Oakhill park cafe: a hidden lunch gem for those with a taste for eastern Europe.

17th August 2016
I go to Oakhill Park in East Barnet to use their pitch and putt course. When we went there last Wednesday, the course had not opened, so we went for a coffee. It was then that we noticed that the cafe was serving Eastern European food for lunch, so we gave it a go.
The cafe has a web site on http://www.oakhillparkcafe.co.uk/ which is somewhat crudely put together, but it does not reveal that there are daily boards outside offering a taste of Eastern Europe with numerous dishes such as Goulash, Zureck and pierogi.
Coffee was decent an £2.10 for a big mug.
I chose the Zurek soup, but when it arrived, it seemed that there had been a misunderstanding and it was Goulash soup that arrived for both of us. We opted for the bread bowl thinking it would be a bowl of bread, but it turned out to be a bowl of bread. You eat the bowl.

Just what you need on a hot day, and it was also very hot, scoring a 9.6 on the CHOF scale.

I have to say that this was an excellent surprise having the taste of the east, with a very home made bread. I have no reservations about this experience, and am looking forward to having another al fresco lunch in the park. The soup and a cup of coffee cost £8.20 which is great value for what it was: a real foreign experience.

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