CRISIS CHRISTMAS APPEAL...

Christmas is as much about giving as it is receiving. Which is why we wanted to share this incentive to promote a brilliant and worthwhile cause this Christmas. If you’d like to help out those less fortunate this festive season Crisis are giving people the opportunity to book a single place, a table for two or even a table for 10 at the homeless charity’s Christmas Day meal. There are a whole range of price options available so give as much or little as you can - help a good cause and you'll feel brilliant about doing your bit. Just check out the website for all the info and to make your booking.

If you're looking for a last minute Christmas present for someone who has everything why not buy a seat on their behalf? Sorted!

http://community.crisis.org.uk/reserved

MONTCALM NEW YEARS EVE...

Fancy seeing in the New Year in serious style? Then the 5-star Montcalm, one of our favourite London hotels in Marble Arch is the place to do it. Start with a glass of sparkling wine and canapés in the rather dapper Montcalm Bar before going through to the swish restaurant for a 4 course dinner with DJ and fireworks shown on the big screen. Dancing until 2:30am is optional as is an overnight stay in the WOW suite – but its New Years Eve right! Check out the menu below...

Menu

Hot smoked salmon, roast baby beets, horseradish cream and winter salad leaves

Wild mushroom ravioli, mushroom and truffle ragout

Smoked duck breast, roast orange and pomegranate salad

***

Pot roast breast of guinea fowl with a confit of it’s leg, carrot parfait, roast endive

and rich Burgundy sauce

Prosciutto wrapped monkfish, olive crushed potatoes, braised fennel

Roquefort stuffed chickpea gateau, leek and spring onion ‘straw’, artichoke

fritters, cherry tomato ragout

***

Chocolate and rosemary tartlette, white chocolate mille-feuille, orange compote

Toffee apple crumble, baby toffee apple, apple sorbet

Book on: 020 7958 3200

Dinner is served from 7pm – 10:30pm
34-40 Great Cumberland Place, London W1H
www.montcalm.co.uk

REVIEW: EAST STREET

EasT Street, the latest Asian restaurant to hit the streets of Soho comes from the same family as the Tampopo restaurants. The menu takes you on an adventure throughout Asia with different specialities from a host of countries.

Inside the decor is on trend with concrete warehouse style ceilings crammed with brightly lit street signage and Habitat style furniture. It's bright, it's colourful and it's full of fashionable Soho types.

The relaxed and informal setting makes the place feel welcoming - the service is great too even on the opening night. To start we shared a BBQ platter of Sesame Prawn skewers, Bulgogi, Satay and Yakitoria served on a slab of slate. Highlights were the chicken satay with a chunky homemade peanut sauce and the Sesame Prawn skewers, we'd recommend going for an extra portion per person if you are greedy hungry.

For mains one of us headed to Japan for Chicken Katsu Curry whilst the other delved into Thailand with a Pad Thai and Som Tam (Papaya salad). The Katsu curry was a generous portion of breadcrumbed chicken served with curry sauce, sticky rice and a large side salad.

The Pad Thai was made with flat noodles rather than rice noodles and we have to say we prefer the later. However it was still a fairly decent Pad Thai with a good portion of prawns and egg in the mixture.  The Papaya Salad was more of an English salad with chunky strips of Papaya and large slices of tomato. It also lacked the chilli kick of more authentic Som Tam's and the fish sauce was noticeably absent from the dressing.

Don't get us wrong it wasn't a bad meal - the food is fresh and tasty but the dishes we sampled seemed more like Westernised versions of their Eastern counterparts. Drinks wise the menu is quirky with Asian beers, wine and three cocktails (including the popular farang drink Sangsom & Coke), oh and the chocolate ice-cream is the snizzle.

East Street, 3-5 Rathbone Place, W1T
www.eaststreetrestaurant.com

REVIEW: DEHESA

Regular readers will remember that we were raving about Salt Yard earlier this year so it was only right that we get around to visiting sister restaurant Dehesa. Located in the heart of Soho, just off Carnaby Street, it excels in the same style of elaborate modern tapas as Salt Yard and Opera Tavern, the third in this holy trinity mini-chain.

Inside, the venue is small and intimate and it's not unusual for two small parties to share a table. The confines of the space do help to generate a buzzing atmosphere though with an electric mood throughout the restaurant, helped in no small part by the quality of the food. Regulars at Salt Yard and Opera Tavern will recognise many of the items on the menu already, but when the standards are so high that is no bad thing.

We kicked off our meal with a selection of Spanish cheeses and padron peppers - small salted peppers that look like chillis but are not at all hot and instead have a bitter taste. There are rumours that one in a hundred are hot - we'll leave it to you to decide whether this an urban legend or not. The first dish to arrive was the courgette flowers stuffed with goats cheese and drizzled in honey - if you only order one dish make sure it is this. The crispy outer coating is sweet with honey, the inner is soft vegetable and within that is melted cheese.

Swiftly followed by cod croquettes with an impossibly smooth and creamy interior of fish and mashed potato, and huge prawns sauteed in garlic and chilli. Chunky and meaty, the spice permeated right through them. Next up came tender steak onglet served rare on leaves with balsamic dressing which melted on the tongue, and mini lamb chops - small but perfectly formed pieces of delicately soft lamb that yielded to the knife as if it was butter. The final dish to arrive was the chorizo, without which no tapas meal would be complete. Authentically Spanish, it was piquant and zesty, served on a bed of sauteed onions.

To round off the meal, we sampled the torrijas, a traditional Spanish dessert like a part-fried doughnut. It is served with a semi-cooked centre giving it a viscous texture, unusual but not unpleasant. Anything sugary and fried is OK by us! The service here is discreet so your meal is not constantly interrupted by staff, but when service is required it can take a while to get their attention! This is a very minor fault though and Dehesa is a restaurant that we will certainly be returning to.

Dehesa, 25 Ganton Street, W1F
www.dehesa.co.uk

KIN OPENS....

Ming Tang Evans

Asian street food restaurants are two to a penny in London but finding a good one is not always that easy. One of the new kids on on the block, Kin is looking fairly promising! We attended the launch last week and were impressed by the food and booze on offer, our favourites dishes being the Bun Cha; chargrilled pork with lettuce, rice vermicellie, chilli and selection of pickles and the Potstickers, pan fried pork dumplings.

The menu features a healthy selection of food, three red, three white and one rose wine, and some Asian beers and teas - it's pretty good value too with mains from £6 and beers only £2.80. A great place for cheap, quick, healthy food...we like!

88 Leather Lane, EC1N
www.kinstreetfood.com

SECRET RESTAURANT

We are big fans of Secret Cinema and everything they do, which is why we are excited about the news of a Secret Restaurant. The restaurant will run alongside Secret Cinema at an unknown location near to where the movie takes place (apparently in a Hidden Attic). The food comes from the team at the Michelin starred St. John, and the menu will be inspired by the film with diners finding themselves immersed in a theatrical world of food, music and mystery.

We managed to get a sneak peak of the sample menu which featured Smoked Mackerel and Pickled Beetroot Appetiser, Pot Roast Smoked Gloucester Old Spot Pork Loin, Trotter & Agen Prunes, Mini Eccles Cake and Auchentoshan 12 year old Malt Whiskey.

To get in on the secret you need to have a ticket to one of the Secret Cinema showings, £28.50 in your sky rocket and you need to email: Bookings@secretcinema.org

Sounds like a plan stan! 

Now until - 22nd Jan
www.secretrestaurant.org

REVIEW: LAHORE KEBAB HOUSE

Lahore Kebab House is located in Whitechapel and it’s open late, really late which is why we found ourselves there on a Saturday night slightly worse for wear. Inside there has been no expense spared spent on the decor however you don’t visit Lahore for the decor you visit it for the food and the fact that it’s BYO.

At 2am it is heaving and when the food arrives it’s easy to see why. Onion bhajis were among the best we’ve tasted and the chicken tikka masala, keema naan, pilau rice and chicken biryani didn’t disappoint either. The highlight of the meal is the way in which they cook the meat – so tender it falls to pieces. We did have one grumble though, the chicken korma...we're still not sure if they just brought us the wrong dish or got the order wrong but the curry was so spicy it kicked our ass and the whole point of ordering a korma is that it’s not. We’d go back though, in a shot....beats a doner kebab any day!

2-4 Umberston Street, Whitechapel, E1
http://lahore-kebabhouse.com

REVIEW: RESTAURANT AT ST PAUL'S

For those who didn't already know it there is a restaurant located in the crypt of St Paul's and a pretty decent one at that. The restaurant serves lunch and afternoon tea with a changing menu which features seasonal dishes.

We went along to try out the afternoon tea last week, fighting our way through the protester's tents to get to the doors...OK so not really fighting, in fact we actually just walked around them and straight into the cathedral. But fighting sounded more dramatic. It's impossible not to be impressed by St Paul's, we challenge anyone to find a restaurant with a better entrance. We certainly can't think of one.

Down in the crypt the restaurant is fairly small with a mezzanine level which is slightly more formal than the tables at the entrance. Afternoon tea comes in two options; £15.95 or £21.25 including a glass of fizzy English rose wine.

The tea consists of a round of the usual sandwiches - salmon, cucumber and egg mayo, a scone and a piece of battenberg and two small cinnamon macaroons. Everything is fresh and homemade which gets the thumbs up; the sandwiches were tasty and moist, the tea was hot and plentyful and the fizzy wine sweet but tart.

Personally we'd have preferred the scones served warm and perhaps as it was chrimbo they could have added a small mince pie in place of the macaroons which we noticed other people getting with their bills.

The afternoon tea ticked the box although it wasn't the best afternoon tea we've eaten however those afternoon teas we not served in St Paul's crypt and that's the hook right there! A great place to take the nana or in laws, its bound to impress, "Boris you will never guess where Mark took us for lunch".

Worth a go we reckon! Plus the fixed course lunch deals aren't bad value either.

Saint Paul's Cathedral, EC4M
www.restaurantatstpauls.co.uk

THE STEW HOUSE

Following the success of The Stew House at Netil 360, the pop-up restaurant returns with an even bigger schedule this Christmas. The bad news is its already SOLD OUT, the good news is they have added some January dates but you're gonna wanna book now before those sell out too.

The menu is based around one of the most popular dishes the world has ever seen, the good old stew. From the Romans to the Vikings, stew has been a staple for thousands of years and there will be a whopping 8 stews on offer!
Artists Jennie Webberand Dan Hillier have create a banqueting room to remember. Based around a huge Tudor Style dining table the space will cross 2D and 3D and bring a blank canvas to life like you’ve never seen before.

Drink wise there will be homemade mulled cider, guest mixologists, beer and wines. Dress to impress a'la tudor style and if you need inspiration check out the dress section of the website. The event is to be held in a secret disused building in East London. Details released a week before the event.

The January dates are - 19th, 20th, 21st, 26th, 27th and 28th. Email to book: jan@thedeaddollsclub.com

http://thedeaddollsclub.com

FLASH SUSHI...

For some, mince pies are totally passé. For others, turkey is so last year. If you're looking for something completely different for Christmas dinner this year then why not try eating sushi off a naked model. Flash Sushi gives you the opportunity to do just that for the very reasonable price of £250 per person - and we're promised that it's hygienic....

This one off event on December 8th will be held at secret locations and diners will only be allowed to know where to go when the table is reserved and pre-paid, all we know is that is somewhere in Zone One..... Included in the £250 price tag is a Champagne reception, a ten course sushi banquet served on the naked body of a model along with Champagne, wine, beer and Japanese whiskey included in the price.

Londontheinside previewed this event when it was last held in June but the key difference this time is that the models will be both male and female - something for everyone! This will be an experience to remember but don't even think about taking your camera - photography is not on the menu, nor are conversations with the models.

And watch where your putting those bloody chopsticks!

Thurs 8th Dec
www.flash-sushi.com

THE STOCKMKT

Last week The Longtable opened in Dalston and unless you were there before 6:30pm or didn't mind queueing for an hour or two in the cold you left hungry. This week there is another food market in town the StockMKT where you'll find street delights from Big Apple Hotdogs, Bhangra Burgers, Spice Monkey and many more, with a side order of crafts, clothing, furniture and live music thrown in. Think Bangkok night market only on a smaller scale, a MUCH smaller scale.

The market opens on Friday and due to the less trendy location it's unlikely the queues will be too long. Go forth and find....

Fri 2nd Dec, 5pm - 9pm
Bermondsey Square, SE1
www.thestockmkt.com

KOSHER ROAST...

Fancy a roast this Sunday, then head along to one of our favourite bars; the Shop NW10 who will be serving up a Kosher Roast all day. The Kosher pop-up will be taking place both this Sunday and next. Diners will be treated to a Roast Beef dinner with all the trimmings and even the resident Rabbi has been involved in the preps.

Tickets cost £25 and are sold out however you can grab a place on the waiting list.

Sun 4th Dec & Sun 11 Dec
The Shop NW10, 75 Chamberlayne Road, NW10
kosherroast.co.uk