S. Worthen | Weblog

At first, it was a hamburger truck. Back then, the Meatwagon had enough buzz that I started following its updates in the hopes of some day intersecting it. Then the truck was stolen. What could have been sheer disaster for such a small-scale business was saved by someone's bright idea: a pop-up restaurant in a room over a closed pub (under renovation) down near New Cross Gate. And so #meateasy was born.

It's due to have approximately two months of life, so opportunity was limited. Having heard that it fills up so fast, it can take two hours to put in an order, we were advised to go at 5:30, right when the doors open. That's how C. and I came to be sitting on mix-and-matched chairs in a cheerful paper-and-chalkboard decorated room lit two-thirds by candlelight with slips of papers numbering 4 and 5 in our hands tonight. Those valuable slips of paper entitled us to order three items each (not including drinks) when our numbers were called on the sensible PA system whose throttled siren breaks through the buzziness of the rapidly crowding-up space.

Our drinks, in jam jars, are from the separate bar on the side which features an impressive array of ingredients. I particularly admired the half-prepped pineapple and the relatively unusual array of cordials. My drink is improvised, a fruity mojito with crushed raspberries; C.'s is a nicely well-rounded G&T. Soon, the wait for the bar looks substantial too; good call getting there so early.

We're so early in the evening that it's not a long wait, either to order, or for our food to arrive on their paper plates, delivered to the table. My bacon cheeseburger is a lovely burger, perfectly cooked, meaty and a little juicy, but the bacon is, almost inevitably, wide, tougher slab bacon and only really noticeably added a little toughness to the burger. C. praises the chili cheeseburger.

We've skipped fries (lackluster earlier reviews) and gone with buffalo wings, mac n' cheese, and onion rings for our shared sides. Buffalo wings! How I pined for them when I was living in York. These are aren't quite classic, but they're close and, more to the point, they're good, well-seasoned wings with a touch of spice and piquancy. The mac n' cheese is straightforward, a solid pot rendition (i.e. no crunchy top), and is the only dish which comes in something other than paper. I should have had the onion rings when they were newly delivered: by the time I tried one, it had lost its first delicacy of still-warm grease, but were still good renditions of thick-cut ones, easy to eat and at one with its crust (instead of slithering free of it).

By the time we left, it was all of 6:30. Spare pockets of standing space were jammed with the hovering 20-and-30-something crowds, gratefully receiving a spare table. The local mobile phone network was jammed up with users, and we'd had quite a nice dinner.

It's only due to be open for another two to four weeks so go now if you're going to go at all.

We brought pork-and-chestnut sausages back from Clitheroe, gingerbread-and-chestnut-honey mustard from Dijon, and the ingredients for a couscous salad with chestnuts from the fridge and cupboards. It is so nice to come back from a week away and have dinner all ready to make.

***

I cannot claim to have been to Clitheroe on this trip: I picked out the sausages from the brochure, and those who were going phoned ahead to reserve our various orders. C. and I were off to the Clog and Billycock, a Ribble Valley Inn pub near the town of Pleasington, to catch up with makyo and A. The structure is slightly confused, with table service for drinks, and counter service for ordering food. Still, it is a spacious, high-ceiled, stone-floored pub with wood burning fires, an interesting drinks menu, and good food.

We shared deep-fried cauliflower with curried mayonnaise, and a selection of dips and bread. Just as well we shared - our mains were substantial. My hotpot was topped with potato slices so thin, they had nearly turned into crisps under the grill. The side of pickled cabbage was crisp, light, and refreshing. C. had the burger, mysteriously disguised under the lable of minced steak. No wonder it was filling: it was 100% Ribble Valley. We hope no one else wanted to visit it, since he and makyo ate it all. A.'s seafood board was lovely, but defeatingly substantial. Nevertheless, between us we managed energy for two desserts: pancakes/crêpes with a scoop of toffee-and-gingerbread ice cream made in house.

Socially, it was educational: we learned about "The Hexagons", a never-made television sitcom about polygons and their lives. I wish it had been.

Location: 94 Ossington, north of Queen West. Toronto. Canada.

I don't usually give so much feedback on a meal while I'm eating it, but our waitress asked, and, more to the point, was patient, interested, and caring enough to listen. It's not that anything was wrong, so much as that they were clearly trying, and some things could be better: wine warm enough to taste, portions of dips proportionate to the things being dipped. We didn't have a chance to comment on being rushed out the door at the end, but that was a nearly-inevitable consequence of giving us time to digest before dessert, crossed with two strictly-regimented eating sessions.

But let me back up. The problems were - relatively speaking - so trivial that C. wondered if Paramour would become our new local if we moved back to that neighborhood, close to where we used to live in Toronto. It's part of the happening new stretch of restaurants on Ossington north of Queen West whose vitality - oddly - has been fed by a city-mandated freeze on the issuing of further licenses along here for a year. As a result, those which got their license in time have a little extra aura to them: the rare, the special, the open.

( Very clear menu design and other, edible things... )

Service was why we came to Paramour in the first place. Splendido, which used to be our favorite Toronto restaurant, was bought out last year and we wondered what had happen to their best, most astonishly intelligent and attentive waiter: he'd gone on to head up the staff at Paramour. Although he wasn't in the evening we were, the staff clearly had their hearts in the right places. After a day in the processed air of indoors Toronto in winter, I was thirsty. The staff kept my glass topped up all evening. Our waitress really was interested in passing on our feedback to the kitchen. The service really was good, if limited by the timing of seatings.

Food was competent and cozy, if undersauced and - for our stomachs - overportioned. Next time, I'd share a starter and a dessert rather than tackling more of the meal's structure on my own.

Location: 18 Almeida Street in Islington, about a 10 minute's walk north of Angel. London.

For Chocolate Week, Almeida, a restaurant, coordinated with Paul A. Young, chocolatier, to create a three course menu for the second year running. We went with cwjat who, as it happens, is allergic to chocolate and so ordered off of the regular menu.

( Richly chocolatey, with a really nice bit of pork belly.... )

Service was helpful and good-natured, if stretched a little thin at peak service times. The kitchen's clearly doing good things, if not reliably so; but it's hard to tell with a special one-off collaborative menu, not refined over months or years of operation. The Chocolate Week menu was a good idea, but the results were more a work in progress than a polished work of art.

Alas, this proved true of my other attempt at a Chocolate Weke event. The Orangery at Kensington Palace promised a week of chocolate-themed afternoon tea, but failed to live up to its advertised Sunday opening hours; it was closed for a private event.

Location: 200 E. 25th St. at Grand Avenue, Kansas City, MO, in the Hallmark complex.

The American Restaurant is perched over the Hallmark complex in Kansas City, emcompassing wide-windowed views of downtown and the complex itself. It's a Kansas City institution, a conscious convenience for the corporation, and the culinary home of the 1999 James Beard winner of best midwestern chef. Friends recommended it, and so we stopped off for a moderately leisurely dinner in the midst of a day of driving from Little Rock to Des Moines.

( A variety of dishes... )

Overall, what the American Restaurant is serving seemed to me as if its root inspirations lay with highly processed, mass-market food. Don't get me wrong: I am in no way saying that this is what the restaurant is cooking. It serves refined, complex dishes made from high-quality, fresh ingredients, transforming them into plates of elegance and intelligence. So few of the dishes wholly came together for me, though. I would be entirely willing to return, but I'm more interested in checking out the other restaurants which Kansas City has to offer, should I have the opportunity.

Location: Pocra Quay, North Pier, Footdee, Aberdeen, looking out over the mouth of the Dee river.

Talk about a good location! The Silver Darling is the old Aberdeen customs house, and overlooks the wide mouth of the industrially-busy Dee river into the North Sea. The boats which ply this stretch are mostly en route to or from the oil rigs a day or two further out to sea.

( Herring, scallops, monkfish, crême brûlée... )

Overall, a very pleasant meal, with some real highlights, which isn't quite as coherent in dish design or service as it could be. But it's worth going: the scallops were really good, the atmosphere friendly, and above all, the view is fabulous.

Location: 152-154 Curtain Road, Shoreditch, in London. Moderate walk from Old Street or Liverpool St. Stations.

In a spacious chic-industrial space full of light, Saf's bar serves up some impressive and innovative cocktails. I drink a praise to England's Rhubarb Triangle, while C. is on the tarragon & tonic, and doctorvirago tries out the "Pick of the Garden Martini". A radish lounges on a floating leaf in her drink. Each cocktail is vividly complex, but with each element still distinct. This is superb teamwork on the part of the ingredients and the artfully performative bartender.

Dinner is thought-provoking, but we're not blown away the way we were with drinks. We have all three courses, starting with a vibrant sea vegetable salad, or a inadequately-varied set of tacos whose meat-replacement filling wasn't nearly as interesting as the sauces it came with. The salsify fettucine was visually lovely, but the comparison with fettucine was a distraction, with its flavor being less robust, more delicate than its namesake. Baked tofu really needed its dash of red pepper sauce to enliven it. The desserts were fine, but none of them were memorable for more than presentation.

Vegan fine-dining is a laudable accomplishment, but frequently, the dishes were, for all their visual elegance, not internally varied enough. We should have gone for more, smaller plates, perhaps a selection of appetizers. We also felt distracted by the names, with vegan dishes labeled as derivative of meat-laden versions we already knew. We wished we weren't burdened by those comparisons.

So: a pleasant meal, outside in the intimate little courtyard with twining pepper plants, fresh air and hard seats; friendly-but-uncertain service from a new waitperson; but the biggest active lure for a return trip is the cocktails. They really are awfully good.

( Photos... )

Location: 3 Hereford Road. Ossington Road becomes Hereford, heading north from Notting Hill Gate. West London.

The main dining room of Hereford Road is down the stairs, a well beneath a rounded skylight. Above us grow grasses and the sun is clear and warm. Here, capacious maroon booths, comfortable for four, ample for two as we sprawl our belongings across their lengths. Without the wash of sun, the room looks like it would be dim, despite its white walls. It's hard for me to picture either way.

The three course lunch special is £15.50. I have a refreshing salad, with large chunks of beetroot tumbled up with sorrel and tender hard-boiled eggs. d_aulnoy is generous and shares a full half of her much-needed salt intake, in the form of cod roe, delicate and light, on a more of the restaurant's good bread. (It arrived, untoasted, with butter, earlier.) Slices of onglet are nearly meltingly tender and buttery. The chips are crunchy and light, just as I like them, with a lemony aioli as accompaniament. The menu is literal: had we wanted additional vegetables, it would have required ordering sides.

The waitress is apologetic - no more strawberries, so I have a non-traditional Eton mess with raspberries, the sticky crushed meringue and fruit giving my stomach the illusion of lightness and very real energy. Service is pleasant and when we need it. The food refines on classics with minor experimentations along its edges. I wonder what dinner would be like there, lighting and all?

Afterward, we explore vintage clothing, Paul A. Young's lastest truffle innovations, and the tranquility of London streets in the middle of a World Cup football game when England is playing. Later, the cashier at a supermarket tells me of 3:30; the cashiers were all at their posts, but there was not a customer in sight.

Location: 118-120 Shaftesbury Ave, south side, by Chinatown. London.

This used to be the restaurant named Chinese Experience; rebranded and somewhat reworked inside to relatively plain, functional decor, it is now one of London's very few Hunanese restaurants. The menu is a picture book, poorly translated, but clearly depicted. We had a Hunan Chinese speaker in our group to bridge confusion, and the waitress double-checked our orders against the items in the picture menu to make sure.

( Many dishes... )

If this assortment is at all typical of Hunanese food, then it is a rich cuisine, meaty, and dominated by an assortment of strong, decisive spices, whether cumin, garlic, or chili. It is not excessively spicy (although we were uncertain if they had been at all toned down for us because we were (mostly) not Chinese). Overall, it was a feast of regular visual interest, spice variety, and flavorfulness,

Service was friendly, not always wholly bi-lingual, but since we had a Hunan Chinese speaker with us, this was never a problem. One odd service moment: part of our party ordered wine from the wine list; the waitress had to come back to tell us that actually, they only had one wine in that day, the house wine. It was, for a while, a challenge to catch the attention of staff when, later in the meal, we needed refills of drinks, including chrysanthemum and green tea in tea pots, and rice, but they were prompt and helpful once we had secured their attention.

I'm now more interested than I was before in consciously being able to contrast regional Chinese food as represented in London (or elsewhere) restaurants. My particular thanks to nou in arranging for the dinner in the first place!