Sebastian

Last week involved lots of restaurants. On Tuesday I went to Arras with leonato to celebrate his birthday. It's opened fairly recently, and seems to have got off to an excellent start. I was particularly impressed that when we ordered one wine pairing, and asked what non-alcoholic drinks they did, they offered to make up a pairing on the spot. I was even more impressed that they then came up with five delicious drinks, all of them very distinct from one another, well matched to the food, and not once falling into the "this is just a mixture of fruit juices" trap that so many inferior non-alcoholic "cocktails" succumb to. I was frankly gobsmacked when the bill arrived, and they had charged a mere £15 for all five drinks.

( What about the food? )On the whole, it was an excellent meal; the high points were really really high, and I was absolutely delighted with my drinks pairing. Six courses and drinks for two came to £220 including service.

On Saturday obandsoller & I went to 12:51 in Islington, which rather suffered in comparison to Arras. The best courses were decent, but most were merely okay, and a couple downright mediocre. The service was also a bit confusing and chaotic, and the ambience didn't quite gel for me. Not a terrible meal by any means, and I think perhaps it might work better for a laid back lunch, but I wouldn't leap to recommend it.

On Sunday I went with themidnightgirl to Monsieur Le Duck near Liverpool Street. They serve duck, and frites. That's it*. We had "Le Grand Jeu", which gives you, to share, one duck burger, 200g of breast meat, half pan-roasted, half grilled over coals, and best of all, a leg of confit. It also includes a couple of sides, including truffle oil frites, which I think we will both be trying to replicate at home. Including a couple of drinks, cheese, and service, it came to around £70. Highly recommended.

*Technically there is a vegetarian option, which we didn't try. Jay Rayner describes it thus "The non-meat option is described as a grilled winter vegetable tart, but could just as easily be listed under “will this do?”. It is a dense platform of just undercooked puff pastry, ungenerously hidden under some flaccidly roasted vegetable. In the sense that it represents perfectly a Gallic shrug of disdain for non-meat eaters, it is just as authentic as everything else here. Look, I am merely the reporter."

One thing about working away from home is that I'm eating out even more than usual, allthough not all of the below are in Birmingham.

The weekend before last I went to Counter Culture in Clapham with kerrypolka. I recommended it once before when I went with themidnightgirl last year, and it was just as good as I remembered. Again, the waiter recommended one of everything, and again we started with that, and then had second and third helpings of the best dishes. On this occasion there was a mexican theme, and we had two favourites. One was the aubergine taco - with the taco itself replaced with very thin slices of aubergine, which were lightly chargrilled, with very little, or perhaps no oil, and then stuffed with goats curd and salsa and a little drizzle of honey that really pulled everything together. Second was the beef taco with wild garlic, which we'd been slightly less excited about when we saw it on the menu, but soon changed our minds when it got into our mouths. Incredibly rich and umamish, with just the right amount of heat. £145 for two, including several cocktails and a couple of soft drinks.

Last week I took myself to 1847 Birmingham, a moderately posh vegetarian restaurant. The goat's cheese bonbons were delicious, and if I had to find a flaw, could have been improved by being slightly smaller, as the accompanying kohlrabi and chilli jam were amazing, and the ratio wasn't quite what I would have ideally chosen. The main course, beer battered halloumi with buttermilk, dill, and lime, was tasty enough, but a little pedestrian. Pudding was a dark chocolate concoction with shards of meringue and a sharp and intriguing sea buckthorn gel - this was the high point; interesting and contrasting flavours that balanced each other well, and a real intense cocoa hit. £39 for one, including two non-alcoholic cocktails.

This Sunday I went to the theatre (of which more later), and afterwards popped in to Sacre Coeur in Islington for dinner. I started with a dozen escargot, followed by moules a l'ail. Both of these were delicious - the mussels in particularly were incredibly fresh, with a really well executed sauce, but snails and mussels are perhaps a bit too similar to be the ideal choice together. Pudding was possibly the best tarte tatin I've ever had - light, thin pastry, and great big chunks of apple, not too sweet, but without skimping on the butter. £33 for one, including a peppermint tea.

Last night I met up with mrph for dinner at Itihaas, a mid-high end Indian restaurant. The poppadoms were lovely and light, and the okra fries were great (although perhaps not quite a great as Dishoom's). For mains we had a couple of lamb curries, with very distinct but both delicious spice profiles. My naan was amazing - light, and crisp, and absolutely swimming in garlic. We were bordering on too full for pudding, so decided to share a trio of kulfi - almond, mango and pistachio, all of which were good, but with a clear winner in the pistachio. £76 for two, including a beer and three lassis.

I've got a ridiculously long list of restaurants that I've been to and not written up, and I keep not writing them up because the list is offputtingly long, so I'm just going to start with the most recent ones and if I don't ever get back to the earlier ones that's okay.

Picture was the venue for my most recent dinner with themidnightgirl. They do a six course tasting menu, for the impressively reasonable price of £45.

They started on an excellent note with an amuse bouche of a pork croquette, the meat meltingly tender with a feisty chilli kick, served in a pungent aioli. The next couple of courses were a little bit safe, and things that I felt I could equally well at home, but still pleasant enough. After that there was a definite step up with a well conceived and executed pork and pistachio terrine. The haddock brandade with the intriguing sounding crisp egg (a perfectly poached egg with a crisp breadcrumb coating) was the high point of the meal - posh comfort food done just right. The main course, beef fillet with baked celeriac and puy lentils, was also very good, and gets bonus points because the main course of tasting menus is so often disappointingly pedestrian.

There was a bonus cheese course for a £10 supplement, and let's face it, I never say no to cheese, but it was actually a little disappointing. The cheddar was a very good example, but it's just a type of cheese that I'm not overwhelmingly keen on. There was a Waterloo, which is a little mild for my preferences - give me a nice stinky brie or Camembert any day. And finally a Cashel blue, which was my favourite of the three. Pudding was decent - chocolate mousse, "milk jam", and salted caramel. The "jam" was actually another mousse, and the flavours went well together, but like the first couple of courses it felt a little bit unimaginative.

All in all, it was a good meal from start to finish with no real missteps, and a couple of really shining courses, and at about £180 for two, very good value for a meal of this time. Also worth noting was the home made soft drinks, especially the ginger beer, which had some unusual herbal aromatics and was absolutely delicious.

Last night themidnightgirl and I went for dinner at Counter Culture in Clapham. It was bloody brilliant. We sat outside, overlooking the common and enjoying the summer night air.

The restaurant has a short menu of small plates, and the waiter said that for two people they recommended one of everything, which was exactly what we'd just decided on. As it turned out, the combination of the quality of the food and the fact that we're both quite hearty eaters meant that we ordered seconds of some of them, and there wasn't a single dish that wasn't delicious. We were especially pleased by the plate of salami, which were lovely and piquante and aromatic, the parmasan and chive gnocchi, which somehow managed to be both rich and comforting and light and summery at the same time, and the pork cheeks with smoked aubergine and barbequed pickled onions, which was expertly conceived and balanced. We were also extremely taken with the cheese course, which was a soft goat's cheese, not too pungent, not too mild, served with slices of peach, firm but not so underripe as to be sharp.

Given the short menu, it probably wouldn't be the greatest dining experience for veg*ns, or people with other major dietary restrictions, but if you're mostly omnivorous, I can't recommend it enough. Dinner for two hungry people, including service and drinks (three beers and two soft drinks, but they also offer BYO at £10/bottle corkage) came in at a very reasonable £115. Also, unlike so many of these new small restaurants, they take bookings, so no annoying queuing.

I had an excellent dinner with obandsoller last night at Fera, Simon Rogan's restaurant at Claridges.

And it was very good, no doubt about it. Lots of interesting flavours and textures, everything cooked extremely well, generally good wine pairings, attentive yet unobtrusive service, innovative cocktails. And yet, and yet...

I came away feeling slightly underawed. Each of us had one course which was merely good rather than very good, but out of seven, plus four amuse bouche, that seems like a pretty good hit rate. But it wasn't that exactly, so much as that I think I might have tasting-menued myself out, at least for the time being. Which is sad, but then I'm sure there are plenty of other kinds of exciting food in the world, and most of them probably don't cost the same as a short holiday, so I think I shall be looking at other styles for a little while.

I'm sure I'll come back to it eventually mind, and by then, it might even be possible for mere humans to get a table at the Chiltern Firehouse...

We started with a drink at Purl, one of the forerunners in the trend for speakeasy style cocktail bars in London. The atmosphere was great, and I enjoyed the two-seater swing chair that we had instead of a table, but the drinks, whilst imaginative in style, weren't nearly as well balanced as some that I've enjoyed elsewhere. The honey smoke in my Mr Hyde's Fixer Upper (their signature drink) was a delicious and interesting touch, but the Zapaca rum that formed the base was somewhat overpowered, and would be better replaced with something darker, with more molasses.

But on to the meal... Dinings is a Japanese tapas restaurant. Yeah, it sounded a bit odd to me too, but I love Japanese food, and I love trying unusual combinations, so it seemed well worth a try. It was.

Many different dishes, and a greatly contrasting range of flavours and textures. The tar-tar chips are a fun little amuse bouche - that was my first time trying wagyu beef, and oh my word the intensity of the meaty oomph was something else. The seabass carpaccio was explosively good - crunch of salsa against melt-in-the-mouth fish against chewiness of the shaved truffle, sharp sharp tang of ponzu against rich umamish earthiness (truffle again) in the dressing. This was one of those dishes that made me almost whimper with pleasure. Wagyu beef char-sui buns, which unlike most char-sui buns actually had the right ratio of meat to bun, and the latter was far more flavoursome and interestingly textured than the cotton wool you usually encounter. There's this wonderful moment biting into it when the juices from the meat begin to escape onto your tongue; a glorious teaser for the pleasure to follow. There was more, and all of it delicious, but those were the real highlights.

The service was friendly and knowledgeable, but there were a couple of times when we were left waiting for one thing or another for a bit longer than would be ideal (though this was acknowledged and apologised for, so I suspect they were just slightly understaffed).

It wasn't cheap, coming in at a shade under £150/head, and unlike a lot of the meals I write about, a much greater proportion of that was on the food than on the drinks.

Tonight was my monthly dinner date with borusa. We went to Seagrass, a former pie & mash house in Islington, which now does mostly fish and game.

It's fairly unassuming - rows of smallish tables with high-backed benches. The menu is printed on A4 paper, and the choices are limited, but all sound delicious. Amuse bouche were mackeral with creme fraiche and pepper on brown bread - classic, simple, excellent. For starters we both had venison, which was superb, on the rare side of medium-rare and served on a bed of delicious lemony risotto, which makes it rather filling for a starter. For mains, Robert had duck, and the mouthful I had was very good. I went for the whole crab, which may have been a mistake, as although I very much enjoy the white meat, I'm less a fan of the more accessible brown, as well as the 20 minutes or so of feeling like you're fighting a battle of wits with your dinner and losing.

To finish we both had the cheese plate, which was a little disappointing after the excellent starter and very good mains. A nice mild lancashire with rather good chutney, but the brie and the stilton were a bit middle of the road.

All in all though, a very decent meal, at an extremely reasonable £70 for both of us. This didn't include wine, but they have a BYOB licence, and don't charge corkage, so you can set your own price there.

"That's the most amazing tomato ketchup I've ever tasted"

...

Not really words I've ever expected to hear, particularly not from someone as food-savvy as themidnightgirl, but in a way it exemplifies the meal we've just eaten - the way that even the tiny things brought something more.

In fairness, it wasn't absolutely one hundred percent perfect - the parsnips were softer than I like them, and the cocktails, whilst enjoyable, didn't blow us away. Everything else, however, did.

I believe that last time I wrote about our attempts to find the best steak in London we had three contenders out of the places we'd tried, which we were planning to revisit when we'd made a first pass at everywhere on our list. After tonight's trip to the Hawksmoor, we don't need to bother.

Let's start at the beginning. After the Royal Fizz and Autumn Mule, which as aforementioned, were decent enough ways to pass the time waiting for a starter, I had the Scallops with Celeriac Puree and Black Truffles, and Robert went for the Tamworth Belly Ribs.

The plates arrived, and as mirror images we leant down towards our plates, sniffed deeply, and looked up at each other, grinning broadly. I sometimes forget quite how distictive a scent good celeriac has, and mingling with the truffles, it left just a hint of the buttery scallop behind it. We drew the moment out a little longer, passing each others plates before we tasted. Robert's ribs were gorgeously aromatic: cinnamon, pepper, ginger, anise - the platonic ideal to which most chinese style ribs are mere earthly copies. I think the most amazing thing about my starter was the way it took on a completely different character when you varied the ratio of puree to scallop, whilst still carrying all three distinct flavours of vegetable, fish, and truffle, no matter what the proportions. The most amazing thing about the pork was the way it felt quite dry when you put it into your mouth, but then as you bit into it managed to overflow with juices that took the heady spices and turned them into something quite new. I'm afraid that this time the celeriac puree was that good that I didn't manage to save myself the indignity of licking the plate. Maybe no-one noticed.

Once the starters had gone we paid a little more attention to the wine, the Luigi Bosca Gala 1 2006, which they describe as a "Sophisticated Malbec blend with Petit Verdot and Tannat. Strong yet elegant with intense red berry fruit and delicate spice. Caresses the palette and has a long finish." It had an unbelievable nose with lots of tobacco and leather, and they weren't kidding about the long finish - it just went on and on and on. We restrained ourselves from more than a few mouthfuls before the steak arrived though.

Oh yes, the steak was rather the point, wasn't it? Wasn't it? OH GOD YES! At this point it's important to remember that I am a man who has eaten a lot of good steaks, many of which have been very expensive and very, very good. But not this good. I'm never quite sure if the fact that an extraordinary meal can bring me to the edge of tears in the same way as a moving aria or a startlingly beautiful painting is a sign that my aesthetic senses are freakishly distorted or merely tuned slightly unusually, but in any case, I was blinking a fair bit more than usual as I ate that steak. I am normally very keen on a bit of good bearnaise sauce, and the pot that they brought us was very very good, but after one mouthful of steak bearnaise it got relegated to a sauce for dipping chips in, because nothing, nothing, could be allowed to adulterate that meat.

We had the porterhouse steak, nine hundred grammes to share, (which was exactly the right amount, leaving us just enough space for one more course). I'm a recent convert to this cut, but do wish I'd encountered it earlier - the usual dilemma of choice between the punchy, almost aggressive intensity of the tougher and gorgeously fatty sirloin, or the more delicate, sweeter, melt in the mouth fillet steak being replaced by the cry that will surely be my epitaph: "Embrace the power of 'And'." And this was 'And' embraced to perfection. There was a layer of fat around the outside of the sirloin bit, so you would work your way up the slice, with the flavour getting stronger and stronger, until the last mouthful exploded in the caramelised juices. The fillet was so soft, almost like marshmallow, if marshmallow had just slightly more resistance and an ever increasing variety of flavour.

And that's another thing worth mentioning - despite the fact that every mouthful was perfect, every mouthful was also different. I kept being surprised by nuances to the flavour - here, half way through, was a smokiness that I hadn't tasted before. There, in a slice that looked just like the last, was a moment of salt, not too much, just enough to spark interest and then disappear. The contrast between the two kinds of steak was marked and glorious, and the contrast within each slice, changed the meal from a theme and variations to an entire symphony.

Having spent three paragraphs talking about the meat, I should give brief mention to the chips before moving on. Thrice cooked, as all the fashionable restaurants seem to be doing nowadays (thanks Heston!), they were very good, and as the beginning quotation indicates, had an unexpected new dimension in the ketchup. A simple condiment, and not one you expect greatness from, this certainly surprised us. I think that what they did was mix in a bit of five spice, and I'll be having a go at replicating this.

And for the final course, I went, predictably, for the cheese and port, whilst Robert opted for the apple and blackberry trifle, with the "Shipwreck" apple brandy. I had a mouthful of the trifle, and whilst it's not a dish I'm terribly keen on myself, it seemed like a jolly good execution, and Robert certainly seemed happy. The apple brandy was quite superb, and a better match for the first of the cheeses than my port. As for the cheeses, there were three - a goat's cheese, which at first taste was a bit unremarkable, but then developed on the palate, and had the mix of crumbly and creamy just right. The second was a strongly flavoured hard cheese - possibly an exceptionally good cheddar, but I'm not sure, because I "don't like strong hard cheeses". Ahem - possibly a revision of tastes might be in order. Finally there was a soft blue. Despite generally prefering both soft and blue cheeses, I thought this was the weakest of the three, whilst still being something I'd happily serve after dinner. The port was right at the top end of good, without tipping over into great, but then at nine pounds for a fairly large glass, one can hardly complain.

The whole meal for two came in at a shade under £200 including service, for three courses, cocktails, aperitifs, and a bottle of wine which wasn't by any means the cheapest on the list. Frankly, if it had been half as much again I'd consider it great value, since it was up there amongst the best meals I've ever eaten in my life.

Despite my utter failure to get to bed at a sensible time last night, and thus running on only three hours sleep, today has been a really good one. On kake's sterling advice I went to investigate Atari-Ya sushi bar, which is just around the corner from where I work. Let's just say I shall never be patronising the Selfridges Yo! Sushi bar again - who would, when they can get sushi half the price and twice as good a couple of streets away. I had a takeaway bowl of chirashizushi for £6.50, and utterly delicious as it was, I could barely finish it. Nom.

After work, which was unusually productive and enjoyable, I went swimming with sashagoblin. I've been going and doing my 40 lengths a week for perhaps a couple of months now, and although every time I've felt absolutely fine in the water, getting out of the pool has always included a period of feeling as though someone had filled my lower legs with lead. Until today. I think I might actually be getting fitter. Rah, and woot, and all that sort of thing.

I promised ages ago to write about Prague, but have come to the realisation that if I haven't done so yet I'm never going to, so instead I'll direct you to my beloved's write up instead.

What I am going to do is talk about some of the food we had there. After the flight got in and we'd had a much needed cup of coffee we made our way by bus to Dejvika, which is a mostly residential and studenty area on the outskirts of the city. The guidebook said it had a few good restaurants though, and it was close to the airport, so we decided to give one of them a try. Unfortunately we relied on my map-reading for a while, until it became clear that we were quite lost, and I figured to hell with the data costs, and I should use the magic of googlemaps and gps. Once we found our bearings it took another twenty minutes or so to reach the restaurant, so we were very hungry by the time we got there.

This turned out to be a blessing in disguise however, because it meant we had space for more of what was probably the best sushi I've ever eaten, at a place called Sakura*. It was sufficiently good that despite only being there for three days, we came back for a second time. I had lots of different things, and could no longer do justice to describing them all, so will pick out some highlights from across the two visits.

The gold goes to the dragon rolls. I've never encountered them before, which may have been part of the appeal, but I find it hard to imagine a better execution of the simply wonderful concept of futomaki crossed with nigiri. Inside the roll was red caviar, cucumber, and prawn tempura in the lightest, most well seasoned batter that I've ever tasted in my entire life. And as though that wasn't enough the eel on top was grilled to perfection, very fresh, and coated in a sweet, sticky sauce that was the perfect complement to the salt of the caviar as it went popopopop on my tongue. The rice, as with all the sushi pieces, was amazing - you could feel each grain individually, and yet it held its form easily as you dipped it.

Silver goes to the cherry tea which Ramesh had on our second visit, and which made me wish I hadn't gone for the (nice enough, but not outstanding) sake again. I'm generally not a fan of fruit teas, as they smell so wonderful and then taste far more insipid than their black, green, and herbal cousins. This turned out to be an exception. It was sweet, without being sickly, fruity, without being sour, and spicy, without being overpowering.

Bronze goes to the california rolls, which I'm not (very) ashamed to admit have long been a favourite of mine. That amazing batter made another appearence around the surimi, and whilst I've always been a fan of avocado, I had no idea it could be this smooth, this creamy, and this flavoursome.

And finally honourable mentions to the avocado nigiri, which I stole from the boy, as they made the ideal ending to a meal, and gave the superlative example of the fruit centre stage. Also to the enonoki soup, which did the thing that always impresses me of finding mushrooms so rich that it takes some effort to distinguish them from the meat (in this case chicken) that they're served with.

I wouldn't quite go so far as to say that this place alone was worth travelling to Prague for, but there are a lot of other reasons to go, and if you do then I would certainly pay a visit if you get the chance.

*Aside - I once had a very brief fling with a girl called Bob, short for Sakura.