Persian cuisine is easy to find here in London with lots of restaurants serving it all over town. I’ve been to quite a few now but I read that Mohsen at Earl’s Court was quite a good so that’s where I went for lunch yesterday. I find Persian cuisine difficult to describe as they serve quite a number of different things such as shish-kebab style meats, lots of dips and bread, salads with lentils, and various stew type dishes, and its definitely too cliché to deem it middle-eastern.

Having been to several restaurants specialising in Persian cuisine, I can at least confidently say that there are some consistencies between them. One guarantee is that I always tend to leave feeling extremely stuffed (especially if I have rice because the serves can be massive). If the restaurant serves rice you they will always offer butter (intended for melting into the rice), and there is usually some paprika floating around in addition to the normal salt and pepper. If you order bread (Taftoon), the restaurant will generally cook it freshly in a stone oven called a Tanoor, which usually sits next to the entrance. Though very close to the same process of making Naan bread, the Taftoon is slightly different in texture being a little bit thinner and probably more intended for scooping up dips and assorted items than absorbing curry sauce.

Mohsen is located up Warwick Road away with the closest tube station being Earl’s Court. It is exactly opposite the Homebase store that can be quite odd if you get the window seats, and the restaurant is quite big all round with outdoor tables out the back that would be ideal in warmer weather. The restaurant has nice tables and intricately decorated plates all surrounded several paintings and numerous articles from various magazines and newspapers surrounding it. The food on offer is quite standard affair, and though not necessarily as cheap as several others, the quality of the food was quite good. I went for a chicken and lamb kebab that comes served with rice with both being deliciously moist and with that char-grilled flavour that comes only with real care. The lamb was probably one of the better ones I have had, and was juicy definitely from the meat and not the fat that several other restaurants I’ve been to seem to serve. The saffron rice was nice and fluffy and there was enough to finish the meat off easily. The orange juice they serve, though slightly expensive at £3, seemed like they had actually squeezed it themselves fresh and was both tasty and had just the right amount of pulp. I literally had to roll myself out of that place after eating there but was pleased that I had been to. Overall it’s good quality and although for value for food, I would still prefer Madhi, is nice if you’re in the area.

Details: Mohsen
Found On: 152 Warwick Road, W14 8PT
Contactable On: 020 7602 9888
Highlights: Good quality food and nice decor
Room for improvement: Slightly strange location
The Kua Rating: 7 out of 10

Nowhere in the world has as many New York Delis as, you guessed it, New York, but it certainly doesn’t means other places do not try. London has a few New York-style delis and today I visited one of the newest of them, Zvika located between Tottenham Court Road and Soho. Zvika is less deli and probably more Kosher as their menu offerings are quite wide, many of the items on offer including different types of curries and Middle Eastern foods though there is plenty of pastrami, salami and salt beef to keep people happy.

Zvika, just like any NY deli seems to focus on really big portions and it was quite a mistake for me to order a soup and a sandwich as you can tell from the pictures. I found the prices though a little bit excessive for London and found myself paying quite a lot more than I thought I would for an extremely filling lunch. They have quite a lot of varying things on their menu although you can tell that the sandwich combinations must be quite popular, with many of them named after famous people like the Victoria Beckham (Turkey, Lettuce & Tomato), the David Beckham (Salami & Pastrami), Madonna (Turkey & Pastrami) and the Wayne Rooney (Big Salt Beef). They serve goulash, hot dogs, spaghetti and meatballs, a variety of salads, sandwiches and soups and by the time you’re finished with your meal you’d be unlikely to reach for dessert though they have them too.

The Matzah Ball Soup is a clear, chicken soup broth served with three large bread dumplings. The soup was well seasoned and full of flavour without tasting extremely salty. It was the first time that I had ever had Matzah Balls and though I found them to be quite meaty, I found their texture slightly off putting because I had no idea what in them and though they because they didn’t taste like any meat I could think of, found it overly strange. Since then, I found out people typically make them out of a combination of matzah meal, eggs, fat and seasonings.

I had no idea what to really expect when I ordered the NY sandwich other than the fact that there was going to be a lot of meat, and even that was a gross understatement. What arrived between two thin bits of rustic bread was a massive portion of meat, including pastrami, salt beef and a hot dog. Thankfully a large gherkin and coleslaw came with and the waiter was kind enough to give me a bottle of mustard to help keep the meat from overwhelming my palette. When it arrived it looked quite impressive and was obviously freshly heated as you could see steam rising from the meat barely contained by the white slices of bread. The hot dog was solidly deliciously and unlike the very fatty English sausages simply tasted meaty. The pastrami and salt beef was somewhat overly chewy but then it could have been just because I had never eaten so much meat in one sitting before and my jaw was probably tiring out. As you can see I had a great attempt at actually finishing the sandwich but alas, failed and gave up before my body did so that I could walk around only slightly uncomfortably instead of the alternative I dare not face.

Overall it was quite a nice experience and I can’t really compare it to anything authentic since it’s been a while since I had a proper New York Deli sandwich I thought it was a decent effort if nothing else. I do recommend that if do you decide to eat there and price is an issue, its best if you go for take away and eat it in the nearby Soho Square park as there is a significant difference in price between dining in and takeaway and it doesn’t even include the typical service charge.

Details: Zvika (Closed)
Found On: 8 Great Chapel Street, London, W1F 8FG
Contactable On: 020 7434 2733 or info@znydeli.co.uk
Highlights: Huge filling kosher portions of food. Good for those atkin-dieters out there. Has additional space upstairs and the dining room is quite nice for a deli
Room for improvement: Seemed to be a little bit overpriced for what it is.
The Kua Rating: 7 out of 10

On Friday night, the closest thing that I could really do to go out was just dinner (still overcoming the whole sickness thing) so I suggested we head out to Brick Lane for something different. Though there are many good curry places littered around London, and some could easily argue, even better places located outside of London, Brick Lane is one of those streets that you have to visit at least once if you eat curry. Much akin to Lygon Street in Melbourne, once you make your way there, the hardest thing to do is pick a place to eat. The number of places is overwhelming and the most distracting part of choosing is the number of hawkers hired by the restaurants to reel in the diners. Promises of free bottles of wine, or a round of beer and tempting discounts from 20-30% or perhaps free starters distracts you from you might otherwise think a good place to eat. I lucky that I did a little bit of reading up before hand and we came across one that I remember being positively reviewed, and after a little bit of menu gazing and some talking later, we were sitting on the second floor with a window view of a curry house called Monsoon.

Service was actually okay for the night and I was surprised to find that even though we were not ordering all the crazy amount of drinks that other tables might have been, we were treated just like any other customers. Monsoon have a free bottle of (house) wine which lasted us the entire meal, and a 30% discount meaning after a few poppadoms, three curries, a couple of rice and naan later, we were only up for £8 each – a very cheap night indeed. The curries themselves were nice, saucy, and quite tasty (except for the Bangladeshi fish that was just weird tasting) but were lacking in substantial amounts of meat. Having said that though, we still didn’t finish all the food and we were quite full (I have no idea how any of the other tables could eat starters or side dishes as well!)

Throughout the night I was equally surprised that there was no real pressure from the waiters to speed up our meal, despite a queue forming downstairs and people continually being “assisted” by waiters upstairs. The evening’s meal was probably only spoilt by an excessively loud table of ten women on the opposite side of the room. There was one in particular that had a really painful laugh, and another who announced to the world that she was from New Zealand and had been in London in six years (you would have thought she might have learned some manners by now!). Other than that though, the curry house was quite good and I could definitely go back there though I would be most keen to try some of the others. It is a bit hard to justify crossing town though to eat curries there when there are a few places nearby that serve just as good, if not better nosh.

Details: Monsoon
Found On: 78 Brick Lane, London, E1 6RL
Highlights: Nice decor, reasonably priced curries (only after discount), okay service and great company for the evening
Room for improvement:The lamb could made more tender and there could be more meat in the curries.
The Kua Rating: 6.5 out of 10