Monthly Archives: September 2010

Esarn Kheaw

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Esarn Kheaw could be counted as a (kind of) local Thai restaurant of mine but until Rehana told me about it I’d never even heard of it! Clearly others had heard of it as when we walked in for our meal just after 7.30 it was absolutely heaving.

We were served by the most camp waiter ever but he was an absolutely crack up and proceeded to tell us all about his upcoming 30th birthday celebration. I’m not actually sure he did much waitering as his main job seemed to be to walk around and check on everyone and entertain them!

Food-wise Rehana and I tried

Starters:

Son-in-law’s Eggs which was maybe one or one and a half hard boiled eggs which had then been deep fried and cut up, then served with a sort of sweet and sour sauce and fried garlic and shallots. This was some thing different though it did feel a bit pricey that we were basically paying a £1+ per quarter of an egg.

Kai Bai Tauy. Deep fried marinated chicken, wrapped in a pandanus leaf, served with a chilli sauce. This was rather disappointing as the chicken was overcooked and flavourless.

Main course

Pla Jien. Which was a crispy whole pomfret with shitaki mushroom, ginger, spring onion, coriander and oyster sauce. We were looking for a fish which was a bit less fishy-oily and more white fleshy. Unfortunately neither of us knew what a pomfret was and our waiter didn’t properly explain what it was. It was a fairly average dish to be honest.

The best dish of the night for me was the Gaeng Pet Pedyang. Roasted duck cooked in coconut milk with grapes, pineapple and Thai red curry paste. Having the grapes in the curry was certainly an interesting addition. The sauce was divine even if it was pretty much only a red curry.

Overall I was a bit disappointed with the food. I would have said the success rate of the food was 1.5 out of the 4 which is pretty low down on the scale. The meal was also a lot more expensive than I was expecting it to be considering the location (its probably once you start to add in the price of rice and drinks.) Would I come back? I read that its supposed to be a little different than other Thai restaurants and admittedly their offerings on the menu do have something a bit different. So perhaps I would come back just to try it out.

London Fashion and Art Event

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One of Cath’s friends, Sally Pang, was having a showing at the London Fashion and Art Event. I honestly had no idea what we were getting involved in. Tickets were £16 so I was expecting something fairly substantial. The Event as at the ICA at The Mall.

I was very surprised to see that actually it was quite small. It was billed as an alternative to London Fashion Week – but I think it had to grow quite a bit more to reach anything even approaching London Fashion Week. Still, I guess if you’re a new designer then any exposure is good exposure. Other exhibitionists included jewellery designers, photographers and artists.

Copenhagen

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With our lunch at Noma under our belt we had some time to explore the rest of Copenhagen.

With the exception of Laney we’d all been to Copenhagen before. Laney didn’t have anything in particular that she wanted to do except to visit the free neighbourhood of Christianshavn. We’d actually gone for a walk in that neighbourhood just before Noma, since that is near where Noma is located. It’s really different in the morning to what it is later in the afternoon and night – people were just waking up. The best thing about our morning walk though the area were the dogs. Saw some really cute French bulldogs and pitbulls I could have happily dog-napped! Ha ha. Shame we couldn’t take any photos of the cute little critters.

Most of the rest of the weekend we spent walking around popular districts like Strøget, the pedestrian mall for shopping, where I loved seeing this politically diverse shop window …

… and Nyhavn and the area Amalienborg Palace. Interestingly both Su Yin and I still had an appetite for hot dogs …

For most of the weekend it was fair weather too so we also did a cruise and hit Tivoli to release our inner child.

At Tivoli we saw the cutest little tike. His fairy floss was bigger than he was! (Don’t worry – I asked his Dad if I could take a photo of him!)

We had the funniest pilot on our flight back to London – he asked us to applaud at end of safety brief before he would take off as a sign that we were listening. Even the air steward called him The Mad Captain!

Noma, Copenhagen

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Recently announced as number 1 in the S.Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurant for 2010, Noma is a restaurant delivering its take on Nordic gourmet cuisine. Noma is a combination of two Danish words “nordisk” (Nordic) and “mad” (food). Topping restaurants the likes of El Bulli and The Fat Duck it must have done something pretty significant to reach the pinnacle so I was inspired so much to try and get a booking at the restaurant. Clearly being named number 1 in the world had a giant impact on reservations ability – the old process clearly couldn’t handle the number of requests because over a course of a week of trying to get reservations the method to get a booking must have changed about five times! Eventually, however, perseverance paid off and I managed to get a booking for four of us on a Saturday. I was well chuffed to get a weekend spot!

Its pretty crazy to make a trip to another country literally just to visit a restaurant but that’s what Pat, Laney, Su Yin and I did. To save on accommodation costs we decided to take the first flight out this morning – a relatively early 7.15 plane out of Stansted … though still one of those flights where you might as well not have slept the night before you had to get up so early in the morning!

After arriving and checking into our hostel we took a long leisurely stroll to the restaurant. Its not actually that conveniently located but it does have a nice location near the water. We arrived quite early for our booking but Noma was very accommodating and didn’t even blink an eye that we were nearly an hour early (we were cold!)

Before we even had to make any decisions about what we were eating (turns out you really have two choices anyway – either a 7 course (seasonal) or 12 course (classic) tasting menu!) we were first served with a number, and when I say number I mean something line 9!, amuse bouches.

The first lot included Nasturtiums (edible flowers) and Snails and Sea Buckthorn Leather and Pickled Hip Roses. When the nasturtiums and snails came out in a vase we weren’t sure whether to admire or to eat! The leather and Roses reminded me of these fruit jerky type things we had when I was a kid in Australia.

Next up was this mysterious tin which when opened revealed Cookie with Blackcurrant Paste, “Speck” and a sprig of pine. Served with it was Rye Bread and Chicken Skin sandwiching a smoked cheese type pate and Leek and garlic – the bulb end of the leek had been deep fried and then what seemed like a roasted garlic tucked into the centre.

The Pickled and Smoked Quail Egg which came next was served rather dramatically in a large ceramic egg shaped container. Nestled inside on a bed of hay with smoke drifting up slowly it made for an engaging dish both in its presentation and taste. The eggs had been cooked to perfection and were exactly gooey in the way it should be.

Another conundrum was presented for us with the next dish. Instead of a vase of flowers we were presented with a potted plant. Was this to be admired or eaten? Turns out that what was potted (in edible soil) were baby radish and carrots. Such a cute dish!

Aebleskiver, or basically profiteroles, with a sardine was another cute dish. Though usually I like sweet and salty combinations this one was actually a bit too fishy for me!

The finale of our amuse bouche was another sandwhich – this time consisting of a wavy crispy bread and a crispy duck stock skin. There was lots going on in the middle with herbs (which were to be order of the day) and roe and emulsions galore.

Imagine that this all came before we’d even made our menu selection – a very stimulating start to our meal. Dishes came out at a decent clip though because we were all so busy taking photos it seemed that dishes came out quicker than we were ready for them. Heh heh.

Whilst we were waiting for our “main” meal to start we were given some fresh bread accompanied by butter and, rather interestingly, a lard with pork crisps. We appreciated the fact that the bread was served in a bread bed of sorts to keep it warm. The pork lard was an interest twist to a spread for the bread but the butter was more popular of the two accompaniments.

Chef René Redzepi’s focus at this restaurant is in serving food that makes the most of the local environment. So, if you ever see him talking about it, its all about going out into the local forest or seashore to gather what is available and use it in his cooking. As a result of many of the dishes we were served today consisted of a lot of greenage. Something I don’t think Laney was very impressed with – think she’s a meat girl. Ha ha! I must admit the meal is pretty unlike anything I’ve eaten before for its creativity and use of herbs and such and you can tell that an incredible amount of care was given in putting the dishes together and plating the dishes.

I’ll never look at lettuce quite the same again thanks to the first dish of the rank: Roasted lettuce blended and served with blanched flaked almonds was interesting. I couldn’t believe how intense the flavour of the roasted lettuce was. The almonds I could have done without (not really adding much in flavour) but they did give some crunch to the dish.

More greens on the next dish with Dried Scallops, Watercress with Biodynamic Cereals and Hazel Nut. A very strange and unusual dish. I’m not quite sure I liked eating the dried scallops – they were kind of too intense in their fishiness and I felt lost that essence of scallop that I love so much – which I think comes not only from its flavour but the fleshiness of the white meat.

Oyster and the Sea was up next. Rather dramatic presentation with the oyster sitting on a bed of seaweed, seashells, rocks and general sea things. Not a giant fan of oysters but this dish wasn’t too bad.

One of the most gorgeous dishes I’ve had came up next and it mostly consisted of onions! I do like my onion – though it has to be cooked down in some manner as I can’t stand it raw. This dish was ‘Læsø’ onion, onion cress and thyme, tapioca and onion broth. It truly was a lovely dish.

Well, we’d eaten a few things by this stage so it was now time to work for our meal! This could come across as a bit gimmicky trying to get the diner involved in their food but I thought it was a lot of fun. So, first out came some ingredients and equipment.

And then the instruction for The Hen and the Egg. The chef first squirted hay oil on to each of our heated hot plates and then the instruction was to crack the egg, fry to liking before adding thyme butter, lovage and spinach to wilt. This was then finished by herbs, flowers and fried potato curls. Admittedly we were probably a bit too concerned with posing for the relevant action shot than the cooking of our actual eggs … but the result was still pretty tasty!

Maybe there is room for us in the Noma kitchen … 😉

The egg was actually a good transition dish because it was sort of a bridging dish between the seafood and green dishes we had before to the meat dish we had next – the Deer and Wild Thyme, Red Beets and Red Fruit. The dish came with this mega-knife … though in actuality it was more a prop than anything as it wasn’t needed at all. It was a pretty serious knife which even came in its own case! The deer was good and enjoyed the beet that it came with.

You may not think that the next dish we received:

was a dessert but it was! How René managed to include greenage into his dessert and still make it work is a mystery to me! This time it was the Hay which had been blended down, on top of this was a Chamomile Ice with Sorrel and Wild Herbs. Really delicious and an extremely refreshing treat.

The official finale of the tasting menu was something a little special. “Gammel Dansk” (a Danish bitters), Ice Cream, Milk and Woodsorrel. The combination of all the items worked really well together. The wafers of what I think was frozen milk were a treat.

The official official finale to our meal at Noma were the petit fours served with our end of meal teas. A couple of interesting tins and wrapped packages came out for this part of the meal.

They were what was in essence a Danish marshmallow, bitter chocolate covered potato chip sprinkled with fennel seed and finale, my favourite, the Noma classic Bone Marrow Caramel. Kind of like a very extreme meat flavoured salted caramel this one really grew on me.

Aside from the food the meal at Noma was certainly an experience from the first minute. The service was excellent – the waiters make an effort to find out where you are from so that they can send out the chefs who are from your country to speak with you. Out of a full kitchen of about 30 chefs there were about 5 or 6 from Oz and the sommelier was from Oz so they all came out to say hi. In addition to this personalisation of the service, dishes were brought to the table by the chefs themselves who presented them to us. Great care was taken to ensure that our dishes were served at the right time – I remember at one stage that there must have been mis-communication with respect to the timing of our dishes so when they were bringing out our Oyster and Sea dish we saw this line of chefs come out to bring the pot to us … but then when they saw we were still eating our dried scallop dish the chefs did this very smooth and fluid circle around us and back to the kitchen! Towards the end of our meal the fire alarm went off so we were all sent outside whilst it was sorted out. We forgot how absolutely cold it was outside so we were a bit freezing!

But were warmed up by the free champagne and then the firemen who came along, not to mention chatting up, I mean, to the chefs …

Had a brilliant experience at Noma today – I could well understand why it is rated amongst the top restaurants in the world.

Shanghai Blues Dim Sum Demonstration

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One of the latest events being held at Shanghai Blues was a Dim Sum demonstration by the chefs at Shanghai blues. I was wondering how they would manage to host an event without sacrificing any of the dining room – turns out that they just ended up converting their main larger room into the classroom. The class, including one champagne drink and a three-course meal, was priced at £48 … which is not to bad.

I’m not sure how many times Shanghai Blues had run this dim sum making class before we attended tonight’s section because the organisation certainly seemed to indicate this was the first time. The fact that they took our names about four times was frustrating – I mean, how many times must our names have been ticked off their checklist!

The night started with a glass of champagne … interestingly when I asked for a non-alcoholic drink they couldn’t substitute anything and instead charged me for my lemonade. A bit rich.

The demonstration itself didn’t really start at the time that we were told. Everyone was sort of shuffled into the bar area but there must have been at least 30 of us and so there wasn’t enough space for everyone so we all just ended up milling around. There wasn’t any sort of official start to the demonstration except for the natural gathering of people around tables – which was more a case of people following other people. The demonstration was about half an hour with the chefs showing us how to make a variety of different types of dim sum (crystal prawn dumplings, sao mai, scallop dumplings and vegetable dumplings.) It was actually quite informative … but there were way too many attendants. Even splitting the group between two areas didn’t reduce the cramped conditions.

After the demonstration was finished we all had a chance to make our own dim sum (which was later steamed for our consumption) but even that was kind of a free for all so it was mainly the most aggressive who had access to the dough and the ingredients. I was a bit embarrassed because some of the more aggressive people were Chinese – cringe!

Making the dim sum was quite a bit of fun – especially laughing at how bad we were at it! Ha ha!

After the demonstration it was time to sit down for our “feast”.

Starters including fried treats (Mooli Croissant and Shanghai Crispy Turnip Puff ) and dumplings (Yuan Yang Prawn Dumpling, Original Shanghai Steamed Xiao Loong Bao, Crab Roe Seafood Dumpling, Shanghai Grilled Pork and Vegetable Dumpling.)

Main course was a Egg Fried Rice, Dried Fried French Beans with Garlic, Assorted Emperor Seafood, Steamed Sea Bass with Lotus Root, and Five Willow Sesame Chicken (oddly looked more like pork belly).

Dessert was a chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream.

Food at Shanghai Blue was as usual up to their high standards. I was very happy to have them serve the Mooli Croissant as part of our meal. Portions probably could have been a touch larger on the mains though its not like we were starving after the finish of our meal. At first I was disappointed with a brownie for dessert but was pleased to find that it had the added surprise of popping candy – which seems to be the new rage in food this year.

Overall, the Dim Sum Demonstration event, though execution could have done with some finessing, was a fantastic idea as you got a good mix of some learning, some feeding, and some socialising.

China City Karaoke

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Karaoke is not really my ideal way to spend a couple of hours … but seeing as how I hadn’t seen some of the crew in a while I thought it couldn’t kill me to check it out.

Our venue for karaoke tonight was China City in Leicester Square where they have three private rooms available. The room that we were in was supposed to be able to fit 8-10 comfortably but was probably more comfortable with a maximum of six people as the eight of us were pretty crammed into the small space quite tightly. The added benefit of doing karaoke in a place like China City is that you can then also order dinner to go with your singing – food was okay.

The music selection on the karaoke was so-so – there were some current hits (including Lady Gaga which was quite the popular choice tonight) but not as many as I would have expected. We had two mics and mostly had to sit and sing from the couches. I enjoyed it more than I thought … mainly because the room was so small that I could get away with not singing! Ha ha!

Kyashii

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Wow – if there was any other restaurant that looked the style this definitely did. And tho the food we were served wasn’t terrible exactly there wasn’t anything terribly outstanding about it either.

Can’t say I’ve ever noticed Kyashii in its current location but it has recently gone under a “regeneration” as the website refers to it. The venue is certainly very pretty with fish tanks along one side, white walls, yellow mood lighting, and shiny surfaces. I kind of wish I’d been at the restaurant before to be able to compare the food before and after.

Sandra and I were dining tonight on a tasting menu which had been discounted thanks to a groupon voucher (£25 for £70 including any drink up to £10) which objectively sounded like great value. In reality, at full price I would have felt just a little bit ripped off – especially considering you can go to a fantastic 2-Michelin starred restaurant such as the Ledbury and get a full tasting menu for £75.

Our menu started with small portions of Crispy Spicy Squid, Steamed Edamame, Kinoko salad (a mushroom salad with yuzu dressing), Honey Glazed Baby Ribs in Barbeque Sauce and Kushiyaki Skewers which included chicken and shiitake mushroom.

Oddly they decided to serve all these things up all at once!

Next up was some sushi Salmon Avocado Roll and a Garden Roll.

The our mains of Grilled Lamb Rack with Okinawa Piri-kara Sauce, Scottish Salmon Fillet with Teriyaki Sauce and Wok-fried Baby Pak-choi with Pine Nuts. Once again served in small portions.

Food was fairly average. Sure, the squid, ribs and lamb were very tender as were the yakitori and mushroom kushiyaki sticks (with these last two in particular having great smoky flavour) but it all came across a little lukewarm, even in temperature. They seemed to have rushed out what would have been a middle course (ribs and yakitori) with our starters (edamame, squid and warmed mushroom salad) which were nice and warm but as we finished these off first our “middle” courses became almost cold.

Surprisingly the tasting menu doesn’t even include dessert which gave our finish to the meal an odd feeling of incompleteness. The groupon voucher actually said it should come with a yuzu tart … so not sure why we weren’t served it tonight.

Priced at £25 (before service) I guess our meal tonight was just about the right price for what we got. I would have been happier if courses hadn’t been rushed out so quickly and also if it was delivered at more than just a bit above a cool temperature.

Oh! Beware – toilets are confusing, when you open the door to find them from the main room its all black and not very well sign-posted – I got lost going there and coming back! … on the other hand you do get to see through to the kitchen …

Bo Concepta

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On the way to lunch Sandra and I stopped in at Selfridges as she wanted to check out some furniture. Weirdly Bo Concepta had a spread put out – free cookies, cake and drink!

Had to pass on the cookies and cake but I had to grab one of water bottles which were pretty cool.

Cox Cookies and Cake

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To say that cupcakes are huge in London at the moment would be the mega understatement of the century. The latest to enter the scene is Cox Cookies and Cake located in Soho. The one thing that Cox Cookies and Cake does is that it adds something a little different to the cupcake scene – in terms of the looks of the cupcakes at least if not the flavours.

Staying true to its Soho location, the shop is themed out to be almost a night club – ridiculously loud music, at least when Sandra and I turned up just before lunch, included. The interior is painted black and window displays are all kitted out with neon lights. The shop is actually rather bare except for a bar along one wall and then, of course, the cupcakes at a counter on the other wall.

The cupcakes themselves looked pretty schmick – there are regular ones (or classics) priced at £2.50 or you can indulge in a specialty (£4.00) which can be covered in skulls, an Andy Warhol Marilyn, or sparkling sugar ‘diamonds’, and a giant pair of lips and then you could go for the Coxxx (get it?) Cakes (also £4.00) such as the Titty Cake, Man Cake, the Beef Cake and the Bum Cake. The flavouring of the Beef Cake sounded the most delicious and unique flavouring – hazelnut praline cupcake with praline icing and nothing to do with the bulging bicep attached on top I promise … the guys said the menu was kind of still being played around with but I do like the fact that the cupcakes themselves aren’t just vanilla or just chocolate (e.g. bases included choc and cherry, carrot, banana and raspberry.)

Sandra and I were going to be having lunch at Phoenix Palace not too long after so I didn’t go for one of the richer specialties or Coxxx cakes – instead I tried the Lemon cupcake with lemon frosting and shaved white chocolate curls. It was very good but very very sweet!

Oh the other thing to be said about the store is that the guys in the store are very cute!!!!

Spots Versus Stripes

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Cadbury were running this Spots Versus Stripes competition thing in Leicester Square – basically it involves mini-competitions between those on the Spots team and those on the Stripes team. It was quite an atmosphere in the Square today and all sorts of people were out – including this one guy walking his giant lizard!

I was surprised that the guy with his white minks wasn’t around too. He normally hangs around Leicester Square or Trafalgar Square at the latest.

So, I managed to convince Sandra to play one of the games called Slide and Dunk. Basically you slide down this rather massive slide in a potato sack and then shoot the ball into a hoop when you got to the bottom. The slide looked pretty big from the ground but when we got to the top it was pretty scary – even for someone like me who likes that kind of thing!

We did it though … and for friendship’s sake we will call it a draw 😉