Richard's Reviews

Maybe going to a Hunan restaurant, a cuisine renown for the liberal use of both red and green chillies, the night after an evening of sizzling lamb chops at Tayyabs was not the smartest of moves. That said, nothing was going to move me from a dish of Chilli Chicken: a big bowl of red chillies with nuggets of chicken hidden amongst them. A sort of extra-hot lucky dip.

Ba Shan seems to divide critics, who either say that it is not hot and spicy enough, not authentic enough or just not very good. Well I cannot judge the authenticity, but it is certainly as good a restaurant as I have ever been to in China. It also, very authentically for many a restaurant in Asia, has a menu with pictures of the dishes. For a China ignoramus like me, this helps. As did going with somebody who has travelled extensively in the region, although he did confess that we had chosen badly, with too many sweet dishes and not enough hot ones.

As well as the aforementioned chicken dish, we had a lovely cold starter of spinach with sesame sauce, some delicately spiced scallop with green chillies and fish flavoured aubergine. We went for this latter not only as I like the vegetable (yes, I know it is technically a fruit, but usage is everything), but also because the name of the dish reminded me of the Monty Python voiceover sketch, where the Bishop of Leicester declares that a certain beer that he is advertising is “the mighty lager, with the world's first great taste of fish!”. I confess, I wouldn't have picked the fish flavour out, but it was as nice a vegetable dish as I've had in a Chinese restaurant for a while. I also like things deep fried, so, whilst I would normally eschew any tofu dish, deep fry it and I’ll partake. As I did here, with a dish that was just too sweet for my taste.

The room is small, the service friendly and the quality far higher than the majority of the Chinese restaurants in Soho/Chinatown.

Antipodeans – check

Flat White – check

Bare floors – check

Cool location – er, no.

Hang on – I've written this review before: yes, Leather Lane, so beloved of fashion conscious TOWIE girls, now has not one but two fantastic coffee shops run by our friends down under. They might not be able to play cricket, but the Aussies (and Kiwis) can certainly make a damn fine cup of Java: to prove it, the 2009 Barista of the Year award (a golden group handle) hangs proudly from the wall.

The space is not so achingly hip as Leather Lane’s other Coffee-Shop-Run-By-Antipodes, the Department of Coffee and Social affairs, but has a bigger, lighter feel to it. The art is less trendy, the walls have plaster on them, but otherwise they are much the same. Service is friendly, not to say a little chaotic, and the food stuffs are of the cake and pastry variety. There are also shelves of every conceivable implement for making coffee, from your basic plastic filter holder to a vast array of tampers, spatulas and even brushes, to dust any stray grinds off.

Tapas bars in Spain are that: bars. In the UK, we tend to think of them as destination restaurants (think the very excellent Fino). Maybe this is why there have been so many people let down by Tapas Brindisa which is, after all, pretty authentically Spanish.

It has a bar complete with stools. It has bustle. The cutlery comes in old pepper tins. You cannot book, but you can sit outside on the pavement. In fact all it lacks is rows of hams hanging from the ceiling, gently oozing fat into those white plastic cones to make it properly Spanish. I am guessing that there is a health and safety issue with this, although it doesn’t seem to have overly harmed our Iberian colleagues.

The food is basic tapas, like jamon (we had the selection of Serrano, Iberica and Bellota, all very pleasant, growing in strength from left to right), which came with the obligatory tomato bread. There was also piping hot ham croquettes and some spicy chorizo on toast. Nothing special, nothing outstanding. Just good honest tapas in a nice friendly bar. Sort of what tapas should be, yet in this country rarely is.

Were there to be a complaint, it would be the price. It is not that the food is any more expensive than, say, Fino, it is just that Fino is a real destination restaurant and Tapas Brindisa is a real tapas bar. That cannot be right: £30 a head for what was a light snack is just plain wrong. Far better to save your pennies and go to Seville: start in the old town behind the Alcazar and just wander. Stand at the bar. Sup a cruzcampo here, taste a tapas there; each bar has a speciality that brings people in, so just follow the locals. A bit like a Spaniard coming to London and doing a pub crawl.

Looking at Viajente’s website, I thought that I was going to hate the restaurant. It is full of that pretentious crap that curators insist on putting next to a picture in a gallery. You know, that sort of: “the artist was trying to show, through the subject’s nudity, the essential frailness of life; her fragility, yet hidden resolve”. Bollocks: he wanted to paint a girl with no clothes on. Nuno apparently wandered around a bit on some quest for enlightenment and interesting things to cook, all explained in flowery twaddle.

Whatever the myriad annoyances with the website, the restaurant is terrific: imaginative, inventive, achingly cool and stuck on Cambridge Heath Road, opposite the Probation Service and Bethnal Green & Bow Labour Party HQ. It is not, as advertised on that sodding website, on Patriot Square, for the simple reason that there is no such address. I know this as not only did the cabbie not know of its existence but, as he said: “it’s not on Google Maps”. The Knowledge be damned: if it’s not on Google Maps, It Does Not Exist.

Once found we were whisked into the dining room. This is split into two sections, the one that we were lucky enough to be seated in also containing the kitchen, where there seemed to be but three chefs, unhurriedly, unfussily going about their task. Actually “containing” doesn’t do the room justice: about half of the room has seats and the other is the kitchen. I am pretty sure that one of the chefs was Nuno himself, but I didn’t want to ask, just in case he actually spoke like the website is written.

From being seated and with a bottle of pink fizz opened, the dishes came thick and fast. Before the first of the six real dishes, we had six amuse bouche. Yes. Six. It sounds as though that is taking things a bit far, but each was half a mouthful no more. In fact, what with one of the amuse bouches and one of the real dishes each coming in two parts, and the obligatory pre-desert and petit fours, there were actually 16 different servings. I… More

When you think of things that have come out of Iceland (Vikings, toxic debt, volcanic ash, Björk) none of them are particularly pleasant. If you were to extend this theme to food, it would be a similar result: the national dish involves putrid shark and they have a penchant for puffin and whale. So why on earth would you want to go to a restaurant that’s USP is that the chef is Icelandic?

The answer is that it is really rather good. Actually, scratch that: it is really very good. Very, very good.

Texture is pretty much a local for me, yet this was only my second visit since it opened three or four years back. Having been inspired by a trip to the champagne bar here a few weeks back, however, we took the plunge late on a Saturday night, post open air theatre. For the life of me, I cannot work out why it has taken me so long to return to dine.

The dining room, reached via the relaxing champagne bar, is a high ceilinged affair, with wine displayed in racks along two sides, one dividing the dining area from the bar, the other half-masking the area where the meals are assembled. It doesn’t have the hush of many a Michelin anointed establishment, being very laid back; an approach matched by the (uniformly fantastic) staff, who were relaxed and friendly, helpfully suggesting certain dishes (which we ignored) and interesting wine (which we went along with).

Food should always be the main point of a restaurant, but everything around the food (the service, the atmosphere, the wine) can elevate good food to great, just as easily as great food to rubbish (thank you Gidleigh Park). I cannot think of a better restaurant that I have been to in London for a long time. It is up there with Hibiscus, the Ledbury, the Square and even everyone’s 2011 darling: Diner by Heston B.

The amuse bouche was a pea and mint affair, with the first of the evening’s “snows”. We’ve had smears, foams and other affectations posing as The Next Big Thing, but (other than at Noma), I don’t think I’ve had snow… More

I don’t understand why so many people dislike the area that Fergus Henderson has chosen to house his new palace to things porcine. I have fond memories of student nights spent wandering around Leicester Square; burger and chips at Maxwells, failing to blag our way into the Wag Club, or a late night insult or several from the kindly waiting staff at Won Kei. My wife even remembers the height of sophistication that, as a student, was afforded by the Angus Steak House. This latter is clearly still the place to go, as it proudly informs all tourists and others not in the know that it has been voted best steak in London! When? By whom? A drunken bunch of students twenty years ago? Ah yes, well sorry about that.

No, forget the smell of fat mingling with spun sugar; forget the hordes of mid-teen European students in identikit slack trousers and reversed baseball caps, there is a certain faded charm, a la recherché du temp perdu, as Proust may or may not have been moved to say, about the whole area.

Being an outpost of St John, it is not difficult to guess what awaits. Everything is white. The walls are white, the floor is white, the aprons on the staff are, you’ve guessed it: white. The bar is on the first floor or, as the receptionist said: “that way” pointing vaguely away from where she was standing. Now I have read many things about Mr Henderson, but I never knew that he was a pedant: the lift was out of order. Instead of the patronising, apology for “any” inconvenience (you know “British Rail would like to apologise for the late running of the 17.05 to Manchester which will now depart at 23.59 and terminate in Plymouth and for any inconvenience that this may cause”), the note on the lift politely apologised for “the” inconvenience caused by this mishap. Bravo. I knew immediately that this was my kind of place.

OK, so the bar maybe takes the white austere thing to a level too far; “it’s like one of those hotel rooms that Lenny Henry advertises”, was my wife’s view. Harsh that… More

To misquote ex Galactic President Beeblebrox, this place is so hip it has difficulty seeing over its own pelvis; so cool you could keep a side of meat in it for a month. Just the place for three middle age suits to hang out, pretending not to gawp at the local attractions, tottering in their Jimmies and Loubs.

I’m old enough to remember when this part of Clerkenwell was a desert, grub- and watering- wise, which isn’t that old. Then His Royal Highness, King Fergus, opened St Johns, the Jerusalem Tavern followed a few years later, then Match. Now you can’t swing a cat without hitting a restaurant, bar or feeding-/watering- hole of some sort. None is so cool as Bruno’s Bistro.

The room is nothing special, although you can enter through the sub-zero entrance that is the Zetter Hotel, so as to prepare yourself for the wafting jazz-funk that envelopes the room. The kitchen is small and open, so that you can see BL at work, with his small brigade, and the large windows mean that the whole place feels light and airy, even when pretty full.

Starters were standard bistro style, with boudin blanc with peas and lettuce being especially good: a light, sausage shaped chicken mousse, offset by the richness of the peas upon which it perched.

One of our number knows BL, so we got a nice little in between course, a pre-main if you will: soft duck egg with parmesan. Heavenly. What with amuse bouches and pre-deserts, I really hope the idea of a pre-main doesn't catch on in more Michelin aspirational places.

The mains too were terrific, with the quail and broad beans and bunny wrapped in bacon, smeared with carrot puree, standing out. I am pretty sure that the waitress had told us that the special pasta was lamb’s sweetbreads, but the dish came with artichoke. No real matter, it was excellent anyway.

I am not usually a desert man, but I was told that the chocolate with caramel was excellent, and so it proved. Honestly, however, the salty chocolate caramel truffles at Magdalen are a step… More

The question of whether any sequel is better than the original is one that plagues film buffs. Yes, the Godfather Part II is certainly up there with the Godfather and arguably Rocky 2 is better than the original, but Godfather Part III or, heaven forbid, Rocky 4. Spare me both.

So how does Russell Norman Part IV hold up? Has he jumped the shark?

No.

It is perhaps a little unfair to compare Polpo with either Polpetto or Spuntino, as all are really quite different in style. Da Polpo, on the other hand, is essentially a remake of Polpo, with the same styling and a very similar menu, but transported from bustling Soho to bustling Covent Garden. I had the joy of trying Polpo one day and Da Polpo the next, so can give a good feel for how they compare. And they are very comparable, although this time with subtle differences.

DP has the same distressed feel, same bare wire lights and same laid back feel as P, but some things have changed. Clearly when opening P, Mr Normand couldn’t afford matching tables and chairs. I kinda liked that. Now, eighteen months and four restaurants later, at DP he can, so they do.

The menus too compare, with dishes and wines being the same on each, but with some at DP that are new, and with a range of pizzetta beyond the blanco that you get in P. Prices too are beyond fair, wine comes by the glass, carafe (both small and large) and bottle and the staff all friendly: no set uniforms here, adding to the atmospheric nature of the place.

We went for the soft opening, so food was half price. It also meant that the team wasn’t operating at full capacity, with tables left empty for far longer than will be the case once fully open. That isn’t a complaint mind, as I was happy to wait, cocktail in hand, for the table to be deemed ready for us.

And when we were ushered to our seat, the formula from each of P,P&S is repeated: no set starters or mains, but bite size dishes then meat, fish and veg options, all similar sizes and all brought as cooked. Without… More