Food and Drink in London

What goes (down) on tour...

A few months ago, a fortnight or so after I'd started to get over the shock of being asked to be best man for my friend Mark, I met up with the groom-to-be to put the world to rights (I'm sure you noticed) and discuss a few possible approaches for the stag do. I'm not sure what influence Mark he thought he was going to have over proceedings but I played along for fun and somewhere between the oysters and the monkfish in the ever-reliable Wright Bros, I registered that what Mark really wanted to do was to go to a fancy restaurant somewhere in town and then repair to a casino. I thought perhaps we'd aim for something a little more ambitious...

Last Friday morning a motley crew – Mark still none the wiser about his eventual destination – assembled at The Four Seasons Hotel in Canary Wharf for a slap-up breakfast and a few exploratory glasses of Champagne. Not bad: suitably plush surroundings in a modern kind of way; decent enough breakfast; nothing particularly special except perhaps the bill. A good start to proceedings.

Two or three hours later, thanks to the oh-so-civilised City Airport, we touched down in Nice. Mark by this point was becoming increasingly suspicious about our assertions concerning connecting flights to Kazakhstan. Our hotel turned out to have a terrific roof bar where we indulged in an enormous bottle of pink stuff in the afternoon sun. A couple more in another bar on the beach and we were ready for the evening festivities.

In a tiny village in the hills overlooking Nice is La Chaumière, a restaurant short on menu but long on character. We were asked simply whether we wanted beef or lamb, the tempting-looking chickens alas being reserved for those who'd ordered them in advance. And then we sat back and ate royally as a procession of treats were brought one after another to the heaving table. There was wafer-thin ham that simply melted in the mouth, tiny olives that packed a real salt punch, an enormous arrangement of raw vegetables for the table to share crudité style that wouldn't have looked out of place in a fancy hotel lobby. And lots of top quality meat, all of it cooked in the fireplace along with ash-baked potatoes. Probably some pudding too: memory fails me now. All in all a good experience and one that I'd definitely try again, but this is not a meal that comes cheap: the food is a cool €80 for what is nothing more than accomplished but basic cooking and the wine list apparently offers little under €100 (I didn't have a look but I could tell the chaps at the other end of the table were struggling to find something suitable for the party).

Back to Nice for a few more drinks on the roof and a couple of hours of mixed fortunes in the casino next door. So far so good.

The main event was scheduled for Saturday: lunch at the Louis XV in Monte Carlo. So after some of us treated the stag to a chopper flight (natch), we sat down in one of the most opulent and beautiful rooms most of us had ever seen. (I'm excluding James here: in my imagination he eats in rooms like this every day. In between trips to Nandos.) This wasn't, alas, the occasion to sample the full delights of Alain Ducasse's menu, but we saw and tasted enough in the excellent value seasonal lunch menu (€130 including wine) for most of us to vow to return.

In a pocket-sized homage to the raw veg the night before we started with a pretty arrangement of very simply prepared summer vegetables in a tumbler. There were thinly shaved and/or sliced celery and fennel hearts, impressively geometric curls of salsify and the like, batons of cucumber and a few delicate leaves of this and that. Individual bowls of a herby dipping sauce set things off perfectly. Immaculate ingredients, simply prepared. A dish less likely to please a stag party it is hard to imagine but we put it away efficiently enough in between samples from the excellent Champagne trolley.

The Louis XV, incidentally, has an awful lot of trolleys. I recollect at least one for each of the following: fizz, bread, butter, sugar (and honey and marshmallows, obviously), cheese and brandy. There may have been others. Meals on wheels, Monaco style.

While the full menus contained all sorts of modern flourishes (or at least I assume they did: I had them whisked away as soon as I caught sight of the one that had the prices on it), the value lunch menu was dominated by classic dishes given the Michelin 3-star treatment. So I started with vitello tonata, a silky carpaccio of veal slicked with tuna sauce and an arrary of capers. An accompanying toast cleverly captured exactly the same flavours in its topping. And for main I shared a magret de canard with Mark, any doubts I had about a duck breast being big enough to share quickly dispelled when I tasted the insanely rich fig sauce that came with it. Excellent stuff.

There followed a giddy procession of final courses, many from trolleys, including some fabulous cheese (the aged comté stood out), a mascarpone ice cream with wild strawberries and an unnecessary warm sweet syrup, and various coffees, petit fours and chocolates. All in all, an excellent lunch, far better value than dinner the night before and, while we weren't sampling the kitchen at its most ambitious, the majesty of the room and the standard of service contributed to a truly memorable dining experience.

The rest of the day was spent in an out of the casinos and bars of Monte Carlo, in a train back to Nice (surprisingly) and in a kebab shop when we got there (possibly). Records from the period are sketchy at best.

The final element of the weekend was a real highlight. On the advice of the ever sage Steve Plotnicki, we went to Café de Turin, a fabulous seafood store/restaurant on the edge of the old town in Nice for a last lunch on Sunday. For under £40 a head we ate our absolute fill of exceptional oysters, langoustines, crevettes, brown shrimp, politically incorrect (but fabulous) Alaskan king crab and lobster. Washed down with a few bottles of Muscadet, at least one of which was on the house thanks to their amusement at our wit, repartee and fancy dress. What a treat.

So... A success?

Well, this just in from Mark: "I just wanted to say thank you so much for organising last week-end. It was great fun and one of the best lunches I have had. It was exactly what I wanted to do." There was more in the same vein. Nice try, mate, but I'm still giving a speech next week...

Baozi Wowzi

Central London is the home of the tourist rip-off, quagmire of simplified and sweetened food.  Ethnic food is often anglicised and caricatured.  Gerrard Street, centre of London's Chinatown, used to demonstrate this and used to top it with comedically rude waiters to boot.  This started to change a few years a go and many new openings are geared towards some kind of authenticity and certainly better tasting food.  We've already learnt that there is Chinese food beyond Cantonese, with the arrival of the Sichuanese restaurants, Bar Shu and Snazz Sichuan.  Now we have the Baozi Inn, from the creators of Bar Shu, serving delicious, good value Sichuan street food in a central London location.

It's a fantastically swift and tasty place to grab a quick bite to eat.  The first time I went I had two of the eponymous Baozi, these are large dumplings, fluffy on the inside.  They're very filling and at £1.20 incredible value.  As a super quick lunch you could go for a couple of these and perhaps the traditional millet porridge accompaniment and escape for a fiver.  I followed with a portion of Chengdu Dan Dan noodles.  This is a spicy pork dish . . . the noodles had a good texture and the sauce, though delicious, only really revealed itself when these had gone.  With Chinese tea this was lunch for £8.70 all finished within twenty-five minutes.  Great!

On my next visit I tried some spicy 'Dragon' wonton, silky in texture, covered in spicy garlic and chilli oil.  A crunchy seaweed salad was hard to stop eating and a main course of 'fragrant and spicy' pork noodles had that delightful Sichuan pepper heat which creeps up on you and worries you until you're accustomed to it.  Throughout both these visits service was efficient and polite.

So, what's not to like?  It's cheap, it's tasty, it's central, it's interesting.  Go.

Baozi Inn 25 Newport Court, Chinatown, WC2H 7JS     020 7287 6877

Black Wednesday

Five minutes after I'd been presented with my menu at Vanilla Black last night Antonia, a strict vegetarian, dared to take a peek at my expression and - let's face it - smirked. "This is how I feel in just about every restaurant you take me to," she said. Yes, for the second time in a month I'd been manoeuvred away from my usual choice of hearty (for which read meaty) establishments and delivered into the welcoming arms of a vegetarian restaurant. Revenge, it seems, is a dish best served with a deconstructed lentil dhal.

At least at Saf, though, there were some dishes I could choose, even if I wasn't jumping up and down with excitement; here, I was in trouble. Still off the carbs, I stared with despair at pastry, potatoes and rice on every dish. Bugger.

But I was still hopeful. Jay Rayner was a fan of this place when it was up in York and I think he and I have a similar attitude to vegetarian fare: celebrate vegetables as ingredients, by all means but don't try to pretend they're something they're not. I was fully expecting creativity and taste would conspire to make me forget about the meagre portions I'd be left with once the spuds were donated elsewhere. Unfortunately, though, the move down South seems to have come at the expense of the qualities that so excited Jay on his visit.

But don't take my word for it: let's face it, I'm biased in the first place. And maybe I didn't do the dishes justice by cutting the carbs. (FWIW I had a quails egg salad with beetroot and some strange and not pleasant furry leaves followed by cabbage and cheese.) Consider, instead, Antonia's thoughts; she's far more qualified to comment than me:

Black olive and yogurt éclair – a bit dry. And surely the wrong way round: put the squidgy yogurt inside like cream and use the salty tapenade to glaze like the chocolate and then you have a much nicer offering.

Feta and orange cake – they said it was their ‘take’ on cheese and fruitcake. Better to do that properly and have a nice dense dried-fruity cake (I even find myself thinking ‘prunes would be good here’ and I never think that). The orange cake was good but very sweet and cakey. Olives in mini Kilner jar – why?

‘Pizza’ – looked like a rat en croute. Doughy. OK my fault for not seeing that the Chantilly cream thing had vanilla in it – but again too sweet. Actually the whole plate looked like the time I made a pizza at home and dropped it on the floor as I was getting it out of the oven.

In general, you could do this restaurant – with its pretty presentation and sophisticated environment for veggie cooking – far better by cooking lovely seasonal ingredients with fabulous robust English cheeses and understanding the balances of texture or protein/carbohydrate or even bloody portion size much better. I give it a month.

I, meanwhile, will be lobbying for a smirking ban.

Vanilla Black 17-18 Took's Court EC4A 1LB 020 7242  2622

Sweet surrender

I had lunch at Waterhouse the new sustainable sibling of Acorn House, on the Regents Canal, Dalston.

It's a funny location and they must be banking on weekend trade or that the area will up-and-come. The premises are sizable and today I was the only diner. The food is Italianate, Jamie-Oliver-ish, with the day's menu displaying summery lightness. I started with a selection of 'mezze', though I wouldn't have used that word for my selection of truffle salami, coppa ham and smoked mackerel. It was all ok, nothing to get excited about though. As a main I'd ordered 'Roast rabbit with couscous, saffron, honey and spices'. Woah . . . this was almost Elizabethan in its sweetness, my teeth sent an emergency telegram to my dentist. It was so sweet that any sense of the spicing or saffron was overwhelmed . . . my Sangiovese was left joyless. A gorilla's handful of raisins colluded with the honey to make it pretty inedible.

What a shame, as the location could actually be pretty nice. I sat outside next to the canal. It'd be good if they replaced the huge banquetting table I sat at with a few daintier spots. The wine list is pretty decent too - I spotted a few Pieropans including 'La Rocca' and the Colombare sweet wine.  What's more, one has to laud it's eco-friendliness, something to which more restaurants should be paying proper attention.

The restaurant is also expensive - that rabbit dish was a whopping £17.50 (must be those newly discovered spices from the Indies). What price urban regeneration?

Waterhouse, 10 Orsman Rd, Dalston. N1 5QJ  020 7033 0123

Hix Up

A few years ago I had a birthday lunch at St John.  As I was tucking into my rook pie I couldn't help but glance admiringly at a neighbouring table where two businessmen were tucking into a bowl of gulls eggs accompanied by an enormous bottle of Ruinart.  No matter how good my rook, I wanted them eggs.  Last weekend I finally tried some.

To celebrate my being offered a new job, Ben and Antonia took me to Mark Hix's new eponymous restaurant.  It's just around the corner from St John and offers, as you would expect from the man who ran the Rivington, British seasonal fare.  The main business of the restaurant is chops and oysters.

The gulls eggs were a whopping five pounds each.  Danger money for abseiling down through a scene from a Hitchcock film I guess.  They came with a little mayonnaise and a pile of celery salt which the waitress proudly announced they'd made themselves.  The subtle flavour of the eggs was perhaps masked by the powerful celery salt but the fine texture and richness of the still soft yolk were excellent.

Asparagus featured strongly on the menu and as a starter I had a soft boiled duck egg with spears as soldiers.  The egg was just right for dipping and the asparagus was fresh and flavourful.  I'd partly ordered this because I'd seen Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall do rather a good version of this on his new tv programme, though with added vinegar to create a sort of do it yourself hollandaise.  Hix should do this too.  Ben murmured appreciatively about his rabbit brawn and Antonia's Welsh rabbit (rarebit) looked less substantial (though more expensive) than the St John offering. 

The waitress had tried hard to sell us one of the big chunks of meat, but we baulked at the cost, £40 for a Porterhouse for two.  Other steaks for one were a fillet at £28.50 and a sirloin at £24.50.  Now good meat should cost bit, there are ample reasons for this . . . but for us, these prices were dissuasive.  And it's Summer anyway, and Ben wanted fish.  He made the right decision.  His lemon sole looked magnificent when it arrived, coated in melted butter.  I wanted to compare the beef and oyster pie to the Wright Brothers version.  The firm pastry lid came with a gratinated oyster atop, when you remove this, you can peer inside and see another oyster there.  Sadly though, the pastry was just a bit too firm and this together with tough meat and an almost complete lack of moisture, indicated that the pie had been well overcooked.  This was eventually taken off our bill.  Antonia's asparagus came on an a huge antique silver thing, that I wish I had the correct word for.  Here it is:

The knockout dish of the evening was a buttermilk drop scone with East End honey ice cream and honeycomb.  Cockney bees up?  The drop scone is like a small American pancake and was a perfect base for the rich ice cream.  Delicious.

In atmosphere and design, it's somewhere in between St John and the Rivington, which is exactly as you might expect, given the food. Busy and buzzy on a Friday night, Ken Stott arrived with a party as we left, bizarrely finding the restaurant's street sealed with barriers and bouncers at each end.

A good restaurant if most of your party wants to go to St John, but someone awkwardly insists on steak.

Hix Oyster and Chop House, 5-37 Greenhill Rents, Cowcross Street EC1M 6B    020 7017 1930