A Rant

I’ve waited several weeks before I could put finger to keyboard and rant about an experience we had at Mishkins.
I feared that before now I would have just gone off on one and ended up really bitching and being hateful, which I’m not but it was a shit experience.

Great food, bad service @ Mishkin's

Mishkin’s has been at the top of my list ever since it opened in November last year, but for some reason or other we just never ever managed to pay it a visit.

Bad Brunch @ The Ozone

This is going to be a very short and not-so-sweet post about Ozone, the newish coffee and brunch spot close to Old Street and just around the corner from the new Salvation Jane outlet.

New York Tales : The Caracas Arepa Bar

After living in Colombia for nearly a year and being married to one for over 10 years, I have come to appreciate the arepa.

I have to admit it’s not my favourite food. I find it quite bland, but that may just be the Colombian arepa. Their food is rather bland anyhows.

But the wife loves them, if she could she would eat one probably twice a day everyday. Which when she is in Colombia she does.

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.

Bad Service or Over Service !!!

When does service become over service and when does that all become bad service. When you visit Aspara in Danang. For some reason al the staff had the longest faces, and were not very happy, either by being there or just in general, we were not sure. From the minute we walked in through the gates, we were getting funny looks off the staff. This I normally take as they either do not like foreigners as we do not speak their language, or we are not dressed to their standards. Tonite however, it must have been the former as we were looking pretty smart. 

I had heard about this place and heard only good reviews about the food, so we wanted to give it a try. It prides itself on it's Champa roots, so all the dishes, mainly seafood, are Champa based. There is even a small Champa Temple in the garden as you walk in. All very atmospheric. 

We were seated and given some menu's and immediately asked what we wanted to drink and order before we had even a chance to open the menu's. I guess they were just keen. The menu is vast, so this took us some time to go through, much to the annoyance of the waiters and waitresses, who kept wanting to take our order. We ordered a couple of drinks, just to keep them happy. We then scanned through the menu again, whilst we waited for our drinks. We decided on some salad rolls and some pork wrapped in shrimp paste and grilled for starters, and a Hot Pot with Fish Tien Sa Style. (Could not find out what Tien Sa was, or is, only that it was not spicy). 

The atmosphere made by the staff was over bearing. Our waitress who had a face like she was chewing a bee, she insisted on making our pork, shrimp rolls for us, we could have done it  ourselves, but hers were better, and I have never seen anyone roll something before with chopstix. Impressive. As we were eating, she would wander over and rearrange our table, just to make everything look perfect. This really got on my nerves, as she put everything just out of range. So I had to move my drink and dipping sauces closer. Grrrrr ...

Then came our hotpot, which she obviously didn't trust us to do it properly ourselves, so she did it for us behind our table. No matter what protests we made, we were ignored. Surprising she didn't eat it for us also. 

I have to say though, the food was really really good, just a shame that the over service was too much and really let the place down. Needless to say we didn't tip anything, which I think they were kinda surprised at, as their faces when they saw this were quite shocked.

A tip for them. Smile.