Ask Italian, Southend on Sea: Predictable and HOT food.

A visit to the old folk on Boxing Day. The traditional thing is to go out for lunch, and we have tried several possibilities in the past, mostly approved by the family. To keep things simple, and because we need somewhere with a ground floor disabled toilet (many establishments did not meet this criterion well enough), and to not go back to East or somewhere we have used a lot, a table was booked at Ask Italian, near the top of the High Street. We have eaten there before, and it is a known quantity. In fact the Ask chain is a very known quantity, providing predictable middle of the road fare at a realistic price. There was the added bonus of not being forced to eat off a Christmas Menu (I am not a traditionalist here), and I found a voucher for 25% off non-special or set menu food. Vouchers for Ask are frequently available, and whilst not always giving you a deal worth having, they should be inspected for their potential. There is no identity or signing of vouchers, so it does not mean you will be flooded with spam emails for months afterwards. Ask (pizza and pasta)  became Ask Italian, and ramped up the contemporary inside feel, and allegedly the menu. I think they have done a great job in creating a family friendly, appealing to most tastes chain, and I have never come away disappointed, today included.

This branch looked and felt clean and airy. Admittedly, for early on Boxing day afternoon it was not busy, and I have been there on a Saturday night when it is packed. There are attractive contemporary place settings including better than usual cutlery and glasses. It makes you feel a bit valued.

For starter, I had the special soup: butternut squash, chestnut and pancetta. 

This was a fair sized bowl of tasty soup with croutons and bits of bacon in it. There is no bread or sticks provided as cover (no cover charge), but this was not really missed. The big thing was this was really really hot, and scored 10/10 on the CHOF scale. It did not taste like a run of the mill squash soup, and the added ingredients gave it a slightly unusual taste - you might not have been able to identify the species of soup without the menu.

To follow, I had  RIGATONI AL MANZO PICCANTE which was

"baked rigatoni pasta with ragù, chopped beef meatballs, green chillies, fire-roasted red peppers, white wine and caramelised onions. Topped with mozzarella and Grana Padano cheese; served with a side salad". The cheese topping was not very generous, and I welcomed the offered parmesan. I was warned by the waiting staff that is was hot, and it scored another 10/10 for hotness. This is praise indeed, and in retrospect, it does seem to be one of the places that ensures that food was really hot. It may have been that there was not a long transit period between cooking and table. Despite the place being desperately understaffed for the number of diners, they seem to have got away with it. There was just the manager and one waiter for the entire place, and all things considered, they coped well with good grace. If you don't like pizza and pasta, it is possible to get chicken or salad or fish, but the choice is not enormous. Check out their menu on http://www.askitalian.co.uk/#!/menus/main-menu . They aspire to Italian-ness, but it is what it is. I noticed an Ask Italian Cookbook on sale, but there is nothing really rocket science about what they are doing and it is probably a concept to move them up a notch nearer to Carluccio.

Hotel Gendarm Nouveau Berlin

20th November
I have written a review on tripadvisor about the hotel, but just wanted to mention the breakfast in the Panorama room, for which normal paying guests would be charged 23.50 euros

Whist the cold collation was of excellent quality with fine fresh fruits and cheeses and smoked salmon, the hot food was a great disappointment. I was the first one into breakfast as evidenced by the top picture. The hot food had presumably been put out at least half an hour before, and the eggs were solid, and unappetizing - I did not even bother. The sausages could have been excellent, but were lukewarm, and barely scored a six on the CHOF scale. I do not know why hotels thing is it OK to put out scrambled eggs to be allowed to congeal and go cold and solid, What is even more amazing is that people actually will eat them and not complain. I know it can be done better, and whilst I recognize that there is not the critical mass in small hotel to have staff cooking live, on the other hand, there are sufficiently few guests that there could be more personal attention. I think the problem here was the six floors that separated the main breakfast restaurant from the panorama room. If I had been a paying guest, I would have complained bitterly. As to panorama, that is a misnomer, as the best it can be described as is Roof Top view, but it is of the Gendarmmarkt, so that was probably ok.

hello to Berlin: is this the best Pizza?

19th December

After an afternoon meeting, an informal meal was organised by the local office in Berlin. I was hoping for  piping hot meat laden traditional German fare, but the deal of the day was Pizza. The choice was+39 piùtrentanove in the Kreuzberg district. The discussion started that this was the best pizza establishment in Germany, this was demoted to the best in Berlin, and after five minutes became the best pizza in the street. +39 refers to the the international dialing code code for Italy. It is just as well as the imagination could run riot here.

To start there was mixed antipasta consisting of mozarella, dried tomato, smoked trout, artichoke and so on. This was a little rustic in appearance and content. Most of my colleagues ordered pizzas, and I have to say they were the largest pizzas I have ever seen

There was barely enough room on the table, and suffice it to say, I did not see anyone finish their pizza.
I chose fegato alla Veneziana as I did not fancy all the dough base of the pizza.

This was probably not as excellent as the version served at Angelos (cf) but as you see, it was attractively presented in sufficient quantity, and was tasty and not cooked to death. There is always a danger when serving big parties of eaters in the pre-Christmas period that restaurants will not care about the hotness, but it achieved a 7.5 on the CHOF scale nevertheless. I hesitate to judge an establishment by food served to large parties, as the company is often deemed to be the most important thing, but there was little to fault this establishment on. In retrospect, it would have been interesting to try one of the XXL pizzas, but I doubt if I will ever get the chance. I have no idea what the bill came to but I think my liver was about 13.50 Euros, which is pretty average. In fact, average is the consummate term for +39, but I am not judging by local standards.

Hello to Berlin: original Thuringer Rotbrastwurst

19th December.
A quick trip to do deliver some training for my EU colleagues delivered me to a new hotel near to the Gendarmenmarkt in East Berlin, and whilst it is over 20 years since the fall of the Berlin wall, it never fails to amaze me how the machinery of socialism has been systematically disassembled and replaced by the consumer society. I nipped over the road to the Christmas market, and as I saw no fast food available on the streets, thought I would probably get fed there, and I was not wrong.

One think I have learned about Germany and Eastern Europe, is that you can always rely on there being a sausage stall, and especially in Christmas Markets. It seems to be part of the ritual of winter market visiting, independent of the time of day that you drink Gluhwein and eat sausage in a roll. The best sausage I ever had in Germany was in Nuremberg,  but here 3 Euros bought your a largish sausage in a dry roll. If you want the roll not dry, you add mustard or ketchup. No messing about.The other piece of good news is that it is likely to be hot -one of the few plus points of freshly cooked street food, and this one scored a 9.5 on the CHOF scale. It was a little dry for a bratwurst, but I am no expert on the variations of bratwurst, so this could have been exactly how it was supposed to be. It did not have the smoky or spicy flavour of some and spoke to more of an English sausage.

As I was walking away from the stall, I saw that their basket of rolls had spilled on the ground. They simply scooped them up, and carried on regardless. So if you are fussy about food hygiene, miss out the bread from this stall or possibly just simply move on to something where you cannot see the joins.

Pret for breakfast at the airport

19th December.

Another trip from terminal five, but rather than using one of the established restaurants, I decided to try a mix and match from the Pret a Manger outlet. The food outlets and coffee bars are very busy in the morning, and I think there is a point to having a mixture of smaller outlets competing against each other rather than one big airport cafe. I have previously written positively about the quality and price of Pret, and was not disappointed in a breakfast selection. I decided to slum it and eat and drink sat on the seating rather than at a table. I was far from alone, and despite the rising costs of air travel, the everyday economy traveler is reluctant to pay the sit-down-restaurant prices. Most BA departures for short haul don't give a meal any more, and for a mid-morning flight, they best you can expect is a drink and a bag of trail mix (20g - that's less than an ounce) so stoke up before you go.

So this is a Pret fruit salad, a breakfast roll with ham and egg, and a filter coffee for £6.03 takeaway price. The breakfast rolls are in a hot cabinet, and I was a bit worried that by the time I had queued, paid and taken away, it would have cooled down, but the packing kept it warm and I would give it a 8 on the CHOF scale which surprised me. Regrettably many staff at airport catering outlets have poor English (even in Non UK airports) and clearly have drawn the short straw. 

There was quite a good variety in the fruit salad of different kinds of fruit (not just apple or melon). I should have taken the lid off to show. One interesting thing is that the packaging for the coffee was almost bomb proof, and I knocked it over ( a common occurrence for me) and almost none spilled. Well done Pret for recognizing the problem of picnicking in airports. Whilst not the same as a sit down repast, this was good start to the day. 

Leon Bankside

There used to be the greasy spoon, when no one cared about the intrinsic nature of what you ate. It was simple stuff, lots of calories, reasonably priced, and not for everyone. Now in this extended period of peace after war-time austerity, there are a generation of eateries where we go because we care about what we eat and what it stands for, and no eater should be discriminated against on grounds of creed, allergy, intolerance or vegetarianism (religion does not enter into it). I put Leon into that class, but on the other hand, it is a jolly good place to eat with a fair selection of good stuff once you have stopped worrying about the allergies, intolerances, sustainability and glycaemic index. I have eaten one of their lunch boxes before in Bluewater, but today, I was showing an overseas guest round the Tate Modern, and having missed lunch, went in for a snack, but as usual went a bit further than I intended.
I had the chicken and chorizo wrap and a coffee for just under £6. I am pleased I did not look a the web menu before I went there, as I would never have stopped worrying http://www.leonrestaurants.co.uk/nutrition/dish_detail.php?=44

Service was helpful but hesitant at the counter, and there was plenty to choose from. In the middle of a weekday afternoon, it was fairly quiet, but would probably get busy at lunchtimes and weekends.

The somewhat factory pre-pack looking wrap reveals a flatbread containing hot spicy chicken, chorizo, salad, and probably all the other stuff on the ingredients list above. It was hot scoring an 7.8, very tasty and surprisingly spicy, and comes with a good strong cup of coffee. 

Putting aside the somewhat aspirational eating philosophy, this represents good value for central London, and there is plenty of scope to go back and try many of the other offerings. http://www.leonrestaurants.co.uk/menu/

El Vaquero Whetstone, South American Meat Fest.

The El Vaquero brand is well established, and there have been several reviews on the web
http://www.elvaquero.co.uk/index.php/whetstone/

This branch is based in Whetstone in what used to be Bejam/Iceland, and has had several incarnations as bars and restaurants with varying longevity. This one has been here a few years and we went there for family birthday Sunday lunch. Not your usual Sunday lunch, and this restaurant is unusual, in that the price is the same every day of the week lunch or dinner and is a set price of £22.95 for as much as you can eat. There are fish and vegetarian options, but they get a very poor deal.The restaurant is in what looks like a conservatory, but it works, and the table layout is aimed at families and parties. Not the sort of place to go for an intimate meal. The idea is that for the meat eaters, you take a plate and get as little or as much salad as you want from a salad bar, and waiters come round with freshly cooked different meats on skewer and you are served and hold what is being carved off the skewers with a forceps like device.

Bowls of somewhat overcooked french fries are offered as complimentary. So the resultant is a sequence of offering of small pieces of many kinds of meat that range from chicken legs and wings, sausages, sirloin beef, south African sausage, leg of lamb, chicken teriyaki and whatever they have coming. It is freshly cooked, and depending on how long the waiter gets to you, it varies in hotness from very hot at a 9 on the CHOF scale to about a 7.

Depending on how fast you eat, and how frequently the waiters, who are all wearing the leather hats as shown in the video clip, come and visit your table, you can end up with a strange mixture:

At one point I ended up with a mixture of roast pineapple and chicken teriyaki which went together surprisingly well. Note the absence of salad, as I regarded this as filler, and went for the main attractions.

We were served well, and initially there was a constant stream of tidbits of meat. Later, as the place became fuller, we had to grab the attention of the servers, but there was no bad grace about it. Probably best to go early on in the session, as it does get full.

We did not bother with deserts, as we were pretty full at the end. Our party did not drink wine, and I noted that the was nothing cheaper than £17/bottle on the menu. The first language of the serving staff appears to be Spanish, and I was told that staff came from Venezuela, Columbia and Spain. I suppose this could have accounted for the surprise when I came to pay by credit card:

and it was just as well I checked before pressing the accept button, or that could have been painful. Service is included.

So, an unusual meal with some really hot food sometimes. I would say that the quality of the meat was good to excellent, and the various spiced offerings such as chicken with paprika worked well. Plenty of salads, carbohydrate, and a Brazilian stew.

Service can be a bit hit and miss because of the nature of the operation, but in general, I found the staff helpful and responsive to requests. The main thing was that it was enjoyed by people who like a good meal of meat, and if that is your thing, forget the pasta and pizza, forget the bread, naan, and rice, and just go for the protein. I have read elsewhere that it would be a good option for anyone on the Cambridge diet (qualitatively if not quantitatively)

Byron Hamburgers Bluewater

The corner property in the Village food court has had several incarnation, and in fact the last one, as I remember it, was as a branch of Paperchase (which did not last).
When it opened as Byron Hamburgers, I made a mental note to try it, especially in the context of comparing their product to the excellent burgers I had in America in October.
There is a simple web site www.byronhamburgers.com  which is more corporate splash than comprehensive information, but what else could there be to know? (nutritional information is the thing now)
The restaurant is laid out in simple style with the kitchen and servery on view.

There is a short menu of burgers, which are middling price: too expensive to be a MacDonald/Burger king substitute, but not pretentiously so. I went there with a work colleague for a functional lunch, and in the period before Xmas, we were able to get a table without queuing. The service was friendly and efficient, and there was no problem about tap water, and no attempt to foist things on us that we did not want. It was not too noisy to chat. I had the skinny burger (£7.50 with side salad), which is a bit of a cop out, as there was no bun (my companion said her bun was fine), and no chips, but a green salad. Byron's say they cook their burgers so they are medium-pink in the middle. Interesting to note that the Americans were in the middle of a salmonella scare when I was there, and everything was sold as well cooked.

This was attractive and was exactly what I was expecting. A 6oz patty of meat seem to have been griddled or grilled. What was interesting, and not unexpected, was that the quality of beef, whilst good was different to that one gets in the US. It is definitely more springy with more of a bite. The American ones tend to be juicier and softer. That is in no way a criticism of this burger as it was well cooked, and tasty with a collection of relishes should I have needed them. Scored an 8 on the CHOF scale.I will definitely go there again and try something else from the menu.

What interests me today is that I read that the opening of the 5 Guys burger restaurant in London which I alluded to in October now seems to be imminent, and it will be interesting to see how the products compare. I think there is just something about American beef that you cannot get in Europe. Perhaps it is what the cows are fed on, or the breeds.

Lunch for two came to a little over £20, which is probably a bit on the high side for a burger restaurant.

Novotel West, Hammersmith: conference dining

Wed 5th November
A meeting organised by Government Agency XXXX. The intent to was to update users of the agency on its latest thinking, and just under 280 delegates paid a substantial amount of money trying to avoid pitfalls that would cost them more. I have been to many of this kind of meeting over the years, and they are becoming more a feature of professional life, as agencies see them as an income stream, and attendees see them as something to keep on top of what they should be thinking. This was an all day affair, on the first day of snow of the London Winter.
The most obvious and most cost-effective way to cope with that sort of numbers is a buffet, and I have to say that unlike many similar gatherings, this time a choice of hot or cold buffet was provided. With that many people it is likely to be a bit of a bun fight, especially when there is no where to sit down properly. I suppose the idea is that you network and are mobile:

There is aways a bit of a risk with a self help buffet, especially with the outbreaks of Norovirus this but I guess I have to trust the Novotel people here, as they should know what they are doing. I made a bit of a dash for the front of the queue, as the typical attendees of this sort of meeting often forget how to put one foot in front of another, or decide to renew acquaintanceships without concept of what is going on behind them. In the event, it was a good decision, as the buffet was stripped bare very quickly and there was no chance at all for anyone who was late or wanted to return.

A strange mixture. When I saw the original picture from my iphone (not the best for indoor food photography as you cannot control the settings very much), I thought this looks a bit scary, but here it is:

It shows an colourful eclectic mix of fish cake, vegetarian lasagne, lancashire hot-pot and salad. The nature of buffet food. I hear that in some catering circles, it is considered normal to expect buffet guests to put the starter and main course on the same plate simultaneously. On the whole, I would give Novotel many marks for trying to offer something beyond the average, and in terms of hotness, given it was a cold December day, a buffet and self serve, it could have been a lot worse, and scored a 7.2 . Had there been more, I would have gone back for seconds. I regard this rather as a functional meal rather than one to savour, and so I put it behind me and move on to the prospect of something more exciting and attractive, but there is nothing in my diary for a few days........

Carluccio's Bluewater: I will come back after Christmas

Carluccio's in Bluewater shopping mall is a favourite venue of mine. I meet business colleagues there, and have a lunching companion that I go there with from work when time permits. I like the food and ambiance, and in particular, a lot of the time they have a fixed price lunch for just under a tenner, which is good food at a reasonable price.
Unfortunately the firing gun for Christmas shopping has been been discharged, and the shopping center is full of shoppers and those who come to look before they buy over the Internet. I quite often buy from John Lewis over the Internet, and pick up here as you can park right outside. The food court at the Village end has some reasonable places, but I keep returning to Carluccio's. Given my prior comment about not going back somewhere, it is probably because of the consistency that I go back.
Without the set menu, my host had to tolerate me ordering from the main menu. There is a Christmas menu, but it seems to be of no interest or virtue.As usual I have the pate which is probably a chicken liver pate which comes in a ceramic container with a seal of fat and a plate of toast. The picture I took tells you nothing, so it will have to see it in your imagination. Suffice it to say, I will be ordering it again.
Today, as a change, I had a veal escalope

Actually, you cannot tell a lot from this picture as the veal is buried under a mount of greenery, but it is obviously not a large portion. It is fine, but not brilliant. Well to over cooked, with a portion of lemon to squeeze over, and a side order of spinach which arrived some time after the main dish. It looks pretty healthy, and I have to say that the spinach was not drowned in butter, and if the veal was fried (It may have been once in its existence but may have been a frozen portion at this stage of it's life) it was not the least bit greasy. A 7.8 on the CHOF scale. Hot but could have been hotter. We were in the alfresco bit of the restaurant on a fairly cold day, so that could have been part of it.

I get very curmudgeonly around Christmas, as I hate restaurants that abandon their clients in favour of a quick buck from an indifferent Christmas menu. It's probably one of the reasons why I like Indian food, as they do not pander to the seasons for the most part. I can only hope that the fixed price menu comes back again soon. What I like even less is the enforced jollity of the work Xmas lunch outing where restaurants quite clearly are trying to offer as little as possible at the highest available price. Although I paid up front for my own Xmas lunch outing, I now discover that I won't be free to go, but that is a story for a later blog.

Pera, North Finchley. Not as bad as some of the reviews suggest

1st December

To Pera Restaurant in North Finchley with my wife's long standing friends and their spouses. We go out together from time to time, so the emphasis is on talk talk.

I have known the site where the Pera is for over 30 years. It used to be a shop-front for the gas board, but when they did away with these, it became an interior decor shop, and after that it has been a succession of restaurants, and the latest incarnation is the Pera, which use to be known as the Medi Lounge. They have not changed it much from the Medi lounge which had good food and indifferent service and atmosphere, but it is now a Turkish Ocakbasi, which means a restaurant with an open flame pit grill. 

They are very popular in North London at the moment, and serve the dual function of restaurants and take-away. Generally cheapish grilled food and kebabs. Pera apparently refers to the eastern side of Istanbul, so I guess for the knowledgeable it it telling them the exact style of food. There are several indifferent reviews on the Internet, and a friend who had tried it recently was not impressed, but we still went. There is a URL which at the time of writing leads to a web site under construction.

The restaurant is quite big and functions on two floors. The last time I went there, they were reserving the upstairs for parties, but it seemed to be functioning on Saturday night. As a result it was not crowded, but there was insufficient waiting staff for two floors, and as reviews have said, the service was slow, but as we were not going anywhere, that was not a problem.

I had a grilled octopus for starter:

This was nicely cooked and really looked like fresh octopus (not a giant), and the thing at the bottom middle was not an eye (I think). There was an plate olives and of freshly baked flatbreads of two different kinds (delicious and soft) to mop up juices, and this needed no seasoning.

For main dish I had a kofte dish in yoghourt sauce with a bread base and side salad. Lost the menu so cannot tell you the proper name.

This was most filling and I could not finish the bread base which was a bit soggy, but I am told that is the way it should be. Tasty, well cooked, and about 8 on the CHOF scale. The green things are chillies, which I did not eat. My companions had a variety of meals including a chicken shish, shank of lamb and other grilled meats. There was general approval. Whilst not the gold standard of Turkish Food (I like the Mangal in Stoke Newington), I could not find anything wrong. 

Strangely enough, the house wine is a Montepulciano d'Abruzzo which was acceptable, and fairly priced. A meal for two with wine came to £42 including service. Would I go there again? Possibly so, but it would not be my first choice, as I think that there are better places in the area. The advantage is one of space, in that this place  is big, and seems not to have caught the imagination of the Saturday night crowd. A few doors up at Meze Meze, you would not be able to get in, for a meal of similar standard (in my opinion), but in Finchley, there is the Izgara, Durum and Divan which probably try harder but can get a bit noisy. The Pera is still a newcomer, and it is difficult to know if it will stand the test of time. The predecessors on the same site apparently did not. Maybe it is the staff, as they are never particularly welcoming, and the service was on the slow side. Time will tell.

Tate Britain Cafe: good luck campers

To the Turner Prize at Tate Britain. Paul Nobles drawings are well worth seeing, but are probably too conventional for the judges. The Spartacus Chetwynd performance was the main reason for going, and not knowing what to expect, I feel rather foolish in not discerning what the Oracle Mandrake root was predicting for me. I wanted to go round again, but it may never happen. Lunch in the cafe. We are members of the Tate, but their members area is so small that it is often difficult to get a seat. At the moment, the main cafe of the Tate Britain is being refurbished, and they have a marquee operation in the front. It was cold today, just above freezing, and the structure is so unsubstantial, that I kept my coat on.
As we were going out in the evening, I just had a salad and coffee. The deal is £2 a dish, or £5.50 for a meal of three. This is what you may get:

So this shows tomato and basil, sweet potato and something with tuna and parmesan. The portion was just about lunch sized. My wife had the tomato replaced with beetroot. As buffet salads go, it seemed fresh enough, well seasoned, tasty and with no nasty bits. Quite a lot of onion. So two salads, and two coffees came to £15.30. It confirms in my mind that London contains at the moment a cadre of people who are struggling to make ends meet (or not bothering), and those that are weathering the economic storm, and have decided that the best thing to do is spend their money. The Tate is full of the latter, as the cafe was mostly full, and the cheapest thing there was (soup) was about £5. The variety of food in this abbreviated cafe is quite good, and there was still options of hot dishes, but not a sandwich to be found at 1.30pm on a busy Saturday. There are not a lot of eating options near Tate Britain (unlike the modern), and I guess they have a captive audience.

I have eaten/snacked many times at the Tate, and I just grit my teeth, and recognize that because we are members, at least we are not paying extra to get into the special exhibitions. A ticket to the Turner Prize and the current Pre-Raphaelite exhibition will set you back £17, so it is worth being a member, as it pays for itself in a couple of visits a year. The main galleries are still free, as are some exhibitions. We went on the guided tour and I have to say the chap that took us this time was excellent, knowledgeable and engaging with his audience.