origamicrane

was the beef sliced into strips then put into a colander and left under a slow running tap? If it is it a standard (i think) chinese beef preparation technique.

really? how much?

hmm.... so its the fish sauce is probably ok and the problem is the meat and the fish sauce together hmmm... substitute the meat instead

Nice and close -- any more details? I read it had a number of "spaces". What should we go for? http://www.matsuri-restaurant.com/high_holborn/index_e.html personally I would go for the teppanyaki room it is a little cold and vacuous but its very business like and the gaps between business talk and idle chatter with the bank manager will be dispersed by the teppanyaki chef cooking. Set menu range from £35- £70. Last time I went for teppanyaki had a £60 set with about 9 courses it was very nice Definitily sorted out my sushi and tempura craving. But if you are just going for a normal hour lunch I think you be better of in the main dining room. They also have the sushi counter if you are a sushi fiends like me.

matsuri in holborn ?

hi errmmm... forgive my ignorance i know very little about kosher food certification but fish sauce is made out of anchovies. anchovies are kosher right?

what do you do with that? how about a new bye law for this thread if you request soemthing tell us what you going to do with it unless its pretty obvious.

ouhh how special is the discount? strange though that two ex-veeraswamy and ex-chutney mary chefs would open in the same week almost next door to each other.

well it tastes a lot like seaweed. whats in a name? carpaccio, tartare, sushi, a bit of a dead animal or twinky, fish finger, chocolate brownie

glad you enjoyed making and eating it. Yeah you have to let it drain and cool down before you eat it. Usually in my place we sprinkle a little deep fried shredded fish floss to give it a more seafood flavour, you should be able to get that in oriental supermarkets too but again that stuff can be pretty messy too!! Your comment is very apt. There was a peking duck thread that drew the same conclusion as you A lot of people try to recreate their favourite chinese dishes at home and they are usually reasonably successful but they will only ever try it once as chinese food seems to generate more mess then most other cusines!!! And the amount of effort compared to the end result lead most people to agree its better to go to there local chinese takeaway or restaurant! Which is good for my industry.

http://www.indianzing.co.uk/ yeah i work opposite teh place will pop in on friday lunch time and see how it is. agni is up the road looks ok menu a little limited but will give it a try next week.

errr... the italian place is not what i would term a gourmet place just an above average italian place with a nice atmosphere. Good luck finding it as i still can't remember the name of the place

hahaha !! are you guys that naive?! you really think the UK public would allow the student of a French chef to win? especially up against a lovely northerner and Gary Rhodes? so now thats over whats next? hmmm.....

looks like you are desperate? http://www.stalbans.gov.uk/tourism/restpubs/restaurant.php try this link the Waffle House is meant to be nice for waffles. There also a nice italian there that i can remeber the name of it should be on the list somewhere think its on the main road running into st albans it on the left hand side just before you go pass the station (i think can;t remeber haven;t been there in years!! )

hi this is my first post in the coffee and tea forum so forgive me if the question i am about to ask has been asked a thousand times. ( i did do a search but you know how bad teh search engine is ) Ok a friend has bought me a nice big bag of osmanthus tea now i live in london and there are no source of mountain spring water in my locality so i was thinking of using bottled mineral water , decadent i know but the tea demands that i give it the due love and respect it deserves. So my question what brand of mineral water would be the best to make this tea? volvic? evian? voss? i will be conducting experiments on this myself but wanted to see if there are any preferences amongst you. thanks

I checked the bill and service was included into the final total, it's possible but looking at how the maths added up and the fact no one put down coins can't see how a sum of £19.50 could have been missing. Normally I would have complained on the spot but we were actually in a rush too yep will see how they respond to my complaint once i organised my letter writing troops. Hen night +stAG night = Hag night A Gay stag night = Gag night I hope ping pong when it open has better service

i think they might reserve the basil fawlty service for parties only? thats the painful part moby !!! the food was more then brilliant!! the food i cannot fault in anyway whatsoever we had a party set menu at £35/head and we had so much food it was impossible to finish it all in 90 minutes the variety was excellent the quality of the food was amazing the only other place that i had something better was either in hakkasan or in Vancouver. I like the design and atmosphere of the place and i would have been happy to pay even more for the meal if we had an extra half an hour to enjoy the food rather then wolfing it down like a pack of dogs and the waiters had at least been curteous. Everyone in my party said the food was excellent shame about the service.

addendum 1: our party was there at 6pm and the place was only half full if their treatment of customers is like this when its not busy god knows what it is like when it is full. addendum 2: the waiter was not curteous , respectful or even polite, there was no greeting, his tone was totally inappropriate to a customer, no "excuse me are you ready to order", no "thank you","please" or "sir" , no smile, no eye contact except when we left and then all the waiters said "thanks and goodnight" which translated as "thank you for coming now piss off quickly!" addendum 3: just had a thought maybe the waiter is skimming? addendum 4: I have to retract the comparison to Won Kei's as its insulting to that culinary institute, at least if i went in there and spent £50 they be like "you go upstair, sir", "you sit here! please" and "you order now, sir" its the morning after and i am still feeling vindicitve as they spoiled my friends Hag night. The thought occurs to me apart from writing a complaint to the management has anyone here done more then that? or known a "friend" that did decided on my course of action moby i'm going to get all my friends to write a complaint letter 16 complaint letter to yauatcha should at least catch someone attention. If you have had bad experiences at yauatcha post them here lets see if we can send yauatcha the way of anda or elevate it to the status of Won Kei's

oh my god !! they got to revoke this places michelin star!!! had a party of 16 down there tonight and i can't fault the food, quantity , quality or price. but my god !!!!! the service!! it made Won Kei's positively luxurious!!! ok as soon as we sat down the waiter comes along and gives us the drinks menu. 90 seconds later he comes round and ask if we'd like some bellini's to start with. reponse no thanks give us a few minutes to decide. 90 seconds later he comes round again and asks have we choosen our drinks yet or would we like some bellini's? again we say no thanks we still looking but could we have some water and i ask him to add two extra chairs as we had two more guests coming. he promptly goes and gets the chairs and then he says "here are the two extra chairs, how many in your party?" i say "we got two more coming" he says "there's 7 chairs on each table you asked me to add two more chairs" i say " yes just leave them there" he says" you asked me to add two more chairs where are the other two?" at this point the waiter has managed to piss me and half my table off and we promptly decide this MoFo is no way going to get a tip! So after blanking him he walks off. 90 seconds later he comes round and says so, "what drinks would you like would you like some bellini's?" we respond "no thanks we'll stick with water". Did you know what this waiter reminded me of? you know when you walking through camdem market and you get the yardies on the bridge and as you walk pass them they just say "skunk! skunk! skunk!" yep thats right this waiter reminded me of a hash dealer maybe he is one on his off days as he did act and look like one. Next time you walk pass the drug dealers in Camden ask them if they like a job in Yauatcha as they should fit in perfectly to their work attitude. This is the second time i've been there, but first time i've been there with a party. Their treatment of large parties is ridiculous its like they trying to see how many customers they can piss off in one night!! Oh and to top it all off we ask for the bill, gather the money, check it and give it to the waiter 2 minutes later he comes back and says we are short £19.50??? why are we so surprised ? well the bill was £710 and everyone of my party threw in £50 in cash (notes only) or by credit card. So if there was any money missing it should have been a round number of either £10, £20 or £50? not some bizarre sum of £19.50 but by now we just couldn't be bothered to argue as they had taken the originally amount of money and it would have been impossible to argue with him on the sum. So everyone agreed that the food was excellent but the service was so offensive that none of us would ever go back there! and if the old saying of "lose one customer, you lose 10" they just managed to lose 160. This is the first restaurant in years to piss me off so much. anyone here know who are alan yau's food suppliers are? i'm feeling vindictive.

then what will you watch? don't think there any more cooking competition things in the pipeline as otherwise i would have applied for them

anyone still watching this? or like me has the novelty worn off? its degenerated pretty quickly hasn't it?

UK chinese perspective plum sauce - served with pei-pa duck basically roast duck with the really crispy skin. The sauce is golden brown slightly translucent with bits in. hoisin sauce - served with crispy aromatic duck or chu cheung fan, browny purple thick opaque sauce. duck sauce - brown and shiny sweet made from yellow beans apricot sauce?

rather harsh coming from a casu marsu maggot excrement eating critic of course the restaurants standards could have just bottomed out as i predicited BTW there's a new chinese dim sum place out near heathrow airport can't remeber the name but it was pretty nice nothing spectalcular but pretty respectable dim sum and beats the hell out of the crap they are serving in the airport terminals. Think its called London Hong Kong restaurant or something I will get the name and address of the place so next time you jet off or get back to heathrow and fancy a bite go there.

the continuation of Sam's further adventures in cooking!!! so yesterday went to help cook at the Buddhist temple in town. Now just for some context I am technically a non-practising buddhist but i have a good friend that is and she knows I am a cookie so asked me if i'd liked to help out with the cooking for their monastic retreat. For the monastic retreat the nuns and faithfuls spend a whole day in silence and in religious contemplation, prayer and meditation. Ok on to the cooking arrive at the temple at 9am. I am met by my friend and a team of 15 student volunteers. We have 3 hours to cook 3 dishes, 1 soup and rice for 100 people that include nuns, congregation and staff. so the dishes are all 100% vegetarian and are Stir fried chinese spinach in garlic sauce. Stir fried mixed veg (broccoli, shittake, white cabbage, carrots.) Mock meat in a mock oyster sauce (soya) Fried Rice with veg Plain rice Vegtable broth soup. So my prep work is to help wash and chop a box of broccoli peel, slice and dice a box of carrots, wash and chop two large bags of chinese spinach, chop 2 white cabbage chop mushrooms chop and core apples With a team of 15 people this prep work takes about 1 hour. meanwhile two industrial sized rice cookers are steaming away. Usually it is the nuns themselves doing the cooking but today as the numbers are so many they have asked people to volunteer and there are two professional cooks in the kitchen. All the dishes are stir fried in the largest woks I have ever seen, they are about 1 meter in diameter and 40 cm deep and they are stir frying with 2 metal spades ( well very large spatulas) on a tiny 2 wok burner! The cooking is industrial cooking and nothing as refined as in Indigo. But the difference here is that there is something else in the cooking a spirituality. What I haven't said so far is that everyone is calm, everything is smooth and if it wasn't for the buddhist service being broadcasted all through the temple everything would have been silent!! It is very strange cooking will you are constantly bombarded with buddhist mantras. Imagine cooking to gregorian chanting i think it might bring your cooking closer to god All the food is cooked before 11.30 and here comes the fun part!! the kitchen is in the basement but the service hall is on the top floor which is 6 flights up with no lift!!! Oh! and you have to remove your shoes half way up the stairs before you enter the prayer hall. So there are 15 of use running up and down the stair carrying large rice cookers, big pots of hot soup, trays of cooked veg, pot of boiling water for the food warmers. The tables are set up and the food is ready. Then the reverend leads the faithful up the stairs to the food hall while singing mantras. Here to me comes the most fascinating part were as we on egullet consider some food to be religious experiences this really was. Were as some of you may give thanks before you eat a meal this was far more significant. The reverend speaks about the food before during and after the meal. She explains how to eat the food, the placement of the food on the table, the importance of the nurishment, the importants that even whether you hate or like the taste of the food you should not hate or be greedy for the food and be aware of the nurishment of the body the food provides. After the meal, we cleaned up and the reverend came in to thank the volunteers. It at this point that my friend tells me that she has been to a monastic retreat in taiwan where a 1000 people were served meals in total silence and all within a few minutes. This was fascinating to me as i have never comtemplated food in such depth. Up until now food has always been a scientific or mechanical thought process follow the recipe getting the flavours right, pairing dishes and wines etc, how many of you have considered the spiritual importance of food? Oh and finally the food was pretty good from a non-vegetarain point of view the mock meat was actaully quite tasty .

well its all about tax evasion or the restaurant has been denied credit card facilities by the banks.