Sparrow, Lewisham

Lentil vada, coconut chutney

On Sunday night we went to Sparrow in Lewisham for Becks' birthday. We've wanted to go since they opened but morning sickness and a baby had got in the way until now.

The menu is an eclectic mix of Italian, Indian and south east Asian influences with some French and north African flavours sprinkled in to. It sounds like it could be a car crash. Can one kitchen really pull off all those different flaovurs in a cohesive way? I'm pleased to say, as it was a birthday dinner, yes they can.

Burrata, slow cooked courgettes

It was difficult to pick a favourite from the mains. The green risotto still had incredible bite but there was no hint of chalkiness and the pine nuts sprinkled on top had been toasted deeply adding a great flavour. How did they manage to toast them that darkly without burning them?

The vada, burrata and lamb were all dishes I'd order again too. Already being full we shouldn't have ordered dessert but did the lure of sugar drew us in. They didn't feel up to the level of the main courses but it's a bit unfair to judge them when we were so full.

It took us a long time to get to Sparrow, but hopefully we'll organiser another babysitter and be back sooner next time.

Green risotto, pine nuts, perroche

Slow cooked lamb, polenta, carrots

Ginger loaf and butterscotch sauce

Mont Blanc

Sparrow
2 Rennell Street,

London

SE13 7HD

Super Thai food: Supawan, Kings Cross

I recently read Marina O’Loughlin's review of Supawan, and like many other people I suspect, decided I'd like to try their Thai food for myself. A catch up with my friend Ed last night provided the perfect opportunity.

Marina was universal in her delight at Supawan. We had two awesome dishes and two a bit more average, although the highs definitely outweighed the lows.

First, the highs. The neua yang (grilled beef) is described on the menu as coming with a grounded rice and mint dressing. What they didn't mention on the menu was the amazing sauce that had us both spooning it over our rice to make sure we ate every last drop.

The second excellent dish was the Thai squid (pictured). At first glance it looks like any other deep fried calamari, but the chili and tamarind coating took this squid to a whole different level. I could have very easily eaten another plateful.

The two dishes that slightly missed the mark were two staples that I love ordering on my visits to Thailand. The first was som dtum (papaya salad). In Thailand this salad is ferociously hot and it is a dish that just doesn't work without chili and our just didn't have enough. Phakbung fai deng (stir fried morning glory) universally comes in tasty garlicky sauce, but this one was just a little bland and without enough punch in the sauce.

The beef and the squid were definitely enough to make me want to go back. Hopefully I find some more highs from the menu. At £25 a head it was excellent value and our lovely server even tolerated my poor Thai.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure the bathroom tiles are the same ones as we have in our bathroom too.

Supawan
38 Caledonian Rd
Kings Cross
London
N1 9DT

Freak Scene, Farringdon

Chilli crab with avocado wanton bombs

Back in early September Becks and I had a quick after work dinner at Freak Scene in Farringdon. The restaurant is run by Scott Hallsworth who has some serious pedigree having been head chef at both Nobu in London and Melbourne.

Freak Scene was originally being billed as a pop-up but has since become more permanent (I'm pretty sure). When we went, presumably thinking they were only there for a short time, they'd barely done anything to decorate the interior since the previous tenants of the building had left and the seating was canteen style complete with plastic red plates. This isn't meant criticism, Sydney gave me a love of rough around the edges Asian eateries with tasty food and keen prices. Which is exactly what Freak Scene serves up.

Writing this I'm not quite sure why I haven't been back yet...

Black cod tacos (top right) and Seared beef salad with pomegranate, onion-peanut ponzu and garlic crisps

Miso grilled aubergine with caramelised walnuts

Red duck curry with lychees

Freak Scene
91 Cowcross St
Clerkenwell
London
EC1M 6BH

Afternoon Tea at the Langham Hotel

Palm Court at the Langham Hotel

Last weekend we decided to go for afternoon tea at the Langham Hotel. It is one of the more expensive options in London, but not excessively so and it also gave us the chance to try some of Cherish Finden's baking. Considering how brutal her judging is on Bake Off Creme de la Creme, surely it must be good?

We spend a very pleasant three hours sitting in their afternoon tea room, listening to the piano being played and being well looked after. Pro tip, ask for a cushion to put behind your back as their seats are quite deep.

Selection of sandwiches

Rather than being given a tiered cake stand and letting you get on with it, you are each served a plate of sandwiches, followed by warm scones and then a plate of cakes. We were offered additional sandwiches and scones before our plates were cleared at the end of each 'course', but there was no way we could fit any extras in.

I'm only a very occasional tea drinker, but it appears they take their teas seriously with several exclusive blends. They brew the tea before bringing it to your table, which has the upside that you don't get an over stewed pot, but the downside that your tea can take quite a while to arrive.

Plain and fruit scones

From the sandwiches the classic ‘prawn cocktail’, iceberg, potato bun, tomato powder was my favourite. Becks isn't a big prawn fan so I got to have two.

For me the stand out cake was the Rikakaka - Crunchy sable, tonka and orange cream, fresh cherries (bottom centre in the photo below).

Cake selection

Nara, Osaka and our only duff meal in Japan

Tōdai-ji in Nara

We took a regional train to Nara from Kyoto, which was a bit of a crushing disappointment having solely zipped about on bullet trains up to that point.

Nara was the capital of Japan and in the 8th century and contains some pretty amazing gates and concentrated in Nara Park just a short walk from the train station. There are some reasonably tame deer wondering around the park too and I can't forget the modern park offices, the toilets of which I was very pleased to avail myself of not finding any other loos in the park!

Todai-ji close up

There is no doubt that there were some incredible sights in Nara, and if you were looking for a 'best of Japan's temples and shrines' day trip you'd struggle to do much better. I know it will make me sound incredibly uncultured, but I didn't feel as awed by Nara as I feel I should have been. It was probably a bit of fatigue of having already seen so many temples already and spending quite a few days on our feet.

15m high seated Buddha

Nara was also the location of our only duff meal in Japan. There seems to be nowhere to eat inside Nara Park. We walked to the nearest exit we could find, hoping to find a line of restaurants catering to all the tourists. Sadly there was nothing around and when we did find a café it was the only duff thing I ate during our entire holiday. Not bad considering.

Crazy statues inside the temple

Bells? Laterns? at Todaiji Nigatsudo

Rather than get the train back to Kyoto, we headed to Osaka for dinner, because with the Japan rail pass you can go a bit crazy.

Donburi 

When we arrived in Osaka we took the metro from the main station to the Donburi district to have a look at all of the lights. Needing some dinner we fell into our now customary routine of walking past perfectly good looking places and finding some reason to dismiss them, until we found ourselves in an izakaya, a Japanese pub.

Donburi II

We pulled up some seats at the bar, ordered a beer and selected some random bar snacks. All of which were absolutely excellent. I think the bar staff quite enjoyed having two gaijin in their bar too. I was really pleased that we'd had a good izakaya experience during our holiday.

Full we headed back to the main station in Osaka to catch the bullet train back to Kyoto. A train ride which ONLY TOOK SIXTEEN MINUTES. I know that the cities are practically one continuous conurbation, but which other country in the world could you travel 55km from city centre to city centre in sixteen minutes?

Back in Kyoto we had a quick explore of the amazing station building and then caught a bus back to our hotel. We jumped on the same number bus that we'd used the previous day and new went close to our ryokan, only for it to start heading in completely the opposite direction. Once we were sure it was just a minor detour we hoped off at a random stop, with another couple of westerners who had made the same mistake.

We walked through the darkened Kyoto fish markets, which in any country other than Japan would have felt mildly threatening, up to a main road where we were able to catch another bus back to our ryokan.

Hanging out in Gion and eating buckwheat noodles Arashiyama Yoshimura, Kyoto

Gion back streets

A quick photo blog of our day slowly drifting around the traditional houses in streets of Gion, along with a lot of other tourists. It was a pleasant and relaxing drift not really caring where we went (which led us to go down at least one dead end street).

For dinner we went to a recommendation from our ryokan, Arashiyama Yoshimura. It is a restaurant which specialising in making their own buckwheat noodles and was probably the smartest restaurant we went to while we were away. It was a bit of a tourist trap with a sprinkling of Japanese businessmen as well.

Five tiered pagoda in Gion

A garden in Gion

Sashimi

Cold soba noodles and tempura

Warm soba noodles

Ice cream dessert

Fowl Mouths at Noak

Asparagus with hollandaise and wild garlic bombs

I was really pleased to be able to try the recent Fowl Mouths residency at Noak in Brockley, going twice while they were open. The first visit was on my birthday with Ed and the second trip was with Becks on the last night of their extended run.

Togarashi Crispy Squid 

There was a lot to like, with the kitchen working quietly and efficiently to produce some beautifully plated food.  From my first visit the chargrilled asparagus with hollandaise sauce and wild garlic bombs was definitely one of the standouts with the wild garlic pods provided a real hit. I also remember the chargrilled broccoli with ponzu from my second visit being almost as good.

Miso aubergine

The Togarashi crispy squid was an exciting roulette with the some pieces of squid more well coated in the seven spice blend than others. Ed and I also both enjoyed the side of kara-age chicken, which brought back memories of eating the same thing in Hiroshima station after jumping off the Shinkansen from Miyajima.

Side of kara-age chicken

Both dinners could have been elevated to one of my highlights of the year, but were sadly held back by a couple of dishes that didn't quite work so well. On each occasion the pork from the slow cooked pork belly was a little dry. The miso aubergine was beautifully cooked, but there was so much miso paste on top that it stuck to the roof of your mouth as you ate it. On the second visit when I ordered the vegetarian miso garlic mushrooms, the yolk of the crispy panko egg was over-cooked too.

Gojuchang beef ribs 

It may sound like I'm quibbling, but the disappointment when something potentially brilliant falls short, is somehow worse than just having an average meal. I will just whisper that the pricing felt a touch too high for the portion sizes as saying it out loud would make me sound like I'm being unnecessarily mean.

Slow cooked ginger and sake pork belly

Palma Pintxos, Mallorca

Pintxos at Tast Union

We checked out a few restaurant options for the Saturday night of our trip to Palma, but with none of them appealing, we decided to do some bar hopping instead.

The first place that we visited was Tast Union. Grabbing some seats at the counter we were a little unsure of the etiquette, but the form seemed to be that you helped yourself to plates from the pintxos counter (that either came in single or double servings). We also ordered a couple of dishes from the tapas menu.

Prawn, whitebait and salmon

The pintxos at Tast Union were really, really, good. Not only did every plate look amazingly appealing but there were also so many tasty combinations of flavour in every single bite. I particularly remember the courgette, jamon and garlic mayo pintxos (photo below) and an anchovy and jamon number with basil oil.

Chorizo in cider and cured sheep's cheese

Slightly less successful than the pintxos, for me, were the tapas that we also ordered. The chorizo in cider wasn't a patch on the version from L'Oculto. I'm usually a big fan of manchego style cheeses, but here it was easy to be eclipsed by the pintxos.

Courgette, ham and garlic mayonaise

Realising that we were somewhere very good we had a couple of extra pintxos rather than moving in case we ended up somewhere disappointing.

Tast Union
Calle Unio, 2, 

07001 Palma, 

Illes Balears,

Spain

When we did finally tear ourselves away we crossed the road and headed up a small side street and straight into La 5a Puñeta, which was equally great but in a completely different way. Where Tast Union on the main drag was polished, this place felt a lot more like an authentic local bar that hadn't changed a bit in the last ten years,

The small restaurant was filled with families and young locals looking to get their pintxos hit. Plates of food were brought out from the kitchen and placed on the bar. The crowds then descended to help themselves and if you didn't get in quick you were likely to miss out!

I remember trying the tortilla from the photo above which was really salty, but it worked very well.

Payment seemed to almost be on a honesty system where you went up to the counter on your way out of the bar and showed them the number of cocktail sticks that you had and told them how many glasses of wine that you'd drunk. Proving that honesty system do work when I realised I couldn't have paid enough, in my faltering Spanish I asked them if they'd charged us for the carrot cake (which they hadn't).

Carrot cake

I was pretty surprised both places charged the same for their pintxos at 1.75 EUR a pop. They are absolutely both worth a try. Tast Union won on presentation and just edged the flavour combinations for me. La 5a Puñeta wins on atmosphere and the fun factor.

La 5a Puñeta
Carrer de les Caputxines, 3
07003 Palma
Illes Balears
Spain

Hopping round Kyoto with a bus pass

Rock garden at the Daitoku-ji temple 

On our first full day in Tokyo we decided to purchase a one day bus pass, and coupled with our Japan rail pass, try and tick off as many of the major tourists sites as we could in a day.

Our first stop was the walled Daitoku-ji temple complex in the north of the city. There are twenty two temples inside the walls, with several open to the public to visit. All of the ones we saw had an entrance fee so we only went inside the Daisen-In zen garden. No photos are allowed inside the temple. It was a very tranquil and relaxing place and I have never seen such manicured gravel in all my life.  Surely they can't have placed all of those pieces of gravel individually. Surely?

The golden temple

It was then a second hop on the bus to get across to the far more popular golden temple, Kinkaku-ji. The ancient looking temple was actually rebuilt in 1955 having been burnt down by a novice monk five years earlier. The temple and lake were beautiful but it wasn't particularly tranquil with the crowds of tourists filing round with us.

In stark contrast to all of the other temples we visited there were hoards of stalls positioned so that you had to walk past them on the way into / out of the temple. They all felt quite out of place.

I'd been suffering with a streaming nose for a couple of days (pleasant image for you I'm sure) and as we walked past a pharmacy Becks convinced me that I should go in to buy a decongestant. Unfortunately the pharmacist didn't speak any English, and with Google translate letting me down, I attempted to act as having a cold with very little success. I was sold a nasal spray (Japanese pharmacies are expensive!) which I later discovered was a hay fever medicine. However, it had some positive effects even if it was a placebo.

Inside the bamboo garden

Our third stop of the day was one of the sites I was most looking forward to in Kyoto, the bamboo forest at Arashiyama having seen so many stunning photos of the place over the years. Sadly it was one of the most disappointing places we visited during our time in Japan. There was definitely a lot of bamboo but I saw none of the vistas that inspired me to visit in the first place.

Fushimi Inari-taisha

Our final stop of the day was Fushimi Inari-taisha. The main shrine was built in 1499, but the site is probably best known for the thousands of torii gates which line the paths on the mountain behind the main shrine.

I was already beginning to approach dusk as we arrived at the shrine so we didn't have long enough to explore the whole mountain and discover the inner shrine. However, we still managed to drift along quite a few of the walkways and up part of the hill.

Foxes (to can be seen in the photo above) are regarded as messengers and there were quite a few of them in and around the temple. Becks bought herself a small ceramic fox as we descended from the hill in the fading evening light. Sadly it got crushed in her bag on the flight home.

Torii gates

Dinner at Ootoya

For dinner we went to Ootoya, which is a chain of restaurants that we saw from time to time on our trip round Japan. It was a teishoku style restaurant meaning the food is served as set meals. I really liked the place as it was one of the view set meal places we visited during our stay and I think we picked a pretty good one to try. It was simple, clean and efficient and I was a happy boy with my katsu, rice, cabbage, pickles and mustard after a long day sightseeing without a lunch stop!