Tastes of the Nile, Swiss Cottage

Swiss Cottage, where I am currently spending a couple of weeks with the fine folks at the Islington Gazette, isn’t exactly a gastronome's delight. Its main claim to fame is that, ten minutes down the road near the South Hampstead overground station, there is a sushi bar outpost of the venerable Atari Ya group. It is beyond outstanding, so watch this space for a fawning review of them sometime soon. Other than that, it’s what you would expect of an area that is, for all intents and purposes, a large road that takes you to the more interesting parts of North London.

Chain fast food joints abound, there are plenty of chicken shops, and lots of dubious looking cheap cafes and sandwich bars. I’ve heard that the rather grimy looking little Chinese place on Finchley Road, Green Cottage, is something of an institution and it’s definitely on my gluttonous hit list. So too is Eriki, an Indian restaurant which garners generally good reviews – not even Morleys could get less than three stars from Time Out – but puts me off because of its overly spacious, airport lounge interior (they actually have a second branch at Heathrow).

What a pleasant surprise then to discover a little farmers’ market last Wednesday. Of course, farmers’ markets are typically visited mainly for their produce and, in all honestly, I’m not actually a fan of most of them, especially those that fall under the official London Farmers’ Market (LFM) banner. I find them inferior to independent local markets like those found in places like Brockley, Hackney, Deptford and Dalston, which tend to be less expensive, more vibrant, and crucially offer a diverse range of quality street food.

I suppose LFMs serve a purpose in so far as they encourage people who are a bit intimidated by other cultures and the non-familiar to make an effort to support small producers rather than just running to the nearest Whole Foods, but damned if I’ve ever had anything other than burnt burgers and sausages – top quality Organic Freedom Soil Bio-Sustainable burnt bangers, mind – to eat at these bag-for-life bashes. Apologies to Millwhites and Kush Cuisine, who are well worth seeking out at these events and for whom I will happily swallow my pride (though I might choke in the process), but on the whole I just can’t see the reason to shop at these places, let alone go to them with the intention of finding something to eat.

Until a few days ago, that is, when I encountered an interesting little stall called Tastes of the Nile at the farmers’ market in Swiss Cottage. Elaine El-Essawy serves Egyptian-style food here as well as at a little cafe in Camden and it’s a simple enough concept at the market: you choose a freshly prepared meat or vegetarian main option that is then served with various salads and sauces. What makes it special is the staggering range of accompaniments they manage to fit into one tray. Normally, my memory is pretty good when it comes to recalling the components of a meal, despite my best efforts at university to compromise all my cognitive abilities. But this was one of those times when I just had to take notes.

Alley Katsu, Hackney Central

With the original burger van maverick, Yianni Papoutsis, looking forward to a second bricks and mortar joint, Lucky Chip soon to set up shop in Soho, Big Apple Hot Dogs popping up everywhere, and The Ribman slinging his infamous Holy Fuck hot sauce as far as America and Australia, London’s street food scene certainly isn’t short on success stories to inspire would-be purveyors of pavement-based gastronomic goodness. Of course, this also means that new arrivals have a certain standard to live up to and, fortunately, the latest wave of mobile eats pushers has, like their predecessors, got the good shit on lockdown.

Recently, I grabbed a cheeky chunk of Al’s lunch from the Well Kneaded Wagon, who offer a kind of flatbread-style twist on wood-fired pizza. In this case, it was a simple yet subtly imaginative and ludicrously effective combination of beetroot, parsley pesto, watercress, and goat’s cheese. Fresh, light, and zingy beyond belief, the quality of the sourdough base and the effect of a proper oven really brought out every last flavour. Similarly, Chula Fused Foods offer a fresh take on that street food classic, the burrito, staying true to the formula but infusing each aspect with well-spiced sub-continental warmth. But while the Well Kneaded Wagon enjoys a fairly wide audience as a result of their eat.st @ King’s Cross appearances, and Vinny of Chula puts in a gruelling four day shift at various locations, it is perhaps the unassuming Alley Katsu that has impressed me the most of late.

Currently trading only on Saturday at the new Hackney Homemade FOOD market, I first encountered their wares a couple of weeks back and was immediately smitten. It really blew me away, so much so that my subsequent tray of Buen Provecho tacos seemed almost lacklustre by comparison. The premise is simple enough: Japanese katsu curries with chicken, prawn, or pumpkin, served in a wrap or with rice. Yet the attention to detail elevates this otherwise humble concept to the upper echelons of London street food.

Al went the more authentic route, opting for an ebi (prawn) katsu wrap. It was one skanking fat rolled up sandwich and she faced a Herculean task trying to enjoy it whilst fending off unwanted attention from both myself and my camera. Readers please note that I only get away with this shit because she’s resigned herself to it after two years. In reality, trying to photograph then eat half of a date’s meal must be a fast rising new entry on the list of Most Bell Endish Ways to put off a romantic interest. That said, I couldn’t really help myself. Proving that street food really is the new crack, I was craving more after just one bite and had to preserve the memory.

The subtly spiced curry sauce was notably deep in flavour and luxuriously silky smooth, while their homemade sweet chili sauce fully highlighted the benefits of composing foodstuffs from scratch. Bearing no resemblance to the sickly sweet, nuclear orangey-pink sludge that accompanies prawn crackers from shady take-aways and otherwise good restaurants alike, Alley Katsu’s version was a much darker, deep red colour and actually packed an OK punch, fully deserving to have the word ‘chili’ in its title. It was enough to pep up my bulldozed taste senses whilst not overwhelming Al’s far more sensible palate.

Camden Town Brewery Bar

Along with the venerable Brew Dog, Camden Town Brewery is one of the leading ambassadors for Britain’s burgeoning craft beer scene, their wares now commonly stocked in good London boozers. Fortunately for the capital’s microbrew fanboys, a full range of their beers will soon be available straight from the vat when they launch an on-site bar later this month. Saturday they opened their doors to offer a taster of what is to come, and while it was evident that a few finishing touches were needed here and there, the space and concept itself seemed well thought out. For one, they had gone through the trouble of recruiting the inimitable Big Apple Hot Dogs to sling stomach liners on the day, something that you cannot help but hope becomes a regular feature.

The outdoor space under the arches near Kentish Town West is hardly scenic, but it’s got bags of potential on a pleasant day, which Saturday was. There’s something reassuringly simple about supping a fresh brew seated on top of a keg near DIY wheelbarrow fires, the basic set up inviting you to focus on your drink rather than what pretentious song choice the Skins wannabe behind the bar is contemplating. Of course, the centrepiece of the day was the beers and, more specifically, their new limited release USA Hells. We managed to get through nearly everything on offer, from their supercharged Ink stout to their beautifully cloudy and floral Gentleman’s Wit by way of the perfectly refreshing American-style pale ale. Yet it was the USA Hells that I kept coming back to. Unfiltered and unpasteurized, it bore about as much relation to commercial lagers as Russia does to a democratic nation.

The lack of meddling, along with the juicy American hops, meant it almost resembles a kind of strange pale ale, wheat beer hybrid – tropical fruit flavours, especially grapefruit, were dominant and complimented amply by the subtly spicy hops, with a hint of bitterness on the finish reminding you that, yes, keg beer can be real beer. There’s little question that Camden Town favours more approachable styles of beer and this isn’t at all a bad thing. Not least, it encourages a more egalitarian drinking experience: more women tipped up to enjoy a bevvy in the early afternoon than probably pass through the Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre during the entire four days of the (totally awesome) Great British Beer Festival.  

That’s not to say that cask ale is or should be the sole preserve of obese middle age men - just that more where traditional methods and styles dominate, said demographic tend to congregate in especially large numbers, flocking to the dark mild end of the bar like paedophiles to playgrounds. Nor is the fairer sex inherently put off by the cask. Indeed, there's some great, forward-thinking real ale coming out of Britain at the moment, with Dark Star consistently good and Redemption a new favourite. But there's also a lot of lazy choices being made by brewers, publicans, and punters alike. So the growing diversity of the craft brewing scene can only be a positive omen as more and more drinkers - male and female - will be lured away from the tight grip of Carling. People can get hung up about technical distinctions between different kinds of beer and methods of brewing, but it really is as simple as good beer is real and real beer is good - presence or lack of carbonation is largely irrelevant.

Similarly, the range and inventiveness of somewhere like Brew Dog is pretty mind boggling, especially when you consume more than a couple of them. But sometimes you just want a tasty, easy-drinking beer – a lager even - that isn’t going to leave you knocking over chairs at your local and thinking that the rather special bottle of Icelandic porter you bought is a great match for a chicken doner. Camden Town Brewery fills this niche in style, their combination of classic German and more modern American influences proving an inspired synergy. Their new bar looks set to be a stellar addition to London’s reinvention as something of a discerning beer drinkers’ paradise.

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.

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.

Roti Chai, Marble Arch

In many ways, Roti Chai lives up to the recent hype it’s been receiving. A visit I paid last Saturday as part of a birthday party revealed the food to be very good indeed. My starter, somewhat elusively titled 'Chicken 65,' is best described simply as little nuggets of kick ass spiced fried chicken - to say I really enjoyed it is putting it lightly. Al's Bengali fishcakes got the thumbs up too, and she also approved of the main course, Awadhi lamb quorma (lamb korma to you and me), which I can confirm was spot-on, a delicately flavoured masterpiece. The use of rosewater and saffron gave the sauce a distinctive fragrance and richness that separated it from bog-standard curry house kormas, though the lamb could perhaps have been stewed a little longer so that it fell apart more easily. Still, it was good enough that I managed to forget that the roof of my mouth didn't resemble a Croydon furniture shop in August. That it so say, it was very good indeed. The eponymous roti selection was stellar, some of the best bread I’ve had in an Indian restaurant, with the orange and cumin one standing out in particular.

My only real gripe with the place, therefore, is that £16.80 is a heck of a lot for a bowl of curry. It’s nouveau Indian prices – a curry at Michelin-starred Tamarind is only a couple of quid more - but this was not nouveau Indian food. It was, rather refreshingly I might add, brilliantly executed home-style cooking and contemporary takes on classic subcontinental street food. I was told that the larger plates we ordered from the ‘Regions’ section of the menu were just about substantial enough to share between two; that's a distinct possibility, if the two concerned have supermodel-style appetites, though given my stature I wasn't prepared to take the risk. The tag attached to plain steamed rice, £3.50, is more difficult to justify - surely it should have had something a bit unique about it to explain the price? -  though a more realistic proposition for sharing.

The Market Porter & Brindisa Grill, Borough

On my most recent trip to Borough Market, I found myself in a reflective mood, contemplating some of life's big questions. Chief among these: is there a better real ale pub in London than The Market Porter? Regulars at The White Horse in Parson’s Green will surely stand up for their local. My boss at The Jerusalem Tavern might well draw up a rap sheet laden with various treason-related charges. And sure, The Euston Tap, Rake Bar, and Craft Beer Co all offer a more diverse and eclectic drinking experience. But for a classic pub atmosphere and an immense selection of rare ales that you’re unlikely to find anywhere else in a major metropolis – a recent visit turned up Harvey’s Bonfire Boy, which I’ve previously only ever encountered in the brewery’s hometown of Lewes...on Bonfire Night – it’s hard to argue with. But I sincerely hope you do, as I always love an excuse to go check out a new boozer.

And also: where do you find the best sandwich in London? Quite possibly at the Brindisa grill just over the road. Open lunchtime Tuesday through Saturday, it serves chorizo sandwiches and only chorizo sandwiches: sweet red piquillo peppers contrasting with the spicy, top-quality sausage still sizzling from the grill, everything stuffed into a soft toasted ciabatta roll and brought together with a simple drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and finished with some crisp rocket. There are various, semi-comfortable places to perch outside the MP where you can drink and munch your meaty masterpiece free from persecution, a really attractive proposition in June if not December.  If it came smeared with a good glob of alioli, it would almost certainly top the John Montagu list. It might do anyways – at least until I finally get my hands on one of Mark Gerveux’s creations. Or until someone says: "Hang on you pleb! What about that place that serves the amazing bánh mì out in East..."

The Market Porter and Brindisa Chorizo Grill, Borough Market, Stoney Street side, SE1

eat.st @ King's Boulevard

An article I just finished at uni, hopefully soon to be published on either SUARTS or ArtsLondonNews. It's not so much a review as shameless hype for eat.st's latest venture in King's Cross. Like they actually need another blogger gushing about how good they are...

Students at Central Saint Martins must be happier than Mario Balotelli on bonfire night. Not only can they boast a brand new £200 million campus as their creative playground, their recent relocation to King’s Cross places them on the doorstep of arguably the capital’s most exciting food market.

Every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, pioneering street food collective eat.st descends on recently opened King’s Boulevard to showcase some of its finest traders, with a regularly rotating line-up ensuring that even the most fiercely fickle palate does not get jaded. One week it might be artisan pizza from the lads at Homeslice that steals the show, while the next could see Kimchi Cult’s Korean interpretations of Western fast food classics wowing the crowds. Crucially, the price point suits cash strapped students perfectly, with fresh, stomach-expanding lunches generally clocking in at around a fiver.