REVIEW: BAR BOULUD

Londoners who haven’t yet tried Bar Boulud’s burgers will probably of heard the hype. LondOntheinside had, so we thought it was about time we checked them out.

Bar Boulud is located in the 5-star Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, Kensington. The restaurant is chef Daniel Boulud’s twelfth and first venture into Europe, which is strange seeing as he is French. The menu features three of the burgers from DBGB which have crossed the pond from NYC to feed hungry Londoners, The Yankee, The Frenchie, and The Piggie.

Everything on the menu looked great, but we had come to try the burgers and try the burgers we did!

For starters we chose the goats cheese salad and mussels mariniere. The salad was nice and light, not too much goats cheese but enough to give it a good kick. The mussels served in a big black pot tasted great although the sauce wasn’t creamy enough for my liking.

For mains it was the Piggie Burger all the way but my dining partner let the team down and opted for the Sea Bass. The burger was a good piece of nice meat, cooked medium rare and topped with BBQ pork giving it a strong smoky flavour. The bun was homemade and even under the weight of the burger and pork it managed not to crumble.

The Seabass was cooked well, no bones and a good piece of flaky fish. The tomato and lemon dressing was strong enough to taste but subtle enough to allow the flavour of fish to come through.

For dessert we chose the coupe de fruits exotiques and the coupe peppermint recommended by the staff. The coupe peppermint was served with a jug of hot melted chocolate which was poured over the dessert to melt its hard chocolate top. Very fancy! Both desserts were great, the fresh peppermint really came through the chocolate flavour and made what could have been an overwhelming dessert taste refreshing.

Given its location, quality of food and service the prices are actually reasonable adding to Bar Boulud's appeal. Will I go back? Well there are two other burgers to try so I think I am going to have to....just in case.

Bar Boulud
Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, 66 Knightsbridge
London SW1 X 7LA

http://www.barboulud.com/

G

ALERT: EXPERIMENTAL FOOD SOCIETY SPECTACULAR

This year’s Experimental Food Society exhibition will be held on Saturday 25th September at The Brickhouse. The daytime exhibition (11am-5pm) will be followed by an extraordinary banquet (7.30pm -1.00am).

The show will feature some Britain's most talented culinary artists including jellymongers, bread artists, one-of-a-kind dining conceptualists, cake artists, butter sculptors, food landscapers, food performers and chocolate sculptors.

Highlights include installations by ACMD Productions, Paul Baker, Blanch & Shock, Bompas & Parr, Carl Warner, Caroline Smith aka Mertle, Choc Star, Gingers Comfort Emporium, Jennifer Allum, Lady Greys, Lana Citron, Lily Vanilli, Love To Cake, Michelle Wibowo, Paul Wayne Gregory, Pop Bakery, Professor Roland Rotherham, Prudence Emma Staite, Rebel Dining Society, Sharon Baker, Simon Smith, Stefan Gates, Teatime Production and The Curious Confectioner. The event will also feature a guest appearance by international chocolate painter Sid Chidiac.

Visit the ticketed daytime exhibition and take part in one of the interactive exhibits, sample the edible art, watch some of the artists as they create their works on site and pick up recipes and tips on how to get experimental in the kitchen.

There are 100 tickets for the banquet finale priced at £75. Diners at the banquet will partake in a unique and surreal multi sensory dining experience in which they feast on the artworks in a five-course menu designed by Matthew Reuter (Head Chef, The Brickhouse) and Experimental Food Society members. Accompanied by a series of food related performances, the interactive evening will end with food themed DJ sets by the Broken Hearts.

Date: Saturday 25 September
Time: Daytime Exhibition - (11.00am-5.00pm)/Evening Banquet -(7.30pm - 1.00am)
Venue: The Brickhouse
Address: 152C Brickhouse, London E1 6RU
Ticket Price: Daytime Exhibition £5.00/Evening Banquet £75.00
Tickets: Purchasable via http://www.experimentalfoodsociety.com/

g

REVIEW: VIET GRILL

LondOntheinside really like Cay Tre so imagine our delight when we found out they owned another restaurant, just around the corner on Kingsland Road. Viet Grill is a lot bigger than Cay Tre which is great because it means you hardly ever need to queue. The décor is nice, the staff are great but the food is the real winner here!

Fighting off stiff competition from their neighbours the Viet Grill still manages to be bustling every night. We started off with the Mango salad and Beef Vinh both dishes recommended by the chef. The Mango salad served with Sun dried squid, mint, smashed nut, julienned mango and sweet chilli sauce was fab. This was the first time we had tried mango salad usually opting for Papaya but it won’t be the last! The staff kindly shared their recipe so watch this space…

The Beef Vinh a roll of five-spice charcoal-grilled beef filet was cooked to perfection, the meat required minimum chewing (always a plus!) and the spices worked well with the meaty flavours.

For main we opted for Seabass Chien Gion, a personal favourite from our visits to Cay Tre, Bong xao sup lo, egg fried rice and plain noodles with bean sprouts and onion. First up the Bong xao sup lo, pork with tiger prawns, shitake mushrooms, cauliflower, wood ear mushrooms and Thai celery, what a dish! For £9 you could literally feed a family of four on this, we had never come across a dish that listed tiger prawns as an additional ingredient and actually contained more than three. Great value and a big thumbs up!

The Seabass served with mango in fish sauce was tasty, a good piece of fish with a light, sweet sauce. Like we said this is one of our favourite dishes so it never fails to impress. The noodles and rice were good, both none greasy and massive portions that we struggled to finish. There is also a good wine menu which you don’t often get in Vietnamese restaurants.

We finished with a glass of Thanh Mai , fermented plum apricot wine, on the rocks, a Hanoi local drink. A little too strong for us but worth a try.

All in all a quality meal and great value. Before you ask, yes we will go back, we are even contemplating reserving a table for our birthday. Especially now we know it stays open until 1am Friday and Saturday, perfect for those evenings when you want to have another drink but don’t want to move on to a pub.

Viet Grill, 58 Kingsland Road, Shoreditch, London, E2 8DP

http://www.vietnamesekitchen.co.uk/

G

OFFER: TWO DINE FOR £20 AT THE COOKBOOK CAFÉ

Men treat your ladies to lunch at the InterContinental London Park Lane's Cookbook Café. From Monday – Friday, 12pm – 3pm two people can dine for just £20.

Choose from the healthy Market Table menu, including fresh produce such as salads, fish, pasta and fresh cheeses, as well as delicious tapas-sized deserts.

If that wasn’t enough diners can dip into the cookbooks of some of the world's most famous chefs, including Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson.

The Cookbook Cafe, open to members of the public and hotel guests, is situated in the luxurious InterContinental London Park Lane. The café has floor to ceiling windows with views over Hyde Park, a lovely place to whittle away an afternoon.

The offer is available until November 2010.

For more details please call the Cookbook Cafe directly on 020 7318 8563 or visit http://www.cookbookcafe.co.uk/

G

NEWS: FOODIE HEAVEN COMING TO THE BARBICAN

With September comes cold winds, autumn leaves and Food Heaven at The Barbican Centre. Food Heaven consists of two new dining areas, The Foodhall and Dining Lounge. The Barbican Foodhall will offer a deli style experience and diners will be able to take away their purchases or consume at the counter tops. Think Harrods foodhall only on a smaller scale. Diners will be able to eat their way around the world at the Foodhall’s street food market.

The Lounge will be more of a sit down affair and offer small plates and gourmet bar snacks. For those wanting a faster feast the Lounge will offer a Dine & Dash menu which guarantees diners will be out of the door in 50 minutes or receive their money back. The Lounge bar will also feature the world’s first macaroon mixologist combining macaroons with a selection of cocktails. Definitely one for the ladies!

Opens 14th September 2010,

Barbican Foodhall & Lounge, Silk Street, London,

G

REVIEW: FIRE & STONE

We popped along to the new Fire & Stone restaurant in Spitalfields last week. Having read a fair whack of bad press we were looking forward to trying one of the weird creations.

Whist debating over which corner of the world our chosen pizza might come from (each pizza is named after a different place) we ordered some Crispy Wonton King Prawns.

The prawns were crispy on the outside and raw on the inside, yep they were actually raw. They are cooked at the ends my dining partner said. Oh that’s ok then, if they are cooked at the ends they will be fine, or maybe not. We didn’t have the heart to complain they were trying so hard but we did notice another plate being sent back so it wasn’t just us who got the raw deal.

Prawns safely hidden under the napkin our pizzas arrived. B played it save with the Maui, cheese and pineapple so he couldn’t really go wrong. I was a little more adventurous and went for the Athena, mozzarella, sliced tomatoes, spinach, feta, pine nuts and pesto. The pizza bases were good, freshly made and stone baked but I made a mistake with my choice. There was just too many tomatoes on it, literally ever bit of pizza was covered in tomatoes. This combined with the spinach and mozzarella meant the middle of the pizza had quite a lot of liquid in it resulting in a soggy patch. I think it would have worked better if they had used sun dried tomatoes. It didn’t actually taste bad although I did give the soggy middle a miss!

The Maui was a lot better and B cleared his plate. For desert we opted for the chocolate mouse with chocolate brownie bits which was nice, extremely chocolaty. Would we go back? We are not sure we would, we did like the décor and would like to try the London pizza just to see what black pudding on a pizza is like, but it wouldn’t be a first choice for pizza, not even a second or third one really! Maybe with a 2 4 1 voucher we could be persuaded….

Fire & Stone 4 Horner Square, Old Spitalfields Market, London

http://www.fireandstone.com/

G

REVIEW: YUM YUM

In 2009 Gordon Ramsey voted Yum Yum, Stoke Newington the second best Thai restaurant in the UK. With his reputation at the moment that doesn’t mean an awful lot although it did give me quite high expectations. Arriving at Yum, Yum on an early Wednesday evening it was encouraging to see the restaurant was already quite busy, especially given its location from central London.

The décor and dining areas are clean and bright, there is a large water feature with big fish swimming about, dark wooden dividers, floor tables and cushions as well as your normal table and chairs . You can imagine this was quite something when it opened but nowadays the likes of Gilgamesh and Shaka Zulu make the décor of most restaurants seem quite tame.

First impressions of the menu was that it was slightly over priced, £8.10 for a Papaya Salad and £8.20 for Pad Thai seemed quite steep for Thai food but you get what you pay for! With that in mind we ordered Papaya Salad and Thai Spring Rolls to start followed by Pad Thai, Chicken Green Curry and Coconut Rice. During the evening the restaurant offers half price cocktails between 6pm and 7:30pm these seemed to be going down a treat. We didn’t get to try them, as LondOntheinside had over indulged the night before, so nursing a hangover we stuck with the water.

The starters were a little on the small side, but hey they were starters. The papaya salad was crunchy, sweet and fresh but I would have preferred a little more of a spicy kick. The Thai Spring Rolls didn’t taste of much except basil, they were supposed to be filled with vegetables but we didn’t seem to find anything else other than basil and rice noodles in ours.

For mains the Pad Thai, again a little on the small side for its price was just an average Pad Thai. Nice enough, although it would have been better if they had cooked it using a little less oil as the noodles were quite greasy. The green curry was nice full of vegetables, including courgettes and peppers which I have to say I have never seen in a Thai curry. The portion of rice for £3.20 was again quite small, we cleaned our plates but still left feeling hungry, not what you’d expect from a two course meal.

Overall I would say the meal was average, Thai food is meant to be cheap, fresh and spicy but I feel Yum, Yum have catered too much for Western tastes and the food lacks the vibrant flavours of Thai spices. Would I go back? Well I am not in any hurry, there are plenty of better, cheaper Thai restaurants (no mention necessary – Busaba Eathai) and if I find myself in Stoke Newington looking for Thai I think I will try the Thai Café on Northwold Road. It certainly doesn’t look as posh but I think that was a lesson learnt from Thailand the ones who didn’t look great, served the best food. As they say beauty is not only skin deep!

Yum Yum, 87 Stoke Newington High Street, London, N16 0LH

http://www.yumyum.co.uk/

G