La Trompette in Chiswick

Sometime’s we all need a little treat - and what better occasion than a birthday! To be specific, two birthdays, as both my and Blai’s birthdays fall in the month of July. I’d been wanting to try La Trompette for a while after reading such marvellous reviews online, and the fact that they were recently awarded their first Michelin star didn’t hurt either, and so I booked a table for the two of us last Sunday at 7pm. We turned out to be the second couple in the restaurant, following close at the heels of the first couple. The restaurant did fill up throughout the night with many groups coming in at about 8pm.

After ordering, the bread basket made its way to our table and we were presented with a choice of three breads; there was a walnut bread flecked with bits of raisin, a heavily speckled black olive bread, and a white bread heavy with olive oil. Needless to say, throughout the course of our meal, we managed to try all three. All three were extremely delicious and perhaps we ate more than we should have. Upon inquiring, we were told that they baked all the bread daily on the premises.

I started with the Confit sea trout, crab and cucumber salad, crab croquettes, vichyssoise and pea shoots:

There were two generous slices of soft, melting fish sat in a bit of vichyssoise, acting more as a sauce than a soup. Inside the lettuce parcel was the crab and cucumber salad - just lots of crab meat with a bit of diced cucumber in a mayonnaise dressing. While the salad contained white crab meat, the crunchy crab croquettes were made of brown meat. I loved this dish.

Blai had the Soft polenta, English asparagus, cured ham, poached egg, black truffle and olive dressing:

While everything on the plate was very well cooked and delicious, Blai did not feel that all the ingredients worked altogether as a single dish. This was the only minor thing we could quibble about. Of the bits I did try, I very much liked the truffle and olive dressing and thought it worked well with the egg and polenta. I can understand though - I feel that some hams can be too assertive when combined with other ingredients.

For my main, I chose the Breast of duck, pastilla of confit leg, hot foie gras, cherry compote and caramelized endive:

The breast was cooked as I requested (pink inside) and sat on a bed of spinach. It was incredibly meaty and the cherry compote was beautiful with it. I never would have thought of caramelizing endive as they had here but its bitterness combined with just about everything on the plate, especially the foie gras and compote. A gorgeous dish.

After much deliberation, Blai settled with the Braised legs of poulet noir, with potato gnocchi, leek hearts, vin jaune and tarragon:

I tried a bit of everything off his plate and I can vouch that that chicken was as soft as it looks. It just fell off the bone and the sauce that went with it….mmmmm. We ended up having a discussion about what “yellow wine” was and we thought it was perhaps a typo and should be vin jeune, a young, not aged wine. However, it turns out that there is a vin jaune that is similar to sherry. Whatever it was, it made that sauce so wonderful! The gnocchi was chewy and potatoey and reminiscent of a German potato dumpling.

All the desserts sounded good but I chose the one that really stood out for me. This was the Fresh citrus fruits, banana sorbet, passion fruit jelly, Earl Grey tea, financiers:

Rarely does a dessert make me sit up and say, “Wow!”, and this one did. The photo doesn’t do this dessert justice - it doesn’t show that underneath that Earl Grey tea granité was a layer of citrus fruit segments, and under that was a scoop of banana sorbet, and under that was the passion fruit jelly. While all the ingredients sound disparate, together they blend together: the creaminess of the banana, the citrus note of the fruits and the tea, the zing of the passion fruit. Gorgeous. The financiers were equally fabulous, but I knew they would be after the quality of the bread!

Blai opted for another dessert that sounded just as refreshing, the Iced coconut parfait with lime granité, tropical fruits and lychee sorbet:

With the creamy coconut parfait sitting on a pastry base, his dessert was more substantial than mine but still very light and summery. I again only tried a bit of it and it was very good and judging by the way Blai cleaned his plate, I would say that he adored it too!

After dessert, I had an espresso, while they offered some hot water steeped with lemon to Blai as a refreshing alternative. Or as my brother so eloquently put it - “it sounds like you kinda drank a finger bowl”. But honestly, it was nice and really helped us relax and it possibly aided digestion; who knows? Alongside came these chocolate truffles:

Looking at these photos again is killing me; I cannot wait to return to La Trompette! Of course, this is unlikely to be very soon as all this deliciousness comes at a price; I would never try to convince anyone that this place is a budget restaurant! Two three course menus, 1 bottle of sparkling water, 1 glass of a red Bordeaux, 1 espresso, 1 hot water with lemon (no charge!) - this all came to £100 for the two of us.

La Trompette
5-7 Devonshire Road
Chiswick
London W4 2EU

 

Kintaro Ramen

I’d been down Denman in Vancouver many times before and had passed the quaint little ramen shop by the name of Kintaro Ramen each time and I had glanced at the menu, with its cheese ramen (apparently, “the ladies loooove it!”), but I’d never bothered to get into the queue. It was only this year, when my brother’s friends gave it the thumbs up, that I managed to finally head over there.

After meeting a group of friends at the corner of Denman and Georgia, and then watching a massive bicycle rally go through that exact corner, we strolled down towards the tiny restaurant where there was already a queue outside. The deal seems to be as such: you take your place at the end of the queue and everyone in your party must be there at the time. The queue works on a first come, first served basis - if there are 2 seats available, but a group of 4 in front of your party of 2, you’ll have to wait until they are seated first. Fair enough. To hasten things, you’re given the menu (in both English and Japanese) to pursue and your order is taken while you’re waiting outside. We queued for about half an hour at around 7pm on a Friday night.

When you’re finally seated, there’s still quite a wait while your order is prepared. Luckily, we didn’t have to wait too long for our gyoza.

These gyoza were fried very nicely and separated easily, something that I’d never seen before. Most gyoza I’ve had tend to be stuck together and so there’s always a bit of ripping of skin as we pry them from each other. The flavour was very good - quite porky but these were also the first I’ve had where the filling is quite finely minced, almost like a mousse.

After we scoffed the gyoza, it was still quite a wait until we received our bowls of ramen. As I’d never been there before, I went quite middle of the road with my order. I chose the miso ramen (their special recipe) with medium strength broth (rich and light broths also available). Their broth is pork based and vegetarians are not catered for - keep that in mind if you’re planning to visit! Each ramen also comes with a serving of pork, available in both lean and fat versions. Of course, I chose the fat!

And this is what arrived - it was a massive, and heavy, bowl of noodles. The broth was opaque and you could see from the globules of fat and tiny particles of meat in the broth that it is very pork based! It’s so rich that I don’t even want to imagine what the rich level of broth is like. But it was delicious. The miso flavour is not as strong as in regular miso soup but adds a lovely creaminess to the broth.

Fatty pork is also the way to go - you get this Swiss roll of pork belly that has both tender meat and melting fat. A friend of my brother had the lean pork and they were drier slices of pork loin. My brother had their shoyu ramen, with soy sauce in the broth, and this was just as delicious, with lots of pepper to flavour it.

We were in and out of the restaurant in under 35 minutes, excluding queuing time, which shows how fast we slurped it all up. Now I’m keen to return again to try their cheese ramen, which comes topped with, you guessed it, a big pile of cheese. It’s supposed to go very well with the broth!

Kintaro Ramen
788 Denman St.
Vancouver, BC
Canada

 

Memories of AYCE Sushi

And what good memories they were! I expressed to my best friend that I had never had all-you-can-eat sushi in Vancouver before and immediately, she sought to fix that. One night, we headed to Kisha Poppo on Davie that has an AYCE menu and we went prepared (read: empty stomachs). All the fish was very fresh and came in generous portions and the sushi was noticeably lighter on rice than at other places I’ve been. It’s not just sushi either as there are various tempura and bbq items on the menu and even ice cream for dessert. We ordered, and got through, a lot of food and here are the highlights.

OK, those of you in the UK will just about faint when I tell you the price - $18.95 per person. That’s less than £10! What a deal!

The rest of my photos from that dinner at on my Flickr photosteam.

Kisha Poppo
1143 Davie Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada

There’s another branch in Richmond, BC.

 

Fatburger

My brother and I were wandering around the downtown Vancouver area thinking about dinner but not wanting anymore Asian food. After wandering around for a bit (and passing many an Asian restaurant), we recalled a couple of burger joints on Denman near the beach at English Bay. We chose Fatburger over Vera’s Burger Shack. Orders are placed at the counter and your food is brought to your booth.

I had the Fatburger (a 1/3 lb burger) while my brother had the Kingburger (1/2 lb of beef!). These were fully dressed and were moist and very more-ish.

The onion rings were excellent! The rings were coated in a breadcrumb mixture that made them seem less oily than their battered brothers. And of course, proper onion slices, not those fake reformed rings of chopped onion.

The fries too were good - crisp with no hint of sogginess.

Would I return? You bet! This is fast food I can get used to! (And I want to try their chili dog next.)

Fatburger
1101 Denman St.
Vancouver, BC
V6G 2M7
Canada

There are other locations around Canada and the United States.

 

Dim Summing at Sun Sui Wah

It’s becoming increasing apparent that some of the best food in Vancouver is Asian. Dim sum, anyone?

This was all eaten at Sun Sui Wah, one of the best Cantonese restaurants in Vancouver. The dim sum quality was top-notch and the price was much lower than we all expected. The only sad thing was that I couldn’t eat one of my favourites - wu kok - as they had run out! All the photos from our lunch can be found on my Flickr photostream.

Sun Sui Wah
3888 Main Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada