Courtesy of my one-time boss in Tokyo, Jun Inoue, via Facebook. Jun more often posts pics of glistening meaty noodle soups and bacon-draped cabbage, but below is the slightly more wholesome proposition of 118 aji and 2 saba fish.
London is a city that's hard to unravel via the internet. For every reliable price estimation on the Squaremeal website, there's a hundred conflicting comments and reviews to weigh up, and top Time Out accolades can be meaningless (especially when it comes to Lebanese food. trust me on that).
So today I'm throwing up a few culinary highlights of our 6-week work stint in London: spots that came recommended by locals or researched by friends. A reliable way to seek out delicious grub in the capital.
FISH N CHIPS
'Wile Out' crackhouse producer DJ Zinc took us to the Butler's Wharf Chop House on the south side of the Thames - see phone-cam picture at top. The Chop House serves what's probably the best chish & fips I've ever had, with jars of tartar sauce and mushy peas, fish unfurled from a sleeve of grease proof paper, and fat rectangular chips that were not crispy at all but so yummy and potatoey when sprinkled with malt vinegar. DJ Zinc wisely ordered sides of baby carrots and steamed spinach ("hold the butter and garlic please"). The restaurant is near the Design museum, right on the edge of the river, and we never had trouble getting a table, which is pleasing in a city where diners love to queue. Fish n chips was the cheapest main at around 16 quid.
Butlers Wharf Chop House 36e Shad Thames, London SE1 2YE
PAKISTANI FOOD
Portuguese producer J-Wow took us to his fave London restaurant, the award-winning Tayyabs. The queue is LONG (literally takes an hour) but it is really worth it. The mixed grill is essential and the naan, chana (chickpea) masala and saag were also dope. It's BYO, and open from midday to 11.30pm. Definitely take beers to drink while you queue. Cheap! And goood.
BRICK LANE Another one of our colleagues, James Pants, is a well known curry aficionado, and he tested out many Indian restaurants in London. He took us to his favourite on Brick Lane, Shampan. It was most notable for not having curry hustlers outside (the ones who tell you if you come inside you get a free drink, and then the staff inside later claim no knowledge of this mysterious drink deal). I had a xacuti curry with tamarind and toasted cumin that was pretty good, but some of the thali plates looked a bit lackluster.
Shampan 79 Brick Lane London E1 6QL
CHINATOWN & SURROUNDS London's Chinatown is the kind of place, late at night, where you might see a drunk brit spraying air freshener on their socks in an an alleyway. But there's also quite a few decent Chinese supermarkets and a stall selling dragon's beard candy, and another stall outside a hairdresser selling really good baozi/steamed buns (it's opposite Baozi Inn on Newport Court).
Being fans of Sichuan food and also of the writing of Fuschia Dunlop, we tried out all three restaurants at which she is a consultant: Bar Shu, Ba Shan and Baozi Inn. To be honest, they're all much of a muchness. The fanciest and most expensive one, Bar Shu, has slightly fancier furniture and the staff wear earpiece headset things, but the atmosphere is not really posh despite the prices. My advice if you eat there is to go all the way and get a whole fish or crab, because the smaller plates (though yummy) are like really, really good home cooking. It's hard to feel they warrant the price tag.
Ba Shan (photos above and below) was just slightly better value and still tasty, though the Mapo-dofu (photo below) was a bit gluggy - we prefer the one at our local in Cologne which has tons of chillies in it. The chinese cabbage in broth with goji berries was comforting. I expect Antipodeans would find the prices quite hard to stomach.
My favourite was Baozi Inn, the cheapest restaurant of the trio: despite the uncomfortable wooden stools and the waitress making us take valuables out of our coat pockets before she hung them up. The baozi were sold out, but some reviewers say they're not the best offering there. The handmade dumplings in a slick of chilli oil were yummy, as was the flower tofu with peanuts and homemade tofu hiding under more chilli oil and ground sichuan pepper, and I really loved my red-braised pork - with its stodgy, slightly overcooked white rice.. it was good for a rainy winter evening.
Baozi Inn 25 Newport Court, London WC2H 7JS
Another decent spot in Chinatown is Haozhan, where you can get a decent meal including a couple of beers for 20 -30 quid. In the couple of years since it's opened (during which time the ex-Hakkasan chef moved on), it's become more shabby than sleek. For someone who doesn't get to eat pan-asian food often though, the singapore noodles, salt & pepper squid, small bowl of egg-fried rice, and softshell crab with curry leaves will wash down very well with your Asahi beer.
Haozhan 8 Gerrard Street, London W1D 5PJ
COFFEE If you have a bit of time up your sleeve - say two weeks - you can do as our American coffee-loving colleague Todd Osborn did, and get up early to walk to a different coffee spot on the East side of London as research. Thanks to him we know a world champion barista at Prufrock and his Swedish colleague claim to have invented the flat white, and churn them out of a clothing store which is in turn disguised as a cigarette shop in Shoreditch.
Other notable mentions: Tina, We Salute You in Dalston, The Whitecross Coffee Cart, Monmouth Coffee at Borough Market (they don't do soy milk), Climpson & Sons, Caravan.
Coffee with breakfast: My London-based kiwi friends Alice & John are into serious brunching, and my favourite of their haunts is The Modern Pantry in Farringdon, with its omelette with sugar-cured prawns and smoked sambal, or poached tamarillos & yoghurt w manuka honey. They also do a caramelly version of hokey pokey ice cream that's so delicious I've been known to eat it for breakfast.
JERK CHICKEN or PATTY For a city so famous for its nightlife, a lot of the clubs in London close quite early (they often stop serving alcohol at 2am), and good post-clubbing snacks are thin on the ground. Judy's Divine in Brixton is open til 1 or 2am, and they serve a patty between two fat slices of white bread if there's no buns. It's also just down the road from a club called Plan B, which has a Funktion 1 soundsystem and some good artist line-ups.
Judy's Divine 423 Coldharbour Lane Brixton, London SW9 8LH
BISTRO FOOD and DUCKFAT FRIES
Last but not least, Comptoir Gascon in Farringdon has really delicious meats (pork belly with parsnip puree! and little raviolis swimming in a yummy sauce that tastes like posh mushroom soup). YUM.
There is no angle on TV show The Wire left to be mined. What does lake trout signify? Saptarshi Ray, for the Guardian writes:
Bunk, at his most unsavoury, it pains me to say, compares Jimmy to a recurring Baltimore speciality – lake trout – when he tries to clean up his act and settle down with Beadie. "They take something and give it a name to make it sound better, but it's still just a trash fish."
Lake trout makes many appearances throughout the programme, understandably, being a Maryland staple. When Marlo agrees to meet the honey-trap girl from the Barksdales it's at the Lake Trout restaurant. Randy likes a lake trout sub with cherry soda while on the campaign trail for Carcetti. In fact, lake trout is such a signifier of project life that when Brianna drops off some spicy fish of a different variety from a downtown restaurant for D and the boys, Wallace has no idea where it's from or what the big deal is. "If it ain't in the west side, I don't know it, yo."
Also, and not entirely unrelated, Snoop meets Anthony Bourdain; Bourdain eats lake trout.
Before I moved back to Australia permanently (and a life based around work and reality tv shows), I was treated to a final family farewell feast.
Unlike the family feasts on SBS*, at my Chinese family feasts no one is slaving over a hot stove. Here you do not learn to cook. That is for the kitchen staff at the Chinese restaurant you have chosen and inevitably have vouchers for. Here one learns to eat and possibly dispute the bill.
Ten courses...two tables...four hours.....lots of tea
We started with soup. I think it was crab (no shark fins anymore....seems my family has decided to shun the delicacy)
Goose feet noodles
Fish Cakes
Peking Duck
Fish with preserved ginger and plums (Chinese umeboshi style)
Sizzling prawns with spring onion, garlic and corriander
ummmm...can't remember
Minced Peking duck as a side with congee
congee also accompanied by stir fried veges and omelette...just count those dipping sauces
Dessert...sweet plus cripsy biscuit thingy
Family portrait
It was a very sweet farewell dinner. For a family which by culture I would not describe as particularly expressive of their emotions it was quite an overwhelming display of affection. I was laden with compliments and gifts. My aunties all hugged me and my uncles passed on some of my late Ama's jewellery. One of my cousin's searching for something nice to say told me I had a lovely voice. I left feeling sad to leave them all behind.
*Oh and also, if you happen to be reading this and work for SBS I have a crossover reality show idea for you - My Family Feast meets Border Control. Large ethnic families have to try and make it into Australia with all the authentic ingredients they can without having them all confiscated by customs....the family with the least number of substitutes wins!!!!
Moving on to further milk products with dubious health benefits.
Last night I ate my first ever pickled herring in cream. But no ordinary pickled herring in cream: this was the 'Minus L' brand lactose-free variety. Another example of the traditional German palate colliding with the mass-marketed health food trends of recent times. Are that many of us clinically lactose-intolerant? Probably not. But why not eat the lactose-free version... it just sounds healthier.
As well as lactose-free yoghurt and lactose-free herb-quark, you can also get lactose-free meat salad, which is little strips of ham in a creamy dressing. 'Meat salad' doesn't sound all too appealing but Erik tells me it's excellent on toast.
As for my foray into pickled herrings, I liked them a lot. The cream was quite light and the sourness was yummy: a slightly fishy salt&vinegar chips vibe. It's appealing how vinegar-marinated fish becomes denser in texture. I regret turning up my nose at my Dutch father's brined pickled herrings (rollmops) for all those years.
Erik says as a kid his mum would sometimes serve these cream-spiked herrings for supper, with some rye bread on the side and grated apple on top (lunch right after school was their big cooked meal for the day).
We had them last night, sans apple, with thin sunflower-oil potato crisps and Americano cocktail on the side. It was a pretty good combo.
This sounds a bit wanky, but we had a really nice Americano with Cinzano sweet vermouth in the bar of Hotel Omm in Barcelona last week. We were there for Sónar festival, and went there at 9pm on a Sunday night, so the big couches were mostly deserted. I'm not sure I could bear the place's loungey soundtrack when filled with posers - but the Stan Getz-produced Brazilian music was totally fine in the company of a few rolex-encrusted senior citizens. But anyway, we were reminded how perfect it is when little dishes of really good crisps are served as a bar snack. Maybe I'm just nostalgic for the chippie sandwiches of my youth, but I would say the Spanish, with their tasty olives and potato crisps, compete with Japanese o-tsumami for world's best bar snack repertoire.
The Spanish are also no strangers to combining the salt & vinegar punch of boquerones (marinated european anchovies) with crisps either. We ate the crunchy, vinegary, fishy plate below at Inopia in Barcelona last October.
Pickled herrings, potato crisps and Italian aperitifs might not be such an unholy euro combo after all. I'm inspired to make this a regular habit: lactose or no lactose.
One of the few unifying traits amongst Gut Feelings authors seems to be Bittman love, which is why his last piece, on the ethical trainwreck that is eating fish, hurts us. It's honest, open and deeply confusing. What do you do when a man who knows more about buying and eating fish than you - and has written a book to that end - admits that he no longer has any systematic way of telling what is good or bad?
In fact, and sadly, the list of fish that I don’t eat is much longer than the list of fish that I do. One could argue, as I sometimes do (mostly to myself), that one shouldn’t eat fish at all, fearing that if fish lovers begin consuming those few remaining species that are not in trouble — sardines, mackerel, squid — we might just make quick work of them, too. But though that may be the easiest argument to phrase, it isn’t likely to be popular, nor will it help the cods and flounders.
It is like being witness to culinary apostasy. As much as I feel like my foodblogging mojo occasionally drifts away, I don't lose my underlying faith in food.
My approach to eating fish is simpler than Bittman's couple of rules. Only eat fish that you could forseeably walk to a beach or river nearby and catch yourself. This rules out anything pelagic - shark, bluefin tuna, orange roughy, patagonian toothfish. It also means that you're forced to learn what fish is actually local (even if it is shipped in from elsewhere) and tends to favour underutilised species.
We slipped in early to Momofuko with pal Ms Q in our whirlwind tour of NYC landmark eating. So no queue. We quickly decided what to eat and informed our extremely surly dragon lady waitress of our preferences
To start, hamachi with beet and apple, then some of the famous steamed buns, two pork, and one shitake for me which engendered funny looks from Hock and Ms Q. One bowl of the supposedly famous ramen and the skate to finish. A few "artisinal" beers which Hock chose.
Sashimi with beet and apple
This dish arrived as a painfully small portion of sashimi of a generally low grade. Words cannot fully describe the disappointment I felt over this fish. It could have, should have been lush thick pieces, with tart crisp apple playing off against a sweet beet flavour. Instead I felt like I was being fed left overs from a diners' meal at David Chang's more upscale Ko. Left over sashimi at a $16 US price point or there abouts.
Pork Buns
Shitake Buns
The buns arrived and offered a brief moment of reprieve. They were pretty good, but considering the price, (if memory serves they were around $9 for two) and the hyperbole, you'd hope for something decent. Especially given that it is still just a steamed bun - street food in most places in East Asia that can be had for a mere dollar or two - with much more succulent pork, speedier, sweeter service and less fuss. Such as this one, had in Japan for a quick bite (and created by someone who appears to be the Japanese "elvis" of pork buns)
But I digress....next arrived the ramen
Ramen
This was a major disappointment. With all the fuss that surrounds momofuku I half expected it to be the best bowl of ramen I have ever eaten. Alas it was at this point that Hock and I turned to each other in agreement and said "the emperor has no clothes". The broth lacked depth of flavour, the pork was like a dry Chinese char sui rather than a succulent fatty ramen pork. The noodles were definitely edible, but again at 16 USD for a bowl I felt as though David Chang had personally sucker punched me in the wallet.
With a single bite into the dry unmalleable pork, both Hock and I began to pine for "our" ramen guy on Thonglor, Bangkok. A simple ramen shop that serves the most unbelievably tender and delicious pork, with a dollop of homemade miso chili paste for the modest price of 80 baht. Or 2.50 USD. Now I know that labour costs and rents are higher in New York than Thailand, but you'd expect that labour perhaps to be more skilled or at least capable of preparing ramen of equal if not superior quality......but no the "labour" in question, standing behind the "noodle bar" seemed more concerned with the placement of his hispter head band and iphone communications than the succulence of our porky noodles. And certainly there was no appreciative yelling of "thank you very much for your custom" that cheers me to no end after eating at family style ramen joints.
Skate with brussel sprouts and kochujiang style sauce
The skate was fresh. And that about sums up all I have to say about this dish.
The beer was good, if not again a little over priced....aahh what a funky label and the words artisinal will do for prices these days
The total price of the meal USD$150 plus tips.....my Chinese grandmother would turn in her grave if she knew what we paid for a bowl of noodles and some pork buns.
Afterwards we headed to Chickalicious for a quick and reasonably price dessert
thumbs up...
it was good to see the original chef still working at her kitchen
Afterwards we landed at a bar in the lower east side that is reached by walking through a Japanese noodle bar. I walked in and half heartedly wished we had eaten here. We had a few whiskys chatted and Hock talked to the Japanese barmen. He told them we had just eaten at momofuko and how bad it was. They nodded in agreement and proclaimed it odd that "white people just love it there"
Which is exactly what momofuko is, it is gentrified "Asian" food cleaned up for a primarily white clientele who will unwittingly pay three times the price for an average bowl of noodles for the privilege and convenience of not having to navigate unfathomable menus and dirty toilets. "Eating the other, without meeting the other" is a term I recall being used once, which is odd, as I thought Japanese street foods like ramen and steamed buns had already been demystified to the general populous, and certainly a Japanese toilet is often far preferable to a western one...and here I was thinking that "Asian" is the new "White"....and that the time for repackaging a steamed bun and selling it for three times the price to scared white folks were over...how wrong I was.....David Chang may not be the greatest chef in the world but he certainly isn't the stupidest either. So in the end we too had to come to the same general conclusion as David Chang himself conceded when interviewed about being given the James Beard award - confusion and general bewilderment that such praise is utterly undeserved.
