The Garden Restaurant @ Stoke Place - 25th of January 2014

I think i have written about Stoke Place and the Garden restaurant before.. one of my favorite places in England!

I have stayed there a few times with my husband - this time we had a girls only birthday weekend for a friend.
After champagne and games in the bar we sat down for dinner and it did not disappoint!

You get 2 different pre-starters before your starters - both amazing!
The first one was "Pumkin espuma, curried banana and pumking seed"
The second one was "Lemongrass sorbet with lime crisp" - it was strange but in a good way - sweet and savoury at the same time!

My starter was "Mushroom Ragout, Pine Nut, Mushroom Panna Cotta, Truffle, Mushroom Froth" which was sooo good with amazing flavours of mushroom and truffle!

For main i had the "Seared Venison, Celeriac, Cape Gooseberry and Red Wine Jus" which was to die for. 4 of us at the table had picked this main and all you could here was "yum".

We then had a little complementary pre dessert of compressed pineapple and youghurt sorbet. Light and tasty

Most my friends went for the Cinnamon doughnuts for dessert so i decided to have the "Poached plums, Youghurt sponge, Sorrel Ice cream, Youghurt and sorrel soup" WOW - absolutely stunning dish with an explosion of flavours.

I can't rate this place high enough - just GO! 

 

Chotto Matte - New fusion restaurant 18th of January 2014

I read about Chotto Matte online somewhere and it sounded really interesting - Japanese / Peruvian fusion? Got to try it!
Booked in for a Saturday evening - it is situated smack in the middle of Soho on Frith street.. i think i remember it being an Italian restaurant there before (Bertorelli's?).
We were greeted by a bouncer dressed in black, wearing a headset (very MI5) and one of those "clickers" recording how many people are coming through the doors.. sounds more like a night club than a restaurant right?

When entering were were met by a "host" - also dressed in black, with a headset but no people counter :-) and he escorted us the 3 meters to the reception. To the right was the bar - which was VERY busy and to the left was the stairs leading up to the 1st floor dining room. Next to the stairs was a DJ keeping the people entertained.

We were ushered upstairs past the robata grill to a small table for 2. We had a very cheerful waiter who guided us through the menu - there are lots of "tapas" sized dishes and they recommend that you share 9-10 dishes between 2.

We started off with the "Taco selection" with Tuna spicy miso, snow crab yuzu, miso vegetables. It was basically nacho chips with 3 dips - very tasty but could have done with more chips!

We then had the "Prawn Tempura" with 3 different dips which were lovely and light. 

We then had the "Seabass Ceviche" with  sweet potato, peruvian corn,
coriander, chive oil, citrus sauce which was lovely and light with some crunch.

 

We then had the "Nikkei Gyoza" with Pork, prawn and cassava dumplings served on amarillo and butternut puree. Very interesting flavours.

 

Next was the "Robata chicken with Miso" with carrot, courgette, yellow chilli
raita. Lovely bite sized charred chicken - again very interesting and tasy.

We then had the "Prawn spring roll, shiitake, yuzu, shiso, ponzu
salsa". Crisp pastry bursting with filling - shame the portion was quite small! But then again - means that you can try more things!

Next up was the "Black cod, yellow chilli miso". I cannot avoid black cod when it is on a menu.. so lovely and delicately flavoured with the miso....

Next was the "Beef rib eye, chives, peruvian chilli" - it looked nothing like you would imagine it - instead it had been flattened and rolled into a cigar shape!

 

 

 Next we had 2 kinds of sushi rolls - "California rolls" and "Beef, peppers, onion, cumine, oregano, soy". The California rolls were lovely - i was in 2 minds about the beef ones - thought they tasted a bit too Indian for me. i liked the crunchy onions on top though!

We decided to go all out and have some dessert too (i know - we totally pigged out here). I had an AMAZING "Salted caramel chocolate fondant" - need i say more? My husband had the "Cheesecake with cherry ripple icecream"

We really enjoyed our dinner. Great ambiance, friendly service and good food. Great place to go to for /before a night out in London.

We had not eaten much all day in order to try as much as possible - however, people next to us on one side had even more food than us (2 girls!!) and the couple on our other side only had 3 dishes to share and a bottle of wine.. so i guess you can do what you want.

 

 

 

 

Shanghai Blues - 11 January 2014

I took my friend Jane out for a Saturday lunch at Shanghai Blues in Holborn as a belated birthday treat.
I had booked the special offer they had on Amazon local for a tasting menu and a glass of wine each for £55 for 2 people.

Great value indeed but the service was NOT good so i would hesitate about going back again.

So, what did we have to eat? Well, we started off with a dim sum platter to share which included Scallop, prawn, salmon and vegetarian.

We then had the roasted duck with pancakes and all the trimmings!

This was followed by stir fried Squid (which i left to Jane since i am not a big fan of squid and the restaurant refused to swap it for something else). She was a bit quick to dig in so the plate is a bit empty on the photo :-) 

We then had deep-fried "crab claws" - they looked a bit odd but were crunchy and fun to eat.

 

 

Our final dish was the stir fried lobster with chili. Fun to pick the meat out (they give you the special tools) but by this stage we were rather full. The dish also came with a big pot of fried rice!!

 

The advertised dessert - 2 refreshing sorbets with passion fruit/mango were not available so they offered coffee ice cream which we declined and asked for another substitute which was not popular. In the end they agreed to let us have a mint ice cream from the a la carte menu (after first saying that the coffee ice cream was the only ice cream they currently had) Not very accommodating. We finished off with a rosebud tea which was nice.

 

 

Great value for money on a deal but the service left a lot to be desired.

Social Eating House

Jason Atherton seems to have his fingers in many pies at the moment - one of them is the Social Eating House in Soho.
I visited with a friend just before Christmas and it was very busy but had a nice buzz to it.
We skipped starters and went for mains and desserts.. and YES.. the food was great. My main was "Roasted wild Cornish bream, saffron farfalle, truffle artichoke purée, artichoke Barigoule". (£20)
I could have licked the plate - the truffle artichoke puree was amazing!

Such a great start and the finish did not disappoint! I had a very traditional sounding "Apple pie, Calvados ice-cream, cinnamon custard, toffee apple" (£7.50) but it was truly sensational and up to date in presentation.. and tasted great.

 

My friend had the very cool looking "“P.B.J” Cherryade parfait, peanut ice-cream, cherry jam doughnut" (£7.50) but i have to say that i think my dessert tasted better :-)

 

Highly recommend Social Eating house - great food in a buzzy environment bang in the middle of Soho!

Saffron buns, Swedish knack and mac's - End of 2013

I kind of forgot about the blog towards the end of the year so here are a few things i made in November and December.

Firstly i felt a bit Xmas'y and made some Gingerbread macs and some Dark chocolate and ginger - turned out rather nice if i may say so myself!

It was then time for my Swedish Christmas treats - Saffron buns and toffee with almonds (knack)..i made the traditional "figure of 8" and also some rolled up with the addition of marsipan and butter filling - YUM.

It was then time for NYE at our friend's house and i made some Pistachio mac's with some edible silver glitter stripes and also some mini pannacotta's with some crunchy nuts on top (made in small disposable shot glasses) - rather festive i thought.