Asian – Page 7 – TheKua Does Food

Azzi

April 11, 2009 Patrick Asian, Korean, Restaurants, UK

After coming back from Japan and having had some Korean food, I was particularly craving some more of it, particularly their hot stone bowl dish, dol bibimbap. I headed out for a Sunday lunch but it seemed like all the Korean restaurants in central London were shut so I kept walking around until I stumbled across Azzi, a fusion Japanese and Korean restaurant.

Its entrance makes it appear quite small restaurant with only four tables visible. A bunch of Korean ladies catching up occupied one of them while another group of Swedish tourists took another, apparently umming and ahhing over what to order. They had a couple of small tables by the main counter so I took one of them. They do have some tables out back as I saw plenty of people head out back but I have no idea how many. Their menu was interesting, less fusion that advertised and more just serving both Japanese and Korean dishes. It didn’t really matter to me since they had what I wanted, the dol bibimbap.

I ordered the dol bibimbap and a lemonade that, with the 12.5% service came to just over £10. I thought it was fairly reasonable since the dish came with miso soup and a side of kim chi, something that many other Korean restaurants charge extra for. The hot stone bowl soon arrived accompanied by the distinctive sound of sizzling rice and vegetables. It certainly looked impressive with a semi fried egg on top soon to be mixed in to the rest of the ingredients with chilli sauce.

Overall I was pretty impressed by it. Tasty, crispy rice and plenty of flavour throughout it. Although the service was friendly, I don’t think it was super prompt as I had to wait for the bill and not really worth the 12.5%. I’d still probably return though and try a few other dishes.

Name: Azzi
Address: 47 Poland Street, London, W1F 7NB
Website: None that I could find
The good: Reasonably priced dol bibimbap with soup and kim chi included in the price
The not so good: 12.5% service? Hmmm…

Patara

April 8, 2009 Patrick Asian, Restaurants, UK

Patara is a series of several Thai restaurants around London. Apparently they are very popular as we could only get a very early 6:30pm that had to be back for 8pm at their Soho branch. It looks like any sort of modern Thai restaurant you’d imagine that does very well in South Kensington – moody lighting, nice decorations and plenty of tables with minimal space in between. Nevertheless they also have a very nice cocktail list and plenty of different things on offer on their menu.

We ended up ordering the Slow braised beef in aromatic coconut reduction with fresh lime,lemongrass and chilli, as well as Veal osso buco braised in massaman curry with lotus seeds accompanied by cucumber salsa and pita bread, with a side of Thai long aubergine sautéed in spicy yellow bean sauce with sweet basil. Admittedly all of the dishes were fantastic. Beautifully presented, complex flavours and all the dishes full of flavour. I really enjoyed the aubergine although I wouldn’t really say it was a very spicy yellow bean sauce – perhaps a bit more on the sweet side than anything.

I had the coconut ice cream for dessert (although the rice pudding is pictured above). Both were just as tasty as all the main dishes and certainly would have been happy with any of the other dishes as well.

I enjoyed the dinner at Patara, although considering what we had, the price added up very quickly. It’s not a place you’d want to go to every night, but every once in a while it’d be quite reasonable.

Name: Patara
Address: Different locations. We went to the one in Soho (15 Greek St., London W1D 4DP)
Website: http://www.pataralondon.com/
The good: Continuous top ups of tap water. Fairly unique Thai fusion with classic flavours
The not so good: Fairly pricey and tables crammed pretty close together.

Little Lamb

April 5, 2009 Patrick Asian, Restaurants, UK

It’s nice to see that some parts of Chinatown are stepping out a bit and not just simply being replaced by cheap, nasty, buffets. Little Lamb is therefore a welcome addition to the other restaurants in London’s chinatown offering the unique hot pot dining experience. Also a popular dish with the Japanese (called shabu shabu), hot pot dining is definitely not like your normal Chinese fair.

Ordering hot pot is easy. Choose what sort of soup base you would like, and then order a wide variety of dishes to cook. They even have a £20 deal where you can order a soup base and five different plates of ingredients for each person dining which really equates to a large number over all. We didn’t intend of getting the deal but the waiter suggested we may as well being only £1 away and able to order three more plates. We decided to go with the three flavoured stock pot, not actually realising it would be an urn separated into three different parts, each complete with a different flavour. The induction cooker in the middle of the table also gave us very good control over the soup, without actually turning the table into a danger zone.

As you can see from the picture above, one of the three soups was a spicy, peppery soup, that was definitely one of my favourites. The other two were clear broths, both very flavoursome in their own different ways. The ingredients come on plates and I’m glad that there was just the two of us because those plates soon filled the table. We ordered a huge variety of different items, with at least one dish from the separate sections such as mushrooms, tofu, seafood, meat, noodles and vegetables. I’m particularly surprised at the size and number of the seafood dishes as we’d ordered crab and prawns and they were definitely generous serves considering the price.

If you do plan on having a meal at Little Lamb, make sure that you leave plenty of time with the ten plates taking us almost two hours to consume. Part of the fun is cooking it in small stages and then scooping hot the freshly cooked ingredients, dipping it into the sauce or just enjoying the whole experience. Eating the crab was definitely most challenging with the combination of tiny bowls and just chopsticks leaving us with little choice but to use our hands.

If you find yourself running low on soup, it’s easy enough for them to fill it with additional hot water. Also make sure you leave some space to enjoy the soup broth that becomes infused with all the flavours from the freshly cooked ingredients.

Name: Little Lamb
Address: 72 Shaftesbury Avenue, Chinatown, W1D 6NA
Phone: 020 7287 8078
Website: None that I could find

Char Siu

February 11, 2009 Patrick Asian, Recipe

My uncle kindly lent me this recipe from one of his books. I tried this with a couple of the pork bellies that I had left over in the freezer from Christmas time (one of the only butchers selling pork belly at this time only sold the whole pork belly!). I’ve posted the original recipe though I make comments at the bottom about what I changed.

The Marinade Recipe:

1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon yellow bean sauce
1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 tablespoon red fermented tofu
1 tablespoon Chinese spirit (Mou Tai) or brandy
1/2 teaspoon roasted sesame oil

The Rest:

750g pork loin
2 tablespoons maltose or honey

The Method
Mix the marinade ingredients together, cover the pork and leave in the fridge for at least 6 hours. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celcius and pick a pan that allows you prop up the dish with water in the bottom. Cook for 10-15 minutes and baste with the marinade. Reduce the heat to 180 degrees C and cook for another 8-10 minutes. Brush with the honey and lightly brown for another 4-5 minutes turning to char around the edges.

The variants
Both times, I tried the recipe without the red fermented tofu. I had a look at a couple of Chinese grocery stores and couldn’t find it, so figured I’d try it without it. I also ended up using Shao Hsing instead of the Mou Tai since I figured any Chinese spirit would be okay, and of course, I substituted a pork belly for the pork lion. I’d read a number of sites mentioning although it’s fattier, it ends up being more moist if slow cooked. I’d also probably consider trying it with pork shoulder or pork neck next time. I did the slow cook method (150 degrees C for about 2.5 hours, finished at a higher heat for the next half hour) and the meat was incredibly tender and moist.

Georgetown

January 28, 2009 Patrick Asian, UK

I ended up at Georgetown on a Sunday night via one of the 50% off TopTable deals. Rather than a la carte, they had a smaller, simpler menu with limited choice for starters, main and desserts. Fortunately they had enough of a selection that we could all have something different and share. Well, that is, at least what we had been planning. When the dishes arrived, they seemed to be focused more on complete individual meals, rather than a more proper asian style of sharing different dishes with people.

I ended up with the chicken curry, chunks of chicken breast in a light curry sauce but tasty nevertheless. What impressed me at this restaurant was that they served each dish with a couple of different types of vegetables such as my dish that came with some sort of beetroot salad, as well as braised vegetables, yet another dish being served with a stewed red cabbage mixture instead. It’s easy for restaurants to have a single “side” pot that they keep scooping from and I appreciated this isn’t what Georgetown had.

The food was pretty decent, though I’m not sure I would have paid full price (£13) for the dishes that we did have. All of it was flavourful but I do think that their their decore and environment left it feeling rather void and empty. “Colonial” style made it feel old-fashioned, and I guess the fact that it was completely empty up until the time we left didn’t leave any good impressions.

Name: Georgetown (closed)
Former location: 10 London Bridge Street, SE1 9SG
The good: Reasonably tasty Malaysian food
The not so good: “Empty” atmosphere and questionable value for money.

New York’s Buddha Bar

January 9, 2009 Patrick Asian, New York, Restaurants

Sometimes reading other people’s reviews don’t really help, case in point with those yelp reviews for Manhattan’s Buddha Bar. It’s located in the now trendy meat packing district, and even though it’s entrance is non-descript, with only glass doors marked with a simple name, the doorman and the parking zone outside gives itself away.

Inside, a further set of doors welcomes the visitor and we see the semblance of the queues that we’d read about. Fortunately we had a earlier booking that let us enjoy the food without too much of the fuss. I’m definitely not one of those people impressed by having to queue for my dinner. Beyond the next set of doors you a rounded corridor with a set of smaller Buddha statues leading you to the reception beyond which, the dining room opens up. The dining room itself is dark and cavernous with low lowlighting, and a small light behind the almost ceiling tall Buddha shadowing the back wall. To the reception’s left is the bar when trendy Manhattanites preen and a sushi bar located all the way to the right, complete with slowly drifting jellyfish lit up just as dimly as the rest of the room.

We sat down at our table, noting how spacious it all seemed since we weren’t crammed right next to the table beside us. It helps that this building is a converted warehouse so their extra high ceilings help keep it airy. It also means we aren’t subjected to the conversations of the tables around us, instead turning into simply background noise. As we made our way to the table we noted a huge number of staff simply standing around. This meant that completed dishes were whisked away quickly, new settings laid and their expensive (US$8!) bottled Voss water continually got topped up.

It wasn’t long before our waiter arrived asking if we would like drinks though we’d hardly had a chance to look at the menu. The menu looked fairly reasonable with, what is best called pan Asian rather than fusion. I started with the smoked ribs, asking about whether the smoky chipotle ribs on the main menu were better. He recommended starting with the ribs and trying their rib eye, a small piece considering this is both the US and the price. The ribs, definitely with some spicy kick weren’t the softest that I’d had though I still managed to clean them off with my knife and fork. The steak, on the other hand, was soft and slightly overcooked (medium well instead of the medium rare I’d asked for), served on a particularly sweet bed of some sort of onion relish tasting dish, and some other vegetables. I finished off with a small chocolate cake, though apparently the thai panna cotta was particularly good.

We noted that as time progressed, even on a Saturday night, the whole place didn’t yet seem to be heaving with plenty of empty tables around us. We did note, however, that the music continued to increase in intensity and we were glad to leave before it got too deafening.

It wasn’t a particularly cheap evening out, adding in the cost of bottled water, slightly overpriced food (mandated by the atmosphere), coat check-in and the towel person you need to tip in the restrooms. On the upside, we had a great waiter, friendly without being over the top and in your face, and the food was much better than I had expected (though nothing particularly memorable).

Name: Buddha Bar NYC
Found at : 25 Little West Street, New York, NY, 10014
Website: http://www.buddhabarnyc.com
The Good: One of the “trendy” places to be in New York attracts a wide assortment of characters. It’s large and spacious for a Manhattan bar/restaurant and definitely has a great atosphere.
The not so good: Food and drink overpriced for what you get.