Category Archives: Timeout’s Top 50 2008

Rasa, South Indian

Posted on by

I caught up with Rehana tonight and she suggested we check out a restaurant which is reportedly one of the best for serving South Indian food. It has proved so successful that there are actually now eight venues spread all over London. In fact in Stoke Newington, the site of the original Rasa, there are two alone – right across from each other!

Rasa N16 in Stoke Newington is a bit of a journey to get to but worth it. Especially when you consider the premium on the prices on the more centrally located venues.

Both Rehana and I were feeling hungry so nearly everything on the menu was looking good to us. We started off with a Masala Dosa which is a thin pancake filled with a spicy potatoes mix and served with sambar and coconut chutney. Along with this we sampled a number of starters (descriptions from the website):
– Bhel Mix. Fresh crispy chickpeas, bhel, sev, peanuts, onions blended in spicy tamarind juice and freshly chopped coriander leaves.
– Medhu Vadai. A spongy dumpling in a crunchy case, made from urad beans and chillies – served with coconut chutney.
– Banana Boli. Plantain slices dipped in a batter of rice and chickpea flour seasoned with black sesame seeds, then crisply fried. Served with our specially prepared peanut and ginger sauce.
– Rasa Idli. Steamed urad dal (black lentils) cakes topped with chef’s speciality mixed vegetable masala. Served with coconut chutney.
– Kathrikka. Finely sliced pieces of aubergines are dipped in a special batter, blended with coriander and chilli, before frying. Served with a fresh tomato chutney.

Hey I said we were hungry.

We were also going to order a curry and rice but our waiter was like, maybe you should eat the dosa and starters first and see how you feel. This was very good advice because we were absolutely stuffed after eating all of the above. That didn’t stop us trying a couple of desserts though – a rice pudding (Pal Payasam) and semolina sweet (Kesari) served with mango ice-cream.

Everything we ate, with the exception of the Rasa Idli which was fairly tasteless and quite dense, was delicious with my favourite savoury dishes being the Dosa and Bhel Mix (good use of tamarind juice.) Service was very friendly and quite efficient and they didn’t hassle you unnecessarily, which makes for a nice change. Its also great for vegetarians – I didn’t even miss my meat tonight! Surprisingly good value for money.

Hakkasan

Posted on by

19th on this year’s 50 Best Restaurants in the world and beaten only by The Fat Duck and Nobu in the UK, Hakkasan is a Chinese restaurant that exudes style and class by the oodles. A birthday, my brother’s, seemed like the perfect opportunity to test it out.

At first I thought that we weren’t going to be able to make our booking because a film crew had taken up residence on Hanway Place and the policeman who was “guarding” the entrance wasn’t letting anyone through. Luckily for us one of the crew realised that they were blocking access to the restaurant and quickly arranged for the blockade to move up slightly. I still don’t know what they were filming there, as Pat quickly dragged us away (clearly being stalkarazzi is not in the blood – ha ha), but it looked fairly intense and they were still at it when we left a few hours later.

But on to the restaurant.

At the entrance of Hakkasan you are met with two bouncer-esque characters who check your name on the reservation list. I’m not sure what their purpose is because there is a bar down stairs where you can wait for a table to become free when you don’t have a reservation and also, when you reach the bottom of the stairs, you are once again asked for your reservation details anyway. I guess it all adds to the experience.

The impact of Hakkasan is immediate – it is dark, yet shiny, with spot lighting on each of the tables and otherwise “night-club” lighting. The otherwise cavernous room is split into more intimate areas by large wooden poles which may or may not have been bamboo poles painted black. Its supposed to be a very modern take on the Chinese motiff. Unfortunately no photos allowed!

We were quickly seated at our table and the waiter immediately descended to ask if we wanted any drinks. At least he gave us a menu at the same time but please people – let us have a chance to check out the menu! The Hakkasan drinks menu was very impressive and contained a good balance of non-alcoholic and alcoholic cocktails not to mention a staggering wine list. When you check out some of the offerings its no wonder that people can easily spend hundreds, or even thousands, on one dinner here!

The food menu was also fairly impressive, with diverse and sometimes unique offerings, but surprisingly nothing shouted EAT ME which is terribly unusual for me not to mention the fact that the prices were outrageous if not unexpected.

As this was supposed to be a celebration we decided to go just a little bit crazy. We started with Jasmine Tea Smoked Organic Pork Ribs and Roast Mango Duck – both priced at just under £10. The Smoked Ribs were DIVINE. The sauce was perfect and the meat literally fell off the bone – making it very easy to eat even with chopsticks! The Duck was, honestly, a rip-off. No doubt it looked great but what we got in essence were thin slivers of duck (not the greatest tasting) and mango with quite a tart sauce which I think, rather than balance the dish, overpowered the flavour of the duck. So, going into the mains were were 1 for 2.

We had some difficult deciding on our dishes for our mains and ended up with Peking Style Duck, Roasted Sea Bass in Chinese Honey (at £38 our most expensive dish of the night) and Stir Fried Black Bean Vegetarian Prawns. The Sea Bass for me was the star of the mains which maintained the beautiful sea bass flavour coloured by a most delicious almost smokey honey flavour. The other two dishes were fairly average though I was quite entertained by the vegetarian prawn making a fairly good imitation of the actual thing. I still don’t know what it was made from though! This is not to say that the dishes weren’t good in their own way but nothing extraordinary which, at the prices being charged, I was expecting.

To my surprise there was nothing on the dessert menu that we were interested in, even if we could fit more food into our very full bellies. Instead we opted for a second round of non-alcholic cocktails – very yummy.

Shockingly Hakkasan imposes a 13% (!) service charge on the bill which took our dinner to just over £120 for the two of us. Considering we didn’t have any alcohol this was pricey indeed, though also very much expected. I guess they needed that much service to cover all the waiters and waitresses that seemed to be all over the place and maybe to cover the cost of the girl whose sole job appeared to be to open the door to the restrooms (!) because we certainly didn’t receive service that was fantastic. It was just okay.

Overall Hakkasan is definitely a place to be experienced at least once but my recommendation would be to save it for a special occasion though if you’re minted, well, I guess you could make it an everyday experience!

J. Sheekey

Posted on by

J. Sheekey belongs to the same group of restaurants as The Ivy so Jenny and I were expecting big things from our meal tonight. Rehana has also raved about the restaurant so my expectations were very high.

J.Sheekey is located just near Leicester Square and, as with The Ivy, is “guarded” by the little man in the top hat. The windows are covered up so once you step into the restaurant the sense of privacy and intimacy is immediate. Something I’m sure the celebrities appreciate. The restaurant is much longer than it appears from the outside but is sectioned off into a number of areas with about 5-7 tables filling any one space. This definitely made it hard to star-gaze! Just last night Kylie and Mick Jagger had dined here apparently but sadly no luck for us tonight. Besides we were so busy gaping at what everyone else was eating to have time to search the restaurant for any celebrities.

If you don’t like your fish than you won’t have too many options to choose from on the J. Sheekey menu – this one is definitely all about the fish and seafood though they do have one or two other dishes for the non-seafood eaters. All around us it seemed the popular starter was the fruits of the sea platter which was filled with all types of cold seafood including oysters, pippies, prawns etc. The platter is maaassssssive! However, not being the biggest fan of cold seafood I went instead with the crab bisque as a starter. It was superbly delicious and creamy but very rich. For mains, at the recommendation of the waiter, Jenny and I shared a grilled fish platter. With it we got bream, salmon, tuna, john dory and cod. A very good selection. We didn’t think we could get full on just fish but surprisingly we did though to be fair there was a lot of it and it was very rich (read oily!) The fish was quite tasty, though I think in future I’d like my platter to have a mix of shellfish rather than all fish because after a while it almost felt too sameish.

We forced (ha ha) ourselves to have some dessert – I tried the raspberry crème brulee (as unfortunately spotted dick was not on the menu). It was nice enough but I must remember in future that tart fruit just does not go with crème brulee! Still finished it however :).

To my surprise the service was a bit hit and miss tonight at a restaurant which supposedly values it quite highly. That’s not to say that it wasn’t unfriendly or unresponsive but I just felt it was … spotty. First of all before we even sat down we were asked if we wanted any drinks without being offered any sort of drinks or wine menu, then we sat for a while without any menus whatsoever and then our drinks that we did eventually end up ordering took very long to get to us. The waitress later apologised for the oversight but still. Finally, we were often left alone for long periods of time. Respect for the customer aside and all but I still expect a restaurant like this to check in with the diners now and again. However, it seems our experience is at odds with everyone else who has dined here in the past if the reviews I’ve read are anything to go by.

So, in the end were my expectations met? I think not to be honest. However that’s probably more from my having such high expectations in the first place. For three courses and a juice and service it was about £52 (which included an outrageous £2 per person cover charge) so for that price you would expect to be dazzled. I wasn’t. Merely satisfied with the experience. I must say however that despite the reputation and seeming poshness of the restaurant you never feel like a, pardon the pun, fish out of water so for that it has to get some marks.