Jon Tseng

Dropped in on the way back from work... last chance had to catch the discount before it blew up. Thoughts in no apparent order: Decor - yes, uber-Hakkasan, down to the dark wood pattern panels in the dining room and the need to have a halogen flashlight to navgiate your way round the loos. Actually I swear the slate sinks are identical to Hakkasan. Can Alan Yau sue for copyright? Nibbles - picked cucumber and roast peanuts. Peanuts had a slight ducky flavour Xiaolongbao (the porky one). Good flavour but not enough soup. A bit lumpy - filling ball too big. Honey roast eel. A bit rubbery and honey paste didn't add enough flavour, although I would add always get this slight rubberiness when order eel in Chinese joints - only the Japanese seem to be able to pull melting soft bbq eel off properly (cf the ambrosial Eel Nigiri at Sushi-Hiro) Emperor stir fry - a claypot of various goodies - abalone, sharks fin (minuscule threads), mushroom, fish maw, sea cucumber. Nice taste - though much down to the ingredients I guess. Pipa duck - served with nice steamed finger things to wrap the duck in and topped with hoisin sauce. Basically a cross between peking duck and braised duck. Nice enough - seemed to be all leg meat which is both a) cheaper for the kichen and b) moister and more tasty for the diner. Salt belly pork stir fried with garlic shoots. Poor choice by me - basically bog standard stir-fried pork, but with garlic shoots. Thankfully I like garlic shoots a lot. Overall slightly superior, but not outstanding Chinese food. Certainly not worth the prices they are charging without the 40% discount. In their defence I would say I probably didn't order that well (should have gone for more seafood; wasted one bullet on the pork) and it is early doors. I shall definitely figure out how to go back for dim sum at some point. The dim sum menu looked interesting. Services was good. l8tr J

wiv that budget ur soooo dead... cafe du marche perhaps? J

Food in History by Reay Tannahill? Also try the proceedings of the annual Oxford Food Symposiums (Jackel10 may know more) On the whole though I have always found the quality of food history books distinctly uninspiring. J Also NB there are early modern/medieval kitchens open to the public at Leeds Castle and Hampton Court Palace - both in the southeast of England (dunno if theres any pictures of them on the web?)

Kewl Where didya get the eels? Were they elvers? J

In a word no, although I hear from the grapevine that theres a place near kilburn tube which is run by a sichuanese family - they might be able to do stuff off-menu if you ask... l8tr J

silly boy... confit of course skin can go towards duck cracklings livers nice gently fried on salad. other innards can be confit too J

sort of caught in two minds low quality - but curiously addictive maybe best to think of themselves as a category of their own rather than lump them with dim sum - this might mitigate some of pcls righteous indignation. e.g. the difference between dried pasta than fresh pasta you can get some almost acceptable brands in london (eg Royal China's "Royal Gourmet" brand). Probably the best description would be cribbed off of the hitchhikers guide: "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike dim sum" J

Two things 1) complexity of preparation 2) Luxury ingredients you will find a lot of the other factors mentioned (expense, complex menu structure, emphasis on balance within dishes &tc &tc) stem from these two principles The optional 3) would be all the social froufrou stuff ie dressing up, posh surroundings, sommeliers, long wines lists etc. Though I am not convined these are essential cheers J

Was there this time last week, hungry, after the Friday Night Skate Turned up at half ten in street clothes and rollerblades. Staff were very gracious; got a table after fifteen minutes mulching in the bar drinking tap water and reading the papers (much quicker than royal china!). Service notaceably good all evening (even let me keep my skates on!), although NB they had received a kicking in the national press that week for snotty service, so everyone was probably drilled to be on best behaviour. Spit-Roast Pork belly with quince, notably soft, yielding, melting. Two inch-thick slices on the place. A bit short on crackling (only a thin half cm strip put on seperately - but the strip itself was good). The skin on the pork itself was tender, but not crisp Served with apples and quince paste. Very good flavour and fabulous texture - just the right mix between fattiness and meatiness. Only complaint a little under-salted. I was very impressed by the quality of the food considering I came in late at the arse-end of what must be one of the busiest services of the year (fri night in christmas season). On skates. Highly recommended! cheers J

A worthy topic title There are two theories about how to get the soup into the dumpling. One is using frozen soup/aspic. The other is plenty of lard/fat. Both of these, obviously, melt to liquid when steamed. Fat more flavourful - sometimes seen as a "short cut". I suspect the truth is a combination of the two. Also crab or no crab? Crab adds more flavour and makes the solid filling more moist/sloppy. Finally wrapper - need to have it thick enough not to break, not not so thick as to make it doughy. A balance needed - how thin can you go without having it fall apart when picked up with chopsticks. Another cheat - a thin slice of carrot on the bottom of the dumpling helps stop it sticking to the steamer - viz thin wrappers and risk they will tear. Also size - smaller better/more prized, I believe. regards J ps in London notable xiaolongbao from Hakkasan and the recently-opened China Experience. But in general I would say the quality of this delicacy in the UK notably poor and inconsistent versus other types of dim sum

Gail Stephens' mob "Gail Force" have a concenssion selling artisan breads in the works canteen once a week Some quite startling good breads, including a potato and rosemary bread with a real sourdough tang and a tiger-top pain de mie which is curiously briochily-addictive. Only let-down is the rather bland san fran sourdough - am yet to find a really good version of this in London J

Anthonys in for an upgrade? (does it have * yet?) J

Generally stars do tend to follow chefs e.g. John Burton Race took two starts from Ortolan to the Landmark. Ditto Petrus' star. Having said that the exception which springs to mind is Pierre Koffmann losing a star when he moved to the Berkeley, although I think he did double the number of covers so it wasn't a like for like move. On that basis I think there's a pretty good chance Pied A Terre will keep its stars J

The French Laundry Cookbook has a very good section on foie gras, outlining steps taken to prepare the liver prior to using in recipe etc. with good illustrations. Also consider the Foie Gras book by Ginor cheers J

Raw foie gras you will find the best prices are at the chicken place in borough market (the shop not stall). About 28 quid a kilo (may have ticked up a bit) or 14-15 quid for a whole duck liver, which is certainly not unreasonable. Their terrine is also keenly priced, though you often get a lot of fat on top. Ginger Pig also had it @ £28/kg last Sat They will cut of slices if you do not want a whole liver Comptoir Gascon was aruond £40/kg (haven't been for a while) and wouldn't do slices cheers J

"OQO is an atmospheric Chinese tapas bar" Sounds like the next Blue Belt to me... J

How fascinating This reminds me of an Indian puri J

re India the venerable Bombay Brasserie, just round the corner from Gloucester Road, the obvious option You're going pretty well with the Waitrose actually. There is also a *very* posh Sainsburys up the road Upmarket - 1880 at the Bentley Hotel is also a short trip up the road. Good cooking - great value - seven courses for forty quid hard to go wrong (although the room itself is a bit Dead) cheers J

Chinesey stuffing - glutionous rice, wind-dried sausage, chestnut, mushrooms and other various goodies? I think there's a recipe in either Susannah Foos books or Ming Tsai's cheers J

Think its a shame Thyme - fun, high quality neighbourhood restaurant with innovative approach of menu/plates - has turned into Just Another Generic High End London Restaurant e.g. 45 quid three course prixe fixed (probably going up to 50+ in a couple of months), safe menu with dishes all modishly flagged by main ingredient name yaddayaddayadda I'm sure its good, but its also not something I cannot get at half a dozen other places in the centre of town The original Thyme is reopening soon with a new chef (mod-french again). would be interesting to see how that pans out cheers J

Did christmas pudding chocolate truffles last year zap pudding in microwave. crumble and drop it into basic ganache mixture. proceed as per normal. J

NB GFG rely a fair bit on customer recs (don't think they say how much, funnily enough...) rather than just inspector visits think of it as the bastard half-child of zagat and michelin cheers J

But NB fine dining driven by foregin business class diners not local money. This is true for virtually everywhere in E Europe - Moscow the possible exception (though haven't been) Means no native demand for higher restaurant standards... makes more difficult for indiginous cuisine to (re)emerge. Need more popular demand for it to take off - this is very much what (finally) happened in London last fifteen years. Also raft of other structural factors... need to have trained skilled chefs, wait staff etc. etc. NB also this is more about fine/michelin dining. There is already good local/home cooking in eastern europe, although against consistency is an issue J

Yes, Budapest and Prague are best (and richest) places Probably looking at Warsaw next (capital cities tend to attract all the investment...) Then places start to become much of a muchness... AVOID SLOVAKIA AND THE UKRAINE J

Nope, no mich guides in E Europe To be honest you'd be scraping the barrel once you get beyond Vienna. I've travelled fairly extensively in East/Central Europe (am probably the only backpacker who deliberate goes to the most EXPENSIVE restaurant in town rather than the CHEAPEST) and in major cities you invariably find international-posh-business-class-restaurant-wannabees (think of this as the restaurant equivalent of a premium new-oaked international cab sav). In terms of quality the food is - at best - a *, but that's being charitable; generally they are at the rung immediately below. The other thing to note is that even the best restaurants often lack the consistency which is so important to get a starred rating. One dish or two might be up to a * standard but the rest will let it down. As for that Gundel review I suspect the reviewer is stark raving mad. It's nice, historic, touristy, business-expense-account focused but the food is * at the level best. cheers J PS www.inyourpocket.com are the most reliable place I know for resto recs in east/central europe