Let’s drive to Brighton on the weekend – July ‘09

Looks like everyone had the same idea. Inspired by Bloc Party – Waiting for the 7:18 (band and a song, in case you were wondering). Nothing much to say, so I’ll let the pictures, lyrics, and some wit (infrequent) do the talking.

They’re not joking with this sign. The seagulls were bigger than any ducks / swans / geese I’d ever seen. I’m not even sure they were seagulls, to be honest. They could have been flying Labradors for all I know.

Waiting for the seven eighteen
January is endless
Weary-eyed and forlorn
The Northern Line is the loudest (Bloc Party)

Those coin machine things (the ones where you keep putting 1p coins in hoping to win 10p) really make me angry. You can’t even kick it or anything.

Sitting in silence in bars after work
I've got nothing to add or contest
Can still kick a ball a hundred yards
We cling to bottles and memories of the past (Bloc Party)

People sitting on the pebble beach, but from far enough, it looks like sand.

Grinding your teeth in the middle of the night
With the sadness of those molars
Spend all your spare time trying to escape
With crosswords and sudoku (Bloc Party)

Fudge

Fudge pot

If I could do it again
I'd make more mistakes
I'd not be so scared of falling
If I could do it again,
I'd climb more trees
I'd pick and I'd more wild
blackberries (Bloc Party)

Dining out while the weather is warm (slightly warm counts too).

Laffy taffy, and going slightly manic in a sweet shop.

Bought some lemon curd here, not realising that all 3 pots had the same expiry date – of 5 days later. Lots of lemon curd type recipes were used within those days.

Another colourful sight in Brighton.

Have I seen you here before …

Not so much a chat up line, more a question actually.

I have this counter thing which totals up how many people visit the blog, that kinda statistical stuff. Thing is, quite a few of the people who come here come from a search engine like Google, when they search for things like:

- rubber band spinach
- sausage holder
- noodle cockroach

As a food blogger, this is not the kinda stuff I was hoping to blog about. This led me to thinking, perhaps all those 10 hits a day aren’t actually from readers, eager to find out what I had. Perhaps from those 10 hits:

5 was mine (not sure why I check my own blog out 5 times a day)
3 from people I know
1 from person led here by Google
1 from someone searching for a big menu

Thus, out of curiosity, if you’re a frequent reader, would you mind leaving a comment, anything will do, just so I know some people actually are return visitors?

Tip (pun intended haha): This is in the ‘customer suggestion’ thing below this post

Fire & Stone, 31 Maiden Ln, Covent Garden, London, WC2E 7JS

This place is competition for Pizza Hut. Where as to most people, this may sound like an insult (ie your cooking is as good as McDonald’s), to me, this is quite a compliment indeed as there is nothing more alluring than the Pizza Hut lunch buffet. However, with Fire and Stone’s 2 pizzas for £10 offer (with Toptable), this place suddenly becomes better value for money.

The queues that form outside this place are probably evidence of this, but on the day we were there, there wasn’t any of that pesky queuing nonsense getting in the way of our eating. Sat down and with a menu placed in front of us, it took about 10 minutes to find my way around the pizza globe they had created.

Each pizza is named after a country, but not all countries are named after pizzas (fact).

My friend mentioned that there was a pizza which came with potatoes on top of it, and an image of a pizza laden with chunky roast potatoes hovered deliciously on the cloud that wafted on top of my head. This cloud wafts quite constantly whenever I’m hungry, so ordering becomes quite a tricky process when hunger clouds all reasons.

After having travelled round the continents and back in the span of an A4 menu, we finally decided on the 4 pizzas:

a) Bavaria
b) Bombay
c) New York
d) Melbourne

Melbourne £7.95 usually (Fire & Stone’s tomato base with sweet roasted butternut squash, balsamic roasted red onions, sliced brie, mozzarella topped with toasted pumpkin seeds)

Not one for pumpkin seeds (not on pizza anyway), or butternut squash (on pizza), this didn’t look that appealing, but I was told by my friends having it that it was great, so it must have been.

Bavaria £8.95 usually (Smoked german pork sausage, crispy bacon, pickled cabbage, Fire & Stone’s tomato based & mozzarella topped with sour cream, german mustard and chives)

This was Super Star of the meal, one of my favourite pizzas of all. The base was lovely and crispy, and although I would never have thought of putting sauerkraut on a pizza (such a lack of creativity), it worked wonderfully. The salty sausage, slightly chewy sauerkraut, and little crispy bits of bacon did the tango across my tongue, each one tapping a different little burst of flavour, but all coming together to the music. It was indeed a great first bite.

Bombay £8.95 usually (roast tandoori marinated chicken breast, spiced tandoori yoghurt base, broccoli, sliced red onion, mozzarella, spiced mango chutney & cucumber & mint yoghurt)

Now if the Bavarian was Super Star of the meal, this one was the extra. Put to the back of the stage, and could have been ignored if not for not wanting to waste. The chicken tasted slightly powdery, and although I find that common with most tandoori chicken (must be something to do with the marinade), it wasn’t that nice when placed on top of dry pizza.

Whoever it was who put the dollop of yoghurt and mint sauce on the pizza was having a canteen-style-slop-the-mush-on day. The dollop was possible bigger than the size of the pizza if I’d evened it out over the base, and after I’d tried to thinly spread it over the pizza, I had lots leftover to scrape off to be put to the side of the plate.

Broccoli was also slightly weird, as I’d never had broccoli with my curry before, and definitely not on top of a pizza. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for trying new flavours (re: 24 hour slow cooked bolognese) but the crunchy yet strangely bland broccoli did nothing for the pizza. Nothing at all.

In fact, the pizza did nothing for the pizza.

New York £8.95 usually (crispy oven-roasted smoked bacon, mozzarella, Fire & Stone’s tomato sauce, garlic and rosemary roast potatoes, caramelised onion jam, topped with sour cream and smoked paprika) – whew

Because I’d imagined chunks of roast potatoes on top of a pizza, it was slightly disappointing (although very highly sensible) when the pizza came with little bits of beautifully roasted potato on top of the pizza. Each little square looked as though it had been carefully roasted and turned in the roasting tray, each one evenly brown and crispy looking.

Although it wasn’t one I had, it looked really good, and I probably will order this the next time I’m here.

Would I recommend this place? With the Toptable offer (which we found in the form of a voucher on our table, convenient), you get 2 pizzas for £10. Works out cheaper than Pizza Hut, and dare I say, even McDonald’s.

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Young Cheng, 76 Shaftesbury Avenue, London (2nd review)

Of the 3 Young Chengs in London Chinatown (I’m not sure why they’re called the same thing either), I’ve only been to this one. As far as I know, one of the other ones is a buffet restaurant, while the other one is sit-down order type of place but at slightly higher prices than the one featured in this post here.

There are usually groups of people gathered outside this place at any one time, presumably not to admire the view but because they’ve been asked (for want of a better word) by the waitress to wait outside, menu in hand, for a table to be vacated. This is understandable, I guess, as the space in this restaurant is really well-utilised.

From my experience of Chinese restaurants (eating in them), space utilisation is almost an art form. If there is anything more than an inch between one chair and another, you’ve wasted considerable space which could have been used for another diner.

Sometimes, even gravity should not be an obstacle. If there is some space from the ceiling, why not glue some chairs there, that way the diners can fill both floor space and ceiling space, doubling profits. This is an idea which I’ve considered patenting, but until some Velcro shoes and ceiling paint is invented, I’ll wait.

Roast ducks by the wall. The duck here is nice, not as nice as the ones in Four Season, but nice enough. If you order a plate of mixed meat rice, you get lots of mixed meat, which makes greedy diners like me smile.

Smile. Lots and lots of mixed meat, delicious gravy and rice.

A friend of ours ordered the beef ball noodle soup, which I’d never tried before from this restaurant. As the soup noodles in Malaysia are far better than any I’ve tried in the UK, I didn’t even consider ordering this, but when the bowl of steaming hot noodles arrived, I was pleasantly surprised. It looked almost as good as the ones in Malaysia, but my friend confirmed that while it looked OK, the soup was lacking in any real taste. If the soup in the soup noodle is not great, there goes 50% of the points.

Looks nice, doesn’t it? Since most of the food pics show what the food looks like before it’s eaten, sometimes some people might not know what it looks like once it’s being eaten, so here it is. This is what soup noodle looks like.

Beef wat tan hor (beef hor fun in egg sauce) £5-ish

This is not on the menu, but from what people have told me, it seems lots of good stuff in this restaurant are not on the menu. The waitress there knew what I was trying to describe, so she managed to get this done for us without much fuss, and we’ve had this dish twice now, both times consistently fabulous, so be sure to order this next time you’re there.

Would I recommend this place? Most definitely so, just be prepared to wait outside with a menu if the place is full. Either that, or invent some Velcro shoes.

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Rasa Sayang, 5 Macclesfield Street, Chinatown, London

The name of the restaurant comes from a traditional Malay song sung by kids. Kinda like, Mary had a little lamb, only that it’d be quite a long name for a restaurant.

Note: We had this meal about 3 months ago, but just hadn’t posted about it until now.

After having peeked in its windows about, oh, 5 times now, we finally decided we’d try it out. The first few times we went by, it was empty and all the brown Ikea chairs were unfilled. Like little dumplings skins without fillings.

This time around, it seemed to have found its fillings and the place was full when we got there. A quick look downstairs and we discovered that there is another floor to this place.

With a menu that consists of an A4 sheet of paper, printed on both sides and laminated, it still took me about 20 minutes to decide what out of the 20 or so items I wanted to have.

So, I did the usual and peered over my shoulder (and everyone else’s) to have a quick look. The Hokkien noodle looked OK but didn’t seem like it was a big enough portion (value for money high on the criteria). The chicken rice looked OK also, but I fancied something with a little bit more spice.

Roti canai, £3 for 2 slices and a bowl of curry

When you can’t choose, don’t. Have everything.

This is puff pastry that is flipped (yes, flipped) pretty much like how pizzas are flipped, over and over again until they’re flipping ready. The pastry is stretched, and folded, stretched again and folded (and so on) until there are many layers in between. It is then cooked over a flat pan, and is usually eaten with some curry sauce.

Stir-fried ladies fingers (okra) with sambal belacan, £5.80

We like sambal. We like okra. Lovely, slightly slimy vegetables, these little okras. Sambal belacan (be-lah-chan) is made from fermented prawns, in a paste, with chilli so it tastes spicy and fishy. Perfect for when you want to impress your first date.

This was almost authentic. I say almost because the dish was quite cold by the time it was brought to the table, so it didn’t have the frying-pan-heat (direct translation of ‘wok-hei’, which is a vague method used mostly by the Chinese in assessing whether or not food is good).

Nasi lemak, £6.80 (coconut rice served with curry chicken, sambal, cucumbers and hard boiled egg)

This was really nice. The rice was cooked wonderfully, with just enough coconut to flavour it. The curry chicken was full of spice, very meaty and tender, with fluffy potatoes absorbing the sauce. Crispy anchovies to finish off the dish, very authentic.

3 dishes tried, another 22 to go.

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Eating in (not something I’d cooked earlier) – April 09

Having stood outside the ship windows of Cinnabon many times, sometimes with the bf, sometimes without, but each time with hungry looks, the bf decided to just buy me a bun and stop the silliness once and for all.

As he’s said many times before that he didn’t like cinnamon, I gleefully thought to myself that this bun would be ALL MINE. Thing is, the food is always nicer on the other side, so he can’t help but takes bites of my food, which is when he discovered that he actually does like cinnamon now.

Half the bun for me.

To redeem himself after eating half of the cinnabun meant for me, he also bought half a roast duck from the bril Four Seasons in Bayswater. Once when we were queueing up, waiting for a table (no wait, no table) we heard the waitress-boss say to someone that if he wanted to have more duck gravy in his takeaway, that he should bring along a bottle or container as the restaurant could only give the gravy in small little polystyrene cups.

All along, we had been under the impression that the restaurant was so miserly in their gravy portions because it was a precious commodity (quite like Jimmy Shoes choos, only, free). (Haha)

This time, the bf was well ahead of the game, and brought along his empty M&S water bottle to the restaurant. We had enough gravy for the duck, the dinner the next day, and a stir fry.

Sometimes, when you buy a takeaway, the quality of the food decreases compared to when you’re having it at a restaurant. Some might even say that there is a correlation to this decrease, ie the longer the time between the purchase and the eating, the lower the quality.

This is not the case with the roast duck from Four Seasons. Warmed up in the microwave before eating, this was just as nice as the real thing in the restaurant. With some gravy on hot rice, this made a fantastically enjoyable, delicious dinner.

Nando’s chicken (one) for £10.50 – consumed almost entirely by the bf. Despite what you might think, it doesn’t take that much time, or effort, to consume one chicken by yourself. All it takes is a little bit of perseverance, a large plate and lots of peri-peri sauce.

Me: ‘Is there a limit to the amount of sauce we can have for the takeaway chicken?’
Lady at counter: ‘No.’

10 minutes later, we’re three tubs full. The more the perri-er.

Pickled Chinese vegetable and French bean omelette. One of my favourite dishes, easy to cook and so nice to have. Usually I don’t have the picked vegetable in it, but since I had some to hand, I chucked it in. If you’re looking at this in disgust, don’t. Try it once and you’ll scoff no more. Something about French beans being stir-fried slightly, and cooked with egg that makes it really tasty.

This is what we call ‘oven food’. This is a piece of chicken with some sort of tomato flavoured paste on top of it, purchased from Sainsbury’s as part of a ‘2 can dine for £5’ promotion. The mash potato that came with it was really creamy and smooth, perhaps too creamy to be nutritional. For £2.50 a person, the chicken was actually quite good, and is something I’d consider having again when I don’t to cook.

Last Friday, when we felt like having nibbles for dinner, we went to Marks and Spencer and bought some of their 3-for-2 nibbles. Sausage rolls, meatballs and mini snack eggs (sausage meat with egg filling) came in one pack, the mini Melton Mowbray pork pies came in another.

This is what a mini Melton Mowbray pork pie looks like. See that bit of jelly that holds the meat and pastry together? That is why you DON’T heat up the pies, as I did. When I lifted the pie and had a bite, the jelly came sloshing out of the pie.

We also bought 2 portions of deep fried salt and pepper squid from Tai Won Mein (a noodle house selling very cheap food), some ready-cooked prawns from Marks and Spencer, and hummous to be eaten with … prawn crackers. Fusion food.

Having read this, you might conclude that I don’t cook much, if at all. That’s not entirely true, as when I cook, it’s usually something really easy to make, and doesn’t look that great (or edible). I do cook though, I just don’t blog about it much.

Lahore Kebab House, 2 Umberston Street, Whitechapel, London

It’s not often that people have their company dinners in a kebab house, and lots of groups seem to do that here, so you know this place is good.

I’ve been here before, and like how the menu is basically an A4 laminated paper instead of some Yellow Pages style wedge.

Lamb chop £7 (you have to try this one out)

This is such a fantastic dish, I don’t really want anyone to know about it, but hey, call me generous (and buy me dinner). Recommended to us by a friend who knows his stuff, this is one dish we order each time we’re here, despite it being one of the pricier items, and there isn’t much of it either on the plate.

When it arrives at the table, you’d better beat the other diners to it. Even if you have to hold it caveman-style, while tearing at the meat with your gnashers, it’s worth the effort.

Marinated in some of the most delicious spices (so delicious I don’t know what it is), these little chops are grilled till just cooked, so that they’re not chewy but incredibly soft and tender to the bite.

Chicken tikka curry £5.50

Very often, the curries with the vague names (ie medium meat curry) turn out to be the best dishes in the meal. I’m not saying that chicken tikka curry is not specific enough (after all, you know it’s chicken which is a starting point) but I guess the type of curry it is, is to be determined. Not that I know the difference anyway between one spicy-looking orange dish from another.

Taste-wise, it was curry-ish. With such obvious talent for describing food, I’d place bets on myself becoming one of the most successful food bloggers soon (as in, I’d place the bets soon, not become successful soon).

Sag paneer £5.50

When my friend asked if we could order this, she almost apologetically implied that it would be quite a gooey dish, thus an acquired taste for most. Thing is, I have eaten other versions of this dish elsewhere before, and quite like the gooey-ness, although it does get a bit much after a few mouthfuls. I’m all up for green cheesey spinach, but there’s only so much of that one can take.

Thus it was almost quite disappointing when this dish arrived at the table, goo-free. It seems the type of cheese, or paneer, they use here is quite different from the ones used in other places. The ones here stay cube-like, goo-free, and taste like tofu. Not necessarily a bad thing as I quite like tofu, and overall, this meant that the dish maintained its green, fresh taste without being blanded out by the cheese.

Quail curry £7

Not often do you see quail curry on a menu. Not often do you see quail anything, actually. Since a quail is less than half the size of the balti dish, that kind of half poultry looking thing on the left of the picture is the quail. Not much meat on it, to be honest, and if the prices for both chicken and quail curries are the same, you get more value for money with the chicken. I know they don’t give you the WHOLE chicken, but it’s still more than what you get from the quail.

Fish curry £5.50

This place gets their fish curry just right; not too cooked but just to the perfect texture. It doesn’t specify what fish it was, but it was flaky and lovely, with quite a few pieces in the dish too. Taste-wise, I couldn’t really tell the curries apart, besides what meat was used in it, so I won’t even try to describe it here. Spicy, perhaps.

Would I recommend this place? Most definitely, I wouldn’t have reviewed it twice otherwise.

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