The Bell and Brisket, Soho

I'm not trying to make a habit out of it, honest, yet I can’t help but notice that my blogs frequently extend beyond the boundaries of linguistic decency. Two thousand words might be fitting for an obituary to Marie Colvin but possibly not for a post that can essentially be summarised as “Pitt Cue Co good” or “Newpub in East London bad.” In the end, it turns out that there are things in life more important than eating, even if people like me are generally loathe to admit it. So in the interest of not punishing reader’s attention spans – and the fact that a ‘waste liquid removal’ is presently encamped next to me outside The Euston Tap – here’s an exercise in marginal brevity.

The Bell and Brisket is a new salt beef pop-up run out of the The Queen’s Head in Soho and it is very good indeed. At £7.50 for a sandwich or around a tenner including chips, it’s not the cheapest sandwich in town, but it is one of the best and a reasonable price for a sit-down lunch: an overly generous pile of juicy, well-seasoned brisket spilling out of one of the UK’s better attempts at rye, topped with liberal amounts of gherkin and an ample spreading of English mustard. American mustard, of course, would have been preferable as it is mild enough to be applied in industrial quantities, but after the first bite I honestly forgot about my lone compositional quibble. 

The pub itself was a more than ample venue for London’s latest great pop-up: a small but well-kept establishment that featured a very good guest ale and a decent take on the capital’s latest drinks craze, the pickleback. Not quite up to the standard of Pitt Cue’s dangerously moreish beetroot brine version, but nevertheless a thoroughly enjoyable if potentially inappropriate lunchtime digestif. Of course, it should really have been a bourbon rather than Jamesons, but possessing the shamrock streak that I do, I’m hardly one to complain.

There's no doubt that I'll be back. Not only is the simple concept of a proper sandwich in a proper pub such a rarity on these shores, but salt beef is an especially hard number to master, especially if New York delis are used as your benchmark. Perhaps pop-up formulas are the remedy because these guys got it seriously right. The last eye-opening meat-and-bread combination I got in a pub was at The Jeremy Bentham, one of my former employers, where the Kiwi landlady knocks out an audacious meatloaf, mustard, and beetroot number. Thankfully, it looks like she’s finally got some real competition in the centre of town. Here's to hoping there's more to come from intrepid sandwich artists like The Bell and Brisket this year.

The Hunter S.: Fear and Loathing in De Beauvoir Town

There’s been a lot of excited Tweeting lately about the opening of a new pub, The Hunter S., in De Beauvoir Town, so as I was heading down that way to check out the new Honey Drizzle cooking school in Hoxton, it seemed natural to pay a visit. Given the concept, I was expecting to love it: Hunter Thompson was one of the first literary voices I connected with, his work helping to instil in me the idea that journalism was about more than just reporting three-car pile-ups. While I’ve long since given up my futile attempts at gonzo writing, I’m nevertheless instinctively pre-disposed to like a pub in his honour. What a surprise, then, that I’m writing my first negative review. It’s not just that I can’t really see what the fuss is about – I actually actively dislike the place.

Let’s start with the beers. Beer is the single most important thing about a pub. Great beer can be found in run-down establishments generally frequented by borderline sociopaths and featured on Danny Dyer programmes, while bad beer can be found, well, pretty much everywhere. To be fair, the beer at The Hunter S. wasn’t exactly bad - there just wasn’t enough of it. Not counting the myriad lagers, each one as predictable as the next, there were two cask ales available on the night and space for a third. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as having three well-kept, regularly changing ales is more than enough to satisfy the grumpy old man in me. Unfortunately, the ales were both Sharps. You know - the Cornish brewery that was alright way back when but then got bought out by Molson Coors and started appearing as the token ale in every second-rate boozer in the south of England? 

Having a contract with a multi-national brewer (or the distributor for a multi-national brewer) means that these two hand-pulls are unlikely to come up for air very often and, given the close proximity of breweries like Redemption and East London Brewing Co, it’s hard to fathom why they haven’t opted to go a more local route. Likewise, having imported lager isn’t deplorable in and of itself, but how many trendy Asian and continental imports do you really need? A couple would suffice and free up space for more interesting concoctions like those emanating at an alarming rate from Aberdeenshire.

That said, my Doom Bar was OK. Fairly bland as usual but it seemed to have been kept reasonably well and didn’t offend. Still, it’s a lazy ale choice and what’s even more unforgivable than underestimating the curiosity of the punter’s palate is overcharging them. In this, The Hunter S. seems to be aspiring to new heights. £1.90 is a lot for a half of ale. Doing the maths, that would beg the question as to whether they are charging £3.80 for one of the most bog-standard, samey cask options on the market. Maybe not, as many pubs inflate half-pint prices, a practice the government might want to look at the next time they’re having a whinge about the Great British Binge. It’s not just mean, it’s irresponsible to penalise people who are trying to take a more responsible approach to drinking.

Chula Fused Foods, London

So-called fusion food rarely impresses me. Partly, this is because it’s a label that is abused nearly as badly as the gastropub designation: liberally distribute sweet chili sauce, coconut milk, and harissa across your menu and apparently you’re serving up a culinary revolution. Yet at its best, fusion really can work and is capable of elevating food to new heights. One of my most memorable dining experiences in London was at The Providores, while probably the best restaurant meal I can remember (admittedly, there are some I can’t) was at Paris’s Ze Kitchen Gallerie.

Balancing flavours that don’t normally happily co-habit the same kitchen, let alone plate, is a delicate art. As a result, it’s something that you’d think is ill-suited to the rough and ready street food scene. Yet anyone who has sampled a Korean-style slider at Kimchi Cult will tell you that this is not an iron rule. Sticking to the basics and doing the simple things very well, anything is possible anywhere. If ever this conviction needed validation, then my experience last Saturday at a slightly bitty new churchyard market on a mind-numbingly miserable afternoon provided it in droves.

Like burgers, I have a bit of a fetish for burritos. And like the market for beef patties, London’s burrito scene is getting increasingly saturated. That’s not at all a bad thing – I’d honestly like it so saturated that there was a Burger & Lobster or Lucky Chip on every corner. But it does mean that the excitement value that came with, say, the brief appearance of #Meateasy in New Cross is slightly diminished. So while I’m itching to get me a Mother Flipper down in Brockley, too many more bright young burgers and I won’t be able to make the most of finally having Ben Denner’s creations on my doorstop. So too with the great Tex-Mex export. On the street, it’s pretty much neck and neck between Luardos and Daddy Donkey; in the bricks and mortar realm, there’s a plethora of options, with Chilango and Benito’s Hat being particularly memorable, and Tortilla especially bad, of late.

I don’t eat as many burritos as I do burgers, so I’m less assertive when it comes to declaring what kitchen produces London’s best. At the same time, my wet-socked Saturday afternoon jaunt through the new Hackney Homemade FOOD market and, more specifically, my munch at Chula Fused Foods may just have provided me with the answer, or at least an opinion on the matter. For sure, Vinod Patel, Chula’s head honcho, makes a mean-ass burrito. It showcases both his Indian roots and his appreciation of the form, which he developed in San Francisco and honed during a stint at Chipotle in London. More than that, it’s a thoroughly well-developed concept. If you think about it, there’s no reason why the burrito, when you strip it down – rice, beans, and slow-cooked meat in a tortilla – wouldn’t translate perfectly to an Indian reinterpretation, as all the ingredients are staples of (or closely related to staples of) the sub-continental dinner table.

Pitt Cue Co, Soho

One of the problems with being an aspiring food and drink writer is that you devote so much of your time to food and drink. Of course, this sounds both hypocritical and contrarian – surely that’s the bloody point, isn’t it? Let me explain. Writer A may know a bit about food. He may have eaten at some great restaurants in his time. He may be able to impress his less gastronomically-inclined friends at dinner parties. His opinion, therefore, on matters culinary may be considered mildly educated, even occasionally fit for consumption by the general public. The problem arises when you realise that you are so into food that you no longer eat at bad restaurants. You read so many blogs, reviews, restaurant guides, and Top Ten/Best Of lists that going out to lunch or dinner on a whim seems, well, very 90s.

So until the time comes when you are respected enough to be invited to review a restaurant – which in my case is likely to be somewhere between a cold day in hell and the end of the world – why would you gamble a sizeable chunk of change on an unknown entity? Partly, this is a by-product of having an obsession with food. Partly, it’s also basic recession economics – we eat out less, so we take more care when we do so. Of course, you can still have a bad experience at what is considered a good restaurant – Burger & Lobster dramatically overcooked my burger, for instance, and in retrospect I am less than enamoured with the downstairs restaurant at Roti Chai. Still, it has become increasingly apparent that my gastro-obsessive nature often unwittingly compromises the vitality of my critical streak. Sorry – ‘Writer A’s’ critical streak.

Why is such a preamble necessary? Because two nights ago I went to Pitt Cue Co and a gushing review is imminent. It was everything I expected, wanted, craved and so much more. BBQ is like crack to me. Though New England is hardly the BBQ capital of the States – that would be Texas, North Carolina, or Kansas depending on who you ask and where they’re from – it’s still full of Americans and where you find Americans you inevitably find a healthy tradition of grilling and smoking various hunks of flesh. So while I’ve never travelled far enough afield to be considered a total guru on matters of the pit, my palate is still trained to detect quality smoked fare – whether it’s at a classic backyard booze-up or on a trip to a delicious dive like the Blue Ribbon BBQ in Arlington, MA.

The Rise and Rise of Hackney's Street Food Culture

The unedited version of my article on Hackney street food that appeared in Feburary's print edition of the Hackney Citizen...

From the streets of Cairo to a cathedral in London, 2011 was a year that will be remembered largely for its revolutions and rebellions. Always evolving rapidly, the gastronomic world was not to be left behind. The start of a new year is the classic time to reflect on what has come to pass and what is still to come, and those of us who live life on a fork’s edge have plenty of tasty developments to mull over.

With English wine now more or less an established entity, 2011 became the year of the microbrewery. Scottish-based Brew Dog grab a lot of the headlines – be sure to venture out and check out their new bar in Camden – but closer to home the London Fields Brewery and Redchurch Brewery both bring the pleasures of craft beer to our doorstep. Redchurch’s rich Hoxton Stout is particularly well suited to the grimmer side of the calendar, while the crisp London Fields Lager is one to get us dreaming of sunny days lounging by the lido. It’s a trend that’s likely to continue well into 2012 and beyond.

But for many of us with ever expanding waistlines, 2011 will be most remembered as the year of the mobile food vendor. Street food in less pretentious terms, it’s a movement that can be traced to the beginning of the century and the cult surrounding a car park in Peckham and Yianni Papoustis’ Meatwagon. Last year, the London scene came of age. Of course, there’s a still a fair way to go before we can honestly claim to match somewhere like New York in terms of widespread quality and diversity, but our capital seems to be rapidly rising to the challenge.

The Great British Burger Debate

The seemingly small matter of where one finds the best burger in London inspires a disproportionately large amount of deliberation and debate. From bona fide food critics to aspiring hacks like myself, everybody has an opinion - the only thing we seem able to agree on is that if you have it well done, yours doesn’t count. To date, Daniel ‘Young and Foodish’ Young has put together what comes closest to being a definitive list of the capital’s best bits of flattened beef, declaring the best burger in London to emanate from the Goodman kitchens. This is a fairly accurate assertion in so far as it is probably the best I tasted to date, despite a major balls-up with regards to cooking time. I sampled their wares late-December at Burger & Lobster, a Mayfair offshoot devised to satisfy public demand for the more humble end of their menu (and presumably free up tables in their restaurants for people spending vastly superior sums of money).

Even though either the person working the grill or the wait staff seemed to have got something pretty badly wrong – medium-rare arrived completely well-done – it was still a pretty awesome hunk of flesh and not at all dry, a minor miracle given the way it had been cooked. Crucially, the fries were the real deal – thin and overly salted in the disgracefully moreish, McDonald’s tradition, while the lobster dish consumed by my companion was deemed pretty flawless. I certainly deemed it an absolute steal for £20. Added to the fact that the concept was beyond brilliant – a three-item menu, spectacular cocktails, the simplest of price schemes – I was a very happy punter indeed, especially after the management offered me free drinks to compensate for the unsatisfactory greyness of my patty. 

At the other end of the spectrum, many believe that life for London’s burger aficionados began not in a well-heeled steakhouse, but in the car park of a south-east London industrial estate with Yianni Papoutsis and his Meatwagon. Again, there’s a certain amount of truth in this claim. For sure, some of the best burgers I’ve tasted this side of the pond came courtesy of Papoutsis and his #Meateasy tenure above a dilapidated pub in New Cross that just happened to be dangerously close to my university. Yet by the time the rest of my art school comrades caught on, the place hadn’t just become a cesspit of pretentiousness, it had started to churn out inconsistent bordering on average burgers, including one that was, for lack of a more eloquent phrase, burnt to shit. Don’t get me wrong:  I’ve always been one of Papoutsis’ biggest fans and love the new joint, MEATliquor, where the deep-fried pickles elicit a particularly strange type of nostalgia (I used to eat them at the now deceased branch of Hooters in Boston). But that doesn’t mean to say that I’m blind to the occasional failings of his restaurants.

The Scavenger Gourmet's Top 10 Brews for Christmas (and the Cold Months)

N.B. – The Scavenger Gourmet would like to apologise. It appears he had a bit too much fun doing the ‘research’ for this blog and has only just realised that it is, in fact, February now. Whoops. Still, these ten beers aren’t just for Christmas – they’ll complement our cold, shit weather perfectly for months to come.

Treasured food and drink pairings like champagne and smoked salmon, port and Stilton, and sherry or whiskey with dried fruit and nuts are all associated with the festive season, while few aspects of our existence seem quite as ritualised as getting pissed at the office party or quietly sipping brandy around the fire with friends and family. Like it or not, Christmas is as inextricably linked with booze as it is to the mistletoe, Santa Claus, and depraved mothers ramming you up the backside with prams on the high street.

Super Bowl Sunday

Thanksgiving in November, Christmas in December, Burn’s Night and Chinese New Year in January: it seems that every calendar month has an event that defines it from a gastronomic standpoint. February is no different. Valentine’s Day stands out in a particularly cringe kind of way, the scores of men and women suddenly fancying themselves as little Heston’s and trying to impress their sweethearts with generally misguided culinary exploits occasioning a strange brand of pity. Equally pathetic is the way people willingly buy into below average restaurants offering ludicrously priced ‘special’ set menus that get you little more than a weak prosecco-based cocktail and something bland tasting but inevitably heart-shaped for the premium. So if V-Day is generally accepted as being a shallow marketing exercise, what does the evangelical food perv have to look forward to before the slow dawn of Spring elicits wet dreams of barbeques and new season lamb?

For something original, follow the lead of our American brethren and go all out for the Super Bowl this weekend. Of course, you could do the easy thing and go for a usually ill-advised Sunday night out. London offers several good options: close to my home in Hackney, Road Trip Bar on Old St is renowned for its sizeable ex-pat contingent and seems a decent bet for a good time, though this is based on word-of-mouth rather than personal experience. Spread fairly democratically across the capital, Bodean’s BBQ offers a good value night out, with £25 getting you a table and food before the big game and at half time. Sure, it can’t even shine Pitt Cue Co’s shoes, but it’s not that bad. Honest, I’m sure the food poisoning I got a few years back was a one-off! The Sports Café in Haymarket is the rowdiest atmosphere, generarally made up of American students - sorry, 'college kids' - and perfect if you want to satisfy your inner Bluto. If you can beat my personal best of fifty buffalo wings in one sitting, I'll post your photo on Scav Gourmet!

Food and Drink Trends for 2012

2011 was the year that London got serious about street food, craft beer became a hipster status symbol, and gourmands swapped oysters and periogold truffles for the pleasures of the humble hamburger. So what dining innovations are on the cards for 2012? Here are five trends for culinary explorers to take note of going forward

Barbeque

Now that the burger has been almost totally re-invented, it’s the turn of another American classic, the BBQ, for a makeover.

A cuisine and tradition in and of itself, BBQ has already found its standard bearer in the U.K.: Pitt Cue Co. started off on the asphalt and recently graduated to a full bricks and mortar operation in Soho.

Most people go for ribs and pulled pork, with the more adventurous fighting over specials like smoked pig’s head.

Everything is washed down with appropriately cheap American lager, or a pickleback – the house special is a shot of whiskey followed by a shot of gherkin brine. Sounds nasty, tastes awesome.

Always at the fore of the UK’s culinary developments, expect quality brisket and bourbon to be flowing freely across London by the end of the year.