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/

Caribbean Food Stall, Kirkgate Market, Leeds

I'm not sure what the name of this place is, or whether it even has a name, but it's a relative newcomer on Butchers Row selling hot Caribbean food. I think they might have started out with a weekly slot at the Source, so it's good to see them progress to being a fully fledged business trading on the market.

You can takeaway or eat in at the handful of tables they have inside and out on the row. Chicken meals are all four quid and curry goat is a fiver. The goat was good stuff, stewed slowly on the bone to melting tenderness. The sauce holding it was deceptive, seeming a bit boring at first but building with fruity scotch bonnet heat.

Rice and peas were the coconutty real deal and soaked things up nicely. Side salad was limp and undressed, but salad isn't really the point of this meal.

A wider range of cooked and ready to eat food stalls is one of the things I think the market really needs, so I hope they manage to make a success of this. Sadly if it didn't last I'd hardly be surprised. For the moment, along with Maxi's Rotisserie there are two good places for lunch filling the gaps on Butchers Row. Use them or lose them.


7/10

Butchers Row
Leeds Kirkgate Market
Leeds
LS2 7HY

Rowsha, Walkley, Sheffield

I haven't eaten out much over the last few weeks, at least not in the evenings in a restaurant with a bottle of wine sense. A few takeaways and a few quick lunches has been about it, but that's not to say I haven't eaten any good food.

A randomly chosen takeaway last weekend was a really pleasant surprise. Rowsha is a little Lebanese restaurant in Walkley with a very reasonably priced takeaway menu. All sorts of mezzes, hot and cold, can be had for less than four quid and kebab wraps are just three pounds each.

The fattoush was a match for those I ate in the Middle East last year, bright and fresh, the veggies tart with sumac and the bread properly crisped. An absolute bargain at three quid for a large container full.

Falafel and shish taouk (grilled chicken) wraps were both well-made, with more fresh salad and thin, lemony hummous. The chicken was particularly good, beautifully moist with lovely smokey barbecued edges. The only down-side was slightly thick, dry bread.

An unexpected delight, simple food cooked really well. I'd love to return to dine in the restaurant at some point.


8/10

288 South Road
Walkley
Sheffield
S6 3TE

Northern Food on tour: Festival food at Latitude

Last year I talked about how much festival food has improved since the dark days of the tinned burger. You'd think with the ongoing obsession with street food that this steady improvement would continue, what with all the dedicated folk selling interesting food from vans and stalls around the country. So how did I get on at Latitude?

Not bad, but could do better I reckon. Maybe I chose unwisely but I think (the much smaller) Standon Calling just edged it. From best to worst, here's what to look out for and what to avoid should you be braving the mud before the summer is out.

Disclaimer: significant consumption of alcohol may have rendered everything in this post misguided, incorrect or at least completely meaningless.

Lamb Kofta, from Kebabylon (£6.50-ish)

I know it doesn't look great, but when did a badly packed kebab ever look great? The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and this passed the test. A generously proportioned succulent kofta, interesting salad, bread that wasn't stale and a generous splodge of hummous. Which wasn't really hummous at all, more mashed up chickpeas. No matter, yoghurt sauce, hot sauce, job done.

Malay style lamb and potato curry on noodles, generic Thai and Chinese food stall (£7)

I doubt this was the best quality food I ate all weekend, but it bloody well hit the spot. Probably because there was about 2000 calories in it. A massive meaty carb load backed up with considerable hits of sugar, salt, spice and grease. All things nice effectively.

The lamb was genuinely very tender and quite delicious though, I'm sure of that. A little bit rendang-esque.

Large chilli beef burrito, Flaming Cactus (£7.50)

All aboard the burrito bus. You can't miss it, it's big and silver. I'm thinking a surfeit of carbohydrate may have had something to do with my fondness for this one too. Having said that it wasn't a tedious chore like eating these things often is, the salsa had a zip to it and it wasn't overloaded with rice at the expense of more interesting fillings. Rightly so too at £7.50 a pop.

Margherita pizza, wood-fired pizza place (£6)

This was just a bit too boring. Good texture and nice char to the crust but little flavour in either the mozzarella or the tomato sauce. Little flavour in the chilli oil I administered liberally to liven it up either. Or the basil leaves for that matter.

Footlong dog, Footlong Hot Dog stall (£4)

A bouncy, dense meaty sausage that didn't taste cheap was let down by very stale bread. Shame. Why the hell I put mayo on it I'm not really sure. Most likely a case of 'sauce is free therefore make the best use of it possible'.

Chicken and seafood paella, a Spanish place (£6.50)

The paella of shame. Actually don't call it a paella, it doesn't deserve it. At last year's festival I got real paella, made with meat on the bone and paella rice. This one didn't involve either of those things. Think overcooked savoury rice with dried up bits of chicken breast and added frozen mixed seafood bits. Crap. Sadly I can't remember the name of the stall selling it.

Bangkok Café, Hyde Park, Leeds (takeaway review)

We're doing rather well for Thai food in Leeds right now. There's Thai Aroy Dee, Saengarun Thai and now Bangkok Café.

Located on the main drag at Hyde Park Corner, Bangkok Café is by far the smallest of these three, a takeaway really with just three little tables in the front for dining in. I picked up some food from there there the other night and was pretty impressed.

The menu covers all the usual curries and stir-fries, with some interesting and less common variants particular on the curry front, but I was drawn to the section headed 'Bangkok popular dishes' which is where you'll find the salads and a range of one bowl rice and noodle meals.

To see how they measured up (and because I bloody love them) against the competition I chose two of my favourites from Thai Aroy Dee, som tam with grilled chicken (B11 - Som Tum Gai Yang on the menu here) and the shrimp paste fried rice (B8 - Kao Pad Num Prim Kapi).

Expectations were high as I watched the staff prepare the meal, it's a one room operation so everything is made in front of you. The wok burner was properly cranked up for the fried rice, there's a flame grill for charring the chicken and a gigantic pestle and mortar appeared and the salad was pounded from scratch.

The tasting lived up to it. The grilled chicken was faultless. Two fat wings, succulent flesh, crisp salty sweet skin. The som tam started off gently but soon revealed a fierce building heat. Fiery and crunchy and delicious. If I had a criticism it seemed a little bit underpounded (not sure that's a word but it describes exactly what I mean so I'm sticking with it), the dressing not quite melded properly with the papaya and other bits and bobs.

The fried rice tasted a whole lot better than it looks. Takeaway never looks pretty when you get it home, and a dish of several components all squashed in together isn't going to win any prizes for presentation. Ignore that and focus on the flavour and textures. Chewy (a bit too chewy, but that's a minor gripe) sweet pork, soft omelette and perfectly fried rice shot through with shallots, chillies and pungent fishiness from the prawn paste.

These two dishes cost £5.95 each, good value, and presumably eating in would cost the same. The staff were friendly and service efficient. I'll be back. Recommended.

8/10

12 Hyde Park Corner
Leeds
LS6 1AF


http://www.bangkokcafeleeds.co.uk/

Italian Express, Walkley, Sheffield

Walkley is lucky to have that rarest of things, a genuinely good pizza takeaway. Thanks to a recommendation from Clare I found out about Italian Express, handily situated just up the hill from my girlfriend's house.

Describing the place as a pizza takeaway is probably doing it a disservice really, as there's a full restaurant style menu; - pasta, risotto, steaks, fish, the lot, all available to takeaway.

I thought I'd put them to the test by ordering the frittura mista, and having it delivered. An assortment of deep fried seafood delivered to your door from most British takeaways doesn't bear thinking about. Imagine what kind of rank, greasy filth you'd get from your average high street pizza/doner/fried chicken merchant. Uurgghh.

Fortunately the Italian Express frittura mista was anything but greasy filth. First impressions were good, I'd been wondering what the method of packaging would be. How to keep the batter crisp and fresh whilst keeping it hot? The answer, apparently, is to put it in a plastic container but cut a little hole in the corner, large enough to let out the excess steam to prevent sogginess but small enough to not let all of the heat out.

It worked, the batter was very thin, very light and very crisp. There were loads of bouncy prawns, mussels large and small, squid rings that weren't chewy, a few octopus tentacles, and something smaller and unidentifiable (cockles maybe?). Everything tasted fresh, not the very finest quality but it was a generous portion for £5.50.

A Bollente pizza (pepperoni, chilli, peppers, oregano, olive oil) had high quality toppings and a very thin, digestible crust with a good char. It was a little too thin in parts, cracking and slightly biscuity in texture rather than crisp then chewy within, but still went down a treat. The toppings were all present in just the right quantities, and the individual flavours of the cheese, pepperoni and olive oil were all discernable.

The pizza was £7.95 so the total bill came to £15.45 with the £2 delivery charge. You can get far cheaper I'm sure, but it will almost certainly be crap. On balance, this meal ought to serve two people, and under eight quid each for food better than many Italian restaurants serve is good value in my book. Recommended.

8/10

391 South Road
Walkley
Sheffield
S6 3TD

http://www.italian-express.net/

Kev's of Eastmoor, Wakefield

My constant moaning about the poor standard of takeaway food in these parts doesn't extend to fish and chips. Credit where it's due we know what we're doing in West Yorkshire when it comes to chip shops.

They're not all excellent by any stretch of the imagination, but I can confidently predict that I'm more likely to walk out of any old Wakefield chippy with a satisfying meal than from the curry house or Chinese takeaway next door.

I'm not really sure why Yorkshire excels at fish and chips above all other regions, it just does. The best chip shops are here, and even some of the mediocre ones put the best efforts of certain other areas to shame.

Kev's is an archetypal example. Basic but effective. Unshowy and friendly. Smells delicious.

Fish and chips were good, though not great. A long, chunky haddock fillet (very long. Look at it! It doesn't even fit in the picture) was fresh, moist and flakey. Crunchy batter, maybe a smidgen too thick but still a pleasure to eat.

Fluffy-centred chips with crispy edges here and there. Great tasting but an extra minute or so in the fat would have given them a more generous loading of crispy bits.

I didn't have peas, being in the mood for curry sauce, which was a little gloopy though fine flavour-wise.

Service was with a smile. Fish, chips, curry sauce and a can of Ben Shaw's pop was £4.70. I was a happy man.

7/10

120 Stanley Road
Wakefield
WF1 4LR

Rahman's Balti House, Stanley, Wakefield (takeaway review)

It's time to delve once more into the underwhelming world of takeaway curry. Would tonight be the night I finally came up trumps? Would Rahman's Balti House turn out to be the elusive hidden gem? Would the 35 of 36 people who reviewed it enthusiastically on Just Eat be proven correct?

No, no and no. I didn't really come up trumps, it wasn't a hidden gem, and sorry to sound like a snob and a know-it-all but all 35 of you are wrong. It was ok, but I could have guessed everything that would be wrong with it before I started.

A mixed starter of seekh kebab, chicken tikka and onion bhaji. The fault list:

Greasy bhaji - check
Red food colouring on the chicken - check (although not an obscene quantity of it to be fair)
Plastic bag containing sweaty iceberg lettuce and a mealy wedge of tomato - check
overcooked lamb - check
watery mint yoghurt sauce - check

On the plus side every component did actually taste ok, it was all quite nicely spiced and the chicken was moist and not at all overcooked.

A fish masala, a tandoori roti and a chapatti. Again, the predictable faults:

Far too much ghee in the curry - check
doughy bread, either not rolled thin enough or not cooked at a high enough temperature - check

It wasn't all bad, the sauce did have a pleasing warmth and a good garlicky tang. The flavour of the fish wasn't overwhelmed but it wasn't particularly good quality, soft and a bit mushy rather than firm and flakey. The roti was pretty crap, the chapatti better.

Just short of £12 all in. Delivered quickly. Ho hum.

5/10

Rahman's Balti House
213 Canal Lane
Stanley
Wakefield

http://www.just-eat.co.uk/restaurants-rahmansbaltihouse

Zen Delight, Leeds

I chanced upon an interesting new Chinese place the other night. It's a casual looking café style space, obviously aiming for the lunch market with set Chinese meal deals and a sandwich menu. There's also a list of more interesting meals and specialities, and these are what caught my attention as I stopped to glance at the menu in the window.

There are a few Sichuan dishes, and also some from Dongbei and (I think) Beijing, both in Northern China. I had a chat with the friendly woman behind the counter who said they'd only been open a few days and were hoping to keep some 'real Chinese food' (her words) on the menu as well as the other stuff. She also mentioned that the chef was from Dongbei so any dishes from there might be worth investigating.

I ordered Sichuan chilli chicken, Di San Xian (a vegetable dish of aubergine, potato and peppers) and some boiled rice.

The chilli chicken was a completely dry dish, not exactly what I was expecting but bloody wonderful. Imagine KFC popcorn chicken but good. Deep fried chunks of chicken on the bone, crunchy and greaseless, smothered in garlic, sichuan pepper, chilli, spring onion and sesame seeds.

I dived in with my fingers and polished the lot off in about five minutes. Salty, spicy, tongue tingling and highly addictive.

The veg dish was much gentler, but also very good. Stewed or braised in a very garlicky sauce, the potatoes and aubergines were soft and savoury, and crispy bits of fried garlic provided textural contrast.

All in all a very pleasant surprise and a welcome addition to Leeds' Asian dining scene which is starting to reveal some hidden depths. I'll be back here, the food is good, the staff friendly and prices are reasonable for the quality of the cooking (this meal cost just over £13).

That's me done for the next few days, Merry Christmas everyone!

8/10

Zen Delight
Swinegate (not sure what number, but it's about halfway between Salt's Deli and Malmaison)
Leeds
LS1

Sukhothai, Headingley, Leeds (takeaway review)

Another day another disappointing takeaway. Thai this time, from Sukothai in Headingley.

Things got off to a bright start with a salad and some Thai sausages. The salad (Som tum) was crisp, zingy and surprisingly chock full of pungent, slightly foetid tasting (in a good way) dried shrimps. A lot of places hold back on these, presumably thinking they're a bit much for the average English palate. They can be a bit of an acquired taste, I like them but preferably in the presence of shedloads of chilli to balance things out a bit. The chilli quotient needed upping by about a factor of five, otherwise it was pretty good.

The sausages (Sai oua) tasted a lot better than they look! Coarse cut, fatty pork cut through with lime leaves and lemongrass. Citrus flavours might sound unusual in a sausage, but it works very well.

Another starter of tiger prawns in crispy batter was ok too. In a 'massive scampi straight from the freezer into the fryer' sort of way, but still.  

My main course was a disaster. It was a noodle stir fry (Pad kee mao) with prawns, basil, bamboo shoots, mushrooms and chilli. The noodles had been horribly overcooked and had formed together in a single claggy, sticky mass, with all of the other bits and pieces scattered around the outside. There was very little chilli in there and if there was any Thai basil in it at all I couldn't detect it, perhaps they'd run out and bunged some coriander (which definitely was present) in instead. Given the lack of basil or chilli the predominant taste was sweet, as in a bit sugary and nothing else.

A red curry was better, in that it wasn't actively bad, just boring. Completely one-note flavour wise (sweet again) and with no particular redeeming features.

Two starters, a salad, a curry with rice and a stir-fry cost about £26. Not the cheapest takeaway but Thai does tend to cost a little more than Indian or Chinese. The sausages and salad did suggest this place might be worth another shot, but on the other hand if they're happy to serve noodles like that then maybe not.


5/10

St Annes Road
Headingley
Leeds
LS6 3NX


http://www.thaifood4u.co.uk/

Jaldi Jaldi, Leeds

I love Mumtaz. Proof of my love for Mumtaz can be found in the fact that I dined there on Christmas Day last year. Balls to turkey. Unfortunately I don't love Jaldi Jaldi so much.

In case you've not noticed them popping up all over the place in the last year or two, Jaldi Jaldi is the Mumtaz group's expanding franchised takeaway brand. The idea is a good one in theory: sell Mumtaz curries in conveniently located takeaway outlets.

Disappointingly it doesn't quite stack up because the food isn't that great. Most of the food is pre-made and displayed in the chiller counter, which is fine for curries but not so good for other things if the turnover isn't very rapid. I had some vegetable pakoras to start off with and they were crap. Dry, clarty and with little flavour other than chilli heat, whenever they were freshly fried was a very long time before I got them.

Lamb rogan josh was better, but still a long way below the Mumtaz restaurant standard. I think the Jaldi Jaldi curries are probably the same as those sold under the Mumtaz brand in supermarkets, and if I'm right you're paying a significant premium for the option of someone warming it up for you.

The accompanying chapattis tasted fine, but were a bit dry and crumbly, another tell-tale sign of stuff being served way past its best.

I had high hopes for Jaldi Jaldi, as I've already mentioned I'm a big fan of the Mumtaz restaurants, but this just seems to be more about cashing in on the brand reputation rather than any genuine attempt to sell good food.

I haven't tried any of the other things on the menu (this was my second curry from there though), but the fact that it in addition to curry it lists naan paninis, jumbo wraps, sandwiches, gourmet pasties and pies, chicken and chips, cakes, muffins and sponge pudding and custard says it all really. They're trying to cover all bases and probably not covering any of them particularly well.

The meal cost me around £8.50.

4/10

There are currently fourteen branches. I went to:

Neville Street
Leeds
LS1 4BQ


www.jaldijaldi.com

Takeaway home delivery: Is there anybody out there?

Despite the so-called foodie revolution in this country, there is still an awful lot of rubbish out there. Mass produced, catering pack pub food is probably the most popular dining out experience in the nation. Walk into any one of the multitude of branded pubs adjacent to a Premier Inn, and it will almost certainly be busy with diners, and the food will almost certainly be crap. I should know, work has taken me to dozens of them over the last few years (can't fault the hotels). I'm not singling out Whitbread here, there are plenty of other chains offering exactly the same sort of dross.

'Foreign' food is often no better. In most of our town centres you can often still find Indian and Chinese restaurants serving up the very worst anglicised version of these cuisines. Luminous red masalas flavoured predominantly with stale powdered spices and ghee. Even more luminous achingly sweet and sour sauce with indeterminate protein in stodgy, greasy batter. All still readily available.

These places don't bother me too much, because they are usually avoidable. I've only dined in so many poor pubs through a lack of time and effort, such meals provide essential fodder when sustenance is needed. In most towns there is a decent curry or a home-made pub meal to be had. You just have to make the effort to find it sometimes.

What does seem to be completely lacking in many areas is good quality, home delivered takeaway food. Over several years living or spending a lot of time in WF1, LS6, LS15 and LS26 I don't recall ever having any food delivered that was better than mediocre. It's been a few years since I've spent much time in some of these places, but on Sunday night's evidence not much has changed.

I should note at this point, I'm not talking about takeaway food in general, but specifically home delivery. There are a lot of decent restaurants providing takeaway, but not a lot of those offer a delivery service (Red Chilli II in Wakefield and Saengarun Thai in Leeds are is just a couple of one examples off the top of my head). Sometimes only a delivery will do. When you're tired and hungover, or generally slobbing about, or drunk perhaps.

On Sunday night I was very much in the tired and hungover camp. Surely it must be possible to have a good curry delivered to the north side of Wakefield? Having nothing better to guide me than the ratings on Just Eat, I opted for Taste of India (where it gets 6/6 for service, 5.5/6 for quality and 5.5/6 for delivery).

I ordered online and waited, fingers crossed for something decent. The food arrived promptly, actually a couple of minutes before the stated time, so no issues there. Depressingly that was the high point.

A seekh kebab was pointlessly red, and largely devoid of flavour. I left half of it, which says it all. I bloody love a good seekh kebab. This wasn't a good seekh kebab. The accompanying salad was at least quite fresh.

Next up, a chicken masaka, which according to their description was: 'Marinated chicken cooked with channa dall, fresh green chillies and garnished with fresh ginger, coriander and spring onions'. Well the chicken was indeed marinated, but in the same red food colouring as the kebab. Food colouring is not a marinade. The lentils were present and correct, albeit swimming in too much ghee. I'm not sure what happened to the fresh green chillies, fresh ginger or spring onions. They must have forgotten them. There was a little bit of something green in there though; presumably coriander. The overall flavour was not unpleasant, sort of a muted, sweet generic curry taste.

Starch came in the form of a couple of passable chapattis, and a portion of vegetable pilau rice. The rice also tasted sweet (sugar is obviously their 'go to' spice) and most of the vegetables in it were potatoes.

All in all not very good at all. If this was a normal review I'd give it 3/10. I've actually had much worse than this too. Most delivered takeaway meals I can recall would rate in the range 1/10 up to 5/10. Surely there must be better out there?

Part of the problem with takeaways is finding reliable sources of information. Restaurants are often reviewed by professional critics and trusted amateurs (the army of bloggers), takeaways rarely are. Call me a snob but I just don't trust the man on the street when it comes to food. Too many people like the aforementioned crappy pub grub, and too many people comment favourably about rubbish like Taste of India. On Just Eat it is described variously as 'the best Asian food in Wakefield', 'absolutely amazing food' and 'cannot recommend highly enough'. Really??

It may be that the ratings system on Just Eat gives some insight into the mindset of people using it. Equal weight is given to Service, Quality and Delivery. Assuming quality to mean 'is the food any good', that leaves service and delivery covering 'any problems placing your order and did it turn up on time?' Personally I'd happily deal with a convoluted ordering process and late delivery if I could guarantee the food was good.
To sum up, the food from most takeaways with a delivery service is very poor, and there is little reliable information to tell you which ones are better. I don't believe there is nothing decent out there, finding it is the tricky part. I have two local (Leeds) delivery services in mind for starters, both of whose food I've tried although not had delivered. They are:

Box Pizza - Leeds (http://www.boxpizza.co.uk)
Manjit's Kitchen - Leeds (http://www.manjitskitchen.com/)

What else have we got? Comments and suggestions welcome.

Edit: I have just found a menu for Red Chilli II in Wakefield. They deliver. I am an idiot. Three options covering two cuisines in two cities still isn't many though.....

Red Chilli II - Wakefield

Box Pizza, Leeds (takeaway review)

After inadvertently spending the hottest day of the year so far indoors ripping out carpets and glossing skirting boards (tedious but necessary) I needed food and sunshine this evening. Pizza seemed like a plan, perhaps with a bit of salad and an ice cold beer. I'd heard good reports about Box Pizza, and given that the average takeaway pizza in this country tends to rank somewhere between mediocre and totally vile I thought it might be worth a shot. I picked up a margherita, a salami with chillies and roasted peppers, and a rocket salad.

The pizzas were pleasant enough, certainly above average takeaway standard. Toppings were good quality but the bases were nothing to write home about. I was hoping for bubbly, charred edge dough but got a limper, cornmeal dusted crust without much flavour.

The rocket salad was good. Plenty of peppery, fresh leaves with roasted cherry tomatoes and a generous covering of parmesan. Including a little pot of dressing was a nice touch too.

£15.60 for both pizzas and the salad. Not bad and easily enough for 3 people. Worth ordering if you're in the delivery area or passing through, but I wouldn't make a special effort. Is there better takeaway pizza in Leeds?

6/10

Box Pizza
The Triangle
2 Burley Road
Leeds
LS3 1JB

http://www.boxpizza.co.uk

Saengarun Thai, Leeds (Takeaway review)

A very big thank you to the Twitter people that put me on to this place. I got takeaway from here on Sunday night and it was excellent. Really good Thai food can be quite a challenge to find in this country, so it's great to discover a local gem. Many of the larger, more upmarket Thai places seem to have chucked money at the restaurant fixtures and fittings, but don't give the same care and attention to the food. I've had very dull meals lacking the vibrancy you expect from Thai food both here and here. Perhaps Saengarun are having a subtle dig when they say on their website: 'Not the finest decorated restaurant in Leeds, but we do serve the best and most authentic tasting Thai food..'.

I ordered a Som Tam (shredded papaya salad) from a short selection of salads, then a Gaeng Ped (red curry) with boiled rice to follow. 

The Som Tam was an absolute face melter. Ridiculously hot, there was no toning down for the unsuspecting farang here. It was sensory overload with the multiple flavours of chilli heat, sour lime, salty fish sauce, pungent garlic and sweet palm sugar all mingling with the multiple textures of brittle peanuts, cold, crunchy papaya and soft, pounded tomatoes. Startlingly good, although I did give up half way through as it was just that little beyond my heat tolerance level. Nothing wasted though, as I finished it for supper the day after.

The curry was also a success, and thankfully a little milder. Generously proportioned with a good mix of vegetables and well cooked chicken, the sauce was rich, coconutty and anise scented from thai sweet basil.

Prices are a little higher than you might expect for a takeaway (most things on the menu seem to be a pound cheaper than the dine in price, my bill came to £15), but it's definitely worth it. I'll be back for more.


8/10

159 Briggate
Leeds
LS1 6LY

http://www.thairestaurantinleeds.co.uk/

Zam Zam Tandoori, Chorlton, Manchester

A damn fine kebab this, my poor photography really doesn't do it justice. It's chicken tikka on nan. Both meat and bread were cooked freshly in the tandoor. The bread was light and crisp, the chicken was moist, succulent and had loads of lovely nubbly, smoky, charred bits around the edges, and the salad was fresh. Generous dollops of both searing hot chilli sauce and tangy yoghurt sauce to top things off. What more do you need? The only criticism I can come up with is the unnecessary red food colouring on the chicken. Outstanding value at £3.00.

The venue is a run of the mill, scruffy-ish takeaway with a few tables inside. I never have a clue with these places. Most of them serve absolute rubbish, but a few come up with the goods like this. Fortunately Flavours of Manchester comes to the rescue. Will someone please start a Flavours of Leeds blog, so I know where to get a good kebab there too? Thanks.

8/10

452 Wilbraham Road
Chorlton-cum-Hardy
Manchester
M21 0AG

Barbakan Delicatessen, Chorlton, Manchester

Barbakan Deli is a rather good bakery and delicatessen in Chorlton. Up until last Saturday I'd strolled past it a few times, and even had a glance inside, but had never actually made a purchase.

On weekends they have a barbecue (they call it that but it's actually a couple of huge frying pans over a gas burner) out the front serving an interesting selection of sausages and burgers including German bratwurst, Polish smoked slaska and lamb in both forms. I nearly walked straight past, put off by the long queue, but curiosity got the better of me and I joined the back of it. It doesn't always work out that way, but in theory very popular ought to equal good.

In this case, the mob were correct. I ordered a bratwurst with fried potatoes. The bratwurst was lovely;- a dense, bouncy, porky sausage with plenty of fried onions on the top. Presumably the bread was baked on the premises, as it was much more than an afterthought. It was a large, slightly chewy roll with quite a yeasty flavour. A genuinely good example of a classic hot dog roll. With a large dollop of dijon mustard the whole thing was great fun to eat. Shame about the potatoes though, they were rubbish. Underseasoned and undercooked, they were mealy in the mouth and tasted of little.

The bratwurst cost £2.75, plus an extra pound for the potatoes.  I'd probably give the potatoes a miss next time, but the sausage was great and more than big enough for lunch. Well worth a visit. If you're lucky you might be able to grab a seat on the terrace next to the barbecue.

8/10 for the bratwurst (but 3/10 for the potatoes)

67-71 Manchester Road
Chorlton-cum-Hardy
Manchester
M21 9PW

http://www.barbakan-deli.co.uk/