Gizzi Erskine's Healthy Appetite

So, I have a new book.  Let me tell you how I got it.

 

 

Let me try to paint a little picture.

 

Last week, I found myself in a restaurant – well, more of a pub – up in Islington, with GrubsterGirl.  We were there as part of a book launch for a new tome generated by a celebrity chef, which is all very well and good and exciting.  As we were sat, waiting for the first course to appear, someone from the kitchen came over to talk to GG about an allergy issue – basically a message had not been passed from front of house to the kitchen that GG has a mild nut allergy. 

 

It was quite a squeeze in said pub and, due to the way the tables were arranged, I had my back to the chef who was talking to us and it would have been a pain to turn around.  Anyway, it was GG’s conversation and she was handling it.  No need to get involved.

 

However, I can hear that the chef talking to us is obviously pretty worried – who wouldn’t be worried about cooking for someone suffering nut allergies, mild or not – and is bending over backwards to try to deal with the situation.

 

And slowly it dawns on me.  We are here for Gizzi Erskine’s book launch.  We are having supper cooked for us by the author of that book.  The person talking to us from the kitchen must therefore be…

 

I twizzle myself round in my chair, awkwardly, to look up at the person towering above me.  It is.  It’s Gizzi frickin’ Erskine.  And she’s talking to my wife about how she’s going to tailor-make a meal for her, with no warning.

 

Call me some loser fanboy if you like, I don’t care – that’s pretty damn cool.

 

So where are we again?  The Draper’s Arms, that’s where, in deepest darkest Islington, near Angel.  It’s actually a very nice pub, in very nice little residential streets.  Gizzi Erskine has a new book out, called Gizzi’s Healthy Appetite, and we managed (through pure fluke, I might add – this is no sponsored post) to bag a couple of seats at a meal she was cooking to showcase some of the highlights.

 

Note to self: Biscuits with my face / book (which I have never written) printed on them = Ultra Cool.

But enough mucking around, we came for the food so here it is.

First course was a sort of appetiser course.  First dish out was walnut bagna cauda.

Bagna cauda, for those of you who don’t already know what it is (okay, I too had to look it up) is a Piedmontese dish – a sort of warm dip often eaten like a fondue.  In this instance it was served with crudités (always reminds me of the line in The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard: "Crudités! Perfect title for a pornographic revue.") which were made from wonderfully fresh, high quality veg.  I thought this dish was absolutely amazing – I was a bit concerned that it would taste a bit like the walnut equivalent of peanut butter (if there is such a thing) but not even remotely.  The fact that it was warm really added something as well.  Rich and more-ish.  Very nice.

Then we were presented with little bowls of stuff.  Dill, peeled baby prawns, pickles and a boiled egg, quartered. 

Minutes later jugs of bright purply-pink ooze appeared and we were asked to fill our bowls.  Which we dutifully did.

This was chłodnik.

What, you don’t know what chłodnik is either?  Dear oh dear.  I’ll tell you.  It’s a soup.  Specifically, it’s a Polish soup made with beetroots and buttermilk, served cold.  It’s also bloody delicious.  Looking at the recipe in the book, it seems pretty simple too and is wonderfully refreshing on a hot summer’s night.  Actually, flicking through the recipe book last night I was thinking: there's a lot here I want to make.  Chłodnik is just one of those things.

Next course was a medley of three dishes, everything arriving at the table on large plates to be eaten ‘family style’ as they say in the United States. 

The first to arrive was Thai roast duck with watermelon salad. 

It’s difficult (nay, impossible, says I) not to like this dish.  I bloody love watermelon salad, so it basically boded well from the start, but this was executed perfectly.  I loved the effect of sweet, refreshing watermelon balancing out the rich, fatty duck.  I’ve always liked duck with fruit sauce but always erred for sharp fruits, such as redcurrants.  I would never have thought of using sweet fruit but it worked an absolute treat.

Next out was crispy chicken with spiralized vegetable noodle salad and satay sauce.

GrubsterGirl got her special food mountain plate, due to her allergies, which was pretty sweet.

Very good, the noodle salad nicely dressed to pair well with the crispy chicken.  Great satay sauce. 

Then the ceviche.

OK, I admit it, this is a completely awful picture.  Sorry about that.  Basically, I missed this coming out (too busy stuffing my face with the first two excellent dishes) and by the time it got round to me the dish had basically be destroyed.  Which is a shame because, from other pictures I’ve seen, it was pretty good looking. 

Fortunately, there are some dishes you cannot spoil with bad looks.  This was one.  I bloody loved this.  The raw fish was marinated in yuzu, sesame and kumquat (finally answering a question I have been asking all my life – what are those little orange things for, other than making rank Corfiot liqueurs?).  Also in there was sweetcorn and avocado in there too and it was topped with coriander, basically making sure that all of my favourite flavours were mixed up into this one, fantastic dish.  I will be making this at home, for sure. 

So that was the first course, top marks.

Now onto the mains. 

Merguez shepherd’s pie…

…and fish stew.

Starting with the fish stew.  Very nice, if not my favourite dish of the day (but then, I’m not a huge fish eater).  A medley of fish, including some beautifully tender and tasty baby squid and some clams.  The sauce was basically the very traditional bouillabaisse Provençal (flavoured with fennel and saffron), which goes so well with fish and brings out all those salty, seafoody flavours.  There was also orzo (little, rice-like pasta) in there too, although to be honest it was a bit lost on me.

Then the Shepherd’s pie.  I have to be honest, at the time I was not really sure what makes this particularly ‘merguez’.  I thought merguez were those spicy sausages you get in Morocco (in fact, I know they are, having eaten them there).  But who cares, it was still pretty damn tasty - and, having checked, the stuffing is a mix of slow roasted lamb shoulder and merguez sausages. 

The topping was an interesting choice - cauliflower mash.  Now, if I’m honest, this doesn’t have the same consistency and unctuous-ness (Is that a word? It is now.) that good old mash has – it’s a bit looser, a bit less rich and starchy.  But it still works – and not just that, it’s still good.  In fact, it’s a much healthier yet still tasty equivalent.  Think semi-skimmed rather than full-fat milk – ok, sure, it’s not got the same wow factor, but it’s basically just as nice with much less fat.

By now, we were feeling pretty well fed.  There were a few words spoken, and Gizzi made a little speech talking about the food and what the book was trying to achieve – healthy eating without all the fad diets.  I thought she’d managed that quite well, with what I think sounds a fairly sensible approach – little changes and big flavours, which is a much  more manageable attitude. 
Then she said something great:  “It’s all been healthy… well, except for dessert.”

GOOD NEWS.

So, yes, pudding was pretty dirty.  In a good way.

Waffles, topped with roasted bananas, pineapple jam, and a chilli and honey butter.  The bananas were cooked ‘Foster’, which means flambéed with butter and sugar, which is just brilliant.  As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m sure, I generally don’t go in for hot puddings, preferring a scoop or two of sorbet at the end of a big meal.  But I am more than happy to make an exception for a dish like this.  The hot, caramelly bananas , with their sticky sweetness and background sharp twang that they take on when cooked, transported me back to the cadet camps and bonfire nights of my youth.  This was decadence in a pudding. 

What a meal.  At the end each diner was given a copy of the book, signed by the author and head chef. 

Meeting Gizzi (again?) was pretty cool.  Turns out, she’s a really lovely person.  They say don’t meet your heroes and I think it’s too often true.  That's not true of Gizzi – she's warm, friendly and welcoming.  Which is a lovely way to end a meal.

So yes, I have a new book.  And that was the story of how I got it.

It’s signed and everything.

Rex & Mariano

Rex & Mariano comes from some relatively serious commercial restaurant pedigree.  The business behind this is the same as that which opened the Goodman steak houses and Burger & Lobster, both of which seem to be chugging along in fine fettle, with a string of decent reviews and an ocean of devotees flowing in their respective wakes.  The place is also named for Rex Goldsmith, a doyenne of the Chelsea fishmonger world, and Mariano li Vigni, who... well, I’m not really sure, but he’s from Sicily and knows a thing or two about fish. 

Its atmosphere is classic modern fish spot, albeit slightly quiet when we went (a Friday lunchtime).  Loads and loads of space, with all the shiny marble-ness of an Italian restaurant mixed with the industrial chic of bare wire light fittings and open ventilation ducts throughout.  A sort of clash of cultures.  It feels nice, though, don’t get me wrong – a sort of relaxed, informal way of eating food that is often overly formal.

But the very first thing you notice is your waiter.  Because this is him.

Yup, an iPad.  For the most part, the waiting is automated, which is designed to cut down on the number of staff and thereby decrease the cost of the food.  On that front, it works – the prices of the dishes are indeed less than I would have anticipated, but then this is from the people who brought us £20 grilled lobsters and were able to employ human waiters.  I’m sceptical about this, partly because it means fewer jobs and partly because it undermines the almost entirely lost art of waiting tables – something which, when done properly and done well, is a joy to experience. 

But, you can’t get away from one simple fact: It’s pretty cool to watch it in action.  For example, we tapped away at our screen and ordered a brace of Aperol Spritz.  Mere seconds (no exaggeration) later, this happened.

And a few seconds after that, our drinks arrived.

So no more waiting around, no more mucking about.  This is an end to that irritating scenario where the table next to you arrives afterwards but orders first, or where you have to wait ages whilst the table of twenty five out on a team lunch have their mammoth order prepared and served.  At R&M they are swift, they are keen, the automation simply slots your order in a queue and it arrives as soon as it’s ready.

So here it is, in the order in which it came (which is the only way their food is served).

First up, sea bass ceviche. 

Slices of fresh-as-a-daisy sea bass marinated in coriander, yuzu (a Japanese citrus fruit somewhere between a lemon, a lime and a grapefruit), red onion and tiger’s milk (not actually – leche de tigre is the Peruvian name for the juice that marinades and is created by the process of ceviche – it’s basically lime juice, chilli, onion and salt). 

GrubsterGirl also had some oysters (I’m a bit of an oyster pansy, I’m afraid) – two of each of the rocks and the natives.  I was informed that they were very good value.

A bowl of courgette fries. 

These were really, really good – much better than I was expecting, and blowing Byron’s much better known (and the original?) version out of the water.  They were piping hot, encased in a light batter that somehow stayed crunchy even once the fries had cooled. 

Fish carpaccio platter.

From top to bottom: sea bass, salmon and tuna.  Let’s just pause a moment to note that, in order to do this dish, you have to have spankingly fresh fish.  Which they have.  In central London.  That’s one of my take home points about this place – their seafood is genuinely very good.

If I want to be picky / fussy, these were the three fish that dominated the menu.  But I like them so I simply don’t care.  Also, the fish had some funny tomato stuff on it which simply didn’t work.  But other than that, good dish.

Then there is the lobster ceviche.

Yup.  This was actually so good, we ordered it twice.  Just stunning, the balance of flavours was perfect that the ceviche process had ‘cooked’ the lobster meat to absolute perfection.  The fennel worked so unbelievably well with it, I was genuinely taken aback.  Ten out of ten for this one. 

We skipped pudding – the list looked a bit meagre, a bit of an afterthought, which was a shame.  But of course (this being an Italian restaurant in London) there was the classic complimentary shot of limoncello at the end.

Rex & Mariano is a great concept, selling food well and at decent prices.  It’s still not cheap though – not in the same draw-dropping way that Burger & Lobster seems able to pull off its crustaceans – but more what I’d call good value.  And the quality of the food, simple as it is, was magnificent.  There are chains you see sprouting up all of the time, and in most cases I feel a bit ‘take it or leave it’.  But not in this case.  I’d like R&M to go all the way, please.

The Chinese Cricket Club

You don't get much Chinese food on this website, and I'm sorry about that.  You see, the thing is that, growing up, my folks never really enjoyed it and so I never really got used to eating it.  They were always put off by cheap Chinese takeaways – greasy, gloopy, overly sweetened and packed with monosodium glutamate.  Not ideal.

As with almost all things food related in London, we have moved on a long way since then.  I'm trying to ease my way back in to a cuisine I know virtually nothing about.  So when a friend offered to take me out for dinner and suggested Chinese, I readily agreed.

The Chinese Cricket Club is, I am happy to say, a relatively standard Chinese restaurant.  There's not anything about it that's fancy or over-the-top, like Hutong in the Shard, or the Michelin-ed types like Hakkasan or Yauatcha.  This is standard Chinese restraunteering – with the one exception to the places we'd visit when I was a kid in that it is actually good.

Ravi guided me through the meal, ordering for the pair of us.  We started with dim sum – which, I know, is not an evening dish in China, but then we're not in China, we're in Blackfriars.  

We started with a platter and they are as follows: scallop siu mai (centre, yellow cases topped with orange roe), har gau (white balls), chicken and spinach dumplings (green cases, white insides, top and bottom of basket) and duck dumplings (orange-brown cases, left and right of basket).

Would you believe that this was the first ever dim sum I have had?  It is, actual fact.  I went to Hong Kong a few years ago to visit a friend who had been posted there.  Whilst out there I resolved to go to a dim sum restaurant.  So booked one just before I left – not just any old joint either, a place that had been recommended to me as the best place for dim sum on the island.  My friend and I turned up only to find that they were not serving dim sum because it was night time.  That's how I came to know that dim sum is strictly not an evening thing.

Regardless of when you're meant to eat them, these were lovely.  Served with spicy and sweet sauces, I found they worked almost best on their own, allowing the fresh, clean, subtle flavours to come out properly.

Scallop siu mai.

Chicken and spinach dumpling.

We also had some special king crab steamed dumplings, which Ravi ordered knowing my love of crab.

These were awesome.  Also, one of the nice – and reassuring – things about the restaurant is that, when they came to the table, the waiter instantly recognised that they were overdone and whipped them away, only to come back with freshly made, perfectly cooked examples a little later.  Now, of course, I would rather they were done right the first time, sure – bit it's nice to know that even the wait staff know what they’re about.

For mains we shared five hour braised pork belly and steamed sea bass.  An eclectic mix, but good to have a range.

The pork was divine – soft, melt in the mouth, with a delicious sticky-sweet Chinese marinade.

The sea bass was equally excellent albeit completely different.  It was served with a sharp soy sauce, it was a delightfully balanced dish that felt fresh and light, without losing any of its flavour.

Ravi uses The Chinese Cricket Club as an everyman joint – it's as good for taking out a client as it is for popping out for a meal when working late.  With food this dependable, I can see why.

- GrubsterBoy -

The Manor

For a while, there was not much around my neck of the woods to get too excited about (food-wise, that is).  Sure, you had the Abbeville Kitchen behind the Common and Trinity on the Pavement – but there was nothing that the real food aficionado would have heard of.  Don’t get me wrong, I always thought we had it good – and we do – it's just it sucked a bit that people would ask what there was nearby then stand with the blank face of incomprehension as one reeled off a list of very decent but unknown restaurants before blurting out "Brixton Village" and denying that it was, actually, quite a long way away.

That's changed now.  Now we have The Dairy, which everyone seems to have heard about and which everyone does rave about.  Rumour has it that there's a certain French tyre manufacturer's star in the offing, although I don’t know about that.

This post, however, isn’t about The Dairy but about its newborn baby sister, The Manor, that's acquired a site around the corner that was until recently occupied by a (pretty grim) Spanish place.  Now, with stripped walls, bare bulbs, the obligatory faux historic set of antlers and some even more faux graffiti – as one companion put it: "trendy – almost achingly so" – it has become something altogether smarter, nicer, classier.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's a joy to eat there just for its surroundings, which despite the cold industrial chic design is somehow warm and welcoming.

But if the environment is good, wait until you get your hands on the victuals.  Oh my.  Dealing in what I would describe as 'modern British', they have nailed what it means to serve really very decent plates of honest food without, I am relieved to say, falling into the same trap as Big Brother The Dairy: small plates with big prices.  We opted for the seven course tasting menu, which at £42 a head may sound steep but really isn’t bad at all – not given both the quantity and the quality.

But before we got there we kicked off with a round of Bloody Marys.  Like all good bartenders, the resident barkeep eschews the old ways of slopping some tommy juice into a glass, adding a dash of heat and sauce and mixing in a puny measure of voddy.  Oh no, this is something altogether more refined.  The vodka is smoked.  The mix is made up of all manner of things, including (in addition to spice and Worcester) port, sherry, fresh horseradish and olive brine.  The garnish includes cucumber (which is also to be found in the juice mix), the scent of which matches a Bloody Mary so insanely well I'm left wondering how it wasn't dreamt up before now.  The accompaniment is a stick of celery filled with a  tomato reduction jelly, a playful twist on the Bloody Mary's more usual accessory and those boats of cream cheese your granny used to serve up as pre-dinner snacks.  The result was terrific – blew many a Bloody Mary out of the water.

And then, as we sipped our sharpeners and passively argued about whether we should be getting the tasting menu or ordering a la carte (I won): Lo, there appeared before us snacks in the form of seaweed and wasabi delights, served on a crispy cracker.  Served on slate slabs.  Awesome.

The first course of our seven course feast was, rather cheekily, bread and butter.  I use the term 'cheeky' advisedly, and carefully.  And I mean it.  Don’t, please, call something 'seven courses' then basically make the cover a course.  It's not.  Just give it away free.

Of course, I can’t complain too much because it was insane.  Seriously.  Freshly baked sourdough rolls served in their own little jute sacks (all together now, Awwwww...) served with whipped butter and crispy chicken skin.  One matey said of this offering: "Can I just have six more courses of that?"  Tempting.

Also, rather nicely, they didn't hesitate to accommodate both dietary requirements and veggies – which is nice; all too often when you say someone doesn’t eat this or that you get a blank stare and are told you can’t have the fixed / tasting menu.  Not here.  To keep her bread happy, the one vegetarian of our gang was delivered a separate serving of clotted cream and buttermilk butter, whipped up by the on-site pastry chef.  And whilst we were presented with a little slab of mixed South African sausages, our resident salad muncher got a rather beautiful looking snack of crab meat, wrapped in celeriac and sprinkled with hazelnuts.

But at last, the first (proper) course arrived: The hilariously named cod face.  Served with a creamy sauce and seaweedy rice crackers, this was a nice dish but just shy of the mark, I – and my fellow diners – felt.  Although none of us could quite put a finger on why – one saying it needed chilli, another saying it needed more cream, yet another querying if there was enough cracker to provide crunch - and I felt it just needed a squeeze of lemon.  Still, nice enough, if only that.

Next up: cauliflower, grue de cacao, medjool dates and yoghurt.

Not a combination you'd naturally go for, but holy cow it was good.  Like, really, really good.  My childhood memories of cauliflower are of overcooked mush in school dinners, or sticky slop masquerading as cheesy comfort food, so I seldom get too excited about it on a menu.  Until now that is, because this was wonderful.  It tasted of cauliflower – not always a good thing, I grant you, but in this context spectacular.  The accompaniment of the sweet date, sharp yoghurt and bitter cocao nibs were perfect.

The next fish course took the form of monkfish, served with ceps and salsify cooked three ways: puréed, roasted and pickled.

This was a polar opposite to the cod face – exciting, zingy, wonderful.  My only complaint was the smear of salsify purée – totally unnecessary and very unappealing.  As my neighbour said: "tempted to send it back, saying I've got a dirty plate".  But that aside this was fantastic – quite a few declared it their dish of the day.

Curiously, the only meat took the form of a game bird – specifically a hay smoked partridge breast and the beasts leg, confited, served up with fermented grains, puffed rice and parsnips.

This was (by a whisker) my dish of the day.  The two textures of bird – soft, smokey, delicate breast and more meaty, crunchier leg – was delicious.  The grains were also excellent, with a hint of sharpness that took the edge off the game.  And then there was the parsnip as well – let's make no bones about this, parsnip and game birds are just perfect partners.

Perhaps unadvisedly we chose to have the optional extra cheese course next – baked vacherin (my favourite cheese), honey from The Dairy's rooftop hives, shaved chestnuts and raisin bread.  I say 'unadvisedly' only because we'd already eaten a tonne of food, not because it was bad.  It wasn't; on the contrary, it was another triumph.

The first of the puddings followed: mandarin sorbet, mandarin segments, mandarin marmalade, kept company by goat's cheese snow.

This was a triumph – the dish that the partridge so narrowly beat for dish of the day.  It was wonderfully refreshing, with the creamy snow muting the zing just a touch (in a good way) and the marmalade adding a hint of bitterness somewhere at the back.  A fellow diner said of this dish: "I could eat a dozen more bowls of just that."  I don’t disagree.

And finally: course seven, pudding two.  Jerusalem artichoke ice cream with thinly sliced Jerusalem artichoke shavings, 'smashed' crème fraiche (frozen and snowed, in reality) and poached quince.

WTAF? (I hear you cry.)  Jerusalem artichoke ice cream?  Yes, actually.  And yes, before you ask, it's really, really good.  It's almost like caramel, in a sense, without being so sweet.  The shaved artichoke as well was a triumph, adding a much needed crunch to the dish.  The crème fraiche was... well, not much really – I could have lived without it, but it didn’t detract from the dish at all.

Tasting menus are all well and good, but the a la carte menu also looks pretty damn tasty.  And, if you go that way, to finish it off you can climb up to the sundae bar and be treated to fresh ice cream mixed with all manner of treats.

Finally, of course, with coffee came some dinky little seed cakes, whipped cream and jam.  Served in a draw pulled out of a vintage apothecary chest.  Lovely.

In all, The Manor has nailed it, I believe.  This place has been transformed from a down-at-heel local institution to a first rate, smart restaurant serving up some of the finest eats around.  Happy days indeed.

 - GrubsterBoy - 


PS: There is, sadly, one exception to the brilliance of this place - the lavatories.  I don't usually write about that sort of thing, but they are, I'm sorry, hideous – they apparently blew the budget on the rest of the restaurant and ran out of money – something I can believe given that there are still posters for the predecessor restaurant in there.  Other than that, this place rules.