Arbutus

I love all sorts of weird things when it comes to food: olive-anchovy sushi with salty chocolate, sweet venison puffs, parmesan cones with horseradish ice cream. If someone offered me a gherkin dipped in chocolate, I would go for it. Having said that, my two favourite restaurants serve food which can best be described as back to basics. We are talking St John in London and Steirereck am Pogusch in Austria here. Both don't experiment with strange flavours, but both still have the odd surprise for their customers: namely tribe, trotters, heads and hearts. St John is famous for the "nose to tail" approach when it comes to meat, and the chef at the Steirereck gets his inspirations from traditional Austrian farmer's food, which also implies using every single part of the slaughtered animal.
When I was a kid, my mother used to cook chicken heart stew for lunch. Ok, so it did taste slightly different from e.g. a beef stew, but neither my sister nor I questioned flavour or texture of the “meat” for years. I can however remember the day I finally did ask my mother more details about this particular stew. I must have been around 15 at that time. And no 15 year old girl would like to hear the word chicken hearts in combination with lunch. So I guess this was the last chicken heart stew my mother ever cooked.
Nowadays I am a sucker for St John's ox heart. So I was all excited to come across another restaurant of the nose to tail kind: Arbutus. A foodie heaven and a favourite among critics. Arbutus' philosophy is to use cheap cuts of meat and make them taste expensive. Take my braised pig's head with potato puree and caramelised onions for example: it surely tasted like a million dollar. The meat, with all its robust flavours, was incredibly tender. It literally dissolved in your mouth.
The ravioli with heritage potatoes, lime, pecorino and sorrel leaves a friend ordered was a pretty little dish and although one would think of potatoes and pasta as a rather stodgy meal, it was full of freshness and lightness. I have to mention the wine as well. Whenever there is an Austrian wine on the list, I have to order it. It is not easy to get hold of Austrian wine in the UK. It still suffers from its bad reputation back in the 80ies when some wine makers were stretching their produce with anti-freeze.
Slowly but surely though Austrian wine is back on the menus. I have already ordered Austrian wine in Fifteen, Gilgamesh, Bacchus and now Arbutus where we had a 2005 Blauer Zweigelt from Anton Bauer. I discovered a gem there. It was a simply beautiful drink and must be the best fruity red they've got on their menu. And it was the perfect choice for our main courses: the two cuts of Welsh black beef with mushrooms were a meat dish made in heaven. The fillet was tender and juicy, the shin melted on your tongue. A perfectly cooked little piece of meat. But after the "melting" pork not the best choice for me though. I like when my food has some bite to it and two times super-tender is one time too many. So I would have preferred the duck breast with golden beetroot: the golden variety doesn't have quite such an earthy flavour to it as red beetroot and was therefore a perfect addition to the succulent duck breast.
Our whole table was full of praise for all the main dishes and simply has to put the dessert menu to the test as well. What I liked most about Arbutus' dessert menu is the lack of ice cream. I am not a big fan of ice cream. As much as I enjoyed Artisan, I really wasn't impressed by the fact that every single dessert contained ice cream. Thumbs up for Arbutus. The cheesecake came with fresh raspberries on the side - no ice cream in sight. Strawberries with rice pudding mousse was possibly one of the nicest desserts and any other restaurant would have turned the mousse into a rice pudding ice cream. But Arbutus didn’t and so it was one of the most delicious desserts I have ever tasted and shows that the simplest ingredients can make the best dish if prepared right. The floating island with crushed pink praline was equally exquisite and proved to me once more that total satisfaction can be achieved without opting for the chocolate option on the dessert menu. PS: I still don't know what the strange indent on our dessert spoons was for, but I simply love them!

Pho

After two glasses of wine I apparently return to the mental stage of a 5 months old: I need to suck on things. Forks, fingers, chopsticks. When presented with those cheap and crap chopsticks you get with every Chinese take-away, this habit can turn into a problem: mouth - or better lip ulscers. Shame, as Pho would otherwise have been a delightful experience. If only my lip was still in tact.
Before deciding to go to Pho, I did my homework (for a change) and checked various reviews about the place. That taught me basically two things: the common European who has never been to Vietnam loves the place. The Vietnamese and all other people who had the chance to eat the authentic stuff before hate it. As for me: I have been to Berlin. That might not sound like much when talking about Vietnamese food, but the Vietnamese dishes I had there was pretty marvellous. Ever since I believe to know when people talk about when praising the "real Pho". Shame that on the day of our visit neither Lydia nor me were in the mood for Pho.
Instead we had Bun (rice vermicelli with bean sprouts and peanuts) with lemongrass beef. And tiger prawn and mushroom curry. Just now, while trying to recall what we ate (whilst still nursing my lip ulscer) I realise that there wasn't much of a lemongrass flavour to the lemongrass beef. Apart from that, it was a decent dish. Not exciting and possibly quite easy to recreate at home: line a bowl with iceberg lettuce, top with bean spouts (a few of the reviews I read before mentioned the excessive use of beansprouts - quite right so), rice vermicelli, fried beef and crushed peanuts. Spices or salt? "Nah, why bother", the chef must clearly have thought.
I love Rick Stein. I love him for his love of salt. He wouldn't have been too happy with our Bun. With a dash of chilli and fish sauce however it turned out be be more than edible, quite nice actually.
The curry boasted much more flavour than the Bun. The prawns were succulent, the mushrooms firm and juicy. Still, the salt was missing. But again, a little fish sauce did the trick.
And although the housewine was of the cheap (but cheerful) side and the toilet unisex, the dinner turned out to be a pleasurable after work get-together.

Darbuka

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the evening at Darbuka, after what seemed like a doubtful start. Our table was so wonky that I feared that the bottle of lukewarm wine was going to land on the floor and this time around it would entirely not be my fault. Romana explained the situation politely to the waitress who moved us to a much nicer table and made sure our wine was chilled. Whilst waiting for our food we had a chance to look at the interior, which really creates an authentic experience. I especially liked the lights and thought the low seating would make the ideal setting for a date.
Our meze platter of haloumi (delicious) houmous (standard), yaprak dolma (stuffed wine leaves), falafel and pita bread arrived and our first impression was that it's good but nothing special. The main course of grilled meat, rice (nicely spiced with cinnamon) and salad arrived as did a belly dancer! It should come as now surprise really as the downstairs bar is a favourite for belly dancing evenings. A girl I spoke to came all the way from Leeds to participate in this. By about 9.30pm the restaurant was quite full. We had more wine (very reasonably priced) and enjoyed the vibrant ambience as we contemplated whether to have a dessert.

The best bit of the meal I would say was the perfect cup of mint tea and delicious baklava - a very sweet finish to an enjoyable evening of fun.

The Larder

Ok, so it wasn’t quite like The Fat Duck. But then, The Larder is not anywhere near the top of the list of the world’s 100 best restaurants. It fact, it has never ever been on that list.
Expectations need to be realistic. When you pay £10-15 for a main course, you will not get a plate of food worth even a Michelin-Starlet. Actually, you shouldn’t even expect to. What you should expect – and hopefully get – is decent food, a nice and welcoming atmosphere and competent, friendly staff.
The Larder is a tricky one in that respect: it has it all. And it has none of it at all at the same time. You cannot hate the place. But somehow you can’t really like it either.
Let’s be superficial, as we are, and talk about looks: High ceilings, white walls and dark furniture. I love it! But this hideous dark purple wall in the back of the restaurant made me appreciate facing the window and I was more than happy to admire the almost artistic reflection of the lamps throughout my meal.
Apropos meal: Again, a matter of hit and miss. The starter of crab with avocado mousse was a bit like eating stringy, salt-water soaked cardboard with… well, avocado. Whereas the baked eggs with and chorizo with manchego cheese and tomatoes was an - admittedly - unpretty little dish, but boasting with flavour. It felt like eating an English breakfast in a little café on the Costa del sol. Chorizo instead of bacon, spicy tomato sauce instead of baked beans, 2 fried eggs: El desayuno is ready, love! Lydia and I had a little disagreement over the main course… even before it arrived. Basically, we both felt deeply attracted by the confit of duck with salardise potato and cherries. As a person who usually gives in and let others have their will (I say others… as long as the others are not called Scott and happen to be my boyfriend that is!), I let Lydia have the duck and ordered calves’ liver on bubble and squeak for myself.
Luckily I inherited this undesirable habit of trying to make others happy from my mother, because I couldn’t have made a better and bigger choice: Two pieces of succulent liver, creamy and silky in texture. A little bit fatty in places though. The potatoes where smooth, well seasoned, but there was no squeak in sight.
As for Lydia’s duck: the meat fell off the bone – as you would expect. I have the suspicion though that it wasn’t “tenderness” alone that made the duck fall apart but also a distinct lack of juiciness.
But coming back to the expected decentness of food, let me mention the dessert. I truly believe that in the whole universe, there is no place better for a plate of meringue, cream and fresh fruits than St John. Although not containing a gram of chocolate, their “Eton Mess” is the most satisfying dessert there is …ever! So compared to gooey, rich and creamy meringue-heaven at St John, The Larder’s version was slightly disappointing. But then, there is a reason why St John _is_ in the list of the world’s 100 best restaurants.
So yes, the meringue with Chantilly cream and berries did meet my expectations. And somehow it was a very decent finish to a somewhat well conceived meal.