Mirage Restaurant, Ilford/Newbury Park: very popular local restaurant with shortcomings.

9th December 2016
December is never the best time to judge a restaurant as they are inevitably overstretched and know that it is a sellers' market. We got involved with an outing here because a friend of a friend had a husband who was providing the musical entertainment. I am always game for a Turkish Restaurant, but the menu is far more extensive than just Turkish. I would also re-iterate my opinion that it is difficult to give a fair judgement when large parties are being served. But it was what it was, and here is my opinion. Their web site is on http://www.miragerestaurant-ilford.com/ which makes it look more like a wedding venue.
The menu is mixed and the Turkish side of it is a bit unchallenging, being mainly mainstream kebabs and moussaka etc, even on the halal menu. It is more of a Meditteranean/Continental menu, which is probably responding to the needs of the local customers, of which there were many. In retrospect, I should have chosen the steaks, because that is what they seem to get most accolades for.
For starter, I had the Calamari with salad.

They were satisfactory and hot scoring an 8.6 on the CHOF scale. What should be evident even from this blurry picture is that this is the boring side of calamari. Nothing challenging here.

Given that we were a 7.30 kick off, this picture is time stamped at 9pm. I really have nothing more to say about them.

For main course, mainly because I knew I would be getting a real Green Lane Turkish experience the following night, I went for the "CALF LIVER LYONAISE 

PAN-FRIED WITH SAUTÉED, ONIONS FLAMED WITH MADERIA WINE". Not very Turkish. This actually would have been something from an Italian Trattoria.

I had this with an accompaniment of cauliflower cheese and sauté zucchini. The cauliflower cheese was a bit of disappointment as it was clearly boiled cauli that had been put in an oven dish, and then a lay of cheesy sauce poured over, and then put back in the oven. Not really what I would have hoped for. The liver was fine, if not a tiny bit on the rubbery side. This main course was time stamped at 2158, meaning there was a gap of an hour between starter and main which could not be compensated for by the efforts of the male crooner singing to his rat-pack backing tapes. I can't wait until punk becomes the music of yesteryear that we all want to hear.

I was luckier than one of our group, who seemed to have been forgotten altogether, and was made to feel that it was his fault for not ordering in a way that the staff would take notice of. I really don't care for it when any restaurant makes their problems your problem, and then expect to put 10% service or more on the bill.

Whilst the house red was reasonably priced at £12.50/bottle, they did not bother to take the sticker off which said 'retail price £4'. So they were selling very cheap wine.

Others had a mixed experience with some meals better than mine and some worse. The key issue was poor service, and lacklustre food. However judging from the full house, it looked as if it was a crowd that knew what they wanted, and it was not challenging food, and not really caring how long it took to come.

I would avoid going there again at a weekend. May be it is better during a quiet week.

Three Jolly Wheelers, Woodford Green : Formulaic 'gastro' pub with strong following

7th December 2016
A cousins' lunch had been long in the planning, and it was left for one of the others to choose a venue. I have some favourite pub lunch destinations, but it seems to me that some of the chains have got a bit out of hand presenting themselves as up-market destinations with restaurant prices. I was fascinated when I arrived here, as the menu appeared in wording and pricing almost identical to the menu at the recently visited Old White Lion. At least I thought I knew what I might be in for. What you do not get is a 'pub lunch' but you do get pub prices for drink. Interestingly the Three Jolly Wheelers, whilst a 'Vintage Inn' is own by the same umbrella company, Mitchell and Butler and more detail can be found on http://www.vintageinn.co.uk/restaurants/london/thethreejollywheelerschigwell .
For starter I chose the salt and pepper calamari with chorizo-flavour seasoning and chipotle mayonnaise

This was pretty good and hot enough at an 8.4 on the CHOF scale. However what is apparent is that this is a triumph of style over quantity and is drowned out by the relatively inedible green leaves and a surfeit of unnecessary chipottle (sic) mayo and not a lot of discernible seasoning.

Just to be different, I did not choose the fish and chips for main, but the Steak & mushroom pie

(described as slow-cooked British beef in a red wine sauce, topped with puff pastry, served with mash and seasonal vegetables, £11.50).

This was not so much a pie, but more a dish of stewed beef covered with a pastry lid with some tired carrots. This is presumably the outcome of corporate boil in the bag supplies of pie filling and is not really the stuff of pies of pub lunches that I yearn for. It was very hot (a 9 on the CHOF scale) but tasted a bit bland.

All in all this was a bland packaged meal, and I guess I am always looking for something a bit more challenging in a pub lunch. I was spoiled by my numerous experiences at the King's Arms in Bexley near where I used to work.

My wife had a slightly more expensive meal, and by the time the bill came, for a 'pub' lunch for two, it came to nearly £50.

Whilst the food was hot enough, it was all a bit bland and corporately uninteresting and this was not the sort of hit I had expected for a mid week pub lunch.

I will not be going back there in a hurry: I can get far better far cheaper: a pub lunch should not cost £25 per head.

UPDATE NOV 2024. I WAS COERCED INTO GOING BACK TO THIS RESTAURANT, AND WITHOUT REALISING IT HAD THE SAME MEAL. THE PIE WAS NOW CALLED PIE. THE CONTENTS WERE LARGELY GRISTLE, AND THE RESTAURANT STAFF, WHO REALLY COULDNT CARE LESS, TOLD ME THAT WAS HOW THE MEAT CAME. I COMPLAINED, AND IT WAS TAKEN OFF THE BILL (COSTS SUBSTANTIALLY MORE NOW). I WILL NOT BE GOING BACK THERE AGAIN. REVIEWED ON TRIPADVISOR.

Bleeding Heart: Trendy smart Clerkenwell Restaurant with consistent reputation.

2nd December 2015
If you had to choose a name for a Restaurant, would you choose Bleeding Heart, especially if you had a vegetarian to feed? The name relates to the location which is in Bleeding Heart Yard.
According to wikipedia, Bleeding Heart Yard is a cobbled courtyard off Greville Street in the Farringdon area of the City of London. The courtyard is probably named after a 16th-century inn sign dating back to the Reformation that was displayed on a pub called the Bleeding Heart in nearby Charles Street. The sign showed the heart of the Virgin Mary pierced by five swords.
Urban legend has it that the courtyard's name commemorates the murder of Lady Elizabeth Hatton, the second wife of Sir William Hatton, whose family formerly owned the area around Hatton Garden. It is said that her body was found here on 27 January 1626, "torn limb from limb, but with her heart still pumping blood." The location is mentioned in Little Dorrit as the home of the Plornish Family.
I have been there a few times over the years both to the restaurant and bistro. Fortunately this has always been with someone else footing the bill.
The restaurant is old fashioned higgledy piggeldy looking more like a converted house on different levels, and the main eating areas are downstairs.
It is now a groupe and has a web presence on   http://bleedingheart.co.uk/ . It says it is French, but the food is more French influenced than pure French. Reports on TripAdvisor are consistently good.
The meal started with an amuse bouche of a piece of smoked mackerel (I think) on a sliver of bread. Not very amusing as one of our party did not eat fish.
For starter, I had the cauliflower soup:

Not a very helpful image, as the flash went off on my phone. However, it was hot, and as can probably be discerned from the picture, was home made. The soup comes in a little pouring pot, and the waiters make a ritual of pouring it into the plate. Anyway it was a good 8.6 on the CHOF scale and was an excellent representative of such soup.

For main course I had haunch of Yorkshire venison with Juniper braised venison cheeks, ruby plums, roasted red chicory and elderberry sauce

It also came with mashed potato and I had a side order of spinach.

The meat was cooked very well, and was tender and tasty and scored an 8.4 being hot enough on the CHOF scale. The helping of spinach was huge.

This was an excellent meal (I shared someone else's desert) and another good experience here.

If you look at the web site, it is clear that this is pretty upmarket, and you could easily expect to pay £80-100 per person for a three course meal with drink. I did not get to see the wine list at the time, but the web site shows it to be comprehensive, and house wine (not that most people were drinking that) would be about £25/bottle.

I would recommend this restaurant but it is not for routine eating unless you have deep pockets and very high standards.

Old White Lion, East Finchley- Sort of local pub with almost gastro pub food

1st Dec 2016
People keep asking me if I am still writing my blog, and I have not had much activity this year. Many of the places I have been to are repeat visits (better the devil you know) or have not been very relevant, or have been reviewed on TripAdvisor, where I know I have an audience. But it is time to get cracking again, as it gives me something to talk about. If you are live person and do read this, please make some kind of comment, even if it is impolite.
December is never the best time to try out a restaurant for the first time. I am guessing that it is the time where the customers are less discerning and prepared to pay more and be squeezed into tighter places. My wife was invited for "drinks...." with her mates from the gym, and as food was clearly on the menu, and we had no better plans, we ordered. We did not order as a group, and each little subgroup was treated separately.
The pub, which has a substantial web presence on http://www.theoldwhitelionfinchley.co.uk/  is just a few yards south of East Finchley tube station, and therefore amenable to public transport. I suppose you could park, but parking in that area, near the Phoenix cinema is never good. The houses in the area (except Bishops Avenue) were all built long before the notion of personal car ownership had penetrated the population, and is a very popular commuting zone (zone 3). The building looks like a pub should, but inside it has been renovated in a style that says created pub rather than evolved pub. Whilst not unattractive, it has nothing to hold the eye.
We did not avail ourselves of the many areas, but stuck to the tabled area were food was served, and even at 7.30 on a Thursday it was starting to get busy (but it was December). We later discovered some live music, but it was out of earshot in the restaurant area.
The menu (see website) is classic pub style food, dressed up in the new gastropub language. We both had 'British ale battered cod with triple cooked chips and mushy peas'. I do not know if anyone really likes mushy peas, but everyone has them on the menu. Also, as it looked like fish'n'chips, I could not attest to whether the batter had ale, or if the chips had been cooked three times.

It is not a chip shop sized portion, but adequate. The chips were very hot and tasty, and the fish was fairly hot (8.4 on the CHOF scale) and did not have a hotness issue. The peas were a 7.6. It did come on a plate, with the faux 1921 newspaper underneath. My wife and I both enjoyed this, but it was not as good as a recent unreviewed meal we had had from a chip shop in St Albans. The meal as depicted cost £12.25, and the relatively short pub favourite menu is pitched so that a two course meal would work out at about £20 each. Drink was London pub prices.

I think that Fish and Chips is a safe test of a pub's cooking as it is unlikely to be pre-pack boil in a bag. Service was accurate and friendly but a little slow. 

This was an OK experience. The food was enjoyable, but not so great that you would rush back. I would commend this pub as an acceptable face of evening 

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