than the magnificent Neasden Temple, a beautiful burst of the exotic in humdrum North London.

The temple - or Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, to give it its full name - was, at the time of building, the largest ever constructed outside India. Constructed by Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (or, the more manageable, BAPS) - a major organization within the Swaminarayan sect of Hinduism - the majestic structure is made of 2,828 tonnes of Bulgarian limestone and 2,000 tonnes of Italian marble, which was first shipped to India to be carved by a team of 1,526 sculptors. The foundations saw the biggest ever concrete pour on these shores when 4,500 tons was put down in 24 hours to create a foundation 6 ft thick. The temple cost over £12 million to build and was opened in 1995.

History lesson over, it’s well worth having a look around the inside of the building, especially to see the interior of the shrine which is constructed mainly from hand-carved Italian Carrara marble and Bulgarian limestone and is quite a sight to behold.

On our visit the mandir was also heated to a temperature not too dissimilar to the surface of the sun. This fact, coupled with the fact you have to remove your shoes on entry to the complex and the floors are covered with the fluffiest carpets I have ever walked upon, sent my poor toes in to some sort of swollen sausage like discomfort. For all strange souls who, like me, find even the idea of walking barefoot brings you out in a cold sweat, you can appreciate how this beautiful heaven quickly became a clammy kind of hell (I missed the whole of the largest wooden temple in Kyoto due to my aversion to the mix of tatami matting and stockinged feet. *shudder* - (Like chalk to her cheese, I can't wait to release my monster munch style trotters and experience these surfaces sans socks! - TE). 

The Ewing was in far less a hurry to leave, so whilst she looked at a roster of famous politicians who have visited the temple – most recently David and Sam Cam, but also Blair, Brown, Clegg and Kennedy, this is obviously a MP hot spot – before going to the shop to buy ‘special’ flax seed ‘for my porridge’, (and they gave me a free pocket calendar - TE) I hobbled back to my shoes and scarpered to examine the outside a little more closely.

After we had reconvened in the car park we made our way to the squat building, rather forlorn in contrast to the temple, which houses the Shayona Restaurant, dessert parlour and shop. Thankfully the inside is a little jazzier, although the cuisine offered in the restaurant is simple, straightforward vegetarian fare.  Not just that but, being based on Satvic principles, the food offered here is prepared with no garlic and no onions.

Now I know, allegedly, food can taste good without liberal amounts of these stinky staples (and chilli sauce, of course) but why would you want to risk it. But, even after years of slowly destroying my taste buds by drinking Tabasco straight out the bottle and garlic pickle by the spoonful I completely forgot about the absence of alliums until I was back home again and went to have another look at their website.

Not only was the food top notch but they also have an all you can eat buffet at lunchtimes, for the bargain price of £7.99, including a drink. Fear not though, this is no Pizza Hut grease fest (although I do miss those days of being able to eat a cartwheel of deep pan pepperoni pizza, topped with garlic bread and chased down with a ‘healthy’ side of tinned sweetcorn slathered in blue cheese dressing), instead you can stuff yourself on a small array of freshly cooked curries and breads, supplemented by fresh pickles and salads.

Top picks were the cubes of mustardy spiced potato, an earthy kidney bean curry and a rich, oily chilli paneer. They also have a deft hand with the fryer too; the kachories - spiced mushy peas stuffed inside a pastry shell - and baskets of freshly cooked puri breads, which are bought fresh to your table, both being particularly good.

Those with a sweet tooth will probably appreciate their, very fine, mango lassi and the dishes of Shrikhand, a sweetened strained yogurt with cardamom and saffron. Not to my tastes, but the Ewing more than ably made up for my lack of interest.

I was, however, unable to resist the lure of the Indian sweetmeats that line the glass counters of the dessert parlour - there's also a small selection of savoury morsels and a freezer filled with swirls of brightly coloured Italian gelato swirled with fruit syrups and studded with biscuits and nuts. 

Normally I find burfi, halwa and the like - no matter how beautiful they look - too sugary, too rich, too 'cheesy' tasting to be enjoyable. Indeed the first time I tried it, from a gaudy sweet shop on Brick Lane, ended in me depositing each, half-masticated, piece into every bin on the way to Whitechapel.

Thankfully these, just like the temple, were as fabulous on the inside as their silver leaf and pistachio adorned exteriors suggested. The lurid marzipan fruit type things didn't really do it for me, but the pistachio barfi, the sticky square of compressed date and nuts and, my favourite, the yellow golf ball-like chickpea flour ladoo, were a beautiful way towards type two diabetes.

Fryday Night

February 13, 2015, 2:07 pm

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Having a firmly London-centric lineage (save for a Norn Iron Grandmother and, as I have recently discovered, a Pie Eater as a paternal Great-Grandfather) you're probably thinking I spent most my childhood evenings eating jellied eels whilst singing a few Chas and Dave songs around the old Joanna (I've never thought that - TE). Sadly, after I moved to the bucolic Chiltern Hills, most nights were about eating my greens followed by Neighbours and trying to avoid my physics homework (I did, briefly and badly, learn the piano, but it was all Phil Collins (heaven help us - TE) and the Beatles, not the Cockney classics).

People often rue the loss of the real London, but it still exists if you look hard enough and it's very essence, hanging in the air like chip fat, can be found through the doors of Masters Super Fish on the Waterloo Road. Beloved of cabbies, locals and tourist alike, the Formica tables, fish straight from Billingsgate and fogged up windows make you feel like you've been transplanted straight out of an Orwell novel.

I'm not sure you would have got a saucerful of shrimps in Orwell's time - although he does talk of the bigger cousins, Dublin Bay prawns, in his Defence of English Cooking. Here they are served gratis while you wait, alongside a basket of baguette and butter. Cue some noisy head-sucking from the Ewing.

Everything was perfect; a thick tranche of cod, served skin on (opposed to the skinless Northerners) was flaky and meaty (which still always seems a strange descriptor for fish); the batter at turns perfectly crisp and soggy and the mountains of fried potatoes peerless.

They also provide generous supplies of ketchup and tartare sauce - heaven for a condiment fiend like me - before bringing silver boats with sliced wallies and pickled onions to your table and asking how many you want with your dinner. That's right, endless pickles are provided table side; surely the cue to get yer selves down to queue for a fishy helping of forgotten London.

Of course man can’t live on cups of tea alone (although the English may try), so it was an auspicious omen that Bermondsey’s Bottle Shop were hosting the first night of their new Waterloo pop up, held at Love and Scandal coffee shop on Lower Marsh. 

Their Thursday/Friday night shenanigans started with four keg offerings, a cheeky little can and bottle list (also available to takeaway) and crisps sandwiches for a quid. It’s as if they had read my mind.

I started the weekend off with a Weird Beard Citra Ninja Pilsner (AKA Faceless Spreadsheet Ninja), a single hopped German pils style beer that’s clean and sweet and refreshing  but with a little kick at the end -from dry hopping with yet more Citra - to keep you on your toes; perfect Friday night thirst-slaking.

The Ewing passed up the chance to try the Punchline, a Chipotle Porter from Huddersfield's Magic Rock, plumping instead for the Ominpollo (from Sweden, and one of the only beverages imbibed over the weekend that was brewed outside the Big Smoke) Saison. This was a juicy, funky brew that the Ewing described as 'FRESH' (the caps are hers).

Crisp butties and a second round were passed up as Stealth had called to announce she was back in E&C and awaiting our arrival. As we couldn't arrive without a present (well, I could have done…) a few cans of Evil Twin Brewing’s Hipster Ale (brewed at Two Roads Brewing Co) from their takeaway fridge seemed most appropriate for the hippest girl in SE17.

Of course it wasn’t all about massive hops and a jet of CO2.  A nice dimpled pint pot of Sambrooks Wandle on cask – a classic English pale ale named after the Thames tributary that runs past the brewery - whilst snuggled up at the back of our favoured haunt, the Old Red Lion in Walworth, bookmarked  a pleasingly gentle end to a frenetic, Capital-centric weekend.

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London Claw Tour

February 21, 2015, 3:11 pm

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It’s been a while since I went on one of my half-cocked ‘challenges’ - well at least since I attempted to eat crab and ice cream (separately, that would be too much of a challenge even for me) at least once a day for our entire Devonshire holiday, which resulted in leaving even crustacean champion the Ewing going green behind the gills – but a recent spate of lobster purveyors springing up in the Capital presented too good an opportunity not to check at least some of them out. All in the name of vital research, obviously.

One of my favourite foodie memories - suffice to say already mentioned here and so I won’t recant it in too much detail - was going to New England as a teenager and finding that McDonalds sold a seasonal, and pretty good, lobster roll. This was also the same holiday where I casually remarked that our dinner (live lobster from the market) had escaped the confines of the bucket they were being stored in and were making their way across the sundeck.

Sadly, my life was pretty lobster-less for a long while after that. There was lots of crab, plenty of prawns and a fair few langoustines. But, save for the odd special treat, such as this great meal we shared with my Aunt and Uncle on their anniversary in Kenya, lobster remained very much the preserve of high days and holidays.

Fast forward a decade or so and it seems this once prized catch is becoming as ubiquitous as the Sunday roast or chicken tikka masala. With Aldi, Lidl and the like selling frozen specimens for a fiver and surf and turf on the chalkboard of every other pub you pass, but can we really have too much of a good thing? 

With a at least three restaurants focusing on lobster opening in the last couple of months in London, like a low rent Anne Robinson, but with the ability to still move my eyebrows independently,  I braved the claw challenge to find out for myself.

The first stop was Lobster Kitchen - actually, it was originally supposed to be Fraq’s, but their website didn’t specify an opening time and the doors weren’t open when I arrived at a quarter to twelve. Not to be defeated I walked the ten minutes from Goodge Street to the top of Tottenham Court road, followed by another ten minutes of hopelessly pacing about trying to actually find the place.

I’m guessing the idea is similar to Burger Shack in le Meridien, or any of the other famous ‘secret’ concessions that everybody knows about. Of course the big difference being everybody does know about them, while I remained clueless about the exact whereabouts, as well as pitifully hungover as I limped around the block inwardly sobbing to myself.

Eventually (and pretty much nobody who knows me will believe this part) I went into the lobby of the St Giles Hotel and asked. Here I was directed by a porter at reception, through a maze of corridors that lead to a door with a hastily sellotaped sign (the first I had seen for Lobster Kitchen) that appeared to lead to the cleaner’s cupboard or some other unpromising dead end. Thankfully it led to Lobster Kitchen, although once through it, the staff looked as surprised as I was that I had actually found it. If you’re looking for it from Great Russell Street then take the left hand door next to the VQ entrance, above, which has a small Lobster Kitchen decal on the glass.

The menu is confusingly sprawling, especially for such a tiny kitchen, and is chalked up all around the serving hatch, making it pretty much impossible to read as you stand at the till - thankfully I saw a pyramid of root beer  twinkling alluringly in front of me, so that was the drinks sorted. To eat was lobster, obviously, and I chose a king roll with garlic butter, they also offer ‘skinny’ (with olive oil) or ‘club’ (without a description).

The roll itself was small-ish but, as they say, perfectly formed, with nothing but the lobster, a touch of garlic, and butter. So, so much butter. Added to the sweet and buttery brioche (with just the right amount of toasting), I became slightly overwhelmed by the amount of dairy, especially due to my sensitive (and self-inflicted) state, and even found myself reluctantly leaving a few butter-soaked pieces of bun at the end.

I’m conflicted over whether this was a problem or not. Certainly those who don’t care much for butter would think so, but, when it comes to lobster butter is a natural bedfellow and I think, overall, it would be more of a crime to have been left with a dry bun. The garlic could certainly have been more prominent, but the lobster was cooked well enough and there was a decent meat to bread ratio.

Fraq’s has a much smaller menu. There’s a Boston Roll, a hot prawn and avocado (roll?) and a calamari club (sandwich? roll?). There’s also regular fries, courgette fries and, slightly randomly, chocolate cake. I ordered the Boston Roll (£15) with a, Christmas themed (yes, I told you this blog post had been waylaid) Diet Coke.

Sadly no root beer was available, and I was also told no alcohol was available on my visit either ( a small mercy, retrospectively), despite there being a fridge full of regular beer and a lemon sorbet vodka slushie machine churning on the counter.

Inside the decor is whitewashed New England beach shack. There was also a big staff to customer ratio, which combined with a Monday morning Motown soundtrack and the bright lights made my mood feel less chilled out on the sand and more slightly sea sick.

The roll was, thankfully, as hefty as its price tag, with the large brioche bun being served stuffed with a cold, mayo-based lobster salad. While the pieces of lobster were smaller than the Lobster Kitchen, there was a decent amount of meat in there. I also, for personal preference, rather liked the shredded iceberg lettuce, crisp chopped celery and creamy mayo, but if you prefer the simplicity of hot, buttery lobster roll then you’re out of luck.

At nearly twenty quid, with a can of drink, for something that took me less than half an hour to order and eat (the less gluttonous may want to add on fifteen minutes) this is fast food with a pretty hefty price tag. The limited menu - usually a favourable selling point with ventures like these - also may seem a little too restricted with only one type (and size) of lobster roll. While all I had to do is crawl on the train back home after I had finished eating, good luck to anyone going back to the office after one of these, as a crustacean coma is probably not too far behind.

I finally made it to Smack Deli, from the guys behind Burger and Lobster and the last stop on the mini trawl (see what I did there), on Valentine’s Day. Appropriately, this time the Ewing was in tow - surely nothing says romance better than fishy breath and greasy fingers? 

Here they offer four types of rollalongside whole lobster, lobster bisque; and, the ubiquitous, courgette fries. 

I was feeling particularly kindly and so I let my darling wife select the flavour she wanted, the Seven Samurai, first. Obviously this was the one I also wanted. Obviously, I could have also had this, but that irritating internal voice piped up saying ‘let’s have something different and share’, knowing full well this wouldn’t actually happen and knowing full well mine wouldn't be as nice.

Sadly, I was right; my roll - the Californian with lettuce, tomato and cucumber (avocado was missing in action) - was decent once I had removed the salad garnish but the Ewing's was far more interesting, the crisp shredded cabbage and sprinkle of Japanese chilli pepper being a particularly good call. The bun was probably the best in class of the one that I tried, but the lobster underneath was a little lacking, both in flavour and volume.

The courgette fries, however were fantastic. Something that can be attested by the fact that when I had to duck out to speak to my aunt on the phone, the Ewing scoffed most of them. And tried to, unsuccessfully, hide the evidence.

Of course, the gold standard of lobster roll remains for many those served at trailblazers Burger and Lobster. Their rolls are the kind I crave; cold chunks of poached lobster meat bound lightly in mayo with a little bit of lettuce and a lot of butter in the brioche. While I haven’t had one for a while, it’s always hard to look past the grilled lobster with melted butter on the few times I have visited, so it's got to be worth taking a greedy friend and adding an extra roll to your order for sharing. Luckily I have greedy friends, and here are two of my favourites chowing down on the aforementioned roll on my hen do. Perfect simplicity, in more ways than one.

My Bloody Valentine

March 7, 2015, 2:31 pm

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Ahh, Valentine’s Day, the annual prospect of a corporate Cupid that tries to divest us of our remaining cash and last shreds of dignity. If your idea of true love is twelve red roses and Billecart-Salmon on ice then you may find this blog somewhat lacking, but if the idea of walking through a Biblical swarm of midges on a drizzly Tottenham trading estate followed by a drunken chicken dinner floats your boat, then I’ve got a treat in store for you.

The reason for this rare north London pilgrimage was to visit the Saturday tap room at the Beavertown Brewery, one the most celebrated of the new wave of  British brewers who produce such wonderful beers as Gamma Ray American Pale (my favourite) and Smog Rocket smoked porter (the Ewing’s).

Our recent visit was in anticipation of the annual release of their lauded brew, the Bloody ‘Ell blood orange infused ipa. Although it may seem like a bit of a schlep, it’s an easy ten minutes’ walk from Tottenham Hale tube to get your hand on some of London’s best beer straight from the source: although I still can’t think of anything positive to say about the drizzle and the insects encountered on route.

Our first sampling of the main draw, the aforementioned Bloody ‘Ell, was a comparison between cask and keg. Very briefly, and hopefully not too boringly, the difference between the two can roughly be described thus - cask ale is unfiltered and unpasteurised ‘live’ beer which is conditioned (including secondary fermentation) and served from a cask (or it can be bottle conditioned) without additional nitrogen or carbon dioxide pressure. Keg beer is beer which is served from a pressurised keg. Keg beer is often filtered and/or pasteurised, both of which are processes that render the yeast inactive and give the beer a much longer life.

After that it starts to get tricky. For a long time CAMRA - who are the champions of ‘real’ (cask) ale – saw ‘dead’ keg as the enemy.  And this may have been true when the competition was from a row of shiny taps offering Stella, Fosters, John Smiths and Guinness, but now many microbreweries (and ‘craft’ drinkers) have resurrected kegged beers - for a start they are usually served colder, and with a little carbonation, that suits the hoppy IPA styles and gives good head to the stouts that are popular at the moment.

Beer politik aside, I happily enjoy both styles without discrimination, although it was nice to get to try a brew that is normally served either kegged or in cans. I actually think I preferred the cask, being a touch warmer it made the orange-lead hoppiness stand out, making it feel more ‘English’. Contrarily, the Ewing preferred the keg, so, for once, we were both happy with our lot.

Next up was something completely different. For me the Dogfishhead collaboration Londonerweisse, a bracingly sour beer with a 2.8% abv that is based on the popular German Berlinerweisse, but with added gin botanicals – such as juniper, coriander and citrus zest and then dry-hopped with Darjeeling tea - to make it ‘London’ style. In Deutschland sugar syrups are added to sweeten, notably green woodruff and red raspberry, but I’m big fan on the pleasing lip puckeringness of this style being served as is. 

The Ewing chose the far burlier Applleation, a bramley apple infused saison, rocking up at a hefty 8.7% ABV. Saisons are beers with lots of history, traditionally brewed by the French and Belgian farmers in the colder months and served to the workers, who were entitled to up to five litres each workday (thankfully at much lower abvs). As it is, it is only served at Beavertown in half pints, a good thing on balance as its warming, vinous qualities made it dangerously quaffable on a chilly afternoon. If you’re a fan of good oaked apple cider, complete with those dark funky farmyard notes, then this could be the drop for you.

There were also savoury snacks, in the form of Soffle's Pitta Chips, which are made on the same trading estate as Beavertown. The chilli ones are properly fiery and come recommended.

The sweet supplies picked up in Lidl on the way proved a good match with our next tipple, the wonderful Heavy Water sour cherry and sea salt imperial stout (at 9% ABV try saying that after you’ve drunk one). The stout itself is, for my money, one of the best in class. It’s oily and rich with chocolate, coffee, malt and Marmite notes, although the cherry isn’t particularly prominent in the mix. A real bruiser for a typically English winter’s afternoon and a great match with Crusti Choc (a Rice Krispie and milk choc marvel), that’s currently my confectionary of choice.

Because of the auspicious date (and nothing to do with the alcohol imbibed) love was in the air and I was eager to share our chocolately spoils with the neighbouring table. This lead to the inspired pairing of chocolate mousse filled bars eaten with Bloody ‘Ell, creating a kind of alcoholic chocolate orange taste sensation –a pairing the Ewing ramped up on our return, combining it with a real chocolate orange; properly zesty times.

More sustenance was supposed to be supplied in the shape of the East meets West ramen burgers (complete with compressed noodle buns), but then something happened, and it wasn’t. Luckily a late substitution, in the form of Columbian St Kitchen, stepped into the hold and we were soon enjoying chicken tamales with tomato chutney, and beef and onion empanadas with pickle. The latter were particularly memorable, like a kind of South American pasty and the perfect grog-absorber for our final round of a 8 Ball Rye ipa for the Ewing and another Bloody ‘Ell on keg for me.

It wouldn’t be a proper Valentine’s Day without a nice dinner a deux to round things off, which is how we found ourselves under the sparkling neon lights of Tottenham Hale KFC, ravenously sharing a bargain bucket and fries, complete with Milkybar milkshake and extra gravy on the side. Who said romance is dead. (Oh God,what did we do to ourselves? TE)

Seven(ish) Thrills of Sheffield

March 15, 2015, 3:34 pm

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Everybody knows that Steel City is also the most famous to be built on seven hills (there may be the small matter of Italy’s capital, with its Trevi Fountain and Coliseum, but Sheffield produced Bertie Bassett and the Cockers - both Joe and Jarvis – so it clearly nudges ahead).

The Ewing is also going through a little love in with the Rome of Yorkshire, after she saw a speculative application for a speculative job which she speculatively though of applying for, despite the closest she has previously ever got to the place being when we pass Meadowhall on the M1 on the way to my Aunt and Uncle’s. 

To indulge her new obsession, we decided to make a weekend of it on the way to our trip to the Peak District. So here we have a beery Sheffield thrill for every Sheffield hill, plus a coffee stop for luck (or for sobering us up...).

Just like our first stop in Birmingham last winter (with the fabulous Craven Arms), I think that our very first stop was here my favourite of the whole trip. Both Arms, Craven and Rutland, are similarly old school, the Craven with its Majolica tiling the Rutland with its 1920's frontage of red brick and gold faience, and both serve a good selection of fine beer in old fashioned, dark wood surrounds.

The Craven Arms also has a mural by Sheffield street artist Phlegm (thankfully the paintings are more attractive than the name), whose distinctive works crop up in many other places across the city.

After battling Sunday buses and spring gales we were just in time for lunch. But before we could eat, it was time for the fabled first drink of the holiday. In my case a half of Magic Rock High Wire, a juicy, tropical fruit filled pale ale from the Huddersfield brewery that’s not seen much down South. The Ewing had a pint of something dark and smoky; always start like you mean to go on.

The food was fantastic. I’m pretty sure that, along with my Aunt’s steamed ginger pudding that I ate on the last evening of our trip, the roast veal with dauphinoise potatoes I ordered was the best thing I consumed in a week and a half (and I consumed a lot). The mushroom gravy, augmented by a drop of the famous Hendos, still haunts my dreams. 

The Ewing’s slow roasted shoulder of lamb was also a belter, with exemplary roast spuds and three Yorkies (although they did have a faint whiff of Aunt Bessie about them). To drink was a second Magic Rock, the belting Big Top, an India red ale based on their Rapture, but boosted up to a tasty 8%, that went down a little too smoothly.

Pudding was a good homemade chocolate brownie accompanied by remarkably good homemade banana and coffee ice cream and a half of Magic Rock’s Chipotle Punchline stout. A decent brew, although I felt the smoky after burn from the chillies rather disconcerting.

Next we considered traversing the city to check out the Red Deer or Bath Taps, but the cruel winds and hail forced us back towards the station; which turned out to be perfect for a couple of snifters at the Sheffield Tap, the famed pub built at the side of the station and accessed from sheaf street or platform 1b.

They’ve got a big range of cask and keg but not a huge amount that interested me on our visit. In the end I settled for a fair, if a little pricey, half of 6 North's Hop Classic Belgian IPA. The Ewing picked the even more expensive Ten Fidy from the Oskar Blues Brewery, at a lethally smooth 10.5 %, and was rewarded with an awesome imperial stout with a malty sweetness and a big lick of dark chocolate and bitter coffee.

Their bottle selection was much more interesting, and we settled for two efforts from the Marble Brewery; the Chocolate Marble and the Earl Grey IPA. Although they came from the wrong side of ‘tPennines, both were belters, the IPA being particularly great and well worth seeking out. I also –displaying a streak of drunken machismo – ordered the chilli jerky to nibble on, the large red lettering proclaiming ‘warning’ not enough to put me off. Well, reader, they weren’t wrong, the aftereffects on my digestive tract being even more cataclysmic the following day when combined with all the beer that had been drunk.

First stop the following morning was for caffeine at the rather lovely Sellers Wheel branch of Tamper Coffee, a lovely bright and beautiful space co owned by a couple of Kiwis, a nation known for their great coffee and brunches.

We weren't disappointed, despite our order turning up in a rather random fashion with rather random excuses; The Ewing's omelette, followed by my coffee, followed by my sandwich (sandwich press was heating up) followed, finally, by the Ewing's coffee (the pour over takes a while to prepare).

Timing grumbles aside, the freshly cooked omelette - four cheese with red onion - was delicious, although butter would have been nice to go with the rye toast. My salt beef and gherkin sarnie with mustard mayo was, as the hedgehog haired presenter of a famous road food TV show may have said, off the chain. 

My piccolo was good, although I really liked the lamington I had asked for alongside whilst waiting for my sandwich to toast (I was on holiday). When the Ewing's coffee finally turned up it was in a chemistry beaker (crazy. TE) which, once poured into her glass, rendered it rather lukewarm. Still the flavours were good, so much so we picked up a bag of the Tamper house blend beans for my Uncle on the way out.

After breakfasting we made way of the unusually sunny weather by visiting the nearby Millennium Gallery - complete with its giant horse sculpture made of Sheffield cutlery and striped (both blue and white for the Owls and red and white for the Blades) bottles of Hendos - and the adjoining Winter Gardens; a fine temperate glasshouse housing an array of tropical plants seldom seen in South Yorkshire alongside shops and a cafe.

Next we made our way down to Kelham Island, formally an industrial area, the 'island' being created by a diversion of the River Don to power the town corn mill, and now home to the Kelham Island museum which celebrates the cities rich heritage, alongside some flashy new student digs and five pubs.

One of these, predictably, was the site of our first stop. The Fat Cat, opened in 1850 in Kelham Island, and which styles itself as Sheffield’s ‘first real ale pub’. While it was under ownership by a big brewery for many years, in 1981 it was put up for auction and became a mecca for independent and local beer lovers. 

Being (literally) next door to the Kelham Island brewery, two of its permanent fixtures are Kelham Island bitter and their signature brew Pale Rider. With both beers having to make less than a 20 yard trip, it’s no surprise to say they were in tip top condition. The pork pies, on the bar were also pretty great.

Being a Monday, the atmosphere (no piped muzak or fruit machines here) was a little lacking and the staff a little curt; although it was nice to see the steady stream of locals, most known by name, propping up the bar and the roaring log fire in the corner. The rest of the food – curry night £4.50 with £1.50 pints, fresh pies baked daily, ploughmans and burgers  – also looked good, and very good vale too.

Saving ourselves we made our way to the end of the road, home of Kelham’s other famous hostelry, the Kelham Island Tavern. The set up here is less warren-like than the Fat Cat, and the atmosphere livelier and more welcoming, and, even though we had just missed the hot beef rolls, the barman offered to rustle us up a chip butty if we liked. 

Kind as the offer was, we stuck to our liquid diet; for me a pint of local brwery Abbydale's Deception and the Ewing had halves of Barnsley’s Acorn Old Moor Porter and a Thwaites Symphonic, a blackberry infused stout.

Another good no nonsense pub, the kind we excel at and that are now, sadly, becoming a rare breed, the Kelham Island is a very fine place to while away the afternoon. The highlight of our visit being when the dyed-in-the-wool Yorkshire barman had to explain to a group of young Frenchwomen what exactly a scotch egg was; priceless.

From the old to the new, dinner was at Craft and Dough, Sheffield’s new pizza and craft beer gaff. Despite being able to see the Fat Cat and The Kelham Island tavern from the window, there’s no bitter and pork scratchings on the menu here. Actually, I tell a lie, there was a special pork scratching topped pizza made in honour of pig week, but they had sadly already sold out on the very first day of it being on the menu. And they also have bitter too, of which I enjoyed a bottle of Saltaire’s Joshua Jane. Proving there isn’t too much difference between the past and the present after all.

Being thwarted by the absence of the piggy special, I went for the equally protein loaded Crafty Cuts, an braised ox cheek, pepperoni, balsamic red onion mozzarella and oregano number, while the Ewing had the veggie Yorkshire Goats Curd, Henderson's Relish and with baby leeks grown at Furnace Hill, the restaurant’s own allotment in Kelham. I think I actually preferred the veggie option, although both were fine pies; generous and with a base that was at once chewy and charred, just the way it should be.

Puds came in the form of soft serve milk ice cream - a little boring, if I’m honest - which was enlivened greatly by the bottle of Brass Castle Bad Kitty vanilla infused stout (say that in a Yorkshire accent) I drank alongside it. The Ewing chose the Yorkshire rhurbarb mess, served with a Ilkley Siberia, a rhubarb infused saison and her second Ilkley beer of the night, after enjoying a bottle of Pale with her pizza. The mess was outstanding; batons of bright pink ‘barb, sweet crème anglaise and shards of meringue studded with tart rhubarb jelly, strong contender for pud of the year, even at this early stage.

 

The icing on the cake, literally and figuratively, came when JP, their lovely front of house, offered us the last couple of slices of his delicious chocolate birthday cake. Many thanks JP, and his Mum, who baked the fudgy, squidgy beauty (hat a treat! TE). You can see from our dishes, even after the shameless gluttony before, how well it went down.

First stop on our final day was the Three Tuns, which is known for being shaped like the Flat Iron Building (or should the Flat Iron building actually be known for resembling the Thee Tuns?) Whatever, this is another unusual and fine looking pub, recently taken over by the chaps behind the Rutland Arms.

 

Grabbing a quick half - a Bad Boi Rye IPA for me and a ginger infused stout for the Ewing -we managed to grab a spot in the ‘nose’ of the pub, which, with its boat shape, felt rather like being in Titanic, another beer and maybe I would have been doing my best Kate Winslet impression.

After the fearsome jerky consumed on the first night you may have thought I’d have learnt my lesson. Sadly not, as this time I opted to try the Pwhoar Horse My Brittle Pony (worth it for the name alone) a ‘100% beef free’ horse jerky. Whilst flavoured with chillies and soy, mercifully it was much milder and provided a good chew to accompany my pint.

Last up was the Harley - a quickly improvised stop when we realised the highly regarded Thornbridge pub, the Bath Taps, didn’t serve any grub. The Harley -along with the Riverside in Kelham and Jake’s bar in Leeds - serves food from the Twisted Burger Co., and we were soon happily ensconced on their battered leather sofas whilst waiting for our lunch.

I chose the Limp Brizket; Double Beef Patty, Shredded Brisket, American cheese, onion jam and techno Burger Sauce; and the Ewing the Pig Daddy Kane; double beef patty, pulled pork, American cheese, Kraken BBQ sauce and chorizo & apple jam; and a sharing portion of sweet potato fries. Not for dieters, then.

Overall these were pretty strong burgers; whilst my patties were overcooked, the outside had a good crust and the brisket was inspired, adding a juicy beefiness. A little bit of chilli heat would have been good, but I compensated with yet more Hendos. The Ewing’s effort was also commendable, although, with both BBQ sauce and apple jam, a little sweet for me, but the sweet potato fries, with their crunchy coating, were perfect.

To drink was a half of Saltaire’s Blackberry Cascade, an American style pale ale infused with a hint of the said fruit. And for me a pint of Farmer’s Bitter from nearby Bradfield Brewery, a rurally inspired and thoroughly English beer that was the perfect prompt for saying goodbye to the hustle of Steel City and making our way to the next stop, the bucolic Peak District.

Drinking up Derbyshire

March 20, 2015, 4:09 pm

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Part of the appeal of visiting the Peak District - aside, of course, from the magnificent hills and dales, classic architecture, culture and history - was the chance to visit the brewery and tap house of two of Britain's best loved brewers; Thornbridge in Bakewell and Buxton in, well, Buxton.

There are some moments in life which are pretty impossible to improve upon. Being called up to be offered a new job just at the the moment you arrive for a brewery tour with unlimited beer to drink at the end is certainly difficult to beat.

Such was the case when we turned up at the Thornbridge Riverside brewery, where my fellow tour mates were treated to the sight of me whooping and jumping up and down outside the full length windows, and before a drop had even been consumed. As if I actually needed a reason to drink more beer....

After getting a good view of the tanks where the brewing happens (recently expanded just a week or so before to increase capacity by a massive 40%) we were invited up into the control room where they check the quality of the beer as it ferments. 

Here they also experiment with new flavours and on our visit we saw a host of vibrating test tubes alongside various phials of beer that were being heated, cooled and otherwise adulterated whilst potentially on their way to become a new flavour in the left field series - a line of ales previously featuring parma violet porter and peanut butter stout.

We also got to see got to see the barrel store which is currently holding the second edition of Sour Brown - this batch maturing in French red wine casks with raspberries, rhubarb and cherries - alongside a contingent of beer quietly aging in Four Roses bourbon barrels.

Then it was back to the bar to celebrate with several jars, including bottles of Kipling, a South Pacific pale ale; Sequoia, an American amber ale; Twin Peaks, a Sierra Nevada collaboration and, on keg, Bayern, a very tasty classic Bavarian pils, and Cocoa Wonderland - the Ewing's favourite - a rich, thick and incredibly chocolatey porter.

We also picked up a bottle or two of pretty much everything they had in stock, including their ten year anniversary beer, Japiur X, a imperial incarnation of their most famous beer that's brewed at a stonking 10%. A few of these the following weekend gave me even more reasons to celebrate (and commiserate the following morning).

Making our way from the brewery we set off to counteract the effects of lingering at the bar for too long. This lead us back into Bakewell and to the Red Lion's  oatcakes - the big, spongy pancakes, not the small Scottish biscuits - which are another specialty of Derbyshire and Staffordshire. Although they are sadly dying out you can still find them on the menu here, stuffed with either cheese and bacon or cheese and onion. 

Rather like a French buckwheat crepe, and with a lovely nutty, slightly sour flavour, this was a great way to spend less than four quid. Add some of the best chips I have eaten for a while (more like mini roasties) served with a proper jug of fresh beef gravy, complete with chunks of meat bobbing in it and pint of Peak Ales Bakewell Best Bitter, brewed on the nearby Chatsworth Estate, it made a fine end to a fine day.

Of course there were some moments of our stay when we weren't liver bashing, and during those brief passages of sobriety we could enjoy views like this, of the Cathedral of the Peak in Tideswell, which we were lucky enough to glimpse through our bedroom window during our stay at the adjacent George Inn.

The George also provided a magnificent example of the proper full english. Tea, juice and cereal to start followed by plenty of buttered toast and a immaculate selection of bacon, sausages, fried egg, mushrooms and tomato.

Like the fabled perfect roast dinner, getting a decent fry up away from home is nearly an impossible thing, but for each of the four mornings we stayed here our breakfast was freshly cooked to order and spot on each time.

Stomachs lined we set off for the geothermal spa town of Buxton. Scuppered slightly in it's bid to become a 'northern Bath' - due to it's high elevation providing even more inclement weather than the British norm - it's never the less still a charming place, complete with its own opera house, Pavilion gardens and the Devonshire dome, which now houses part of the campus of the University of Derby.

Despite the notable architecture the main charm for us heathens was the Buxton Tap House, the brewery tap of the eponymous brewery who produce their ware on an industrial estate just outside the town. Being as they don't offer official tours of the premises a visit to the Tap House was the closest we were going to get to where the magic happens. But with a regularly changing selection of five dedicated casks and eight keg lines of their own beer, it didn't seem much like a poor second best.

We started gently with two different types of golden ale, both on cask; a half of Moor Top, hopped with chinook, for me and a Buxton Spa, hopped with citra, for the Ewing. Both were finely kept and went down with an effortless ease.

Next I tried a half of their famed Axe Edge, named for the moor south west of Buxton, and here also served - a rare sight - on cask. This, deservedly, often makes the list of top UK IPAs and it's not hard to see why. Hopped with Amarillo, Citra and Nelson Sauvin, the bitter bite of citrus and big topical fruit flavours still manage to belie the 6.8% Abv.

To eat I went with the once trendy, now decidedly retro, (showing my age) pub classic, nachos. Normally I wouldn't bother, applying the 'I could make this at home' rule to it, despite the fact nachos are amazing I haven't made them since I was a student. On this occasion I'm very glad I did, the heap of tortillas arrived smothered by their smoked beef shin chilli, salsa, jalapenos and a blanket of cheddar and mozzarella, with generous Pollock-esque dabs of guacamole and sour cream providing the finish touches.

The Ewing's chowder was just as great, the mussels being home smoked in their own smoker and joined by corn and chunks of bacon, ably supported by doorstops of buttered brown bread. Top notch pub grub all round. (The Chowder was a revelation - TE).

Continuing our progress through the list my next brew was the Wild Boar, on cask, coming in at 5.7%. A decent pale ale that starts initially with the sweet flavour of tangerines and honey before smacking you around the chops with a lovely dry, bitter finish.

The Ewing's Red Raspberry Rye, a beer I'd heard much about, was the most interesting drink of the day. This poured completely opaque with no head and a dark red colour (as opposed to some of the bottles I've seen, which seem to pour a little clearer and pinker in hue?) and tasted phenomenal; dry, tart, a touch of wheat and packed full of fresh raspberry flavour. Perhaps not for everyone, but a beer well worth sampling at least once. (Definitely!- TE)

Last up was my favorite of the day, the Nth cloud, a DIPA the colour of Irn Bru. This was fresh out the brewery and was in fantastic condition, with a slightly sweet, resinous, almost chewy quality and huge amounts of ripe mango and grapefruit.

The Ewing went with the no less magnificent Living End - this being the bourbon barrel version rather than the Islay whisky incarnation - a imperial stout coming in at a majestic 10.1%. Thick with coffee, malt and chocolate with vanilla and oak from the barrel aging. Dangerously smooth and the perfect night cap to send us back (along with a selection of bottle to takeaway) to Tideswell.

It wouldn't be a trip to the Peaks without a chance to sample some of the cakes and pastries that helped put the region on the map. By far the most famous of these is the baked offering from Bakewell, here known as a pudding not a tart and resembling more of a baked custard tart with a raspberry jam layer underneath than the iced mini Mr Kipling pies my Dad used to wolf down. 

I found the original puds were good, if a little oily, although I must have inherited the same unsophisticated taste buds as my Dad as I preferred the tooth-achingly sweet iced version with its frangipan sponge layer.

Better still were the Thar cakes - very gingery, crisp oat biscuits (they are a relative of Yorkshire's parkin) - and Wakes Cakes, crumbly - short biscuits flavoured with rose water and ground coriander - that we bought from the bakers in Tideswell. Beer and biscuits; there's plenty of treats in them thar hills.

Fischer's Baslow Hall

March 25, 2015, 3:37 pm

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In a bid to trump conventionality the Ewing and I celebrated our nuptials on leap Day. As well as being a suitably contrary date, we also cunningly thought it would avoid the need for scrabbling round for the least wilted bunch of petrol station flowers every 365 days. Of course, all that has actually happened is that we now seem to find ourselves celebrating both the 28th February and 1st March.

This year we also decided to throw in a lunch on the 27th, at the Michelin starred and highly lauded and Fischer’s of Baslow Hall, whach was just down the road from where we were staying in Tideswell. That's of course  if we could correctly follow the sat nav; instead we ending up taking a more ‘scenic’ route and having a customary anniversary ‘disagreement’ before we had even arrived.

Luckily things picked up pretty quickly and we were soon enjoying a glass of fizz alongside some (polenta?) jenga chip thingies, served with a dish of sweet and smoky spiced aubergine puree, whilst sitting beside a roaring log fire in the drawing room. So far so good.

On being seated in the dining room we were left alsone with the fancy bread basket, a very dangerous thing indeed, which contained a hazelnut and raisin roll (good) and a treacle loaf (better). This was followed by an amuse bouche of onion soup topped with thyme foam. The herb infused foam, so often an unpleasant spaff of froth, was particularly tasty, working well with the sweet earthy soup.

We had picked the - very decent value at £27 for three courses - set menu, and to start I chose the seared squid with radicchio risotto; a riot of dark pink grains topped with a scattering of frosty sea herbs that looked rather like nuggets of green glass that had washed up on the beach. This was very good without really jumping up and grabbing me, I think I was expecting more of a bitter note from the radicchio to act as a foil for the sweet and tender squid.

The Ewing’s sea bream with blood orange and fennel was another fine looker. Here the bright acid punch of the citrus really set off the fish, which had been cooked perfectly to end up with crisp skin whilst remaining soft and flaky within. Blood orange is a fabulous thing, and here the brightness and astringency felt like a welcome shot of summer.

For the main we both chose the bavette with shin pie, cheesy mash, greens and carrots. Well, who wouldn’t? This was another fine piece of cooking; the slow cooked shin served in a hollowed out marrow bone only being improved by its buttery potato carapace. The steak had an iron-rich smoky flavour that paired perfectly with the slick of good gravy and pile of roasted root veg.

To drink I went with a Thornbridge Jaipur, brewed just up the road in Bakewell; a rather unconventional but spot on pairing with the spiciness perfectly complimenting the beef. The Ewing had a fishbowl of something red, French and pricey. Good job I love her.

My pudding, a kind of ‘deconstructed’ vanilla cheesecake with blood orange sorbet, felt like a bit of a disappointment, but only because there was so little of it and it tasted so good. Refined and beautiful is all very well - and the cheesecake was meltingly buttery and rich, probably not to be recommended in huge quantities - but three mouthfuls doesn't a memorable pud make.

In contrast the Ewing’s chocolate cake with brown butter ice cream, crumble and malted cream came as a generous slab of stickiness that kept even her quiet for a few minutes. The smoky caramel sauce and malted cream made particularly fine accompaniments.

From here we retired back into the drawing room for coffee and petit fours in front of the fire. The coffee, a silver cafetiere of giant proportions that was left on our table for us to help ourselves, was a caffeinated dream for the Ewing. Although she may have felt differently when trying to sleep later that evening after five or six cups of the stuff. The petit fours - fair salted caramel truffles and fabulous raspberry macaroons - were also very welcome, even after all that had preceded them

The whole Fischer’s experience is resolutely old school and none the worse for it. From the glasses of fizz to start to the coffee around the fire to finish, we were looked after impeccably. What’s more it’s thumpingly good value grub if you eat from the lunch menu and the manicured grounds are the perfect place to burn off a chocolate truffle or two. A very happy three quarters anniversary, indeed.