Grumbling Gourmet's Reviews

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to live, breathe and eat in London. The 10 Cases is so good it's practically a public service. Being a West End boy I've grown proficient at seeking out hidden gems in Soho and Covent Garden and The 10 Cases is a worthy addition to that list.

The dark panelled pocket-box of a bistro is appropriately named for it's main draw, the rapidly rolling wine selection; 10 cases of 10 whites and 10 reds, when they're gone, they're gone. We sampled a light and jammy Chinon and a surprisingly good Austrian red. Both, like most of the list, pleasingly priced at £25-£30 and available by glass, bottle or carafe.

We were a bottle to the good before arriving and immediately ploughed into a selection of their excellent small plates. You can go for starters and mains if you fancy, though there are generally only 3 big dishes at any one time. Excellent fresh bread (a £1.50 cover in case that kind of thing annoys) was a great soaker-upper of the reminants of buttery potted crab and a surprising (to us) foie gras en cocotte.

Surprising only if you were expecting foie gras en croute, not having read the menu properly. Envisaging some form of butter pastry and forcefed liver combination, we were disappointed in the way that only the truly gluttonous could be. If you know your bistro dishes then you'd be expecting a pot poached egg in butter on a tiny, perfectly cooked slab of foie. You'd be right, but you probably wouldn't remember quite how wonderful this dish can be, because if you did, you'd be eating it now. Right now. Silk cooked in butter, served with butter…

Steak hache, that bistro stalwart, wouldn't be a bad addition to the menu but other than that, it was pretty near perfect. The only slight fail for me was a deconstructed prawn cocktail. Fresh enough ingredients and the old skool styling delighted my guest but i didn't rate it as anything more than a dull assemblage. Thankfully we finished on an enormous pillowy chocolate mousse meant for sharers… More

A railway themed curry house right next door to a major transport terminus. What could be right about that sentence?

Compared to some of the Indian railway cafe themed establishments such as Dishoom and Roti Chai that have sprung up since Bangalore opened, the decor could only politely be described as lacking somewhat. Double decked railway carriage dining built into the wall and accessed by bunkbed steps might appeal to teens but it's not in itself a reason for the rest of us to stop by, especially in somewhere as well stocked with restaurants as Waterloo.

Initial signs aren't good. We're jammed in behind the waiters station, the table cleared as we sit. While the dips that come with a basket of poppodoms are interestingly different (though not close to the South Indian delights of Ganapati), with beetroot chutney and a raw garlic number, they're preprepared and look like they've been around for a while.

The main menu is all kinds of confused. While a range of starters will be familiar enough to most people, the mains fall into two broad swathes. Half span different curry cuisines from around the world, covering African, South East Asian and the Indian subcontinent. The ‘curry house’ korma and vindaloo that your middle aged British parents would be looking for are served in a pick your meat n mix your curry sauce section at the bottom. It seems an odd thing to advertise, given that many cheaper quality establishments prepare vats of generic sauces and add meat on demand, losing the flavours and tenderness that often come from the cooking process but saving cost and waste.

And the food? While I don't think I'd make a deliberate trip back, it definitely wasn't the worst curry I've had, damning it with faint praise… We shared a hot and sour prawn curry from South India, a nicely balanced bowl of earthy, peppery black dhal and some manner of cold sweet potato salad. All pleasant enough but nothing more than the sort of weeknight standby served up by competent home chefs… More

Pearl Liang used to be very close to my office and was a great spot for payday dim sum. As I still do some work with them I often find myself nearby, seldom sadly at mealtimes. Going back to visit The Insider for a post work meeting that segued into beers that morphed into a strong desire for something to fill our stomachs seemed like an ideal opportunity and so we snagged a table in the windowless space. It was surprisingly busy given its soulless office complex location in Paddington's mini Canary Wharf, Sheldon Square.

Arriving after 9, even on a near weekend evening, may not have been wise. The service was abrupt, a little distracted (we ordered a second beer and they brought and served us an entirely different brand) and they were keen to chivvy towards the end. A party arriving later than us were asked for their dessert and coffee orders even as their main courses were coming out. I can understand the logic within licencing laws, but wasn't aware that it was illegal to serve coffee and ice cream after 11.

We weren't really there for a long digestion of the menu and went for one of the set choice menus, given what I've heard about the usually high quality here that may have been a mistake. The selection of starters was a promising mix of mainly fried and breaded items. The squid fared particularly well, and a plump prawn encased in crisp dry noodles was similarly toothsome, though I had to leave most of my large Vietnamese style spring roll, filled with glassy noodles (and little else) before being deepfried. The one I had seemed to return most of the contents of the frier, disgorging oily liquid as I bit into it. A slug of Tsing Tao was needed to wash the taste away and the rest of the roll remained on the plate, avoided by me and uncommented on by the staff.

Aromatic, rather than crispy, duck followed, with the delightful addition of homemade pancakes. In the same way as you will with fresh, homemade pasta, we really noticed the difference.

We finished with four… More

I dunno, you wait for London's tapas king to open one new restaurant, and two come along at almost the same time… No one was at all surprised when Jose Pizarro of Brindesa fame opened up jewel box perfect Jose on Bermondsey Street a year or so ago, there was a little more surprise when it was followed up less than a year later by bigger brother Pizarro a few doors down.

If the impression is that these are a couple of places he's thrown together, then it works. Jose is a absolute favourite for post work sherry and a pincho from the authentic little bar cum kitchen in the tiny space. I remember taking a Madrileno friend prior to dinner at nearby Zucca and after a swift but heated argument with the bartender on the best sherry on the menu and two plates of their heavenly croqueta, he happily declared it the equal of anywhere in Madrid.

Pizarro is a different level to the bustle of Jose. It's a significant step up in size for one, and though there's window seating and bar service, the majority of the covers occupy dark, masculine furniture evocative of a high end wine shop. We took a seat at the marble bar and eyed up the short menu.

While everything is available for sharing as you'd expect from the tapas king, there's a slightly more ordered approach here, with the menu broken up into small and large plates. We went for two of each, which arrived in that order, much in the manner of a starter and a main course…

As well as some of the divine jamon croquetas, we went with razor clams to start. Served in their shells with lashings of garlicky butter and sticky nuggets of chorizo to contrast with the soft flesh of the shellfish, they were perfectly well cooked if not quite to my taste, I traded the last one for another go on the croquetas, an outcome that suited both parties. Of the mains, we shared a slightly one dimensional if well conceived dish of roasted root vegetables and curdy but bland goats cheese. The other shared ‘main’ was as lovely a lump of roasted lamb as I've… More

With the current craze being for reservation free dining, unless you're actively surfing ahead of that zeitgeist or are prepared to huddle in the cold for 45 minutes minimum even for a table at 7, you'll be left wistfully wishing you'd got ‘it’ before Twitter did. New dining is about social support networks, and by the time you read about it in the old media, it's probably already jumped the shark.

Thankfully you don't have to try and corral your less cool friends into the latest reservation free pop up as the plethora of these has thankfully given you an excuse to revisit slightly quieter options that don't feature on the Twits radar.

Arbutus is one of these. Just off Soho Square, it's a clean contemporary dining room serving clean and contemporary seasonal Modern European food. They specialise in some of the biggest of flavours, put together with the lightest of touches. I start with a contender for best starter of the last few years; squid and mackrel ‘burger’. Infinitely better than it sounds, it's an absolutely joyous hockey puck of freshest seafood that absolutely hits the back of the net for me and my Cordon Bleu trained dining guest.

If you prefer dining out to involve a bit more effort on the part of the chef than just piling good ingredients on a plate then you'll be pleased. There's a real sense of craft demonstrated here that stops short of showing off.

Chef Demetre delights in multiple incarnations of ingredients in each dish, in this case rabbit for Cordon Bleu and tripe for me. To be honest, the portion sizes got a bit messy. I know offal is cheap but I literally have four large plates to plough through. Slow cooked as an enormous cassoulet on the side is marvellous melting and soft. Topped with crisp parsley crumb, a distinctive uric tang rises with the steam. It's not that, but the portion size that defeats me in the end.

Less successful is the small plate of slightly soft chewy crackling served alongside. It's a fatty afterthought that doesn't add… More

Whatever you do, don't turn up to Taiwanese institution Leong's Legend without all your party present… I'd have had a better reaction standing outside a school offering peeks at my etchings than having the temerity to arrive friendless at Leongs. On learning that my guest was running late I was made to stand on the staircase, like a chubby schoolboy waiting to see the headmaster, until she arrived. It may have slightly classier decor than other Chinatown joints but the welcome and service are reassuringly brusque.

We were there on recommendation for the weekend dim sum menu, I've become slightly obsessed by the dainty Oriental tapas of late. Once I'd persuaded them that I did have someone joining me and wasn't some sort of solo dining restaurant pest, I took advantage of my guest's tardiness and got my ordering on. She arrived as the food did (or possibly the other way round), my social pariah status at an end. At an average of £3-4 a plate, £25 will more than cover two hungry souls.

It was all fresh and seemingly home made, standout were their siu leung bau, or soup dumplings, steamed purses filled with piquant broth and a hunk of garlicky pork mince. There's nothing finer than taking one of these bad boys onto your spoon, biting the tip off and sucking the fresh hot salty liquor out. At £5.50 for eight pieces, they're also very, very good value and an acceptable lunch in their own right. The char sui bau are also excellent versions of the pillowy soft steamed BBQ buns filled with anunctuous porky sauce. We worked our way through a number of other steamed options and a portion of fresh turnip puffs. If I had one, tiny, criticism it would be that the noodle wrapper on the cheung fun was too thick and chewy but that's the only thing I could score them down for.

The menu goes wider than dim sum, and once you've got past the front door it's cleaner and friendlier than a number of other places along the strip. You wouldn't have a problem bringing clients or parents here and… More

China's ascendancy as a global power over recent years has done much to force and foster understanding of a massively diverse culture. Western diners have realised that there isn't just ‘Chinese’ food, in the same way as there isn't just ‘European’ food. Across the continent, there are tens and hundreds of regional variations in cooking style and ingredients, these are often broken down into 8 or so key cuisines and those further categorised into four very broad and general groups; Northern (Lu or Shangdong), Southern (Cantonese predominently), Western (Sichuan and Hunan both fall here) and Eastern (Yang or Huiyang after one of the main regions).

The problem you have with trying to categorise such diverse cuisines together is that obviously, and wonderfully, they just don't want to fit into your neat boxes. I love the idea of the four cuisines on a stage like a boy band; Sichuan, as the ‘kerazee’ Robbie Williams is spicy, punky and unpredictable, Cantonese Gary Barlow, gloopy and ubiquitous, for many years the only one that you'd find anywhere. Prissy Mark might match Huiyang, meticulously turned out, perfectly prepared and delicately flavoured, leaving Jason or Howard to stand in for Shandong's background soups, seafoods and, um, harmonising melodies. 

Going by this broad categorisation, you might worry that setting up a Hunanese restaurant round here would be like throwing an ultra spicy tattooed powerhouse into the refined part of Pimlico that sits just off Sloane Square and forcing them to hang out with bankers, diplomats or the wives and mothers of such. It's not ideal. 

Thankfully the joys of a generalisation (and particularly of my very stretchy analogy) are that you have plenty of room to work. Hunanese food is not the same as Sichuan. Not close. Despite the categorisation, the spice, where it is used, comes from the vinegary sour of pickle and ferment and not the numbing heat of the pepper. This doesn't mean that it's not hot at times, but the gulf in style is… More

Purveyors of allegedly the finest BBQ in London (not a great boast given the competition), Pitt Cue Co has built up similar levels of rabid support. Following a period slumming it Meatwagon style in a silver trailer on the Southbank, they've moved into a (slightly) more permanent space in the middle of Soho. Even at 6.30 on a Monday evening the queue is out of the door and round the corner for one of the 30 spaces in the tiny two-floor space. Luckily I'd sent Miss Jones on ahead to bag a spot on the waitlist.

The menu is perfunctory. Two meats, two ribs and a daily special with a few sides on one page, wines, cocktails and beers on the other page. Hipster credentials are established with the imported Pabst Blue Ribbon; PBR is gassily ubiquitous in Lower East Side and Williamsburg skinny-jeaned hangouts, and so very appropriate here given the early adopter clientele. The cocktail getting the airtime is the Pickleback, a shot of bourbon and pickle juice – better than it sounds and enough to give any junior advertising executive a few hairs on their chest…

Onto the meat. They really do know what they're doing here. Short rib of rich, aged, buttery Dexter and a half portion of exemplary moist pulled pork came with pickles and garlicky greens. Miss Jones took in the heavily sauced St Louis pork ribs and a large portion of beef brisket, slow cooked and sliced in thin slivers. Certainly the best BBQ I've had in London; though with the competition consisting of Sir Jamie's pricey and off the mark Barbecoa, the execrable Sticky Fingers and mid market hangover cure Bodeans, they didn't have to do much.

Certainly a deeply satisfying meal, we waddled out 90 minutes later, unrushed by the splendid staff. Stifling a meaty belch as we walked past the crowds waiting for their turn I couldn't help but think that, with the experience they were going to have, over an hour stood in the cold might be bearable again.