Cafe Rendezvous - A Good Ol' Cafe

You get what you pay for at the majority of Cafes in England. Some are good, some are bad, and others are mediocre. Rendezvous is an ok place that serves your traditional favourites plus a few daily specials that may be up on the wall week after week.

I opted for the set brekkie as always. Sausage, bacon, fried egg, fried slice and a mountain of mushrooms. The yolk was runny and the sausage was still juicy. The bacon was a tad tough, but there were 3 rashers, which is a bonus as you normally only get 2. The fried slices of bread was a blast from the past, haven’t had one of those (for good reasons) since the 90’s.

My partner in crime opted for the daily special of the Chicken Curry. Which she says and I would have to agree with her, reminded her of one my dad’s Thursday night currys. Straight from the jar curry sauce, and Uncle Ben’s boil in the bag rice. Do they still make that?

The Rendezvous is a nice place on Highbury Barn filled with locals, workers and some students from the LMU. Friendly staff who provide a cheery service in a nice reliable place. If you are outside and in need of some filling food, then it cannot be beaten.

Trullo - Highbury's Finest

I made the reservation for Trullo about 6 weeks in advance. I’ve never been that organised in my life before, but sometimes you just have to plan ahead. I’ve already made a reservation for the River Café at the end of March, but that’s for my birthday and that’s different.

I’d been wanting to eat here for quite a while, but in some cases I feel it is best to let a restaurant run for a while, before charging in like a bull in a china shop, and criticising it for basic start up errors, which hopefully should iron themselves out over time. So over 8 months since its opening, I thought it was time to give it a whirl.

I had seen the interior of the restaurant from the outside many a time from the 19 bus, but once you are inside, it is surprisingly small but yet still spacious. It has a simple but kind of industrial look about it, with scaffolding planks masquerading as shelves, even a few books on them as well.

The menu is short and sweet and comes in several parts. Beginning with the antipasti, primi, then the mains from the grill or the oven, followed by the deserts and then the finale of cheeses.

I’ve never been keen on antipasti in restaurants, as the price outweighs the quantity of the food that you get. So I always give them a miss.

Tonight’s menu offered us a nice range of offerings, but there were more dishes we were not keen on than we were. Which is a shame, but wrong night I guess. There were a few offal dishes to keep us entertained, so all was well in the Highbury world of Italian restaurants.

So for starters we ordered the borlotti beans with grilled ox heart and the papperdelle with a beef shin ragu. Both were presented nicely, well I thought so. They were very rustic and simple in look, but who needs to be complicated. Both had Parmesan wisps grated over the top. Taste wise, my pasta was silky smooth and had a great feel to it, I just wish I could say the same about the ragu. It was lifeless and boring. The meat had been cooked to the desired tenderness, but it lacked any real flavour at all. Had they forgotten to season it, had they tasted it? Obviously not.

The same disappointment was met after tasting the borlotti beans with the ox heart. The beans were again lacking any real taste. Some of them were chalky and slightly undercooked. The ox heart was perfectly cooked, but again it did not taste of ox heart. It could have won the tasteless ox heart of the year award. A big shame. This did not leave us with high hopes for the mains.

The mains came and looked lovely. 10/10 for presentation for these guys. I had the Venetian calves liver with polenta and a rocket salad. For me, this made up for any shortcomings on the pasta dish. The liver was cooked spot on. I could not fault that at all. Perfect, perfect perfect. Excellent. The polenta had been griddled so was kind of crunchy on the outside, whilst still being creamy on the inside. It did need a smidgen of more seasoning, but the liver was still sending my senses into heaven that I didn’t mind. The rocket salad was as sharp as it should be, anymore and it would have been too much and been totally ruined.

The problem came with the 2^nd main. This was from the grill. The pork chop, potatoes and braised celery. On first appearance it looked great. Taste wise, the chop had bags of flavour and was still juicy. The problem was the potatoes. They were still fridge cold. Unbelievable. Had they forgotten to take them out in time, and just remembered whilst they were plating up and hoping we wouldn’t notice.

We called over the waitress and told her the tatties were cold. She had a most surprised look on her face. She took the dish away without a word, and then we waited. By the time the dish came back we’d more or less polished off my liver. But there was no word of apology from anyone. In fact, more or less after that we were ignored. I’m not sure why, I can only imagine it was because the staff hadn’t been trained how to apologise. It’s like some of the agents I use overseas, when all goes well, all is fine. When things fuck up, they really fuck up, as they have no idea how to handle it.

But for a restaurant that was charging £16.50 for a dish, you’d expect a) the tatties to be hot, b) you’d expect an apology. Period.

I have to say the dish that we got back, and it was a brand new dish was pretty damn good. The chop was as juicy and tender as the last one, the celery had a lovely crunch to them. Even the now warm tatties were nice.

The lack of an apology has left a bad taste with us. We were not expecting anything off the bill, and we never got it, but we expected a simple sorry. Nada.

Trullo does do very good food. Some highs (liver), some lows (ragu) and some schoolboy errors (cold potato’s). But it come across to me that the pricing and the bad service that it is really punching well above its weight here. But when you look around this part of North London, there really isn’t anything that can come close to the quality that it does turn out. But that doesn’t excuse bad service.

I’d expect that in Nando’s (although I’ve only ever had good service there), but not in a restaurant where you pay £40 + per person.

Good food, bad service. I won’t be going back unfortunately. 

Gutted.

The Beach Hut – My Local Chippy

Fish and Chips were a Friday regular in my household as a child, until my dad decided that the other British staple of spaghetti bolognese was to be the choice for our Friday night dinner.

A lot of the local fish and chip shops in Basingstoke became Chinese takeaways, instead of banishing this traditional food and replacing it with their own culinary treats, they actually improved the quality of the fish n chips. They also provided us with that so needed added extra, Curry Sauce. I recently had some chips with curry sauce in a pub, and it rolled back the years. It’s crap we know that, but it’s also pretty addictive. One of the good things to come out of the 80’s.

Islington has its fair share of fish n chip shops. Some ok and some not ok. I think I’ve tried most of them now to be able to say that. That would explain my ever increasing waistline then.

The newly opened Beach Hut on the site of a one time closed fish n chip shop has brought life back into an odd stretch of road. There is a quality butchers, a good Italian deli and a fantastic cheese shop (even if the staff are rubbish), and some not so good cheap take away joints. Somehow they shouldn’t mix, but they do and it works. Kind of.

I think I’ve sampled the fish n chips enough times at the Beach Hut to know they are the bees knees. Unlike the fried fish of my childhood where the fish was cooked hours ahead of service and left in those traditional warm counters to sit and sit and sit until wanted. These little beauties are dipped in batter when you order them and they are fried before your very eyes. It makes all the difference.

The fish comes out lovely and crispy, the soft flesh is perfectly cooked and is a delight to eat. You can actually taste the quality of the fish. A rare thing these days.

We’ve eaten in and had take-away a few times. The décor is truly like being at the seaside, lot’s of pastel colors, wooden tables and chairs.  The menu is displayed on a chalkboard behind the counter.

The portions are truly on the large side. We made the mistake of ordering a large portion each first time round, well I was seriously hungry. One would have been enough for us both. They are that big.

The chips are good and comforting. Nice and floury on the inside, although not being as crispy as I like on the outside, but still very good.

They have a good selection of sides, the mushy peas are particularly good and go well with the mains.

For some reason I prefer having a take away rather than eating in. The only downside to this is the fish and the chips are a little bit too greasy and being in the bag for the short trip home sweats them a tad, but a quick blast in a hot oven dries them out enough. 

I’ve found out something in life the other week. Martini’s and fish n chips do not go together. A night of too many cocktails at 25 Canonbury Lane, a great cocktail bar just near Union Chapel told me this.

There is something about de-stressing out over a few perfectly made and alcohol laden cocktails that puts you in a good mood for the night ahead.

Things have a changed there a bit, it used to be more cocktails than beer, but on recent visits it’s more beer than cocktails. Seems the locals now, scoff at the idea of a well made mojito or martini. Actually on our last drunken visit, only women were drinking cocktails, and me. But it’s still a good place to chill and drink. Good mix of well heeled and not so well heeled people.

But after a night of strong vodka martinis, hunger always creeps in and as the Beach Hut is on our way home, we stopped in for some grub to quench our hunger. Martini’s good. Fish n chips good. Together. It just didn’t work. But I’m sure if we hadn’t been so drunk we would have realized that beforehand.

Thankfully the Beach Hut is doing good business, so it won’t be joining the vast majority of restaurants that close within their first year. Hoorah.

San Daniele Del Friuli

I really do not know what to say about San Daniele Del Friuli. Another disappointment from a small family run restaurant.

Everyone says to eat locally, eat at small independent restaurants. But what do you do when the food you are served is just really not that good. Sometimes you loose faith.

San Danielle is quite a large restaurant on the top of the hill that lads down to Finsbury Park.

We hadn’t expected to eat there. Our first choice was Garufa. Packed. Second option was Juniper. Again it was full. We’d already tried some of the other restaurants on this strip like Au Lac. Let’s not mention that place again. Worst Pho we ever did try. San Danielle was pretty empty. There was a reason for this, but hunger got the better of us. 

Whilst we were looking at the menu, the restaurant reminded me of a typical tourist trap that you would find in either Rome or Florence, which caters to large tour groups.

The menu has all your typical Italian for Beginners dishes that you would recognize form Teesside to Timbuktu.

It wasn’t very inspiring, but Lina got excited at the thought of having lasagna, whilst I had some glee that they had calves liver on the specials board. I am a sucker for offal. It's my first choice every time. 

All what we were hoping for never came to be. What came was a very big disappointment. My liver was over cooked and was very under seasoned to the point where I believe alt is banned in the kitchen under the penalty of death.

The lasagna wasn’t much better. It came in its own dish, and was quite sweet and watery. It had obviously been cooked beforehand and frozen for defrosting at a later date. It’s not hard to cook a decent ragu, but why do some people find it impossible. Ahh who knows.

All I can say is that eating in small local restaurants can be hazardous to your belly.