The stuff called fast food

No matter where you are in England, there is one type of neon sign that shines brighter than the neon sign of McDonald’s.

That is the neon sign of the kebab / bacon buttie / fish and chip van. Whichever countryside you’re in, whatever public holiday it is, these vans are there. Persistently wafting the smell of bacon and fried eggs in your direction, hoping that someday, you’re give in to the delicious smell and buy something.

Oh OK then. Gimme a bacon sandwich. With an egg. Some mushrooms. Maybe a sausage. And how about some onions.

The gourmet fast food to beat all other inferior, copycat fast food. Soft chewy bread (no doubt bought in bulk and costing about 5p), bacon rashers and lots of tomato sauce. One of those things you have to eat on the way somewhere because at least, then you have an excuse, saying ‘Oh I was on the way there and was hungry’ instead of ‘I stopped at this stall which is not really on the way to anywhere just to get a sausage sandwich.’

If you’re gonna have fried chicken from KFC, you might as well have it from a KFC which has won awards in 1997 and 2000. Which is what KFC Greenwich on Trafalgar Road is. An award-winning fried chicken restaurant.

I don’t know what standards these awarding people give their points on, but from the 10 times or so I’ve been to this KFC, the standard has been consistently good.

Perhaps there is something to the awards after all.

This was a Zinger Tower Meal, and for about £5, you get a Zinger Burger, 2 hot wings (very nice, crispy batter with spice and crispy even after half an hour), fries, a choice of either baked beans or coleslaw and a drink.

Not bad for food that is fast.

Cheddar Gorge, Wiltshire

Some time back, there was a ruling that said only cheese made in Parma, Italy could be called Parmesan cheese (obviously not if it’s actually Stilton or something, I meant if it was actually parmesan cheese to begin with). This meant that supermarkets selling parmesan cheese not made in Parma had to then re-name their cheese ‘hard Italian cheese’.

Descriptive and cost-efficient at the same time.

A quick search on Google shows that there is no such restriction on Cheddar cheese, and cheese can be called Cheddar even if they are made in Scotland. There is a ruling, however, that says that the specific name of ‘West Country Farmhouse Cheddar’ is restricted by EU ruling so I guess there is some sort of rule here after all.

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Cheddar Caves is found in Cheddar Gorge, which is in Wiltshire. On the way to the caves, the view was really quite amazing, so much so that I didn’t take any pictures (was busy being in awe of the view). Thus, I’ll have to rely on my descriptive skills (good) to explain what it’s like.

Imagine one really gigantic hill made of limestone, and that this hill has one side which is almost 90 degrees vertical. Now imagine another hill, identical to this one, but facing it so that both the 90 degree sides are about 10 metres from each other. Now, imagine winding roads between these two hills, and that you’re driving through this gigantic gorge. Both sides of the hills are so high that when you look up, you can hardly see the sky. This stretches on a little, and then you’re back in open air, and the first thing you see is the quaintest little village ever, full of green trees and dew-dropped leaves.

Thing is, we’re here for the cheese.

This little town is big on cheese. Everything has the word Cheddar on it. Even the 2 takeaways in that town have the word Cheddar on them. It was quite surprising really to see takeaways here, considering the fact that it didn’t seem to be a residential town, and if you were a tourist here, surely the last thing you’ll want to have is sweet and sour chicken, or curry. I suppose if you don’t like cheese, perhaps you might want some sweet and sour, or curry.

Subliminal messaging not quite effective, then.

To get into the caves, we each bought an ‘Explorer’ ticket, which is gives you admission into Gough’s Cave, Cox’s Cave, and some other cave areas (there were quite a few). All this for £15 (pricey, I know).

Once inside the cave though, it kinda gets a little darker and colder.

Water drops fall from the top of the caves, dripping down to form stalagmites.

Through the centuries, the larger stalactites have broken off (gravity and all that), but some of the stalactites have water dripping off them, forming stalagmites at the bottom, and they meet halfway eventually.

A pool of still water in the caves, reflecting the image above it.

Closer look at it, nice isn’t it.

I was there for the cheese. Nice scenery, fabulous caves, but where is the cheese.

See it made, try it, choose it? Just you stop me. With free chutney, and lots of cheese in little cubes ready to be eaten, I was up and away.

This little lot have been cave-matured. When I was in the cave, I actually saw shelves with barrels of cheese, whether or not they were real cheese I’m not sure.

This is what the cheese machine looks like.

Cheese made from ewe’s milk. Ewe might know it but if ewe don’t, this is cheese made from the milk of female sheep.

Chilli cheese.

With that much cheese on the shelves, I had to buy something.

Cow has milk. Milk is cheese.

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The Zetter Restaurant, Clerkenwell Road, London

‘Where do we go from Yo Sushi?’ was the question to my friend. Well, the answer to that would have been ‘Anywhere is better than Yo Sushi’ if this was a trivia question.

I was however, trying to find my way to The Zetter Restaurant (and boutique hotel) in Clerkenwell one weekend, with 3 other people equally as directionally-lost as I was.

‘Follow the sign to the big Z’.

‘What, like Zorro?’ ‘Yes, that’s the one’.

Who needs street names, landmarks, that kinda thing.

As we rumbled like baby elephants into the very quiet restaurant, the waiters greeted us with plenty of smiles, offered to get our coats and were most friendly even though we’d caused enough ruckus to put most people off. That’s what happens when you’ve been wandering around Clerkenwell on a weekend evening, with no shops open for miles and finally find the restaurant you’re looking for. It’s … liberating.

This restaurant is described as Mediterranean in most of the websites featuring it, but the menu was more Italian than Mediterranean. It was kinda like a mixture of … I’m not quite sure what.

Thing is, we were there for the 50% Toptable promotion, and all the food was half-price so I’m not going to question which continent it comes from, as long as it’s nice.

One really lovely waitress was constantly coming over to the table to ask if we were OK. Sensing perhaps that we had not a clue what to order from the actually really small menu, she recited the whole menu to us, explaining what each dish was and what meat was in it.

(Call me paranoid, but I refuse to eat something described as ‘risotto with meat of some sort’.) This bread came with olive oil (and something which looked like black pepper, but was actually salty).

We were told that they’re not usually as empty as this. Granted, the weather wasn’t amazing that weekend, winds were going at 50mph in town, and it was drizzling almost all the time. It was pretty good for us as almost all the waiting staff were there for our one table. Could really get used to this kind of service in restaurants.

50% off starters equals yes please

Jerusalem artichoke soup with goats’ cheese and onions £5.50

We were all really hungry by the time the starters were served up, not because the service took long, but because we took so long to decide what to have.

When the waiter put down a plate with 3 wisps of leaves, and some little berries, my friend looked as if he was about to eat the utensils. We all considered doubling up the orders, and a friend frantically asked to up her portion size from a starter to a main.

Then the waiter poured this white soup from the little jug, and everyone heaved a sigh of relief.

When everyone had calmed down from the initial portion-phobe, my friend who had this soup described it as sort of a mix between leek and potato, and something with cream.

Grilled chicken salad with Gorgonzola, endive and walnuts £5.50
Should I know what endive is?

Grilled chorizo on toast with roasted tomatoes and Chimicurri £5.50

A whole chorizo came with this dish, on top of possibly ciabatta slices which had been toasted. It tasted similar to sausages, slightly more salty than the sausages you get from supermarkets, but it wasn’t the chorizos I was used to seeing. Perhaps this is the Mediterranean version?

Poached octopus with Cannelinni beans, Piquillo peppers and pickled ginger £6.50

When the plate came, I thought ‘Now this is what you call a good portion’. Then I looked more closely and realised that 4/5 of the plate was plate, and 1/5 of the plate was this little concave with food.

It was actually more than it looked, and the squid portion was generous to say the least. Everything I looked for when I ordered this dish was delivered, from the chewiness of the squid, to the fresh and clear tasting seafood in the dish.

50% off main meals, bring it on

Braised squid and chorizo risotto £12.00 (half-price! half-price!)

In case you came to the conclusion that I wasn’t actually that much of a cheapo and that I do actually pay for expensive meals, do reconsider.

This was half price, about £6 which transforms a dish (in my opinion) from a so-so one to a very tasty one. The rice was cooked very well, the texture was chewy yet cooked, and the meaty chorizo taste infused through the dish. I couldn’t taste much squid, but it was probably the chorizo that over-powered it.

Chestnut pappardelle with wild mushrooms, sage and pistachio £12.50

Perhaps this may be a reflection of my usual choice of cuisine, but when this dish was put on the table, I thought that they’d served up shavings of donner meat covered with cheese.

Grey slices of stuff? Check.
Shavings of cheese? Check.

This turned out to be a really tasty pasta dish, meatless and all that. I’d never had pasta like this before, and in that dim romantic lighting which was invented to annoy food photographers, it really looked quite weird, colour-wise. Good thing it tasted much better than it looked. The pasta was al dante, and you know I like my pasta al dante. It was also full of flavour, surprising considering the fact that there wasn’t any meat in the dish to lend flavour to it.

Grilled fish of the day (seabass) with lentil ragu, salsify and salsa verde £16.50

Salsify? Like, seabass that has been going for salsa classes? Whatever it was, this was one tasty fish. Pity about the portion sizes, because I could have easily had another one of it. The fish tasted fresh and nicely-chewy.

It came with mayonnaise of some sort, which I guessed to be the salsify as no restaurant like this serves you fish and mayo. Not without chips being part of the dish anyway.

Braised ossobucco with tomato, saffron risotto and gremolata £16.50

Usually when I read a menu, I understand more than 50% of the items on it. This menu though, was like reading a French dictionary upside down. When we asked the waitress what an ossobucco was (refer to comment above about not eating non-descriptive meat), she first said it was something like ravioli, then someone said it was beef, and when the dish was all mixed up, the kitchen staff confused, and we got the wrong risotto, it turns out that ossobucco is actually veal.

Very soft, tender veal at that. Braised in some tomato sauce, and put on risotto which tasted like it had been cooked in cream and some white wine. Lovely stuff. I don’t usually have veal, and don’t intend to have veal, but I chewed on a piece before it dawned on me what it was.

(Look, it was ravioli, beef and something else before it was veal.)

Here comes the desserts … (50% off, can’t refuse)

Creme brulee with banana and ice cream £5.35

Looked nice, and the friend who had this said that the banana gave the dish an interesting twist.

Pear and pistachio tart £5.35

When this was served, I asked for it to be moved to the centre of the table to be photographed. It was very nearly not moved back to the friend, it looked THAT good.

I’m not sure what it tasted like, as I knew that if I had one bite, it’d cause some friction in the friendship when I refused to give him back his dessert, and ran out of the restaurant with it hidden in my coat.

A friend who tasted it said it was ‘pistachio-ey’, which is as good a description as any, I suppose.

Without the Toptable promotion, I would never have discovered this restaurant. Now that I have, I have nothing but compliments for the chef. If it weren’t so expensive, I’d say I’d come here again, but without the promotion, there are cheaper things to have which would probably be up to this standard.

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Addie’s Thai, 121 Earls Court Road, London, SW5 9RL

Some like it hot. Some it like it very hot.

And some like Addie’s Thai.

I’ll elaborate further later, but for now, let’s just say that halfway through my meal, I had cold beads of perspiration and a faint dizzy-like feeling complete with little chicks going in circles around the orbit of my head. If there was a pool in the restaurant, I would have been in it.

Oooo you say, I wanna try some, how do I get there? The nearest tube stop is Earl’s Court, and to get there, I had to go by Notting Hill Gate station.

Look at the station lights. When I was younger, and had only seen Britain from films and computer games, I thought London looked like this (even in the daytime). I thought that it’d be foggy, that people dressed in tweed jackets with tweed flat-caps and women wore huge skirts and held delicate lacy umbrellas, as they sipped tea from china cups, little fingers in the air.

Americans still think England is like this (joke).

You don’t usually see stations like these. Most of the newer lines look like something out of a space-themed film.

Back to the restaurant, it isn’t the most obvious to spot, compared to the other brightly lit shops on the same street. From what I saw, there is a waiting area at the entrance of the shop, from where you can smell, but not eat. It’s not a big restaurant, so booking ahead is advised unless you particularly like waiting areas.

When the table was ready, we were shown to it, sat down, and a menu was put on the table.

Their menu is not big, it’s enormous.

It had tabs along the sides, and was bound in a leather-like material. The tabs were the sections of the menu, i.e. drinks, starters, main dishes. I nearly looked for an index to find my way around it, it was that big.

Tabbing from the start to the end and back to the start of the menu felt like a trek through the Sahara and by the time I was done, I still had no clue as to what I wanted to order.

In the end, we decided on going for the dishes which had accompanying pictures on the menu. My friend had dined there before, and highly recommended a fish dish, so we went with that too, and of course, in every Thai restaurant, you have to try the Pad Thai.

Comment: My friend’s recommendation was excellent, the highlight of the meal.

In keeping with the theme of the menu, I have split this review into several tabs.

TAB 1: The food

Egg fried rice £1.80. The plain white rice was £1.50 and for another 30p, you get egg so why not? (This was not the recommendation, in case you were wondering)

Pad Reau Poh (Stir-fried seafood with brandy £8.95). This was one of the dishes with pictures in the Specialties bit of the menu. The seafood selection in this dish were fresh, very tasty and the dish as a whole went very well with the rice. It came in a metal dish, which perhaps had been used to cook the dish, and in the mixture were deep-fried fish, prawns, squid and mussels. For the price, the portion was reasonable, and because it had that much seafood in it, the portion was never going to be that huge.

Superstar of the meal
Pla Pad Prik Sod (Deep-fried cod fillet with morning glory £8.95). This was the highlight of the meal, and also the dish recommended by my friend. The cod was deep-fried with a very tasty batter, and then cooked in a sauce which tasted almost like black bean, but not quite, and the morning glory vegetables (kangkung) that came in the dish absorbed the sauce very well. For the price, we got quite a few chunky pieces of cod.

When I bit into the first piece of fish, I wanted to jump from the table shouting ‘Gimme another serving.’ It was THAT good.

Gai Tra-Kai (Fillet of chicken with lemongrass and fresh chilli £7.95). This was pretty much a stir-fry of chicken with chilli, as the name suggests. The chicken was quite dry, but the dish was tasty (as stir-fries go).

TAB 2: The chilli experience

By this time, I’d invariably eaten lots of little pieces of chilli, disguised as green beans, sprinkled liberally over all the dishes. The little chicks were beginning to circle the orbit, and my cold drink was no help at all in cooling those chicks down.

Anyone would have stopped eating by now, and perhaps gone in search of some water to swim in, but I continued heaping portion after portion of these green beans onto my plate, while the chicks were now learning to fly.

With that, some of the words used to describe the food (i.e. tasty) could be wishful thinking on my part, as, by that time, there was nothing but the taste of chilli in my mouth.

TAB 3: The food, continued

Pad Thai £5.95. This dish came with a net over it, some sort of an eggy omelette disguised as a net. The texture of the noodles was as it should be, although taste-wise, I couldn’t taste the tamarind or fish sauce that would have been used in the dish. This could mainly be due to the fact that all I could taste by that time was chilli.

Yam Woonsen (Vermicelli salad with pork, prawns and jellies mushroom £6.95). We expected this dish to be cold, and it was described as a salad, but it came warm, probably from the pork which would have been cooked before being mixed into the vermicelli. If I had to guess which dish was the main source of the chilli-chow-down, it would be this one.

Between the four of us, we ordered 4 main dishes to share, 1 Pad Thai and 2 portions of rice. The portion sizes were reasonable without being OTT, and the food in this restaurant is definitely tasty.

Would I make a return visit? Definitely, but this time, those ‘green beans’ better be removed from the dishes.

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