Annual review

Happy New Year!

For me, the highlight of 2012 was the perfect vodka martini I had at Brasserie Zédel. Apart from that, here are some of the places I’ve been to in the last year that didn’t make it to what I grandly like to call ‘full review stage’. Mainly out of apathy.

MEATLiquor
74 Welbeck Street W1G 0BA
God this was good. The whole ‘dirty’ food thing has now exploded beyond all sense and proportion, hence why I didn’t write about it (I’ll leave that to Marina O’Loughlin, who does it much better), but when I went here last January, I had genuinely never had a burger like it (or chilli cheese fries, for that matter). The denizens of the food blogging community are wild in their acclaim for the MEAT family’s burgers (brioche bun, pickles, sauces with funny names….), and it’s entirely justified. Not everywhere served drinks in jam jars when I went either. It was a simpler time. Go, it’s still great and the queues (SIGH) are slightly shorter.

L’Autre
5b Shepherd Street W1J 7HP
This happened because a group of us had decided to try to get into Burger & Lobster at 7pm on a Saturday night. It’s boring being right all the time so I didn’t mention the obvious problem with this plan, and when we were summarily ejected back on to Clarges Street for a casual 3 hour wait, I calmly suggested Shepherd’s Market. L’Autre was chosen on the basis that it looked funny. And yes, it is funny. It’s a joke. A Polish Mexican (seriously) restaurant with a French name and décor more commonly seen in a ski chalet. I didn’t write about it because it also turned out to be an expensive joke, and I was annoyed. I have just read a review on Trip Advisor in which the only positive comment was that the Mexican and Polish menus are separate, and ‘not fused’. Well great, but it’s still freaking weird to eat a boar stew whilst your friend is tucking into quesadillas. I say ‘tucking in’, but that would be a massive over-exaggeration as the food was not up to much. I suppose we shouldn’t have expected great things given that instead of background music they had boldly gone for the metronomic ping of the microwave door. Ironically, by the end of the night the only thing we could think about was l’autre restaurant to which we should have been.

L’Etranger
36 Gloucester Road SW7 4QT
Don’t let the idea of ‘Asian French’ put you off. For one thing, it works much better than ‘Polish Mexican’ and, if you think about it, given France’s colonisation of various parts of the East over the years, it makes sense that there is a common food culture behind the concept (e.g. banh-mi, Vietnamese baguettes). In my humble opinion this is one of the best restaurants in London at the moment, and they are definitely aware of the French colonisation vibe because they’ve self referenced it; not only by naming the restaurant after Camus’ classic existential story of Algerian alienation, L’Etranger, but also by piping excerpts of the book through speakers in the loos. Which is actually a bit odd. ‘Aujourd’hui Maman est morte’, is not the most relaxing thing to hear whilst you’re powdering your nose. The club downstairs is called ‘Meursault’ which is the name of the novel’s protagonist and also a very nice wine from Burgundy. This delights me. We went there en famille for a Christmas lunch and around the table there were artichoke and truffle soups, asian scallops, foie gras with lemongrass, turkey, miso black cod and lobster ravioli. It’s more of a classically French menu with a very light Japanese (I would say it owed more to Japan than other countries in Asia) overlay – for example you might find oysters with a ponzu vinaigrette, or steak tartare with a soy glazed dipping sauce. Everything is cooked so well and the base flavours are so harmonious that it works. That makes it very, very clever because for the same money (which is a lot – this is Michelin territory) it could be just another fusion nightmare. Save up and go here.

Ashbee’s Wine Bar
22 Hogarth Place SW5 0QY
To be perfectly honest nothing in this place is going to knock your socks off as much as the lady in charge, a fearsome Polish woman by the name of Elisabeth. Or, Elizabeth III, as I once heard her call herself over a glass of honeyed mead. Simultaneously the kindest and most terrifying person you’ll ever meet, she presides over this tiny Earls Court basement in great style. It looks like Paris and apparently she once had the whole of the Philharmonic Orchestra in there (another glass of mead). The wine list is well priced (great Beaujolais) and for £7.95 per person baskets of bread and huge pots of nameless molten cheese will arrive in front of you, roiling with fat and oil and good humour. We once met a Canadian lobster salesman called Bernard here.

L’Art du Fromage
1A Langton Street SW10 0JL
I only know one woman who is as obsessed with cheese as I am and, by a cruel twist of fate, she now lives in America and has to deal with plastic, orange ‘cheddar’. We went here quite some time ago but either I was having a quarter-life crisis or I was too full to write it up. Yes, it’s the second fondue place on the list (scarily, there could be a third as I did go to a fondue restaurant somewhere in Spitalfields but it was 11pm, I was terrified -Jack the Ripper tour- and I have no recollection of where it is or what it was like). L’Art du Fromage is sort of a modern art concept, but for cheese. Imagine a very smelly Tate Modern. Everything is beautifully presented and elegant, which is sometimes difficult when you’re dealing with rennet. It was quite some fondue too; Emmental, Comté and Beaufort with kirsch. Almost at the zenith of my cheese tolerance, and that is pretty high.

Osteria dell’Arancio
383 King’s Road SW10 0LP
Having walked past this restaurant every evening on my way home for the last 6 months, I had become convinced that it was called Osteria dell’Arancini, or ‘Tavern of the little rice ball’. Happily, it is actually Arancio, which means orange. It suffers from being close to La Famiglia, which practically needs a blue plaque nowadays, but it is a very good alternative and the outside tables are a real bonus. In the final days of what laughably passes for summer in this sceptic isle, 2 girlfriends and I sat at one of these and chewed the fat (literally- we had prosciutto) over some superlative northern Italian food. More Piedmont than Puglia, we worked our way through antipasti and meat ragus on parpadelle, drinking rosé and desperately trying to ignore our coats and umbrellas.

Vinoteca
53-55 Beak Street W1F 9SH
I didn’t blog about this because I went with a man who I didn’t want to scare away by writing about him on the internet the first time we had seen each other in a while. My diary is one thing, but this is kind of public. We arrived late and by accident (Polpo was full) and it could not have been more perfect. The wine list is stupidly comprehensive (300!) and the guys behind the bar stupidly knowledgeable about it. Bavette, watercress, horseradish and chips was just about the perfect thing to soak up 300 bottles of wine. Reasonably priced, cosy and lots of fun.

The Chelsea Ram
32 Burnaby Street SW10 0PL
I almost don’t want to talk about this because it is our flat’s secret pub. Obviously other people must know about it; occasionally we go there for a quick drink after a stressful Tuesday and there is a huge table of raucous, young people having a great time, and all the regulars are propped up at the bar watching in bemusement. It’s on a side street in the doldrums of Lots Road, treading a fine line between old and new Chelsea and managing both. With great food on a more interesting level than sausages and mash, the best atmosphere of any pub in the area and a working fire which always has 2 or 3 dogs lounging in front of it, what’s not to love? Once, suffering from a monumental hangover related illness, I sat in the corner by myself with a book, a burger and an alka seltzer for 3 hours. Nobody bothered me. This is what you need in a local pub. They also have a private room for parties.

Princi
135 Wardour Street W1F 0UT
This was a real find in the dog days of 2012, when the weather was gloomy and it wasn’t quite Christmas. We arrived at 3pm on a dreary Saturday afternoon and left about 7 hours later, during which time 4 people had joined the party. It’s a Milanese restaurant that is apparently authentic, although I can’t vouch for that, not being from or in Milan. You order, collect and pay for antipasti, pizza, secondi, drinks etc. from a central bar area, and then try to grab a seat. It’s amazing how something that is manifestly not fun at school, or in McDonalds, makes total sense in a loud, buzzy, pizza café. Being incredibly continental, we actually ate ours standing up against a shelf, as I have seen people do in Rome, refilling from a bottle of white as necessary. The pizza is very good, more doughy than your traditional Neapolitan crisp-based effort (not surprising, given that this is from Milan) and big slices with almost any toppings you can think of are under £5. A great place to start a night out in Soho, or even refuel afterwards.

Noor Jahan
2A Bina Gardens SW5 0LA
Curry is something I rarely crave but if you do have an urge, this is the place to go. A family favourite, we’ve been coming here for as long as I can remember. They must be pleased the sisters and I have moved on slightly from the adventurous ‘4 chicken kormas’ order that characterised our early visits.

Michael Nadra
6-8 Elliott Road W4 1PE
I feel this deserves a quick mention because in its actual ‘review’ I just went off on one about how much I love Chiswick. The cooking here is really exceptional.