Time stops in Paris

Onglet & pommes soufflees at Boeuf Couronne

Rumpsteak Boeuf Couronnee

Pressed pig starter at Le Timbre

Snail and Puy lentil starter at Le Timbre

Veal and beef mains at Will's

Baron Rouge

Oysters and Charcuterie at Le Baron Rouge

Le mini-break

parisien we took this weekend was magical in only the way Paris can be. Armed with several maps, pieces of paper and recommendations of places that simply had to be visited, we took the crazy traffic on with Velib bikes (I’ll take my own bike next time though…)  Not being the most organised two people, we got lost a million times, and I’m sure I properly irked the chef at Le Timbre with my poor pleas, in French, that we were quite lost in Montparnasse.

First night in, was Le Boeuf Couronne, a restaurant in La Villette thats been there for ages, and no aspect of it – aged servers,  Art Deco interior or menu, seems to have changed. Since an article in the New York Times stated that this was one of the best places in Paris to try steak-frites, and they could acommodate us after a Eurostar trip that only reached the capital at 10.30 pm, it was perfect.

Foie gras pate and brioche for Simon and Fines Claires oysters for me, all terribly classically presented and pretty much standard as could be expected.  The restaurant however focuses on beef (Charolais) and these are served in the classic way too – rump with bearnaise for him, onglet with caramelised shallots for the lady. I love the pommes soufflees served on the side here - can’t say I’ve seen those anywhere else recently. A good Pomerol and some ripe cheese with Port finished the meal…

Next up was Le Timbre. Most dining venues, indeed most living spaces in Paris are tight, but this place redefines the term ‘intimate dining’.  As big as a double bedroom I’d say, with only one server, and the chef who acts as the host, takes bookings, washes the dishes…oh and does about 50 covers of splendid food a night. Our starters were so phenomenal that I think they stole the mains’ thunder, and whilst my millefeuille le timbre was something I’d love to replicate, Simon’s poached pear was just a little too plain for the price.  The chef does so much and the place is so busy for its size that you leave feeling like your job is positively a walk in the park. The menu and wine list are clearly reflections of the his personal taste, so is’nt entirely balanced, but if its your place you can do what you want, right? Judging by the string of patrons waiting outside in the cold (no space indoors) for a bunch of tables to clear, enough people agree with the chef’s recommendation anyway. I’d certainly go back if I found myself in Paris again…

Last up was Willi’s Wine Bar (preceded by a quick nibble and drink at Juveniles around the corner) which was, as we were jokingly warned by the server at Juveniles, awfully serious and packed with Americans. Well, we took our Southern Hemisphere accents and braved it, although for a place that’s been around for two decades I was expecting more atmosphere. Too much light, or something. Perhaps we were supposed to concentrate on the wines more, or judging by the rest of the customers, we were perhaps too young to appreciate the space.  The list is superb (that’s why we went in the first place) and so was the food, although next time I’d only go for a drink, and eat at a more moderately priced place.

Sunday morning saw us at Le Baron Rouge – certainly only a bar du vin that one would find by recommendation (thanks Brett)!  I tried to get a hold of as many Arcachon oysters outside as I could, whilst Simon quietly stared the crowd out of the way at the bar, returning with some ice cold white. Can’t say I’ve spent the better half of a Sunday morning leaning against a wall, working my way through dozens of oysters and chilled white – in deep-autumnal Paris- before, but I didn’t want to leave, and we mucked about for such a long time that we pretty much  just made our Eurostar back. By about 1 minute.

Martini London

Flavoured Martini

Sanderson Original Martini

Too-dirty Martini

The one cocktail that has stood both the test of time and cowboy barmen the world over. James Bond did a lot for it (if misguidedly) and today a good cocktail bar and its head mixologist (very fancy barman) is judged by their version of the original Martini (which was originally a Martinez, and no one is really sure whether it was gin or vodka in the first place so the lines are a little blurred to start off with.)  I love it, and like any Martini afficionado, I get quite upset when presented with a half-arsed attempt. Its like a kitchen serving rillettes or something-or-the-other potted – you serve it with the buttery/fatty seal on top just hitting room temperature – not colder and harder, not softer and melted. And the toast has to be hot to make the contents spreadable, all accompanied by some sharp pickles. That’s it.

 The Martini shares this simplicity; once you start dicking around, it all goes pear shaped. I am fascinated by all the different ways barmen swear they achieve the ultimate Martini – freezing the glass, using a room temperature glass and swirling ice cubes for several long seconds, swirling the alcohol with the ice, and of course all manners of shaking.

London boasts some of the best bars in the world and since I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t have time to have a drink in all of them, appreciating their decor, and er, drinks, I formulated my very own Great Urban Swish Martini Expedition. 20 bars, 20 martinis. (Maybe more martini’s. Up first - Dukes Bar at Dukes Hotel, tucked away in a cul-de-sac in St. James’ place.  A tiny bar that claims to be the very place where Ian Fleming conceptualised Casino Royale, and the now famous “shaken…” phrase. We were easily the youngest patrons, but settled into the deep royal blue chairs, and ordered Dukes’ Gin Martini’s. (£14.90) Yep, pretty steep, but the drink is created tableside with such flair you could mistake it for ordering crepes suzette at a silver service French restaurant. Alex, our server, talked us through the whole process, from when the vermouth is splashed (also sometimes spritzed on the glass here) in the glass and swirled, the addition of Tanqueray Ten and then the oil from an  Amalfi lemon rind which is dropped into the drink. The alcohols and glasses are stored until use in a freezer set at -25 centigrade, which eliminates any use for ice, he explains. Which makes for a very strong drink in which the aromas develop as you slowly sip the viscous liquid. Bar snacks including massive Gordal olives are topped up discreetly, and the experience soon became so enjoyable that we decided we couldn’t leave without trying the Vesper (the heroine in Casino Royale). At £16.50 this not the priciest Martini version in London I might add.  Based on the classic , Potocki Vodka, Tanqueray Ten and Angostura Bitters are used, and the drink is finished with Lillet. Lemon oil is added again with the twist. This drink is loaded with different flavours, but its hard to imagine that more than one could be enjoyed, even though Dukes uses the smaller kind of Martini glass with a narrower bowl.  

A few weeks later we decided to pay the Sanderson Hotel with its famous Phillipe Starck decor a visit. We opted not to sit at the Long Bar which is seriously lit up for people-watching, and had our Martini’s in the garden courtyard instead. Original martini’s (£12) were properly mixed but my second choice – a dirty martini, must have been 1/3 olive brine :  2/3 alcohol. Not good at all and the cheap IKEA-looking glassware wasn’t what one expected the Sanderson to come up with.  Simon had a  flavoured martini which was garnished with a very flamboyant physalis, but the drink could have been any fruit cocktail, which what flavoured Martini’s become I suppose. So Dukes is up ahead after 2 bars and 8 Martini’s…

Oysters all over

The ominous oysters

Artichoke Vinaigrette at Pearsons Arms

Oysters at Pearson's Arms

My favourite ancient Roman gourmand, Apicius, has been documented in history bragging about supplying the emperor Trajan with oysters - oysters that could be served uncooked safely, and were famous for their unique taste of the sea. Those specimens would have hailed from what Romans then called “cold and inhospitable Britannia”, from the area where the tiny seaside town of Whitstable is today. Wealthy Romans loved oysters (in the manner that they loved everything exotic – turtle-doves, peacock tongues etc…) but historians today don’t believe that they were ever eaten fresh by the time they had crossed the Roman empire. Even Apicius gives a recipe for ‘pickled’oysters in his book (the first recipe book ever written) but neglects to mention how to get hold of fresh ones if you feel the urge.

Here in Europe oysters are at their best from October to February due to the sea being much colder, so I figured a weekend visit to Whitstable was needed to try the now famous Whitstable natives, as well as some rock varieties. Wheelers Oyster Bar was a must – any restaurant that manages to stay in operation for over 150 years, and recently had Jay Rayner creaming, has me interested. As the tiny restaurant was full, we sat at the counter up front, where customers come and go, enjoying nearly every kind of shellfish Britain has to offer. We were in the mood for a pre-dinner snack, and had brought some beautiful wine with us from London.

I ordered a bowl of winkles, which were the wrong kind of chewy and not fresh. That aside, we should have known when a nervous-looking lad brought the dozen oysters we had requested – even the lady behind the counter suddenly became quite occupied. Initially we were really surprised at how badly shucked these specimens were, and thought that that could have been the reason for the cloudy juice. Which it wasn’t. These were old. Too old. I immediately had images of dying, and was convinced I’d start feeling seriously ill any moment. Simon was looking as uncomfortable as I felt and it seemed as if the place was closing in on us. We got ourselves out of there fast Anyone who has been serving oysters for such a long time knows when they have bad or old stock, - passing them off to paying customers is a pretty irresponsible way of doing business, even if Mr Rayner thinks its fine.

A local had told us about The Pearson’s Arms earlier that day and we hoped to save our night there, with Simon bravely ordering some more native oysters. These were not only presented with more care, but were clearly fresher. The rest of our meal here rivalled some of the “best” gastropubs in London and I’d happily send someone here if they felt the need to check out Whitstable.

Too much of a good thing…

Blood cake at St John's

Perfectly cooked rump at Rodizio Rico's

Bespoke grill at

Artichoke and octopus at QV

Rump & Bearnaise at QV

Rhum Baba and physalis at QV

The past week I set foot in more restaurants than I normally do over several  months, but as things do,  loads happened in my life in a short space of time, leaving me in a  slightly dejected mood tonight. Of course I have stuff that needs doing, but I’m sure you know the feeling of when you’ll put things off and procrastinate because all you want to do is go back there in mind and spirit.

It all started on Sunday when I met Werner for late lunch at St John Bread & Wine, one of my favourite East London Sunday hang-outs. Clearly on this particular Sunday the lady that served us wasn’t really into it, and we sat around for quite a while with our sad/hungry faces on waiting for bread and wine. Eventually I thought I’d chew my arm off and flagged down some other server who helped us. I would have thought that the service would be quite good as Mr Henderson himself was dining. Eating was the standard brown crabmeat on toast, ham & green bean salad with duck egg and a steaming but unappealing fennel & Berkswell gratin. A super highlight was the blood cake with prunes and pancetta. I love making blood cake myself and this version was inspirational.

Off Simon and I cycled to Hyde Park for a staff party, and several Caipirinhas and some drama later, everyone was sizing up the buffet at brazilian restaurant Rodizio Rico. For £22.50, you help yourself to all the brazilian side dishes you can eat, and then servers come to the table and carve off every conceivable piece of meat that can be barbecued – on top of everything on your plate. Know when you eat so much you can’t actually drink? Well that’s the deal here. Feijoada with fufu, bean and pickled vegetable salads and  particularly the roast  rump were ridiculously good. It’s all about no-fuss eating.

My folks landed on Monday, and insisted on having a bite at Vinoteca, as well as a bottle of something inspiring that they had’nt tried before. The Hungarian Chardonnay (unoaked) got the thumbs-up from my mom, who according to my dad, has been a bit of an ABC all of the 30 years they’ve been together. Mission accomplished I say.

Tuesday lunch saw me and my mom at the bar at Salt Yard, and we had such good tapas that she prematurely called it her favourite meal in the big smoke. Can’t believe I’ve never been before – if I could afford it I would park myself at the bar weekly. Tuesday dinner (oh yes, still going), our party sampled the steak tartare, oysters, octopus and artichoke salad and smoked salmon at Quo Vadis. Mains were  rumps with bearnaise sauce that they have a bit of a name for by now, duck breast and my confit monkfish. All perfectly executed if not a bit boring. Or something. I expected something more exciting from QV but I suspect I was getting jaded by this point. I was delighted to see rum baba on the menu, and got Simon to order it, being the only one with room for dessert. General consensus at the table was the question on whether there was a difference between the baba and a soggy doughnut. I forgive them, they just don’t get it.

Last in the line was Terroirs – a wine bar I’ve been wanting to try for some time now, and even though the decidedly French small plates (clams, smoked eel, remoulade) were delicious, the decor didn’t do it for me. Love the list though, and it’s my top choice in Covent Garden for affordable eating and good wine. I’m taking a break now though. Until Sunday, that is…

Why I became a chef

Private function starters

Asking a chef why he/she decided to pursue their (un)enviable career, you’re due to get a more creative answer than asking an accountant for example, or a banker, why they do what they do. Because no, I don’t get to play with numbers on a PC the whole day and look intelligent for it, and I sure as hell don’t get paid a lot for slogging away an unfathomable amount of hours. My job is physically hard, working conditions are hot and uncomfortable, and ask any chef – there’s always a shortage of staff. So you work harder, to do some other guy’s work. From the second you light the ovens  in the morning, you start sweating. Then you do service and work up a real good sweat – the kind where rivulets stream down your arms from your armpits to your forearms, down your back to your butt, and inbetween your breasts. Nice. The winning comforting thought of the day is that you can at least change your jacket before you have the priviledge of sweating all the way through the afternoon and working up a good sweat again during evening service. By the end of it you feel like a Babylonian whore doing brisk trade in the summertime.

Not counting all the auxillary little things that can go wrong in your day – the fish delivery being stolen out of the delivery truck an hour before service, the oven/dishwasher/salamander/blender/your willpower breaking down  again… All in all you know no day will be the same or tedious in any way.

In most kitchens people of different nationalities work together, often with different grasps of English, and anyone with a special talent for Charades will never have the wrong part of a strained stock, unknown vegetables (anything other than a tomato) or precious foie gras fat binned. There’s also the issue with front of house. The pressure and rush of service can often turn small issues and miscommunications into large and often spectacular blow-ups. Its quite terrifying to see a screaming head chef’s nose  literally explode with blood in anger (and obviously the heat). Its not funny being thrown with a cucumber/leek/your prep/your plated dish mid-service either. A sure indication that you are now in the shit.

So after all that complaining – why do I do it? Because it’s me. Its what makes my day complete. The science of cooking, the history, the trivia, its neverending lessons and secrets. My dad once told me whilst I swung wildly at golf balls – ‘Golf is probably one of the most humbling games, once you think you’ve mastered it, something goes awry with your swing/stance/posture, and you have to review and have a whole new look at your game.’  I approach my cooking in the same way…

Fast food done decent

Growing up, my idea of fast food was  my dad driving the entire family 45 minutes to the next, bigger town, ordering from Kentucky Fried Chicken, then driving all the way back before even being allowed to touch a chip.  We would then eat  as a family around the table, which made that KFC the best meal of the week. This happened about once every 2 months until I was about 14, after which the region I lived in started being transformed by instant food.

I’m still not a fan of fast food, or eating in front of the TV  in fact, although I’ve developed a weakness for pizzas. When moving to London, the food culture is a bit of a shock after Cape Town. The city is saturated with fast food outlets, all serving pretty much the same thing, in various degrees of crap quality. Cape Town has its fair share of fast food joints, including the local bunny-chow, but the general population can’t afford to buy it regularly, except probably for McDonalds, but that doesn’t qualify as food, and therefore doesn’t count.

Which is why when recently on the island of Lesvos, their versions of Gyro and Souvlaki, the ultimate Greek fast foods, is bloody good. Charred pita with shish pork, fresh tomato, tzatziki, onion and a whole lot of fries stuffed in there. If you really want it, they’ll reluctantly add mustard and ketchup instead of the tzatziki. So good I ate three souvlaki in a week.

Daytime souvlaki

Nighttime souvlaki

 That’s more fast food than I’ve eaten in the last three years. Yeah. 

One week of feasting in Lesvos

Baby goat kleftiko

Fish Shop

Eating octopus and courgette flowers

Bakery in Lisvori

Phillip's uncle cutting melon

Seafood at Vatera beach

Fried sardines

Our fish being portioned tableside

On the Greek island of Lesvos the coffee and the drinks have one thing in common – they’re both strong enough to put hair on (anyone’s) chest. The food is simple, the ingredients top quality, and the pastries are so sweet you get high. The graffiti is political, the sea is so salty that swimmers can float about in it in the sweltering summers.

The week I spent there is now a bit of a distant memory, but this being my first European vacation, I reckon I made a pretty good job of it. As one is supposed to whilst on holiday, we ate daily until near bursting, and when we couldn’y fit in any more to eat we went in search of a beach and a drink.

Phillip’s mom is from Lesvos and we were fortunate enough to try her traditional Greek dishes most nights, followed by some super sweet local pastry. Kleftiko, dolmades, tzatziki, octopus in red wine with clove, sauteed squid, moussaka, okra in tomato sauce, spanakopita, horiatiki, fried courgette flowers, etc were brought along every day. By Wednesday I decided that Phillip’s mom shamed my cooking skills and I seriously considered becoming a librarian, which is what I planned to do with my life before becoming sidetracked by a crayfish somewhere in my teens.

Greek food is simple and reliant on good produce, and Greeks are not into spicing their food heavily (no , thats apparantly what the Turkish do). Lesvos is pretty much a self-sufficient island, and most of the little villages around the island (little as in 40 – 180 inhabitants) are known for some kind of speciality – Phillip’s ancestral village, Lisvori, is known for its bread. We managed to navigate an excuse for a road to obtain some of this bread before siesta – and it’s that good that Ida ate the better half of a loaf on the way to the next village.

Not content with the seafood nirvana I reached on my trip to Lisbon earlier this year, I tried as much as the island had to offer. Every restaurant does octopus in vinegar/red wine, as well as sardines which are served fresh, lightly salted with sea salt, or fried. Red mullet, squid, octopus (meat)balls and of course there’s always the option of choosing a fish from the small displays and having the  kitchen grill it for you. Mischa even ordered shark at some stage (well did you know what Galeos Fish meant on a menu), which is served with a kicking skordalia sauce. Enough garlic to keep you healthy for a year.

On our last night we went to a fish restaurant in a village neighbouring Mytilini, owned by a family friend of the Prokopiou’s. Inside the kitchen (!) we were shown a catch of Red Roman that had just arrived, and chose our dinner. Obviously it was roasted to perfection, and filleted into portions tableside. The fish was cooked by someone who knew what they were doing, and the meat, still moist (you can overcook Red Roman quite horribly- at which point the only thing you can do is cry) flaked beautifully off the bones. It was simply served with lemon and olive oil (the island’s oil is much lighter, and less peppery, therefore more food friendly than the mainland versions). A fitting end to a stay on a beautiful island.

Poisson en Papillote de plastique…

I like Twitter. Anyone that has a Facebook page will like Twitter. I use it mainly to highlight new posts on this blog, and to check out what other foodie people – mainly those I have met through work, are up to. Once you’re onto a network, you’ll find that a lot of randoms want to ‘follow’ your tweets on your network, as that (networking) is what most people use the engine for. (That and a lot of pointless yackering.) So, like with actual groups of friends, there are friends of friends and boy/girlfriends of friends and dogs of friends. And all of these tweople, if none of them suffer from twitphilia, join your twitterverse.

So the point I was getting to, was that I have some real randoms following me, and I’ve returned the favour. I see some pretty weird stuff sometimes – ‘Have jst lcked mself out of hse. No shoes. Wet hair. Nbours not hme. What t do?’ She got a lot of advice. This afternoon’s one was the best though – and kind of alarming. ‘ Steamed fish in Saran wrap in micro last night. Grt new healthy way to cook’. Oh no. That’s just wrong. Plastic wrap? Really? The classical French dish with a space-age twist.

I wonder if this tweeter (twit?) has thought about what plastic wrap is. PVC. Yes, as in bad, bad outfit PVC. Oh, and something has to make it stretch. Those would be plasticizers, which are chemicals that can transfer onto food when the fish and the plastic and the microwaves all do their zapping thing in the microwave oven. Not good.

When you ask chefs what the item most used in a professional kitchen is, most would answer plastic wrap. The stuff’s incredible, and we use tons of it. To cover food. I’ve seen it used as belts and impromptu apron strings. When we steam though – we mostly take the hint from the Japanese with bamboo, or a la francaise avec papier. Quite a few chefs I know have mused over the fact when they’ve realised the only thing that destroys it, are sub-zero temperatures. Weird. (heat merely melts it) Somehow I just don’t think that it’s the best vehicle for lemongrass butterfish en papillote…

Sunday night’s sausage

Cochineal Insects

Danish Salami

Living in the East End of London (more towards the er, Bow end…) has its downsides. If you don’t bike about, you WILL wait for a packed and heaving No.8 bus. For hours. Nipping out for a quick (decent) coffee is a bit of a problem too, thank heavens for The Counter in Hackney Wick. The other major problem is decent shopping. Not a supermarket within walking distance, as is the norm elsewhere in London. Loads of crap cornershops – good for cheap(ish) beer at 2am, not so good for ingredients for a decent Sunday night meal. Which is how we ended up with the Danish Sausage. I wasn’t aware the Danish made their own version, but there it was. Its memorable colour however is what drove me to write this post about it in the first place. Very, very pink. Barbie would have had sausage envy.

I’ve always wondered about those really pink meats in the cornershops. Why are they so pink? Did some kind of research show that customers in cornershops, desperate for cold cuts, are somehow drawn to marbled pink, fanned sausage displays? Because thats all there is. Up and down Roman Rd. The packaging says that apparently 65% of my sausage is pork. Well, could have been worse. Says there too that The Sausage owes its radiant hue to E120 – also known as Carmine red or Cochineal.

The fine internet tells me that this colour is derived from little South and Central American insects, which are, as it were, boiled, dried and minced. It takes 155,000 insects to make 1 kg of colouring. The happy news is that they are not toxic or carcinogenic, but the production of the colour they produce, used to colour everything from make-up, my sausage, and clothing, can induce anaphylactic shock. Ok.

I don’t now how I feel about that. We ate quite a lot of the sausage anyway, its the recession after all, and we were hungry. (Its not good when Simon is hungry). But I don’t think we’ll have Danish Sausage again.

A thought I had whilst on my bicycle the other day…

This whole blogging thing is a bit of a double-edged sword methinks. Every Jane and Jack with some kind of opinion can now voice it loud and clear in cyberspace, tag it with umpteen words and then sit back and watch how innocent web surfers looking for ‘plum jam’ and ‘truffle mash’ are attracted to their dumb and ill-judged views on their stupid blogs. Says the one with a blog called ‘E rants on…’

Back to my point. From a chef’s point of view its useful to see what customers really think of a restaurant’s food, and of course people go on about the wine, ambiance, good-looking service staff etc. Which is good. On the flipside there are those morons out there with too much time on their hands and more foodie aspiration than they know what to do with. Now these people act much in the same way as those snaking crowds on golf courses watching the Opens and Masters day after day in respectful silence. They have a nagging wish to be part of the restaurant industry, be chefs, know what the difference is between Dauphinoise and Duchesse potatoes, or what is grown in the Douro valley. Thing is, they’ll never do it. (Doesn’t pay enough, hard work, long hours, dirty and sweaty, looks cool from a distance only.) Since they obviously do some other job in the daytime, they decide to start keeping a blog, on which they voice their opinion about every foodie thing they can possibly fit into their downtime.

So now the web is inundated with ladies who sipped the cheapest wine at a wine bar, declared that they were not very impressed. Of course not – its the CHEAPEST WINE ON THE LIST. What did they expect? Next time they should just stick with 2-for £5 at the cornershop. More wine, same level of satisfaction. Neither do I want to know whether Hitler was a vegetarian or not, or why its so bothersome if he wasn’t. I just wasted valuable internet time reading some guys rant about whether a chocolate pot – made from 70% dark chocolate, was chocolatey enough. Some woman dissatisfied about portion sizes in a restaurant. Next time guys – mention it in the restaurant – so the staff can do something about it – maybe give you a whole chunk of bitter chocolate to chew on, or an entire rack of lamb instead of 3 cutlets. Then go home, and write about something interesting.