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.