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I’ve got the parents coming down to stay in a couple of weeks. They’re mainly coming to see the Masketeers, while they’re staying we’ll probably take them out for a meal or two, as well. I really wanted to take them to St John in Smithfield but they don’t do Saturday lunch or any Sunday service. The two most convenient times to take the visiting parents out.
St John was fantastic, a big white room, industrial pendant lamps, simple furniture, white linen on the tables and the staff. Our waitress was informative and friendly without overdoing it. Mrs Mask ate a crab the size of a coffee table for her starter, she then had pigeon with radishes and for dessert a blood orange jelly served with clotted cream and little handmade biscuits. I started with the signature dish of bone marrow, essence of cow, served with a parsley salad, toast and a little pot of damp, grey English sea salt. It was fucking marvellous. Then I had shin of beef braised with pigs trotter, dark, glutinous hunks of meat that would’ve made at least two blubbering psychotics of any vegetarian diner. I finished with a small plate of madelaines. These light, fragrant Proustian nuggets take fifteen minutes to arrive, as they are baked fresh for each diner, from scratch. To accompany the food we had a couple of bottles of Burgundy from the sensible end of the wine list and afterwards a pair of armagnacs, and I broke my caffeine-free kick and joined my beloved in an espresso.
It was, perhaps, the best meal I’ve ever had in a restaurant. Certainly the best I’ve had in a long, long time. But we can’t take my parents there.
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Man I really want to go there. Is it turbo expensive?
Umm...sadly most of my restaurant reccomendations are for the take loads of mates there and get lashed for not much cash veriety.
The Perseverence on Lambs Conduit St (Russel Sq) is supposed to be very good gastro-pub kind of thing with a restaurant upstairs. It has been full everytime I try and book though. Posts: 2793
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Whilst I don't have time to give you any actual reviews (later, certainly), I can pass on this gem.
With this book in hand you will never, ever go wanting for a good, reasonably priced meal ever again. My lovely lady wife bought it for me last year and it has been carried with me ever since.
quote:Originally posted by Darryn.R: I ate at the BALTIC a while ago with work, cracking it was too (I think) I mostly got tree'd on vodka and stared at the mightily bunty waitresses
The same goes for Wódka, linked on the same splash page. Some things never change you see - there are still large numbers of Germanophiles who gather together to invade the local Polish restaurant.
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When I had a proper job, we went to Baltic for a working lunch, and I got wasted on grey goose on the company account. One of the greatest lunches of my life.
quote:Originally posted by Darryn.R: BALTIC seems a hit - I'm sure the food was good too
I'm actually a fan of Polish food, and can be honest in saying that visits to Wódka are not made simply for the, erm, Wódka. The bigos are as good as what you'd get in Krakow, Przemysl or Bialystok, and the Barczsz is out of this world.
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The Fat Duck in Bray is bloody marvellous. Heston Blumenthal is some sort of witch. Course, since winning Best Restaurant in the Universe tables will be hard to come by. He also has a Bistro and now a pub. The pub even serves "normal" food. I bet that's nice.
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What ho. Sat here feeling bilious after a lunch at Petrus, Gordon Ramsay's restaurant in the Berkeley Hotel, yesterday. As a special treat, and a gastronomic and service delight, it was fantastic. There are three lunch menus to choose from: the set menu for Ł30 (*gulp*), an a la carte for Ł60 (*swoon*), and the degustation for Ł80 (*dead faint*). The service was amazing - the kind where a smartly dressed Frenchman comes and attends to a need you you were only just beginning to be aware of. There was someone in charge of the door, someone who did apperitifs, a wine man in charge of the 3in-thick wine list, someone to whisk amuse bouches around, and the one with the best job of all - charge of the cheese trolly and the BON BON TROLLEY. Yes, at the end of the meal a silver trolley appears at the table, with dangling crystal baskets full of the most delicious sweets, which the dear Frenchy then plucks with a tiny pair of silver tongs and puts them on a crystal dish. And the cheese! So much runny French stuff the trolley practically propelled itself. And the biscuits came in a silver biscuit barrel, one for each table!
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Baltic cocktails are the dogs bollocks. I have eaten there but couldn't comment on the food due to the cocktails wrapping me up in a haze of toxic bliss.
anyway recommendations. Chez Bruce, but that's in Wandsworth common and therefore a bit of a trek. Pricey as well. My fallback is always Cafe Boheme in Soho, decent food, not too pricey and the cocktails are amazing. Howabout Smiths of Smithfield, never been there myself but always hear good things, especially from meat eaters.
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I don't mind the Baltic but I don't think the food's all that. They fry their pierogi, which I think makes them second rate but I guess the blini aren't bad.
If you want really good Polish food then I'd recommend Zamoyski in Hampstead, which is cheap but really great. The golabki are fantastic, you often don't get them on British menus and their chocolate vodka is really thick and goes down a treat.
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Chez Bruce do a good set menu price, but it's all a little 'gout' inducing.
There's a Polish Club in Balham which gets really good reviews, inbetween Balham and Tooting Bec, just by the TA centre on the High Street. I've never been, but never heard a bad word about it either - however, it is south of the river.
If you are near Leicester Square, grab a falafal from Gaby's Deli (which is next to the theatre opposite the Hippodrome on Charring Cross Road) they're fantastic.
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I went to some 'Polish' bar in Holborn for the beginning of a stag night once. I had been to Poland the summer before and, while I obviously didn't go to every bar in Poland, this one was about as far away from being a Polish bar as I could possibly imagine.
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Actually Swine is pretty much what they eat - a lot of pork, and cabbage and tuber veg. I think it's more the community sense of a whole gang of Polish folk getting together, singing loudly with beer and paint-stripper inside them about the old country as they chuckle all the way to the bank doing all the jobs that fat lazy brit's are too fat or lazy to do, better than they would anyway, and cheaper, while still earning more money a month than they would a year back home. Or is this stero-typing, I can never tell?
The Polish bar in Holborn? Is it down a little, busy alley? If it's the place I'm thinking of, it's like some rich twats idea of what a polish bar would look like if Stanley Kubrik was filming it set in some post-modern future, and yeah, it's rubbish.
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quote:Originally posted by Benny the Ball: The Polish bar in Holborn? Is it down a little, busy alley? If it's the place I'm thinking of, it's like some rich twats idea of what a polish bar would look like if Stanley Kubrik was filming it set in some post-modern future, and yeah, it's rubbish.
Yes. Yes, that's it. 100% certain. Just around the corner from the tube station.
I once heard (endured) the singer in some band point out this incredible observation: that if you say the word "Polish" (meaning from, or of Poland), the word "polish" (as in what you make your table shiny with) and the word "police" (as in the ***** with funny hats) in a Sean Connery accent, they all sounded the same. That way, you could have the "Polish polish police" or "Polish polish polish" as he said. The audience was in hysterics, I can tell you.
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Thanks Statist. I'll have to remember to tell the best man to regale the audience with that one when I am in Poland for a wedding later this summer.
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quote:Originally posted by Samuelnorton: Thanks Statist. I'll have to remember to tell the best man to regale the audience with that one when I am in Poland for a wedding later this summer.
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that reminds me of the joke about what does a polish brisde get after her wedding that s long and hard to get her mouth round A NEW SURNAME it is one of those jokes that is quite difficult to tell and make it funny even if you have my capacity for the english language. maybe that is because it is not funny. one day i will work out why my brain insists on retaining such a colossal amount of utterly useless shit, like unfunny jokes about polish brides and the Girl Guide Promise, but is quite happy to let me forget things like the last time my father made me laugh, or the name of that little boy who gave me the chinese dolls in primary school who has as good a claim to the title of 'my first love' as anyone bar maybe adam ant and the boy in the white and blue helmet from battle of the planets. can anyone tell me why the human brain is so cocking contrary. bueller. bueller. anyone.
quote:Originally posted by Samuelnorton: Thanks Statist. I'll have to remember to tell the best man to regale the audience with that one when I am in Poland for a wedding later this summer.
In my experience, best men (wherever they come from) are fucking desperate. Don't tell him it's a good idea cos he'll only fucking believe you. Best men do that. How does being an official part of a wedding suddenly turn otherwise acceptable people into retards?
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quote:Originally posted by Benny the Ball: If you are near Leicester Square, grab a falafal from Gaby's Deli (which is next to the theatre opposite the Hippodrome on Charring Cross Road) they're fantastic.
Hah, I bigged Gaby's up a few months back and noone paid any attention, they do indeed have falafal of the gods, I can also highly recommend the little oblong chocolately biscuit/cake things dusted with icing sugar which are at the front of the counter about a yard in to the place, they're so good you could ruin a perfectly good pair of pants in pleasure at eating one.
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The first time I had falafel, and the seccond I had a mixed salad. So there. Martin had a salt beef sanwitch, which contained an entire cow's worth of salt beef.
I am considering going today, but I dont think I will have time. I am hoping to go on a guided tour of St Pancras chambers...report to follow...
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