Covent’s Belgo Centraal

Patrick Restaurants

Belgo CentralAlthough Belgium is apparently just a Eurostar train ride away, I’m surprised that I haven’t yet had food nor a beer from a Belgium restaurant or bar. As you can probably tell from the title of this post, that all changed last night as I feasted on a filling meal at the Belgo Centraal restaurant. Located opposite the Paul Frank store and Neal’s Yard in Convent Garden, a flight of stairs will take you down to the spacious basement holding the huge kitchens and the large number of tables and benches making up the restaurant.

Until this morning I did not realise that the Belgo Centraal is actually part of a larger chain (funnily enough called Belgo Restaurants) but not on the same scale as your McDonalds franchise. It seems that the chain is having a promotion for many of its restaurants and last night we partook in the Beat the Clock one. By ordering one of the promotional meals (that is also served with a Maes lager, house wine or soft drink) you only pay the price at the time of your order as long as it is between 5pm and 6:30pm.

Thrilled by the mussels (or moule as they call it) at the Belgium Beer Café back home, I decided to go for the moule and frites special. Although I will admit that the meal was not as good as the same as you would get back home, it was still tasty overall. Perhaps it was the size of the more miniature mussels that took more effort eating, or that it was the white wine sauce (or did you ask for soup?), or maybe it was the frites that were more like french fries than anything (still definitely much better than your typical English chip affair, but not matching the extravagance and crispness of the thick beer battered ones back home). Don’t be mislead by my detailed description, the mussels were still a huge serve and extremely tasty even without the sauce. My sister and her friend both ordered a chicken which was I was told was extremely succulent through and full of flavour, even with the rich sauce that almost drowned it.

The food was so good that we even decided to follow it with a dessert comprised of a Belgian waffle sitting in a rich dark chocolate sauce and topped with a scoop of hazelnut ice-cream.

Details: Belgo Centraal
Found on: 50 Earlham Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2 9HP
Contactable on: +44 (0)20 7813 2233
Highlights: Open tables and atmosphere that is quite busy but not overwhelmingly noisy. Good food and beer selection (the schnapps sticks looked deadly though entertaining). Beat the clock deal also offers great value for diners.
Room for improvement: Benches are a little too close together, perhaps making it too easy for a knee in the back as people walk by.
The Kua Rating: 7 out of 10

An Introduction to the “He Who Knows” Challenge

Patrick The 'He Who Knows' Challenge

Just like my mate, Ben, we’ve both been challenged by a colleague at a common former employer of ours. This mutual colleague of ours has spent a fair amount of time in London, and going by the moniker, ‘He Who Knows’, has requested the following:

I submit a challenge to you young Kua. I would like a Kua-rating on the following.

  • The hot chocolate at Amato.
  • The espresso at Bar Italia.
  • The G&T at the Finsbury Circus Lawn Bowls club.
  • The little Italy Long Island Iced Teas.
  • The Conran restaurants.
  • The extension to the British Library.
  • The new Baltic Exchange.
  • The Kua newspaper of choice.
  • The pret-a-manger experience.
  • The Leadenhall fishmonger.
  • The Boro markets.
  • The Evensong at Southwick cathedral.

Can you succeed where others have failed ?

Not one to back down from a challenge, I intend on properly getting around to all of the places and giving them the proper review. There are no guarantees on how fast I’ll get around to doing these, but I can assure you that each one will be appropriately reviewed in due time. Watch this space.

To Market, To Market

Patrick Food, London To Do, The 'He Who Knows' Challenge

Update: Summary added for the ‘He Who Knows’ Challenge

The Borough MarketsLocated just outside the London Bridge Underground station, you will easily stumble across London’s Borough Markets, with the closest thing back home in Brisbane being the farmer’s markets organized by Jan Power. I had high expectations for these markets, having read about this place sometime last year at The Passionate Cook’s food blog, and after visiting can say that I was definitely not disappointed.

The only way that I can succinctly describe the markets is that it is distinctly London. Unlike the powerhouse markets back home where you can walk up one side and down the other, the Borough markets can be difficult to navigate. Just like the city that hosts it, the markets comprise of winding paths connecting all the stalls seemingly held together by the swarms of people from all over the world that flow through them all. Admittedly the markets are not as big as I was first anticipating, consisting of about 70 stalls and a handful of stores, but the quality and variety of food and produce available certainly make up for it.

The offerings of food is amazing and had I actually had a kitchen to return home to yesterday, probably would have come away with much more than I did. Stretching further than just typical farmer markets fare, the markets have pretty much everything you would need for any pretty fine dinner, and listing them all here would not really give justice to what the markets really do offer, but you can find huge varieties of fresh fruit and vegetables, seafood, poultry, meat, game, jams, cheese, wines, breads, cakes, chocolates and just so much more.

Whats Up Doc?One of London’s premium coffee stores, Monmouth, has a double presence here with a small stall in the heart of the markets fuelling the crowd’s almost frenzied movements with shots of caffeine, and the more permanent fixture on the street just opposite the markets. The more permanent fixture is so popular, that like all busy pubs in the city, that it has people cascading onto the streets, all standing around chatting and drinking coffee out of proper cups and saucers. Neil’s Yard Diary, well known for its quality cheese products also has a physical store just next to Monmouth but was so busy inside I didn’t feel up to pushing my way through to its delightful offerings (especially where there is one just a street away from work).

It should be fairly obvious to a person new to London that meat and meat products play a big game in British food fares (or is that just London?). Amongst the many meat products on offer, I saw a much wide variety of things including fresh Haggish, Black Pudding, pies, sausages, rabbits hanging, wild boar, pheasants and an amazing amount of cured, smoked or dried meats. I was thoroughly impressed by one particular store, the name currently eluding me that had four or five legs of cured pork meat each held by a single vice all on a large long bench. At the request of a customer, attendants would shave off fresh slices of what looked like prosciutto or parma-ham, with a long blade to be carefully layered on sheets of plastic.

Feeling like I couldn’t come away from the markets without making a purchase, but unable to really buy anything that useful (my hotel room doesn’t have a bar-fridge or anything) I decided to pick up a punnet of fresh raspberries to snack on, and a small bottle of oak-smoked garlic butter to give to my sister.

The markets are only open from noon until 6pm on Friday and then 9am to pm on Saturday. Crowds on a Saturday are thin early on, but increase in density pretty quickly. There are plenty of things that you can still pick up, even if you don’t live in London (fresh coverture chocolates, cakes, croissants, sweets, berries, coffee, etc) and even though the markets are on the southeast side of London, it is extremely easy to get to. It’s definitely a place I will be visiting regularly.

Details: The Borough Markets (Location)
Found on: 8 Southwark Street, SE1
Highlights: Fantastic variety of food, nice atmosphere and great variety, and the potential to see Jamie Oliver walking around.
Room for improvement: Crowds and people with strollers make it difficult getting around to all the stalls and combined with the winding paths may make it difficult for you to return to that stall you may want to revisit.
The Kua Rating: 8.5 out of 10 (I’m impressed but I haven’t visited any of other London’s market offerings)

Back from hiatus

Patrick Website News

It’s been a while since my last post mainly because I have most waking hours, if not at work or out with people, searching for a more permanent home in London. I’ll write more about that experience later, but back to putting up some stuff I’ve been meaning to for a couple of weeks now.

Classic Quote of the Day

Patrick UK Life

Before the show last night, we were walking around Lecister Square which was hosting a filming of an epsiode of some TV show. I had no idea what it was so I went up and had a chat with one of the security guards manning the fencing surrounding the filming. He said, ‘It’s called ‘How to start your own Country’ but I don’t think it’s very good. I don’t recommend watching it’. Ha! How funny.

What the Butler Saw at The Criterion

Patrick Theatre

Tonight my sister and I caught a preview of the play, ‘What the Butler Saw’ held at the Criterion Theatre. Our £10 tickets got us fairly close to the front and proved to be a rather entertaining night. I had no preconceptions of the play, and it was only until recently that I found out that the English colloquialism ‘What the Butler Saw’ refers to seeing something with voyeuristic connotations.

The play follows the script written well over thirty years ago by Joe Orton starting off with a psychiatrist’s misguided attempt to seduce his secretary. Thrown in his drunk and floozy wife, a young and ambitious Bell boy, the doctor’s overzealous reviewer from the city department, a dim-witted policeman, a handful of lies begetting lies, plenty of slamming doors and quick wit and you get an idea of what this classic English farce offers to its audience.

The script is extremely quick with rarely a moment for neither the audience, nor the cast members to actually breathe. The plot builds up momentum quickly and will have the audience laughing at the awkward situations in which the doctor tries to untangle himself with but finds him even more involved with lie after lie. The ending comes rather suddenly and slightly unbelievably but is still a good show to go and watch for those that appreciate British humour.

Notting Hill Carnival

Patrick UK Life

£1 per visitHundreds of thousands of people in the street, a parade of floats, and groups of police patrolling the streets of London can only mean one thing… the Notting Hill Carnival. This weekend, London put on its best and brightest weather to welcome at least one million people over two days to the streets of the Notting Hill district. Five words probably best encompass the essence of the carnival – People, Music, Food, Drink and Rubbish.

The carnival originally started as a way for the Afro-Caribbean community to celebrate and promote its roots and continues to grow each year. Reggae music plays a major part in the carnival, with plenty of the floats blasting it into the crowd, but the variety of music reaches far beyond it today. These days dozens of stalls and stages host people and DJs playing a wide variety of R&B, Hip Hop, Breaks, House and Drum ‘N’ Bass (at least from what I saw). Pictures cannot capture the madness in the streets, with the closest thing I have seen being Halloween on the streets of San Francisco.

Once you push (or get pushed) past the crowds of people and have some breathing space, you might find yourself in veils of smoke. Besides the obvious kind you find at most festivals, it also could mean you stumbled across the many food stalls lined up all over the place. “Jerk”-style food is abundant with BBQs in a barrel on almost every corner. You can also find a number of other food vendors there, serving other traditional and not-so-traditional Caribbean food. Even the bars and clubs get in on the act, with outdoor bars set up just outside building premises. With all this food and drink being consumed, you might expect quite a lot of rubbish and you wouldn’t be wrong. Bins are hard to find these days in safety-conscious London, resulting in giant piles of rubbish. Add, to that, the traffic and wind that blows through the streets and you can imagine what the streets look like at the end of the day.

All in all it is an amazing atmosphere to just walk around but you’ll find that getting into the heart of the carnival is actually the easy part. It is at the end of the day when the tube remains closed and the swarms of people return to wherever they came from, where you really have to fight your way out. Be prepared for a long walk, or least a long queue if you don’t leave early.