Villandry - Bicester Village

I went to Bicester Village the other week. If you like your designer goods, don't mind that designs are a few seasons out and may be sorely disappointed that you probably won't get anything in your size, then it's the place for you. Actually, I probably made that sound very negative considering I had a good day walking around the shops and splurged on a pair of jeans (which I still haven't worn), a dress for work (worn twice) and a lovely cut pair of trousers (worn once). I even got fed at Villandry -  weighing the fact that I quite liked my visit to their London branch when I was there a few years ago, I was more than a little disappointed.

Queues were long (understandable since it was bang on lunchtime on a Sunday afternoon but there were so many tables available it boggled the mind why there was even a queue to start with!) and the service was slow (which probably explained the long queue).

My Dining companion decided on 2 starters to make up a meal - tomato soup served with bread and butter. A little too tart for my liking but overall it went down well. The 2nd of the two starters, prawn and mango salad. I was imagining green mango salad and a little surprised at the ripe orange mango slices that arrived with the salad. But overall the taste was fine.

The real let down was my grilled chicken and avocado mayonnaise salad. The chicken was dry, cold and tasteless. The dish was unseasoned and the leeks ............... what in the heck were they doing on my plate? It was totally and utterly out of place. It was a dish that really shouldn't have been on the menu.

I would give it a very middle of the road 5 out of 10. Half the meal was fine (my companion's) and the other was bad (mine). It's a pretty fair score.

Villandry
50 Pingle Drive  Bicester, Oxfordshire OX26 6WD

Icco - Fitzrovia

It's always happy pizza time at Icco (Italian Coffee Company).

 

Neptune (top left) - Anchovies, black olives, cheese,  tomato sauce, basil & herbs (£ 4.50)

Pepperoni (top right) - Pepperoni, cheese, tomato sauce,  basil & herbs (£ 4.50)
Capricciosa (bottom) - Ham, mushroom, black olives,  cheese, tomato sauce & basil (£ 5.30) with extra artichokes (£0.50)

And a little extra dosh for the little dippers - garlic and BBQ. Garlic wins everytime.

Brew Cafe - Clapham

SM and I wondered down to Clapham with dessert cravings aplenty recently. At 10PM choices aren't in the biggest supply if we weren't looking to quench our sugar rush in alcoholic form but if the craving is big and one looks hard enough, there's always something to be found - Brew Cafe on Northcote Road. It's small and snugly - brilliant in summer when the doors are pulled back to incorporate the tables on the patio with those in the restaurant into one space. But for now only the brave are left outside with a few heaters and rugs to help fend off the cold.

We're both craving chocolate and I call dessert shotgun for the Chocolate Brownie Affogato. Intense, fudgy little squares of chocolate goodness piled into a small glass and topped with an equally intense shot of espresso and a dollop of vanilla ice-cream. It was ... intense. Good intense. If I were to make a suggestion or two of my own - (1) a bigger glass, please. All that digging and ensuring all the good stuff didn't topple out was a bit of a feat. (2) whoa ... that coffee was strong. Digging to get to it was too drawn out and I had to eat the brownie and ice-cream (happily) before I could get to the coffee. Sadly most of the coffee had to be left behind. 

SM was stuck with the Chocolate Fudge Cake with Clotted Cream. It was good cake and with the strong coffee situation, I think SM was secretly glad to have ended up with the fudge cake. And doesn't clotted cream make up for most shortcomings? Not that there were any with that cake. SM polished off the cake (down to the last cake crumb and sliver of cream left glistening on the plate) and gobbled up a few of my brownie nuggets too. Well done!

Brew Cafe
45 Northcote Road  London SW11 1NJ

Osteria Dell'Arte - Clapham High Street

After having our hopes dashed for a table at Mongolian Grill in Clapham (Saturday night + no booking = utter stupidity), SM and I wandered down Clapham High Street when we passed Osteria Dell'Arte. It hadn't been there the last time we passed (a little light Google-ing has informed me that it used to be San Marco) and it looked as good as any of the other overflowing restaurants. Seated initially by the entrance we were lured to the back with promises of a spacious larger table by the waitress. We passed the kitchen, we passed the loos ... before we were arrived in what I later grumbled to SM was the store room. It wasn't really but after the bustle of the front room, the back dining area felt a little too remote for my liking. In SM's own little way I was told to just chill out since it would look really stupid if we tried to get our old table back. Fine, whatever. The waiting staff were friendly and sure enough our little area soon filled up making it less store room-ish.

SM started with the deep fried sardines with shaved fennel which was fresh and light. Not only was it after every morsel was gone and the plate wiped clean did SM reveal it was too small, too clean, too light a starter. Well, bully for SM because if that revelation had come a little earlier I would have happily swapped.

I had a very nice bruschetta topped with porcini sautéed in olive oil and butter and topped with a little cheese (no idea what kind) and mixed foliage. Warm, earthy flavours. Perfect for an autumn's evening.

As usual it was a pepperoni pizza for SM. It was a perfectly good pizza - thin crust with just the right amount of toppings but the crust was over the top salty. Definitely something that the chef should work on.

After my usual indecisiveness, I ordered the pappardalle with spicy sausage only to have an apologetic waitress come back just before the arrival of the starters that it was sold out. No matter, I pointed to my backup on the menu she was holding out. But what was set out in front of me later on didn't look anything like the seafood linguini I thought I had ordered. The mass of black pasta topped with crab and cherry  tomatoes looked appetising enough ... if you liked and could eat squid ink pasta. I was horribly allergic to squid ink (random I know) as a child - swelling of the face, itching ... yup, you name it ... and have steered clear of it ever since. It's not something you come across regularly. The waitress was good natured about it - she misheard me and thought I had pointed to the dish below the linguini I was ordering. She whisked it away and replaced it with what I wanted 10 minutes later. It was absolutely delicious. Fresh seafood, punchy tomato sauce, al dante pasta ... I only wished I ordered 2 portions.

The prices were reasonable - the meal with 2 drinks came to about £35 or thereabouts for 2. The service was friendly and the food good. This all adds up to a definite return.

Osteria Dell'Arte
126 Clapham High Street, SW4 7UH London

Pinkberry - Selfridges, London

 

After calm over the summer I have been on the hunt for frozen yogurt again. After my initial dissapointment I decided to give Pinkberry another go- this stop, Selfridges (possibly one of my favourite places in London - I never said I wasn't just a little bit shallow). As with my previous visit in Dubai, it was a Natural and Pommegranate swirl and this time I was a little wiser and only went for 3 toppings - granola, strawberries (heavily mascarated but yum indeed) and plain chocolate chips. It costs about £4.50 for a medium cup with toppings.

It's still not my favourite - my heart still belongs to Yog and Yuforia but it was few pleasant minutes spent slurping froyo and slowly wandering around the food hall.

Pinkberry
Selfridges, 400 Oxford Street, W1A 1AB London

Lunch @ Work

Chef (or one of his kitchen minions) at the staff canteen was feeling particularly generous this lunchtime. I couldn't quite believe my luck when I got this pile - grilled gammon steak on jambalaya with spicy Italian sausage and a poached egg. I added portion of boiled to hell and back veg (because I secretly quite like veg that is overly floppy every now and then).
Negatives - the sausage was non-existent, the gammon was horrendously salty, the poached egg was overdone and there was a suspiciously large number of mushrooms in the rice (overflow from this morning's brekkie buffet I think.
On a slightly more positive note, the rice was delightfully spicy and despite the saltiness the gammon was thick and meaty.

Village East - Bermondsey

 

Sometimes there is nothing better than an incredibly lazy Sunday lie in followed by a hearty meal, all really chilled out because I cannot handle another drop of alcohol before the weekend is out. A quick Google search zooms me on to Village East, with its better than good reviews and the possibility of gorging myself silly on delicious brunch goodies – big fry ups, smoked salmon and wobbly eggs, golden French toast …. buttermilk pancakes!!!!

Orange and Ginger Presse

Short of a skip and a hop (or jumping into the car for the drive to Bermondsey), we arrive in good time but spend another 20  minutes driving around in circles because there’s no bloody parking. I get terribly savage when I’m not fed on time and doesn’t SM know it! SM suggests I’m dropped off to get a table to which I bark it’s bloody pointless since we’re having a fun day out or are supposed to be having one anyway.  Bless SM’s little heart for putting up with me all these years :) We do finally get parking, make it to Village East, are seated at a front facing corner table and then informed by the bemused waitress that the kitchen stopped serving brunch about an hour ago as it was past 3PM. No amount of pleading would get Chef to change his mind, she added. Damnit, it’s bloody Sunday! It should be mandatory that brunch be served all day on a Sunday!

Grudgingly, I settled for Grilled Chicken Sandwich with smoked bacon, flat mushroom and Gruyère cheese (£7.40) and double grudgingly I admitted I was pretty damn happy with it. It was hearty, tasty and just what I needed to take the edge of my Sunday growl.

My side chips (£3.60) were hot, crisp and most importantly skinny. I’m willing to turn a blind eye to the extra calories.

I never thought I’d have such good memories about a salad but there was something so yummy about this one. Thin slices of baby radish, little carrot matchsticks, fine cliced salad onions, small chuncks of tomato, sliced skinless and seedless cucumber on the diagonal tossed with the usual suspects of the green leaf salad bag - baby spinach, chard and rocket. Lightly dressed in a vinegrette. So simple but yet utterly refreshing not just fed green leaves straight out a ready washed bag of leaves.

 

SM was in the mood for a roast and went for the beef Lyonnaise potatoes, veg and gravy.It was rather good despite it looking slightly too pink (for SM) with too thick a border of fatty wobble (for me).

For a sweet treat I manage to convince SM to share a Hot Fudge Sundae with me - really just a ploy to take the edge off my guilt for eating ice cream. And to eat those pesky little marshmellows - chewy little disrruptions to an otherwise perfectly good ice cream dish.

 

I've never been to New York (ok ... so shoot me) but I'm told that places like Village East are in abundance over there (East Village - geddit?). It's cool, it's chilled out. I'm a bit of a fan.

Village East

71-173 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3UW

Suda - Covent Garden

Deciding against booking a table during our last regular meet up, NS and I found ourselves wondering around Covent Garden. Heading towards the direction of Soho but not quite there yet when we stumbled upon Suda. Beckoned by the large open front windows and the possibility of refreshing cocktails, we were sold.

Perched on a high table at the front of the house, we ordered cocktails and a plate or two (or 5 in this specific case) just to get us going before we moved on to dinner. About 15 minutes in, our drinks hadn't arrived but the first of our food had started trickling over from the kitchen. And there kick starts my impatience ... I hate it when my food arrives before my beverage. It goes against my acknowledged order of events when it comes to restaurant dining. I know the bar wasn't mad rush busy, I have a great view of it - perched high as I am right in front of it. The drinks do finally arrive (with nary an apology from the waitress for its late arrival!) and well, well ... what else could get me simmering a little more? The Thai Pimm's, so penned as "traditional Pimm’s with a Thai twist! Pimm’s with fresh Thai ginger, mint, holy basil with sliced orange, cucumber, topped with lemonade" (£6.50) on the menu was warm, flat and decidedly lacking that Thai twist. An utter waste of time!

The Pla Meuk Tod Prig Klue - Thai style calamari with sweet chilli dipping sauce (£4.95) was the first to arrive and looked decent enough. I liked the look of thinly sliced kaffir lime leaves encased within the batter but too bad the crispy batter hid a shameful secret underneath - rubbery squid.

The Satay Gai - chicken satay sticks with peanut sauce (£4.95) was fine but I've had better. However, point be made that this is coming from a girl from Malaysia. It would be a sorry state of affairs if I claimed the best satay I had was this dish. It was fine. No more.

I was particularly looking forward to the Gae Yang Som Tum - Grilled lamb chop with lemongrass and chilli dressing, served with Som tum salad and sticky rice (£8.50), since Suda boasts of a som tum bar. This is another dish I can only best describe as "fine". Despite the meat looking rather limp (thanks to a good bashing with a mallet?), it was pretty tasty (down to a good amount of time spent in the marinade?). The som tum was .... forgetable. I really do not recall how it tasted so I can only deduct it wasn't bad enough for me to remember or that good either.

The grilled prawns in the Yum Som-o Goong Yang - Pomelo salad with kaffir lime juice and grilled prawn (£5.50) were actually rather nice. Nice fresh crunchy prawns were unfortunately let down let down by the star of the dish - the pomelo salad. There were pieces of fruit in that salad that were out of the freezer frozen. It thawed in my mouth, adding an interesting crunch along with the peanuts.

By now NS and I didn't know if we should laugh or cry or outright refuse to pay. The food was going from bad to worse and to say that the service was bad would be unfair. It was just that the staff tried so hard and in doing so, didn't actually give very good service. For example, after we ordered I asked if I could keep a copy of the menu with me. Sure, no problem. But every time I put the menu down, one of the staff would try to grab it off the table. I went through the my explanation of wanting to keep a copy with me to 3 people before I gave up. At this point I was very to move on but NS relented into giving them another chance by ordering another drink (a much faster turnaround time for this drink - things were picking up), when much to our surprise another dish arrived - chicken wings with herbs (also known as pandan chicken). We had forgotten all about it and till this day, the taste shall also remain forgettable.

Shall I be returning? Oh no, I shall not!

Suda
23 Slingsby Place, St Martin’s Courtyard, London WC2E 9AB

Dessert Time - Yauatcha, Soho

Following our somewhat disastrous lunch at Spuntino, RB and I were in total agreement we had to make up our day with dessert. And preferably something that oozed chocolate. A leisurely stroll around Soho (to allow for a lengthy digestion of the truffled egg toast), we ended up at Yauatcha. A brilliant dessert choice. Years of staring longingly at their cake offerings at the window was no more ...

 

    

 Dark Chocolate and Raspberry Delice with vanilla ice cream (£7.75)

 

 
Milk Chocolate Praline Cake with kalamansi sorbet (£7.75) - this was so freakin' delicious I still think about it. Chocolate mouse on a crunchy praline base, encased in silky dark chocolate. What hit this on the head was the  kalamansi sorbet .. so mouth puckeringly yummy.

Cucumber and Lime Ice Tea (£4.90)

I have to note that whilst the desserts were pretty darn good, the service really needed a kick up the backside. It may have been graveyard hour (we were probably there at about 16:30 on a warm Sunday afternoon) but it was no excuse to fall behind on service - 10 minutes to bring the bill, no attempts to take our order without arms flailing in the air trying to procure some sort of attention from the staff - all this with a fully staffed restaurant. Shameful!

Yauatcha

15-17 Broadwick Street. Soho, London, W1F 0DL

Honest Burgers - Brixton

In the market that I used to shop for fresh fish and veg (at ridiculously low London prices), a new breed of traders seem to have emerged with lightning speed recently. Jostling for space with the last few lingering fishmongers, butchers, greengrocers ..... these new kids are infinitely more delicious (and minus the persistent overwhelming smell of tough cleaning agents).

Home made lemonade

The setting for Honest Burgers, like most of it's other newbie-ish neighbours, is utilitarian. The seating are wooden benches and fold up chairs, the tables are slightly rickety, the menu is up on the large chalkboard and little sheets of paper handed out by the waitress. The list of offerings on the menu is minute - if you don't want burger, well .. heck, you're in trouble. But in all honestly, why come to a place called Honest Burgers of a plate of spaghetti?

I'm all for a simple burger - beef patty in a bun, some lettuce, a bit of tomato ... anything more my brain gets overexcited, starts salivating all over itself and then goes into massive overdrive at the prospect of having to attempt to finish the load of food. Despite my initial tinge of disappointment at the size of my Beef burger (£6.50) when it arrived, it was pretty darn good - just the right size, juicy flavourful patty, nice bun ... not too squishy, not too dry. Even the onion relish I didn't mind. At least it wasn't overwhelmingly sweet and it did add that little bit extra to the burger. The triple cooked hand cut chips with rosemary salt were fine but maybe a tad too limp and heavy on the rosemary for my liking (burger companion SM thought they were absolutely fine).

House dressed green salad - to counter all that beefy goodness

SM got the Honest burger (£8) with 35 day dry aged British beef, smoked bacon, cheddar, pickled cucumber, red onion relish and lettuce (picture at the top of the post). SM is the polar burger opposite to me. The one more heavily piled the burger is, the more desirable it is to SM. To be fair SM so nearly got the chicken option - free range chicken, lettuce, tomato and lemon mayo (£8) - diet, you see - but my sweet talking changed SM's mind. I didn't want the burger but I so darned wanted to see what it turned out looking like and just wanted a weenie little taste. I believe SM thanked me profusely too - who wants to be stuck with a measly chicken burger when there is a hunka beef to sink your teeth into.

SM and I have been talking about going back and to do so quick before it gets cold. I, for one, will not be a happy bunny having to sit in the Brixton Village Market arcade in the freezing cold.

 

Cute tin the bill arrived in

Honest Burgers

Unit 12, Brixton Village Market, Coldharbour Lane, London SW9 8PR

Spuntino - Soho, London

I wanted, expected to be blown away by Spuntino. All those rave reviews had made Spuntino one of those absolute must try places. But in so many ways I'm more sheep than shepard and had waited for the waves of reviews surround to me before I got round to marching myself down to Soho, plonking myself down on one of Spuntino's bar stools and ordering a round of Italian/American inspired small plates of food. And frankly, I was disappointed.

The complementary chilli popcorn was chewy, hard and flavourless despite the chili. And it stuck to my teeth. Not the best look to start a meal with.

 

Eggplant chips with fennel yogurt (£4) were pretty average. It came out piping hot, the spiced coating was crunchy and the dipping yogurt was a nice touch - all of which should add up to a good dish but it didn't. It lacked a certain 'oomph', a step further in foodie flavourings to make this really delicious.

 

The soft shell crab with tobasco aioli and fennel shavings (£8.50) was technically fine. The deep fried crab was hot and crunchy, the tobasco gave a nice little kick to the aioli but the fennel salad just fell in a heap of dry boredom. I wanted a tart dressing or even just a squeeze of lemon and a sprinkle of of salt to zing it up.

 

We got 2 sliders to share -  ground beef and bone marrow (£4.50) and lamb and pickle cucumber (£5). The slider buns were a little on the dry side and the fillings were fine if nothing to write home about. Absolutely ridiculous it may sound but I was telling RB as I was munching on my share of the lamb and pickled cucumber slider how moist the ground pork patty was. With a raised eyebrow RB informed me I was tucking into lamb and the cucumber was pickled. Oh.

 

Our last dish was, without a doubt, an absolute terrible mistake on our part. Neither RB nor I are cheese lovers yet we hands down agreed to try the truffled egg toast (£5.50). Our faces screwed up in unison as soon as the plate was set down in front of us - "WTF, is that stench?!?". We forgot that cheese + truffles = possible smell issues for us. I like to say we bravely soldiered on, cutting large pieces for ourselves, avoiding possible gagging as the egg yolk mixture spilled forth from the cheesy bread centre and popped in into out mouth for an awaited try. Oddly, despite it smelling bad (or good, depending on your love for truffled cheese scents) it tasted a bit like cardboard. The scent just didn't translate over to flavour. The cheese was bland and the whole dish desperately needed seasoning. RB and I at one point toyed with the idea of donating our dish to the group sitting next to us who were openly salivating over our carved up dish but opted instead to keep it and make the occasional pokes at it.

RB and I left disappointed and just a little bit hungry. Perhaps we made some wrong choices with what we ordered but it's seriously unlikely that either of us would be willing to go back to give it a 2nd go. Another aspect that put us off just before we left were the 2-3 members of staff with their too cool for school is totally in this season look who were standing at a corner of the bar openly staring and laughing at customers. Heck, I know bitching about customers takes place but really ... try to more discreet about it.

Spuntino
61 Rupert Street, London W1D 7PW