Randall & Aubin

Earlier this evening a friend and I found ourselves hungrily wandering the street of Soho, mouths watering.  Both being indecisive beasts, we were struggling to agree on somewhere to eat.  Our two 1st choices were closed for Sunday evening and we fancied a change from the ubiquitous (yet reliably excellent) small, no-bookings, italian/spanish/BBQ things we have been drawn to all too often recently.  Walking down Brewer Street, we came across Randall and Aubin.  I remembered having a decent meal there a couple of years ago and we were in the mood for fish - so in we went.  This, sadly, would turn out to be a mistake.

Most of the seating at R&A is on high stools at ledges around the edge or bar-tables in the middle of the restaurant.  The seats were a little difficult to get comfortable in, but we didn't think much about this as we tucked into delicious olives and bread and studied the menu in the frame on the wall in front of us.  My companion is a relative newcomer to eating fish and other things from the sea and was excited by the varied selection of seafood on offer.  I too was impressed by the menu, until I noticed the small notice in  the corner about the 'cover charge'  - £1.50 pp. to cover bread and olives.  These stealth taxes have always irritated me; if you are going to charge for your bread and olives, put them on the bloody menu and make them optional.  Sliding them in front of you with no mention of cost until the bill arrives (unless you have spotted the 'fine print' on the menu) is rather unsporting.  Looking back through the hindsightoscope, perhaps this should have given me a clue about the value for money, or lack thereof, that we should expect from the restaurant in general.

My starter of 'half a pint of native pink prawns' was spot on.  To my mind, prawns always taste better when you have peeled them yourself, plus you get the unrivalled pleasure of sucking the flavoursome goo out of the heads and drawing alarmed looks from the more squeamish patrons.

The salad of queen scallops with crispy pancetta and capers was reportedly quite tasty.  The scallops looked pretty tiny and there had evidently been a salad-spinner malfunction in the kitchen as the leaves were a bit wet but the flavours were good on the whole.

From then on, things deteriorated.  I chose the main course of king scallops for £19.50.  The tender broccoli and delicious fennel pureé that formed a bed for the molluscs were faultless.  My problem with the dish was not one of execution - the scallops were very nicely done - caramelised on the outside, sweet and just-raw in the centre, but there were only three of them.  THREE!  They were not especially large and for the best part of twenty pounds, I felt very hard done by.  For this price they could, at least, have served the roes as well, but these had been wastefully stripped away.  3 scallops for a starter: fine, but for a main course that's just mean.  What's more, the garnish of frizzled spring onion strips on top was tough, dry, chewy and unpleasant - if it wasn't for the faintest allium whiff I would have thought they had sprinkled my plate with hay.  This had all the makings of a great dish - but the lovely seafood and veg were let down by redundant and revolting garnish and the sheer parsimoniousness of the portion.

My friend decided to have the grilled sea bass. The chive, spring onion and rosemary salsa sounded tasty but, due to an allergy, he asked for the 'curry dusted potatoes' to be replaced with fries.  We were quite shocked to be told that this would not be possible.  ''The fries on the menu are a larger portion than the potatoes that come with this dish, so I cannot swap them, I'm sorry.''  What nonsense!  Chips are about as divisible as any food item I can think of - surely the amount put on the plate is up to the chef; the idea that they can only be served in a portion of a pre-determined size is absurd! Our waiter did not seem to understand this line of reasoning, so we asked to have the potatoes simply without the curry dusting.  This also was impossible as they were pre-prepared.  Short of ordering another dish altogether, the only option was to have the potatoes removed and to buy a side order of fries.  When the dish arrived we were surprised to find that the bass was a single fillet rather then a whole fish - this was not made clear on the menu.  It was slightly over-done but not to the point of being ruined.  The fish was accompanied by a small bunch of undressed watercress and the 'salsa' which turned out to be a collection of cold, chewy, greasy and vinegary slices of grilled scallion with some raw rosemary twigs thrown in as an afterthought - not nice.  The fries never arrived and by this time it seemed silly to ask for them as they would appear long after the fish was finished.

At this point we were hungry, annoyed and uncomfortable - our bill of £71 (with one soft drink and a glass of fino) only served to make us feel hungrier and more annoyed.  We decided not to hang around for pudding and hurried off elsewhere to find sweet things to fill our unsatisfied bellies and cheer us up (incidentally this took the form of exquisite desserts and cocktails at Yauatcha).

Based on tonight's experience I find it impossible to understand why this restaurant is so often packed, with queues sometimes stretching out of the door and down the street.  The music is just that little bit too loud to have a comfortable conversation, the seats are arse-numbing and  the service, while friendly, is rather blasé.  This would all be forgivable if R&A served decent food at reasonable prices but seeing as the only well executed and good value dish we had consisted of a glass full of cold prawns and a dish of lemon mayo (hardly requiring great skill to prepare), it appears those two boxes must go un-ticked as well.

Randall & Aubin

14-16 Brewer Street,

Soho.

W1F 0SG

3/10

X

Ceviche - Soho

I was lucky enough to spend a month in Peru a few years ago - I loved it - a vibrant, strikingly beautiful and wildly varied country.  One of my lasting memories of the food, other than the obligatory guinea pig (don't bother, incidentally) was Ceviche - the name given to raw fish, cured in 'leche de tigre' (so called 'tiger's milk' - a mix of citrus juices and chilli).  Ever since that trip, every time I have seen a Ceviche on a restaurant menu, I have ordered it - I find the combination of soft, slippery fish, sharp citrus and chilli kick quite addictive.  I've also made it myself a few times - with good results.  So, ever since I heard about Martin Morales' plan to open a Peruvian restaurant called Ceviche in Soho, I have been itching to try it out.  I am not usually one for rushing to new restaurants in their opening weeks, I prefer to let them settle in, iron out their kinks and hit their stride before I waltz in and issue judgement from atop my high horse.*  However, in this case my impatience got the better of me and today, a mere week after the opening, a friend and I went for an early supper.

My 1st impressions of the restaurant were very good - the front of house were very friendly and the ambience was great.  Vibrant posters in frames on some walls, black and white portrait photos on others, the latin-american soundtrack was upbeat and the waiters were smiley and helpful - Ceviche, we decided, was a very nice place to be.

The menu was full of interesting things - mainly 'tapas-style' small dishes to share: ceviches, anticuchos (grilled meat skewers), salads and assorted traditional dishes and sides.  We were encouraged to choose 3 or 4 dishes per person; this was not hard to do as I would happily have ordered any of the intriguing things listed.  However, as we looked at the prices, doubts crept in about how much we would have to spend to fill ourselves up.  We ordered fairly conservatively and before long the food began to appear.

1st came our two ceviches.  The first, irritatingly named Barranco I Love You, was seabass with a zingy citrus leche de tigre and a few crunchy fried corn kernels for texture.  It was a mouthwatering delight - transporting me back 11 years to a bar in Lima where I tried it for the 1st time.  The lip smacking juice had a pleasant, fruity, chilli heat but it didn't overpower the sweet fish at all.  The second dish was less successful. Pulpo al Olivo consisted of sliced, braised octopus topped with a zig-zag of oddly unattractive mauve sauce and scattered capers.  The sauce was too salty, which sadly overwhelmed the well-cooked octopus and the dish cried out for some acidity to lift it.  Octopus, done so well by the Spanish, Greeks and Japanese, is one of my favourite things to eat; but neither of us particularly enjoyed this dish.

Next came the Anticuchos de Corazòn; grilled beef heart skewers.  This was a pleasant surprise - the heart was tasty and succulent, and the peppy, yellow ajì amarillo dipping sauce complemented it well.  Not much of it for £6.25 though, especially given how inexpensive offal is.

A nicely dressed Quinoa salad was refreshing and full of varied textures - the toothsome quinoa grains, soft avocado, floury butter beans etc.

Next to the eponymous Ceviche, the dish I had been most looking forward to trying was the Arroz con Pato, described as Confit duck in coriander and dark beer rice with salsa criolla.  The duck was delicious - satisfyingly crispy on the outside with tender flesh within.  The rice hiding underneath it, however, let the dish down.  Although not unpleasant, it was rather underwhelming: a pallid khaki colour, slightly overcooked, and lacking much interesting flavour despite being adequately seasoned.  A little coriander came through, but there was no trace of the beer it had apparently been cooked in - shame.  Even if the rice had lived up to the tasty duck, the portion would have fit neatly into my cat's food bowl - a meagre helping for the £10.75 we paid.

Our last savoury dish was a Peruvian Corn Cake, the flavour of this offering was pleasant: sweet Choclo corn piqued by feta-like cheese, but it was overwhelmingly salty and simply too small to share.  My friend found it unpleasant (mainly due to the saltiness) and could only eat a little spoonful - I polished off the rest, but found myself gasping for water afterwards.

One pudding in particular aroused my curiosity: Suspiro de Chirimoya Limeña. This was described as a Chirimoya (custard apple) mousse topped with a cinnamon and port wine meringue.  Unfortunately, the soft, italian meringue on top of the dessert was extremely sweet and had no port wine flavour whatsoever.  This was not helped by the fact that there was altogether too much of it resting on top of the small amount fruit purèe underneath.  The custard apple itself would have been lovely on its own - but it is an intrinsically sweet, creamy fruit and had nowhere near the depth or acidity needed to offset the thickly saccharine meringue.  The pud was not a success, but mercifully it was truly tiny - a mere 4 spoonfuls and it was gone.

With the exception of a single Peruvain beer, the only alcoholic drinks on offer are based around Pisco - the national spirit of Peru.  Calling itself 'Europe's first Pisco Bar', I was rather hoping that Ceviche would give me the chance to sample a variety of different Piscos, (rather like the splendid variety of Tequilas and Mezcals found at Wahaca or the Sakes found at Bincho etc.) On the contrary, I was dismayed to find that there was no such selection on offer.  Pisco only came mixed into cocktails or in the form of Macerados - shots of the spirit infused with various fruits or aromatics e.g. Cherry, Physalis, Chilli, Lemongrass.  This disappointment aside, the cocktails we had were excellent - well crafted, balanced, interesting and fruity affairs that I could have drunk several more of with ease.

Looking back at the drinks menu online, I have just spotted that there was one example of Pisco available straight-up, I must have overlooked it, skulking as it was at the end of the cocktail list.

My thoughts at the end of my meal were mixed.  The restaurant itself is lively and convivial and the service was good (although when we were there, it was near-empty).  The food, on the whole was tasty and novel but let down in too many cases by badly misjudged seasoning.  My main problem with Ceviche is the value for money.  The dishes were, without exception, small and in order to fill hungry stomachs you need a fair few of them.  With one cocktail each, one bottle of water and 7 dishes the bill for two people exceeded £70 and we were barely full at the end of it.  The fact that less than 3 hours later we could be found stuffing ourselves with a mountain of excellent dim sum (for less than half the price) speaks volumes.  If we had eaten as much as we had wanted and had a couple more drinks each, as we normally would, the bill would easily have reached £140.  Simply put, this isn't the kind of food people expect to pay that much money for.

Ceviche is in very good company in Soho - surrounded by excellent eateries such as Koya, Polpetto, Pitt Cue Co., Wahaca, Spuntino, Bincho, Mooli's, et al.  In my view, all of these places will fill you up with delicious, good value grub.  With a little tweaking to the food and a reasonable reduction in price or increase in size of some of the dishes, I think Ceviche could happily compete in this neighbourhood.  As it is though, I suspect they will draw in the first-time punters with the promise of the new and exciting but lose out on return trade as people seek better value elsewhere. 

Hopefully, the small changes needed will come in due course (they have only been open a week or so, after all) and Ceviche will survive and go on to become another unique and special feature in the colourful and diverse Soho food district.

Ceviche

17, Frith Street,

Soho.

W1D 4RG

6/10

X

*For the 'Bernard Wooley' pedants amongst you: I am fully aware you can't waltz whist on a horse… shut up.

St. John vs. Polpetto

For those of you who are already thinking that this is an odd, or even ridiculous comparison to be making, please bear with me – I hope my point will be made!

Also, my apologies for lack of decent pics - my camera was stolen before I had chance to upload them!!

St. John in Smithfield is nothing if not controversial.  Its champions talk of food free from frippery and the devotion to forgotten meat cuts, ‘nose-to-tail’ and such like.  It has, after all, featured on the ‘Top 50 Restaurants in the World’ list for a while, has held on to a Michelin star for 2 years and boasts a list of celebrity foodies and chefs who rave about it.

However, its critics are less satisfied with the pared-down approach to dining and question whether St. John really has a place in the constellation of london Michelin restaurants.

Having read mixed reviews (e.g. here, here  and here) a friend and I decided to see for ourselves.

The restaurant finds itself in a refurbished smokehouse in Clerkenwell – it has deliberately been kept minimal: open plan, bare walls, no art, paper tablecloths etc.  It really is the antithesis to the usual Michelin glamour.  The antidote, some would say.

The service was friendly and casual (the first time I’ve ever been served by a waiter in a blood-stained apron!) and the menu was full of intriguing things.  To start I ordered a warm octopus and potato salad.  It was everything octopus should be and so frequently isn’t; meaty and toothsome without being chewy or slimy and the dressing was a savoury, tangy delight.  The pig skin salad sitting opposite me was a generous pile of crunchy, deeply porky crackling shards and nicely dressed watercress.  My friend reported goosebumps after the 1^st mouthful.  The portions were ample, but boths dishes were pretty much dumped on the plates.

When ordering our main courses we had differing approaches: I wanted to try something completely new to me and he wanted to see how well St. John could prepare a simple, standard dish.  To that end I had the poached lambs’ tongues and he the roast duck breast.  The tongues were a revelation; succulent, soft and salty with a deep lamby flavour – not as ‘offally’ as I had expected.  They were paired with crunchy shavings of blanched carrot, whole radishes, some rocket leaves and white beans.  I ordered some boiled new potatoes as well and these were genuinely the most delicious I have ever eaten – with the fantastic deep, buttery flavour that I have only ever found in roast spuds before.  Sadly, my fellow foodie’s experience was not as good.  His duck was fairly moist and pink, but surprisingly flavourless – actually pretty bland.  The skin, though browned, was soft and devoid of the savoury intensity and crispiness that good roast duck should have (I am pretty sure it was cooked sous-vide).  It was accompanied by a lone braised turnip; halved and with a slightly tough skin and a splash of thin pan juices from the duck.  The dish was pretty charmless and left him sorely underwhelmed.  It was not poorly cooked per se, at least not enough to be returned to the kitchen, but both of us felt we had cooked better at home: not something you would expect from a restaurant in this league.

We decided against puddings (Paul A. Young chocolates is walking distance from the restaurant and we wanted to save room!) and left St. John with mixed feelings.

2 courses and a glass of wine each, potatoes and a side salad came to £76 including service.

On reflection, I feel that St. John is a good place to go to try well-cooked examples of the less frequently used parts of the beast.  Next time I feel an offal craving, I will be back to see what their ever-changing menu has to challenge my tastebuds.  However, I find their deliberately spartan, no-frills mess hall ethos to be oddly more pretentious than most of the restaurants they are trying to set themselves apart from.  If meat is to be unadorned and cooked simply, then it must be nothing short of excellent.  If a duck breast is the only thing sitting on a plate costing close to £20, then it should be the paragon to all duck breasts, not a lament to the misuse of a waterbath.  I do not think that a Michelin inspector eating the same meal would have allowed them to keep their controversial star.  

After our lunch in Smithfield and a wander around Islington and Soho, we decided to see if we could find a more inspiring, better value meal to put the smiles back on our faces.  I am yet to read a single bad word about Polpetto, so figured this would be a good bet.

We were not entirely sure we were in the right place as we wandered up the unassuming staircase by The French House pub on Dean St.  However, at the top, we were greeted warmly and shown to a small table somewhat wedged in between others.  The 28 cover restaurant is crammed into a single room above the pub but, at 6.45, when we arrived, it was already pretty busy and the atmosphere was palpably alive.

We ordered an Aperol spritz each while we perused the menu.  It quickly became clear that we both wanted to order the entire menu and it took a lot of discussion and willpower before we had whittled it down to a mere 6 dishes to share.

The 1^st to arrive was a carpaccio of swordfish adorned with pink peppercorns and dill.  The plate was tiny, but the flavours huge –grins were instantly restored to our faces and our mouths were left watering for the following dishes.  Next came a pizzeta with cured pork shoulder and pickled peppers – as thin and crispy as any I have ever had and incredibly moreish, and a bruschetta of ricotta, grilled fennel and prosciuto.  The fennel was wafer thin and char-striped; its cool, smoky slipperiness complimenting the salty ham perfectly.  Warm lentils with creamy burrata and heady basil oil were hungrily demolished.  Borlotti beans with wild garlic and rosemary crumbs were good, but I would have liked to have seen more of the wild garlic; it was a little lost amongst the beans.  Finally the braised ox cheek on white polenta arrived.  The cheek was so tender that we could literally eat it with spoons, the flavour was deeply beefy accented with slivers of olive and some melt-in-the-mouth cherry tomatoes.  The polenta was very soft – wetter than I am used to, but silky and lovely nonetheless.

My dessert was a small, dense polenta cake doused liberally with an orange and campari syrup and a splodge of yoghurt icecream. Pleasingly tart, slightly bitter and very moreish.  My friend’s flourless chocolate and walnut cake was a little dry and crumbly and rather heavy – but tasty.

2 spritzers, 6 sharing dishes, 2 puds and service came to £69.  We waddled back down the stairs feeling fat and happy and vowing to return soon to try the rest of the menu.  The only thing which spoilt an otherwise excellent evening was the fact that our table was very close to the adjacent one, which belonged to the most irritating diners I have ever come across – they were shouting, or rather bellowing conversation at each other across the table, on topics ranging from better restaurants they’d eaten in to French prostitutes, all the time swearing, guffawing and gesticulating wildly – it was almost impossible to keep my own thread of conversation going and I struggled not to butt in and ask them to pipe down a bit!  Space is at a premium in Soho and I don’t begrudge Polpetto trying to squeeze as many tables into their outstanding little eatery as possible – we were just unlucky, I guess, with our neighbours!

You might wonder why I am comparing these two restaurants.  It's not just that I ate at them both in 1 day, but rather that I think they share similar ideals – unpretentious, honest grub, celebrating the ingredients rather than aesthetics and high concept.  One may be rooted in traditional/historical English cuisine and the other in vibrant Italian fare but they are not that different in essence.

However I feel that, where Polpetto wins, St. John fails.  Polpetto do their best to excite and titilate you in a buzzing, friendly environment, whereas eating at St. John you feel as if you are being challenged to appreciate their food.  It is as though they are picking a fight; inviting and relishing the controversy, daring you to disagree.  This, to my mind, detracts from the experience.

St. John Bar and Restaurant

26 St. John St,

London

EC1M 4AY

6/10
£££  X

~~~~~~~~

Polpetto

Upstairs at The French House

49 Dean St,

London.

W1D 5BG
9/10
££-£££  ***