The Orange Pimlico Rd

The Orange ****

37 Pimlico Road, London SW1W 8NE

Having had this place highly recommended for its impressive cocktail menu, I didn’t think its food offering would be as exciting.  I was pleased to discover that, whilst I enjoyed my “Basil Fawlty” (Belvedere vodka. apple juice, passion fruit, basil syrup), I was much more impressed with the food: huge portions and really tasty.  It was on the expensive side for lunch, but the quality of the food was worth it.

What we gobbled up:

Spiced calamari with harissa dip (£7.50)

Pepper seared beef, marinated baby artichokes, parmesan (£8.50)

Pumpkin, spinach & goats cheese tart, warm lentil salad (£15)

Wild boar, chorizo & mushroom stew, chestnut, mashed potato (£16.50)

Spiced grilled poussin, sage & Manchego dumplings, artichokes (£16)

The service was also excellent and our waitress even refused a tip when we tried to round up when we split the bill! The restaurant itself is really quaint, all wooden chairs and we sat under a lovely old, rustic chandelier with the fattest candles I’ve ever seen.

We ate at around 4pm and it was still busy as anything, I dread to think how long you have to wait for a table during peak times.  I will be back: Oranges definitely are The Only Fruit.

Tamra Battersea

Tamra ****

63, Northcote Road, London SW11 1NP

Reasonably priced, extensive but not overwhelming menu and great coffee.  Three ingredients necessary for the perfect brunch and three unequivocally provided by the charming Tamra.

It doesn’t look much from the outside, but by virtue of the sheer number of people inside, you know it’s got to be good.  And it makes a change from the ubiquity (and inevitable disappointment) of breakfast/brunch at Wetherspoons.

We had:

Stack of pancakes with maple syrup (£4.50)

Fry-up: eggs, bacon, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans, black pudding, toast (£8.50)

Lots of coffee

Tamra does what it does better than other places boasting the same concept.  The food is fresh and always arrives promptly, despite the fact that there’s never a spare seat and even when it’s snowing, customers brave the Arctic conditions to sit outside.  Which must be a pretty reassuring testament to a restaurant’s quality.

The perfect spot for a late weekend breakfast.  See you there!

Scott’s Mayfair

Scott’s *****

20 Mount Street, London W1K 2HE

Five stars for: fabulous, faultless, flamboyant, fantastic fish/food.

I’ve wanted to eat in Scott’s for so long it’s almost a little bit embarrassing.  Yes, it is expensive and yes there are a lot of pretentious people in there but that’s because the food is (f)enomenal.

I only wish we had been more hungry and had tried the oysters on offer, but nonetheless, what we did have was very impressive:

Chargrilled squid, romero peppers, plum tomatoes & olives (£11)

Roasted mixed squash, goat’s curd, slow roasted tomatoes & toasted pine nuts (£9.75)

Goujons of Cornish sole with tartare sauce (£19.75)

Fish of the day – lemon sole (about £28)

We did have to eat quite early to get a table, which meant the atmosphere was only just starting to get going as we left, but the meal was so excellent and the restaurant so gorgeous that that didn’t really seem to matter much.

The service was very polished, but not impersonal and the food was just exquisite.  I love fish so I was anticipating being impressed, but my expectations were definitely exceeded! The evening was made all the more entertaining by playing the “spot the billionaire/gold digger” game, for which there was plenty of fodder.

I will be going back when I have secured a billionaire of my own.  In the meantime, I will be memorising the exact taste of that lemon sole.

The Duke of Cambridge Battersea

The Duke of Cambridge ****

228 Battersea Bridge Road, London SW11 3AA

Ask anyone abroad what the Brits eat and chances are, they’ll say: roast beef.  Odds on, they don’t know that curry’s now our national dish, but instead naively cling to the romantic images of old, where carving up the joint was part and parcel of everyone’s Sunday.

My oldest memories are of Sunday lunch with my family and it was the one thing I missed the most when I started university and then lived abroad.  The Moroccans do a mean couscous and I spent more time (and money) than I’d care to admit in the Sion Brauhaus in Cologne, but I would have given my right arm for my mum’s roast potatoes nestling into side of roast beef with a buxom Yorkshire pudding atop a mound of green and orange loitering about the vegetable corner, set off with a rich, red-wine based gravy and a dollop of horseradish…

So all of that basically boils down to one small fact: a pub roast has got to be pretty darn on the money to impress me.  You just can’t replicate that kind of emotional response to food in a pub.  But did that matter?

We had:

Roast beef & trimmings (£12.50)

Roast chicken & trimmings (£12.50)

I was impressed.  So, clearly, are the locals judging by how packed the place was at about 4pm, usually a restaurant’s quite time.   The Cambridge definitely leans towards the gastro end of the pub bracket, but it’s still got a warm “pub-by” atmosphere and the prices aren’t unreasonable given the quality of the food, which was excellent.

So if you like a royally good roast, the Duke delivers.

The Goat Clapham Junction

The Goat ****

66b Battersea Rise, London SW11 1EQ

Sometimes in life, you get a hangover.  And sometimes that hangover wakes you up, kicks you in the face and smacks you about with your own chagrin and leaves you in a heap, confused and feeling queasy.  On days like this, the only reasonable solution is to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and head back into the arena for Round Two.

My Round Two was with The Goat on Battersea Rise.  I couldn’t face anymore alcohol but a pint and a half of diet coke perked me up a treat.  The menu was fairly extensive and I could certainly have ordered – and probably eaten – everything on there.

We had:

Calamari with tartare sauce (£4)

10 oz beef burger with bacon, cheese, beef tomato, baby gem and mayonnaise (£9)

Spinach and lentil burger with salsa and sour cream (£7)

The food was excellent value as the portions were H-E-U-ge and, embarrassingly, both of us self-proclaimed foodies struggled to finish.

Although I love meat (and the beef burger put in a solid showing), I’ve become pretty keen on veggie burgers, the legacy of my university days spent unable to distinguish beef casserole form squirrel hot pot… And the lentil/spinach combi is one I’m quite a fan of.  It doesn’t overly complicate things with 12 indecipherable vegetables blended with potato and tofu all parceled up in breadcrumbs.

All things considered, I will be back to The Goat.  But I will NOT be drinking.  Ever again.

Cicada Clerkenwell

Cicada ***1/2

St. John Street, London EC1V 4JT

Any place with sticky toffee pudding on the menu is worth its spot on my blog.  Especially any pan-Asian restaurant with sticky toffee pudding on its menu.

The modern interior and buzzing Friday-lunch vibe had been luring me in every time I walked past Cicada, so I knew I had to give it a whirl.  The result was impressive food, slightly dampened by mediocre service.

We had:

lychee, butternut squash and tofu green curry (£8.50)

beef fillet, black pepper & asparagus (£15)

bok choi, shaoxing & ginger (£3.95)

sticky toffee pudding with vanilla anglaise (£5)

banoffee pie (£4.50)

I’m not a huge spicy curry lover, but the combination of lychee and butternut squash had me at “hello”.  It was just right, spicy but not head-blowingly hot and the unusual flavours worked a treat.

I can’t really get worked up about bok choi but my fellow diner loves it and deemed it pretty good.  The beef was good too, although I was disappointed when I ate a massive chunk and just got asparagus.  It was like biting into a creme egg and finding it hollow – nothing wrong with the taste, but just not what I’d set myself up for.

All in all, the only slightly disappointing thing was the service.  Our initial waitress was charming, very smiley and polite, but we soon seemed to get forgotten about and it took half an hour to order dessert.  And once I’d seen they had sticky toffee pud, I couldn’t bring myself to leave without having some.  And I was glad I waited!

Portal Clerkenwell

Portal ****1/2

88 St John Street, London EC1M 4EH

An empty restaurant is usually a bad sign.  I discovered this to my cost when I lived in Fes and I boldly decided this ramshackle old shack with only a ramshackle old man and his dog in it looked so much more appealing than the Lonely Planet-recommended place opposite rammed with tourists.  Needless to say it wasn’t my finest and most glamorous moment.  Although I did lose about a stone in… well, I’m sure you can imagine.

So, when I entered Portal and the hostess laughed when I asked if there was space for two, I started to think I was about to be struck down by the food gods once again.  Not so.  The place is almost like a greenhouse, all airy with big glass walls.  It was actually incredibly romantic, which isn’t something I say often and the food was first-rate.  The Portuguese-inspired menu was perfection and the staff were excellent.

What’ve they got, that was just so damn hot?

Goats cheese tart with crispy leeks, asparagus, honey and toasted almonds (£9)

Scallop and prawn skewers with lime risotto (£14)

Tuna tataki with mixed vegetables tempura and wasabi (£19)

Sirloin steak 250g (£26)

General consensus was that my tuna was the stand out dish of the evening.  It was a massive portion and so rare and flavoursome that it pained me to pass a mouthful over as a taster.  It was a fair exchange though, as both the steak and scallops were also faultless.  The unusual combination – honey, almonds, goats cheese – in my starter worked really well together and a cheeky side of walnut bread with olive oil and vinegar finished it all off.

It was such a lovely meal, in such beautiful surroundings I completely forgot it was a cold November night in London and about zero degrees outside.   Who’d have thaw’d it?! (Groan).

Caffe Concerto One New Change

Caffe Concerto **

1 New Change, St Paul’s, London EC2V 6DL

Unimpressive.  That’s my verdict on the “Italian brasserie catering for the upmarket”.  I wasn’t so much disappointed with the food, which was solid – although I do have to ask how difficult it is to go wrong with a sandwich – but more with the whole shambolic production.

I love Italian food and I worked in an Italian restaurant, so I know my shizzle when it comes to the difference between a rigatoni siciliana and a penne arrabiata.  I also know that when a customer enters the restaurant, regardless of how busy, stressed and pissed off you are, you acknowledge them.  Smile.  Make an “I’ll be with you in a sec” gesture, or just nod some kind of acknowledgement that let’s them know you know they’re waiting.  Not astrophysics.  We waited 5 minutes before anyone clocked we were waiting, annoying as we didn’t have long to eat anyway.

I operate with a nun-like strictness when it comes to eating out: NO talking until the food is ordered.  Otherwise I can’t dedicate sufficient attention to my menu, which is, after all, the Bible of the Resta-ligion.  All this means I take about 2 minutes to decide what I want.  So, imagine my annoyance – I am HUNGRY at this stage you understand – when  FIFTEEN minutes later, despite repeated attempts at eye contact from both of us, numerous “excuse mes” and us successfully flagging down a waitress only to be told “I’m not taking orders”, we are still yet to order.

Rant aside, I know service varies and one bad experience isn’t necessarily indicative of the whole restaurant’s failings.  And Lord knows I know how horrible and hard it is when it’s busy.  But, this is entirely the responsibility, and fault, of the management.  If it’s consistently chock-a-block, hire more staff.  Again, not astrophysics.  Don’t, as the manager of the One New Change Caffe Concerto did, strut around, chewing gum.  I can only imagine how short my waitressing career would’ve been if I had been on the floor masticating my jaw off…

So, what did I eat that evidently failed to pacify my anger at the seriously underwhelming service?

Goats cheese, vegetables and pesto focaccia (£7.50)

Toasted baguette of grilled mini beef steak with spincach leaves, red onion and mustard mayo (£6.75).

You may wonder why I have given the place ** when, if it came to service alone, I would give it an emphatic  double thumbs down.  It was rescued by the fact that the food was pretty good and by how happy I was to discover both Chianti and Gavi di Gavi by the glass.  Although my happiness came with a hefty price tag.

And my biggest grievance of all? The Victoria’s Secret catwalk show was played ON LOOP in the background.  My whine here is not at the incredibly hot women parading themselves around whilst I chow down on carbs.  Nor is it at the fact that I couldn’t hold my fellow diner’s attention for more than 5 minutes before he’d catch a reflection of the TV and get distracted (he had his back to the TV, which made no difference to how much of a bloody nuisance it was).  My real disdain here is reserved for the fact that we were in there an hour, tops.  And I watched THE WHOLE BLOODY SHOW TWICE.

Pizza Hut Brentwood

Pizza Hut ***********************************

I was hungover.  I was in Essex.  Says it all really.

We ate:

Too many cheesy bites.

Pizza Express St Christopher’s Place

Pizza Express St. Christopher’s Place ***1/2

Barrett Street, St Christopher’s Place, Marylebone, W1U 1BD

BREAKING NEWS! X Factor’s Wagner is moonlighting as a waiter at Pizza Express.  His doppelgaenger served us, sadly, without any scantily clad women high kicking/stripping/getting hitched over our dough balls. 

Pizza Express works.  As a concept, it is actually quite brilliant.  The food is solid, although I have heard from a former manager at the Kings’ Road branch, that their chicken is frozen.  The restaurants themselves, whilst homogenous, are usualy buzzing.  Despite how much I protest I love the quirky-down-a-side-alley-nobody-else-knows-about-it places, I do keep going back to Pizza Express.  They draw me in with their garlic butter, keep me there with their roasted vegetables and finish me off with a slice of rich, moist and decadent chocolate cake.  Add to that, that a Taste London card gives you 2-for-1 and I’ll be back again before you can say “Wagner shock winner of X Factor 2010” …

What we had:

Wine.  And lots of it.  Me: Chainti (lrg £5.80, sml £4.50), my fashionable friend: Pinot Grigio (lrg £5.80, sml £4.50)

Dough balls (2 x £2.50)

Pollo verdure salad (£8.95)

Nostrana salad (£8.95)

Chocolate fudge cake (4000000 x £4.70)

The food is good.  Maybe that’s the secret.  I know what I’m going to get, I enjoy it and I come back and order it again.  Not rocket science.  Dough balls are a brilliant marketing con, really, they cost next to nothing to make but taste like little balls of carb-y nirvana.  And the idea of chicken and roast vegetables in a salad gets me salivating as soon as I step in the door.  And I can’t even talk about the chocolate fudge cake without hitting almost inappropriate levels of seratonin release. 

Grudgingly, I will admit I like Pizza Express.  But morally, I object to the glut of chain restaurants destroying local businesses, originality and individual flair.  Hypocrite? Who me?