Rossopomodoro

With the recommendations of both a Neapolitan and a Sardinian, a group of us girls from work headed to Rossopomodoro near Covent Garden for dinner a couple Friday nights ago. This Italian chain has received quite a slating from the blogging world but it seems it’s all their dishes, apart from their pizzas, that disappoint. So, sticking with the pizzas must be the thing to do.

I bullied poor Mirna into sharing both a red pizza and a white one with me; unsurprisingly, the latter is made without tomato sauce but this can be added if you miss it. It was a long wait for the pizzas but I think it was worth it (and hey, the place was packed and we were a large group).

Our pizza rosso was La Verace (£10.20) with tomato sauce, DOP buffalo mozzarella, DOP extra virgin olive oil from Sorrento and fresh basil. I’m sure it’s difficult to find a more carbon-unfriendly pizza with all its ingredients flown in from Italy but you know what? I didn’t care as it was delicious with its great tomato base and dollops of fresh melty mozzarella. The base was both thin in the middle and thick (in a puffy way) out towards the edges and had a good chew and flavour. Excellent.

For our pizza bianco, I chose the Carmelo (£9.30) with Provola cheese, Neapolitan sausage, friarielli (Neapolitan wild turnip tops) and fresh basil. (Ah, those turnip tops! We had the same amount on our pizza as there was on that plate at Polpo.) I loved that combination of bitter greens with savoury meat and the herbal bite of basil. What would have made it better would have been some sweet tomato… I missed it! I need to get used to white pizzas, I think.

Even though we were all pretty stuffed (and the two of us were doubly so as we controlled pre-dinner hunger pangs with a char siu bun snack), I split a Mandorlotto (£5) – Almond flavoured ice cream with Nutella, whipped cream and chocolate brittle – with another colleague. Our waiter confirmed that all their gelati were made with buffalo milk – is this the norm in Italy? If you don’t like the flavour of bitter almonds, you won’t like this. I thought the gelato was alright though a bit icy and there was no sign of chocolate brittle unless they meant cocoa powder. But Nutella with ice cream – why haven’t I thought of this before?! What a fabulous combo that I will definitely recreate at home. Still, just an ok dessert from Rossopomodoro. I’m definitely going back but it’ll be just for those pizzas.

Rossopomodoro
50-52 Monmouth St
London WC2H 9EP

There are two other branches: one on Fulham Road and the other in Notting Hill.

I’m heading off out of the country soon and so I’ll be away from the blog for a while. New posts in about a fortnight!

 

Polpo

At about 7pm last Thursday, I was sitting down at a table at Polpo, the latest must-try place on the Twittersphere, excitedly reading through the placemat menu under my nose. The place was buzzing and lots of people were being turned away at the door. Everything sounded so good and as I was dining with three other very keen food lovers, I knew we’d get a chance to order a good sampling of what was on offer. However, at about 8:30pm, we left unhappy and still hungry. Here’s what happened in between.

While waiting for the others to arrive, a couple of us ordered nonalcoholic cocktails, exclaiming at the good value prices of only £3 each! Only when we came, we found the prices to be the exact opposite – not such good value at all. Actually, they were quite expensive for what’s essentially a combination of fruit juice and sparkling water, all served in tiny kindergarten water tumblers.

When the others did arrive, we started ticking off our choices on the menu; bizarrely, some items were listed in Italian while others were not – very strange and there didn’t seem to be any logic to it. Anyway, a crostini or two each along with some arancini, those lovely deep fried risotto balls, to start. Then a pizzetta bianca, as we’d heard good things about it. Two meat dishes. Four seafood dishes. Two vegetables. We’d order desserts later.

Our nibbly things arrived first. The pizzetta bianca was a thin 6 inch round of dough topped with cheese, onions and oregano. It was tasty but nothing spectacular. My Spratti in saor crostini was well priced and tasty enough but I was having difficulty seeing what I was eating again. The light was so low (so “romantic” others might say) that one eating companion asked how the cabbage was on my crostini. Only it wasn’t cabbage but onion. It’s not that I’m complaining about the darkness because I was unable to take proper photos but when it’s so dark that I cannot actually see what’s on my plate – does the restaurant have something to hide? In case you’re wondering what spratti in saor is, it seems to be fried sprats marinated in a tangy escabeche-like sauce. At least, that’s what my taste buds told me; it was too dark to confirm this visually. As for the arancini? Biting in one was like taking a mouthful of plain white rice. There was no salt added whatsoever and the little bit of inoffensive cheese in the middle added little to its flavour. I found myself reaching for the salt shaker.

A good while after these nibbly things, our other dishes arrived and yeah, they were a lot smaller than we’d expected them to be and we probably wouldn’t have minded if the cooking impressed. The Cuttlefish in its ink, gremolata was really delicious – excellent tender cuttlefish in a briny rich sauce. But Slow roast duck, green peppercorns, black olives, tomatoes was bland – chunks of soft duck in a tomato sauce and I couldn’t detect any green peppercorns. Mussels and clams came in a large mound but we quickly realised that a lot of it was mainly shell. I counted maybe two or three minuscule clams and half of the remaining mussels were closed and inedible. The Pork belly, radicchio, hazelnuts had good flavours throughout but it just didn’t make you sit up and take notice. The Octopus salad had the opposite problem of the arancini, being oversalted. Fennel, bobby beans, cobnuts turned out to be exactly that – thinly shaved raw fennel with blanched bobby beans, all scattered with roughly chopped cobnuts. A lovely salad that really showcases the quality of the ingredients….well, it would have been if I hadn’t been distracted by the small handful of fennel and all of three beans. The Fritto misto we ordered never turned up at all, as I only recalled this morning.

The biggest kicker of the evening though was the Turnip tops, chilli, garlic which came in the most ridiculously sized portion – that’s it in the photo below! I’m torn between calling it mean or just pathetic. And here’s the real blow: on the menu, it’s listed for £5.80. To be fair, on our final receipt, it became £4.80 but a fiver is still too much for what we received.

After all these dishes, we still had large spaces in our stomachs to fill. I believe we could have honestly ordered all that again twice over but we were tired of their food (and frightened of doubling our bill) and even gave up the idea of trying their desserts. Along with service and two of their cheapest bottles of wine, the total came to £100 for the four of us.

After reading so many good reviews and experiencing so much of the online hype about Polpo, to say I was disappointed is a bit of an understatement. The cooking in the kitchen really needs to be reviewed as well as the prices versus portion size issue. Nothing to complain about the service though – everyone was professional and pleasant and the room itself has a good vibe and is pleasing (and would be more so if the lights were turned up a bit).

Polpo
41 Beak Street
London W1F 9SB

I had to add this on as an addendum to the post – we took our still hungry bodies over to Bodeans on Poland Street and feasted on a second dinner of baby back ribs and Buffalo wings!

 

Skylon at the Royal Festival Hall

Skylon was a futuristic, cigar shaped, insectile tower that stood as the symbol for the Festival of Britain in 1951. It stood on the Southbank for not much longer than a year before it was scrapped but there are many people in London who still do remember it, which we learned when watching a documentary on the Festival on the telly; I think this was shown about the time the Royal Festival Hall was reopened after its refurbishment in 2007. This was also when Skylon was reborn but this time, as the name of a new restaurant within the hall.

As we were heading to a concert at the RFH last Thursday (Berg’s Wozzeck – fabulous!), I wanted to have dinner somewhere closeby and having not tried Skylon before, I proposed that we head there for their pre-theatre menu. Skylon is divided into two areas: the restaurant and the more casual grill. We stuck with the grill, hoping that dishes would be turned out quicker and enticed by the slightly more affordable set menu. In the grill, it’s £19 for two courses and £22.50 for three.

We shared a starter: Foie gras chicken liver parfait, tomato and apple chutney, toast poilane. This was quite delicious with the sweet-sour chutney working well with the rich, creamy parfait. The toast was excellent (I love pain Poilâne) but I wish there was at least another slice.

For Blai, the Salmon and smoked haddock fish cake, baby leaves, tartar sauce for a main course. This was a lovely, big, fat fishcake with lots of fish within; a nice example but still, it’s just a fishcake.

I chose the Confit leg of duck, warm puy lentils, red wine jus. The duck leg was a good size but wasn’t as tender as that amazing confit de canard I had in Paris. The puy lentils were a lovely accompaniment, cooked with a perfect bite but the red wine jus wasn’t so much a jus as a sticky, almost jammy reduction. A little more sauce would have been nice. So that’s both main courses that were just ordinary.

Luckily for us, desserts were more interesting; feeling rather greedy, we each opted to have one. My Verbena poached peach melba, yoghurt sponge, vanilla ice cream came in a tall glass with crunchy fried antennae. OK, they weren’t really antennae but simply fried batter and heck, I love anything fried and crunchy. I swooned over the soft, moussey texture of the chunks of yoghurt sponge but couldn’t taste any verbena within the peach. Well, the raspberry puree did overpower most of it…the dessert could have used a little less. Still, I scoffed the whole thing rather happily.

Blai’s Lemon curd tart, cinnamon sable, yoghurt ice cream was certainly very pretty. However, he felt there wasn’t a good curd to base ratio – the base was just too thick and almost a challenge to chew. The cinnamon was also a bit too strong, overwhelming the lemon curd.

A huge downside of Skylon is the lack of light in the restaurant when the sun goes down. There’s a huge and dim main chandelier-like light and candles on each table and that seems to be about it. Most of the light came from the floor to ceiling windows facing the Southbank and they do provide a gorgeous view of the crowds and river. But towards the end of our desserts, I was struggling to differentiate between the peaches and cake. I don’t like eating in the dark! Service too was hit or miss – when anyone did serve us, it was all very pleasant. However, trying to catch the eye of the waiters and waitresses was difficult. And there were many waiters who were standing around so I wonder what they were doing apart from ignoring us.

But would I go back? Well, if I’m short on time and need a quick meal before a concert, then yes, perhaps – the location is what it’s got going for it. That said, there’s a Canteen a couple floors below and the portions are larger there for the same price or less (and that’s a la carte, not a set menu) and the quality of the main courses is at least the same as that in the Grill. £19 for two courses isn’t cheap for the quality of food that we got; I’m curious as to how the Restaurant compares.

Skylon
Southbank Centre
Belvedere Road
London SE1 8XX

 

A Qype Seasonal Menu Tasting at Wahaca, Westfield

After attending the launch of Tastes of Singapore at Selfridges last week (photos here), I hopped over to Wahaca in Westfield to attend a Qype event – a tasting of the new dishes on their autumn/winter menu. I’ve been to Wahaca before when, in a nutshell, the food was hit and miss and the service wasn’t to my taste. As I hadn’t been impressed by my first visit (and I had blogged it), I wanted to get my thoughts down on this recent visit. This tasting brought their main dishes to my attention: there was a gorgeous mole and a wonderful pipian. The fish tacos were also delicious. There were other dishes that were less successful, though – the vegetable burrito and sauteed greens come to mind and I wasn’t enamoured with their pork pibil taco. Still, it was enough for me to give them another try and to order from outside the street food section of their menu.

Just a few photos from the night:

The full set of photos (along with descriptions and thoughts) can be found in this Flickr photoset. Thanks to Chris for organising this event and it was great meeting some new faces: Kelsie and Mel from Travels with My Fork and Luiz from The London Foodie.

Wahaca
1074 Westfield Shopping Centre
London W12 7GB

 

Song Que

Last Wednesday, a friend from work organised a dinner at Song Que – I was really looking forward to it as I’d not been to Pho Mile in a long time and Song Que is meant to be one of the best along the stretch. Even on a Wednesday night, the place was packed and there was a constant queue (albeit a short one) at the door. Though a table was booked for us as 7:30pm, we didn’t make it there until 8pm but luckily, a large round table freed up just in time for us seven.

The menu is long and takes quite a bit of perusing. When a dish is ordered, the waiter whips out his ballpoint pen and scribbles your order number on the paper tablecloth near you, Wagamama style. Watch out for those waiters – they love a good joke or two. I asked one for some chili sauce for my pho and he shook his head – no; I was so puzzled as I’d seen bottles of the stuff on other tables. He walked away as I sat there in confusion but then promptly came back with all the available condiments and with a big grin on his face, happy that he’d played a good joke on me. Uh huh.

Anyway, I ordered a Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk to drink, something I would later regret as I lay in bed that night, my mind racing. I wasn’t to know of those effects, of course, as I sipped on this sweet, icy treat.

To start, we ordered a number of appetisers to share between us. I don’t remember their Vietnamese names (I didn’t take a photo of the menu) so bear with me as I call these dishes by their generic sounding English names!

First up, beef wrapped in betel leaves. These juicy little parcels came with a small pile of rice vermicelli, lots of mint and Vietnamese basil, and plenty of pickled carrots and daikon in a green pepper cup. Delicious.

The grilled squid in tofu sauce was tender and tasty though I wasn’t actually sure what the tofu sauce was.

The meaty spring rolls were good specimens of the Vietnamese variety but nothing seemed to suggest anything particularly special about these ones.

Two large summer rolls came to each order, each one plump with three prawns. The freshness of these went down a treat.

For the vegetarian in our group, we ordered the green papaya salad minus the pork and prawns. Even without these meaty delights, the salad was gorgeous! It took a lot of self-discipline not to gobble up the whole plateful and thus leave none for our vegetarian.

The fried soft shell crabs were excellent; the hacked up crabs were lightly battered and fried and served with a scattering of garlic, spring onions and sliced chilies.

I thought the weakest and most disappointing of our appetisers was the prawn paste on sugar cane. The prawn paste was fine enough but the sugar cane itself was quite terrible to chew on after the paste was chewed off. The prawn paste had left an almost unpalatable saltiness to the cane. Ah well.

For mains, it was every man for himself. A couple at our table opted for the single dish with egg fried rice option but I have no idea how Vietnamese these dishes were as they were sitting on the opposite side of the table. A couple others went with the bun (rice vermicelli) with various porky things on top – I think there was grilled pork, shredded pork and perhaps more of the spring rolls.

For the final three of us, we each had pho with rare steak, well done flank, tendon, tripe and beef balls. Now this pho just blows the pho at Pho out of the water (how many phos in one sentence?). The broth was deeply beefy, the noodles not at all mushy, the herbs generous and fresh, the beef all delicious. The portion too was huge and probably would have been enough for me. We dipped our heads towards the bowls and slurped away happily.

As we were full to bursting, we skipped dessert, the only offerings being ice cream and a che, a Vietnamese soupy dessert. It was for the best, we reckoned, as we rolled out of the restaurant after splitting the bill – £16 each. (You can easily get away with spending less than a tenner if you stick to just the pho or bun and a drink.) So far, Song Que is the best Vietnamese restaurant I’ve been to in London – what are your suggestions for worthy competitors?

Song Que
134 Kingsland Road
London E2 8DY