An Invitation for some local French Food

We were lucky enough to be invited to the 1^st anniversary party of the Angel branch of Cote a few weeks ago.

It was a great fun night and a chance to meet the guys behind this ever growing chain of French Bistro style neighborhood restaurants.

Hawksmoor at the Guildhall

A couple of weeks ago before the wife went on a “work trip” to Venezuela and before I started my new job in sunny Clapham, we kind of had a celebration by having lunch at Hawksmoor at the Guildhall.

It had been quite a while since we’d had a good steak that was memorable, and we both felt we were long overdue another one.

I’m not sure why I chose this one over the Shoreditch branch, but I think it was the rave reviews that J had given me about the breakfast he had there with Stevie P one morning, and plus door to door by one bus. Sorted it.

Great Queen Street – A Wonderful Return

There is something about the Great Queen Street Restaurant that gives me this feeling that I should only eat there in the colder months.

To me it doesn’t come across as a summer or spring eatery. It’s more suited to those darker winter cold months.

Could it be the dark interior, the dark furnishings or the fact that the menu is so winter, with big man sized pies and unxious stews and proper man cuts of steak. Or is it the oh so French wine list that screams to me of winter.

As you can tell I have only ever ate here in the winter months. I’m pretty sure I’ve never even seen a summer menu here. I wonder what it is like.

But as winter was well and truly upon us, the thought of the Great Queen Street came alive into my mind and I so had to return to see if it was as good as I remember it.

To cut a long story short. Yes it was. Nothing has changed in the year since I last ate here. The walls are still dark, the place is still packed and so damn cosy.

We sat a the bar this time, a new sensation on me, as it was jamming with groups of friends and couples staring longingly into each others eyes. The place has that affect.

Now what to order. This night we were lucky enough to see steak and chips for 2 on the menu. Were we in luck or what.

The steak in question was the Onglet, or to some the hanger steak. This offaly beefy cut, which has become one of my fave cuts from East London Steak of late. But more on that at a later date. Hopefully.

The steak was cooked to a perfect medium rare. Anything else and it would have been like eating a pair of old school shoes.

The chips were chunky and plentiful. The béarnaise sauce was tart and a faint taste of anise. I would have preferred tad more. But I’m just a real picky so and so. I think it was making at least 3 or 4 litres of hollandaise sauce a day for so bloody long that has made me so picky on it. But it was good, it wasn’t mine, but it was good.

Maybe The Great Queen Street has been doing good ales forever, but this is the first time I have ever seen them or ordered a pint. I always go straight for a bottle of heavy red to flow with my normally heavy wintery food.

As always The Great Queen Street restaurant is an underrated gem of a place that sadly I only ever seem to visit in winter. This really must change, but to the next cold snap.

F is for France @ Le Relais de Venise L'Entrecote

It has been a while now, over two months since our little jaunt through the alphabet in London town. But we’re back.

After many people had been on holidays to Spain, Ecuador, Colombia and Morocco since our last outing back in May. Whilst poor old me hasn’t even left London in all that time. Boo hoo.

So I am making up for it with a quick jaunt across the channel to France. This time to Le Relaise de Venise L’Entrecote for some steak frites in Marylebone.

This place does one thing and one thing only. Steak and chips, and to be honest with the quantity they churn out, they do them very well. Which is pretty bloody surprising as we were there in total for around two hours including queuing time and it was constantly full with a never ending queue churning around the corner.

The sheer volume this restaurant does on an evening is staggering. It’s a good thing that they do one thing and one thing only. I’d hate to work in that kitchen though,  everyday doing the same prep. Make special sauce, blanch chips, cook steaks, dress salad leaves. Yawn yawn yawn. But for the owners its damn good.

I initially suggested this place as a bit of a joke to everyone, as one of our party has a problem deciding on what she wants to eat. I think everyone else got the joke but her, and to top it off she ended up making the final decision. But at least there were desserts for her to ponder over in the end.

So the 6 of us sat down and the only thing to choose was which wine we wanted to drink and how we wanted our steaks cooked. Three chose rare and three medium. All these we were told was in the French style.

To start the meal off, you are provided with a plate of dressed lettuce leaves and walnuts. I’m not a big salad eater in restaurants and this has put me back years. It was pretty dull, wet and not very attractive. If I wasn’t here for the steak this would have made me cry. I’m sure my old chef would have told me to walk if I sent something out looking like that. Not a good start.

Thankfully the main was a hell of a lot better. If you didn’t know you got two portions of the steak and French fries, then you would be seriously saddened by the small portion you received first time round.

My meat was cooked to a perfect French rare, which is how I like it. To be honest I have no idea how the steak really tasted as it came thinly sliced and smothered in their Special Secret Sauce. This closely guarded secret is from what I can understand, made up of chicken livers, thyme, cream and Dijon mustard. Bloody good it was too.

The fries are not bad, not quite as crispy as I would like, but the second set we had delivered to our table by the delightful French waitresses with their ooh so French attitudes, were a lot better.

The only choices you have is on the dessert menu, where a montage of French classic puds live.

We also have a dessertinator in our ranks, who could quite delightfully eat her way through dessert after dessert after dessert. For such a tiny thing she managed to eat a tower of a pud all to herself. For her sins she was slightly hyper afterwards with all that sugar in her veins, we all were not surprised.

All in all Le Relais de Venise is not a bad place to eat. You could do a lot worse, but with a group of friends it is a fun place, and with the queue constantly outside, everyone else is thinks the same as well. 

Kentish Canteen - A Very Good Invite Indeed

I’ve never really been to Kentish Town, well the closest I’d been was when we were first looking for somewhere to live in London, and were taken to a small dingy flat with broken furniture somewhere nearby. After we told the estate agent on the way back to her office that we were not interested, she kicked us out of the car at a set of traffic lights. We never returned. Until now.

Last week I received an email inviting me to sample the delights of the Kentish Canteen. Oddly enough, I’d read about it the week before in the Guardian, as it was listed in an article about the “Top 10 Budget Eat’s in North London.” The blurb about the restaurant was that it prided itself on reasonably priced unpretentious, seasonal dishes from breakfast right through to dinner. It sounded a PR to me, but I was kinda hooked.

Reading some of the critic’s comments made me more curious. Or were they the norm we have come to expect from certain newspaper journos who have lost their way.

“Bright, buzzy… the flexible food station it claims to be”

“Sensationally good…Exemplary. Expect great things of this new place”

“Simple things done well include grilled chorizo on lentils, the eggs Benedict, an excellent beef burger (soft floury bap, good meat, no frills, far better than any “gourmet” hamburger chain), big juicy sardines on sourdough toast with roast tomatoes, fat chips, a good mid-priced plate of Spanish charcuterie, and any number of salads”

After reading the email I was pretty excited about going, so I jumped at the chance and set up a time to visit the following Wednesday. Told you I was excited.

I’d read that the décor was bright, buzzy and a little bland. A tad harsh on the bland I would say, it definitely is a lively coloured restaurant. The large windows let in a lot of natural light, that at 7.30pm made me feel it was still lunchtime. I still haven’t got used to the extra hour yet.

Even for a Wednesday evening there was quite a crowd, which gave the place a nice atmosphere. Nothing worse than going to an empty restaurant to eat. Some people are swayed by the look of a dish, I more the vibe of a place really. Probably why I give starchy 3 Michelin Star places a miss. It’s all in the atmosphere for me.

Their menu is nicely laid out and not that big, which is a blessing these days, as any place with a 4 page plus menu means nothing is freshly cooked.

As with the décor, everything was light and summery, with starters ranging from Spring Parmesan Minestrone to Grilled Haloumi and couscous.

Everywhere these days have their own version of the burger and the Kentish Canteen is no exception. They also have heir own is the Fish n chips ala NW5 (their words not mine), which is pan fried haddock, pea puree, skinny fries and tartare sauce. Also on the menu is a pumpkin ravioli with sage, lemon butter, and a crab, lemon and chilli linguine (sadly not available when we visited, as we asked).

I was pretty surprised as there are quite a few good veggie options as well, which you normally don’t get. I often feel sorry for veggies eating out, as there normally is a token-thought-on-the-spur-of-the-moment-dish. But here I’d be a very happy veggie. Although there is no chance of that happening. Too addicted to meat I’m afraid, even if it National Vegetarian Week.

As it was a mid week supper, and me trying to control my excessive eating habits, we opted to share a starter of their own smoked and flaked salmon with chilli and lemon. Which to be honest I was not expecting much, but was actually pretty damn good. It actually tasted of salmon, which is very unusual these days, as I’ve had some really bad stuff recently.

For the mains we ordered a Hake steak, which came with a Spanish green sauce, new potatoes and a salad and the big boy Butchers steak, horseradish cream, watercress and fat chips.

Both were really excellent. The hake was still juicy and flaky, a lot of care had been taken in its preparation. The steak was cooked a nice medium rare, anything more with this cut and it would have tasted like old shoes. But the real star of the show were those fat chips. I’m a chip lover and these are some of the best in London, almost as good as the Hinds Head in Bray, but not quite. But damn close.

To round off the meal we shared a Passion fruit cheesecake. I’m a lover of passion fruit, it’s the tartness of the juice that gets me and it went well with the creaminess of the cheesecake. It was a shame that the cake was still fridge cold when it was served, but after a few minutes of trying to leave it alone so it could warm up a bit it was a treat. Nice biscuit crust.

Even though we were on a freebie I would have been very content to pay for the bill. I roughly worked out the bill to be around £40 or so with 2 glasses of wine as well. It’s a winner, but I want to return and have a lazy weekend brunch there.

Kentish Town seems to have a lot to offer, as there are some good pubs on the high street, and its not too far from where we are now, but I just wish the Kentish Canteen would become the Stoke Newington Canteen, then I’d become a very happy man indeed. 

Big Boys Steak Night at Goodman

This was definitely the best steak I have eaten since leaving Argentina at the end of February 2010. Even the steaks at Garufa, BuenAyre, Hinds Head (although that comes in a close second), and our short recent trip to Paris, which I still have to write about if I can remember any of it now, didn’t come close to these babies.

I’m not going to say too much about the décor, as everyone in London bloggerland has eaten there already and knows how it is. Its dark woods lend it to a tad corporate or even clubroom feel. But it has a nice vibe to it, especially on a Saturday night.

So let’s get down to business shall we. The steaks and cuts. You can also read a more in-depth write up of Goodmans here and here, so I shall dispense with the technicalities of how the meat is bred etc.

Our table of three were very impressed with the service, our waiter a French sounding guy from northern Brasil. It knocked us for six I can tell you. The training at Goodmans must be pretty good, as he was very knowledgeable about the cuts, the feed and taste, texture of the different cuts they had on offer.

The plate he brought us to show their prize cuts, consisted of two USDA ribeyes, one bone in and one boneless. The same with the two sirloin cuts and also a grass feed fillet from Scotland.

It’s quite an impressive thing to do, it’s braver than having an open kitchen, although that is very in vogue these days. Yawn. The marbling on all the cuts was pretty good I have to admit, and it showed the quality of the meat to you in one fail swoop.

We opted for two ribeye, bone in, and a sirloin bone in. I think my two friends ordered theirs medium, where I went for rare. A gasp of approval from the waiter. I guess not too many people order their meat rare these days. In Café Boheme, we used to get a lot of people asking for their steaks medium rare, and then sending them back asking for it to be well done. Idiots.

Sides were truffle chips, green salad, honey glazed carrots and some creamed spinach. Not sure if I could taste the truffle oil on the chips, but they were damn fine chips none the less, which is what you need when you are eating a great steak. The salad was good and in the Argentine style. Glazed carrots were sweet and carroty. I never tried the spinach, as it was gone before I thought of trying it, so I gather it was jolly nice.

OK the steaks. My bone in sirloin was amazing. Just to get a 400g piece of meat alone on a plate definitely has the wow factor. Nice cross hatch grill marks, the hallmark of a good American steakhouse. Although this is a Russian one, but you get my gist. It was cooked perfectly rare, just how I like it. It had been properly rested so there were no juices flowing freely on my plate. These boys know their stuff.

The fat had been trimmed and nicely rendered and had a smoky crispness to it, that was a pure delight to eat.

The meat itself was tender, juicy and well flavoured. You can almost taste the sweetness of the meat through the cows being grass fed on large open pastures. I’m sure they led a happy life and they would have been proud that the chefs treated them with respect and cooked them to perfection, and equally pleased that we enjoyed them so much. Well maybe not, but it’s a good dream to have none the less.

We each had a pudding, I had the American Cheese Cake, which was too cheesy and heavy after a glorious meat fest meal. I actually couldn’t finish it, but then again I am not much of a pudding guy.

All in all including tip (well deserved), a couple of bottles of wine, some desert wine and a meal fit for a king we spent about £85 each. Money well spent. I now have to take the wife here, as she was cursing me for going without her. Now there won’t be any problems with me returning here that is for sure.