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Ahhhhhh Devon. *gulps in a huge lungful of air* beautiful verdant lush Devon. Land of cream, custard, cider and the beast of Exmoor. (Not necessarily in that order). I loves it, at least I do now. I’d never been there until just a few weeks back. Being from Essex, which, geography fans is the complete opposite side of the country, almost the entire South West of the UK was a complete mystery to me, just names on a map. But now, I’m gradually filling in the blanks and *wise knowing look* I can say things like, ‘Devon knows how they make it so creamy’, with the most complete and utmost conviction.
Errr…yeah….anyway…
I was recently given the opportunity to get my arse to Devon, for a look around the farm of vegetable box purveyors, Riverford Organic (Which, I might add, was incredibly impressive if you like swaying fields of beautiful organic vegetables, rolling countryside and the heady strident whiff of farmyard animal shit). But what I want to talk about is their restaurant, or ‘Field Kitchen’, which is slap bang in the middle of the farm and, for the most part uses the organic produce that is grown in the surrounding fields. It won an Observer Food Monthly award in 2010 for Best Ethical Restaurant. I’ve quite fancied a visit for some time.
‘E’ and I arrived in Devon separately from the other invited bloggers and hacks making their way over from London, who were scheduled to arrive much later that evening. So when we were offered dinner at the Field Kitchen while we waited, it wasn’t too taxing a decision to accept.
The restaurant itself is a surprisingly modern stand-alone building, with something of a Scandinavian look about it. It’s nestled in a natural bowl in the surrounding landscape. ‘E’ and I made our way down the steps, through a herb garden to the entrance, intrigued by what we would find inside.
The Field Kitchen turned out to be a large, high ceilinged room with an open plan kitchen at one end, and communal tables and benches throughout. Interestingly, for us, as we run The Montpelier Basement supper club along the same lines, you sit at a table with strangers and the food is served on shared platters which are then passed around the table by your fellow diners. It was interesting to experience this from the ‘punters’ view for a change. It works well and encourages strangers to chat and interact with each other.
The menu itself, written up on a chalkboard, is set – apart from desserts (More about that later).
On the night we visited, the menu read as follows…
Antipasti to share
Hot smoked salmon, dill, beetroot and roasted buckwheat
Potatoes in a bag with wet garlic and thyme
Broad beans, lentils, spring onions and mint
Spring greens and red pepper sauce
Spinach gratin
And a vegetarian option of Tomato and courgette parcel
I don’t know about you, but that reads like a cracking menu – perhaps it could do with a bit more meat, but for £26.50 a person….Hello.
‘E’ and I took our places at our bench and almost instantly fell into conversation with the two lovely women who were sitting immediately next to us. We waved and introduced ourselves to the rest of the table. It turns out, a surprising number of the table were veggies, ‘more meat for me’ thought I.
The food started to appear from the kitchen thick and fast, antipasti of homemade bread, sliced meats, crab bakes, shrimp & potato blini, cheese panzarotte and a selection of dips, olives and pickled mushrooms. The crab bakes in particular were bloody delicious.
I immediately sensed competiveness with a couple of the guests further down the table; they were a bit ‘grabby’ and seemed intent on ‘getting their fair share’. Which in one sense was kind of ridiculous as there was so much food…but I also kind of understand. I readily admit to having something of a voracious wolf like glint in my eye where it comes to eating, perhaps they realised this. Perhaps they eyed my predatory ‘eating build’, my just a second too long hungry glances at the arriving platters or perhaps my custom made- over-sized cutlery that I often produce from under the table when I’m competing for grub. They were right to fear me. I’d eat it all; mine, theirs, yours and I’d wash it down with their booze…any booze in fact, given half the chance. But for now I affected shocked and polite indignation for the benefit of my fellow guests at the grabby couple’s amateur posturing, whilst muttering meaningless platitudes such as ‘Anyone want the last one of these?’ as the aforementioned item was already halfway into my gob.
More and more food arrived; all of it piled high, most of it obviously grown in the surrounding fields, beautifully presented in a nice rustic fashion and all of it bloody good. There was more than enough to go around, even with a stomach on legs like me seated one side of the table, and an almost equally scary consumer of food in the shape of ‘E’ seated on the other side.
Finally, when even we, ‘Team Guts’ were declining the last few bits and pieces and shifting uncomfortably in our seats trying to balance the extra weight, the waiter arrived to usher each table one at a time over to the kitchen counter where a whole selection of desserts were assembled to select from. Trifles, tarts and puddings. Custard or cream. It was all here, present and correct.
Knowing that the head chef, Jane Baxter had previously worked at the River Café, and spying their infamous Chocolate Nemesis amongst the puddings on offer, (The recipe for this in the River Café cookbook is notorious, as it doesn’t work), I had to go for that, as I’d never seen it done properly. It was bloody superb, but so rich it almost send me spiralling into a staggering mumbling food delirium.
At this point, our taxi arrived to whisk us away and not a moment too soon. I was stuffed silly, and not a little drunk.
Myself and ‘E’ had a cracking time. It was a lovely evening with some fine company, a lot of booze and some excellent food. And at that price, it’s a complete bargain.
Amazingly, it didn’t end there.
The next day, after our scheduled tour of the Riverford Organic farm with our fellow bloggers and some professional hacks, hosted by the surprisingly affable owner, Guy Watson, we were ushered back to the Field Kitchen for lunch.
The other tables were full already with paying customers and once again, the lunch we had was exactly the same as what they ate.
Happily, this time the menu contained some meat;
Roast and confit duck with turnips
New potatoes cooked in a bag with wet garlic and thyme
Roast asparagus, rocket, pistachio and orange
Spinach gratin
Spring greens, red pepper dressing
Broad beans, lentils and spring onions
Another cracking menu, and this time, as it was lunch – an even more bargainous (and rather strangely priced) £19.90
Exactly the same format as the previous evening, shared benches, huge platters of beautiful organic rustic food. Absolutely belting.
The ‘school dinner queue’ format for puddings was also the same. Once again I engaged my sly and cunning brain to help me make a selection. Knowing that the head chef, Jane, who as well as working at the River Cafe had also worked at The Carved Angel in Dartmouth, which used to be famed for their sticky toffee puddings, that’s what I went for. Jackpot! Quite possibly the best sticky toffee pudding I’ve ever eaten, and I like to think that I’ve eaten a hell of a lot to compare against.
So, there you have it. Dinner and lunch at the same restaurant, and absolutely cracking both times.
Both ‘E’ and I really enjoyed it. The communal seating and shared platter format adds a great deal to the experience. The prices are ridiculously cheap when you consider the quality of the produce and how much of it you actually get to eat (Even if you’re competing with people like me). The food is plentiful, seasonal and really quite lovely. If you’re in the area, the Field Kitchen is something of a must visit.
I don’t think I’ve ever written about a free meal on the blog before. I’ve been offered a few, but have rarely accepted them, mainly because it’s hard to write about something you’ve been given for free – your objectivity is called into question if extra care, attention and dishes are lavished upon you, making the experience you may have had entirely unlike the meal an average punter would stump up for. Therefore, I thought long and hard before writing these meals up, but at the end of the day, it was quite obvious that the dinner and subsequent lunch we had was exactly the same as the paying diners. The communal nature of the field kitchen experience ensured this. So, in this case, I don’t really have problem writing about it.
Riverford Field Kitchen
Buckfastleigh,
Devon
TQ11 0JU
Telephone: 01803 762074
http://www.riverford.co.uk/restaurant
P.S.
‘E’ has a copy of the rather superb new Riverfood Farm cookbook ‘Everday and Sunday’, which has been signed by both Guy Watson and head chef, Jane Baxter, to give away on her blog.
I used to work in Camden. Well, that’s what I used to say when I was infrequently asked where my sometime office was located. The elicited response was more often than not ‘”I love Camden”. But really I knew it was telling a bit of a fib. My office lair wasn’t in the funky, rough and ready, but in parts surprisingly genteel Camden that most people know. No. I was based in a strange arse-backwards, unglamorous netherworld between St Pancras and Camden. Bordered on four sides by a former tropical disease hospital/coroners court, a Travis Perkins, a veterinary college and a strangely anonymous Ted Baker office, (save from it being somewhat bizarrely decorated by a giant red lobster). It was precisely 20 minutes walk, in any direction, from anywhere of use, and I hated it. Bitterly mourning my exile from the much more central and cool Clerkenwell site every single day.
Where am I going with this? Well. For years, on the long walk to work, I used to pass through the gigantic building site that was St Pancras, and wonder what would become of the derelict former Midland Grand Hotel. An absolutely beautiful and sprawling gothic construction designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, which in it’s heyday, during the late Victorian period was considered one of ‘the’ places to be seen. It finally closed in the 1930s, due in part to a completely Victorian lack of newly fangled central heating and plumbing, (300 fireplaces had to be constantly supplied with coal) and the rooms, which had been designed without bathrooms required a chambermaid to fill and wheel a bath into a guest’s room at the ring of a bell, while an army of servants were employed to discreetly dispose of chamberpots.
Whilst passing every day, I gazed at this boarded up relic and thought how amazing it would be to see it re-opened and how incredible it would be to have a great restaurant on the site. (One thing St Pancras/Kings Cross truly lacks is a really decent restaurant).
Well, no one was more surprised than me to hear that just a couple of years later, The Midland Grand has been completely refurbished, and has re-opened as The St Pancras Renaissance London Hotel and Marcus Wareing has opened a new restaurant on the site, named after the hotel’s architect ‘The Gilbert Scott’.
Hallelujah!
In something of a surprising move, considering Marcus Wareing’s classic French, Michelin starred restaurant background, The Gilbert Scott’s menu is resoundingly British, but with a bit of an historical slant. Unusual long forgotten British dishes feature heavily. Victorian culinary stalwarts, Mrs Beeton and Eliza Acton would no doubt approve.
I’ve been gagging to visit, and when I found I was going to be back in London earlier this week, I booked a table straight away.
Arriving for lunch, it seemed strange to be entering a building that has been off limits for so long. Following signs for the restaurant, ‘E’ and I gasped at the incredible Victorian gothic interior, rich crimsons and golds, heavy elaborately carved stone archways, beautifully tiled floors and intricately painted ceilings. As is often the case with many grand Victorian buildings, it has something of the hushed calm of a cathedral about it.
The dining room of The Gilbert Scott itself is absolutely gorgeous. Flooded with natural light from the large windows running down one side of the curved room and decorated mainly in mustard yellow, flanked by polished limestone pillars and with crimson leather banquettes, the former Midland Grand Hotel dining and coffee room has come up an absolute treat. In fact, it may quite possibly be one of the most beautiful dining rooms in London. It has the air of a grand Parisian bistro about it, but with a definite British feel.
Idly munching on some rather nice bread and butter (particularly the caraway seed), and glancing down the menu, my first thought was how well it reads in it’s simplicity and it’s seasonality. It’s without a doubt the most British menu I’ve ever seen, and somehow it makes me extremely proud to see so many cracking, but often overlooked, or in some cases, entirely forgotten, dishes on a fine dining menu. The whole thing actually hangs together surprisingly well.
Acting on a recommendation, I started off with a bowl of Quail Mulligatawny, decorated with onion rings. I’ll say this right from the start. Quail and me have never got on. In fact, it features in one of the worst dishes I’ve ever eaten. Basically, I’ve never eaten a decent quail dish ever. But this was something else. A revelation, sweet curry spice and the most delicate crunch from the onion rings, with incredibly moist and tasty pieces of quail at the bottom. It was superb. The first truly great quail dish I’ve ever eaten. The only problem I had was a brief flustered moment when deciding which cutlery to employ to eat it. (For the record; spoon, then knife and fork for the bird, and finally my fingers to pick at the bones…you cant take me anywhere).
‘E’ also having been tipped off by a friend, ordered the rather royally titled Queen Anne’s Artichoke Tart. It was a beautifully presented dish. I managed to duck in and pinch a taste, and it was bloody gorgeous. Creamy and rich, infused through with the vegetal green subtlety of globe artichoke. Chalk this up as a massive success.
Dorset Jugged Steak followed. Consisting of braised featherblade, pork dumplings, port and redcurrant jelly it was presented as a massive lump of meat, topped with more meat in the shape of the pork dumplings, surrounded by a glistening slick of port and redcurrant gravy. I heartily endorse meat on meat action and was actually grinning like a madman as I took my first bite. Bloody hell. Imagine the richest stickiest, tastiest beef stew you’ve ever tasted. That’s the closest comparison I can think of. I absolutely loved it. Combined with a side dish of colcannon made with a possible nod to the Joel Robuchon School of creamy spuddage. I was transfixed.
Meanwhile, ‘E’ was admiring the incredibly even and neat herb, lemon and nutmeg crust on her dish of seatrout, another blast from this nations forgotten culinary past, Tweed Kettle. A strikingly beautiful looking plate of food. It was an extremely well cooked and executed dish with top-drawer ingredients but perhaps lacked something of the expected eccentricity that such an unusually named dish conjures up.
My pudding of an incredibly moist and sticky Eccles cake paired with Cheddar cheese ice-cream was exceptional. The puff pastry exterior was syrupy sweet, almost in a baklava style and the fruit filling was rich and heavily spiced. I was intrigued by how the ice-cream would taste, It seemed to be more like a honey flavoured ice-cream topped with cheddar cheese shards rather than tasting of cheese throughout. In any case, the whole thing was frigging awesome.
‘E’ had gone down the less traditional route and ordered warm chocolate in a pot, with cornflakes, topped with a dollop of mascarpone. She thought it incredibly rich, almost like the gooey interior of a chocolate fondant, but combined with the crunch of the cornflake topping and the sweetness balanced by the tartness of the mascarpone. Her opinion, delicious.
Perhaps cheekily, as it was right in the middle of the lunch service, we asked for, and were happily given, a kitchen tour. We were led downstairs to the surprisingly spacious, immaculately brand new kitchen and spied Marcus Wareing himself working on the pass. It’s incredibly interesting to watch a respected chef at full tilt and it was immediately obvious how entirely focused he was on the job in hand. A couple of things struck me. The first was how incredibly quiet and calm the kitchen was. No shouting at all. Secondly, and perhaps more oddly, Marcus Wareing looked like he was wearing some rather expensive grey trousers, the sort that might partner a suit and not the kind you’d cook in.
Tour over, we headed upstairs to settle the bill, but at the suggestion of our host decided instead to order coffee and drink it in the bar.
Bloody hell.
The Bar is beautiful. Full Stop. It’s an almost cathedral like space, with large windows at each end allowing the light to slowly play across the daytime shadow of the room. The ceiling is painted, huge gilded archways lead back to the restaurant. It’s a fantastic space, which somehow puts me in mind of an Italian or perhaps Turkish palace.
Our coffee was served from a rather nice proper set, which led us to think ‘Hello, how much is this going to cost then?’
I had three cups, and upon checking the bill, it was £3. That’s right…an almost laughable three pounds! So, hanging out in St Pancras? Heading to Paris on the Eurostar? Laugh in the face of the coffee chains and their stupid paper cups, head here and act like you’re a Victorian Lady or Gentleman. Read your broadsheet, drink coffee served to you by smartly clad waiters from a proper service in an absolutely gorgeous room. What a frigging bargain. I really can’t think of anywhere nicer to hang out if you’ve got time to kill.
So, in conclusion I liked The Gilbert Scott a hell of a lot. The menu is endlessly fascinating to me. There are British dishes here no one has seen on a menu for probably a hundred years. It seems, at least from what we ate, that Marcus Wareing has refrained from tarting them up too much, and they are, more or less, the original honest dishes, just made with exceptional ingredients and skill. The restaurant itself is absolutely gorgeous, and housed in the most incredible building. The superb bar is the icing on a cake. I’m so excited to see a fine dining British restaurant with a big name chef, attached to a railway station. The last time we had anything remotely like this in Britain, was probably when Queen Victoria was on the throne.
Price wise, lunch for two came to £106, that includes a glass of wine each, coffees and a tip. Which all things considered, isn’t bad at all. Although £4 of the total was a cover charge, which on top of the 12.5% service is kind of taking the piss.
Nevertheless, The Gilbert Scott is cracking, and certainly lives up to the weight of expectation from being housed in such a grand setting. I’ll certainly be eating there again.
The Gilbert Scott
St Pancras
London
NW1 2AR
Telephone: 020 7278 3888
http://www.thegilbertscott.co.uk
For the last few weeks, I’ve been hearing things. Snatches here, snippets there. The Star & Dove gastropub located in Bristol’s Totterdown area has re-opened. People who know about food have eaten there, and the rumours reaching my delicate shell-likes seemingly confirm that it’s pretty good.
Gastropubs, I love em. I like the informality and the rustic food. I like being positively encouraged to drink pints of beer with my meal. Basically the sum of all a gastropubs parts appeals to my inner Essex peasant. So, I’d vowed to myself (in a somewhat admittedly over elaborate ceremony, involving chanting and farm animals) that as soon as I got the chance, I’d be hotfooting it over to Totterdown with all the single-minded determination of a cruise missile.
Monday was that day. Rolling out of bed with nothing planned, no demands expected, and not a thought in my mungus brain other than the half formed idea that it might be nice to stuff my gullet with tasty things, I suddenly remembered The Star & Dove.
Easily persuading ‘E’ to accompany me, whom as luck might have it, was enjoying a scheduled day off. We hurriedly got ready and it wasn’t long before we were both striding purposefully through the centre of Bristol, Southward bound.
Geographically, Totterdown is South of the river which runs through the centre of the city and therefore to my mind, somehow equates to ‘Sarf of the river’ in London. This also means that, to me, it’s a somewhat mystifying and unexplored part of Bristol, and my mental map has it marked with ‘There be dragons here’.
Luckily the Star & Dove isn’t too far into this heathen wilderness, and it wasn’t long before we were rocking up outside.
Monday lunchtime is probably not the best time to visit a place that has only been open for a few weeks, but needs must, and if a place is open and selling food then you’ve got to argue that anytime is valid for a review.
I hadn’t visited the pub in its previous incarnation; supposedly a pretty decent gastropub of the same name that had closed, and had remained so for a good few months. The new owners are in fact three of the chefs who had worked there previously, returning after a year apart, after working at The Harbourside, The New Inn Backwell and The Robin Hood’s Retreat on Gloucester Road respectively. Unusually, they appear to be sharing all roles, including running the bar and splitting their time between front and back of house. To encounter a ‘barman’, who is also one of the chefs, and also one of the owners isn’t something you come across often.
My first impressions upon entering the pub were of space and light. The place is frigging huge. There are three large rooms around a centrally located bar, with large windows flooding the place with daylight.
Now that I’m older, wiser, more sophisticated and almost impossibly, more beautiful, my automatic first choice is no longer a lager. So, it’s always good to see some more unusual beers on draught, RCH Double Header (oooer), Ruddles County and Abbotts Ale all featured, along with, happily one of my frequent choices, Otter. For the undecided, or those with a ridiculously short attention span, a nice touch is the option to buy 3 third of a pint measure, taster glasses. An offer that ‘E’ took up.
We picked up a menu. Ten minutes later, after much heated debate, vicious arguing and possibly a few heartfelt slaps and blows, we presented a smiling united front at the bar and ordered our food, a selection of starters and smaller plates first, and a larger main dish each.
First we started on some homemade bread with butter and rapeseed oil for dipping. The bread, apparently made each day on the premises was cracking stuff, liberally slathered with butter; we both happily stuffed our faces. I feel perhaps that the rapeseed oil as a dip for the bread isn’t the best choice. Yes, it might be locally produced, but it just isn’t that pleasant when compared to a decent Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Although saying that, we laid our hands on some smoked rapeseed oil recently at a farmers market, and that would be a completely different proposition. It’s gorgeous stuff.
With the nagging feeling that I might have over-ordered somewhat, I started on a large plate of home cured corn beef. The accompanying piccalilli was obviously homemade, and all the better for it. Some more of the excellent bread, toasted this time, and the corned beef, although not outstanding, was good. At £4.50 it was altogether a nice, incredibly cheaply priced plate of food.
Across the table, ‘E’ was rapidly working her way through a glass of freshwater crayfish, topped with some caper rapeseed mayonnaise. I tried some, and it was absolutely delicious. Once again, ridiculously underpriced at £2.50. The only minor niggle we had with this dish, was that upon nearing the bottom, there seemed to be a bit too much liquid, suggesting that the crayfish could have done with a more thorough draining off before piled into the glass.
‘E’ had ordered Porter Rarebit. To be honest, we weren’t sure about this dish at all. Yes, it certainly tasted of Porter, but strangely didn’t taste at all of cheese. It was more of a golden paste on toast, rather than a traditional grilled and bubbling rarebit. It wasn’t unpleasant, just a bit lacking in flavour really. I’d prefer to see this ditched from the menu, and a well put together standard rarebit, made using decent local ingredients, put up in its place.
So, a bit of a mixed bag to start with. Mostly good, albeit with some minor easily remedied niggles and one pretty duff dish.
But then, my main arrived and somewhat astonishingly saved the day. It looked bloody awesome; in fact it was probably one of the nicest looking plates of food I’ve seen outside a Michelin starred restaurant. I’m not sure the photo does it justice, but I sat and admired it from every angle for a good couple of minutes. Salt Marsh Lamb, Blood pudding, egg and Lamb Bacon. It was basically a whole load of beautifully cooked meat temptingly draped around an egg. I was like a pig in shit and demolished it in record time, all the while marvelling at the attention to detail, the interesting cuts and the bits and pieces artfully placed around the plate.
Truly outstanding and for £10 just a bit of a steal.
Meanwhile, although perhaps not garnering the ecstatic torrent of praise my food had provoked, across the table ‘E’ was soundly satisfied with her dish of cider braised mushrooms, wild garlic and baked potatoes. It looked great and I couldn’t say no to a quick taste. It was very good, full of herbs predominately dill - surprisingly, a great match with mushrooms and a combination I haven’t tried before. Altogether a really decent plate of food and at £7, a lot of work for again, a very low price.
Finishing up with a dessert of mead set cream with lavender shortbread that was pleasant, but had on paper, sounded a lot more interesting than it actually tasted.
I sat and mulled over the meal we’d just eaten.
I came to the conclusion, that it’s a bloody interesting menu, and that some of the food is absolutely spanking which proves that the Star & Dove could be amazing. My salt marsh lamb dish was off the chart in a scale of excellence, and it was absolute food porn to look at too. Although the side was let down a bit by the not so great dish (Porter Rarebit, I’m looking at you), and a minor niggle with the crayfish prep. It’s always just a bit frustrating when a meal isn’t consistent.
Also, if I was being a complete pedant, and had my ‘cheesemonger’ head on, the generic Stilton and Mature Cheddar on the menu really need to be replaced by some of the excellent British handmade artisan cheeses available. It’s that much more exciting to see ‘Stichelton, Colston Bassett or Keens on the menu, rather than Stilton or Cheddar which suggests the use of cheaper, catering stuff and could be the reason why the rarebit was so bland.
Saying all that, we both left more than happy with the lunch we’d just eaten. The Star & Dove is serving nice booze and obviously doing interesting things in the kitchen, (a pickled chicken dish on the menu certainly caught my eye, as did the rather interesting looking ploughmans that passed by our table, apparently served with a shot of celery juice).
The whole menu is blatantly underpriced and the Sunday lunch menu we saw looked superb. The owners went out of their way with regards to customer service, the chef even supplying ‘E’ with a free, ad-hoc, lemon curd and oat dessert when it transpired there was gelatine in the mead cream that we’d ordered.
To be fair, it hasn’t been open long, and they’re obviously just settling in. Hopefully with just a bit more attention to detail and some more consistency, The Star & Dove could be a real Bristol destination.
I’ll definitely be heading South of the river for another visit.
The Star & Dove
St Lukes Road
Totterdown
Bristol
BS3 4RY
Telephone: 0117 933 2892
http://www.staranddove.co.uk/
Notoriously slow on the uptake, and quite often utterly oblivious to what’s going on around me, even I haven’t failed to notice the recent trend for historical British food that seems to be influencing high end restaurant menus and cookbook publishers output alike. Yes, it seems that this year the combination of old and British is a winning one.
But not just anything ancient and of this green and pleasant land will do. That’s way too easy, British nursery food has been done to death in the past few years and is now almost a default choice on pub menus across the land. No. It seems it also has to be obscure.
Before featuring on the menu at Heston Blumenthal’s new London restaurant ‘Dinner’ how many of you had heard of the 17th century salad dish, salmagundi? I know I hadn’t. Sounding perhaps like a particularly loathsome venereal disease, it’s been plucked from historical culinary obscurity, rediscovered and reinvented for the 21st century. (Just so you know, it’s a salad comprised of cooked meats, seafood, vegetables, fruit, leaves, nuts and flowers and dressed with oil, vinegar and spices).
The Gilbert Scott, Marcus Wareing’s brand spanking new St Pancras restaurant (It opened just last week, and I’m gagging to eat there) similarly has a menu littered with forgotten British dishes that probably haven’t been served to a paying customer for at least a hundred years. Dorset Jugged Steak or Tweed Kettle anyone?
So you’re excited about all this unusual yet strangely familiar British food. But can’t wait 3 months for a table at Heston’s ‘Dinner’ and St Pancras isn’t handily located in your particular ‘hood’? You want to get in on the act, and you fancy cooking up some 19th or 18th century British food of your own. Superb. But where to begin?
Luckily, most of the cookery book publishers anticipated this trend and are re-releasing classic and quite often, downright obscure culinary texts as we speak.
Particularly interesting are the Penguin ‘Great Food’ paperbacks. This beautiful series of re-printed classic books cover a range of authors from Victorian cook Eliza Acton to 18th century housewife and the original domestic goddess - Hannah Glasse. Not all the books in the series deal with British food, but the majority have a link.
What I find fascinating, flicking through the pages is quite often, how little anything has actually changed. Many of the recipes and dishes are not a hell of a lot different from the versions you might find in a much more modern book. However, just to keep you on your toes, the very next recipe will be a ‘certain cure for the bite of a mad dog’ or a ‘receipt against the plague’ (If you’re interested. It’s a rather heady mix of rue, sage, mint, rosemary, wormwood and lavender cooked in white wine vinegar for 4 days, then mixed with camphor – wash your loins with that concoction, and you’re free to strut around town with no chance of contracting the plague at all).
My absolute favourite from the series is ‘Recipes from the White Hart Inn’ by William Verrall. An 18th century landlord from Sussex, who had trained as a chef in France and was trying to introduce the ‘modern and best french cookery’ to his customers. The preface where he describes being hired to cook a dinner in a Gentleman’s house, and the resulting woeful lack of equipment and culinary knowledge on the part of the incumbent cook and indeed the diners had me in hysterics. Surprisingly, most of the recipes seem very up to date (which is indicative perhaps of how little French cuisine has changed). Williams’s thoughts on the use of fresh vegetables, herbs, ‘mise en place’ and good kitchen management are just as valid today as they were then. All imparted in impossibly elaborate, beautiful Georgian prose with a mile wide streak of gruff pub landlord running through it. Hilarious. I can’t recommend it enough, if only for the sheer entertainment value.
Quadrille are also in on the act with a selection of re-released, long lost, volumes in their ‘Classic voices in food’ range. Eliza Acton features again, in a rather hefty and beautifully printed ‘Modern cookery for private families’. It’s incredibly comprehensive with 34 chapters covering pretty much, every conceivable facet of cooking. From soups to preserves, including unusually for the period, a whole chapter on ‘foreign and Jewish cookery’. Once again, it’s a fascinating and rather useful book, especially if you’re looking for some ‘on trend’ historical British grub inspiration
I absolutely love this unexpected direction British food has taken. Looking into it’s distant past and rediscovering itself. Instead of feeling like the red-headed culinary step child and constantly looking abroad to other cultures for ideas and influence, it seems that we’ve finally realised that once upon a time, way back when, we had some pretty bloody good food of our own, right here. I’m so proud and getting just a bit teary; after I’ve finished belting out a verse of Jerusalem, I might start hunting around for a tricorn hat on Ebay.
I love good coffee. But It hasn’t always been so. I’ve found that as I’ve got older, more into food, I’ve become something of a coffee snob. Nowadays I sneer at the acrid essence of crumbled mud in glass jars that passes for coffee from the supermarket chains, but years ago, a more innocent, a more naïve me deemed it a perfectly acceptable brew. Later I felt the same way about the coffee from the doggy-style-humping-evil-world straddling-corporate chain, Starbucks, as I blindly ambled to work sipping my tasteless yet ridiculously expensive fix from a two gallon cup.
But I’ve matured. I’ve grown. I’d sooner neck a litre of my own piss than drink an overpriced Shattachino (TM) from the aforementioned Seattle based company, at least my ‘home brewed’ is cheap, steaming, and tastes of something.
Nowadays, I want to buy my coffee from a little independent place. I want it made with love and care. I want it to taste smooth and amazing. I want a flat white. And I want leaf patterns drawn in the froth to show just how damn skilful and artistic the person who made my coffee is. Oh, and they simply must have lots of tattoos.
Not much to ask is it?
Luckily, London is sprouting a rash of decent independent coffee shops like a pubescent teen developing a particularly fine crop of acne. Pop your head into any of these places, and it’s a pretty safe bet that it will be an Antipodean behind the coffee machine. In a somewhat surprising development, whilst we were all gormlessly sipping on awful brown coloured pish, across the other side of the globe, the Aussies and the Kiwis were developing a café and coffee culture that is second to none. What they don’t know about decent coffee isn’t worth knowing. And God bless them, they want to share it with us.
All of which brings me to the latest, coolest place to get your premium caffeine fix, all the way from Melbourne Australia, supposedly the pre-eminent café in a city that is absolutely heaving with serious competition. Yes….Clerkenwell in London now has a ‘St Ali’.
But why St Ali? I hear you ask. Well, apparently it’s like this. Ali ibn Umar al-Shadhili (St Ali) was the patron saint of coffee, who in the 15th century introduced coffee beans to Muslim mystics. Who knew eh?
So, a couple of weeks ago, I made the pilgrimage back to my old and much loved stomping ground of Clerkenwell (Some of you will know that I was cruelly mistreated and banished from this wondrous area of London, last April by my one-time evil ex-employer in a savage and entirely unwarranted act of redundancy). In fact, I more or less worked right across the road from the new St Ali site.
Happily my pained and tortured countenance was rapidly replaced by a look of serenity and total calm, as I greeted my pal Nicola who was joining me for lunch, and took in the vast and light flooded space.
Seriously, the place is bloody huge. (You could fit my entire flat into the toilets). At one end of the main room, beyond the central bar is an absolutely massive free standing roasting machine. Next to this, a ‘living wall’ of plants, which added considerably to my feeling of zen…
…A feeling which, doesn’t last long for two reasons. Firstly my ordered flat white is absolutely excellent. Smooth but packing quite a wallop, it’s a bloody nice cup of coffee. The problem is the ‘coffee art’ gracing the foam.
I’ve had a few goes at doing this on a professional machine myself, and basically, I can’t do it. It’s much harder than it looks and all my attempts have been frigging diabolical. The example that I now held in my hands didn’t have just one fancy palm frond. It had a three. To my eyes, that’s just taking the piss and reinforces what an utter dribbling incompetent of a coffee maker I am, with all the subtlety of a boot heel grinding my face into a gravel path.
I throw a look of utter contempt at the smiling unknowing barista.
Strangely, the other ‘calm killer’ was the beautiful old communal antique bench we were sitting at. Absolutely cracking to look at, battered, full of character, one end covered with vases festooned with flowers. It looked like it belonged in a glossy magazine photo shoot. But…it’s set at just the right height that when seated on the proffered stools, it’s impossible to put your legs under. So we both ended up sitting ‘side-saddle’ whilst eating, which isn’t a comfortable dining position at all. Solution, raise the bench up – or cut the legs off the stools, right now it’s definitely a case of style over comfort.
On the plus side, apart from the excellent coffee, the food menu is very interesting. With an obvious emphasis on brunch/lunch, it’s full of fresh, Bill Granger’esque dishes and combinations, with unusual foreign sounding ingredients –savoury French toast with bacon, maple labna and apple balsamic, grilled sardines with skordalia (What the hell is skordalia?) dukkah, kasundi, zhoug all feature (Aren’t they characters from Star Trek?). Trust me. It’s an intriguing menu.
Mystery ingredients aside, those in the know had flagged up one dish as being absolutely cracking. The weirdly named ‘My Mexican Cousin’ (I have no idea why its called that – as far as I can tell, based on the ingredients, it has sod all to do with Mexico).
Consisting of corn fritters, baby spinach, halloumi, kasundi (A spicy Indian tomato chutney) and two poached eggs. It’s lovely. Just simple, fresh food and therefore pretty much the perfect brunch dish.
In fact, St Ali is the perfect brunch place. I just wish it was down the road from where I live. It’s the sort of place you want to grab a late weekend breakfast, chill out and read the papers. Sadly it’s in the wrong frigging city.
F*ck my luck.
Build it in Bristol next time Ok guys?
St Ali
27 Clerkenwell Road
London
EC1M 5RN
Telephone: 020 7253 5754
http://stali.co.uk/uk *Added Note*I've just been informed by the owner of St Ali, through the wonder of Twitter, that 'My Mexican Cousin' is so called, because it was literally his Mexican cousin who came up with it. So, now we know.
Regular readers of my blog, you know, the achingly hip, hauntingly beautiful yet supremely intelligent types…. (Yes you), may have noticed a lack of restaurant reviews of late.
Believe it or not, I’ve been dining out often, but the problem is this. The places I’ve been eating at *whispers* haven’t been very good. But to be fair, they haven’t been very bad either. They’ve been alright, sort of OK…adequate.
Y’see I find mediocre boring to eat, extremely boring to write about, and absolutely yawnsome to read. I’m only interested in writing about the two complete opposite ends of the scale. Really bad is really good…. at least, good in the writing sense. It’s an absolute joy to write about somewhere that is cringingly awful, truly abysmal. Because, lets face it, if it’s that bad they deserve everything they get, upto and including my size 11's planted firmly in their rectums, in the literary sense of course.
And really good is just that, the best of all. Cracking to eat and an absolute pleasure to spew forth my gushing appreciation, alles uber da platz.
So. That’s the situation. I’ve been biding my time, pissing my hard earned cash down a urinal of culinary mediocrity, gradually…falling…. asleep…until….
….Last week I finally got a chance to pop my head into the recently opened Spuntino in London
The latest Soho outpost in the rather excellent Polpo/Polpetto stable, Spuntino is, for anyone who’s visited its sister restaurants, both familiar and at the same time, a bit of a diversion. Here is the same battered and frayed Victorian wreck meets New York dive bar chic, the same brown paper menus and even the same almost effortless cool vibe. But out is the Venetian bacaro style menu, instead replaced by a hard to define, New York bar snack menu punctuated with flashes of eccentricity and off the wall brilliance. Also out is the restaurant table, instead a bar fills most of the room with stools surrounding it.
It’s extremely informal. There’s no booking, (there isn’t even a telephone number to call), just show up, grab a stool, eat and drink off the bar with the food arriving in no particular order, as it’s ready.
Sipping a Meantime Pale Ale and studying the menu whilst nibbling on the complimentary popcorn served in a chipped enamel mug, I mentally wrestled with what to order. It’s such an unusual menu, filled with such interesting things it’s hard to know what to try first.
Egg and Soldiers arrived, a shelled, runny boiled egg, coated in a spicy crust with toast for dipping. Something different, but perhaps a bit too conventional when stacked up against the sheer awesomeness of the next dish to appear.
Truffled egg toast. A thick square of toasted white bread, with a square hollow cut into it, which is then filled with beaten eggs and truffle oil, and then finally surrounded by melted fontina cheese was very good indeed. Rich, oozing and just a bit decadent. I liked it a lot.
A Ground Beef and Bone Marrow Slider appeared next. (A Slider, in case you’re not aware is a mini burger). A skewered mini bun of melted cheese smothered meatiness. It was very nice indeed, but I’ve been thinking about the price. It was £4.50, which in itself isn’t terribly expensive…but, just a short walk from here you can get arguably the best burger in London, the Hawksmoor Burger with triple cooked chips for £15. The dilemma in my mind is, do three £4.50 sliders add up to the wonder that is a Hawksmoor burger and chips? I’m inclined to think no. Although in the context of the whole small snack menu, they work – I just think they might be a tad overpriced.
Eggplant chips with fennel yoghurt were beautifully crisp, with a nice aniseed kick from the dip. I could have sat whiling away the hours munching on these whilst drinking beer all day.
I was intrigued by the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich, which turned out to be a couple of slices of peanut butter ice cream, sprinkled with crispy peanut ‘bits’ and filled with Jam. It was absolutely cracking, but definitely one for sharing as I found it a bit too sweet to finish on my own. (Although I managed…of course).
Spuntino is a very hard place to dislike. It’s extremely accessible and informal, the menu design, the bar stool eating and the lack of reservations invite both quick grazing and longer drawn out meals. In fact, I suspect propping up the bar here will be a very pleasant way to spend a few hours.
But what I like most is… it’s different. Where identi-kit restaurants and bars, each with menus practically identical to each other blight our land from top to bottom, Spuntino is breaking new ground. They really are doing their own thing with a menu packed full of interesting new ideas and twists. It’s innovative, eccentric and therefore utterly cool. I applaud and cheer them for this heartily. I will be back, soon.
Spuntino
61 Rupert Street
W1D 7PW
http://www.spuntino.co.uk*Edited to add*I've just been reliably informed that there is a full size burger available at Spuntino, priced at £8. But just like the famous burger at Joe Allen, it's not actually on the menu.
