Smoke, salt & cycling
Feb. 4th, 2022 12:01 amI've just been out for dinner with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
themidnightgirl to Smoke and Salt in Tooting. We went for the six course menu (plus the extra cheese course, obviously, and Zoë had the wine pairing, so I got to taste them as well. It was good to very good throughout, with a few moments of absolute brilliance.
The absolute highlight was one of the snacks, a perfectly crisp light choux bun, filled with an intensely flavoured truffle and parmesan sauce which had us both grinning like idiots. Close runner up was, slightly to our surprise, the main course, which I often find can lack some of the spark and inventiveness of the surrounding dishes. Even more surprising is that it doesn't even sound especially exciting by the standards of these things - veal with cabbages and chive mashed potatoes. But the veal was amazing, somehow managing to combine the light delicacy you'd normally expect with a rich gaminess that ought to be a contradiction. And yet the real start of the show was the cabbage, which melted away in your mouth with layer upon layer of soft, smoky unctuousness.
Seven courses for two, with one wine pairing and service came to £165, which felt like extremely good value.
*****
A few days ago I acquired a widget for attaching my phone to my bike handlebars so I can use it as a GPS without having to stop and fish around in my pocket. I was a little bit sceptical of how useful it would be, because I didn't entirely trust myself to be able to look at it whilst still keeping an eye on the road, but I underestimated both how clear the audio instructions would be, and how quickly I could glance at the screen, and it's actually been a complete game changer.
I was already quite surprised by how much more comfortable on the road I've been feeling after only a few weeks, and for the most part the only bit that I still find stressful is trying to navigate unfamiliar streets with my truly terrible sense of direction, and this has just taken that away completely. I decided that cycling all the way back from Tooting might be a little bit far immediately after a big meal, but I went in as far as Charing Cross and then got the tube the rest of the way, but that meant navigating right through the centre of town after dark and at busy times, and I scarcely found it stressful at all.
themidnightgirl to Smoke and Salt in Tooting. We went for the six course menu (plus the extra cheese course, obviously, and Zoë had the wine pairing, so I got to taste them as well. It was good to very good throughout, with a few moments of absolute brilliance. The absolute highlight was one of the snacks, a perfectly crisp light choux bun, filled with an intensely flavoured truffle and parmesan sauce which had us both grinning like idiots. Close runner up was, slightly to our surprise, the main course, which I often find can lack some of the spark and inventiveness of the surrounding dishes. Even more surprising is that it doesn't even sound especially exciting by the standards of these things - veal with cabbages and chive mashed potatoes. But the veal was amazing, somehow managing to combine the light delicacy you'd normally expect with a rich gaminess that ought to be a contradiction. And yet the real start of the show was the cabbage, which melted away in your mouth with layer upon layer of soft, smoky unctuousness.
Seven courses for two, with one wine pairing and service came to £165, which felt like extremely good value.
*****
A few days ago I acquired a widget for attaching my phone to my bike handlebars so I can use it as a GPS without having to stop and fish around in my pocket. I was a little bit sceptical of how useful it would be, because I didn't entirely trust myself to be able to look at it whilst still keeping an eye on the road, but I underestimated both how clear the audio instructions would be, and how quickly I could glance at the screen, and it's actually been a complete game changer.
I was already quite surprised by how much more comfortable on the road I've been feeling after only a few weeks, and for the most part the only bit that I still find stressful is trying to navigate unfamiliar streets with my truly terrible sense of direction, and this has just taken that away completely. I decided that cycling all the way back from Tooting might be a little bit far immediately after a big meal, but I went in as far as Charing Cross and then got the tube the rest of the way, but that meant navigating right through the centre of town after dark and at busy times, and I scarcely found it stressful at all.
