The Bonneville: Clapton on the move

Before we go any further, lets get the toilets out of the way. If you've never been to the London Dungeon, and lord knows why you would unless you have visited as a hapless tourist, you need no longer even consider it. Put that £17.50 back in your pocket; The Bonneville has it covered.

Some might call it naff, it probably is, but I liked it.  Descend the stairs and the dry ice gets to work: "smoke"; a cobbled street; all very spooky. Its like you've been on the Delorean with Doc Brown, transported from hipster heaven to Queen Vic's London, you could imagine Jack the Ripper walking past, dipping his cap, on the way to his latest misadventure. It all makes for quite a dramatic place to take a pee.

But back to upstairs: here things are much more Clapton 2014. Walls are stripped, men are mustached, braces are abundant. Despite this it feels cosy, a place you want to be. There is a lever espresso machine in the corner (a La Pavoni I would proffer), resplendent in brass. Beers are served by the 2/3 pint, a good selection of local craft, a pisco sour was lost in the making, just too sweet.

 

While the Bonneville may be very Clapton 2014, the menu is from a hidden brasserie in the Bastille. Resolutely Gallic. There are snails, but they lack the necessary punch. Where is the butter, let alone the garlic - they should be drowning. Here they feel like they've been on one of Channel 4's fat camps; transformed into a health food.

The tartiflette is much better, but still lacked a certain oomph.

We get to the cassoulet and at last the Bonnville starts singing.  The beans have done their job, rich and creamy, excellent sausage and bacon. This is what many look for but can often no longer find in Paris' never-ending brasseries; honest, rich, hearty, French cooking. The green salad is spiked with tart French dressing; a perfect bedfellow for the rich cassoulet.

There is also steak and frites: its fine, but hardly a destination dish.

There is no doubt you can eat better French food in London at a similar price.  But the Bonneville has something: it makes you want to snuggle up for the night. Outside is a place you don't need to confront for a while.  For you are safe in the arms of the Bonneville, another glass of red wine? Oh, okay, why not. Outside can wait a little longer.

Som Saa: worth the wait!

I love a queue. I really do. I see a restaurant surrounded by baying "foodies" and I want to go. I will stand in the rain, the sleet and the snow, just to get whatever it may be: a burger; some ramen perhaps. I waited 2 hours for a burger from #Meateasy, as they then were, in New Cross Gate. Call me boring, but the great thing about a queue is that it is orderly, you may be climbing the culinary equivalent of Everest, but the summit is in sight: you know how many breathless steps you have got to go to get there.

Men with clipboards, however well meaning, are a slightly different prospect. You are assured of 45 minutes, that comes and goes. Others, who arrived after, seem to be sitting down earlier (perhaps the joys of eating in a three). One table, almost empty other than for a few portly gentleman, offers hope, a false dawn; no that is the owner who needs nine seats for him and his chums. An hour arrives, still no luck. Another quarter, nope, still waiting.

We get to 1 hour 35 and at last we sit down, a little weary, murmurings that "it had all better be worth it". But see that's where Som Saa, the latest pop up at Climpson's Arch, gets you. Because it is. Despite the disorderly seating system, the mislaid snacks which turned up 30 minutes late and the general lack of organisation, the food is, in the main, very good indeed. You have traveled through purgatory and arrived in heaven: a heaven heavy-laden with chili, drenched in fish sauce and full of lime-smacked smiles. In London it is perhaps only second to The Heron in delivering that collision of flavour that only Thailand can.

Some snacks got us through our wait, cashew nuts tarted up with Kaffir Lime and chili, some fermented pork, sour and spicy. There is the usual som tam, here served Bangkok or Isaan style (a little heavy on the salt, but vibrant).

Grilled pork neck makes the most of the wood-fired oven at Climpson's Arch - hot, sweet, sour, and salty in equal measures, it is everything Thai food should be.There is a curry which, to my palate tastes similar to a Massaman, although it is given a much more interesting name here.

Juicy prawns are simply grilled, served with a dipping sauce in which to get your fingers grubby.

And fish, perhaps the scariest looking sea bass you ever will see - I was waiting for fireballs to roll forth from its nose! It may look overdone, but the flesh was perfect, the skin crispy. A triumph on which to end.

The wait and the queuing system at Som Saa may be frustrating, the food is anything but. Head early or late, gorge on some of the best Thai food around and leave laughing. I'll be the one at the bottom of the clipboard, waiting for my hit.

*Thanks to the kitchen for the extra serving of prawns to make up for the wait, much appreciated!

Jubo: London's love affair continues

Just when you think London may be slowly falling out of love with American fast food, when sensible, grown-up, dare I whisper it, healthy, restaurants are opening to fanfare, you are again faced with chicken strips. Okay, so Jubo isn't quite in the same mould. Its Manhatten via Seoul. Nevertheless, the American influence weighs heavy.

Nestled into the corner of the ground floor in the Bedroom Bar, Jubo serves food to eat while drinking. There are wings, chicken strips, and steamed buns of various sorts. Kimchi slaw. A beef-stuffed sub. Perfect food after a few cocktails.

The "Yangnyeom Tongdak" (Korean-fried) chicken came winged or stripped, with soy or hot and sweet. We went for the strips, three of each. I am reliably informed by my trusty companion Wikipedia that the difference between American and Korean fried chicken is that the Koreans are not happy with frying their chicken once. No, theirs is double-fried for extra crunch (cue Heston's next show, triple-cooked chicken). And, sure enough, the chicken was super crunchy, but still juicy and tender inside. The hot and sweet ones with sesame seeds slipped down a treat.

We also got the Bulgogi (Korean-marinated) beef sub - a tasty roll, but nothing exciting.  Kimchi slaw was disappointing - the fermented hit lost in a sea of mayonnaise.

Hirata buns, one filled with slow-cooked pork and sriracha, the other with portobello mushroom, were rich, the mushroom heavy with umami. A couple of years back, they would have been exciting. Now they were just a little disappointing, at least when compared with those on offer at places like Yum Bun round the corner. Still, not a bad effort, and certainly fine to nibble on while drinking with friends.

The mushroom hirata...

And that's where I end up with Jubo. If you are going expecting a revelation, you will be disappointed. If you are meeting a few drinks and want some tasty bar snacks to sit alongside your cocktails, Jubo will do just fine.

Auntie Naan: definitely an improvement

Before Auntie Naan (what a name!) opened there was only one option for spice on Broadway. Joy. It may well have been called Misnomer. Recommended by a friend of a friend from whom no further recommendations were sought. It served the worst food I have ever eaten.  It was like they had established an Indian restaurant based solely on Tesco club card points and a microwave, by someone who was quite happy to take your money and then smirk. Everything about the place was utterly awful.

So you can imagine my scepticism when Joy closed down and a new Indian "concept" restaurant popped up in its place. Was this the old place with the same owners, but with a lick of paint and some trendy old beaten up furniture?  It is entirely possible it is, I forgot to ask.  But, if it is, you can rest assured that more thought has been put into a single dish at this re-opening than the entire menu at Joy. It's all Indian-British fusion - spicy fish fingers, "Bombay" wedges and a few samosas, bhajis and curries thrown in for food measure. I was intrigued enough to give it another shot.

First to the five stars, you walk in and feel like you are on holiday. Roughly sawn wooden floors and walls, brightly painted chairs and tables, a superb outside garden area and a generous helping of random Indian signs. It may not be like the cafes I have experienced in India, but in this case that is a positive. Someone has clearly spent a long time working out how this place will look.

Turning to the food, it is a mixed bag. The onion bhajis are things of splendour - sweet onion, crispy on the outside with a hit of fresh chili, I could have munched a whole bag of these. The wedges and samosas were fine (if a little toned down), but both needed more crisp - a little anaemic, I suspect they were rather hastily warmed up.

I liked the idea of the fish fingers, but the crumb needed more spice and the fish inside was slightly overcooked.  Minor points, but the difference between fine and good. Nothing really to right home about. What was exceptional was the curried mayo which came alongside - sweet and sour with a hit of tamarind, this was no ordinary mayo.

The only real let down was the chaat salad - a mixture of chickpea, radish and cucumber. With just a little lime, chili and seasoning this could have been the perfect accompaniment to the rest - as it was, it was just a little underwhelming.

So no more Joy. But happiness instead. The food won't blow you away, but it's not bad.  Auntie Naan brings something different to Broadway - some fresh flavours and a great new place to meet with friends for something light to eat.

Update (23 September 2013): having only been open for some three weeks, Auntie Naan has shut down (well at least it is closed at the moment for what appears to be a name rebrand).

Hawksmoor Spitalfields Bar, A Special Place

When you go out not intending to eat, let alone drink double shots of mezcal, but leave somewhere feeling full, smiling, you know the place you've been was special. And, so it was, last Thursday I was going for two beers, then home to enjoy the treats my lovely neighbours had given me to celebrate the end of Ramadan. So, two turned into three, it always does. Then of course we had to finish the round. The Italian suggested a cocktail at Hawksmoor's bar, underneath their Spitalfields restaurant. Okay, just one more then...

Who was I kidding? Walk into a Hawksmoor and not eat? That was never ever going to happen. One step into the achingly cool bar (the de rigeur metro tiles have even been aged!), I knew my Ramadan feast was going to have to wait for another night.

So let's get one thing straight, there are no steaks - if that's what you're after, go upstairs. But there are ox cheek nuggets (I was sold!), burgers, pulled pork rolls, chili dogs, wings and ribs - need I say more.

We opted for a burger, pulled pork roll, ox cheek nuggets and pig's head poutine. And a cucumber and watermelon salad also turned up - we weren't complaining, respite for the arteries.

As you would expect, the burger is good. Very good. Rich, juicy beef, perfectly cooked medium-rare, topped with cheese in a beautifully soft brioche bun. Best of all, it is only £8.50. That is the same price as GBK. One can only imagine GBK's margins are significantly larger. Seriously, £8.50? It is an absolute steal! The Italian had the pulled pork which went down a treat.

The sides are where things started to get really exciting. I had no idea what poutine was when I ordered it, I was lured in by the pig's head. Turns out it is a perfect dish for two Scots to devour following a night on the beers. Originating in Canada, it is made up of chips, cheese (yes, okay, not the holy trinity of mozzarella and two types of cheddar you get at BBQ Kings in Glasgow, but good nonetheless) and gravy. Not content with that, Hawksmoor have added pig's head. Filthy, yes. Healthy, no. Worth it once in a while, absolutely.

We also had the ox cheek nuggets - slow-cooked cheek, encased with some mozzarella in breadcrumbs, with some kimchi dipping sauce. I could have eaten these all night long.

And, to freshen things up, a salad of large chunks of cucumber and watermelon, with a touch of ginger, chili, garlic and, I think, some fish sauce - this was a refreshing counterbalance to the rest of the meal. Excellent in its simplicity.

So the bar is cool and the food is great, but it is the drinks, or, more specifically, the barmen, who really make this place really stand out. Excellent cocktails (butter infused bourbon old fashioned anyone?) served up by a tag team from Turkey (Mr Pinky, you know who you are!) and Wales - we were kept in stitches for most of the night. If you like fun, go. If you don't, well, that's your loss, this place isn't for you.

Rotary Bar and Diner: bad, really bad

It was always going to happen. Such is the proliferation of American BBQ diner food in London, one bad egg was always going to get through. A cynical attempt to jump on the band wagon, to cash in without putting in the hard yards. I just didn't expect it to be now, here, at the Rotary Bar and Diner. This place has pedigree. It's owned by the Rushmore Group, the same people as Giant Robot and the Player Bar, both of which are great. Rotary Bar and Diner is not. In fact it's not just not good. Its really, really bad.

The bar itself is fine, good place for a few drinks. The menu looks enticing - everything seems to be in the right place. There are wings, devilled pig skin, burgers and ribs. What could go wrong.

We started with the chicken wings. They were cooked. But that is about the extent of the positives I can muster. Greasy, they tasted like they had been slathered in butter. And not in a good way. Even worse were the pork scratchings (sorry, devilled pig skin) - they tasted only of old oil. And finally, the smoked chicken salad.  I think they may have popped out to Subway for the sauce, the chicken was barely smoked. Worst of all, in the midst of it all was chicken skin. Not lovely, crispy, salty chicken skin. No, a slimy, limp dishcloth of a piece of skin. Horrible.

After being all smiles and sunshine to start, our waitress turned sour when we said that we had not wholly enjoyed our starter. And we were still on our best behavior at that point. I mean yes the starters were awful, but we still had chicken, ribs and steak to come, things were about to look up. Right?

The chicken and ribs came covered in "BBQ sauce". Sickly sweet, this was everything BBQ sauce should not be. Here is my plate when I started.

Here is where I finished.

I couldn't eat it.  That is not like me, as my friends and waistline will attest. I love food, I never leave things. I have been brought up on "waste not, want not". But I just couldn't eat it. Neither could the Brand JD manage the dry chicken, again covered in that sauce. But wait, there was a corn muffin. Surely that must have been good. Well, it might have been a corn muffin at one point, but by the time it made it onto my tray it would have been better used as a cricket ball. One bite was all I could manage.

The steak at least did not come drenched in sauce. It had been well-aged and reasonably cooked. But it looked lonely on the plate with only a side of over-cooked and over-buttered cabbage to accompany it.

By this point our waitress was steadfastly ignoring us and a young Parisian took over. We were being less well behaved by then. The complaints rained down on him. I felt a little sorry, it wasn't his fault and, as he rightly pointed out, he had not cooked any of it.

I really hate writing negative reviews, you've had a bad meal and now you need to relive it. Often I don't bother, why go through it again. But in this case it was so bad I felt I had to. In fairness they did give us 25% off the price. But then, if I had paid full price for what I had just eaten, I would have been upset, really upset. It would have been over £25 a head with one beer. For that money you can eat seriously well in London. Just not at Rotary Bar and Diner.  Don't go.
   

East London in the Summer: a veritable posse of pop-ups

Cometh the sun, cometh the pop-up.  Places, which only weeks before would have seemed highly improbable locations for restaurants, are transformed - abandoned rooftops reworked, work yards receive a makeover. And the arches by London Fields station, it appears, is the epicenter of this culinary explosion. Not a bad place for food at the worst of times (think Broadway Market, E5 Bakehouse, Buen Ayre), come summer your options multiply.

On the rooftop of Emigre Studios is Coppa, the new outpost of Lardo (a great little Italian round the corner serving up seriously good pizza from their disco ball oven).  Serving cicchetti - Italian tapas - the menu is concise, we ordered at least one of everything.  There are fresh chickpea and celery salads, unctuous nduja-laden arancini and rich caponata.  Less impressive were the spiedini - little skewers of tough lamb, grilled bread with cheese or prawn (note the singular - for £4!).  There were various other fried things - zucchini chips, proscuitto tomato and mozarella calzone fritte (and to think people scorn the Scots for deep fried pizza, although that's maybe because we add a healthy dollop of HP sauce!). All perfectly fine, but not really worth searching out.  Great place for a beer and arancini, but would stick to that.

Literally round the corner (it was one of those kind of days) is a collaboration between Climpsons Coffee and Lucky Chip (here, Licky Chop - see what they did here) - Climpsons Arch.  Housed in the arch used to roast coffee beans, most of the place is outside, a yard surrounded by a couple of meters high metal fence.  Not the most inviting of spaces you might imagine. But, as with another newly opened railway arch restaurant, Beagle, Climpsons and Lucky Chip have made the most of what they've got. 

The menu is made up of my kind of things - oysters (the ones with tapioca pearls are quite possibly the best I have ever had), bone marrow on toast with a smoked anchovy spread, onglet steak (there it is again!) and even a whole roasted pigs head, medieval! We opted for the bone marrow - roasted hunks of bone with sourdough, could have done with an extra slice of toast though.  The hake with cocoa was also good.

A sun trap (well at least on the day we visited) serving interesting food and great drinks (you've got to try the bottled rhubarb cocktail) - I think I can forgive them that fence.

Beagle: a place you'll want to stay

Perhaps it was the fact it was a bank holiday weekend, perhaps it was the glorious evening sun streaming through the windows making the food glisten, or maybe, just maybe, Beagle was as good as I remember.  Set in three railway arches - one bar, one restaurant, the other kitchen -Beagle is the new home of James Ferguson, formerly of La Rochelle.  It is a great little bolt hole from the hustle and bustle of Shoreditch and, despite the fact that trains rumble their way towards Liverpool Street only meters above you, surprisingly serene.

The food is very much on trend, but it does not feel trendy. It doesn't feel like its trying too hard. Yes they sell smoked cod's roe (a favourite of the St John's empire). But not in a "what you haven't tried smoked cod's roe, seriously?" kind of a way.  It's far friendlier that that. There is English asparagus with fried egg and a salad of courgettes, tomatoes and feta (I am sure this was more interesting than it sounds), but we opted for the cuttlefish with aioli and the grilled lamb's tongue (a new one on me) with beets. The tongue was soft, the beets sweet. The cuttlefish was perfectly cooked, just enough bite.

The lamb's tongue and beetroot

Cuttlefish and aioli

With the sun beating down, the forerib for two or the mutton with pearl barley would have been too much - I  went instead for the pork belly. Salty crackling, melting meat with sweet onions and rich lentils - this is the kind of food that works well in July and January. The onglet steak (by the frequency with which this cut is now served in London you could almost be led to believe that there is no other!) was cooked rare and seasoned well. The duck fat chips were the only disappointment - not crisp enough for me, although the Fashionista thought they were tops.

With no space left for dessert, we sauntered off.  Yes I went on a sunny summer evening, yes we'd enjoyed a beer in the sun before, but I have this sneaky suspicion that I will be just as comfortable in Beagle come winter - snuggled up in the archway watching the snow whirl outside. This is a restaurant for keeps. This is my kind of place.