Soko Barnet: pan Asian restaurant with mixed outcomes

13th August.
One of our dining club had noticed this place at the top of Barnet High Street before it becomes Hadleigh. It is a small place with a main claim of having a Japanese grill, which you can see just beyond the entrance. They have a fairly helpful web site on www.sokorestaurant.com . This is helpful except it does not give an exact address and some of the menu information is slightly inaccurate.
When we booked, the staff seemed uncertain if they served wine, but they have a decent enough wine and drink list when you get there. The staff are a mixed bunch, as are most restaurants these days, and I am unsure of the Asian provenance of most of them, but never mind.
At 7.30 on a Saturday, we were the only customers, but over the evening it filled up. It is not a big place, and I would not want to turn up there on a Saturday without a booking, but many did.
For starter, I had a grilled chicken gyozo.

I have had gyozo before in a Japanese Restaurant. These were a little disappointing in that the fillings were a bit gelatinous and gloopy with little taste, and the sauce did not bring much additional taste. They were OK and scored a 7.9 on the CHOF scale. My wife's tempura vegetables was by far the better bet, in that she had a huge plate of freshly fried veg, and I would recommend that.
I cannot remember exactly or find on the on-line menu what I had for main, but essentially it was a teriyaki style fillet beef in a hot sauce. This was tasty and hot, and scored a 9 on the CHOF scale. I enjoyed it, and also had a taste of my wife's seafood and rice, which was excellent.

Service was a bit hit and miss, with the first of our party of 5 being served a good 15 minutes before the last, but may be that shows it was freshly cooked. The staff just seemed a little confused of what was expected of them.

Reviews elsewhere of this restaurant have been mixed: people either love it or hate it. I fall in the middle, in that I would not rush to go back there, but would not say no if it came up again. I would probably choose something different to eat.

A meal for two including drink came to just over £60 which is fairly representative.

Abshar Restaurant 694 High Road, North Finchley, N12: A star was born, but went unnoticed

5th August 2016
Now Closed after a fire.
Have not tried the successor


I had noticed this re-incarnation restaurant in the run of shops nearby Argos in North Finchley. I had never seen it at night, but it looked smartly set out but deserted.
Fortunately they left copies of the menu outside, and it looked sufficiently interesting and moderately priced to be worth a try. In the light of being let down by others, my wife and I went there last Friday night (a better test than going on a Saturday).
North Finchley seems to have become a focus of Iranian ex-pats with grocery shops, restaurants, tea shops and a cultural center. A big Persian Restaurant a few hundred yards away had closed with no signs of life. It had to be worth a try.
When I booked, I saw I was the only name in the book, and was invited to choose where I wanted to sit. There is a completely European main area, but once you go out to the back, you are in Shisha land. Passing through an area of booths for relaxed smoking, you go out to the back, where you are somewhere that is not the UK. It has the look of the middle east with wall carpets, ornate lights and strange statues. This looked like fun.
When we got there at 8pm on a Friday, I was a bit worried that the back area we had booked might turn out to be a full blown passive shisha experience. Knowing that one pipe is the equivalent of about 90 cigarettes, I needed some assurance that this was not going to be a respiratory experience. They said no problem, and as the top was essentially open (presumably to comply with laws about smoking in restaurants), we took our seat.

The menu is fairly short, and you can have vegetarian dishes, lamb or chicken with some fish available. Our Romanian waitress confused us about what could be had on the mixed starter (only some of the cold ones, and some of them won't fit on the plate), so we plumped for individual starters to share.

This is a spinach bourani (yoghourt with spinach) and a Kashke Bademjan (fried aubergine with fried onion, herbs, spice and Iranian sauce)
This is served with a large lavash bread. The portions were huge, and extremely tasty. The Kashke is a little on the oily side. The taste was the taste of the east, and you immediately felt that you were in a very foreign place. If this had been not in the UK, it would have not been a surprise, and it was like being on holiday.
The drink list is a bit short, and I suspect that it is largely aimed at non-alcohol drinking ex pats.
There was red or white wine, and three types of bottled beer. We both went for Corona (a strange choice for the nationality of the restaurant, but I dare say there is not much Iranian beer around).
For main course I opted for the Chello Kebab Sultani which is one skewer of baby lamb fillet, one skewer of minced baby lamb served with grilled tomato. My wife opted for Bakhtiari which is a mix of chicken and lamb kebab.

This had definitely been freshly cooked but only scored an 8 on the CHOF scale. Service is a little slow, but amiable.

The meat was very tender, and there was a mountain of rice with a little packet of butter.

We could not work out what they had done to the lamb fillets, but not only were they very tender, but also had a marinated taste of the east. This was excellent, and together with the two starters made for a big meal.

We did have a desert to share.

We had this tailor made for us, and it was a mix of ice cream and a rice based noodle with citrus sauce (and an umbrella on the top). A person from the next table seemed to know what this was, and assured us that it was an authentic choice. Very good indeed.

Whilst the service was a bit hit and miss, the experience was one of the best we have had for a long time as we felt that we had dined somewhere very out of the ordinary. The bill for the two courses, one desert and two beers came to just under £40.

When we left, the local ex pats had arrived and were sucking away on their pipes in a very convivial atmosphere. The front restaurant was deserted, giving a very misleading impression.

We loved this place, and we only hope that not only does it stay, but does not get spoiled by being too widely discovered. However, it needs the customers to survive, so this is the only significant review on the Web at the moment. The only other two review found on AllinLondon were very enthusiastic. I suspect that this is authentic food, and an atmosphere that might have been found in Iran before the revolution in the late 1970's.

(NOTE THAT SINCE WRITING, THE RESTAURANT SUCCUMBED TO A FIRE. IT HAS BEEN CLOSE FOR SOME TIME, BUT SHOWS SIGNS OF REOPENING0

Westminster Lodge leisure centre cafe bistro, St Albans: so good it made me take up my pen again

14th July 2014
I take up my pen/keyboard again, having had an experience that made me want to write about it, but not on TripAdvisor, which has had too much of my input recently.
This is somewhere we had not been before, and we found ourselves there whilst looking after our granddaughter for the day. We had to find somewhere child friendly that did not cost an arm and a leg.
The cafe/bistro is located in the leisure centre, and is a large open functional space that looks out on to a patio, where it is said you can see the cathedral (did not notice it). Whilst possibly intended for the sporting users, it attracts all kinds and is one of the places to use if you are in Verulam Park, as it is next to the car park (free for first two hours, and £2.30 if you want 3 hours). When we went there for lunch, there appeared to be a lot of people gathering wearing business dress with name tags, so I don't know if it has meeting rooms there as well.
It offers a mix of cafe style food, with a small selection of hot dishes including pasta and baked potatoes.
Knowing my granddaughter would eat pasta, I chose the spaghetti carbonara with chicken and bacon, so that I could share it with her. My wife had a sandwich. Firstly I have to say that whilst in a pack, the sandwich was well filled and attracted no adverse comments.

After a wait, suggesting that it had been made rather than heated up in a microwave, what appeared, whilst not pretty, was impressive. A big portion which as you can see is stuffed with meat, and not drowned with sauce. The pasta was not over-cooked and it was adequately hot scoring an 8 on the CHOF scale. It was a little on the dryish side, maybe, but it tasted excellent, and exceeded my expectations, but not those of my granddaughter. I have had carbonara in proper Italian restaurants in the UK which have not been as good because they were drowned in salty sauce. A huge plate of pasta cost £6.50 . The Americano Coffee was not great, probably having too much water added (using Costa as my benchmark).

My family rate this place highly, and whilst not as picturesque as the other cafe in the park, it is an excellent functional stopping place. It has the added bonus of free wifi and newspapers.

Cocorico, Whetstone High Road: Italianish Restaurant aimed at the masses

13th February 2016
Don't you just hate the rip-off menus and meals that are everywhere on Valentines? I have had it with short overpriced set menus and indifferent food with rose sellers. (NB have you ever heard of a Romantic Curry?). So I try to go out either side of the day, and I think this is catching on. We booked Cocorico about 6 days in advance, because I could not get into the small local trattoria. There had been some initial negative reviews of locally of this place when it first started, and one or two people reported food poisoning. But a year down the line it is still there and I have noted that it is packed at nights even during the week. It had to be worth taking a chance. They promote themselves as a cross between an Italian Nando's and a full Italian Restaurant, but they do not do pizza (yet). The grilled spicy chicken is supposed to be their thing, and is very competitively priced, and avoids the necessity of dining with feral youths at a real Nandos. I would not knock Nandos as I think it is a great product at a great price, but I do not want to queue with teenagers for a table at a weekend. A friend of ours said the Italians do not know how to cook chicken, but I still took a chance.
There is an enthusiastic web site on http://cocoricorestaurant.co.uk/ which is sort of helpful. They accepted a booking immediately slotted in to their convenience, but when we arrived a few minutes early, there was a little queue of bookers and non-bookers. The place was pretty full on a Saturday night at 8pm, and only started thinning out at about 10. I heard that the place was an offshoot of Al Fresco across the road, which I have found very noisy with diffident staff, and I would not choose to go there regularly.
Unfortunately there are no pictures this time as  my phone had run out of juice.
The restaurant is modern, close packed with a bar and fairly open range kitchens where you can just about see what is being cooked. At least the ingredients looked real. Service is patchy and the waiters come from the demonstrative school of waiting showing what hard workers they are and how serving you is a bit of a burden. We were dealt with relatively promptly and got the feeling that they might have a window of attention for each customer before they want them to move on.
Having said that our staters of fried calamari and chicken/chorizo skewers were excellent. They were hot, and substantial portions.
I had the house grilled  1/2 chicken. Unlike Nandos, this is only mildly spiced and you cannot choose the hotness. However there is chilli sauce of high strength on the table. I thought my chicken was a little on the dry side for the breast meat, but my wife's chicken in a fruit sauce was excellent. The grilled chicken comes with two sides, and I chose the fries and sweetcorn, which was very like Nandos. Her meal came with Sautee potatoes, broccoli and green beans. She thought that you do not go to a restaurant to eat broccoli and green beans, and chose some fried zucchini as well, which was a good idea. The food was tasty and hot, scoring an 8.4 on the Chof scale. Portions sizes are very generous, and we might not have needed the starter. There is absolutely no pretension here, and it is a middle of the road place aimed at middle of the road people.
The pricing is also very middle of the road and our bill for a meal for two but sharing desert and a bottle of Malbec came to £61+. I put down 70 in cash and the waiter asked if I wanted change. Yes I did.
Would I go there again. Probably yes, but not as a talking group as it was very noisy, and probably not on a Saturday night, as it was packed and noisy.  The food is fine, and I would probably go for something other than the grilled chicken next time.

Yijo, Finchley Central: A taste of Korean Barbecue in North London

6th Feb 2016
Our Eating Group was led into this unique restaurant: it would seem that it may be the only Korean Barbecue in London, but of course there are other Korean Restaurants in London. I remembered trying this many years ago when it was not a bbq place, but could not remember anything about it except that I had not been sufficiently motivated to go back there these past 30 years. It has been in its location for ever, in a side street on the Main Drag of Regents Park Road and Ballards Lane, and is opposite the back entrance of Finchley Central tube station: it is completely invisible to passing trade. It is completely unpretentious, and weirdly enough has the only waitress who speaks English as a first language on their staff.
There is a fairly helpful web site at http://www.yijo.co.uk/ but what it does not tell you is how much to order and how to cook it properly. We were watching the other patrons who seemed to have a much better idea than us of what to do, but we were reluctant to look too naive.
The easiest thing to do is to show you the itemised bill. We order 5 starters for 5 people to pass around, and a bit too much in the way of main courses to get stuff to barbecue and accompaniment.

The first five items on the list were the starters, and this is an idea of what they looked like

It is difficult to explain what the flavour is, as it is definitely oriental, but not Chinese, Japanese or like Thai or Vietnamese. A taste of its own. Suffice it to say that it was extremely tasty, not too spicy, and hot scoring an 8.5 on the scale. The portion sizes were generous for starter, but they were not cheap, as an average dish at this restaurant is about £8.50.

We probably ordered too much for the barbecue course in the way of accompaniments, but the actual helpings of meat and fish to barbecue were quite small and it was only by virtue of substantial starters and accompaniment, that there was enough to go around.

The above gives you an idea of the barbecue arrangement which is in the middle of the table, and the waiting staff come and fill the centre with hot charcoal. We should have had some help with this, as they suggest on the web site, but we were left to figure it out for ourselves and watching other customers. What we did not know was that like a conventional bbq, we should have left the charcoal to heat up, so for the first 20 minutes, it was struggling to cook things quickly enough, and the baby octopus did not cook enough and had to be put back on. The tongue cooked very quickly but was a bit unsubstantial, and the salmon was quite fiddly. The prawns were a bit easier, as we were told that they would change colour once cooked. It was all a bit strange and unfamiliar, but at least with it being cooked by ourselves, it was hot at the point of delivery. The noodles which you can see in the lower part of the upper picture were delicious and had really fat noodle in it, which I thought was asparagus when I first looked at it. The vegetable platter was a bit uninspiring and definitely not £5.50 worth.

So the bill for 5 including 3 bottles of wine and 12.5% service (there was not a lot of service as it was all brought at once, and we cooked the bbq ourselves) was £181 which was a bit of a big hit for a distinctly suburban restaurant.

Would I go there again? Possibly so, but I would not order as much, I would not go for the barbecue, and would probably try some of their soups and stews. I think they should have made sure that we knew what we were doing, and I think 12.5% service is a bit of a liberty take. As we had spent so much, I asked for a loyalty card, but they would only endorse it for the diners who had paid in cash. As this place is probably geared to young ex pats, they probably are not desperate for my repeat custom

UPDATE: NOW CLOSED. INTERESTING TO NOTE THAT 12.5% HAS BECOME THE NORM FOR TIPPING EVERYWHERE, AND IS SOMETIMES MORE. NOT AS BAD AS NORTH AMERICA.

The Wolseley, Piccadilly. Expensive, but you get what you pay for.

31st. January 2016
As a treat/reward, we were taken by our daughters for brunch/lunch at the Wolseley which we have been to before for a birthday dinner. They did not actually have a brunch menu, but you can get lunch or a sort of Sunday lunch or just eat what you want from the menu.
When I was a kid, a Wolseley was a boring car, that maybe your teacher might drive in a sit up and beg manner. They were part of BMC/British Leyland, and eventually faded from site. I looked it up, and the premises in Piccadilly were used, in the 1920's, for a somewhat upmarket marque of the time which became the somewhat disappointing marque of my childhood. Then the building became a bank, and then an upmarket restaurant where people might go to be seen. Whoever did the refurbishment did a fantastic job of returning it to its Oriental Art Nouveau style, with a mix of Chinoiserie and Ancient Greece. Frankly it is worth going just to be part of the environment which I found most enjoyable.
They have a fairly comprehensive web site on https://www.thewolseley.com/ which tells you most of what you need to know, but may scare you off.
Having been to some fairly overpriced venues in recent times, I was quite suprised to see that the menu pricing was not silly. Expensive, yes, but silly no. For 4 people for a lightish lunch with cover coffees and service, but no alcohol, and including 12.5% service, you can come in for under £100, which is quite normal for central London.
I had the burger with some fries:

As you can see this is not a stonking great burger, but something a bit more dainty. I got a bit confused as they did not tell me it was coming in a bun, even though I asked. I have to say that this was one my better burgers, and was almost on a par with 5 Guys in New Jersey. It was well cooked with a real grilled taste, and crisp on the outside. A real pleasure, and it was a pity that it was not a little larger. It was hot and scored an 8.7 on the CHOF scale. The fries were a little limp and the top few could have been hotter. You can also see the salt beef sandwich and chicken soup that my daughter chose.

This was pretty good and exceeded my expectations, and it is actually not easy to get a quality burger in London. Most are solid and indifferently cooked. This crumbled and was a joy to chew. There was a little pat of relish that you can see on the plate, but that is not my thing, and I only ate it because it was there.

I add this picture of my post lunch cappuccino for two reasons. Firstly because it now holds my record for most expensive cup of coffee (£4.95) and secondly because of the debate about why we had a glass of water with the coffee. We asked the staff, and we were told that it was for us to rinse the spoon. However a more convincing explanation from the Internet is that the tradition of serving a glass of water with coffee dates back to 1685 in Vienna. In brief, in the traditional Kaffeehaus’s, serving a glass of water with coffee was a way of showing better hospitality and service. The proprietor would encourage guests to stay a while, read the paper and leave at their leisure. Pretentious or what? I rate the Wolseley as pretentious but practical, and on a Sunday lunchtime, the fact that some seemed to be using the place to eat rather than be seen made me feel more comfortable. 

I enjoyed the experience and the food and would be pleased to eat their food again.

The Griffin, Whetsone: competent pub catering but not exceptional

20th January, 2016
We had been invited to join some friends who had been given a complementary meal as a result of serious confusion on New Years Eve which resulted in us being denied access to the pub, despite the thinking that there was a reservation. In the event it turned out to be a blessing in disguise as we were about triple the age of the average customer on that night.
The deal was that we could have a meal, but the drink was down to us. Fair enough, and it emphasises the value of complaining about unsatisfactory service.
There is a moderately helpful web site at http://thegriffin-whetstone.co.uk/ but the menu on the web site was out of date at the time of writing, but is not a million miles away and give you the flavour of the typical pub restaurant meals.  Half fancy and not quite yet a gastro-pub.
We were there on a Wednesday night in January, and whilst there were a lot of people drinking, I did not see anyone else using the restaurant facilities. There were one or two somewhat raucous tables of celebratory drinkers which made the atmosphere a bit too noisy for my liking, but it is a pub, and what could I expect?
For starter I chose the fried calamari with chilli sauce

                        

This was a decent size portion with fairly soft calamari, and a tasty sauce, and joy of joys scoring a 9 on the CHOF scale. They were not too oily and clearly some had thought about the appearance which is quite attractive: lots of browns and golds.

For main course I had the Angus Burger with Fries and coleslaw.

I asked for mine to be medium well done with cheese. You cannot see much of the burger as there is a lot of bun served with it, and the cheesed seemed more like cheese sauce. The burger was well cooked and was very hot scoring a 9.2 on the CHOF scale (wow: both courses at my sort of temperature). It was somewhat solid in texture, and I think the best burger I have had still rests with the Jersey City, NJ branch of 5 Guys (I still have not tried any of the UK branches). The chips were quite tasty, but the coleslaw which you cannot see was a bit swimming in dressing. You can see the attempt to also make this attractive by serving on a slate plate.

Altogether a satisfactory meal, as were the meals of my companions, but nothing special and nothing that would make me want to rush back there to eat, given the wide variety of options in Whetstone High Road. The place became very noisy with a big table of girly drinkers, to the point where we decided to move table to somewhere at the front where there were less customers.

I don't know if it was because we were the only ones eating, or because this was known by the staff to be an 'apology meal', but service was attentive and almost bordering on the unctuous. I would guess that for an average customer, they could not put so much effort in, but I may be wrong. House red was about £15/bottle.

Assuming that the quality and quantity are representative of what happens every day, and if you like this sort of formula pub food, then the Griffin will work for you. An average starter is about £5 and an average main about £10.