Host, Liverpool

Pan-Asian, a restaurant genre to strike fear into the heart of the purist. I'm not really one of those, but I understand their criticisms. Asia is a big place. The two most populous nations on earth have cuisines more varied than some continents, and that's just within their own respective borders. And it's not as if the vast span of Asia outside China and India eats food that's lacking in distinction either.

So can a Pan-Asian restaurant like Host really do justice to such myriad variety, or is it destined to disappoint? The classic jack of all trades but master of none.

A duck and watermelon salad with cashew nuts and thai basil was pleasing to eat on account of its textural contrasts. Fibrous meat, yielding, juice heavy melon and the snap and crunch of nuts and beansprouts. Taste wise it wasn't so much fun. Sweet fruit, sweet-ish meat and a sweet dressing left it one dimensional, needing something acidic for balance, or at least for the advertised basil to be detectable.

I couldn't resist ordering the seared beef pho to follow, partly because I fancied something soupy, and partly because at twelve quid it was by some margin the most expensive pho I've ever seen.

What does the mark up on your average Vietnamese restaurant prices get you? A very fine looking dish with a well stocked platter of garnishes, which although plentiful sadly didn't include any of the more unusual herbs, just regular coriander, mint and basil. The meat was the high point of the dish, a good slab of well seared, blush pink sirloin that wouldn't have been out of place with a bowl of frites. Springy noodles were also a hit.

So far so good, just the broth to taste, and oh... it just tastes of salt. Not offensively so, there's just not much else to it. None of the meaty depths of a good stock, no aromatic star anise back note. Ultimately what you're paying for is the European-isation of the dish, everything else acting as the supporting cast to the big slab of protein in the centre of the plate. Not unpleasant, just not really the point of pho as far as I'm concerned. It should be all about the broth.

Sadly it didn't really add up for me at Host. I hoped that the food would defy expectations, but it just served to confirm my suspicions that pan-Asian restaurants are never the place to go for genuinely good Asian food.  At £24 for two courses, one beer and service it's also not cheap.

Service, I should point out, was excellent. Everyone I spoke to was attentive, polite, and keen to check that everything was ok. Fine, I said, of course. Which it was. You can't really take up your issues with the entire concept with the waiting staff.


5/10

31 Hope Street
Liverpool
L1 9HX

http://www.ho-st.co.uk/

Yuzu, Manchester

On my second day this week in Manchester I thought I'd stick with the healthy eating theme and go for Japanese. Fish, rice, nourishing broths and vegetables. That sort of thing.

Japanese food remains a bit of a mystery to me, I keep intending to give it due attention but I'm so easily distracted by the more obvious, dirtier delights of Sichuan, Thai or Indian that I've never really learned to appreciate its subtlety and elegance.

With those thoughts in mind I rocked up at Yuzu and ordered the epitome of health, subtlety and elegance: deep fried pork, or tonkatsu to give it its proper name.

Each of a concise list of lunch specials comes served with rice, miso soup and garnish (some lightly pickled cucumber and daikon), mine being the most expensive at £7.95. The tonkatsu was an enormous pork cutlet, expertly fried. They really do know how to deep fry things the Japanese. The crumb coating was grease free and crunchy, the pork within beautifully moist.

There was a little jug of sauce to go with it (I wasn't sure whether this should be poured on the pork or rice, so opted for both), which tasted like sweet, thick Henderson's relish. The internet tells me this is Tonkatsu sauce, and it is indeed a Worcestershire sauce type confection.

I did enjoy this meal, but it didn't quite give me my Japanese food breakthrough, just seeming a bit too plain for my tastes, like the meat and two veg of the Asian food world. It could just be that my palate has been beaten into submission by aggressive spicing over the years though.

The restaurant itself is plain but rather nice, with wooden tables for four and a long sort of bar with stools making it a comfortable place to dine alone. Service was efficient and prices look to be very reasonable at dinner as well as lunch. I'd like to return in the evening, this might just be the place where I learn to love Japanese food.

7/10

39 Faulkner Street
Manchester
M1 4EE

http://www.yuzumanchester.co.uk

Wasabi Sushi & Noodle Bar, Manchester

Another flying visit to Manchester last week,  I was in the mood for noodles so headed to Chinatown. I was on the hunt for a hidden gem, I'm sure there must be more of them like this place, but it's tricky spotting them without prior knowledge. A lot of the restaurants are either above or below ground level, or don't have full menus on display, or have interesting things listed only in Chinese characters.

I ended up in Wasabi by default really. Menu on display in English - check. Something I want to eat listed - check. I can see inside and it looks ok for a quick solo meal - check. My expectations weren't particularly high so I was pleasantly surprised.

Seating downstairs is at the revolving sushi bar where just £8.50 will get you a bowl of rice or noodles and any three plates from the belt. I chose plates of salmon and mackerel nigiri, and a plate of edamame beans. I'm no sushi expert, I've never eaten really top notch sashimi, but both the salmon and mackerel seemed pretty good to me. Fresh and clean tasting, really good with generous quantities of pickled ginger. Certainly a cut above the high street sushi packs and cheaper too.

Roast pork ramen also hit the spot flavour-wise but was let down a little by the noodles. The broth was light but packed an intense umami punch. Really savoury and more-ish. The roast pork was tender and tasty and the sliced egg and wobbly tofu were welcome additions. Just the noodles weren't quite up to the job, being either overcooked or poor quality, they lacked bite and disintegrated all too readily.

A good find, I'd definitely eat at Wasabi again. The set meals are fantastic value, you could dine very well for less than a tenner if you drink water. I didn't, having a beer and tea, but still paid a more than reasonable £14 including a tip for the very friendly service.

7/10

63 Faulkner Street
Manchester
M1 4FF

www.wasabisushi.co.uk

Sesame, Leeds

I was confident there’d be somewhere good to grab lunch up at the financial/legal/office end of town. Surely those hungry workers couldn’t all be satisfied with Tesco Express or Starbucks. It was starting to look that way until I chanced upon Sesame.

It's a little corner café and takeaway just off Park Square, the focus is on sushi, salads and noodle soups but I spotted there was a Friday special - a fishfinger sandwich for £3.

It was £3 well spent, a very good sandwich. I don’t think the fishfingers were home-made, but they were a cut above the average frozen effort, the crumb crispier, the fillet chunkier. There were also a generous three of them in there.

Combined with decent tartare sauce, salad and very good bread and you’ve got an excellent sarnie. It’s funny how you often don’t much notice the bread when eating sandwiches. Bad bread, cheap and nasty or stale stands out a mile, but average bread just passes me by as I home in on the fillings. It’s that average bread that tends to be the norm, so when you eat a sandwich made with genuinely good, well-made bread you suddenly realise what you’ve been missing. I do anyway.

I chose granary but rather than the open textured slightly dry stuff you might expect this was closer textured, slightly chewy and with a lightly glazed crust and a delicious mild, yeasty flavour. A proper sub roll I guess you’d call it, reminiscent of the rolls used for the sausage butties at the excellent Barbakan Deli over the hills in Chorlton.

The bread at Sesame was advertised as being from Thierry Dumouchel, a French baker and patissier based in Garforth. I’ve heard of him before but this was the first time I’ve sampled his bread. A trip to Garforth beckons.

Service was quick and friendly, even though they were very busy. Great stuff. I'll be back to give the noodle soups and sushi a try.

8/10

18 St Paul’s Street
Leeds
LS1 2LE

http://www.ilovesesame.co.uk/

London and South-East round-up: the not so good, the bad and the ugly

I thought I might as well balance things out with a report on the less than inspiring things I ate down South last weekend. It's not all amazing street food and wonderful sourdough pizzas down there you know.

The George, Gravesend

This was actually better than expected. It's a pub attached to a Premier Inn which usually means crap food. The George seems to have retained some semblance of independence though, offering a Sunday carvery which isn't the norm for Whitbread establishments. Carvery is usually a byword crap food as well though, so it was almost a pleasant surprise.

The beef was dessicated and flavourless, but the turkey, hidden beneath its leathery cloak of cow, was much better, moist and tasty. None of the vegetables were overdone, a welcome change to the regular carvery mush. Good gravy and a passable Yorkshire too.

Sponge pudding and custard for afters wasn't bad either. Overlook the beef and all in all a satisfying enough meal.

6/10

Hever Court Road
Singlewell
Gravesend
DA12 5UQ


Wagamama, Windsor

Sometimes I hate Wagamama, but after a visit to the Windsor branch I left feeling generally positive about the place.

When I'm in hating Wagamama mode I tend to dwell on how average much of the food is, and how if you're in most UK cities the same dishes can be had elsewhere, executed better and for less money.

I was probably liking Wagamama on this occasion for two reasons, firstly I had one of the dishes they're better at, chicken chilli ramen. In my experience there's a sliding scale at Wagamama that goes something like this:

Noodle soups = not bad, can be quite satisfying
fried noodle dishes = ok
fried rice dishes = just about ok
curries etc = awful

My bowl of ramen was quite satisfying, it hit the spot on a cold day. Nice bouncy noodles too.

The second reason was the presence in our group of four young children (in the under 1 to nearly 4 range). They've really got the family angle covered in there, there were crayons and colouring pads and beginner chopsticks all over the place, which generally made for a festive and entertaining lunch.

I want some of those beginners chopsticks in adult size though please. They're like normal chopsticks but fatter and with a little hinge to join them together so they kind of form chopstick style grabbing tongs. All the better for eating more noodles at once I say.

6/10

31 High Street
Windsor
SL4 1PH


The Kingfisher, Chertsey

Things are heading downhill now. I had the burger here (£8.95) and there wasn't a huge amount right with it.

The patty itself was the high point, generously proportioned and formed from good quality beef. But it was overcooked and the cheese on top wasn't even remotely melted suggesting it had been added some time after the burger finished cooking and the bun was dry and the chips were average at best.

Other dishes of calves liver, steak and another burger were respectively overcooked, not bad at all and no idea because it never turned up after an exceedingly long wait so we got bored and cancelled it.

Not much in the way of beer choice either. A distinctly mediocre pub.

4/10

The Kingfisher
Chertsey Bridge Road
Chertsey
Surrey
KT16 8LF


Frankie and Benny's, Rochester

I can't recall ever having been to a Frankie and Benny's before so in a moment of retail park madness with a work colleague I thought we'd give it a try. Rest assured it's as crap as you might expect.

A louisiana wrap was a large flour tortilla stuffed with some low grade chicken that was more mushy, bready chicken coating than actual chicken, alongside some bits of iceberg and an awful lot of red onion, the whole lot doused in far too much of a one-note vinegary, hot sauce. A bit like Frank's hot sauce with the heat and acidity, but without the flavour.

The chips were weird and undercooked. It cost six quid. Couldn't fault the friendly chap who served us though, so he got his tip.

3/10

Medway Valley Park
Rochester
ME5 2SS


Côte, Ealing

Another chain, another disappointment. I've eaten at a Côte before and quite enjoyed it, so I did expect better. Breakfast this time. I wanted eggs but not a fry-up. The breakfast menu at Côte had just what I was after.

Sadly when it arrived it wasn't just what I was after anymore. It's not a complicated thing, Eggs Royale, but I do think it needs quality ingredients and accurate execution otherwise it will be minging. It was minging.

The salmon and bagel were inoffensive but basic, like if you bought the cheapest available version of each in the supermarket. One of the eggs was woefully underdone and leaked raw liquid white over everything as I cut into it. The hollandaise was ok but what with the greasy salmon and egg juice it was like eating a great big pile of cholesterol slop.

I didn't bother sending it back because I didn't really fancy another plateful even if the eggs were right. £8.10 for the meal but by the time a small coffee and 12.5% for the (confused) service had been added that had become £12.64. Shit.

2/10

9-10 The Green
Ealing
London
W5 5DA

Pork hock udon

I love noodle soups. I don't know why I'm writing this now because I'm craving noodle soup something rotten, but have no suitable ingredients in the house and no intention of leaving it to get some. I'm sort of torturing myself with temptation.

Anyhow I love noodle soups because they are the comfort food of the gods, because they are infinitely variable, and because they can be utterly, utterly delicious. There's rarely an occasion when a great big bowl of steaming goodness won't hit the spot. From the simple, almost ascetic pleasure of a clear broth spiked with nothing but a scattering of herbs and a few shards of ginger, to the dense, rich pungence of a good laksa.

I make noodle soups all the time, rarely bothering with a recipe and mixing and matching ingredients from across East and South-East Asia as the fancy takes me. They're always satisfying, and sometimes memorably delicious too.

This was a particularly good effort, so I thought I'd put it on the blog. The flavours are quite clear and bright, with added richness from the fatty pork and crackling. I'm sure it's not in the least bit authentic, but if it's close to the cuisine of any country I'd guess it's Japanese with a bit of Vietnam thrown in.

it's a leftovers recipe really, so you need to have the pork prepared in advance. I had it left over from a different meal. If you do it from scratch a whole hock should do about 3 people.

What you'll need per person:

handful shredded pork meat

about 1 pint pork stock

shards of crunchy crackling

fish sauce

sriracha chilli sauce

2 spring onions

1 hot chilli

1 clove garlic

small lump ginger

mint

coriander

lime/lemon

1 sheet udon noodles

some greens or other veg (I used runner beans)

To make the pork, stock and crackling

1. Simmer the hock with onion, celery and peppercorns for a couple of hours, skimming off any scum from the surface. 

2. After a couple of hours remove the pork and veg from the stock. Chuck away the veg. 

3. Pull the skin/fat off the hock, then pull off the meat and shred it. 

4. Put the remaining bones back in the stock and simmer for another hour. 

5. Dry the fat, salt it and roast in a hot oven 'til you get crackling.

To make the noodle dish

1. Finely slice the spring onions and chilli.

2. Shred or grate the ginger and garlic.

3. Chop some mint and/or coriander leaves.

4. Heat the stock in a large pan or wok.

5. Add the noodles, greens/veg and pork and heat until the noodles are just done.

6. Squirt in some fish sauce and sriracha to taste.

7. Garnish with the garlic/ginger, the spring onions/chilli, the mint/coriander, the crackling and a wedge of lemon/lime.

8. Serve immediately, stirring in all of the garnishes with your chopsticks.

For blogs providing more expert coverage of all things noodles I can wholeheartedly recommend Eat Noodles Love Noodles and Hollow Legs.

Little Tokyo, Leeds

The quest for good South-East and East Asian food in Leeds continues. So far I think there are at least two good Thai places (Saengarun, Cottage, others?), just the one Chinese that's anything to write home about (Red Chilli), no Korean, no Malaysian, no Vietnamese but at least a couple of good Japanese places. I'm including Little Tokyo alongside Fuji Hiro here, as I enjoyed some fairly good ramen there over the weekend.

Little Tokyo is a different proposition, in that it's much more aimed at the evening out at a restaurant end of the market, rather than the quick bite, functional canteen style at Fuji Hiro. The interior here comes complete with a pond full of koi carp, a mini waterfall, and tables and chairs hewn from roughly cut tree trunks, bark and all. Perhaps this is authentically Japanese? Don't ask me though I've never been. The menu is also wider ranging, covering soup noodles, stir-fries, an extensive list of bento boxes and a selection of sushi and sashimi.

As I just wanted a quick meal, and for purposes of comparison, I stuck to the noodles and a side order of dumplings. Chicken chilli ramen was pretty good, the broth having a good depth of flavour and the noodles retaining bite. There were lots of different vegetables in the mix too, adding texture and variety. The only issue was the inclusion of too much hot chilli. I like my food spicy but this contained a lot of birds eye or finger chilli with all the seeds still in. The heat level would have been fine in a more full on dish (a laksa for example, where all the other flavours are an assault on the senses), but the rest of this was quite subtle so the chilli was a bit overwhelming. Still good though, I'm being quite picky here.

Crystal prawn dumplings were also nice, but lacked a bit in the execution. The prawn filling was really sweet, juicy and gingery, but the skins were slightly overcooked and had gone a touch gluey and chewy. Not sure about the crockery by the way, I prefer it plain and simple as opposed to the made in school pottery class approach found here.

With a bottle of lager this cost just under £15, almost exactly the same as a similar order at Fuji Hiro. It was all good stuff, but could have been better. So, on the basis of my completely unscientific sample of one meal at each place, I'm awarding my 'best ramen in Leeds championship' to Fuji Hiro.


6/10

24 Central Road
Leeds
LS1 6DE

Fuji Hiro, Leeds

Normal service is resumed. After all the gadding about in Croatia, London and Kent over the last week or so I've finally made it home, and on Friday night I finally made it to Fuji Hiro. I don't know how long Fuji Hiro has been around for, but it's a long time. I must have been planning to go for at least seven years, attracted by its solid reputation for good quality, fairly priced Japanese noodle dishes. I'm pleased to report it lived up to expectations.

The menu is concise. There is a page of side dishes (mostly gyoza and yakitori in various guises), a page of ramen (soup noodle dishes), a page of stir-fried noodle dishes and a page of something and rice dishes (katsu curry and the like). There is also a meal deal available at all times, that will get you any side dish, any main dish and a bottle of beer for £15. Taking up the meal deal offer I opted for ebi gyoza (prawn dumplings) and chilli beef ramen.

The gyoza were very good if a bit greasy, they were lightly fried to give one edge a nice crust and the prawn filling was sweet and fresh.

The ramen had a deeply savoury chicken stock base, and the beef was a sliced sirloin steak just dropped into the broth to allow it to poach a little and stay rare inside. Lovely. There were also quite a few different vegetables in the mix, including leeks which added a nice touch of sweetness. The noodles themselves were fine, though I'm a novice when it comes to Japanese food so I'm not really sure what texture they should have. As ever with soup noodle dishes the serving was huge.

Overall a very good meal with friendly service. Independent places like Fuji Hiro really are an asset to Leeds, especially at a time when every new opening seems to be another chain. The food here is made with a level of care and attention that you just won't get at a chain restaurant, and is consequently miles better than what you'd get at Wagamama or Tampopo. It's better value too, exactly the same meal (even the same brand of beer) will set you back £21.20 at Wagamama. Go, and don't let the rather down at heel decor (they really should spruce the place up a bit) and out of the way location put you off.

8/10

Fuji Hiro
45 Wade Lane
Leeds
LS2 8NJ