Words from Yannis

The name, website and staff of Joel Robuchon imply a definite Frenchness about this restaurant, however it’s classified as ‘Modern European’ by Timeout. The decor and style of the restaurant and the dishes justify the description, so does the sitting arrangement (you sit at the bar facing the kitchen, or at tables and stools of the same height around the restaurant, resembling a tapas bar). The style of the menu is also a bit more original - you can order from a traditional menu with starters and mains, but you also get the option to pick a few smaller dishes and eat tapas-style. There is also a 7-course £110 tasting menu, if you’re really hungry.

The food is very good, as you’d expect from such a restaurant. The Iberian ham with toasted tomato bread was delicious, the langoustine fritter was just about the best shellfish I’ve ever tried (and I don’t even like shellfish), hot foie-gras with potatoes was nicely balanced, the veal fillet was excellent and the beef and foie-gras burgers where a bold and successful combination. To finish off, a Calvados warm soufflé was flavoursome but perhaps slightly too eggy for desert, and the chocolate cube was a proper hit of chocolate. Although both the Sicilian red wine we had with our food and the desert wine were fantastic, the actual wine list was on the expensive side, even for a restaurant of this type - in the numerous pages of the wine menu you could only find a handful below £50. Service was efficient and discreet.

Overall, this restaurant has the cooking and the service to justify the price-tag of haute-cuisine, but has a twist of originality that makes it an interesting night out. Definitely recommended.

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Although Theo Randall at the Intercontinental is what you’d call a fancy restaurant in many ways (the excellent service and the price tag for example), it still remains an Italian restaurant at heart, taking it away from some of the typical characteristics you’d expect. For example, the portions are not tiny fancy-restaurant sized, but rather reasonable quantities; which leads to a very filling meal.

The menu boasts fresh ingredients only (which also means they may run out of some items as they did on our visit), but the freshness shows in the dishes. The buffalo mozzarella and tomato salad was very flavoursome, as were the tagliatelle with mushroom sauce. The seafood risotto was full of tasty prawns, squid and shellfish, while the pigeon with lentils and red cabbage was fantastic. We decided we could just about squeeze desert in, and we were not disappointed by the extremely chocolaty soft chocolate cake and the unusually mealy but delicious cheesecake. There is an extensive list of wines with (unsurprisingly) a focus on Italian ones split by region, and both our choice of white for the meal and the desert wine were excellent.

All in all, this is definitely worth a visit, and although it is special-occasion territory, it still remains close enough to familiar Italian cuisine to give it a bit more of a special character.

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Gaucho can be summed up in two words: Excellent meat. The waiter comes round the table before you place your order with a big wooden tray holding examples of all their meats: rump, ribeye, sirloin and fillet steaks, churrasco (a thinner and marinated for 48 hours steak) plus some lamb chops. The beef steaks come in 225gr, 300gr or 400gr portions and are simply perfect: tasty, juicy and tender. They’re so good they hardly require any sauces to go with them (the peppercorn sauce being the only tiny let down in this restaurant).

The rest of the food doesn’t disappoint either. On arrival you get bread with butter and a delicious warm cheese-bread bite. Starters are great too, but I usually opt to go straight to a sizable steak, along with some side-orders (these are necessary as the meat doesn’t come with any salad or vegetables). The chips are worth particular mention, as does the dulce de leche cheesecake, if you can find the room for it. Vegetarians are also accounted for, as their menu has expanded lately to include more mains including a couple of veg ones. Still, this remains very much a steakhouse.

The list of wines is extensive and you won’t have any trouble finding a great red wine to match your meal. The restaurant atmosphere and service is also well looked after (most of them have room set aside as a bar), so the place doesn’t lack in ambiance either. 

This restaurant really scores high marks in every department, the steaks are truly outstanding and the place is worth every penny.

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The Maze, one of Gordon Ramsay’s ventures, ticks all the boxes of a fancy restaurant: well cooked elaborate dishes, excellent wine, efficient and unintrusive service, lovely atmosphere. As it has a bar attached to the restaurant with nothing to separate them, there is music played perhaps louder than most restaurants but at reasonable levels for having a conversation over your meal.

The menu however is organised a bit more differently than you’d expect. There is a list of dishes, split into smaller and slightly larger ones, and you are free to order as many as you want, but advised that two smaller and two larger ones is probably the right amount. Something like a gourmet tapas menu. There is also the option to go for the chef’s menu, which consists of 7 dishes (the last 2 of which are deserts) with only a couple of choices in the list to vary your selection. Even though the portions are predictably small, this is a lot of food, but it’s a good chance to sample many dishes. On our visit, the pumpkin soup with pieces of duck was very tasty, a dish of pickled beetroot with cream cheese was deliciously sharp and full of flavour, a quail with warm foie gras was quite pleasing, a dish of hake wrapped in parma ham was marvellous and the lamp accompanied by shepherd’s pie was fantastic (I told you it was a lot of food). The ice cream with fig jam and the floating island were light and sweet, a perfect finish to the meal. The wine list is extensive and they also offer “flights” - three glasses of three different wines to match your meal. The flight suggested by the Sommelier for our meal was excellent and original.

Overall, it’s very much worth a visit for a special occasion dinner.

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Bumpkin has a brasserie on the ground floor and a restaurant on the first floor, but the whole place feels more like a gastropub than anything else. So did the menu on our Sunday lunch visit. There was only bread with liver pate and onion marmelade for starter, an extensive list of different Sunday roasts (beef, pork, lamb, chicken and a fish and a vegeterian option) for a main and a choice of cheese, strawberry tart or chocolate cake for pudding. It’s a very short menu (it would be interesting to see their regular one) but the food tastes very good (so did the brilliant 2005 Rioja).  Especially on a wintery afternoon, it was ideal and left us perfectly satisfied.

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Capenter’s Arms received some very positive reviews from Timeout and we decided to pay it a visit after the Bonfire night fireworks at nearby Ravenscourt Park.

This establishment is classed as a Gastropub, and it was indeed a small and cosy pub converted into a comfortable dining area. There are limited tables, but the outdoor area would add to that in better weather.

However, the similarities and relevance to a traditional pub end there. The service, the menu and the presentation are those of a classy restaurant and bear no resemblance to a pub. You won’t find traditional pub-food dishes on offer, like fish and chips or sausages and mash, or even approximations of them. The daily changing menu on our visit included a starter of hot foie gras with barley which was delightful, and a satisfyingly creamy but light goat’s cheese salad. The list of mains was unusual and adventurous. No beef, no lamb, the only pork dish also contained snails, and there was a dish with haddock and rabbit. Our venison steak with chips and salad was excellent, as was the accompanying Rioja. We rounded off with a rich and tasty pear and pecan tart.

The imaginative dishes are very well cooked, this seems to be one of those places where the cooking skills of the chef are undeniable, no matter how plain or bold your choice of food is. This is as restaurant-like as a Gastropub gets, but it hits all the right notes. With so many summery options in that area, this is definitely a worthwhile one for the colder nights of the year.

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A while ago, I blogged about the (then new) “My Location” feature in Google Maps. In summary, it didn’t work for my PDA (constantly reporting that my location was unavailable) and it seemed like there was a newer version out, but not available for my OS (Windows Mobile 5, I was asking for trouble to be fair).

I looked for a newer available version yesterday and happily downloaded it hoping it may solve the problem. Indeed, I had a brief moment of joy when a blue dot appeared on the map with the footnote “your location with 3000 metres accuracy”. And then I noticed the map around the blue dot. This is where it was: http://tinyurl.com/3qwxpj

No. No I’m not in Taiwan, I’m in London. That’s off by a tiny bit more that 3000 metres.

Remaining seriously unimpressed (albeit slightly amused).

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Once again on Friday night we ended up at Barrafina. This is a Spanish tapas bar, and it’s literally that: there is an L-shaped bar that sits around 24 people on bar stools and that’s all the seating in the place. Given the small size of it, it’s remarkable they can prepare food and seat that many people anyway. There is also a counter with just enough room running along the side of the bar for the queue of people waiting as much as 40 minutes to be seated to be able to order drinks and a couple of tapas to appease their hunger.

And the long wait is perfectly justified. Barrafina specialises at preparing simple tapas very very well. There are a lot of things grilled or cooked with olive oil, garlic and lemon, thus bringing out all the flavour of the fresh ingredients without any extra fanfare and pretence.

Food is prepared in front of the customers, just behind the bar. You can observe the cooks grilling fish, shellfish or meat, slicing Iberian ham off the huge leg resting just behind the counter, frying croquettes and tortillas and the simple recipe is quite obvious: cook, season simply (salt, pepper, olive oil, vinegar, garlic, lemon - two or three of these), serve. There is also always a large selection of specials, most of which are fish and shellfish resting on ice at arms length and grilled on the spot (someone’s lobster was killed right in front of us).

On yesterday’s visit we enjoyed patatas bravas, pimientos de padron (green grilled peppers), bread spread with garlic and tomato and grilled lamb chops, which are amongst our regular choices and excellent as usual. We opted for a ham and spinach tortilla omelette which was perfectly cooked, some (fairly rare) grilled octopus seasoned with paprika and very tasty, and finished with a grilled piece of rib-eye topped with red peppers and melted cheese, which was amazing. There was just enough room to share a (thankfully) light crema catalana at the end. Oh, and the cava never misses.

Apart from the amazing food, it’s the experience that makes the place very worthwhile. Observing the food being prepared and ordering whatever looks good, a couple of dishes at a time, having the seafood in front of you to choose from, and the friendly and informal service, combine to give an authentic and pleasurable atmosphere.

Be warned, the place doesn’t take bookings, so expect a big queue (unless you go very early or very late). Also they do not accept groups of more than 4, as the place is so tiny, and even that would be a stretch as you’d be sitting side by side. It’s rather an ideal place for two looking for a fun and informal dinner out.

All in all, this is by far my favourite Spanish restaurant in London and as authentic as it could possibly be (as much as that’s worth coming from a non-Spaniard). As long as you’re prepared for the queue and the slightly cramped conditions of eating at the bar, you’re guaranteed to have a great time.

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I read Robbie’s post about convergence of devices (one device to rule them all) and got thinking about the behavioural aspect of it. Robbie argues that although it’s handy to have one device that’s your phone, internet access, GPS, camera - pretty much everything really - it makes for expensive upgrades as you stop using your bespoke devices and you get in trouble as you have to change when one feature breaks.

I would go one step further than that. I think that all-in-one is convenient only for the things you don’t care about much. For example, it might be just me, but I don’t find it convenient to use my phone as my main camera - my (cheap and insignificant) digital camera is much better equipped for that - better resolution, bigger screen, more features. Yes, I don’t always have it with me, but I can live with that. Then again I look at the photography enthusiasts (Dr. Pepper and psd for example)  who have massive SLR cameras with huge lenses and I can’t imagine they care much about taking photos on their phone. It seems to me that taking a random photo of something funny you see on the street is all the camera on your phone is good for. I think this goes for the other features as well. Listening to music on your all-in-one device will probably only be good enough if you don’t listen to that much music, and you don’t bother about noise-cancelling headphones etc.

You can easily disagree with my view on the above examples, but my point is that I see a behavioural trend towards specialised devices. People care about a really good camera, really good music experience etc. And it’s hard to build one device that’s really good a lot of things, it’s actually hard enough to build a device that’s good at one thing. An all-in-one device will inevitably be a compromise and will only be good enough for the things you don’t care that much about. On top of that, once you get used to a particular device for one feature, it would be annoying to have to change because another feature broke.

Or maybe I’m just a bit old and used to having different devices for different things. Maybe growing up in a world full of all-in-one devices means that you accept how good they are at each particular feature and can’t imagine having loads of different devices.

We’ll see which type prevails! 

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The Launceston Place is a newly refurbished British restaurant with very good reviews, so we decided to pay them a visit. We weren’t disappointed.The food was well cooked and immaculately presented. The foie gras starter with elderflower milk soup had delicately balanced flavours, while the very fresh scallops came served in actual sea shells. The main of lamb with smoked aubergine was tasty and accentuated the taste of the meat and the duck was excellent. A desert of strawberries with clotted cream and champagne was a good finish to the meal, while the brown bread parfait with spiced Mayan chocolate was original but a bit confusing. Espresso was spot on. There was also an amuse-bouche and a pre-desert (which was served inside eggshells) that added to the experience.The restaurant is cosy and has a discreet kind of elegance, while the small touches (like the flambe starter prepared in the middle of the dining room) help to form a pleasant experience and atmosphere. The service is unobtrusively friendly and particularly efficient - even for a restaurant of this stature (and price tag).Overall, this is a posh restaurant that’s worth it. Best suited for a quiet but special evening out, it definitely deserves a visit.

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