Sabrina's Passions' Reviews

Ok, the decor is beyond cheesy and the music is very '70's American supermarket'… But this place is the daddy of all Vietnamese restaurants. The menu is pretty large with lots of different choices, with a huge selection of starters and mains. Special mention to the Mien Tay spring rolls that are simply put, incredible, the papaya salad with dry beef is also absolutely superb along with salt and pepper garlic squid.

We ordered several mains (way too many, as it turns out) including beef with rice paper wraps, which are a spicy, lemongrass infused mixture of minced beef with thin sticky rice paper sheets and assorted herbs and vegetables so you can make your own rolls. A whole seabass deep fried topped with chilli, garlic and coriander is moist and delicate in flavour. We also ordered some Chinese-style crispy fried seafood noodles, which were ok, but couldnt remotely touch the authentic Vietnamese dishes on offer.

After all we ate, I thought the bill would probably come to around 70 quid, but no… I gasped to see it came to just 40! What a total bargain. If anything, it gives you EVEN more reason to eat here. The staff are lovely, the service is great… I don't live near Battersea, but nothing will stop me from coming back to this fabulous little gem of a Vietnamese restaurant… It beats all the Kingsland Road Vietnamese eateries, 100 times over. It is simply the best Vietnamese food I have evere had, outside of Vietnam!

It is early days yet, but Nuno Mendes' ‘Viajante’ venture shows promising signs of becoming THE new culinary destination for foodies in London. The quirky bar's decor is a cross between a 60's boarding school interior, with odd retro wooden armchairs and wooden bench-couches with grey upholstery and an airport lounge. It all makes for a very amusing bar experience, the drinks menu is dotted with signature cocktails as well as classic Portuguese ‘Super Bock’ beer and some excellent wines to boot.

Viajante's dining room is quite ‘pretty’, with class-room like wood panels, blue ‘lace-effect’ walls, twee little bowls of spring flowers adorning every table and cherry blossom arrangements dotted around the place. We are literally sat at the best table in the house in front of the ‘open kitchen’. There are 3 menus to choose from… 6, 9 & 12-Course menus. We are told we can see the menu, although they would prefer for us to be surprised. Interesting. We take their advice and place our trust in them and see what comes out.

Amuse Bouches are served in quick succession starting with toasted crostini topped with black olive and romesco sauce, freshly baked mini baguettes with a sublime ‘brown butter’ chicken skin and lardons, ‘Thai Explosion’ of mini sandwiches of toasted bread with chicken skin, filled with shredded confit'd chicken, coconut milk, chillies and coriander – which were absolutely incredible…and lastly ‘Smokey aubergine’ paste, served almost like Baklava between sheets of crisp filo pastry topped with pistachio nuts, accompanying a mini glass filled with a gelee of consomme layered on top of a soya milk gelee.

Our first course is a signature dish of Chef Mendes'… ‘Squid tartare with pickled radishes, samphire & frozen squid ink jus’. The squid ink jus resembles a black granita and is packed with flavour. The raw squid is milky and chewy but in the most unique and moreish way, paired with radishes for crunch, the dish is a triumph as a first course. The next course of… More

Arrive after 12:15pm and you can expect to wait up to 30 minutes some days, but the truth is, if you have the time, it is a meal worth waiting for. Packed with mostly male City suits and banking types, with the occasional women thrown in for good measure, the City branch of this world famous formula of restaurants is just the thing the Square Mile seemed to be missing.

The concept is simple, with just a single item on the menu, a simple green salad with walnuts and vinaigrette, followed by a straight forward Entrecote steak with bottomless quantities of proper ‘Frites’ and an oozily unctuous ‘secret sauce’ that is the real star of the show. A rich butter sauce, made with herbs and absolutely stacks of garlic, which when drizzled over your steak and fries, is absolutely heavenly. Don't make the mistake of eating here when you aren't really hungry, because with two rounds of meat and as many fries as you can gorge yourself on, this really isn't ‘Nouvelle Cuisine’. Great value, it has to be said, with a fixed price of just £19.50 per person.

For the brave among you who manage to continue on to eat more, the desserts are really the stuff of dreams. They are famous for the incredibly naughty stack of delightful little profiteroles, filled with vanilla ice cream (rather than cream) and bathed in the most sinful dark chocolate sauce you could ever imagine. They are also do some wonderful cheeses and wines, so i ask you, what's not to like?

The only warning I would give is for Vegetarians. This is NOT a restaurant for you. We did once take a vegetarian colleague with us to lunch here and hilariously she had a small plate of cheese with endless fries. Cheese and chips at £19.50? Erm, I think even the non-veggies among us would pass!

I can't understand why more people don't rate this wonderful gem of a French Brasserie, located in Old Spitalfields Market. Every visit I have ever made has always confirmed my belief that it's one of the best spots for Brasserie style French food. A lovely menu which is generous in content, featuring fabulous seafood, monstrously delicious Cote du Boeuf served almost ceremoniously with loud cries of “Cote du Boeuf! Cote du Boeuf!”, it is also one of the best places in London to get an authentic steak tartare, made in front of you, the correct way using diced piece of fillet steak. A fantastically whiffy cheese trolley just brimming with creamy delights to suit all cheese lovers is wheeled over to tease you and desserts are suitably delicious with classic Creme Brulee and an incredibly rich Chocolate Mousse. Wine selection is also excellent with one of the few top British Sommeliers, Donald Edwards working there, it's a great place for wine lovers. They also do lots of fab little wine/cheese/speciality food tasting dinners. Value is always reasonable and service is as you would expect in any French restaurant, good, efficient and although a little slow sometimes, they are very good with remembering your face and making you feel valued. A great little find.

On the site of the shortly-lived ‘Keelung’ – like a Phoenix from the ashes, arises The Empress of Sichuan, one of the most exciting Chinese eateries to hit town for a very long time. With classic Sichuan cuisine dominating the menu, this is most definitely not your normal garden-variety Chinese restaurant. Delicious and interesting offerings of ‘Shadow lantern beef’ – chewy beef strips bathed in a spicy-sweet dressing with added chillis for a real kick, do so much to awaken my palate. Meltingly tender lamb skewers marinated in a cumin-based spice mix are delicious also. The highlight for me was, put simply, the best damned bowl of ‘Dan Dan’ noodles I have ever had. A clear and spicy broth, laden with generous quantities of delicious noodles and spicy sauteed minced pork, an absolute winner. The menu is enormous, which often has the tendency to worry me, but if the few dishes that I chose were anything to go by, then The Empress of Sic huan won't go the same way as it's predecessor and like Chinese proverbs say, will have and long and prosperous future.