Sager + Wilde Paradise Row, 1st July

Way back in 2013 I think it was, Stephen and I spent an evening under the Arches in Bethnal Green – firstly having a few small plates at what was then called Mission – Sager + Wilde’s newest place, then a cocktail at the Craft Cocktail Co.

Both have just recently been rebranded, and I was invited along to try the new Sager + Wilde Paradise Row. Being a warm, though rather wet at times, evening, we sat outside and enjoyed several dishes from their bar snack menu along with a few beverages.

Should you want to sit inside and make more of a meal out of it, they do a four course set menu as well for £42.

My eyes honed in on the bread with cultured butter – thick slices of dense and chewy bread with butter to die for, the culture providing a pleasant tang. While deciding what to order, we noticed the couple next to us being brought a huge fried glob of something stuck together. What is that, we wondered. It was the whitebait – fried with seaweed and bean kakiage. All at once, it sticks together and you peel off chunks to eat a bit like you would an onion blossom. I enjoyed the veggie part of this, which was sweet, the batter being light and like tempura, but I couldn’t bring myself to eat the whole whitebait.

Stephen couldn’t resist having the clams with peas and flowers. A little heavy on the pea, perhaps, this was the prettiest dish by far, and Stephen said it was great. I did have one bite and the light flavours of the pea and flora seemed to combine well with the subtly briney clam, but I am still yet to be convinced on clams.

‘My’ dish was the iberico pluma – pork, with broad beans and herbs. It was supremely soft, being served in that new-fangled way of cooking it quite rare. Stephen wasn’t so much of a fan but I thought it was cooked delightfully.

And if there's a sandwich on the menu you know I'll want to try it. This one was mortadella in a roll, slices hanging out of a sweet roll with a nice garlicky butter in it. Difficult not to finish this in two bites. 

We’d had a cocktail each with our dishes, but moved on to wine while we considered whether to have anything else. Our friendly waitress brought us two types to try – Sager + Wilde’s own Syrah, and a French number. I liked the Syrah, Stephen preferred the French one so we had one of each and ordered the two cheeses they had on offer. One was a crumbly yet full of flavour Lancashire, which came with almost equally crumbly oat crackers, the other was a pungent and intoxicatingly strong soft cheese – St Cera, which we spread over chunks of (slightly too) grilled bread.

Even though ‘Mission’ seems to have upgraded itself to more of a restaurant, it still feels like a neighbourhood place that you could drop into for a drink or a few small plates without having to make a big deal of it. Has to be said that the staff were very friendly and there was very little to-do when I split an entire glass of red wine, mainly over Stephen, but also partially over the ground. They were quick to offer lots of reassurances that it *probably* would come out of his nice new jeans... (it did).

Resident of Paradise Row, 25th August

Just when I thought I was about to have visited every new place under the arches in Bethnal Green, another place opens up. That would be Paradise Garage, from the people behind The Dairy in Clapham and it is too expensive for me to be heading down there soon. So, I was at the other place with Paradise in its name – Resident. On a Tuesday evening it had a few people having a bite but wasn’t by any means busy. I think it deserves to be.

As it was my first time here I wanted to try a few things so we got a few dishes from the small plates selection. All of which sounded delicious but it was the fresh pea arancini with habanero sauce I had been fantasizing about all day so I had to have that. Our waiter told us it was a very good choice. Added to this I ordered the chorizo with rosemary pinto beans and we also got padron peppers, maris piper chips and a pork spring roll.

My date for the night proclaimed that arancini was in his top two favourite foods (along with mac and cheese) and so if anyone could judge whether these were on the money it was him. He declared they were great – very light and fluffy (but with a good crispy coating). I had expected the pea to be incorporated throughout rather than the actual odd pea here and there so was a little disappointed but they were tasty. The habanero sauce was in no way as fiery as I thought it would be but the habanero was discernible and we preferred dipping our chips in this to the ketchup we’d asked for. And the chips by the way were excellent. 

I hadn’t expected the chorizo dish to turn up the way it did but I cut it up and spooned it up with the beans. You can never go wrong with chorizo (or if you do someone is a very bad cook) so this was predictably delicious. 

Most impressive I think was the spring roll which contained actual chunks of pork and came with a really tasty soy-based dipping sauce. I would get this for myself another time.

House cocktails are only £6 but be warned that even though they do have a beer on tap, they still only give you a bottle-sized serving!

This is a great, laid back bar/restaurant that is perfect for stopping in for a few dishes to line your stomach for any drinking along Paradise Row later.

The Palomar, 8th August

While I had a really enjoyable day and night Thursday, Friday was my birthday proper and I’d hoped I had lined something up a little bit special. I was going to try to get into Palomar for lunch. Given the amount of hype it has had lately, I wasn't sure of my chances, but I also knew that I really wanted to eat at the counter where the kitchen was (and all the action), not in the back, so this was the risk we had to take. We timed it beautifully. We got there at just after 1:30 and there were about five spaces at the counter that had disappeared only a few minutes later.

And something special this certainly was. It only served to highlight how off-the-mark The Culpeper had been the night before.

I already knew it was loud and boisterous out the front, and had read that the Chef had a habit of doling out freebies and shots. I didn’t dare to hope that, however many weeks after opening, they were still keeping up this generosity, but I was wrong! We had barely been seated when the Chef dished out egg cups to me, Stephen and the couple next to us (as well as a couple to himself and his staff) and filled them with a house concoction, beckoning us to all do the shot together. This is my kinda place! Shots – at lunch time!

Stephen and I oohed and aahed over the ‘sharing’ menu, trying to decide what to have. There was at least one thing I knew I wanted to try already, but the rest was hard to narrow down. Behind us was a raw bar, and both Stephen and I ended up getting something from that – him, two oysters, me the kubenia – the Israeli version of beef tartar, something I’ve only had once but enjoyed. And of course, we got the kubaneh pot bread with tomato and tahini dips.

For our bigger plates we had the pork belly tagine and steak onglet to share, although (for a lunchtime anyway) they were big enough portions that I would have been happy enough if we’d had one each as a main. What with our dessert on top, I came away from the meal fully sated and only forcing myself to have a slice of cheese and toast later that night because I was going out drinking.

So, anyway, we had decided against one of the salads even though both the Fattoush and the Spring salad really appealed to me. I’m glad we didn’t order the spring salad though as they were giving out taster portions of this to those of us who were wise enough to sit at the counter. I thought this was wonderful – crunchy kohlrabi, asparagus and fennel all doused in a zingy feta vinaigrette with poppy seeds and sunflower seeds giving a nutty texture and even more crunch. Why can’t all restaurant salads be this inventive? Our neighbours had chosen the fattoush and that looked packed with plump tomatoes and plenty of dressing as well.

The pot bread was tipped out in front of us before long. The tomato dip was, well, the very essence of tomatoes, there’s no other way to explain it. The tahini was concentrated tahini, which was a bit much at times – like an even drier, more bitter peanut butter, it really needed the squirt of oil on top of it.

My kubenia came on a slick of more tahini, with bulgur and then dumped on top was pomegranates, pine nuts, coriander. Most of the flavour of the dish came from these additions but the beef was there, in the background and the tahini provided that nutty undertone which was a lot easier to take like this than using it as a straight-up dip.

The stars of the show were the pork belly tagine and the steak. The steak was cooked in the josper oven to perfection. It’s taste alone was so good that I made sure to have several mouthfuls without any accompaniments. But the egg it came with (cooked just a little runny) and the latke (potato cake) were just as delicious and welcome. The whole spring onions were a little tricky to cut into (especially with the limited elbow room for cutting and rather dull knife). As much as I love spring onions, I ended up eating them like crudités on their own which was a bit pointless.

The pork belly was rolled, giving a heart of tender meat, surrounded by the fattier stuff. This came with Israeli cous cous and a Ras el hanout, a slightly spicy seasoning that was very moreish. I tried to get every last cous I could just to taste more of it. Also with the lamb was some stewed carrot, apricot and confit potato. A perfect combination of sweet and spice, we cooed over this dish a lot.

I may have *accidentally* let slip that it was my birthday when I was ordering my second glass of Prosecco, which meant we got an extra shot on the house – elderflower, lemon, orange and vodka and of course it was the perfect excuse to have dessert even if we did share it. Having seen our neighbours get the chocolate cremeux, we did not hesitate in replicating them. A thick mousse sat upon an almond streusel biscuit and came with a coca tuile. And, in my case, a candle in honour of my birthday. 

We savoured the chocolatiness and regrettably asked for the bill when we could grab our waitress’s attention. Not content to give away shots and salad, they also comped our dessert as a birthday present. How can you not love this place? Well, unless you’re a total curmudgeon without tastebuds, you can’t. I’ll admit, the set up is a little confusing – you still order from your waitress, but she’s behind the counter along with the cooks so it does feel a little weird. And yes it’s loud (though not hot where we were) and it seems a little chaotic, though you soon realize this is organized chaos as the seven bodies duck, weave and glide among each other. But really, the place is pure joy.

Find the menu & restaurant information on Zomato

Opera Tavern, 13th February

My boyfriend and I are developing a few of our own Valentine's Day traditions. Firstly, we stopped celebrating it on Valentine's Day and instead do it the day before (or after) so that if we want to go to a restaurant we aren't forced into choosing from a special Valentine's Menu and the place isn't full of sickening couples. Secondly, we seem to end up at slightly weird places (last year - Naked Girls Reading, the year before, a war memorial). And thirdly, my boyfriend buys 'me' some chocolate from Paul A Young (which he gets to share of course).

This year we took the day off and went for lunch at the Opera Tavern for the first part of our celebrations and then went to the Romantic Misadventures event in the evening (see next post about that).

Opera Tavern is run by the same people who own Salt Yard (and Dehesa, and their new one Ember Yard). We'd been to Salt Yard for my birthday a few years ago and loved it so we thought we should try one of the other ones. 

Salt Yard is a basement restaurant, with a bar for drinking and charcuterie upstairs, whereas Opera Tavern has its bar on ground level and the restaurant upstairs. Which makes for quite a bright and airy room, not quite the romantic cavern we had imagined. The romance was dialled down another notch by the room being mainly occupied by parties of six or more, and so was rather boisterous. Oh well - our own folly for bucking the V-day trend.

First things first - a portion of fluffy, chargrilled bread with a mild, light olive oil was lovely, and the bread was good enough on its own without the oil. Next up came the smoke haddock croquettes with saffron aioli. That aioli was not taking any prisoners with its full-on garlic taste. The haddock croquettes were creamy and fishy, but not overpoweringly so - very happy with those. 

One of the differences between Salt Yard and Opera Tavern is Opera Tavern's grilled selections, so we made sure to choose something from that section. While the food was lovely on the whole, it was probably the grilled dishes that weren't quite as fantastic as they might have been. We ordered a beef and beetroot and a lamb neck and pear skewer and while they were tasty, they weren't quite as juicy or moreish as I thought they might be. There wasn't as much pear on the lamb skewer as I'd hoped – I thought there would be chunks of it cooked on the skewer – and there could have been more of the pomegranate sticky sauce the beef came with.

Another thing that marks out Opera Tavern from its sister restaurants is the focus on iberico pork, which they serve as a burger instead of just in jamon form. Taking advantage of this and the charcoal grill, we ordered the pork and fois gras burger. This didn't quite live up to its expectations on Stephen's behalf, but I really liked it. He thinks this is because I don't partake of the full joy a beef burger can give you but I thought the flavour was lovely, even if I was a little taken aback by the very pink middle at first. I liked the crispy onion and the sweet, charred bun, but must admit, didn't discern the fois gras making much of a difference to the porky taste. Stephen thought that it being served rare did its texture no favours and also lead to a lack of taste. I agree that I thought the firmer edges of the burger were the better parts.

We then had a salad of ndjuja, honey parsnips and quail's eggs, and bavette with braised onions and trevise. The steak was my favourite dish - the bavette being incredibly tender and full of flavour and slow cooked onions pretty much always steal my heart. But the nduja salad put up a pretty good fight - the quail's eggs were perfectly cooked, the parsnips were sweet and the nduja was spicy, with some nice peppery and robust greens to make up the salad part. The spicy chorizo-like oil did a good job of making us feel like we weren't eating anything too healthy for our celebratory meal.

The only real disappointment on the savoury front was the monkfish with orzo and mussels which had a sauce which was a little too bitter for both of our taste buds. Whether this was the sea purslane effect or the choricera pepper I don't know. 

We weren't sure if we really needed dessert but two interesting ones caught our eye and we caved. I had the rhubarb with italian meringue and shortbread while Stephen had the blood orange tart. By gum were they good. Mine was like eating a thick eton mess (but without berries for once) - the shortbread was sprinkled on top, pieces of stewed rhubarb were laden on top and there were lovely chewy bits to the meringue, as well as a sweet rhubarb sauce. Stephen's tart was just that, with a lovely blood orange marmalade and caremelised pistachios. 

I enjoyed my meal at Opera Tavern - the food was accomplished, interesting, and mostly tasty. Stephen had a couple of Alhambra beers with his meal, which he very much liked and I had a very tasty brindisi reserva - a full-bodied red. I think I preferred the cosy intimacy of Salt Yard but allow that it might be purely down to the time of day we visited. However, despite having a lovely lunch, if I would return to one it would be Salt Yard, and I would try one of the others in the group before going here again. 

Find the menu & restaurant information on Zomato

Fernandez and Wells, 23rd September

On Monday night I think I rather spectacularly failed to make the most of my visit to Fernandez & Wells (Lexington Street). I have wanted to go to one of the branches for ages, since being told what great wine they did. And then, when I finally did go, I didn't even have any wine! 

I was seeing a friend I hadn't seen in almost a year and there was so much to catch up on, we spent the first half an hour talking before we even looked at the menus. I did, however, order something to eat - the name of which has escaped me - a vegetable ragout of peppers and onions with a poached egg on top and served with some toasted sourdough bread. It was very tasty, although I must admit, I thought a bit of spice to it - either in the form of chillies, or black pepper, or some spicy chorizo - would have been a welcome addition. It was still very nice to eat and not a bad price at £8.00. My friend ordered the raclette which was a very generous amount of melted cheese all over more sourdough bread and topped with cornichons.

And then we chatted and chatted some more, and by the time I said I was going to get myself a glass of wine, the staff were basically winding down for the evening and were at the other end of the bar doing the washing up. In a way it was quite nice that they left us to it and didn't pester us to order more once our food was done - clearly, if you want somewhere to while away a few hours this is the place to go. On the other hand, I thought maybe just asking us if there was anything else we wanted wouldn't have gone amiss. They would have got an extra bit of money out of me for it. There were plenty of people in there solo, reading or doing a bit of work with a small plate and a glass of wine. When we got there it was still fairly busy but by 8:30 or so, it was practically empty so it's a pretty good place to go later in the evening for a quiet drink and a bite to eat.

Mockingbird, 22nd September

Sometimes what you need as a pick-me-up to combat the Sunday blues is tapas and cocktails. Which is exactly what Mockingbird provides. Having not seen my best friend for a little over a week (we consider that a long time now she's in London) a catch up provided the perfect excuse to indulge a little on a Sunday.

We had an early dinner so got to Mockingbird at about 5:30. There were a few people inside and all of the outside seats were taken but it was far from busy. As we perused the menu, mouths salivating and eyes opening in joy at the many references to bread, we found it hard to narrow it down. We decided to pick a couple of dishes to start with and then add to that if we needed any more.

So first, probably my two favourite dishes - bifinhos and tortilla. The tortilla was a basic Spanish omelette with potatoes and onions. The bifinhos were slices of beef on bageutte topped with melting brie and a padron pepper, and drizzled with oil. A simple dish but really enjoyable to eat. Likewise the tortilla, which was a really good sized for sharing. All the dishes in fact were large enough to be shared without feeling gypped - we only ordered four dishes between the two of us in the end but I felt more than full. Makes a nice change from eating in 'small plates' restaurants and still feeling hungry but not wanting to order any more because of the prohibitive cost.

Our second two dishes were the croquetas con pollo and the langostinas. Both came with aioli (which could have been a little more garlicky in my opinion). The prawns came skewered together and peeled garnished with (which is what drew us to the dish) grated egg! It worked rather well but after having two or three of them I realised my allergy was kicking in and I had to give the rest to my friend in exchange for more balls. It's always good to have more balls. These were quite dense balls of shredded chicken, and with the addition of some salsa that we requested, a pretty tasty snack.

We accompanied our dinner with a couple of glasses of white wine, but decided that for 'dessert' we should have a cocktail. Most of them are very reasonably priced between 5 and 7 pounds, cover the expected mojitos and sangria but with a few more interesting concoctions such as the Micelada that I had and the Santiago which Alison had. The Micelada is a beer based cocktail (that's the second I've had recently after Dead Dolls House!). It's like a bloody mary but with beer instead of vodka - so it has tomato juice, lime, some spices and hot sauce. It was very peppery. If beer always tasted like this, I'd be a convert.

Alison's Santiago had a reassuringly bourbon taste to it that was lifted and sweetened by the cranberry juice, cucumber and grapefruit juice. It was very refreshing without being too much like lemonade.

Mockingbird may not have provided culinary fireworks but it did provide solid, filling good cooking for reasonable prices. I'd happily go back. I caught a glimpse of the homemade nachos which looked reassuringly fried!

Three drinks meant we weren't in the mood to go home so we headed off to the Ridley Road Market Bar where we were offered a taster of their well-priced wine before ordering a carafe, and finished off the night with a £5 mojito each. It's such a cute, quirky little bar - with its Hawaiian/tropical feel you wouldn't expect to find it tucked past all the smelly fishmongers!

Find the menu & restaurant information on Zomato

Dead Dolls Club, 4th May

Finally got myself down to the Dead Dolls Club the other weekend, this venue that had reached magical, enormous proportions in my mind. I follow them on twitter, and the tweets about the food provided by The Foragers had filled my brain with images of an outside grotto with gnarly trees and fairy lights hanging from above adjoined to a warehousey/cafe in front where the drinking and perhaps dancing happened.

It was nothing of the sort. I booked a place for us at 8 because it was a Saturday and because it's something of a novelty these days to be able to book. It probably wasn't strictly necessary but it did mean we got a table to ourselves rather than sharing, which is always nice.

The place was almost the opposite of what I envisioned. Completely missable from the front, only the most subtle of signs (and knowing the address) told you you were at your destination. Stepping inside did feel like stepping into a dollhouse writ large - or a stylised version of what a child might think a parlour should look like, with drawings of wallpaper all over the walls making it feel very quaint and picturesque. Other odd touches (see below) made you feel like you had stepped out of reality. Instantly I was charmed.

Little hands holding the lamps

The menu is a 'grazing' menu, which basically means that it's part of the slightly passe vogue for small plates. Our companions I don't think realised this at first and were astounded at how cheap everything was, because all the plates were about £7.50. That soon adds up when they're recommending two to three plates per person but it does mean you end up getting a better idea of the food overall. 

Everything on the menu sounded pretty good to me and we had a hard time choosing. To help things along I inquired about the 'special' cocktail of the day - only £6.50 compared to the normal £9.00. It was something mixing rum and cointreau and after that I kind of stopped listening as I'd heard enough to convince me. I think she might have also said it was 'strong' so I ordered one forthwith. It was very tasty and served in a cute little glass that reminded me of a squat old-style champagne glass. You know, the one modelled on a lady's fair bosom.

Finally we reached a consensus about what we wanted - we decided to go for two plates each plus two portions of chips to share.

I had the venison and ramson (had no idea what ramson was - still don't - but it sounded interesting) bourguignon and the scallops.

Both Stephen and Kevin had the wood pigeon (Stephen had been set on having wood pigeon in some form - the menu we'd seen beforehand had it as a burger) and Kev also had the venison bourguignon. Stephen had the muttom ham as his second.

Karin, our fish-eating vegetarian friend ordered the salmon ceviche and the mushroom and parmesan arincini.

Arancini

When the food came out, it met with mixed appreciation. My pan-fried scallops with caramelised onion puree, apple puree, parsnip puree along with some sort of leaf (probably the foraged bit) was probably my favourite scallop dish out of all those I've eaten. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

The venison bourguignon was pretty boring though - it could easily have been beef rather than venison and I wished I'd saved some of my puree or had some bread to go with it. On its own it was a bit much. I didn't even bother to take a picture as they hadn't done anything with its presentation. Just imagine a stew you'd made at home and I'm sure you'll have an accurate picture.

Stephen didn't enjoy his wood pigeon very much, which he said was quite overcooked. I had a bite and agreed it was, although I still thought the taste was good and went some way to salvaging it. Kev, on the other hand, to be fair, liked both of his dishes.

LIke me, Stephen's other dish he liked very much. His mutton ham came with buttered leeks, hazelnuts and hedge garlic. But it was really just a charcuterie plate and not very substantial though as you can see the presentation was quite something and it did taste very good.

Karin's salmon (marinated in sloe gin and herbs,served with crunchy fennel and a coriander, lemon, orange and stonecrop dressing) was a lovely light dish which she very much enjoyed and the bite that I had was great. She said her arancini were heavy on the cheese (a very good thing) and seemed to like them very much. (I avoided them as they were mushroom-based. Down with mushrooms!)

The chips which apparently had chilli and ramson salt on them, were very good chips, nice and thick, cooked properly throughout, although, thinking about it now I don't recall much seasoning on them beyond normal salt. Still, they were good at the time.

I think two dishes plus half a portion of chips was just right, but it probably depends on which you ordered. For me it was fine. If I'd had the scallops with the ham though, I probably would have been hungry.

The desserts on the menu didn't make any of us feel we'd regret not sampling them, and so we ordered a cheese board to share at £10. There was just enough to have a nibble and I, despite not being a blue-cheese eater, quite liked both the blue cheeses but was too shy to ask what they were. Out waitress was also very obliging about giving us some extra bread as a normal portion wasn't really enough for us all. It came with two chutneys - one of which was quite spicy in the non-heat sense of the word, and which I really liked.

All of that with a bottle of wine between the four of us and some pints came to £28 each which isn't too bad for an evening meal. Would I go back again? Not for a sit-down dinner, no, but I'd happily go along and sit at the bar at the back and order that scallop dish again, or a plate of ham for something to nibble on. The foraging element felt like more of a gimmick than the main event, but to be honest I didn't expect otherwise. This place is also just around the corner from the Haggerston (where we went after) and Passing Clouds so a good place to drop in first as it wasn't that busy and a cocktail for £6.50 is bargain enough to draw me back.

Have also just heard that they've been given a late license so the nights might start getting a little livelier soon!