La Tasca, Canary Wharf, London

‘You can’t take pictures here’, says the security man all wrapped up in his security visor jacket. ‘Especially not of that’, he says pointing to the bridge. I look to the bridge, in all its misty, dimly lit glory (it was a cold, misty night).

‘Why not?’ I ask. ‘I’m just taking photos of the lights and how nice it looks.’

‘Your hotel should have told you about not taking pictures here’, he says, shrugging without giving me any real reason at all why I have crossed the line by taking pictures at Canary Wharf (I’ve done so a few times before without anyone telling me I couldn’t do it).

Last time I checked, we could take pictures of places, as long as they are not private establishment type places. I guess Canary Wharf counts as one huge privately owned place? Try telling that to the tourists who’ve undoubtedly taken pictures of the place, a thousand times or more.

Update: Just had a quick check and it seems it is one giant private establishment, which allows photography but where security might question why you're doing it.

Anyway, I showed him the pictures and won him over. Quite an achievement considering how rubbish the pictures were. Look, here’s one.

Rubbish picture of bridge

It was dark, and it was cold, and my hands were wobbling. I tried steadying myself on the bannister to take the picture, but that was when security man came over, so the bridge picture was unsuccessful.

Here are some of the more successful pictures, taken when we were on the other side of the bridge.

Anyway, feeling rebellious (and slightly confused), we went on towards La Tasca, 50% off vouchers in hand. These vouchers surprisingly allowed us to dine in on Fridays, so we took that opportunity to try it out one more time. I’d previously tried it twice, and was not that impressed but we figured, since everyone seems so won over by this place, maybe the ones we tried weren’t good examples of what La Tasca had to offer.

The outside of the place looks good, and the inside looks warm and very welcoming, especially since it was really cold and windy when we were there. As we’d made the booking for 8pm, this meant that we could skip the 10-people deep queue that was already there, going with our over-worked waitress to the table.

This might be a good time to say that it was unbelievably dark in there, so I had to use the flash for the photos. Tapas = many dishes = many flashes = many people looking at us.

Pan de Barra £2.25 (Fresh bread served with an extra-virgin olive oil & balsamic vinegar dip)

We were expecting the usual balsamic vinegar with olive oil dip, but what came was this red and green dip – the red tasted like garlic and tomato, the green tasted like garlic and olive oil. Interesting. But not nice.

Pollo Marbella £4.75 (Chicken, cooked with paprika, chorizo, sweet peppers, onion and a white wine & cream sauce)

This was OK, as in it would have been OK if we hadn’t ordered this. I know, I know, it sounds like I’m complaining about each dish, but that’s not necessarily without reason. The food tasted like it was ladled out of ready-prepared vats, and perhaps reheated prior to being served. We’re not expecting Michelin-starred quality, but hey, we’re paying restaurant prices (albeit only half) but it would be nice if it tasted like it was cooked fresh to order instead of being reheated fresh to order.

Calamares Andaluza £4.25 (Deep-fried squid rings, served with roasted garlic mayonnaise and fresh lemon)

Perhaps the favourite of the meal, because it wasn’t soggy, and the squid was tender.

Alitas de Pollo £4.25/£5.95 (Marinated chicken wings)

Of all the items which were ordered, this was the only one which tasted like it was cooked to order. How could I tell? The skin of the chicken wings were crispy to the bite, and each bite had a little bit of moisture with it, showing that it was cooked only just before being served. Because of that, it was very tasty, very tender, very nice.

Paella de Carne £4.25 (A meat paella, with chicken and chorizo)

If the chicken wings tasted the freshest, this probably wins the award for the least fresh tasting item in the meal. The texture of the rice was similar to that of microwaved frozen paella. I’m not saying that’s what it was, but it sure tasted like it. It was also very salty, but that wasn’t a problem as we only had a bite of this anyway.

Costillas de Cerdo £4.65/£6.75 (Succulent pork ribs, served in a tangy sauce)

The ribs were generous in size, and surprisingly juicy. Would have been very nice if not for the slightly too tangy sauce.

Albóndigas a la Jardinera £4.65/£6.75 (Spanish-style beef meatballs, served in a tomato sauce)

Meaty tasting meatballs (I know), in a sauce which was tomatoey. As far as descriptions go, this did what it said on the menu. Nothing more, nothing less.

Buey al Jerez £5.95 (Rump steak and mushrooms, sautéed and served with fried potato and a rich sherry sauce)

*Taps fingers in an attempt to come up with more inventive descriptions. Remind me not to have tapas again, this is quite tiring*

OK, it looked promising, what with the many pieces of meat and brown-looking potatoes. It tasted like leather.

Patatas Bravas £3.35/£4.35 (Fried potato, with a spicy tomato sauce)

Liked this very much, because it was potatoes and because it was fried. You can’t really go wrong with fried potatoes, as shown here, so we like this, it was nice, should have ordered more.

Tortilla Española £3.60 (Spanish-style omelette, with potato and onion)

Finally, the omelette. Not had this before, ordered this to try as I was curious what it would taste like (seen it being cooked many times on TV and in cookbooks, but not tried it myself). Maybe this is not the best example of a tortilla, but it sure tasted like a cake-pie.

Excuse me while I have another meal to make up for this one. Would I recommend this? Probably not. Even with the 50% discount, I still didn’t feel like it was good value for money, and neither was it filling enough to be counted as a satisfactory meal.

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TGI Friday’s, 6 Bedford Street, WC2E 9HZ, London

American food. When you want huge portions and lots and lots of BBQ sauce, there’s always American food. Call me a stereotypicalist, but you know it’s true.

Nothing wrong with that though, big portions and BBQ sauce always make a nice combination. Which is why one weekend, when we were feeling on top eating form, we decided to try out TGI Friday’s in Covent Garden.

Perhaps try out is not the correct words to be used, as we’ve tried this place out before. Usually we only go here when we’re really hungry, as the prices aren’t cheap, but for the price you pay, they most certainly don’t short change you.

The stroll from Soho to Covent Garden takes a good 15 minutes, so we had to stop for some nourishment along the way. Introducing the blackforest gateau from Patisserie Valerie (Covent Garden branch).

This shop sells the best cakes in London, and while we were in these, people were queuing up for these delectable little morsels despite prices being higher than average. Look at them, how can you say ‘only one slice, please’.

You’ll notice that when we had the cake, it was still bright. One slice of cake and a short stroll later, it was beginning to get dark. This is the front of TGI’s in Covent Garden, a place usually filled with lots of American food (and this time, 2 hungry people also).

As you enter the restaurant, you’re instantly transported into the make-believe neon-light-filled world of the American diner reception area. With bated breath, you wait to be led to your table by a chirpy waiting staff.

‘Here’s your table’, they chirp, as we position ourselves underneath the huge spot light hovering above the table. Nothing like some spot light to make you wanna order some food.

Or a spot of shopping (note the Primark shopping bag in the background).

TGI’s have their special Jack Daniel’s sauce, which, to be honest, does not taste of Jack Daniel’s at all, though it does taste pretty good. It’s slightly sweet, slightly smoky, slightly bitter, with a tinge of treacle-like taste to it. The texture is similar to that of treacle also.

A few other restaurants try to do something similar, ie Jim Beam sauce, but it just doesn’t match up to the original one here. Used as a sauce for alot of the meat dishes, it’s one of those sauces that make you want more of it even while you’re eating it.

Mmm, more sauce.

We seem to be developing the ‘Order More Than You Can Physically Eat’ practice to a T. Is it because we’re usually very hungry when faced with a menu? Is it because the smell entices us? Is it because we’re just very greedy people with not much logic when we’re hungry? All the above, probably, which means that we end up with too much food than ever sensible for 2 people.

Baby back ribs with JD sauce, oh yummy. Each piece of rib had fall-off-the-bone meat, tender and flavourful. The slightly tangy, slightly BBQ-ey and sweet sauce was perfectly absorbed by the tender pieces of meat, altogether very enjoyable.

Surf ‘n’ turf is the default choice when we want to share a huge dish, but can’t decide if we want meat, or fish. So we say, why not have both, and that’s why we ordered this here. Though the prawns could have been slightly overcooked (chewy), they were fresh and crunchy, and the piece of grilled meat that came with it was flavoured just right so as not to overpower the delicate taste of the prawns. Probably not the best way to cook either meat nor seafood, but hey, you’re here to have a nice, relaxing time, with lots of music, lots of chat, and lots of food.

Would I recommend it? Well, you know what you’re getting with TGI’s, so why not.

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Mirch Masala, 111 – 113 Commercial Road, London, E1 1RD

Whenever we go to Lahore Kabab House (and then invariably miss the turning to get to it), we then go by Mirch Masala and think to ourselves how we’d like to try it out. After doing this about 3 times, we decided to make an actual trip there instead of just imagining it.

While waiting for our friend who was making his way from Clapham, we decided to look through the ENTIRE menu. Not just waft our way through it, no, but look through it in entirety, understanding every word as though revising for an exam. A fun exam.

Having had a look through the entire menu, memorised the spelling of the dishes, completed a quiz on the prices of the dishes, and then decided what to order on behalf of said friend from Clapham, said friend still hadn’t turned up.

When you have nothing to do while waiting for your food, you play with whatever food you have. Can’t do anything with chilli sauce and yoghurt? You’ve been proven wrong.

The table setting here is pretty much wooden table with some red napkins, nothing jazzy, but nice and purpose-befitting. When our friend finally turned up the day after (kidding), we told him what we;d be ordering and what he’d be eating. Thus, the dishes you see below were decided upon entirely by us, which is what happens when you’re late for dinner.

Mixed frill (3 grilled chops, 3 seekh kebabs, 3 pieces chicken tikka, 3 pieces lamb tikka, 4 pieces tandoori chicken wings) £14

With 3 of us dining (2 of them being hungry man-types), the full works had to be ordered. After a quick mathematical assessment of price vs quantity, we decided that this was the best option for starters if we wanted variety, quantity, and lots of meat.

Suffice to say, it didn’t disappoint as it looks like half the farm was served up on the sizzling plate. With a bit of seekh kebab to lend to the texture of pure meat, the blend of spices, the mixture of tastes, and the sheer quantity of the dish made this very enjoyable.

Trust me to always prioritise quantity over quality.

Karahi ginger chicken £7

It’s not often that I see ginger in my curry. Ginger is more often than not a vegetable (?) I associate with steamed Chinese dishes, so when I saw this on the menu, I thought it might be worth trying out.

When the dish arrived with the ginger bits on top, I felt slightly disappointed as just from looking at the dish, it seemed as though it was a typical curry dish, just with extra ginger garnishing on top of it.

Pleasantly enough, the curry actually tasted of ginger, so this is a dish I’ll order again.

Paneer naan £2.50

Due to no other reason than pure greed for food, we decided that 3 portions of rice between the 3 of us wasn’t enough carbs, so we ordered one more portion of naan for good measure, just in case we hadn’t ordered enough already. The cheese used in the bread is not as strong as the usual Cheddar variety, and I could actually taste the milk used in the cheese, with a nice stringy chewy texture in between the layers of bread.

Karahi fish £7

Typically ordered to see how a new restaurant fares on our weird and non-scientific benchmark list, this dish proved to be a winner. I’m not sure what white fish they used, but it was tender without being too flaky, and because of that, it managed to retain all the spices used in the curry. Kinda like a sponge with ovely texture.

This was the first time we’d been to a Mirch Masala (it’s a chain restaurant), and it won’t be the last as the quality of the food and service was really impressive. Reasonable prices, more than decent portions, and a creative (but not big) menu made this meal very enjoyable.

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Fish ‘n’ Chips, Harry Ramsden’s, Brighton

I have watched you on the shore
Standing by the oceans roar
Do you love me do you surfer girl
Surfer girl surfer girl (Beach Boys)

No, I’ve not taken the lazy route of just posting lyrics with my pictures (actually I have). But the lyrics quite fit the picture, so it’s OK.

Trying to decide where to eat after a lovely day at the Brighton beach, we had shortlisted a few places and went from one to the other, just looking in to see what the dining possibilities were.

Option 1 – fish and chips at the local chippy (greasy breezy)
Option 2 – fish and chips by the beach in the shack (microwave ping)
Option 3 – fish and chips at Harry Ramsden’s

Seeing as we had all these varied and international choices to choose from, we decided on Harry Ramsden’s, purely based on the fact that it was (surprise) the cheapest. The dining-in prices were not cheap, but the takeaway (ie going to the counter, buying it in a takeaway box, and sitting outside) prices were cheap.

Divided by the restaurant wall, this option saved us about £10.

Looking good, like the counter at KFC.

If you’ve never had fish and chips before, you’re missing out. Although the chips don’t look great here (they actually look quite bad), they were surprisingly crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. The fish was slightly more crispy than how I usually like it to be (soft batter is the way to go), and it felt as though the fish had been overcooked as it didn’t flake. Rather, it was kinda chewy, and if you can make cod and haddock chewy, you know you need more training with the fryer.

With fish and chips, you gotta have mushy peas. Made of peas, and mushed, lovely.

To conclude, it was a reasonable meal, not the best (hey, cheap options usually aren’t) but good enough to please these non-discerning diners.

Masala Zone, 147 Earls Court Road, SW5 9RQ

After meeting up with some friends for a moving-of-things-session around the Earls Court part of town, we were pondering over that all important question which we ask ourselves, and each other, daily.

Where should we go for dinner.

We’d spent the day being stuck in traffic, while trying to get from one side of London to the other. Usually, without traffic, this journey takes about an hour. With traffic, you’re looking at a leisurely time of about 3 hours.

With nothing much to do while stuck in traffic, I took some snapshots of London on a Sunday evening (looks warm but it’s not). In fact, it was raining and windy throughout the day, with bits of sunshine in between, which was when I took these pics.

These were blocks of flats near Earl’s Court. In the evening light, they looked like something out of a movie, and very unlike any flats I’d seen in London, so I took a picture of it.

When we got to Earls Court road, we were spoilt for choice as to what we COULD have if we decided against Masala Zone.

Japanese? There was no one in there so probably not. Chinese? Wagamama’s didn’t seem too appealing. Masala Zone was it, so in we trooped.

The girl behind the menu is not trying to be the Masala Zone man, she’s just holding up the menu for me to take a picture of. Most of the pictures here are in an attractive shade of orange, mainly because I believe in getting the ambience of the place like it was when actually dining there.

Mainly also because I don’t know how the white balance on my camera works.

Dhaaba roghan josh thali £10.45

Although it may seem as though I’m taking pictures of the same plate of food, just from different angles, I assure you this is not the case. The plates just all look the same, with curries in slightly different shades or red and orange.

This dish (same as the one above, in case you can’t tell the difference between them) was nice. Not as nice as the Grand Thali, which is basically the thali seen here, but with MORE STUFF. More stuff is always nice.

This thali had the vegetable of the day which was curried cauliflower, spiced potatoes, curried lentils (dhal) and the chapati. The main part of the dish was the roghan josh, and although it looks really red here, it wasn’t actually that spicy.

You could taste the spices coming through, not heat-hot spice, but more, flavourful spice. The meat was rather too lean, and so was slightly chewier than I preferred.

Yellow chicken korma Grand Thali £7.40

This may look particularly yellow here, but it was quite yellow in real life also. Does what it says on the menu though.

I don’t usually go for kormas because there’s something about the creaminess of it which I don’t like. The korma is a curry stereotyped as the one you go for if you can’t take spicy food, but this is not always the case. It has its own taste, and that day, my friend (who can eat spicy stuff) decided to have this for his dinner. I didn’t try it so I don’t know what it tasted like.

Since we’re taking lots of pics of the same meal, but from different angles and in different mood lighting, why not take more of the different bits to the meal. This is the pilau rice on the thali, which was very flavourful and well cooked. Each bit of rice had enough spice on it, and was firm (but not too firm) to the bite. One of my favourite aspects to the meal.

This is the kachumber, which is the Indian salad according to the menu. Served chilled, this was slightly tangy, slightly sweet and very refreshing to have between bites of the spicy curry.

The potatoes that came with the thali, each bite was fluffy yet slightly chewy the way I like it. Not too spicy either.

Dhaaba roghan josh thali £8.05

Tender pieces of lamb in a very flavourful sauce, accompanied with the mini portions of potatoes, rice and veg.

Overall, this was the first time I’d had thali here, and found it an enjoyable experience. Would I return to this restaurant? Most certainly so, and I’d recommend it to anyone despite it being a chain restaurant as the food is tasty, the quality is satisfactory, and the ambience is always good for groups of friends wanting a loud party or even couples wanting a quiet dinner.

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