Tonyfinch

Loathing. They'd sussed out gallois was a veggie.

I'm pleasantly amazed to see Oslo Court win an award. For those who've never heard of it, it is set on the ground floor of a block of luxury flats which overlook Regent's Park. It has been there for decades and it caters for a middle aged to elderly well off clientele, many of whom are from the North London Jewish community or are St John's Wood and Swiss Cottage old MittelEuropean ex-pats. At weekends the place is packed with Jewish families celebrating boobah or zaida's 70th or 80th birthdays. The staff know the routine and make a fantastic fuss over the birthday boys and girls and go out of their way to make everyone feel relaxed and at home. It is not a kosher restaurant (though I doubt they serve pork). Instead, as Circe said, the menu is stuck in a 70s timewarp, with "continental" dishes majoring and things like "Chateaubriand for two with bernaise sauce" and Peach Melba and the like. And actually they do it very well. The food is very nice, but its not somewhere to go if you're looking for even the remotest hint of culinary modernity or innovation. It represents the antithesis of all that. It is by no means a cheap restaurant . I hadn't seen it in a guide for years and wasn't even sure it still existed until I went for a relative's birthday two years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. How nice to have Roast Duck with Cherries again! Maybe I'm just getting old but I want to go back and eat Veal Holstein!

Akiko, it's the other way round actually. Parathas are made with plain flour and water, rolled and twisted several times with butter, then fried and finished off with ghee-no yeast Nans are made with self raising flour, yeast, amd sometimes a little butter and yogurt and baked Rotis are just water and flour baked. Well they shouldn't be making bill mistakes now. You were surprised because the restaurant really is amazingly cheap by any standards in London. Given the quality of the food, hey're practically giving it away. I just can't go to an upmarket Indian ,despite the more comfortable surroundings, and pay £6.50 for a portion of Sikki Kebebs when I know I can go to NT and have a more authentic version for 70p per stick.

Lissome, the Greek wine industry is undergoing a revolution at the moment. They've brought in a new appellation system and used EC money to invest heavily in technology and agricultural improvements and bring in outside expertise. New small high quality wineries are opening up and the bigger companies have committed themselves to driving up standards. Turkish wines are still the pits.

Well I never described it as "great cuisine" but there is definitely a cuisine there that is far more varied and interesting than is to be currently found in restaurants. I have two cookbooks that I picked up in Greece that are chock full of interesting recipes that have never made their way anywhere near a Greek menu in London. I just wonder why not.

Yvette. In London the Greek restaurant scene is woefully stagnant. One restaurant stands out, but the rest are mired in a sixties time warp and are serving sub standard formulaic food to an ever diminishing clientele. Why do you think this is? Do you have any thoughts on why Greek middle classes and business people do not seem to see food and restaurants as a ripe area for development away from the old Greek Cypriot model. I don't think the argument about non-availability of ingredients can apply to London I believe that the best of the cuisine has never been showcased, at least in London restaurants. Why do you think the Greek entrepeneurial classes seem so uninterested in selling it?

Yvette, most people have no "burning need " to do it. It's like picking your top ten pices of music or top ten books and arguing about it. It's a fun thing to do but ultimately not something anyone has a "burning need " to do unless they are getting paid to do it (food guides, for example, and they rank order restaurants, not cuisines) or unless someone is so insecure that they need to convince themselves that their preferences are "right" and, by definition, anyone else's alternatives are "wrong". But that's their problem and you need not concern yourself with it.

Actually I always go up to the till when I want to pay and leave the tip with whoever's manning it. I must ask them what they do about distributing tips. They've now got a computerised till which itemises your bill but up until recently they just added it up in their heads. Several times I noticed mistakes but at least 50% of the time the mistakes were in my favour!

One of the underpinning assumptions of Western society is that what is new is also better. In other words we are making onwards and upwards progress in all areas of life. Now its true in the fields of, say medicine,social care, public housing, motor manufacturing etc. But is it true of cuisine? If you go to a top restaurant today will you OF NECESSITY have a better meal than if you went to one thirty, fifty a hundred years ago? If you believe the answer to be yes then the same principle applies if you compress the time frame down to months or weeks. People often talk of chefs "constantly evolving". Well if that is true then it follows that a chef is always more evolved in the present than he was in the past. And he will be more evolved in the future than he is in the present. And if we believe that "more evolved" equals "better" then there is a whole belief system which values the latest as being the best and which therefore pressurises chefs, if only subliminally, to constantly present something new to diners and to regard the older repertoire as less good.

Ask to speak to Salim or Wasim and tell them about it. They do seem to have a pretty casual attitude to money there generally. Everybody and anybody seems to pick up bills and tips whether they've served you or not. Different people work the till depending on who's around. I can never figure it out and I'm there at least once a week.

Well I was waiting for Scottish Chef but he doesn't appear to be about. For Biryani a meat or chicken curry is made. Then rice is either boiled or it can be fried with cumin. Onions are fried sometimes potatoes also. The separate elements are then assembled together to make one dish, sometimes garnished with saffron which may also have been used to colour and flavour streaks of the rice. A pullao is made more like a paella or risotto with the rice benig cooked in a stock and then spices added and browned chicken or meat added to the pot so that it all cooks together. I have to say they are not my favourite dishes but I'm not a massive rice fan.

Akiko, they have daily specials. The Nihari ( slow braised lamb shank in a spicy sauce) is only available on Mondays unfortunately and is often sold out by 7pm in the evening. They do Batera (quails) on a Tuesday. I can't remember the other days. The grilled sizzling meats with rotis or naans are the starters to have,. You must not miss ther siki kebabs and their lamb chops. The tandoori chicken and fish are also good. You must try their dahls. Ther's a variety. I'm currently completely addicted to their Kerala (bitter gourd) dahl, but it is a bit of an acquired taste. The brain masala we had is not on the menu. They did that specially for us. Ask for a dish called "dry meat". Its a curry where all the liquid has been cooked down and what's left is just what is clinging to the meat. . It's the only dish they use butter ghee for and its very rich but gorgeous. I've just rediscovered a liking for chickpeas and I'm enjoying their Chicken and Chickpea curry at the moment. Don't bother with prawns and don't bother with rice unless there's a special pullao or biryani on. Stick to rotis naans and parathas. Pakistanis are wheat eaters not rice eaters. Enjoy!

What's the French for "you lot couldn't organize a piss up in a brewery?"

Its TIDDY Dolls- after an eighteenth century term for the working gals who hung around Mayfair at the time.

Are you saying that Lebabese is the most ubiquitous cuisine of all or only of the Arab/North African cuisnes? Is there a lot of Western cuisine there?

There's a night club below Embassy. I don't know what the joining regs are but the last time I ate in the restaurant it was full of pretty thin girls sipping champagne cocktails and smoking and waiting for the club downstairs to open.

The one in Soho is in Dean St.

Food's awful there too I'm afraid. The fact is there isn't anywhere with both a high standard of food AND a high standard of entertainment. Try to dissuade your friends from this silly course, Scott. Tell them they should go out for a wonderful meal one night and an entertainment the next.

Heroic work,boys. I especially like the moment when you were feeling the pace but slogged on regardless. It shows character. It shows resolve. Damn it, it makes one proud to be British.

Which is why they overcharged on every bill. They had a system whereby the waiters "bought" the food from the kitchen and then "sold" it to the customer. They'd stick extra charges on every bill and present the bill as an illegible scrawl hoping the customer wouldn't notice. They used to long for Gentile customers because they either didn't notice or, if they did, they were too embarassed to say anything. Every Jew went over the bill like it was his final will and testament and when challenged the waiters would shrug that "so what do you want from me" shrug and smile and change the bill immediately. Jews shouting at the waiters and telling them they were "Gunufs" (theives) was all part of the fun. Meanwhile the Gentiles were so mortified they were hiding under the tables.

Satisfied customers?

For Indian it could be Agra in Whitfield St. Nondescript curry house now but the first restaurant (apparently) to serve Tandoori Chicken in London- now THAT started a culinary revolution. For Chinese it must be Limehouse, as Simon said. The one in Salmon Lane-Good Friends? Anyway, something friends-is said to be the original and best. Unfortunately Blooms in Whitechapel is now a Burger King, but there's a long standing branch in Golders Green Rd where you must try Stuffed Neck and Tzimmes.

Well that's just as well because Granita is mediocre in the extreme-always was even when whoever owned it before owned it. I went there several times in the mid nineties hoping to catch Gordon and Tone in order to tell them that I'll run the country if they were going to squable, and I don't think I had a single interesting or memorable dish, let alone meal. It was also uncomfortable and noisy. One of those restaurants where I really couldnt see what any, let alone all, of the fuss was about.

I can't comment on Loiseau,but on a more general point. People in the entertainment/leisure industries often complain about the pressure they're under. They reserve their biggest complaint for critics. And I can see what they mean. You work,you slave (in the case of a chef literally over a hot stove) you study, you flog yourself to death, often for little financial reward, you practice and practice and work and work... and then you begin to achieve success and to reap some of the rewards of all your hard work when.........along comes Joe Schmo who knows nothing about nothing(in your opinion) with a bee in his bonnet because he's got a hangover or couldn't get his legover last night and with a mere stroke of a pen damns you to millions of readers because the service was a tad off that night because your best server was working with a migraine and didn't respond the moment fingers were snapped or the meat was a teeny weeny bit over/undercooked or there was a slightly over enthusiastic crowd in that night and the critic tells millions that the place is full of drunks and so on and so on......... When Gordon Ramsay famously threw AA. Gill out of RHR a year or so ago my only reaction was to wonder why it doesn't happen more often:"If you think I'm gonna let you sit here and criticise everything I've worked so hard to build up just so you can impress some floozie or other.......etc. OUT!" Is it fair? Well I suppose it is. We're being charged money. Often a lot of money. And as such we've a right to criticise and complain. And as Martin says no-one has to do it. Heat and kitchens and all that. But I sometimes wonder if the balance is wrong somehow. So hard to achieve success. So easy for a critic to destroy it, or at least to seriously damage it. And in the case of Michelin they don't even have to justify their views-a serious fault IMO. In the end I'm a consumer and I suppose I come down on the side of the consumer. We need critics and guides to keep us up to date and to help us avoid being ripped off etc. And I suppose it's down to critics that people get success in the first place. So in the end I think those in the leisure/entertainment industries who complain about critics are wrong...........but I can see what they mean.

But does it have to be that way? There ARE fine cooks there even if there isn't a fine restaurant cuisine. Surely there'd be a market for genuine, regional Greek food- even if the restaurant was a cheapish and cheerful one-if the ambience and setting were pitched right and it was marketed skilfully. As I keep saying-The Real Greek has been hailed as a groundbreaking restaurant and is extremely successful. Where are all the Greeks with business acumen looking at its success closely and planning a Greek equivalent of La Cuisine de ma Grandmere? Or some such? I have a book in front of me called The Best Traditional Recipes of Greece. It contains loads of distinct and really tasty sounding recipes not one of which has ever found its way on to the menu of any Greek restaurant in London as far as I can see. I open up the book at random-Lamb with Plums. The lamb pieces are marinated in onion and lemon juice then sauteed in butter then cooked with almonds and plums. Lemon, sugar and flour to thicken are added towards the end. OK-maybe not haute cuisine. But tasty, interesting, warming, filling etc. What would be wrong with that on a Greek menu? The cuisine is there. It seems that people are just not interested in selling it.