Time for another London Blog.....

Mien Tay

www.mientay.co.uk

Having  been quite dissapointed by my last visit for Vietnemese food along Kingsland road, or 'Pho Mile' as it has been nicknamed, i decided to visit Mien Tay as i had heard lots of positive reviews.

When we arrived at the restaurant it was packed out, which i was shocked by as it was early on a Sunday evening. We were seated quickly, however we were left to our own devices perusing the menu for about 20 minutes before anyone even asked us if we would like a drink. 

The menu was vast, at first i was quite excited by the amount of choice on the menu, then i became a little dubious as to how they could possibly offer all of these dishes without the quality of the food suffering somewhat. For starters we opted for one dish to share and chose chargrilled quail with garlic, honey and spices as i read that this was one of their most popular dishes.

We seemed to be waiting a long time for this dish to arrive, and although the restaurant was very busy, i couldn't understand why one starter could be taking so long. When it did arrive it looked appetising, the flavour of the meat was quite pleasant, but i think the chilli overwhelmed it all a bit and i couldn't detect much of the honey flavour. The amount of small bones was also a bit fiddly to chomp around, therefore we finished the dish both feeling hungry and also frustrated by the poor service we had been receiving.

The service seemed to keep on getting worse during the course of the evening. We waited abot 20 minutes for the main course, looking on as the table next to us who arrived after us, had pretty much eaten up and were paying their bill. When we asked a staff member where our food was he looked at us slightly confused, dissapeared off somewhere only to return and say that we had been pretty much forgotten about, and our food would be coming soon.

By this point i didn't really want to stay and would have gladly left if it wasn't for the fact that it would have meant another trip to go and find somewhere else to eat.

When our main meals arrived, there was no apology for the delay, however all i wanted to do was tuck in. We ordered crispy sea bream with lemongrass and chilli, stirfried mince pork with aubergine and stirfried noodles with beansprouts. The fish looked really nice, and tasted quite good, i liked the light fragrant fish sauce it was sitting on, although i was a bit dissapointed that i couldn't taste the lemongrass much. I would have also prefered the fish to have been filleted to save time.

I took one bite of the minced pork and aubergine dish and in all honesty it was one of the blandest dishes i have ever tasted. The sauce was very synthetic and the whole colour of the dish was extremely unnapetising. The meat tasted like it was very poor quality and the aubergine didn't  have that lovely smokey flavour you would expect. It was a complete crime against the wonderful aubergine, and i couldn't have continued to eat it.

The noodles were fairly standard, the crispy onions on the top were a nice touch though.

I was so suprised by all the positive reviews of this restaurant, and i thought that the total bill of £29.00 was too expensive for the quality of the food and service received.

Naru

www.narurestaurant.com

We enjoyed a much more pleasant experience at Naru, a Korean restaurant right at the top of Shaftesbury Avenue. The atmosphere in the restaurant was relaxing, and our waiter for the evening soon put us at ease with his friendly service and complementary tap water.

After a very long perusal of the menu we chose starters of traditional Korean pancake with seafood and spring onion and sweet potato and enoki mushroom noodle spring rolls. Both these dishes were great. I loved the mixture of soft and crispy textures of the pancake, and the filling was very generous. The rolls were wonderfully crisp and the enoki mushrooms and noodles were a really nice soft texture in contrast to the crisp outside. The only thing that could have made it better  would have been somekind of dipping sauce on the side.

I can't actually remember the name of this dish. However, it consisted of rice noodles, rice cakes, white fish, shitake mushrooms, and was strangely topped with cheese. On the menu it said that this was a traditional Korean dish so i was interested to try it out. It was hot and spicy, packed with chilli, the noodles and ricecakes providing a nice chewy texture, great to soak up the rich sauce. Courgette and carrott ribbons adding a bit of crunch and freshness to the dish. I am still not sure about that cheese topping though!

Total price £23

One of my favourite places along Edgeware road, 'Meya Meya' an unassuming Egyptian takeaway. Doesn't look like much from the outside but it does really interesting Egyptian dishes at reasonable prices. One of the best things about Meya Meya however, is their feteer. An egyptain style pizza which you can have with various sweet and savoury fillings.

Here is a rather lovely chocolate and coconut cream version, mmmm!!

THE THATCH - Bottesford

www.thatchrestaurant.co.uk


The Thatch is a picturesque listed building in the village of Bottesford, situated within the Vale Of Belvoir. The rather old fashioned looking website doesn't really do the building itself much justice. 

We were given a free 'amuse bouche' to start but strangely were not told by the staff what it was we were eating. It consisted of some rather drab looking salad leaves with a dollop of some slow cooked lamb on the top. I found this an odd choice to choose to start the meal and you wouldn't really refer to it as an amuse bouche. Perhaps they were trying a bit too hard to impress but missing the mark somewhat.

First on the starters was a duck pate, with melba toast and red onion jam, which was presented nicely and i am informed by James, that this was very enjoyable. Not being a pate fan myself i tried some of the melba toast and onion jam and pleased to see that the melba toast had not come out of a packet.

My starter was a seafood bouillabaisse, which i was really looking forward to as i had been wanting to try this dish for sometime. When it arrived it did not resemble a bouillabaisse at all. It was a rich earthy looking broth filled with lovely chunks of fish. Instead, i was served a rather thick looking fish soup which had the consistency of baby food and tasted like pureed salmon. Very disappointing!

Whilst waiting for our main courses we were served a complementary sorbet. Again, we were not told by the staff what the flavour of the sorbet was and spent the whole time debating about it. I overheard another member of staff telling another table that this was an orange and aniseed flavoured sorbet, (nice of them to have offered up the information beforehand). My sorbet didn't really have any taste other than that of a syrupy cough mixture which was not very enjoyable and didn't cleanse my pallet at all.

The main meals looked much more appealing, and i was very pleased with the presentation of my Moroccan lamb dish. The amount of lamb was very generous, i think there were three large sized chops all together and the meat was beautifully cooked. This was resting on top of a lovely mixture of morrocan spiced vegetables and rich wine soaked beetroot. At first i thought that this seemed like quite an odd combination but i really enjoyed the dish

.

James had the steak, with a mini shepherds pie and dauphinoise potatoes. When the dish arrived we were both a bit unsure of the rather odd looking serving platter it arrived on. Looking more like a fancy pottery chopping board and making the size of the food look a bit tiny in comparison. Also quite hard to cut the steak on without attracting a lot of attention due to the strange ridges on the platter. Overall opinion on this dish was that the meat was nicely cooked, but the amount of peppercorn sauce was a bit overpowering. It could also have done with more fresh vegetables as an accompaniment as the meat and the pie were both quite rich.

I forgot to photograph my pudding as i was quite underwhelmed first of all by the choices on the pudding menu but also the presentation of my dish. I opted for a lemon tart and cream. The pastry was quite nice and buttery, and not too thick and the lemon filling was nice and fresh. However the cream had big sugar granules in it as though it had not been mixed very well, and was quite unpleasant. I also thought they were a bit mean with their portion sizes. 

James however, did remember to photograph his pudding. This was a rhubarb crumble with vanilla ice cream and a decorative physilis. Overall opinion was that the rhubarb was much too hard and would have been nicer if it had been stewed down a bit more. Also the presentation of the dish was a bit disappointing and probably would have been nicer served in the traditional way with a nice splash of rich creamy custard!

My overall thoughts about 'The Thatch' were that the staff needed to relax a little more, they were very attentive but they seemed on edge and uncomfortable a lot of the time, which didn't put me at ease. They also failed to inform us what we were eating when they put our plates down, and i found this frustrating. I also think that you should have one member of staff wait on your table and not three different members of staff. I think they have a bit of an identity problem, perhaps they are not quite sure what kind of environment they are trying to achieve, and they are taking relatively good pub food and tryin to elevate it to fine dining.


We dined here using a groupon voucher, which entitled us to a three course meal for two for £25.

AQUA FOOD AND MOOD - Warwick

12-14 Jury Street
Warwick
CV34 4EW


www.aqua-food-mood.co.uk


This was my first visit to Warwick and i found that most of the decent sounding restaurants were quite pricey so when i read that there was a Lebanese restaurant in the town which sounded fairly reasonable i decided to give it a go. Also i am a very big fan of Lebanese and mezze food so i was quite excited about the prospect of eating here.

When we arrived at the restaurant on a Saturday night to see there was only one table of people in there we were a little hesitant as i like there to be a bit of an atmosphere. Once we were seated it didn't take long before the restaurant began to fill up, which made me relax more.

The choice of starters on the menu was fairly long with a good range of hot and cold dishes on offer. Not wanting to fill up to much before our main meals, we ordered a starter of mixed dips and bread. Consisting of humous, broad bean dip and baba ganoush. 

When it arrived it seemed quite small, i did think they could have been a bit more generous with the portion sizes of each dip. However, the humous was very good, nice and thick and rich. The baba ganoush was also very nice and had a great smokey flavour and the bread was very nice and fresh tasting. The disappointment came with the supposed broad bean dip, with no broad beans in sight just a few borlotti beans in a murky looking brown sauce which tasted like it had come out of a tin.

On to the mains, we ordered whole grilled baby chicken with garlic sauce, and a lamb and okra stew. The dishes looked very appetizing on arrival and were decently sized. The chicken tasted very good and was grilled very well so it had that lovely charred bbq taste. However, the supposed garlic sauce was just a small ramekin of what resembled garlic mayonaise. It came with rice and a small salad, although the rice didn't have that nice buttery texture that i would expect, it was just plain boiled basmati rice with a few herbs sprinkled on.

The lamb and okra stew was quite an average dish, the lamb was a bit chewy and the sauce tasted quite acidic, and didn't have a rich enough taste of the tomato. I think this was probably because it hadn't been cooked for long enough to get that rich slow cooked taste. 

The meal came to £34 including service. All in all this was a fairly decent place, and for somewhere small like Warwick i am sure it offers a refreshing change to chain restaurants and overpriced gastropubs. However it just didn't quite excel in the kitchen enough to make me want to go back.