Czech and Slovak Club

(Officially Czechoslovak National House)
74 west end lane
West Hampstead
London NW6 2LX
+44 (0) 207 372 1193
(05-07-07)

One of the many things I love about London is the historical oddities that you find around town. Some are relics of empire or war and some are just there because there is an individualistic and oftentimes eccentric nation living here. The Czech and Slovak Club is definitely one of those oddities.

Apparently, it was founded as some sort of social/drinking club for Czech legionaries/mercenaries/free Czechs during WWII up in Holborn but moved to West Hampstead 1946. The move was cause by some ban on drinking beer that apparently existed in Holborn in 1946. Can’t imagine such a thing. When the legionnaires bought the club house they had the financial support of the former Czech president Benes (he put up £3000 a bucketload in those days) and his former bodyguard is still living in the club and works the bar at 90 years old.

The Club has survived WWII and Communism and is still cheerfully serving great Czeck beer and food to the local community of Czecks and Slovaks. I used to live no more than 500 meters away but only managed to visit after I moved away from West Hampstead. The bar is well worth visiting by itself as it has the best Pilsner Urquell and Budweiser Budvar on draft in London but the restaurant is really a unique thing.

Basically, the Czech and Slovak Club restaurant serves traditional central European cuisine that is heavy on the meat, sauerkraut and dumplings. So rollmops, pickled sausage and potato and bacon pancake for starters would be typical. Fried goose liver with onion & bread is simply brilliant. It is not foie gras but it is heartstoppingly rich and on the basis that you only live once I would make a special trip to risk my life with that one.

Main course include meatloaf, pork, beaf, duck, boar all roasted, fried, boiled and invariably served with sauerkraut or dumplings or preferably both. To ensure no one leaves without receiving their full complement of calories they then cover everything in a cream sauce. Some choice examples include:

• Beef goulash & dumplings (beef cooked with onion and spiced with red paprika and marjoram)
• Szegediner goulash & dumplings (pork cooked with sauerkraut and double cream, spiced with red paprika)
• Roasted beef tenderloin in blended cream and vegetable sauce & dumplings
• Roasted duck (leg) with sauerkraut & dumplings
• Roasted wild boar in cream sauce & side dish
• Stuffed breaded Wild boar with pork belly bacon, onion and garlic & side dish

Now these menu selections may sound terribly heavy but rest assured that the Czech and Slovak Club restaurant also serves vegetarian dishes. My favourite would be the ever so healthy “Langoš” that they describe as “deep fried dough topped with mayonnaise, grated cheddar, garlic and ketchup”.

I can for obvious reasons not eat at the club every night as I simply would not survive but I do think that for an occasional bout of excess they serve terribly good food. The menu descriptions also do not quite carry just how uncompromisingly they use cream and butter and other traditional ingredients.

For example, the wild boar in cream sauce and side dish (the only appropriate side dish being dumplings) is not just covered in cream sauce; it is covered in a carbonara style cream sauce. So cream, cheese and egg but dipping the dumplings in there is just perfect. The meat also was the kind you only get from someone who really understands about wild game. Strong tasting yet tender and cooked to perfection with just the right amount of pink.

We also had the other wild boar dish last time. It really consists of a large slice of belly bacon and fried onion between two large slices of wild boar covered in some think dough and deep-fried. It was extremely satisfying in a very overpowering kind of way.

We finished with a house speciality that really is uncompromising namely the “Apricot dumplings topped with butter, cinnamon icing sugar and whipped cream”. If there is such a thing as politically incorrect food this is it. The bloke who wrote “eat what you like and die like a man” would really approve. Now, a dumpling is water and flour mixed together and dumped in hot water to cook. Basically a vehicle for the tasty fat on your plate to travel to your mouth. So not dangerous at all as such.

What this dish consist of however, is a dumpling that’s been formed around an apricot. So far so good. They then glace it with cinnamon flavoured sugar, dump it on a deep dish and cover both the dumpling and dish with clarified butter. To finish off; a few large dollops of whipped cream. This really should not be as good as it is but I have to admit I love it.

The Czech and Slovak Club is a total anachronism in today’s health conscious world but I absolutely love the fact that they’ve survived to this day. It is also great value for money which is another aspect that you rarely encounter in London anymore.

La Petite Maison

54 Brook’s Mews,
Mayfair W1K 4EG
(27 July 2007)

This is an offshoot of a famous Nice restaurant that I’ve been to a couple of times in the past that just opened in London. Actually, I went there convinced it was an offshoot of a Brussels restaurant but it pretty quickly dawned on me that this had to be a Provencal restaurant. The space used to belong to a rather dreary Italian restaurant that managed the feet of being massively expensive without having anything worthwhile on the menu but stuffy staff aplenty.

I went without a reservation figuring that since it the place is new it would not be full. This being London, however, I could not have been more wrong. The place was absolutely full and buzzing with activity. We however, did get seated pretty quickly by the lovely Tamara the PR for the restaurant. We must have been looking particularly prosperous because she told us that she looks after VIP’s and should I need a table in the future I should call her.

The Restaurant is in an odd shaped corner space that actually works rather well for a restaurant because you walk in and the whole space opens up in front of you at a 90 degrees angle rather than at 180 degrees as is more normal. The dining room is also rather large and bright, painted cream coloured with very elaborate flower arrangements providing colour. All in all they have very successfully created a very Nicois feel to the place.

The concept of the place is European food served Asian style i.e. many small and large dishes to share. The food also ranges from very simple (fave beans and pecorino) to the opulent such as the blackleg chicken with fresh braised foie gras. There is also a satisfyingly large selection of dishes.

We had only three courses, namely:

1. Salad of broad beans (fave beans in French), basically broad beans, olive oil, salt, pepper and slices of pecorino. Works beautifully;
2. Baked Aubergine, shrimp and melted cheese: I don’t generally hold with cheese and seafood but I found this too intriguing not to try. It really works extremely well delicate flavours that are not at all drowned by the cheese as I had feared;
3. Blackleg chicken with fresh braised foie gras. I could not resist this dish even though it takes an hour to get it to your table, (I think they managed in 45 min but can’t be sure as I was not paying attention). Blackleg chicken is a French type of free range chicken that is let grow quite large and is exceptionally tasty. They marinate it in lemon before braising it for and hour in a heavy oven pan. That’s it, served with fried foie gras and Pommes Dauphinoises it really is to die for. The quantity was rather more than the two of us could handle as it could easily have fed four as long as none of them is my nephew.

I’ll be going back for dishes like: pissaladiere (caramelized onion tart topped with anchovies); Nicoise salad; sweet peppers in olive oil; stuffed Mediterranean vegetables; deep-fried baby squid; deep-fried courgette flowers, sage, with anchovies and onions; and warm prawns with olive oil, Carpaccio of Scallops… And they also have macaroni with summer truffles… actually I may have to go back tonight for that!

The best thing though, they serve Chateaux Rasque – La piece nouble! My absolute favourite Cote de Provence that I have every time I go to Bruno’s in Lorgue. You normally can’t find this wine outside of France or really outside of Provence but they have it in Mayfair!

To top everything off the service is also great provided by mostly young French people. How come that when you get good service in London it is always provided by French people.

VALENTINO SANTA MONICA

3115 Pico Boulevard
Santa Monica CA 90405
USA
(23 July 2007)

I was in California for business travelling with some real wine buffs who insisted we go to Valentino’s not for the food but for the wine list. They where rights of course as the wine list is not so much a list as a book. The restaurant has over 200,000 bottles in its cellar and when they drop the wine list in your lap it is quite intimidating. If they have a wine, they also have all notable vintages of that wine, so it is not enough to know the producer you need to know the vintage. Similarly, if they have the region they have all the notable producers… I just found this confusing.

In the end I settled for a Hofstatter, Pinot Nero Riserva S.Urbano 2000 from Alte Adige and a Voerzio Barolo Cerequio 1996. Choose both because they where pretty reasonable value for money (in a pricey list) and because I know the producers. I hate taking pot shots on wine when I’m with business associates.

The food was pretty decent too! I had summer truffle risotto that was as good as any I’ve ever had. Actually, it was amongst the best I’ve had to be fair. I also had a steak, fillet mignon, with a Balsamic reduction sauce. The beef was really good and perfectly prepared but the sauce was a real disappointment that ruined the whole dish for me. Basically, balsamic vinegar is a very popular ingredient that people tend to use in inappropriate ways.

AA137 London - LA (21-07-2007) Bus Class

Chateau Lynch-Moussas 2000 - Although this is one of the original 1855 chateaux it is an extremely unremarkable vine not bad though.

Smoked Sesame Salmon and Cucumber Roll "accented" by a Thai sweet Chili Sauce - cringeworthy that's how bad that was;
Salad of fresh seasonal greens and assorted fresh veggies olive oil and balsamic vinegar - very good;
Grilled Chicken Wrapped in Bacon - This really is the kind of rubbish that airlines used to serve in the '80. At least it was edible even if extremely uninteresting.
For snacks they served a pizza that was quite good but PIZZA. This is business class, my company paid something like $10k for the ticket and they serve PIZZA
Inferior seats, inferior food and battleaxes as stewardesses. As bad as I feared.

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Le Garcon Chinois

Hengshan Lu, Lane 9, no. 3
(15-07-2007)

This is the first Spanish – Vietnamese restaurant I’ve ever been too, or heard of for that matter. It is in an old, impossible to find, mansion in an alleyway off Hengshan Lu in the French Concession. You have to walk down the long alleyway that really does not fell like you should be there. The building, however, is absolutely charming and the white tablecloth service, wood panelling and low candlelight give a real sense of an old colonial lifestyle. There is also a really intimate bar that was full of punters on the night I went. All in all the atmosphere is what makes this place because the food really is nothing to write home about! The Tapas was ok, really suffered for some rather mediocre ingredients and the rest was good but not special.

Jade on 36

Pudon Shangri-La
Level 36, tower 2,
33 Fu Cheng Lu,
Pudong, Shanghai 200120
(12-07-2007)

I had never heard of Paul Pairet the chef of Jade on 36 but apparently I should have. He’s not only been making waves for over 20 years in Hong Kong, Sidney, Paris and Istanbul he’s almost as good as Heston at the Fat Duck. This is “Cuisine Moleculaire” at its best and not only my best meal in Shanghai it is one of the best meals ever.

It also does not harm at all that the meal is eaten in the splendid surroundings of the 36^th floor of the Shangri-La hotel. Very futuristic design (by a certain Adam D. Tihany who apparently I should have heard of) and stunning views over the city of tomorrow as the Shanghaiese like to refer to their city.

We went for the full experience by taking the biggest menu and the Chef’s recommended manner of experiencing his food. The range of food, however, is such that you’d need to several visits and similar sized menus to have sampled Mr. Pairet’s full repertoire.

Jade XL Menu

Tuna & Yellowtail
Dandelion Sashimi

Good start but not very memorable;

Foie Gras
Passion-Choco Foie Gras Opera

This dish really set the bar for the rest of the menu to beat. Really counterintuitive but basically the classic opera cake (chocolate, chocolate ganace, coffee foam and almond pastry) with the chocolate replaced by foie gras except for a layer of cocoa powder over passion fruit gel. Served with toasted brioche, simply sensational.

Bread
Truffle Burnt Soup Bread

Toasted whole wheat bread poached in soup Meuniere covered with Chinese black truffle, truffle oil and meunier foam. With burnt bread butter what ever that is. Good fun very unusual taste.

Duck a l’Orange Sunny Side Up
Lemmon & Coconut Roast Duck

This dish is almost ridiculously funny. Basically, roast duck served with an “egg” where the egg white is made of coconut foam and yoke is made of orange juice for an egg sunny side up. They add asparagus, fava beans and green pea purée for a perfect breakfast!

Jumbo Shrimp
Jumbo Shrimp Citrus Jar

Jumbo Shrimp stewed in a kilner jar with its own juices, lemongrass and orange juice for about 45 minutes. Supposedly, this is the chef’s most famous and oldest creation and it has been celebrated in loads of publications. I can see why, this is the kind of dish that you just don’t want to finish, it is that good.

Black Cod
Black Cod Hong Kong

Not the classic black cod of Nobu fame rather a steamed affair in a kind of sous vide type technique. The cod is put into a heat-proof bag with what they call Cantonese-style soy sauce, orange and butter. This soy is made of soy, sesame oil, star anise and truffle oil; not sure how Cantonese that is but no complaints as it was very good. I feel a little churlish to say this but this dish that was merely good, hardly up to the standards of the rest of the fare.

Beef Short Rib
Rib Teriyaki

Beef rib cut right back so that about 10 cm of meat remain in the middle with the rest of the rib totally clean. Braised for twelve hours, lacquered with a teriyaki glaze, served with fried garlic, truffle mash and orange reduction. There really is no way of explaining just how good that was. My mouth still waters at the thought.

Lemon
Lemon & Lemon Tart

Candy a whole lemon, remove the pulp and replace with lemon sorbet, lemon curd and vanilla Chantilly serve with lemon sablee. This was definitely another oh my god moment.

Mango
Mango, Liquorice, Dill

Mango, some sort of liquorice gel, syrupy dill… very good mango but with everything else I needed to remember this one is a little vague.

Brandy & Cigars because in Communist China they don’t have fascist rules forbidding private landlords from allowing their guest to smoke.

BA168 Shanghai - London 17-07-07 Club Class

Pouilly-Fume les Pierres Blanches 2005, Domiane Masson-Blondelet
Very good crisp chardonay I don't know the Domaine but I love the appelation.
.
Chateau Arnauld 2004, Cru Bourgeois Haut Medoc.
Nothing wrong with this Haut Medoc, deep red mostly Merlot with some Cap Franc and Petit Verdot mixed in if memory serves but BA was serving it too cold.

This is a twelve hour daytime flight so we had two meals. For lunch I had:

Hot Smoked salmon, with cucumber salad and wasabi dressing
This was very good, and at the right temperature for once. The trick with hot smoking fatty fish like salmon is not to overdo it which makes the fish salty. This one was perfectly smoked and the wasabi and cucumber combination was just the right kind of light touch that was needed.

Mark Edwards' halibut in black bean sauce, bock choy and egg fried rice
(Mark Edwards is part of the BA culinary council and the say he's "specialist on Asian inspired cuisine, London")
Basically slices of fish in some sort of fairly heavy dough fried and reheated until you just could not decide wich was worse the oilyness of the dough or the dead dryness of the fish. I find the pride that BA attaches to its Culinary Council very ironic considering the utter crap they produce.

I never take the dessert on BA as I've never had anything resembling eatable desserts with the airline.

For what BA calls a Light Meal I had:

Parma Ham, grilled goat's cheese and basil salad

Basically a very good idea for an airline dish. Get the logistics right and this is very easy to handle dish that copes well with waiting while refridgerated. BA however was quite cabable of turning this into a disaster. The parma ham should have been thin slices of reasonable quality but where instead slabs of some horrid cheap ham. You really had to work at chewing this stuff and any pensioners with fake teeth could have forgotten about it. The goat's cheese did not look grilled it looked and tasted like it had been caught in a fire. The final insult; the basil salad was three completely vilted leaves of basil!

Sweet & Sour Pork with shiitake mushrooms and steamed rice
This dish was so unspeakably bad that only comparison with school food or possibly '80's vintage Russian airline food would capture how dreadful it was. Even the rice was uneatable.

Selection of fruit
At last one thing they got right

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ZEN Restaurant

House 2
South Block Xintiandi Lane
123 Xinye Lu (by Madang Lu)
(12-07-2007)

Very little to report. Xintiandi is a kind of amusement park for urban tourism where a couple of block of houses build to resemble "old" Shanghai. Old Shanghai of course never looked this good but the place is actually very nice despite looking like it could be anywhere in the world. Basically, row upon row of restaurants from around the world, cafes, bars and loads of shops.

Zen was the type of Chinese that you can find in most European cities now a days. Basic Chinese food interspersed with a few new ideas and a cool sparse interior. Food was mostly very unmemorable although we did have a very good Crispy soft shell crab with peppercorn salt. Main was a steamed grouper with garlic and ginger that was good but not memorable.

Lost Heaven

38 Gao You Road
Shanghai, China,
(11-07-2007)

For dinner last night we went to this Yunnan restaurant which appears to be primarily attended by expats as there where very few locals around. That said the place was quite smart and service was pretty good too. Lost Heaven specialises in the food of the peoples living along the ancient Tea Horses Trail (Cha Ma Gu Dao) or so they claim themselves. My understanding is that this trade route ran through Yunnan up into the mountains to Tibet, Burma, Laos and Vietnam. Consequently, the food is a mixture of Burmese, Yunnan, Vietnamese and minority cuisine from groups with names like Dai, Bai and Miao.

If you know Burmese cuisine much of the offering will infact appear extremely familiar with a few new things thrown in. In any case we had:

1. Mandalay fish cakes with a sweet and soure type sauce, OK, let down by the strong taste of the local water i.e. you could taste the clorine;
2. Prawn Cakes with Salty egg yolk and Yunnan ham. This turned out to be a prawn toast with a topping of extremely salty egg of some sort and a dried local ham. Extremely good.
3. Burmese Curry vegetables – good, not much more to be said about it thoug;
4. Ancient Road Sausages – this was a type of dried pork sausage fried up on oil. Extremely tasty competes favourably with any dried sausage I've tried;
5. Dai style fish with ginger – a great dish. Basically some dished local fish stewed in a ginger curry.

We had Italian Pinot Grigio with the meal with was perfect even if I doubt the Dai & Bai villagers have ever herd of it!

M on the Bund

7/F, No. 5 The Bund (at Guangdong Lu)
Shanghai 200002 China
(08-07-2007)

One of my goals in visiting Shanghai is to eat in Jean-Georges Vongerichten's restaurant 3 on the Bund. So I made reservations for 21.00hrs Sunday night for me and my friend Per. There was just one problem the actual entrance is on Guang Dong Lu on the corner with the Bund and naturally that was too difficult for me.

We walked down from the Westin Hotel along the West side of Guang Dong Lu until we came to what looked exactly like the entrance for a top class restaurant. I was a little confused but it looked exactly like what I was expecting i.e. grand old building with different restaurants on each floor. So I asked the doorman if this was where Jean-Georges was, to which he responded "yes it's on the 7^th floor".

Which is how I found myself eating at M on the Bund which as you will notice is not the same as Jean-Georges Vongerichten! I can be such a clueless idiot sometimes. I even had a very good opportunity to rectify the situation when they did not in fact have a reservation for us but before my feeling of unease got critical the Maitre D took the situation in hand and declared it was probably just language difficulty and found us a seat.

Jean-Georges by the way is on the East site of Guang Dong Lu roughly 10 meters away from the entrance to M.

Now this was not necessarily a total disaster as I was very much aware that M on the Bund was a highly rated restaurant (yes another reason why I really should have caught on) so I actually wanted to go there. The experience was mixed however. Service was pretty good although I had the feeling they where hurrying us along. The setting, atop an old art deco building with a unobstructed view of the futuristic Pudong skyline, was magnificent. The food however was uneven. We ordered:

1. Pan-fried foie gras with pomegranate molasses and dressed cress, served with toasted brioche on the side for Rnb 138.00 (£9 or so);
2. Mandarin beluga caviar on a warm crepe Parmentier, which we like best, or with Melba toast and crème fraiche Rnb198.00 (£13);
3. And both of us had for main what they call "Our famous salt encased slowly baked selected leg of lamb, newly partnered for Spring with a warm salad of asparagus, morels, and roasted roots, dressed with lemon, parsley and capers" for Rnb218.00 (£14.5);
4. Om Ali - Egyptian filo pastries filled with fruits and nuts, served with spiced cream and spiced ice-cream for Rnb 78.00 (£5);
5. 'Tarte Tatin' - Bernard's adaptation of the French sisters's tart, topped with a scoop of vanilla bean ice-cream for Rnb 86.00 (£6);

The foie gras was OK. It was somewhat undercooked and the pomegranate was way to strong for the taste of the liver. The dressed cress went some way towards making up for the pomegranate but overall this dish was a disappointment.

I have no idea what Mandarin Beluga Caviar is but NOT beluga caviar comes to mind. Whatever it is, it is barely better than lump fish roe but I suppose the price should have warned me off. However the rest of the dish in no way made up for the quality of the caviar. The crepe Parmentier was quite good but three time thicker than it needed to be and therefore the dominating taste. The crème fraiche was tasty but very liquid; this is not a good thing for cream to be eaten with caviar. Overall, a complete failure of a dish.

The lamb was the highlight of the meal. Perfectly cooked, perfectly matched with all the sides and quite deserving of whatever fame it has garnered. This really is a dish that could carry a restaurant by itself. Quite heavy for the temperature outside but what the heck.

Om Ali – totally nondescript, not bad but I really can't muster any enthusiasm for this dish. I did not taste the Tart Tatin but Per liked it. I was very sceptical at the speed with which it appeared however. I recon the only way to get a Tart Tatin to the table in the time they did is to nuke it which is really not kosher for a restaurant like this.

We had some pretty good wines with dinner, we started with a perfectly good Vouvrey Sec for around Rnb600 (£40) and a Pinot Noir, Domaine Drouhin, Oregon 2002, at Rnb1200 (£80) with the lamb. Oregon pinots are impossible to get outside the US and always overpriced when you do find them but I could not resist this one as I have found memories of it at a dinner in Seattle with Boeing. It is 14% but has the body of a 11% wine which gives it a unique bouquet that is perfect with a stewed meat like the salt encase lamb.

I guess I'll be going to Jean-Georges later!

Shanghai Day 3

The culinary experience in Shanghai so far is mixed but I'm having fun with it partially because I keep having language related incidents.

The first day I stepped into a local eatery chosen at random where they had English language menus but the staff did not speak any English. This resulted in me ordering two soups (won ton and a bamboo sprout and roast duck noodle soup) which was already funny. What was even funnier though was the fact that both soups came in portions that where apparently intended to feed a family of twelve. I must have looked hilarious sitting there fat and happy with enough food in front of me to feed a small village. In any case the won tons where very good but the broth they came in hardly tasted of anything. The duck soup was inedible. I remember meat soups from my childhood that where terrifyingly bad due to having been made from extremely fatty lamb. There would be a layer of fat floating on top of the soup and lamb fat was all it tasted of. This duck soup was exactly like that except that apparently they had let the duck go rancid first for added effect.

The evening was much better as I went with two friends to a Vietnamese restaurant called Foreign Culture Club (889, Julu Lu/By Changshu Lu. Bldg.11-12) that was quite an experience both because the food was great but also because of the surroundings. The FCC is located in an old colonial mansion in the French Concession. The restaurant has a patisserie, a med restaurant, and a H2O bar (servers bottled water from all around the world) and a modern Vietnamese which is where I ate. The food was modern versions of classic Vietnamese food so beef in tomato curry was served on a baguette not with rice which worked a treat. Other great dishes included Grilled Eggplant with Scallion Oil and Soy Sauce a very light and tasty dish and superb light cold egg rolls.

For lunch on Friday I had a noodle soup in a hole in the wall where no one spoke any English. It was the sort of place where pointing did not help as the menu (on the wall only) was in Chinese but I was saved by a patron who while he did not speak English did understand basics such as soup and noodle and pork. That is also exactly what I had a pretty thin soup with loads of noodle and nondescript pork.

Dinner on Friday was quite an adventure as I was out drinking cocktails and me and my allegedly Chinese speaking friend did not start looking for restaurants until late. So late in fact that most restaurants had closed in the neighbourhood we where in. As a consequence we ended up in a Xinxhuan restaurant that most definitely does not cater to tourists as they had no English speaking staff and the menus where in Chinese. Per ordered fried shrimp, stir fried beef and rice in his Chinese. I term his command of the Chinese language alleged because what we got was frog legs, some completely unrecognisable meat (most definitely not beef of any quality I've encountered before) and fried Chinese broccoli. Both the meat and frogs where in great big heaps with about equal quantity diced fried chilly. We where hungry so we ate all of it and apart from the morning after effects of all the chilli the food was not bad at all.

Saturday, I had lunch at the Westin hotel, where I'm staying, at a restaurant called EEST that offers Thai, Japanese and Cantonese food all in one neat package. They hype themselves as Shanghai's best Asian restaurant and have gotten some pretty good reviews. My experience suggest that they owe more to their corporate background that any desire to gain Michelin stars. I had tempura prawns, grilled miso blackened cod and vegetable fried rice of which the rice was the best dish. The prawns would have been good because they where using very light batter where it not for the old oil that they where using. Anyone who's ever tasted fish and chips in a chippy that does not get the need to change the frying oil regularly will know the taste.

The only problem with the cod was that it was neither grilled cod nor blackened cod. It was somewhere in between and it did not work either way. Rice was good though!

Dinner Saturday, anther Xinxhuan but this time apart from ordering way too much food we had a pretty good experience. The highlight was deep fried mutton with vinegar dipping sauce very unusual but quite good. Again loads of chilly.

BA 169 London – Shanghai, Fist Class (04-07-07)

Sancerre Edmond 2003, Alphonse Mellot

A very fine Sancerre, very dry yet still fruity.

Chablis Grand Cru Bougros, Cote Bouguerots, 2004, Domaine William Fevre,

Good call to start with the Sancerre as this was a much bigger wine, very dry and crisp. You don't really go wrong with a Chablish Grand Cru.

Chateau Beychevelle 1996, Grand Cru Classe Saint-Julien,

I am a huge fan of Chateau Beychevelle and 1996 was one of their best years. BA must have bought a huge proportion of the production though as they are serving it everywhere. Saint-Julien is, as the smallest of the Medoc wines, a bit of a boutique appellation but produces great full bodied and very high tannin wine. Mostly Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot 20% and Cabernet Franc 10% if memory serves. Full marks to BA for this wine.

Shaun Hill's Loch Fyne, Smoked Salmon Tartare
(Owner – Chef at The Glasshouse, Worcester, England)

This was barely edible due to being barely above freezing. I have no idea what it is with BA they assemble a very grandly named BA Culinary Council stuffed with some of the great and good of the industry but they can not get a basic logistic like serving the food at the correct temperature right. I've had frozen salads and cold steak on BA flights. I don't think the idea of a cold salmon tartare was necessarily a bad idea and the sour cream dressing was not bad at all, but no good frozen.

Catch of the day – pan fried bream with colcannon mash, broccoli, and turned carrots.

The bream and the mash very quite good but the veggies where just overcooked veggies that added nothing. Actually, given how piss poor the logistics where on the salad I am impressed with the fish.

BA really needs to update its first class offering. The seats or pods are still amongst the best in the industry and the service is impeccable but the rest of the product is way behind. The wine is only ok, the food is substandard and the IFE is two generations behind even the business class offering of most major airlines (ok not US Airlines, who appear to have given up competing at the top of the market). The new Club Class IFE is a generation behind but in First they offer a tiny screen, nothing on demand and quite frankly most of the time it is broken anyway. This is at a price that is just about the highest in the industry.

Moscow Restaurants

My brother is going to Moscow and called to get restaurant recommendations. In the two years I spent going back and forth to Moscow I ate in a lot of very good restaurants and every time I go there I discover new great places. The scene really is exploding as if people are trying to make up for 70 years of communist drabness and dreadful food.

Below are a few of my favorites:

1 Red Square
(Russian/Czarist recreation)

This restaurant on top of the Natural History Museum is worthwhile for the view alone. North side of the Red Square over to the Kremlin and St Basil’s, not bad at all. I’ve been there a number of times and particularly like the Milk-fed veal with fried chanterelles and the Pork brisket. They also make something called a koulebiaka which is sturgeon blended with rice, cream, and spices, baked in a flaky pastry. Quite an astonishing dish.

Cafe Pushkin
(Russian/Czarist recreation)
26a Tverskoi Bulvar

I love Café Pushkin it is almost certainly my favourite in Moscow. It is the sort of pretentious, pointless place that only Moscow does well. Supposedly the restaurant is a recreation of what dinner was like at the Czarist court in the 18^th century. Sure if really large sideburns where a dominant feature. Pushkin is a bit of an amusement park but the food is very good and so is the service. It is also open 24 hours a day so you can show up there at 4 in the morning and have pirozhki with some seriously scary types. I prefer the café downstairs to the formal dining rooms upstairs and if the whether is cooperating then the roof top garden is great.

Café Pushkin is a good place to have caviar and blinis, the fish soup ukha and grilled sturgeon. Anything vaguely gameish such as smoked quail and tongue and onion is done to perfection. I once had something that they called filorett or something to that effect which was meat, eggplant and tomato gratinated with cheese and very yummy.

Drink vodka, they have a very impressive selection.

Genatsvale
(Georgian)
Kropotkinskaya

Moscow is full of very good Georgian restaurants but I particularly like Genatsvale. It is load, big and very original. Veal shashlick, hachapuri (a pie filled with salted cheese), harcho (a goulash like beef stew) and anything that they roast or fry and cover in sauce is good. Last time I went they way load speakers going that where very unpleasant but they atmosphere is great non the less with huge tables full of very drunk parties doing endless toasts.

Noah's Ark
(Armenian)
Maly Ivanovsky per. 7-9/1

This place is a bit like Café Pushkin in that it is an attempt at creating some vision of a past that never existed. A really palatial place in a sort of faux antiquity style. Food does not disappoint, however. I don’t really know Armenian cuisine well enough to know the names of stuff but shashliks, tolma in grape leaves, mutton kebabs are the sort of thing you would expect.

Cheese
(Italian)
16 Sadovaya-Samotechnaya street

It may appear a bit pointless to seek out Italian restaurants in Moscow but they actually have some of the Italians I’ve visited. My absolute favourite is Cheese. I find the décor irresistibly funny – the ground floor is decorated to resemble the inside of a cheese – and they do some of the best simple pasta I’ve had. Last time I started with a truffle pasta, which to be fair was very expensive, that had more truffle in it than I’ve ever seen in one dish. The pasta itself was fresh and had only just been made. The only other ingredient was butter... I also had a rather large and perfectly cooked veal chop.

Cantinetta Antinori
(Italian)
20 Denezhny Pereulok

I think this place belongs to the same restaurateur as Cheese but unlike Cheese it is done in a very elegant and unpretentious manner. I particularly like the very intimate upstairs dining room. Everything really is very good at this restaurant although I particularly remember the octopus in red vine sauce.

Verre Dubai

Hilton Hotel Dubai Creek,
(17 June 2007)

This is Gordon Ramsay’s effort in Dubai. I vent there with business partners for Sunday dinner. I found the setting in a glass box on the mezz floor of the Hilton Dubai Creek a bit cold but at least the food and service where pure Ramsay.

I had:

• Yellow fin tuna two ways – marinated then seared and carpaccio with pickled white radish, soy dressing: no complaint here. While this was not exactly an inspired dish it was very good and since I knew the main course would be heavy a liked the lightness of touch that went into preparing it.
• Slow cooked pork belly, creamed Puy lentils, black pudding and pan-fried foie gras with braising jus: I have no idea what the foie gras was doing there other than justify the price but the rest was magnificent. It really is difficult to mess up slow cooked pork belly but this one was particularly good and the puy lentils and black pudding worked a treat.

Basically, another great Ramsay restaurant.

Emirates First Class Dubai - London

Corton-Charlemagne
Domaine Bonneau du Martay 1991

There really is no way for this service to go but down. That wine is by some distance the best I've ever had on a plane.

Chateau Palmer
Grand Cru Classe de Margaux 1997

Unbelivable, BA may have lost a client!

Iranian Caviar
Served with traditional accompaniment
Not exactly russian beluga but very good nontheless.

Arabic style braised lamb shank - couscous roasted vegetables, pine nuts... Mutch better than expected. Meat was moist and slightly undercooked for a braised lamb shank but very good. I have no idea why BA can't pull that.

Cheese selection

Not bad at all although it is mostly the quality of the vines that impressed
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The Queens Head & Artichoke

30-32 Albany Street
Regents Park
London, NW1 4EA
Tel. 020 7916 6206
(13-06-07)

This is a very new and nice gastro pub in the Regent’s Park area just off Great Portland Street station. I went with some friends who where staying in a nearby hotel. It is a restored Victorian pub that looks exactly like a page from the IKEA Gastro Pub Guide but nevertheless manages to be very pleasant.

The menu is split in two, an extensive tapas menu with a Middle Eastern flavour and a traditional 3 course type menu. For starters we had tapas selections of treated fish and meats that were correct but there where individual tapas on the menu that sounded much more exiting. For example the Jar of foie gras with granary toast and Muscat grapes is actually something I want to go back for.

For mains most of us went for the Rainbow trout, baby vegetable ragout, lemon & almond butter. This was a very satisfying dish that I could have every day. We also tried the Crayfish & avocado tian, mousseline, rosemary crouton and chicken & foie gras boudin blanc with spinach. Both where good, not great, but sufficiently simple that you could eat there everyday.

I’m going back for the spring lamb cutlet, neck & leg, rosemary polenta, olive jus. That just sounds like a winner.

Washed it down with a red duero Portugal. I’ve never had this before but was very happy with it.

Arbutus

Frith Street
London W1D 3JW
(31-05-07)

“Arbutus is a genus of flowering plants in the family Ericaceae, native to warm temperate regions of the Mediterranean, western Europe, and North America” – Wikipedia

I realise that is becoming harder and harder to come up with an original name for a restaurant but you really have to wonder if a random number generator was involved in selecting ARBUTUS! No doubt the two founders of Arbutus have some suitably clever story for how this name came to be chosen but it does seem terribly naff to me.

In any case I took a date there last Saturday and was quite pleased with the restaurant. I had been there for lunch and wanted to try the full dinner experience. The space is U shaped around a central stairwell so you do not get a feeling for how big the restaurant is rather it is quite private and you only see a half dozen or so tables. She found the décor rather cold and impersonal but then she’s a creative type whereas I liked the décor but then I’m an analyst type.

Service was attentive and unlike so many London restaurants they where not constantly trying to fill our vine glasses up to the rim. This may sound a bit ridiculous but I am really annoyed at the fact that London waiting staff rarely knows how to pour vine.

In deference of her dislike of food that looks back at you I decided against having the braised pig head for witch the restaurant has become famous. Instead we had:

• Crab Salad with garlic mayo that she pronounced excellent;
• Smoked eel with beetroot and beetroot horseradish cream that was an absolutely brilliant combination.
• Bavette of beef with potatoes dauphinois and red vine shallot sauce – ordered medium definitely came rare and judging by the amount left over not to her liking despite her protestations that it was very good;
• Saddle of rabbit, shoulder cottage pie and braised shallots – this really was excellent, the boneless saddle was perfectly cooked moist and tasty and the cottage pie really could have stood on its own it was that good;
• Selection of cheeses: Nothing much to report although the Alderwood was excellent;

All accompanied by Gevrey-Chambertin, Cuve Ostrea, Domain Trapet 2004, one of my all time favourite vines which did not disappoint.

A taste of Pisces

Piesces is a restaurant in the Madinat Jumeirah resort in Dubai; it is only one of 28 restaurants in the resort and my first dining experience. Below is their tasting menu.

I am treating myself as I am once again stuck in a foreign country by myself on a Saturday night. My meetings have gone well but I'm still alone for dinner and I must say that it's a bummer that we and the Middle East can't agree on when is weekend. So I'm planning to compensate by overindulcing on good food. Ten years ago I would have had a burger and hit the nightlife until I found company but I can not be bloody bothered anymore.

So here goes:

Apple wood smoked Salmon with White aspargus mousse, truffled quail egg and beluga caviar:

I'm afraid this one goes into the "trying way too hard" category. The basic problemn here is that it is a good idea let down by crap ingredients. You would need propper wild salmon to make this one work because farmed salmon is just too fatty and tasteless to carry a dish like this. That being said the mousse and quails eggs where excellent it is just that the whole thing did not work. There was beluga as well but I don't think two fish eggs really count as an ingredient so including them in the description was just a tad misleading.

Pan roasted scallop with Lobster sausage and white aspargus tarragon emulsion:

Now this was a truly inspirational dish although I'm not entirely sure why they lead off with the scallop as the main ingredients. Not that it was'nt perfectly coocked it is just that it was the lobster sausage and the sauce that made this dish. I have no idea how you make lobster sausage and not ruin the meat. They however clearly do because the sausage was as good as fresh lobster except crispy on the outside which added a je-ne-sais-pas-quais that I've never had before. The sauce was basically a liquid aspargus mousse heavily flavored with tarragon. But boy what a combination.

They also served the dish with a kiwi gewustraminer that was both excellent and very complementary to the tarragon sauce... Something to keep in mind gewustraminer and tarragon.

White grape sorbet and apple jelli as pallet clenser; very nice.

Confit of grey snapper with White aspargus risotto, king crab ravioli and lemmon beurre blanc:

I expected this dish to be way busy but in fact everything worked perfectly together. Maybe the crab was a little overwelmed but that is small change compared to a perfectly executed dish. The snapper was freesh and just right i.e. firm bust still moist. The risotto was al dente and the rather gentle taste of the aspargus very much apparent. Lemmon beurre blanc; what an idea to dump that on top of everything else but one that paid off handsomly. Possibly at the cost of drowning out the crab but this is actually a dish I"ll remember for a long time.

Pre dessert of strawberry icecream and vanilla mousse. Sounds good but because the mousse was actually made from yogurt it was great. Mmh

White chocolate mousse vanilla poached aspargus and rasberry sorbet.

Very good but I won't remember it next week

Espresso...

... Have to go to bed.

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Dubai

I spent all of last week in Dubai in meetings with bankers and other business partners. Although, the place looks like it sprung up mushroom like out of the dessert I am overall extremely impressed with the quality of what I found. I stayed at the Emirates Towers which is just about the nicest “business” hotel I’ve ever stayed at. The only hotels I’ve visited that beat the Emirates Towers on comfort and service are old style Grand Hotels such as the Oriental Bangkok and Plaza Athene in Paris. In addition to great quality the place has a buzz about it as does all of Dubai that you get in dynamic places.

There is also a huge amount of kitsch going on. Dubai is the sort of place that would really have liked the ’80 and the ’80 would have liked it back. The buildings are not built for practicality they are built to show up one neighbour. And since you and your neighbour are likely oil sheiks there are some magnificently pointless buildings going up. Same goes for the malls, which are magnificent, they are massive and every conceivable luxury brand is present as is every conceivable trendy seller of jeans and T shirts. There is simply no way that the relatively small population of Dubai shops enough to keep all of these shops going. I suspect that a lot of shops have been set up by franchisees that can afford to loose $$$ on the venture.

I also vent to the most massively kitsch ’80 party ever held. It was the launch of the Pallazzo Versage Dubai i.e. the developers where inviting potential investors for a party to draw attention to the latest luxury development in Dubai. Nothing special about that except that the MC was Cindy Crawford (still absolutely yummy although she’s a big girl) and the DJ was Boy George (also a big girl). The decorations where a mixture of commercial material for the Pallazzo and displays of Versage’s most outrageous designs in dresses. Tell me, what could possibly be more ’80 than, Versage dresses, a supermodel made rich and famous for being pretty and a coke snorting cross dresser!

In any case this is my food blog. The food in Dubai was uniformly good and in some cases great. The best meal I had was actually at a private house. We where invited to dinner at the house of some wealthy Iranians who put up a traditional Iranian meal all made in house. Unfortunately they also served copious quantities of wine so there will be no lengthy descriptions of the grub as I don’t really remember in sufficient detail. Basically, traditional Iranian food but unusually good.

I also went to a chop house, a Chinese dim sum place, a Japanese yakitory place, an Indian curry house, an Iranian restaurant and the Buddha Bar Dubai. The chop house was called The Chop House and served a perfect veal chop with some lovely pinot noir. What I call a perfect veal chop basically means caramelised on the outside and pink in the centre. They did that. All of the rest where good but not fab except the food at Buddha Bar which was much better than what you get at the original in Paris. The Buddha Bar Dubai is also much, much bigger than its Parisian parent.

I’m staying at the Mina A' Salam hotel when I go back to Dubai on Friday. It is from the same Jumeirah chain as the Emirates Towers but apparently more of a tourist destination. The hotel describes itself thus:

“Nestled on the shores of the Arabian Gulf, Mina A' Salam is the 'harbour of peace' - and gateway to Madinat Jumeirah, The Arabian Resort of Dubai. Offering a unique escape into a world rich in culture and faithful to time honoured values, Mina A' Salam is a grand boutique hotel of exquisite style”.

I am rather looking forward to this!

Menu Sunday 29 April 2007

1. Caviar Versailles
2. Portobello Truffle Soup
3. Brandade aux Mojo Rojo
4. Red Deer W/Polenta Fontina
5. Chocolate Nemesis;

I used the last of my Russia caviar loot make Caviar Versailles as per menu on 24/02/07. I will have to bribe some of my Russky friends to restock me. This is still the best way of serving caviar. I don’t care if the blini and cream and scrambled egg and charlotte are more traditional this is simply unbeatable. It is also just under a trillion calories per bite so not to be had often.

I skipped the vodka this time served with champagne.

The Portobello Truffle Soup is an invention of mine that I am not too happy with but which my guests liked a lot so it can’t be totally useless. Basically, you make chicken stock by simmering chicken pieces (brown and white meat), garlic, bouquet garni, an onion, carrots and whatever else is going off in your veggie drawer for about 1.5 hours. For six people you will need about a litre of stock.

When the stock is ready, put the liquid through a sieve, throw away the vegetables and all but about 100gr of chicken meat. Put the chicken and stock into a blender and whiz up until the chicken is totally obliterated put aside.

While the stock is simmering chop and fry about one Portobello per person in olive oil. When the mushrooms are done, in about 10 min, put about 80% of them in the blender with a single black truffle. Whiz up until the mushrooms are quite finely chopped but not a mush. Add to the stock with the remaining mushrooms.

Just before serving add about 50 - 100 ml of double cream and if you are feeling generous another black truffle finely sliced.

At this point we changed to Planeta a Sicilian chardonnay that I’m partial to.

I made a basic Brandade, see below, added a couple of tablespoons worth of double cream and filled one ramekin per person. I then covered the Brandade with parmesan cheese and heated in an oven with convection and the grill on at about 200 degrees. When the olive oil starts to bubble the Brandade is ready. Cover with Mojo Rojo… This really is a fantastic combination that will reappear on other menus.

The Polenta I made from about 200 grams of polenta as per instructions on the packet but instead of adding butter at the last moment I melted about 50 grams of Fontina cheese into the polenta. I then poured the polenta into a square oven proof form and let it set for 30 minutes. 15 minutes before serving the meat I put the polenta into the oven under the grill at 200 degrees.

To make the sauce I first made stock from the bones of the red deer. Essentially, I make it like any other stock. You start by grilling the bones with a bit of oil and then boil the hell out of it with veggies and herbs. I thickened the sauce with a bit of maisana before working about 50 grams of Fontina into about 300 ml of sauce.

The Red Deer was shot by my friend James somewhere near the Scottish border a few months ago and froze it after aging it a bit. What I was serving was the back fillet cut into about 1.5 cm steaks. I seasoned the meat with salt and pepper and flash fried in a very hot pan for just one minute per side. This is just about as good as red meat gets. It is extremely tender, gamey in a very delicate manner and just fantastic. I would compare this to any of the speciality beef types such as Kobe.

Served with Frans Haaz 2004, a pinot noir from Alte Aldige that is excellent with game.

The Chocolate Nemesis is taken straight from the River Café cookbook and consists solely of chocolate, butter, sugar and eggs. The recipe goes as follows:

Ingredients:

1. 675g dark chocolate (70% cocoa);
2. 450g unsalted butter;
3. 10 eggs;
4. 675g caster sugar;
5. Crème fraiche or mascarpone, to serve. It is also quite good to whip up some yogurt with honey as a somewhat healthy alternative.

Preparations:

• Beat the eggs with 1/3 of the sugar, until the quantity quadruples;
• Dissolve the remaining sugar into a syrup with hot water. You really need to make sure that enough of the water has evaporated so that you have syrup. Too much water and the cake won’t settle;
• Place the chocolate and butter into the syrup, and combine over heat;
• Allow to cool slightly before adding the chocolate syrup to the eggs;
• Pour into a cake tin, and bake for 40-60 minutes in a bainmarie;
• Allow to set completely before turning out. Serves 10-12;

The cake is astonishing. It has no redeeming features other than being just incredibly good.

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