Macaroni Cheese

For years, I thought pasta was pasta, period.
The choice on the supermarket shelf was a mixture of the aesthetic - are bows cuter than spirals - and the practical - would you rather slurp spaghetti or shovel in neat spoonfuls of macaroni?
Of course, things are rarely as simple as they first appear. Italian tradition dictates that long, thin pasta goes with thin, oily sauces, while chunkier and ridgier varieties go with a thicker accompaniment that clings better to their shape. That would explain why carbonara is usually served with spaghetti or tagliatelle, but the rule then clearly fails for bolognaise.
One day, I should do a pasta tasting to see how much difference the shape actually makes. But that doesn't sound nearly as much fun as, say, a wine tasting, and for now I still mostly just have one type of pasta in the cupboard at a time. So, tonight, when the cold weather and the dark evening had me yearning for comfort food, we had fusilli cheese. And very good it was too.



Serves 2-3 hungry people

400g pasta
4 slices bacon
1 pint milk
50g butter
50g flour
4 garlic cloves
200g cheddar
mustard, pepper, nutmeg, salt to taste

Cook pasta per instructions. Fry the chopped bacon.
Slice the garlic and put in a small pan with the milk. Warm until just short of boiling. (Or use a microwave.) Warm milk is my newly discovered secret to a perfect white sauce.
Melt the butter in a small pan, add the flour and cook for a couple of minutes. Slowly - very slowly - add in the milk, constantly stirring to make the smooth white sauce.
Flavour with mustard, black pepper, nutmeg (and anything else you fancy) to taste. Grate in about half the cheese.
Put the pasta, bacon and sauce in an oven-proof dish. Top with the rest of the grated cheese and put under a hot grill until bubbling.
Serve with a green salad to keep up the pretence of trying to eat healthily.

For the ultimate guide to macaroni cheese variations, check out Felicity Cloake's Guardian column. But for me it's very much an easy, lazy, comforting kind of dish that does not involve the faff of turning on the food processor for breadcrumbs or splashing out on parmesan. Besides, anything that has been under the grill with cheese on top always looks awesome.

Guilt-easing Soup

Once upon a time, there was nothing to stop me from just having waffles, or even bread and cheese for dinner.
Now there are two spectres over my shoulder, guilt-tripping me into the kitchen -- the veggie box and the blog.

The veggie box (or rather bag) comes from Hackney's Growing Communities and, for £6 a week, fills my fridge with a selection of vegetables I feel duty bound to use up. The latest batch included some cavolo nero -- a dark green, almost black, leafy Tuscan cabbage. First popularised by the River Cafe cookbooks, it is now widely grown in the UK and can be used in recipes which call for kale or savoy cabbage.

Once I'd ruled out the waffles and determined to use up the greens, my first thought was just to fry them with some bacon and top with an egg. But, while slightly more interesting than grilling a frozen potato-based snack, this still didn't seem sufficiently adventurous to provide blogging fodder. So I leafed through my recipe folder and discovered another way of combining cabbage and bacon -- in a hearty, low-effort soup.



Cavolo Nero, Bacon and Bean Soup
Serves 2 hungry people as a main course.

3 slices of thick bacon
2 stems celery
2 small onions
3 cloves of garlic
handful of rosemary
750 ml chicken stock
1 tin of white beans (eg cannelloni)
250g cavolo nero (or kale, or savoy cabbage)

Chop the vegetables and the bacon into fairly small chunks.
Fry the bacon until seared. Add the onions, garlic and celery and fry for about 5 minutes until softened.
Add the rosemary, stock and drained beans. Bring to the boil and cook for about 20 minutes.
Add the cavolo nero and cook for another 5 minutes.

This makes a hearty, warming bowl and has the added bonus of being pretty low on calories. You could grate some parmesan on top to serve, as the original recipe suggested, or like me, you could add a dollop of sour cream. You could also add some black pepper but I would skip the salt, as the stock and the bacon make the soup already quite salty.

Warning: the pale green stems that run through the dark leaves of cavolo nero are very tough. You need to cut them out and just cook the leafy bit. Otherwise, like me, you will end up with some tough and bitter mouthfuls in your otherwise delicious soup.

Rex Whistler at Tate Britain

Babies and culture mostly don't mix all that well, unless you count nursery rhymes. Theatres and concerts require a babysitter while serious books (I have discovered) can prove a bit too much for a sleep-deprived post-pregnancy brain. Open air stuff is generally ok though, as are art galleries.
So, we found ourselves at Tate Britain, checking out John Martin's Apocalypse exhibition. His scenes of judgement day and the end of the world were hugely popular with the spectacle-seeking Victorian public, and still look striking today. (If you go, The Evening Standard has a 2-for-1 offer on tickets until the end of the month.)
Our cultural appetites sated, it was time for lunch amidst much more light-hearted art.
The walls of the Tate's restaurant were covered in a whimsical mural by Rex Whistler nearly a century ago, then a 23-year-old art student. Called The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats, it charts the progress of a group of seven people "through strange and wonderful lands encountering unicorns, truffle dogs and two giant gluttons guarding the entrance to a cave".
These days, the restaurant's focus is modern British (no unicorns).



In the interests of research, I should have ordered the most unusual thing on the menu, the garden pea panna cotta with turnip, radish, pea shoots and mint oil (£6.50). Instead, I chickened out, and ordered what I actually wanted -- the beef carpaccio with truffle oil and celeriac remoulade (£7.95).
The beef was good quality and the truffle oil added an extra rich, velvety layer of taste. The remoulade -- thin strips of celeriac in a French tartar-like sauce -- was also very nice, but, to my taste buds, did not really go. The portion was also fairly small, even for a starter. I fleshed out the lunch with a couple of side dishes. For £3.25, the mixed leaf salad seemed overpriced - it was literally a handful of standard mixed leaves in a pleasant but unexciting dressing.



The same amount of money was much better spent on a large bowl of chunky chips which succeeded in walking the tricky tight rope between a crispy golden outside and a soft centre.
If you are hungry, the lunch menu is good value at £16.50 for two courses, and includes a selection of wines from the interesting list at £3.75 a glass (served 11.30am-3pm). They have also jumped on to the (now quite overcrowded) bandwagon of afternoon tea, complete with cute multi-teer cake stands. Accompanied kids eat free at lunchtime, and they have high chairs.
I wouldn't trek all the way out to Pimlico for the food, but it's a nice spot to digest the impressions of an exhibition -- this was not our first visit, and is unlikely to be the last.

Rex Whistler Restaurant, Tate Britain, Millbank,
Westminster, SW1P 4RG; Tel. 020 7887 8825

Banana Tree Canteen

The food was nice enough, but you really must go for the baby chairs. Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd be writing when I originally started this blog in 2006.

Banana Tree started out some 20 years ago and has now expanded into a mini-chain across London, attracting good reviews. I stumbled upon their Islington branch the other day, and was lured in by a board promising a lunch from just £5.65. There are more exciting options on the menu -- which spans from Thailand to Singapore, via Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia -- but that price (plus service charge) bought me a plate of chicken pad thai, washed down with regularly refilled tap water.



The dish smelt burnt when it arrived, although I didn't actually find any culprits for the aroma. A few slices of red chilli added bite, raw bean sprouts provided some crunch and a wedge of lime contributed the zing. There were also a few crispy deep fried tortilla-ish chips on the side. It was a perfectly pleasant lunch, but no more.
The high chair on the other hand was simply awesome. The waiter produced a folded, cloth contraption, about A3 size. As I looked on dubiously, he arranged it into a cunning seat which attaches to the table with a solid metal frame. I'd never seen anything like it before. It would be very useful for visiting friends and family, or just for keeping in the car for times when your chosen cafe or restaurant doesn't have high chairs.



Banana Tree Canteen, 412-416 St John Street, Islington, EC1V 4NJ; Tel. 020 7278 7565; www.bananatree.co.uk

Oven Risotto With(out) Madeira

Have some madeira, m'dear
You really have nothing to fear
I'm not trying to tempt you, that wouldn't be right
You shouldn't drink spirits at this time of night

This recipe must have languished in my file for half a decade, since a trip to the island of Madeira from which we brought a bottle of its eponymous sweet, fortified wine. The wine, I think, disappeared at a party years ago. But the recipe caught my eye again this week, as I am on the lookout for dishes that can be prepared in advanced and finished off in the oven. With a baby, this is the only way to eat dinner at a reasonable hour, as I discovered after an early attempt at entertaining saw me plonking the guests in front of the stove while I dealt with an especially grumpy bedtime.



2 small leeks (approx 250g)
1 large onion
100g mushrooms
350g risotto (arborio) rice
1l chicken stock
300ml madeira (I used white wine)
75g grated cheese (the original calls for parmesan, but we only had cheddar, which to my philistine taste worked fine)
thyme, parsley

Preheat the oven to 150 degrees.
Fry chopped leek and onions in a hot, oiled pan for about 10 minutes, stirring.
Add chopped mushrooms and fry for another couple of minutes.
Add rice and stir to coat well.
Add the stock, wine and thyme. Stir. Bring to the boil.
Place uncovered in the oven for 30 minutes, or until the rice is cooked and the liquid has all been absorbed.
Stir in the grated cheese and fresh parsley before serving.

The result was a delicious and quite convincing risotto. You miss out the therapeutic stirring, but gain time to spend with your guests/partner/sofa/put a baby to bed.
The original recipe calls for Madeira, dried porcini mushrooms, parmesan and tarragon, and claims to serves 6 people.
I adapted it to suit the contents of the fridge and cupboards and the two of us managed to polish off the lot in one evening, though if you add another course (or are less greedy) you could probably stretch it between 4. As long as you stick to the ratio of rice and liquid, you could experiment with all sorts of other ingredients.

PS Apologies for the slightly out of focus photo, I was too hungry to take more than one!

Spaniards Inn

Autumn, more than any other time if year, makes me forget my sworn city girl status and yearn for the countryside. Luckily, that craving for red-golden leaves and the feeling of being miles from anywhere can be satisfied a hop, a skip and a jump from central London - on Hampstead Heath.



A bracing walk calls for a hearty lunch, and the Spaniards Inn has been filling that hole for centuries.
It is an atmospheric old pub, full of nooks, crannies and history. In Dickens's Pickwick Papers, it is the scene of a tea party in the countryside, featuring huge quantities of bread and butter. A few centuries on, the portions are still quite hearty, though the food is luckily more varied.
The husband (for whom I am still thinking of a suitable nickname for this blog) had the 10oz rump steak (£16.25). It was juicy and rare, as ordered, and came with some peppercorn butter. Flavoured butter seems to be the trendy thing for steak at the moment, and in this instance it worked quite well. Lighter than the traditional creamy peppercorn sauce, it let the meat shine through more while still adding a bit of zing.

My attention was caught by the salad with avocado and halloumi, until I realised that it was the exact same dish as the one I had really enjoyed at the Island Queen in Islington a few weeks earlier -- the two pubs must be owned by the same people. So, in the interest of trying more things, I changed my mind at the last minute in favour of the tart with figs, goats cheese, pecans & roasted squash (£11.25). It was a good mix of the sweet and savoury, and went some way towards reversing my broad distrust of figs.
The house red was perfectly drinkable. The half of ale came in a cute half pint tankard, although it could have been better kept. The vegetable accompaniments were also a bit of a letdown - my tart came with an overpowering mound of deep-fried greens (kale?), while the steak was paired with some decidedly anaemic chips.
Overall though it was a nice meal in a lovely setting - not worth the journey in its own right but a great end to a walk on the magnificent heath.

Spaniards Inn, Spaniards Road, Hampstead, NW3 7JJ; Tel: 020 8731 8406 www.thespaniardshampstead.co.uk

The Gunmakers

Some restaurants pride themselves on having a mission or a premise. The Gunmakers, judging by its website lays claim only to a menu and an address. And, judging by its food, it's on to a winner. On the downside, it means I can't tell you the history of the place or its name, as Clerkenwell is historically more famous for its printers and Italians rather than guns.
In a world of chain sandwich shops and crumbs over keyboards, the cosy pub felt like a gateway into a less hurried, bygone era. A handful of suits were finishing their meals and their drinks when we arrived at about 2.30pm on a weekday.



In one corner, the bar man had started on his lunch. His mackrel looked very good, so we ordered that. The husband pronounced it delicious, and even finished off the accompanying beetroot - a vegetable he normally winces at.



I went for the chorizo toad-in-the-hole, which further confirmed my new-found love of the Spanish sausage. It worked really well with the batter, adding a stronger, more vibrant flavour than the usual English banger. Definitely one to try at home, along with the celeriac mash which came on the side.
We washed it all done with well-kept Mad Goose ale, and I left wishing I still worked in the area and could sneak off for lunches there on a regular basis.

The Gunmakers, 13 Eyre Street Hill, Clerkenwell, EC1R 5ET; Tel. 020 7278 1022 thegunmakers.co.uk; Lunch for 2 around 30 pounds

The Seeds of Halloween

I really, passionately hate food waste.
It is an irrational passion, which knows no boundaries of time, effort, or money. I will rush around buying ingredients to turn that random packet of dried beans that has sat in the cupboard for years, or that minuscule piece of meat left from last night's dinner into a full meal.



So, when I carved out this year's Halloween pumpkin, I had to toast the seeds. The process takes the best part of an hour, creates lots of washing up, wastes electricity, oil and salt. You have to be passionate.




First, spend a good 15 minutes picking them out of the mush of stringy orange innards ( which, I gather, are inedible).
Then, boil them in salty water for 10 minutes. Drain.
Spread them out on a baking try, spray with oil and put in the oven for about 20 minutes.
Discover that this is slightly too long, and your pumpkin seeds are now on the burnt side.
Place your handful of slightly burnt seeds into a small bowl, which they only half fill.
Sit down and chew them bitterly as you google to discover that a bag of (presumably unburnt) seeds can be yours in the nearest supermarket for about 60 pence.
Decide that it is probably best not to add up how much electricity you spent on producing your offering.
Display your carved pumpkin proudly in your window and hope that some trick-or-treaters show up, so you can get rid of the rest of the seeds. If I was a trick-or-treater after home-made treats though, I'd be heading elsewhere tonight.

Happy Halloween!

Lamb Chops with Pea, Feta and Mint Salad

We are in the midst of a house move at the moment, surviving with a few essentials while most of our life possessions snooze in brown boxes.
For the husband, the essentials include half a dozen musical instruments in varying degrees of repair.
For my part, I rushed to unpack the cookbooks - including the thick ring binder of recipes torn from magazines, purloined from friends and stumbled upon on the Internet. This overflowing and messy file is my chief source of culinary inspiration -- including for last night's dinner (which serves two):



2 large lamb chops
200g frozen peas
small pack of fresh mint leaves
100g feta
2 pittas (or any bread, stale will work)
Cook the peas and cool (I rinsed with cold water to speed this up).
Add cubed feta and mint leaves.
Generously pepper the lamb steaks and fry to desired level of done-ness. Leave to rest for a few minutes.
In that time, chop the pitta into large croutons and warm in the pan used for the lamb, thus soaking up any juices.
Mix the croutons into the salad and serve with the lamb.

This would make a good dish for a BBQ, but is also good for pepping up a grey autumn day.

The original recipe, of unknown provenance, also called for cucumber and lemon wedges (which were absent from my fridge) and used twice as much feta as peas.

Polpetto

Strange or unusual dishes beckon me from restaurant menus with an almost irresistible force. In its grip, I have found myself picking at a greyish, mushy plate of brains in a Bulgarian restaurant in Moscow and tucking into a gamey but not entirely pleasant giraffe burger (the animal, not the chain) in Camden Market.
More successful forays have included nettle soup at the now sadly defunct Ambassador in Exmouth Market and, most recently, dandelions at Polpetto.

Polpetto has squashed some dark wooden tables into a small, cosy room above the equally crowded French House pub in the centre of Soho's hustle and bustle. It's been open for a little over a year, receiving praise for the food and taking other criticism on board - the originally tapas-y menu has been split into small and large plates (starters and mains to you and me) and it's now possible to book.

The stalks of dandelions added a delicate, flowery and slightly citrusy crunch to a delicious plate of rigatoni flavoured with "wet walnuts". It turns out that wet walnuts are the super seasonal young fruit of the tree, which dry out into the more familiar variety with age. And very good they were too.



Given that Polpetto means "baby octopus" in Italian, I also felt moved to order the octoped. It came as a carpaccio starter, bejewelled but nor overpowered with fresh red chillies (£6).

The brief, description-free menu gives diners the option of asking the waiters for advice/translation or -- as we did -- going for a lucky dip approach. Tempted by smoked anchovies, we thus took a gamble on its unfamiliar accompaniment, puntarelle. The gamble paid off, with the arrival of some tasty green shoots of the chicory family.

Among the mains, we also sampled the squid (£11.30) - with a delicious if slightly overpowering char grilled tang - and the Italian classic of pork in milk (£10.30). The meat was meltingly tender, with notes of aniseed and chunks of white bread all but dissolved in the juices.

Largely ignorant in Italian wine, we washed down the meal -- one of the best I've had in London since returning -- with carafes of the very drinkable house red, and pledged to come back again soon.

Polpetto, Upstairs at The French House, 49 Dean Street, London, W1D 5BG; Tel. 020 7734 1969 polpetto.co.uk
Cost: around £30 a head for two courses with wine

Secret Garden Salad

We've been back in London for a few months now, rediscovering its tastes and smells. Reading other people's blogs has infected me with a desire to resurrect my own, to chart and share the next chapter of my adventures in the British capital.
There will still be plenty of pigging out, but the arrival of a baby means that now more of it takes place in our kitchen than in restaurants. The baby has further reinforced my love of quick meals, the kind that can be rustled up over a glass of wine once she has gone to sleep and before my stomach implodes from hunger. (I do not cope well with hunger, as my husband will testify. I get very hangry.)
Tonight's dinner was just such a meal -- an easy medley inspired by the plum tomatoes from my vegetable box and the harvest in St Mary's Secret Garden.
I was very excited when, among drab council blocks near the shiny new Hoxton Station I stumbled upon this little oasis of edible plants. The garden was founded a quarter of a century ago and is run by volunteers as a haven for local community. There is even a beehive and a pond full of friendly newts. They sell some of the produce on site, and I was given mini shears to cut my own chard -- my first bit of harvesting since childhood visits to pick-your-own strawberry farms.
Chard is another new discovery for me. Its dark green leaves are reminiscent of spinach, but with a stronger flavour, while its stalks -- deep red or white -- are more akin to beetroot. It's in season for another month, and goes well with egg dishes (like frittatas), as well as in salads.



Baked Camembert with Tomato, Onion and Chard Salad
Serves two as a main, four as a starter.

The hot, baked cheese makes it a nice option for golden, autumnal days, when it seems a shame to completely surrender to the impending winter, but it's clear that this year's salad days are numbered.

6 tomatoes
1 small red onion
small bunch of chard
1 camembert
bread

Chop onions and tomatoes quite finely and place in a salad bowl. If you have time, leave them in the fridge for a couple of hours to soak in each other's juices.
Chop the chard, keeping storks and leave separate. Fry the storks for a couple of minutes, then add the leaves and fry for another minute. Leave to cool (and finish cooking) in the pan. Once cool, add to the tomatoes.
About half an hour before dinner, preheat the oven and pop in the camembert. Leave until its soft to touch on top and runny inside. This took about 20 minutes at 180 degrees in my oven.
Before serving, you could add chopped herbs to the salad (I had some coriander lurking in the fridge). Salad leaves, such as rocket, would also go well.
I don't think this salad requires a dressing, but if you don't like your vegetables naked you could add a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
Eat dipping chunks of bread into the runny cheese and interspersing with fork -fulls of the salad.
If you don't add salad leaves or herbs, any leftovers will last in the fridge for a day or two. Probably not ideal for work pack lunches though, given the raw onion....

St Mary's Secret Garden, 50 Pearson Street, London, E2 8EL www.stmaryssecretgarden.org.uk

The Barbarians in Moscow

It's been nearly three years since I moved to Moscow and stopped writing this blog. During our time here, the city has finally secured a place for itself on the gastronomic globe, with Varvary - The Barbarians - becoming the first ever Russian restaurant to make it into the world's Top 50 (sneaking in at number 49).



In many ways, the place is very typical of the Moscow dining scene, with over the top decor, a surly doorman and sky-high wine prices. We had booked a place on the balcony, but were told that the tasting menu would only be served indoors, as the strong wind and pukh* outside would ruin the delicate presentation.

Unusually though, Varvary takes pride in using local ingredients. This is a welcome change in a country where distant foreign imports are still the most prized, because local produce is considered to be of poor quality and people want to show that they can afford the best.

The 11 courses of the 8,500 roubles (190 pounds) "Gastronomic Show - Moscow Summer 2011" also had a distinct Russian flavour, showcasing such traditional, unglamorous ingredients as mayonnaise, dill and potato.



A good example of this was the appetiser, featuring "Real Russian Flavour" in the form of intense beetroot jelly on a sliver of black bread (remnants can be seen on the tablecloth in the photo!). On the same plate there was also sea buckthorn (a bitter, orange berry so beloved by Russians it even features as a toothpaste flavour) with curd cheese, shaped like the Japanese maki rolls that are omnipresent here; cream of broccoli with cod liver, and a herring mouse with sorrel and rocket -- a concoction of intense green, served in a beautiful egg-bottomed cup and possessing of a very sharp fishy flavour.



Next came the "oyster", the wittiest dish of the set. The flavour of the creature was separated from the traditional slippery texture and infused into a fragile green leaf, floating on a cloud of lemony foam in a silver spoon. The generously-sized oyster itself, on the other hand, was distinctly unoysterish, served baked under a parmesan crust in a very Russian sauce which the husband identified as warm mayonnaise.

Being a lady (ahem), I was then served the Spring Meadow -- a plate of green salad and fresh asparagus with steaming chunks of white truffle flavoured dry ice around a golden pond of a poached egg.

The manly alternative consisted of a shot of vodka and a plate of intense traditional beetroot soup, borsch, with a ball of dill-speckled sour cream which dramatically burst within moments of serving. Ironically, I preferred the borsch, while the husband was most taken with my salad!

There was generally a lot of soup on the menu -- gaspacho ice cream with lobster bisque was followed by langoustine soup with calmari essence, both nice enough but not spectacular and, together, overdoing the fishy liquid quotient of the meal.

A Russian-style dumpling (varenik) with succulent Kamchatka crab was a hands down favourite, with the quality ingredients shining through. Vareniki, or pelmini as their meat equivalents are known, will be probably the Russian food that I will miss the most, as they are cheap freezer staple for us on those too lazy/tired to cook evenings, though I am more used to them stuffed with non-descript meat than prime seafood.

The fish and meat main courses -- silver cod with peas and beans, and veal on the bone with pepper sauce -- were surprisingly simple, again allowing the quality ingredients to shine through. They were interspersed with potato with dill and red caviar, but alas by this stage the wine had started to kick in, and I can no longer recall how these traditional Russian staples were woven together. Restaurant blogging here seems all but non-exhistent, so google was of no help -- you'll just to have to go and check it out for yourself.

The meal finished off with a selection of honey-based dainties, followed by cute little pots of cream and jam and another potato - this one a chocolate cake-cum-sweet of Soviet childhood.

With a bottle and a half of one of the cheapest wines, the final bill rivalled our lunch in the Fat Duck. In terms of the food and the whole 'show', I would say Hesthon Blumenthal has nothing to worry about yet. But Varvary does offer the most interesting food I have tried in Moscow, while proving that Russian cooking can be turned into a cuisine.

Our time here is running out and London beckons again, so it's too late for me to start a Moscow blog, but I will do a write up of some of my favourite places here - watch this space.

Varvary, 8A, Strastnoy Boulevard, Moscow, Russia; Tel. +7(495) 229-28-00; http://www.anatolykomm.ru/Varvary



*Pukh is Russia's summer snow. In May and early June, the white fluff blows off poplar trees in Moscow's parks and boulevards, covering the streets and getting into everything from drinks to nostrils. The story goes that after the war, the powers that be wanted to make the city green as quickly as possible, and they chose the poplar as the fastest growing breed in the moderate climate. But in their hurry, they filled the streets with female trees, which produce the fluff (insert sexist joke), ensuring year round snow in the Russian capital.

Bye Bye London (and Blog)

As I write this, it's already over a week since I left London for Moscow. Sorry, there were a couple of places I wanted to post about before drawing the line under this blog - at least for now.

I've really enjoyed chronicalling my restaurant habit over the last couple of years, and want to thank you all for reading and commenting.

As I am now discovering, Moscow also has lots of exciting restaurants to offer (as well as lots of very over-priced ones). If anyone has any suggestions of where I should try here, please let me know!



For now I leave you with a snap of my last London meal - a surprisingly decent eggs benedict and a glass of prosecco at The Tin Goose in Heathrow's Terminal 1.

Good bye and bon apetit.
Slonik
x

Menelik

The table cloths are stained, decorations include a dusty Eiffel-tower-shaped brandy bottle and the place is empty around 7.30 pm on a Friday night.
Plus, in my mind 'Ethiopia' was always more linked with television images of famine than with cuisine.

But stereotypes and appearances can be deceptive.



We order their taster selection. The first to arrive is a large tray covered in traditional injera bread - a pancake like thing with a slightly vinegary taste. Upon it, the waitress ladles out half a dozen or so different dishes. I particularly enjoy some beans and a mix of barely cooked mince with (I think) spinach. All is eaten with your hands, scooped up with more injera bread, and washed down by surprisingly good Ethiopian larger.
The only dish that we fail to finish is the Ethiopian take on steak tartrare - large chunks of raw beef in a thick, spicy sauce. It's not bad, but the consensus is that the chunks are a bit too big to chew/digest raw.

Still, we leave a couple of hours and many beers later, absolutely stuffed and amazed to have paid only about 15 quid for this feast. Sure, you might not want to eat here once a week, or even once a month, but it's definitely worth trying at least once.

Menelik, 277 Caledonian Road, London, N1 3EF; Tel. 0207 700 7774; Tube: Caledonian Road

Cork and Bottle

A hidden gem just off Leicester Square. Yes, really. Such secrets don't come along often, and I'm only letting you in as I won't be in London for much longer to savour its delights myself.

Hidden under red awning between the endless kebab shops and ticket touts, the small door deposits you atop a spiral metal staircase. Below, there's a buzzy, cosy vibe of a not quite authentic French or Italian wine bar.

The wine list is amazing in scope, decent in value and wittily, informatively written. The food menu focuses on classic comfort food with a nod to the owner's Antipodean origins.



The husband's burger is large and decent-tasting, but I am smitten with the cheese and ham pie, the house speciality. Beneath a pastry lid is a savoury heaven, a layered tower of cheese and ham... Mmm, writing about it, I want one now.
We were far too stuffed for the cheese course, so finished off with a couple of glasses of a young Beaujolais Village.

This lovely precursor to the theatre set us back just over £50 for two huge mains, some olives, a bottle of a zesty Spanish white and the glasses of the Beaujolais. Like I said, a gem.

Cork and Bottle, 44-46 Cranbourn Street, Leicester Square, WC2H 7AN; Tel. 0207734 7807; Tube: Leicester Square

Moshi Moshi

The location: Potentially convenient, but otherwise not ideal - inside Liverpool Street train station. The windows actually look into the station and you can watch the Essex trains leave and arrive down below.

The spec: A Japanese restaurant with a conveyor belt and also cool wooden booth-like seats. Part of a mini chain which prides itself on sustainable fish.

The good: The starters.



There's an interesting selection on the set menu platter, from fresh sushi to Cornish crab.



The tempura is also good.

The not so good: The mains. The beef is overcooked and overly sickly. The chef's special selection is far from special - octopus (which I think is too rubbery to be eaten raw), tuna, salmon, seabass. Nor is there much of it - hardly the "sumptious feast" advertised. The 'seasonal' sardine and ginger miso soup is fairly grim.



The service is slow, inattentive and sometimes just downright bizarre. The wine arrives and we taste it, nodding approval. The bottle is then whisked away and replaced by a new, unopened one, from which we are also given a taster before finally being allowed to keep it.

The verdict: A mixed experience, and certainly not worth it for the money for dinner (ours came to around 80 pounds), but would be OK for lunch or if you have a special offer and happen to be in the area.

Moshi Moshi, Unit 24, Liverpool Street Station, EC2M 7QH (above platform 1, behind M&S); Tel 020 7247 3227; Tube: Liverpool Street; www.moshimoshi.co.uk

Katana

The location: A hop, a skip and a jump away from Trafalgar and Leicester Squares, above a modern but pleasant bar called The International. Looks posher than it is from the outside.

The spec: A Thai restaurant, owned by the same people who own various places in and around Covent Garden, including Tuttons.

The good: The happy hour in the bar, including bellinis for £3.95. The light vegetable tempura starter from the good value £13.50 set menu which came with a free glass of Pimms. The teriyaki salmon from the main course, especially when moistened with some of the sauce from the Thai chicken curry.

The disappointing: The bland chickpea patties in the second starter (admittedly helped by a yoghurt dip), and the overcooked chicken in the curry.

The bad: The service, though my dining companion, who'd been before, said it wasn't usually like that. In a largely empty restaurant, the waitress insisted we had to order deserts at the same time as everything else because "the kitchen will be busy later". (Luckily, when it did arrive, the ice cream didn't look like it had been pre-plated at the start of the meal.) The drinks, for each round, took ages coming, and we were drinkless through most of the main course. Although others had brought happy hour drinks up from the sister bar downstairs, a very abrupt manager told us this was not allowed and we had to pay full price. The kitchen with its dirty plates was far too exposed from where we were sat. These are all minor quibles but they added up, especially as the tone of the stuff was generally far from friendly and occasionally border line rude.

The verdict: I will definitely add the bar to my list of good venues in the area (where it joins The Chandos and The Porterhouse), but am not sure I'll be back to the restaurant.

Katana, The International, 116 St Martins Lane, WC2N 4BF; Tel. 020 7257 8625; Tube: Charing Cross or Leicester Square

Langtry

What better antidote to a rainy summer and tightening money belts than a posh lunch with unlimited champagne? Step forward the Langtry and its £35 meal deal.

I like the elegant room, with old-fashionedly ornate walls, bow-legged padded chairs and slate place mats. Plus they have phallic flowers on the tables :)

The waiters are very reverential to everyone, from a special occasion birthday party quartet to a youngish girl with Harrods bags and a large hole in her black tights.

The bread basket is freely and frequently offered, and -- rewarding our efforts to make the most of the free bubbles -- the champagne glasses are never allowed to go empty. (Bizarrely though they only refill the tap water tumblers when asked.)



We both start with the tuna loin. Rare and tender, it is offset by a delicate pale green mousse. I am sure I detect hints of avocado, but a re-examination of the menu reveals that actually it starred coriander and Cromer crab. Hmm, so much for my palate, best not give up the day job.



The main course of olive crusted lamb fillet is very tasty though the lamb is a bit on the gristly side.



The sea trout actually makes fennel and anise in the accompanying cream taste quite nice to my hostile-minded taste buds.



We finish with a Madagascan vanilla créme brûlée served in a nifty spoon/plate and a palate-cleansing champagne sorbet with summer fruits. The bill comes with another round of champagne and, with service, is still under £80 for 2.

For the delicious food and well over a bottle of champers (each), I think that's a veritable bargain, especially as here you are made to feel as special as if you'd spent more than double that.

Langtry, 21 Pont Street, SW1X 9SG; Tel. 0207 201 6619; Tube: Sloane Square or Knightsbridge; www.langtrysrestaurant.com

Pearl

The "modern French" food is masterminded by TV-regular Jun Tanaka, and the name harks back to Pearl Assurance who once occupied the grand building in the heart of London's law district. Real pearls, though, are everywhere, hanging off the ceiling in jawdropping chandeliers.

Considering a single main course will normally set you back a whopping £31.50, the toptable three-courses-for-£30 seemed like a vertiable steal. But be careful, supplements and drinks will quickly inflate the bill.



I am surprised by my strarter of osso buco -- a Milanese dish of braised veal shanks -- which essentially came deep-fried. Still, the meat was tender and as a cheese-loved I quite enjoyed the addition of mozarella. The accompanying artichokes had an unpleasant pickled flavour though and the cold roasted peppers, though nice, tasted like they could have come from a posh jar.




My main course is also not really a winner, the tortellini are tiny, with little sign of the advertised parmesan, and the Swiss Chard turns out to be just an accompaniment rather than a filling. It's a bit bland and confirms my theory that you should steer clear of vegetarian food in expensive restaurants.



Others fare betters, sampling the sea Bream with clams, grapefruit vinaigrette wild leeks and samphire,



and a beautifully pink rump of salt marsh lamb with wild garlic and beans.



In the only desert we sample the dark chocolate contrasts beautifully with the slight tartness of raspberries. And, as all the food, it looks stunning on the plate.



The artisan cheeses come with a £6.50 supplement - a bit much when you only get six slivers from what is, admitedly, a very impressively burdened cheese trolley. We ask the sommelier to recommend a red wine for the cheese. His choice is quite dry and we are not that impressed - something fruitier, more full bodied might have gone better. We are even less impressed when the glasses appear on the bill at around 13 quid each, costing more than the champagne. They are not very gracious when we complain, but do remove one of the glasses from the (already quite hefty) bill.

It leaves a bit of a sour impression. Overall I would say the setting is stunning but taste-wise the food is merely good -- which at these prices isn't enough.

Pearl Restaurant & Bar, 252 High Holborn, WC1V 7EN; Tel. 020 7829 7000; Tube: Holborn; ww.pearl-restaurant.com

Mucho Mas

Months after everyone else, I finally get around to trying Mucho Mas, a modern-looking (no longer very) new cafe in the centre of Upper Street's hustle and bustle.

On a sunny weekend lunchtime the outside tables provide a top people-watching spot -especially as they serve Negra Modello, one of my favourite dark beers.
It's a casual kind of place, so you have to order at the bar and they only take cash (cue mad dash to the cash point).

The menu is short, featuring burritos (the small portion is called 'Mexican', the large is 'American', which makes me smile), tacos and a few salads. They make the stuff up in a production line in front of you which reminds me of Subway, though the contents of the metal pots look more appetising here. Unless you want a salad, the choice is essentially very limited: whether you want one big piece of tortilla wrap or several small ones, and whether you prefer your chosen meat (or veg) accompanied by rice and beans or cheese and salsa. Either way, you have to pay extra for guacamole.



We tried a chicken burrito (for the record a 'Mexican' is plenty big enough) and some beef tacos. The flavours were fresh, and the medium sauce gave them plenty of spice.

They get bonus points for the jug of tap water and cups on the counter, but minus marks for making diners use plastic cutlery and eat out of cardboard boxes. For the two dishes and the two beers we got about a quid change out of a twenty, which I reckon is a bit steep for eating out of cardboard, but then I seem to spend most of my time these days gasping in horror at restaurant and bar bills.

(It must be a sign of the times that the spit-and-sawdust dump on Old Street that was called Bar £1.50 when we first moved to London has, after progressing to Bar £1.70 and then being renamed as something non-numeric, now shut altogether. These days, unless I am in a Sam Smith's or Wetherspoons, I am lucky to get a pint for under £3.)

So, Mucho Mas is a great spot for a shopping break/casual lunch on a sunny day, but I am not sure I would go as far as backing the unrelentingly rave write ups it seems to be getting on public review sites.

Mucho Mas, 27 Upper Street, N1 9LQ; Tel. 020 7704 2123; Tube: Angel; www.mucho-mas.co.uk (site under construction)