Kerb and Caravan, King's Cross, London

I'm still here. Just. A trip to Somerset, a hell of a lot of tennis (watching not playing) and the sudden onset of a proper summer have all conspired to make my blogging even more sporadic than it was already. Lolling around in the sun and watching Murray win Wimbledon has taken precedence over waffling on about what I've been eating. With good reason I hope you'll agree.

So, now that the ghost of Fred has finally been laid to rest, back to business as usual.

A flying visit to Kent for work the week before last meant a change of trains at St Pancras. A few years ago you'd need a good couple of hours spare to make venturing from the northbound stations worthwhile, but the King's Cross area has come on in leaps and bounds in recent times, and boasts a whole host of options from sherry bars to street food, all within a few minutes walk of the station platforms.

It was the latter option that tempted, the street food collective formerly known as eat.st has expanded and relaunched as Kerb. They now have a whole host of stalls on daily rotation on the new pedestrian street round the back of King's Cross.

Kimchi Cult, purveyors of Korean style burgers, was the one I'd been looking forward to most. I bloody love Kimchi and was intrigued to see how its cabbagey funk worked outside its usual environment. I'm pleased to say it works very well. The spice and savour of the stuff works a treat with a high quality beef patty and plasticky cheese, in the same way that anything else pickled works with a burger or sausage.

It was all beautifully put together; bun the right texture, the right sort of melty cheese, very good meat in the patty, but the whole just didn't do that much for me. The presence of kimchi just made me crave a great bowlful of it in a porky noodle soup.

I can't blame Kimchi Cult for this, I think the realisation is finally dawning that I don't really care about burgers. The relentless obsession with the things in the food world in recent years has brainwashed me into seeking the burgery holy grail, but I don't think it exists. They're just not that exciting. Give me a fine steak or a Thai salad or a bowl of raspberries or a pork pie instead please.

£6 for the kimchi cheeseburger. Personal preferences aside this was a top notch burger, but six quid still seems to be pushing it a bit. I had plenty of room for lunch number two ten minutes later...

..which came courtesy of Yum Bun. I was hoping for a pork bun, but I'd left it too late so had to settle for the Japanese fried chicken bun. Garnished with iceberg lettuce, tartare sauce and chilli dressing this was a bit bloody lovely. The soft bun was a delight, just a little bit chewy but light and airy with it. The chicken: think KFC popcorn chicken with better meat, better batter and better frying skills. Very good.

£3.50 for one of these, or £6 for two. As with the burger, a bit overpriced I'd argue. I do think that the food served at all of these stalls is very good, and deserves comparison with similar restaurant offerings (I'm sure it's better in many cases) but lunch can be had at many restaurants for not much more money, and with the considerably larger overheads of a building, waiting staff and so forth. Minor gripe over, and ultimately the prices are pitched at what the London market will bear.

Between my burger and bun I grabbed a takeaway coffee from Caravan. I really want to eat at this place, the menu reads like a dream, but there wasn't time on this occasion so a coffee had to suffice. A £2.40 flat white (very fairly priced for the location) was good, but not as good as I'd been led to believe the coffee here would be. The coffee itself was excellent, the execution just slightly off though, the texture of the milk a little thin and not as smooth as it could have been.


Kimchi Cult 7/10
Yum Bun 8/10
Caravan coffee 7/10

Northern Food on tour: New Year in London part 2

Here's part two of my round-up of our trip to London over new year. In addition to the meatballs, skewers, bao, bacon, coffee, pizza, pasta, French toast and fry-ups we managed to squeeze in a couple of meals in swankier establishments.


Clos Maggiore, Covent Garden

Clos Maggiore is a rare beast, especially in this part of town. A restaurant that's obviously chasing the tourist pound, but that hasn't lost sight of what makes a good restaurant in the first place: good food.

If you're lucky enough, as we were completely by chance, to get a table in the conservatory, then it lives up to the 'most romantic restaurant in London' hype. The prettiness of the room is backed up by service that's formal without being intrusive.

The food is French, but not very French if you're ordering from the set menus which could just as well be British, in that they wouldn't look out of place in any pub with aspirations to quality food. Beef cheeks, sticky toffee pud and so on.

Which is exactly what I ate for main and dessert, after a starter of house pickled herring with potato and dill salad. The herring was a fine plump specimen, bigger than any rollmop I've ever seen, pickled very assertively, the acidity balanced by a very creamy potato salad.

Across the table Jerusalem artichoke soup with a poached egg and truffle oil didn't have quite the same balance, being rich and creamy with extra rich and creamy. I only had the one mouthful, any more would have been too much for me and A couldn't manage half of it.

The aforementioned beef cheeks followed by sticky toffee pudding were both exemplary, if unexciting. The cheeks were excellent, collapsing into gelatinous shreds of loveliness at the touch of a fork.

Ice creams, served on a slightly unnerving bright green meringue, were well made as were the petit fours served with coffee. The blueberry financier was the pick of the bunch, my least favourite the pineapple macaron. There was nothing wrong with it texture wise, it just didn't taste of pineapple or anything much.

At £23.50 for three courses with half a bottle of wine (red, French, drinkable, can't remember the details) this really was exceptional value for the standard of food and service in this location. As I mentioned earlier the food on the set menus isn't dissimilar to what you'd get in a good food pub, with one notable difference: it would cost you more in the pub.

A fifty-odd quid bill was of course ratcheted up to closer to £90 by the time we'd added a couple of glasses of fizz, sides and coffees, but what the hell we were on holiday. Worth it and recommended.

8/10

33 King Street
Covent Garden
London
WC2E 8JD

http://www.closmaggiore.com




The Delaunay, Aldwych

The Delaunay, sister restaurant to the more famous Wolseley with which it shares virtually the same menu, is a splendid place at which to take afternoon tea. I would imagine it's also a splendid place to go for a burger, or for breakfast, or for a platter of oysters, or for apple strudel and ice cream, or for any one of the myriad options available. Being such a jack of all trades can be problematic, but these places are on a scale grand enough to pull it off.

Afternoon tea for us, and it was very nearly the best I've ever had, the crucial matter of the scones letting the side down. They were fresh, and very light, but sort of disintegrated into a very claggy mush in the mouth, sticking in your teeth like Wotsits (just the texture, they weren't cheesy). The strawberry jam was also lacking in flavour.

Everything else was wonderful. The sandwiches, all five varieties, demonstrated good attention to detail, and were worth the effort in their own right rather than being pre-cake filler as is often the case. Lovely soft bread, delicate fillings and high quality butter. We had an extra round of the cucumber just because we could.

The cakes were also all spot on, with some unusual variants like a rosewater and lemon battenberg and a clementine tart. If I had to pick a favourite it would have to be the chocolate hazelnut eclair, an absolutely delightful confection of feather-light choux pastry and  creamy, nutty (like Nutella only better) goodness.

At £22.50 per person the full afternoon tea isn't cheap, but is far better value than the equivalent at any of the top hotels. The quality here is just as high and the atmosphere a lot livelier and more fun than the sometimes ossified environment of a posh hotel dining room (I think they would call it refined, at times such places feel more like 'funeral parlour' to me). Exceedingly good, except for those scones.

Oh yeah, and we drank Earl Grey, which was nice, and they had cool tea strainers with the little cup to catch the drips on a hinge. Nifty.

8/10

55 Aldwych
London
WC2B 4BB

http://www.thedelaunay.com/

Northern Food on tour: New Year in London part 1

Mega-post alert. We spent three nights in London over the new year festivities, you might not be surprised to discover that eating was a very important part of the trip. By very important I mean that's mostly what we did, alongside the drinking of course.

I'll never get round to writing up each meal individually, so here's a warts and all round-up, good and bad, in mostly chronological order, of the whole lot.

To make things a little more manageable I've split the post into two, this first one covers the casual and the unplanned, the second post will be of the two slightly more upmarket places we ate at.

Ikea, Milton Keynes

You'll probably be aware that Scandinavian food is the hot ticket right now. The Nordic dining revolution has made the short voyage across the sea to our shores, and is making waves in London and the South-east. It's an intriguing mix, connecting food to culture with an almost palpable sense of place, ground-breaking in its sourcing and preparation of foraged ingredients, terroir on the plate in the most literal way.

What better way, we thought, than to introduce ourselves to this cuisine with a trip to a restaurant run by an organisation that's done more than any other to bring Scandinavian food to the people of Britain. So we went to Ikea in Milton Keynes for lunch. As you do.

I'm not quite sure how it came about, but it was something like this: no breakfast + bored on the M1 + traffic jam + discussion about meatballs + pouring rain making original outdoor plans unlikely = sod it let's go to Ikea for lunch.

The meatballs are an experience. Nice in a rubbery, filthy sort of way, but I'm not convinced by the weird milky gravy. And the lingonberry stuff is just crap jam. Crap jam with weird milky gravy isn't a great combination I don't think. Next time I might have my meatballs unadorned.

We had apple cake with vanilla sauce for pudding. I really enjoyed the cake, it was moist with good fat chunks of tart apple in. Scan-delicious! The sauce was rubbish again though. It had the taste and texture of Bird's custard after you've mixed the powder into the milk but before you've cooked it. Weird.

Would I go again? Yes, it's inevitable. Avoid the weird sauces. Cheap.

5/10

Bletcham Way
Milton Keynes
MK1 1QB

http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/store/milton_keynes


Baozi Inn Takeaway, Chinatown

Baozi Inn is a little Sichuan cafe in Chinatown, I've eaten there a couple of times but not for a few years. The good news is they've opened a little takeaway next door that sells nothing but skewers and buns.

The skewers (£1.00-£1.20 each) are boiled to order in a dirty great vat of spicy broth laced with salt, chilli and Sichuan pepper. The result is stonkingly good: tender morsels of meat or veg intensely flavoured from the broth. There are loads of varieties, I only got as far as lamb and enoki mushroom, both of which were great.

The buns (bao) are big fat steamed dough monsters stuffed with pork and onion, sturdy and filling for the harsh winters in Northern China (or to fill a 15 Ikea meatball sized space before a trip to theatre). Two quid each.

8/10

27 Newport Court
Chinatown
London
WC2H 7JS


Princi, Soho

Princi is the sort of place I wish existed elsewhere in the UK, but just doesn't. This sort of thing only seems to work with the critical mass of London.

It's a big bustling Italian bakery-cafeteria-bar-takeaway. You shove your way to a space at the counter, shout out your order from an impressive display of baked goods, pizza, filled focaccia, salads, pasta, meat dishes and god knows what else, collect your drinks from the bar then elbow your way to any vacant space on the communal tables. Not the place for peace and quiet, but for a lively drink or two accompanied by some quality snacks (or a three course dinner if you feel like it) it's an excellent choice.

Pasta pesto and mozzarella and tomato salad were both very good. Beautiful milky cheese, tomatoes with some semblance of taste (which will do for me at the end of December) and grassy, herbal pesto. The pizza was just ok though, I'm never a fan of the thick rectangles of pizza a taglio stuff, not even in Italy.

Given the central location prices are reasonable. We paid just over a tenner for the food and a bottle of water.

7/10

135 Wardour Street
Soho
London
W1F 0UT

http://www.princi.com/




Full Stop Cafe, Brick Lane

A pleasant coffee shop with a few comfy sofas. The coffee, when it eventually arrived after nigh on twenty minutes, was satisfyingly robust. Yes I know that quality coffee isn't made in an instant, but twenty minutes is still too long in a not very busy place.

Still, at least we got to amuse ourselves eavesdropping on the conversation at the neighbouring table during the wait. This being East London hipster central it was mostly about their unbridled talent going unrecognised, this being the fault of others, his issues with anger and hers with Tatiana, ya? The joy.

£2.70 for a flat white. A bit much but probably par for the course in these parts. And still cheaper than Costa so on second thoughts that's good value.

7/10

202 Brick Lane
London
E1 6SA


The Breakfast Club, Spitalfields

We only ended up at the Breakfast Club as our original brunch choice was closed over Christmas and New Year. It was good enough to entice us back on New Year's Day for a hangover cure before the journey home.

It was an infuriating place though, with the makings of excellence being let down by shoddy execution in parts. The coffee was just ok, too milky and not very well made.

The bacon sandwich was also a misfire, but I shan't bang on about it having already done so here.

But the cinnamon French toast with roasted apples and syrup was bloody lovely, so much so that I voted it my breakfast of the year (and shared a plateful the day after, making it a contender for the 2013 award too!).

The half monty breakfast continued the trend. Beautifully poached eggs of unusually high quality (dark yellow yolks that actually tasted of something) balanced out by everything else on the plate being mediocre.

Breakfast plates are priced from around six quid up to a tenner, fair enough, but drinks are a little pricey. Service is brisk and the atmosphere verging on raucous, busy with loud music. Depending on your level of delicacy this could be a good or bad thing.

7/10

12-16 Artillery Lane
Spitalfields
London
E1 7LS

http://www.thebreakfastclubcafes.com/

Dirtyburger, Kentish Town, London

Those of you who spend rather less time than I do obsessively scouring the internet for all things food related may not have realised that, in these benighted times, the streets of London are no longer paved with gold, but with burgers.

There are a hell of a lot of burgers in the fair city of London, a hell of a lot. An entire sub-genre of food blog devoted to chronicling the burgers of London has sprung up of late, and they really do make me hungry. In the grand scheme of everything I like eating I'm not even that big a burger fan, but there's just something enticing, some basic urge that needs satisfying when I see all these photos of dirty great slabs of beef, glistening with cheese 'twixt bread. Want burger. Drool.

Want burger I certainly did on a very brief foray down South last week, and as luck would have it I wasn't too far away from Dirtyburger, which was also conveniently located down the road from Hampstead Heath, a quick yomp up Parliament Hill afterwards would count as a cursory effort at working off some of the grease.

My dirtyburger wasn't that dirty, I've undoubtedly had dirtier, half pound chilli cheeseburgers from Big Mama's of Headingley spring to mind and it's a decade and more since I've had one of those.

It was bloody delicious though, the taste of fantastic quality beef being particularly prominent despite some assertive pickles. The bun was up to the task too, holding together 'til the last even though the meat was very pink and juicy. Only the cheese seemed to have gone awol, it was definitely in there but didn't really taste of anything.

Crinkle cut fries were crunchy and moreish but I wish I tried the onion fries instead (who am I kidding, as well as). There's beer if you want it and Fentiman's pop. £5.50 for the cheeseburger, £2.50 for fries. Bring a coat in winter, it's a sort of shed out the back of Pizza East (same owners) and heating looks unlikely.

8/10

79 Highgate Road
London
NW5 1TL

http://www.eatdirtyburger.com/

The Castlebar, Ealing, London

I'm writing this for one reason, and one reason only: a damn fine burger.

The Castlebar isn't the most attractive of pubs. It was the night that Poland played Russia and the outdoor drinking area was noisy, windswept and more than a little bleak. TV commentary vied with Eastern European chanting and the Uxbridge Road traffic for aural supremacy. Loud was an understatement, conversation nigh on impossible.

Table service, friendly and efficient once someone's attention had finally been caught, was a bonus, but the beer selection was uninspired. I wasn't in the best of moods. RP persuaded me that the food was worth ordering. I remained unconvinced.

Sturdy cutlery and starched white napery arrived after we'd ordered, incongruous placed on the bench seating with the backdrop of football bedlam. A sign of the quality to come.

The burger was excellent. A thick, exceedingly juicy patty, served medium, with a defined beefy flavour. The supporting bacon, cheese, lettuce, tomato and mayo were spot on too, though I'd have ditched the few rocket leaves that had also found their way in there. The bun held up to the challenge, in spite of the succulence, and the fries were plentiful.

The burger cost around a tenner, and was well worth it. On a warm night, with a football match of interest, I'd have loved the place I'm sure.

8/10 for the burger
5/10 for the pub

The Castlebar
84 Uxbridge Road
West Ealing
London W13


http://www.facebook.com/TheCastleBarEaling

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

London and South-East round-up: the good

Home at last. I'm just back from a rather silly week long jaunt around the country for both work and play. I've stayed at a Premier Inn, a Holiday Inn, two Travelodges and one friend's house, with no more than a couple of nights in one place. I'm not half glad to be home.

It's been an interesting week food-wise though, I've experienced much of what's good about eating on the cheap in Britain; the enthusiastic adoption of foreign cuisines and the rapidly developing street food scene being the primary examples.

On the other hand I've also experienced much of what's bad; the distinctly average offering in most pubs and the proliferation of crappy chains interested only in the bottom line being cases in point.

Other than Silk Road, which got a post all to itself, here are the things that were good, and if I can be bothered I might write about those that were bad too:


Franco Manca, Westfield Stratford City

There's much to dislike about the new Westfield mega-mall adjacent to the Olympic site at Stratford, if, like me, you're really not that enthused by shopping. Or by corporate-style marketing nonsense, which seemed to be in overdrive in an area of the centre named the 'Great Eastern Market', and described as a 'modern take on a traditional market'. If that's the case then a 'modern take' on a 'traditional market' means not actually like a market at all, more like an area of a shopping centre where the units are small and everything is hideously overpriced. Great.

Now I've got that rant out of my system I'll have to give credit where it's due. There is much to like about Westfield Stratford City from an eating perspective. All of the usual suspects are there, but a significant proportion of the extensive food offer is given over to small London based businesses. Businesses like Franco Manca who have opened their third outlet here.

Franco Manca are widely acknowledged to make some of the finest pizza in London. I've eaten at both of the other branches, in Brixton and Chiswick, and agree that they're excellent, although I didn't think Chiswick was quite up to the standard of the original in Brixton market.

When I spotted them in Westfield I was worried that they might have sold out, expanding the empire at the expense of the quality. I needn't have worried, the wood burning ovens were present and correct and the prices no higher than in Brixton.

Just tomato, mozzarella and basil, simple but absolutely delicious. They use a sourdough for the base which is then blasted in those fiercely hot ovens producing a crust that's beautifully bubbled and charred on the outside but remains soft, light and slightly chewy within. Good quality cheese and tomato in just the right proportions offset the dough nicely.

The ease with which a whole one of these can be gobbled up is amazing. Just compare and contrast with the heavy going stodgefests that so many pizzas become. An absolute bargain at £5.90, especially when you consider that the vastly inferior equivalent at Pizza Express costs £7.50.

9/10

Unit 2003
The Balcony
Westfield Stratford City
London
E20 1ES

http://www.francomanca.co.uk/




Buen Provecho, eat.st at King's Cross, London

I'm all for the street food revolution. Mobile catering has been improving at festivals and the like for a good few years now, and it finally seems that bringing the same idea (that you can serve good food from a van) to the city streets has caught on in a big way. London's new eat.st is at the forefront, with a rotating list of traders pitched up along a new pedestrian precinct round the back of King's Cross station.

Mexican stall Buen Provecho tickled my fancy last Friday, mainly because I'd heard great things about their tacos. Which as luck would have it were unavailable because the tortillas were late arriving. No matter as the lunch box meal is any two of the same taco fillings served on rice, with salsa, guacamole and tortilla chips.

A point of note to virtually every one of those burrito places that have popped up in recent years. It wouldn't kill you to include guacamole in the price. 50p extra or more for a smear of mashed avocado is a rip-off. Buen Provecho showed how it should be done by making good guacamole and including it in the price. Self service salsas and tortilla chips, and the fact the guy serving was friendly and looked like a pirate also made me smile.

Star of the show was Cochinita pibil, slow roasted pork marinated in orange juice and spices (I'm not quite sure what). The meat was reduced to lovely moist shreds that oozed juices with an intense tangy flavour. If I ever get round to going here again I'll just have this stuff. The salsas were also pretty good, one of raw finely diced veg and coriander, the other a hotter, smokier affair probably involving some sort of roasted chillies. A dollop of refried beans were also successful, lending creaminess to the rice.

The only duff note was the other meat dish, chicken and chorizo in a sauce that was a bit nondescript. It tasted ok but was dull in comparison with the outstanding pork.

A substantial meal box costs £6, service is friendly, you can help yourself to salsa and there's plenty of kerb to sit on.

8/10

King's Boulevard
London
N1C

http://eat.st/kings-cross/




Banh Mi Bay, Holborn, London

Imagine a sandwich that's rich and meaty but fresh and tangy. A sandwich that marries three types of pork with mayo and pickles. A sandwich that's spicy and fragrant. A sandwich that's crusty and crunchy but smooth and moist. This is the Banh Mi, Vietnam's notable contribution to the pantheon of great sandwiches.

I fell in love with the Banh Mi when I lived in Woolwich. Someone opened up a Vietnamese coffee shop just off the high street, so they were pretty much the only exciting foodstuff I could eat without hopping on a train (Woolwich is not London's finest foodie suburb, there are some potentially good Ghanaian places, but they always had strange blacked out windows and I never plucked up the courage to venture inside). I would muck around in the gym for half an hour or so, then reward myself with bread, and chilli, and three types of pork.

I digress, the special Banh Mi at Banh Mi Bay was pretty damn good. All the key elements were there: a light rice flour baguette, roast pork, pork roll, pork liver paté, slightly pickled carrot and mooli, mayo, cucumber, coriander, chilli. I'd have liked the paté to have been more liver-y, there are plenty of other strong flavours present to stand up to it, but apart from that I couldn't fault it.

£3.85 for the special Banh Mi, perfectly reasonable as it's an impressively proportioned sandwich. It contains three varieties of pork too, did I mention that already?

8/10

4-6 Theobalds Road
Holborn
WC1X 8PN

http://www.banhmibay.co.uk/

Silk Road, Camberwell, London

Silk Road is one of my favourite restaurants anywhere, ever. I first ate there around three years ago after a whole host of recommendations on the Chowhound boards.

At that time I'd barely scratched the surface of the myriad wonders of Chinese food, my only experience being takeaway standard Cantonese and a couple of tentative forays into Sichuan.

Silk Road pretty much blew my mind. It's one of the only (if not the only) restaurant in the UK specialising in food from Xinjiang province, the vast territory in the far west of China. The geography and many of the people here are more central Asian than Chinese. The native Uighurs are predominantly Muslim and their cuisine is influenced by the nations to the West -Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan to name the largest.

That means plenty of lamb and mutton, a diet based on wheat and potatoes rather than rice, and use of spices not always associated with Chinese food, cumin being the most obvious example. Mix that all up with the majority Han Chinese influence from the East - loads of chillies and peppercorns, rice, soy sauce, stir-frying, and you've got some fantastic food.

Anyway, lesson over. Camberwell isn't that handy for someone who now lives in Wakefield, so I hadn't been to Silk Road for well over a year. That was rectified last night as four of us headed South to fill our boots.

It's not a posh restaurant this. Expect bench style seating and sometimes rather erratic service but it's more than worth it for the food. Order a round of Tsingtao beers and as much of the menu as you can manage, then just wait to see what arrives first.

In our case, the lamb skewers (£1 per skewer). Don't wait around, eat these quickly while they're fresh off the grill. The juicy pieces of meat and fat come liberally doused in a cumin/salt/chilli rub and are delicious when hot. After they've cooled down they lose succulence and the fat goes a bit wobbly and unpleasant. When they're fresh I can't think of a better way to eat sheep fat.

Next all three vegetable plates arrived in quick succession. Home style cabbage, home style aubergine (about £6 each) and cucumber with garlic sauce (£3).

The home style dishes are similar in execution, but taste quite different. Both have the main ingredient stir-fried in a garlicky sauce with plenty of chilli heat, fresh green peppers and a little soy, but the aubergine is silken and comforting whereas the cabbage is more assertive, crunchy with dried chillies and a lovely smokey back note from the wok. I love both dishes but the cabbage is my favourite. To make something so delicious from a humble cabbage really takes some skill.

The cucumber dish, served cold, brought large chunks of the veg, bashed around a bit to absorb the flavour of a very garlicky marinade. Strangely refreshing and really enjoyable.

On to the dumplings, there are several different varieties, we just had one plate of the pork and celery. They're small with satisfyingly chewy skins and a meaty filling, and are also a steal at £2.50 for ten.

Then the beast arrived. The photo really doesn't do this dish justice, and nor does the name for that matter. It's medium plate chicken (£9, small and big plate are also available), a huge vat of beautiful, deeply savoury broth, spiked with star anise and Sichuan pepper, in which are hidden bone-in chicken pieces, potatoes and sliced mild green peppers.

Included in the price is a serving of belt noodles; thick, chewy, wheat noodles that are a carb-lovers dream. The dish doesn't arrive with them in, one of the waiting staff will come over whenever a fresh batch are ready and chuck them in the bowl. Much mess-making then ensues as everyone at the table dives in at once, attempting to fish the two foot long monsters out with chopsticks.

The final dish of the night was pork with black fungus (about £6), another dish of interesting textural combinations. Soft pork, a few crisp greens and slightly rubbery fungus, all held together in another knock-out flavour packed, umami rich sauce.

We ate everything with a few extra bowls of steamed rice and washed it all down with Chinese tea and beer. The total bill came to just £56.30 between four of us before a tip was added. As ever the service was a little random, one happy guy, one miserable and the rice didn't turn up until after most of the other food.

But what food, and what fantastic value. It's all so deceptively simple. Hearty food with theoretically straightforward seasoning, but all imbued with such utter deliciousness I'm not quite sure how they do it. The prices also haven't risen in three years despite the place attracting the attention of the critics and being constantly busy

I don't know when but I know I'll be back. I love Silk Road.

9/10

49 Camberwell Church Street
Camberwell
London
SE5 8TR

Review of the year

I love lists. Give me a Top Ten of Everything book and I'll be happily occupied for hours, or possibly even days. As I've reached the end of almost a full year's blogging I'm going to indulge myself with a review of the year starting off with a list of the best and worst meals I've eaten out, the best thing I've cooked and whatever other miscellaneous categories I happen to think of.

Firstly and in no particular order here's the list. What follows is a rambling and unwieldy commentary on the winners, those who came close and anything else I may choose to waffle on about. You may or more likely may not wish to read it.

Leaving aside the merits of my prose please do support the restaurants, cafés and pubs listed. They are all independents or part of very small chains, all of them are very good at what they do, and all of them deserve continued success in 2012.

The winners (and loser)

• Best meal of the year: Hawksmoor, London

• Coffee shop of the year: Laynes Espresso, Leeds

• Lunch spot of the year: Sunshine Bakery, Leeds

• Best Fish and chips eaten in 2011: The Chippie, Hawes

• Indian meal of the year: The Wee Curry Shop, Glasgow

• Chinese meal of the year: Red Chilli, Leeds and Hunan, Manchester

• Other Asian meal of the year: Thai Aroy Dee, Leeds

• Breakfast of the year: Hawksmoor, London

• Pub meal of the year: The Mark Addy, Salford

• Spanish meal of the year: José, London

• Pub of the year: The Marble Arch, Manchester 

• Holiday meal of the year: Fortuna, Jerusalem, Israel

• Worst meal of the year: The Crown, Rochester

• Best thing I've cooked this year: Damson crumble 

Meal of the year

Nothing else quite came close to the decadence and deliciousness of the breakfast at Hawksmoor. I'd never have guessed the best meal I'd eat all year would be breakfast, but what a breakfast. All the classic components were there, quality ingredients perfectly cooked. Add to that an introduction to the joys of bone marrow, plus two dishes illustrating how anything can be improved with the addition of meat, in the guise of short-rib bubble and squeak and trotter baked beans. I was worried the whole would overwhelm, but it didn't. It was amazing.

Add to that excellent service and a complimentary doughnut that was the best I've ever eaten and I think we have a worthy champion.

Coffee Shop of the year

I only started drinking coffee again in 2011 after a gap of five years or so, so I'm not an aficionado by any stretch of the imagination. I'm hardly a lone voice shouting about Laynes Espresso though, plenty of others who probably know a lot more than me about coffee think it's great. The coffee is fantastic, the baked goods are excellent, service is always efficient and friendly, and apparently the tea is wonderful too though I've yet to try it.

Lunch spot of the year

I've never even been to the Sunshine Bakery. It's in Chapel Allerton and I rarely go there. Just about everything I've bought from them has been at The Source in Leeds market. For a few months earlier in the year they were regular fixtures in the market on a Thursday or Friday. Alas, this is no longer the case. Please come back. Pretty please.

Their sausage rolls and sandwiches and massive buns (read cupcakes) are all lovely. I've not had better in Leeds. They also run a supper club at the Chapel Allerton base, which I'd love to go to in 2012. I just need a date. Form a queue ladies, you might get to see me spill gravy down my front.

Fish and Chips of the year

I'm not sure whether I've eaten more fish and chips in 2011 than usual, or whether writing it down has just made me realise how often I crave the classics. Whichever it is, I've eaten a lot of fish and chips.

What I've also realised is that enjoying fish and chips is, perhaps more than any other food, about the time and the place as much as what you're actually eating. The food quality has to be there for starters, but the location, company, weather and time of year can all conspire to elevate it to the sublime.

It is for these reasons that I enjoyed the best portion of fish and chips all year back in February, at the Chippie in Hawes. Every component of the food was great, a huge fillet of fish in crisp, dry batter, fried to order in beef dripping. Lovely chips and peas. Strong tea. And the occasion. An icy cold lunchtime, well below freezing, the stark beauty of the Dales in winter, a moderate hangover, a group of mates entering the warm fug of the café, taking a seat with a scalding brew and talking nonsense as we waited in anticipation of being fed. As I said, sublime.

Second most memorable of the year, for completely different reasons, was my visit to Stein's in Padstow. I was very happy that the food didn't disappoint and I ate it in a classic fish and chip environment. A lovely summer evening, warm but not hot, sat alone leaning against a bollard aside the working harbour, gazing out across the estuary. A can of fizzy pop to accompany. Splendid.

Honourable mentions also go to Fish& in Leeds and Frankie's Fish Bar in Manchester for serving very good fish and chips if not on such memorable occasions.

Indian meal of the year

As is usual I ate a lot of Indian food over the course of the year, but very little of it was particularly impressive. Strangely I haven't been to most of my stock 'good' curry houses this year, with no visits to either Akbar's or Mumtaz, and visits to Yorkshire's two highly regarded vegetarian Indian restaurants, Prashad and Hansa's will have to wait for another year.

As a consequence neither of 2011's best Indian meals were eaten in Northern England. Best of the lot was this visit to the Wee Curry Shop in Glasgow which served to remind me that Indian vegetarian food is the best vegetarian food in the world. I really want to go to Prashad and Hansa's.

Also very good was a trip to Delhi Grill in London, with their goat handi being the best meat curry I ate all year.

And finally an honourable mention for Azram's Sheesh Mahal, the other of my stock 'good' curry houses that I did visit a couple of times. I didn't blog the second trip but we ordered some of the more unusual menu items and were pleasantly surprised. Consistently worth a visit, I've been going there for over thirteen years now.

Chinese meal of the year

I was going to give this to my most recent meal at Red Chilli, but that seemed a little unfair on Hunan. I didn't take any photos of that meal and it was the second ever post on the blog, so all I can remember is what I actually wrote about it at the time. Lamb hotpot and green chilli stir-fried pork sound like wonderful dishes though, so let's assume the rating of nine was fair and they were.

As for Red Chilli, it can be a little inconsistent particularly at the Leeds branch, but when it's on form as it was on this visit in October it rocks. Sichuan spicy salty numbing deliciousness.

Middle Kingdom, BBQ Handmade Noodles King and Zen Delight were also all very good.

Other Asian meal of the year

Thai Aroy Dee has been a revelation. I've been there three times now, and I've been increasingly impressed with each visit. I wrote up the first two visits here and here, but went again the other day and had the best meal yet. To hammer home the point that it's really, really good here's a quick review of my third meal there.

The first thing to note is that they've translated the Thai menu into English. It's still separate from the regular menu but is now bilingual and titled 'Thai Street Food menu'. We shared four dishes between two of us. Shrimp paste fried rice with all the trimmings was like the fried rice of my dreams. The trimmings comprised cashew nuts, sliced omelette, little chewy bits of what I think were pork and pork fat in a sweet soy sauce, dried shrimp, savagely hot birds-eye chillies and some other stuff I can't remember. All mixed up together it was a deeply savoury, fiercely hot, intensely satisfying melange of textures and tastes. Brilliant.

Northeastern spicy beef salad was actually the least spicy dish of the meal, but beautifully seasoned. Mint, lime and shallots were to the fore, and the beef was full of flavour and very tender.

Rice topped with spicy basil and pork stir-fry brought sweet anise notes of basil with lovely savoury little nuggets of meat.

The final dish was the most adventurous of the lot. Raw prawns dressed in lime, fish sauce, chilli and garlic dressing. I'll admit to being slightly apprehensive about this one, having never eaten prawns completely raw before. It was simple but delicious, being little more than prawns doused in industrial quantities of the advertised ingredients, particularly garlic which was present in half-clove sized chunks. Sounds strange but it worked.

Go to Thai Aroy Dee. Please. If this isn't the best Thai food in Leeds by a country mile I'll eat my hat. With a side order of raw prawns in fish sauce-lime-chilli-garlic dressing.

Other standouts were Korean at Seoul Kimchi and Japanese at Fuji Hiro.

Breakfast of the year

See meal of the year.

Given the overall winner is a special occasion breakfast, designed to impress and not to be eaten every day it seems a little unfair to compare it with the other contenders. Those that serve breakfasts that are cheap and filling, but that still do so in some style. Honourable mentions therefore go to the Koffee Pot in Manchester and to the Greedy Pig in Leeds. Excellent work people, you'd have both been victorious had I not visited Hawksmoor.

Pub meal of the year

I didn't think I'd eaten in many pubs this year until I started checking back through the blog to write this. As it turns out I've eaten in sixteen of them, and most were average at best. Where my pub meals differed from a lot of my dining out is that they were usually unplanned. If you're having a couple of beers with friends, if you're exploring a strange town or for a whole host of other reasons a pub remains the easiest and most obvious choice for a quick meal in this country.

The trouble is unless you've planned ahead and sought out a good one, the majority are mediocre or worse. Standards have certainly improved in the UK, but we're still a long way from the day when you can walk into any old pub and expect a good meal.

The Mark Addy was an exception to the general dross, it was a planned visit but everything we ate there lived up to expectations. The scallops and black pudding were particularly well rendered. They do get a black mark though for serving spam fritters that were made with something other than spam. Spam does NOT come in semi-circles, only in rectangles. We are not that easily fooled.

Spanish meal of the year

Did I mention that I like Spanish ham? The amazing stuff made from black leg pigs that spent their lives feasting on acorns which is possibly the best foodstuff on the planet. Oh yeah, sorry. I think I did.

I've fallen in love with Spanish food. No other European cuisine has gripped me in this way, not Italian, not French. Unlike in 2010 I didn't visit Spain in 2011, but I did get the chance to eat in a few of the best tapas bars in this country.

The Spanish food craze that's hit London in recent years doesn't really seem to have spread up North yet, with the notable exception of Liverpool. Go Liverpool. There are of course Tapas bars in Leeds and Manchester, but none has a menu that reads so well as the London and Liverpool places.

José was the best of the bunch by virtue of its ham and a very fine black pudding dish, but only by a small margin from Barrica and Salt House Tapas.

Pub of the year

This is the prize for the best pub to drink in, rather than eat in. It's about the whole package bar the food. The drinks, the ambience, the location, the crisps.

Photo credit: Bregante

The Marble Arch is just fantastic. The excellent Marble Brewery beers are always well kept and the pub itself is a work of art. The lofty tiled ceiling and walls with their blandishments to drink. Ale! Porter! Gin! The way the floor slopes down toward the solid, crafted bar.

Photo credit: Good Pub Guide

The aspect, alone on its corner plot in a post-industrial proto-regenerated wasteland. The location, perfect for commencement of a crawl back into town. In every way a very worthy winner.

Over in Leeds my favourites are Mr Foley's and the Adelphi. Mr Foley's has the finest selection and most reasonably priced beer in town, excellent chips and football on the telly. The Adelphi is not quite so hot on drinks but has a wonderful historic multi-roomed interior and a great atmosphere.

Holiday meal of the year

2011 brought trips to Croatia, Cornwall, and Jordan and Israel. It was my first time visiting all of these, and I really enjoyed all of them. If I'm honest Cornwall was probably the highlight in terms of the actual places. Looking purely at the food it has to be Israel though.

On the evidence of one week Israel is one of those countries where dining out well is the norm. Planning ahead isn't necessary as chances are wherever you go will be good.

Best of the lot was a meal of a multitude of excellent salads, grilled hanger steak and perfect chips at Fortuna in Jerusalem. The cheeseburger at Kanibar in Haifa was also a highlight.

Worst meal of the year

Nothing has come close to the Crown in Rochester. The best meal of the year may have been eaten down South, but so was the worst.

Managing to combine serving a badly made version of a foodstuff that shouldn't be served in a pub or restaurant in any circumstances, even if made properly (instant mash), with completely offhand and indifferent service, and relatively high prices to boot, The Crown was truly atrocious.

I gave the same rating, in slightly tongue in cheek fashion, to the Sainsbury's Café in Sale, but for a better comparison of complete rubbishness look no further than the restaurant at the Westerwood Hotel in Scotland. An absolute rotter of a steak, small, wan and gristly served with barely edible chips for twenty quid.

Best thing I've cooked this year

Let's not end on the worst meal of the year, so what about the best of my home cooking?

The best thing I cooked in 2011 was a humble damson crumble. It was a thrown together affair, nothing more than fruit, sugar, flour and butter. Sometimes that's all you need. The star of the show was those wonderful damsons. They were divine. Intensely fruity, but also dark and tannin rich. Almost chocolatey. Complimented by a rich, buttery crumble and served piping hot with a dollop of cold, thick cream. Utterly delicious.

I didn't post the recipe because I haven't a clue on the quantities involved. It was guesswork that got lucky. It was along the lines of throw damsons in pan with a load of sugar, then heat up until the juice starts to run. Transfer into a baking dish then top with a crumble made from butter rubbed into sugar and flour. Bake in a medium oven for about half an hour.


That's all folks! See you in 2012.