The Pepper Tree

I knew it would be just a matter of time before my sorry arse ended up in the Pepper Tree for a quick lunch, it has now happened and surprisingly it wasn’t that bad.

The Coco Noodle Bar in Ealing

As I’m nearly done with my job in Ealing. Finally after 18 months I can now try and get my life back on track and join the real world, and hopefully put some life back into to this weary body.

Having lived in Ealing Common and Brentford for around 5 years, oh so many years ago, I know the eating options in and around Ealing Broadway and South Ealing are pretty poor.

There are exceptions of course, like the great Sushi Hiro, now alas gone. Boo hoo. The brilliant Santa Maria Pizzeria, which sadly I have tried all too little, and of course one cannot mention Ealing and not say the word Nandos. As that branch next to Ealing Common tube station was the first one in the UK, and still for me it is the best.

As my soul has been zapped over these 18 months my spirit has dwindled and my passion for cooking has been here and there, but steadily on a low. I’ve tried to cook everyday but to be honest I just cannot be arsed most days. Which is not good as I used to love being in the kitchen and cooking away all day. For the last few months I’ve put my head down and tried my best to regain those skills I once had.

So when I do not bring my lunch to work, I am forced to either eat Singapore fried rice at the Kam Tsin Village, the Chinese take away opposite. Believe me, I’ve tried a lot of other people dishes form there and the Singapore fried rice is the best.

Then there is Guru, but the standard and portion size has gone down hill a lot from late last year, and I haven’t been back since. Plus he never has any change for the £3,49p lunch deal. He owes me so many 1p’s.

Oscars is fine if you have the patience and get in there before the students from the college opposite. If you see a queue you may as well just walk to the Broadway and forget about it. It’s a lost cause. The sarnies are good, but they are so bloody slow.

I remember trying Coco Noodles many years ago and not being too in awe of their noodle dishes, but my main stay for lunch these days is simple fried rice. See Kam Tsin Village above.

So sometimes I go for a wander up to the Broadway for a bit of shopping but mainly to get my arse out of the office for an hour or so.

Coco Noodle Bar will win no prizes for its culinary delights, but it does provide some good things form its large pan Chinese cum Asian menu.

I normally do not like restaurants like this, take Banana Tree as an example, but I have found that these places seem not to fuck up on fried rice dishes. Thankfully. The best of the bunch is the Thai Fried Rice. No idea why the name. It contains lots of little morsels of meat and prawns and has a good supply of hot chilli’s.

So if you are ever in Ealing, no idea why, but if you are Coco Noodle Bar will provide some good nourishment.

Banana Tree Soho – The Blandest Meal of the Century

I seem to be getting a lot of invites to try out new restaurants recently. Most of then I turn down because even though they are free I don’t want to eat at those establishments.

I was in two minds whether or not to accept the invitation to eat at the new Banana Tree in Soho.

I’d tried the branch in Angel on one of the Tube Strike Mondays. Ahhhh I miss those days, the only good thing of working over the other side of London. C’mon you greedy tube drivers, I think it’s time for some more pointless strikes so I can have some more days off work.

I was not impressed with the concept nor the food at the Angel branch. I thought it was for people who were shit scared of Asian food and wanted a dumbed down version to get their chops around it.

Finally I relented and mid week we wandered down to the Soho branch with our £60 voucher expecting to get through about half of it. How wrong I was.

The neo industrial look is the matter of course these days, everyone including shops are jumping on the band wagon. I’ll be delighted when someone finally doesn’t do it.

We ordered a beer and a cocktail and 6 of the satay sticks to get us going. The sticks were ok. Nice charring, but really not much taste on the chicken itself. The peanut sauce was pretty good, and I wished I had kept it on the table for the following courses.

We began ordering. Well we had £60 to get through. The Papaya Salad came first and after trying it made me remember why I should not have relented to this freebie offer. Unbelievable it actually had no taste at all. The dressing was non existent and the papaya had no crunch to it. Soft and floopy. I felt really sorry for the fruit to end its life on a plate as part of a poor excuse for a salad.

The Roasted Duck in Hoisin Sauce actually wasn’t that bad. The meat was juicy enough, but the sauce was too loose and a bit over powering.

Next up was the Char Grilled Chicken Bakar Java. The menu said the chicken was marinated in an array of Javanese aromatic spices, grilled slowly to perfection. I’ve no idea what their idea of perfection is, but it was far from mine. The chicken had some nice charring on it, but it was dry and a tad tough. I’ve no idea how long it had been marinating for, but it obviously was not long enough. Those Javanese spices failed to shine through.

I had this served with a Nasi Goreng, which turned out to be a bland egg fried rice. That’s two dull Nasi Gorengs I’ve tasted recently, and both have been a poor substitute for the real deal.

Amazingly in the end we managed to spend £59 on really not much food and a few drinks. But then again we are in Soho.

Banana Tree is what it is really. A pan Asian chain restaurant serving up watered down and bland food to the masses in neo industrial surroundings. It’s gonna make its owners a hell of a lot of money.

Tube Strike Tuesday at The Banana Tree Canteen

Was I the only person in London gutted not to be able to go to work on that fateful Tuesday? The sense of disappointment I had upon waking up and seeing that the entire Piccadilly line was suspended. I really cannot say how I felt. STOP. My boss isn’t going to read this. So was I like everyone else who could not goto work that day. Very bloody happy. I am fully beginf tis strike, as long as it continues to give me days off.

Both of us were pretty happy to go back to sleep and snooze for another couple of hours. It makes all the difference to wake up around 11 o’clock mid week. A magical feeling.

Islington is always busy, except when there are no tubes. I never realised how many people come to Angel for work, mainly because I live the other end and only come down this way at certain times. Plus as I work in west London, I am rarely here during the week.

A day off, the sun was out, and I was hungry. I was in no particular mood for anything special, but felt like somewhere new. Somewhere we’d never eaten at before.

As we were wandering down an empty Upper Street nothing we saw grabbed us. Then as if a sign from up above, the Banana Tree Canteen came into mind. Well not really, I could just see it in the distance.

We had pondered about eating at The Banana Tree for quite a while now. Well it is on the route of the number 19, so I’ve passed it on countless occasions, but never ever got round to eating there. Maybe there was a reason for that. Even as we were crossing the road, I was thinking about going to Song Que for some Pho. Now that was a sign.

The Banana Tree reminds me a lot of a chain called Wok in Bogotá, Colombia. It promises so much with its large menu, but really delivers a watered down version of what it promises as good Asian food.

The menu is to large for a single kitchen to make, so a lot of stuff is either made off site either by themselves or by a catering company, and there are a lot of them around these days.

I ordered a Malaysian lamb curry, which was nicely cooked and quite tender, but pretty flavourless, and no heat at all, as you would expect from a Malay curry. The portion of rice was a good size and came with a small salad that was actually the nicest thing on my plate. Do love peanuts.

Lina’s Mee Goreng with a slab of char gilled pork was an interesting plate of food. The pork had been smothered in a honey dressing that I thought meant it had been charred to death, but it was quite moist. It was just plopped on the side of the plate and there was no room for anything else, so a simple salad was on top of the noodles. Not a good way.

Somehow I wish we had gone to Song Que. The Banana Tree serves the local office lunchtime crowd very well, and those folks that congregate around this end of Upper Street at night.

After this visit, I now know why we never went in there, damn those striking tube drivers. Well not really, I am looking forward to the next one. But that time I will goto Song Que instead.