Author Archives: Grace

The Summerhouse by the Waterway

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Making full use of a glorious bank holiday Monday, after touching down from my flight for Greece, I met up with Pat for dinner at The Summerhouse. The early evening was lovely – even at 6.30pm it felt like we were actually meeting for lunch!

The Summerhouse is the latest in the recent trend of pop-up restaurants/shops around London. Its parent restaurant, The Waterway, lies just up the road so presumably the reason for having a pop-up located nearby was to further take advantage of the canal that both lie next to. We were happily guided to a table along-side said canal for our meal. It was really a perfect evening … and normally the view would have been perfect too .. except …. then Mr Rat came along!

He was one of the largest rats I’ve seen in London and I’ve seen quite a few around. Of course it wasn’t really the restaurant’s fault (we were trying to think positively that Mr Rat died way up the canal nowhere near the kitchen …) but bless the manager – he tried to push Mr Rat quickly downstream with a broom … only for Mr Rat to come floating back not too long after!

After that bit of excitement we settled down to choosing our food. The main reason I wanted to try out the Summerhouse was that a review I’d read had mentioned popcorn shrimp. The Summerhouse menu describes it as ‘Best ever’ popcorn shrimp – though I’m not entirely sure why the ‘Best ever’ bit required quotation marks …

Popcorn shrimp is so named because of the bite-sized popcorn-like nuggets that the shrimp comes served and in its simplest terms is a breaded shrimp fried with a bite. Done well it is awesome. The rest of the Summerhouse menu had no real surprises on it (lots of seafood with some Mediterranean influences and a couple of meat dishes) though the biggest surprise was probably fish and chips being sold for £16. Really? It was only cheaper by £2 than the most expensive dishes (a filet of sea bass and a steak!)

Pat and I were pretty hungry … read in this instance greedy … so as usual we over-ordered. First having a chowder each, neither of us could resist, plus the popcorn shrimp before moving on to our mains with additional sides. Not being able to really finish our mains and sides we did, however, resist dessert.

Overall food was average. The chowder was watery yet salty, and lack the creaminess and depth of a decent chowder. The popcorn shrimp was disappointingly flavourless, so it was good that it came with sweet chilli sauce, and my grilled swordfish was dry. The sweet potato chips were tasty though you can’t really go too wrong when you deep fry something. I think Pat was happy with his whole fish.

With nothing to rave about with respect to food I suspect that the Summerhouse is still going to be quite popular because of the venue itself and the fact that its not great value for money is hardly likely to bother the Maida Vale locals! I do have to admit that there is a great vibe and its really lovely spot to spend a summer afternoon / evening. Rock on the summer!

Greece Bank Holiday Weekend

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I only had a really really short visit to Greece to visit Mirela this time around so as soon as I landed late on Friday evening we headed straight out to her village in Lykoporia. Visiting Mirela is practically like visiting family so she knows that she doesn’t have to do much to entertain me – especially if we’re somewhere like in Lykoporia where the water is clear, its warm and the sun is out. This post is not so much about the word but more about the pic. Enjoy!

This is what we woke up to on our first day:

Mirela was so excited to cook me up a proper full English breakfast. And the best part was we could eat in our swimwear! Ha!

There was a bit of a breeze about this weekend and with big boats out in the open water the tide was pretty high. Our chairs nearly got washed away!

Oh – and the trip was a great opportunity to test out my underwater camera. Mirela, ever the clown, was a willing test subject.

Awww .. how sweet, the happy couple!

Some “friends” also came along to play with us and Mirela had a great time throwing them out to the deeper water … and I think they must have liked it because pretty soon a whole bunch of them came along. I refuse to think that it was because they were coming to sting us! Ha ha!

Back in Athens Mirela took me to the funniest restaurant called Bar.B.Q. It was really funkily decorated with a random mix of chandeliers

and hilarious art along the panels of the kitchen. All meat themed. I bet the toilets were hilarious too … but I forgot to check them out.

It was really nice to catch up with Mirela and Enrique.

And even more exciting news … just the day before I arrived Enrique had proposed to Mirela! Congrats guys!

Santa Maria Del Sur

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Say what you will about Gordon Ramsay – you have to give the man credit for raising the profile of what would probably be fairly ordinary run-of-the-mill local restaurants into something a bit more special. Like Simply Thai Santa Maria Del Sur made it to the semi-final of the latest series of Gordon Ramsay’s the F-Word and this was the one that Sandra wanted to check out.

After getting a thorough soaking in the rain, and rather randomly running into Nic on the bus!, Julian and I met Sandra and James for dinner. I hadn’t seen any of the F Word series so had no idea what to expect from this Argentinean Steakhouse – which I think could only work in my favour as then I had no expectations.

Walking into the restaurant you’re treated to an open kitchen where you can pretty much see all the grilling going on. The restaurant is dark though so don’t expect to be able to see your food too well! Hard bread (unwarmed) was served with the trademark butter with blue cheese. The blue cheese flavour was quite delicate but gave a nice sort of zing to the bread.

For starters, with the exception of James who opted for the ox tongue, we all stuck to the traditional empanadas. Empanadas were great and I could have easily eaten a whole ‘nother serve of them, if not for the fact they were deep fried. James wasn’t too impressed with the ox tongue which was too vinegary for his taste.

Mains were, as you would expect, steaks all around though we did all try different cuts. I can’t speak for the others but my fillet steak came out tender and chunky, if not necessarily having too much flavour. This was accompanied by a side of chips seasoned with garlic, herbs and I think parmesan.

We really couldn’t fit it in but desserts also went on to our table – hey, who knows if I’d make the journey out to the restaurant again. I couldn’t go past trying the milk toffee cheesecake – but it proved way too heavy and I couldn’t finish it!

Service was pretty decent for us without being exceptional. I get the feeling it could be hit and miss depending on who is your waiter and also depending on how busy the restaurant is.

Overall, I’d say it was a nice experience to eat at Santa Maria Del Sur. I don’t think I would call it the best steak joint in London, certainly not at the prices which seem a tad expensive, but if you live locally you could definitely do worse for good steak. PS the plating could do with some better presentation (e.g. I think our empanadas came served on paper towels!)

Prisoner of Second Avenue

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The only reason that I went to see Prisoner of Second Avenue was to see the talented Mr Jeff Goldblum. I didn’t even know what the show was about!

The clue as to what tonight’s performance was about is in the name – Jeff Goldblum plays a middle-aged man who loses his job, and subsequently his mind!, and as a result is a prisoner in his Second Avenue home. Mercedes Ruehl is brilliant as his ever-patient, ever-supportive wife. I don’t think two actors were more suited to play their respective parts.

At all times both funny and sad I came away even more impressed by Jeff’s acting abilities and totally fell under Mercedes’ charm. So much that we went and stalked them at the stage door where both graciously posed with Su Yin and I.

Your Sushi Sushi Making Course

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For my birthday Sandra surprised me with a 2-hour sushi making course. The two of us have certainly eaten our fair share of sushi so it made sense that we should actually learn how it is made. When I was studying Japanese back at school, I won’t say how long ago that was but fair to say its in the double digits at least …, I remember going out on a excursion to watch someone make sushi. The two things I remember from that day was that rice was cooked in a rice cooker and that you needed to use a bamboo mat to make your sushi.

At the Your Sushi sushi making course you not only learn how to roll your sushi you also learn how you actually make sushi rice (it involved a lot more than whacking your rice into a rice cooker!), how to prepare some vegetables and then how to roll four different types of sushi. We actually learnt quite a bit in two hours – even given that we had time to muck around prepping veges and creating our own sushi rolls.

The good thing about the class was that it was only a small group (there is only ever a maximum of 12 students) and it’s a very hands on session. The surprising thing about the class was that we were taught by a non-Japanese sushi chef – Chef Manu (Emmanuel)Letellier – now he was certainly not from Japan but he sure new his stuff! One of the facts he imparted to us was that before you can get to the stage of even being considered a proper sushi chef that you would have to spend many years first learning the art of perfecting sushi rice not to mention all the other training that goes into learning about the ingredients and then the presenting!

As anyone who has ever cooked rice in their life one of the very first steps in cooking it is to rinse off the starch. With sushi rice you could be washing it up to nine times before being satisfied that you’d gotten rid of as much starch as possible. Eating sushi you can taste a certain flavour – and this comes in preparing the rice by mixing in a whole lot of vinegar, sugar and a touch of salt (about 600:395:5 ratio.) I was surprised by just how much sugar goes into the sushi rice – and here all along I thought it was, if not healthy, at least not unhealthy! Then after your rice is ready you have to wait a certain amount of time for it to cool etc. etc. Anyway, long story short – the rice was prepped for us and our hands on bit started with us preparing the veg and then, the fun part, making our sushi!

As I mentioned earlier we learnt how to make four styles of sushi: Hosomaki (thin rolls), Futomaki (fat rolls), California rolls (technically a type of maki or roll with very specific ingredients) and urmaki (inside out maki) and then also learnt about some presentation skills. Just imagine that making just four rolls took us quite some time.

The class certainly gave me a better appreciation of the effort that goes into making the sushi that I devour. If there is any kind of food that really typifies the Japanese traits its gotta be sushi. The amount of detail and care that goes into making the sushi (e.g. making the vegetables or ingredients precisely square, or making sure the item is balanced) is exactly how I know the Japanese to be – precise, neat, and taking great care.

The class was an excellent way to spend the afternoon, and even better, we got to take away our creations for nibbling on later!

Ghost Stories

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I deliberately didn’t read any reviews of Ghost Stories beforehand so as not to create any expectations before seeing it. Nevertheless, I couldn’t prevent myself from having expectations of. Its very title promised so much, not to mention all the posters and adverts I’d seen for it all over the place, claiming it was an amazing and astonishing play.

To our disappointment the show didn’t quite deliver.

I have some difficulty in writing up tonight’s experience as I don’t really want to give anything away. Suffice to say there are a few scares but mostly a lot of laughs – whether or not it was intentionally poking our funny bone was another matter. I think my greatest issue with the show was that I couldn’t see where it was going – where the title implied one thing, the show headed in a different direction altogether.

The show had an extremely slow start and the first third easily could have been developed differently. Strangely throughout the show we lost a lot of people to toilet visits. Come on people – you can’t hold it for 90 minutes!

What I did like was a the ending – it kind of reminded me of Inception in some ways …

Tom Aikens

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One of the reasons that I think Tom Aikens, the Michelin-rated restaurant, was on offer was that the company running it had gone into administration a couple of years ago and this was a way to stimulate some interest in the business. I’m not sure how effective this strategy was proving – we were dining at 7pm (admittedly on a Tuesday night) and other than one other couple the restaurant was empty! (More people did arrive a little later.)

Actually, the restaurant itself does not try to cram too many people inside – in the centre of the room was a lot of
open space and of the tables I saw there must have been about 40 covers max available? Well, whatever the reason for the offer Pat and I were definitely happy to take advantage. At 50% off (£75 for £150 of credit) it was a true bargain and enabled both of us to go for the tasting menu.

You sometimes wonder with these offers whether the staff will treat you differently, especially added to the fact that we rarely drink anything beyond tap water, perhaps indulging in a soft drink with Pat maybe having a glass of wine to go with his meal. We were pleased that this didn’t affect the level of service we received at all. In fact, the staff at Tom Aikens even passed my water test (that is, that the restaurant ensures your glass of water is never empty!) The only minor gripe, and I always seem to have something, is that the first two courses were really served very quickly! Otherwise service was pretty much spot on terms of being there when we needed staff without being overbearing.

But what about the food?

Something that seems to separate Tom Aikens from its fellow fine-dining venues I think relates to the bread that the serve. Now, this shouldn’t really feature in your meal (after all, food is generally very rich and you want to save your calories for the serious stuff) however I think I have to applaud the bread that you serve. First of all there must have been over ten varieties of food offered to us including Buttermilk, Polenta, Olive, Dill, White, Brown and Bacon and Cheese. And all served warm. I was in bread heaven and Jenny if you’d been dining with me there is also no doubt that we would have been fighting over the butter to go with the bread. They offered the bread all the way until we got to dessert to – both a blessing and a curse. Ha!

Our amuse bouche was a trio of mini treats: a melt in your mouth Polenta and Parmesan croquette; a surprisingly please Tomato jelly, gaspachio and basil oil “drink” and then a surprising physical sensation in the Olive “Bubble” topped by (I think) truffle and parmesan. Very interesting!

Our tasting menu consisted of 6-courses and Coffee/Tea and Petit Fours. The first off the rank was the Scallop dish (marinated scallops, lemon oil, and lardo crudo.) This was a really light but sharp tasting dish which we didn’t have much time to enjoy before our next course of Foie Gras was served. This consisted of cured foie, pickled mushrooms, foie gras mousse, and sauternes jelly. This dish was kind of appealingly messy – though as a result I was a bit confused as to what to start with first! The foie was delicious but the pickled mushrooms a bit too vinegary for me.

A John Dory fillet was up next after quite a considerable lag. This came with a very lip-smacking tasty roast cauliflower puree, and brown butter and smoked eel. Yes the John Dory was good but the cauliflower puree won it for me!

For our “main” we had a split – both of us wanted the Sea Bass but Patrick was good enough to go for the Lamb so we could see the two different dishes. To be honest the Lamb (marinated in ewes cheese and served with aligot potato and dried green olive) sounded more appealing than the poaching in black olive oil, pickled fennel and artichoke and black olive crumb that the Sea Bass was described as but I’m not a fan of lamb at all so had to go for the Sea Bass. Both dishes turned out quite well but in the end I think Pat was pleased he had gone the Lamb than the Sea Bass. The Lamb does look simply served but the taste was incredible. Apparently.

Our first dessert, or maybe it was a pre-dessert, was a Coconut dish consisting of fresh coconut, coconut crème, watermelon and mint syrup. A dish that I should have loved I was a bit turned off by the actual plating – scraping bowl felt worse than someone tearing their nails down a chalkboard. I still *shudder* thinking of that now. The crème was lovely and the watermelon contrasted nicely with its freshness and sweetness.

A very summer-inspired dish was our next dish – passion fruit jelly, vanilla pannacotta and passion fruit granite. Very refreshing though at times the passion fruit’s tartness pushed through a little strongly.

To wrap up our meal we received, to our delight, one of the best selection of petit fours we’ve had anywhere. Another nod to the baking chefs in the kitchen I think! Our selection included a selection of eight totally decadent chocolates including the usual truffles and a particular favourite of mine – a salted caramel treat. In addition to this we also had a small selection of cakes I guess you would call them – madelines (lemon, carrot and vanilla), a donut, a pistachio cake and I think a carrot cake. We were overwhelmed but piggly split everything in half and ate it all!

I’m not sure I can afford to come here all the time but if the restaurant keeps serving up food this good – you may see me back. I saw a Roast Suckling Pig dish on the menu that I would love to try out …

Les Trois Garcon

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For my birthday Su Yin arranged for a meal on a special offer at Les Trois Garcon. Located in Shoreditch the restaurant inside is as funky as the area on the outside. The décor, with its stuffed animals, chandeliers and bejeweled decorations, it is certainly quite decadent. Also fun to identify the random things used for decoration so I could be forgiven for paying more attention, at first, to the surrounds than Su Yin! Ha ha!

Given the fact that Les Trois Garcon seems to have garnered some pretty decent reviews I was surprised to find the venue virtually empty when we got there, and once some diners started to trickle in it also seemed that most of them had come in based on the offer. Very strange. Admittedly off the offer the 2 course meal at £39.50 was a tad over-priced compared with similar restaurants.

We started off with an amuse bouche which I think was some goat cheese concoction

Before hitting our starters of Dorset Crab for Su Yin and Dorset Snails for me! Both were nice without pushing the boat too much – though Su Yin’s plating was pretty cool.

My favourite dish of the night was my main of pork – basically pork three ways and it was simply divine. And whilst Su Yin’s dish looked pretty – she felt it didn’t have quite enough flavour.

For our dessert we both opted for the lemongrass pannacotta with mango jelly, brandy snap biscuit and cardamom ice cream. Very tasty dessert and I like the use of not so common ingredients.

Overall our meal at Les Trois Garcon was pleasant. I can see that the food could be quite hit and miss – with dishes looking good not necessarily tasting good but dishes not looking that good tasting superb. Because of that I’m not sure how well valued it is based on the normal menu – but it was certainly excellent value for money on the voucher deal (£18 for three-courses).

Edinburgh 2010

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I last visited Edinburgh on a very very short visit back when it was heading into winter in November. At this stage Rache was still living in London. That trip was kind of a weird one because though I could technically say I was in Edinburgh … I don’t think we really did any sight-seeing type stuff at all. The visit this time wasn’t that much longer to be honest but it was still a good visit nevertheless.

I took a half day from work to catch the mid-afternoon train up. The train was late by leaving by about half an hour, which caused me a little bit of concern that we would be late for dinner but I needn’t have worried as our 9pm booking gave me more than enough time to make it to Kitchin. Pretty much that was all of our Friday night!

Saturday saw a fairly relaxed start to the day. It was actually festival time in Edinburgh which is always a fantastic time to visit the city as its all abuzz with all the artists in town, not to mention loads of tourists, who are annoying in normal situations, but give Edinburgh quite a lively atmosphere at this time of year. In hindsight I wish I could have taken better advantage of the festival and really booked in some more shows however, as time was limited and my primary goal was to spend time with Rache, I didn’t want to overload my time up there getting carried away attending shows.

One show we did see was called Your Days are Numbered: Maths and Death. The show title really tells you what the show is about – though the subject is dark, Death, the show sets about establishing how it is that each audience member had a 0.000043% chance of dying … umm …. Yeah. So, slowly as the members of the audience “died” off by various causes – we are taken through a journey of what statistics mean in the concept of death, e.g. you are more likely to die from smoking a cigarette than taking a tab of ecstasy … right. It was an amusing show but did have its slower moments when I was fighting off sleep (but I blame that entirely on the late night the night before …)

After the show we headed over to the Foodies Festival at Holyrood Park. The festival has nothing on what we have in London – but what it did have was that added touch of combining comedy and food. We were lucky to get into the Tim Vine show – a hilarious guy who thoroughly entertained us for his slot. I think I like his boxing popcorn the best – the new way to get fit.

We also went in to see the guys from the Rutland, one of Edinburgh’s top dining places. Sadly this was a little less funny and entertaining than Tim Vine’s show but we did have the added bonus of getting to try some cocktails and a lovely dessert.

For the evening we headed somewhere (I have no idea) for a booze cruise with a bunch of Rache’s friends from here work – where we had a live band and got to see a beautiful sunset.

Though it finished at 11.30 I don’t even know what time we got home between not being able to get a taxi back into the city, stopping at a night club (I think we left around 3am), stopping for some cheese and chips at one of those places you stop after being out all night and where we met this Hugh Jackman look-alike, or should I say Wolverine, getting rejected by the bouncers at the casino because one of us, I won’t name names, was too drunk!, and just walking around. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been nearing sunrise by that time .. don’t get me wrong though – I had an awesome time!

The strip club was an interesting experience. I’ve been trying to get the boys in London to take me for ages but I think they’re too embarrassed! But luckily Matt and another of Rache’s friend was well up for it. The first strip place, the Pleasure Palace, wouldn’t let us in because they had a no girl policy. I could understand – I mean, how hot are Rache and I! ha ha! The Sapphire, the next place we tried, was much more accommodating. Inside girls danced around three poles on the floor – because of the mirror behind them I think they spent most of their time looking at themselves! If they weren’t on the poles (about every 15 mins or so there would be a “performance” they were lounging about on the loungers or speaking to the punters). In the performance some took off their tops and others didn’t. In all it was a lot more modest than I imagined it would be! We had a really good time there however as the music was really really awesome, fantastically sexy of course, drinks were reasonably priced, it wasn’t overly crowded and we had a pool table to entertain us!

As a result of Saturday, Sunday was pretty much a write-off. All we had time for was brunch at Two Thin Laddies where I had possibly the largest pasta serving I’ve had in my life for one sitting … before Rache walked me back to the station to catch the train back to London. It was a great weekend though – and was very happy to spend the time with Rache.

The Kitchin

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This weekend I decided to head up to visit Rache in Edinburgh. Never one to miss an opportunity, where it can be helped, to check out the local fine dining scene I convinced Rache to try out The Kitchin, a Michelin-starred restaurant named for the chef Tom Kitchin. Quite a good surname to have really for one in his industry!

The Kitchin is located in Leith, kind of near some water (I think Commercial Quay), but approached by road. Actually, we didn’t see the restaurant at first (it was dark!) and what you would think is the front is actually the back. Anyway, the entrance is actually around by the Quay and we found it eventually. Our booking at The Kitchin for dinner at 9pm is probably one of the latest I’ve ever started eating! But this was because I’d had to catch the train up from London. I still maintain that train is my preferred way to get up to Edinburgh but it sure does take a long time!

Tonight we dined on Tom’s Land and Sea Surprise Tasting Menu which considered of six courses though once you add in an amuse bouche and petit fours it ends up being more than this. First up, as we considered the menu though was a nice selection of breads and such, warm to eat which was delicious.

Our amuse bouche was a cold chickpea and mint soup, topped with crème fraiche with bits of crunchy stuff mixed in. Normally I’m not a fan of could soups at all but this really worked quite well together in terms of flavouring (very refreshing) and texture.

The next course was a pre-starter of tartare of wild sea trout from Usan, served with diced apple and a lemon creme fraiche. The flavourings in this dish work particularly well and again it had very good texturing with the crunch of the diced apple contrasting with the silkiness of the trout tartare. The only disappointment was the use of crème fraiche. I know it was probably used to break up the dish a bit but the fact it had already been used in our amuse bouche kind of made me think – couldn’t they kitchen have come up with something else to use other than crème fraiche. On the other hand, in this way, the crème fraiche gets used up I guess!

A particularly tasty dish, probably because of the chorizo, was a razor clam from Arisaig, served with diced vegetables, chorizo and lemon confit but … the clam hadn’t been cleaned particularly well because a couple of times I crunched on something that had the feel of something between sand and a broken tooth!

Switching from sea to land was my favourite dish of the night – a boned and rolled pig’s head, accompanied by scallop and bacon. Mmm mmm mmm – tasty tasty tasty!

The turbot that followed was pretty close behind in taste. A poached wild turbot from Scrabster, served with braised fennel and artichoke a’la grecque, looks pretty simple in the picture though I’m sure the cooking technique isn’t. Turbot was well cooked

The abats beignets (I think some sort of offal fritter) was the best thing about the next course – the whole roasted French squab pigeon served with braised peas, lardons, lettuce and abats beignets. I’m finding that game bird is a very difficult type of meat to cook perfectly – and surprisingly more often than not what I’ve had hasn’t been very impressive. The pigeon tonight was just okay for me.

So, that was the last of our savoury courses. By this time it was nearing 11pm and we were getting pretty full. Not sure why but our dessert took about 20 minutes to come out! Dessert was a gooseberry pannacotta, separated from a crème fraiche ice cream (the best way to eat crème fraiche in my opinion!) by a caramel lattice with the whole thing then drowned in gooseberry consumme. I’m not entirely sure the consumme was necessary – but hey, I can claim the dish as one of my fruit and veg for the day right? 😉

Towards the end of our dessert Tom Kitchin came around to talk to everyone left in the dining room who hadn’t already gone into the kitchen. The kitchen itself has an open window which people can look through whilst dining but also you can request to go into the kitchen to say hi if you really wanted to. Anyway, he came over to us and said a hi and hello … we exchanged pleasantries (you’re food is lovely etc. etc., thank you for coming etc. etc.) and then we weren’t sure what to say after that! Nice of him to give that personal touch though!

Over our petit fours we had a very funny conversation with one of the waiters who was a local, and not French like a few of the other waiters. When speaking of our plans for the following day he said that it sounded like a “Crescendo of Awesomeness” and that we should make “Twisted Shapes” when out on the dance floor. Rache and I were cacking ourselves!

Food-wise I was quite happy with our meal at Kitchin. Good ingredients and a nice variety (except maybe for using crème fraiche a little bit too much – heh heh). The only thing seemed to be that every dish contained so many ingredients that sometimes the detail was a bit lost in the dish and we were like – Did you taste that bit? Was that ingredient actually in there?

Service was good and friendly for most of our meal, though some waiters had very strong accents and it was difficult to understand their description of our food. Kithchin fell down a bit in the water filling up stakes – alright to begin with but it tapered off slowly during the night to the extent that at one point I had to reach behind me to grab the water bottle and refill it myself! Ha ha! I do like my water …

Overall a lovely night which nearly became a lovely morning (we rolled out just before midnight!). The good company helped too 🙂