Dock Kitchen

Few restaurants can boast as impressive a setting as Dock Kitchen. Overlooking the Grand Union Canal, in a smartly restored Victorian wharf, globetrotting chef Stevie Parle's Ladbroke Grove base doubles as a showroom for furniture and lighting designer Tom Dixon, whose studio is downstairs. Restaurant/showroom hybrids might be nothing new - Chair in Westbourne Grove (chairs, obvs) and Firevault in Marylebone (designer fireplaces, believe it or not), both now closed, got there first - but nowhere does it with quite such urbane modernity as here.

Parle has made a name for himself travelling the world, researching and discovering regional techniques and ingredients - nice work if you can get it - and parlaying that into a number of popular books (on sale in the restaurant, natch) and TV series. It was watching the most recent of these, Spice Trip, which led my pal Ian to suggest that we give Dock Kitchen a whirl, his appetite whetted and interest piqued by Stevie's televised adventures. We took mutual friend Anders along on the itself not-insubstantial trek to W10.

Dock Kitchen offers two options at dinner, a set menu changing every ten days or so which showcases a particular region (Old Delhi on the night we visited) and a la carte; we chose the latter. Like Stevie Parle himself the menu roams from country to country, name-checking an unusual spice here, a less-than-familiar vegetable there. If it weren't for the likelihood that, like Ian, most diners will be fans of the chef's programmes and thus know their labneh from their lavash, it could seem wilfully opaque. Instead it reads excitingly and although fairly concise at six choices for each course, is hard to choose the most appealing dishes from.

A pre-starter nibble of tempura sage leaves, drizzled in honey and sprinkled with chilli flakes, were fiendishly moreish, as was a basket of lavash, an unleavened flatbread served hot and charred from the grill. There was more of it with my starter, lusciously fat and bloody chicken livers cooked in seven spice and pomegranate molasses, which I smooshed onto the bread and wolfed down before, mea culpa, the boys could have even a taste.

Ian's starter, listed as 'A piece of Iberico secreto' (a piece of menu writing I found rather affected) was a good tender slice of this pinkest of porks, its delicacy not overwhelmed by grilled leek and pleasantly smoky if rather wet romesco sauce. Anders' cotechino sausage, served as is traditional in some parts of Italy on New Year's Eve - despite it being late January in London - on a bed of lentils, had enough peppery savour to not really need its accompanying mustard fruits and dragoncello sauce. Dragoncello, incidentally, is tarragon; why it wasn't just called that here escapes me.

I won't reproduce the exhaustingly-long twenty-word name of Anders' main course in full, but it was, essentially, a Sri Lankan thali. A very good one, too, albeit one with an occasional whack of such intense heat as to make Anders' eyelids snap back in his head. Ian and I shared lamb biryani (available only for two people or more), cooked in a clay pot sealed with dough to keep moisture and its wonderful aromas in. It was a superb dish, the lamb flakingly tender and so beautifully spiced as to prove without doubt that Stevie knows his stuff. We liked too that it came with dishes of rose petals, almonds and coriander to mix in to taste, bringing a little variety to each mouthful.

Desserts were pleasant enough if not in the same league as the more complex savoury courses. Ian's pistachio and nutmeg cake with saffron yoghurt was good as cakes go but nothing to get too excited about, and my Seville orange tart, while refreshing after the biryani, was rather too sharp. A pot of poky smoked Sri Lanka tea took the sourness away most agreeably.

The boys' ordering of wine by the glass (still on the wagon, I stuck to the excellent home-made lemonade) pushed our bill including service up to about £53 a head, steep but about the norm for food of this quality and into which clearly a lot of thought and love, not to mention considered sourcing, had gone. Only the biryani, while admittedly splendid, felt over-priced at £35 for two. Service, from a hipsterish brigade of jeans-clad boys and girls, was impeccable.

You enter and leave Dock Kitchen through a mini-grocery store where many of the ingredients championed by Stevie Parle in his programmes and books - as well as the books themselves - are on sale. This rather sums the place up; more than just a restaurant, Dock Kitchen is the shop-window for a clearly very talented cook who, less ostentatiously but no less surely than Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay before him, is fast becoming a one-man industry. And good luck to him with it I say; when food's as exciting and enjoyable as this, the person responsible for it deserves to be shown off.

Dock Kitchen, Portobello Dock, 342/344 Ladbroke Grove, London W10 5BU Tel: 020 8962 1610 http://www.dockkitchen.co.uk







Posted by +Hugh Wright

Cinnamon Soho

One of the very first restaurants I wrote about when I started this blog was The Cinnamon Club, chef Vivek Singh's magnificent haute Indian in Westminster. Since then I've eaten out countless times and that meal still stands out in my mind as being one of the best.

Expectations were understandably high then when I went along to try out Cinnamon Soho, the second, newly-opened casual offshoot of the SW1 original (the first, which I've not been to, is Cinnamon Kitchen in the City). As he'd been my date for that first memorable meal at The Cinnamon Club, best friend Anders was the obvious and only choice to come with me.

Located in a somewhat dark, fairly bland but inoffensive two-floor site on Kingly Street, home to both the estimable Wright Bros and execrable Fornata among others, Cinnamon Soho isn't without competition for the stomachs and wallets of the price- and quality-conscious diners it's aiming to attract. Based on what we ate, Vivek Singh isn't taking the competition lightly, because there's some seriously brilliant food coming out of the kitchen.

Refreshingly at a time when most new openings offer 'small plates' or some other portions 'concept', the menu at Cinnamon Soho offers starters, mains and desserts as well as a section of kichri - biryani-type dishes - and pies. There are also sections headed All Day, comprising lighter snacks and sandwiches, and All Balls! - why the exclamation mark I've no idea! - five varieties of spherical savouries served individually or as a selection.

We ordered the latter to share while deciding what to order but it was so large - two each of five balls, each served with a complementary sauce or relish - that it sufficed as a starter in itself. All but one  - slightly pappy beef shammi kebabs - were excellent, particularly light, fragrant crab cakes and clever meat-free Bangla Scotch eggs, a spicy vegetable mix replacing the more usual pork.

Anders' main course - smoked saddle of Cumbrian lamb with a spiced onion sauce - was typical of several items on the menu, British dishes given a modern Indian twist through spicing and saucing (elsewhere on the menu there's curried cullen skink and Roganjosh [sic] shepherd's pie). Prettily plated, sliced and fanned out alongside a timbale of rice, the lamb was beautifully tender and expertly spiced, the subtle smoking of the lamb flattered by the depth of the soubise.

Keralan fish curry is one of my favourite Indian dishes so I was excited to see it reinterpreted here as a seafood pie. The curry - silky, creamy, spicy and tamarind-tangy - was wonderful and the crisp puffed-pastry lid, studded with cumin seeds, served perfectly as an alternative to bread for mopping up the sauce. We also tried a couple of sides, a fairly ordinary potato paratha and some tasty Masala mash.

Indian desserts are known for often being face-pain-inducingly sweet, but Cinnamon Soho's managed to induce only pleasure. Carrot halwa was served as four small slices of neatly-rolled confectionery with a scoop of cinnamon ice-cream, and while certainly sugary it wasn't oppressively so. Lassi panna cotta had a cleansingly off-sour flavour and bouncy texture, tamarind-glazed figs adding zest.

In addition to a couple of very fine cocktails - an elderflower-scented Garden Mojito for Anders and a Manhattan-ish Orange Julep for me - we drank a bottle of light, peppery Tour de Pins Grenache from the mostly Old World list which offers plenty of choice under £30, a restrained approach to pricing which applies equally to the food, with mains peaking at £17.

Service was as polished and professional as one would expect from an offshoot of The Cinnamon Club, but at times verged on the over-formal; Cinnamon Soho is meant to be a more casual, accessible restaurant than its grand sibling and to achieve that, front of house needs to loosen up a bit - perhaps ditching the starchy waistcoat-and-trousers uniform for jeans and t-shirts would be a start. 

There's also a bit of an identity crisis in the way food and drink is presented, in that just about every current cliché  - cocktails in jam jars, starters on slates, oven-baked dishes brought to table in their own Staub pans - has been picked up, rather than the restaurant finding a direction of its own that's as innovative as the food. These, though, are the gripes of a restaurant train-spotter; most people eating out less often - which let's face it, is most people - would be very unlikely to find these as roll-your-eyes tiresome as I did.

If the restaurant as a whole then is not quite, yet, the sum of its parts, it's at least starting on a very firm footing, getting the two crucial elements of food quality and value-for-money pretty much spot on. If the room and service can be lightened up and at least some of the more hackneyed presentation habits done away with, then Cinnamon Soho could stand to be as good a restaurant, in its own very different way, as The Cinnamon Club itself.

Cinnamon Soho, 5 Kingly Street, London W1B 5PF Tel: 020 7437 1664 http://www.cinnamonsoho.com 

I was invited to review Cinnamon Soho







 Posted by +Hugh Wright

Dishoom, Covent Garden

'Dishoom' is a wonderful onomatopoeic word derived from Bollywood films and meaning the sound made 'when a hero lands a good punch, or when a bullet flies through the air'. It also, more colloquially, can mean 'mojo' or to bring it right up-to-date, 'swagger'. To say that a man has 'dishoom' is high praise indeed; to name your restaurant such displays a certain elevated confidence.

Fortunately for the three brothers behind Dishoom - 'a Bombay café in London' - it's confidence that has paid off, because this is a very good restaurant indeed, not only delivering excellent food and drink, more of which momentarily, but also fantastic decor, great service and that money-can't-buy element, buzz. 

Part of the shiny St Martin's Courtyard development that is also home to a Jamie's Italian and the universally-derided 'gourmet Mexican' Cantina Laredo, Dishoom is a beautifully-designed space that aims to be an homage to, rather than a direct recreation of, the Irani cafés of Bombay which once numbered in their hundreds but are now an endangered species. There's an excellent post on Dishoom's blog about both the history of the Irani cafés and the design process, but the look is essentially one of slightly haphazard colonial grandeur combining dark wood panelling, trippy patterned floor tiles, multiple hanging lamps, ceiling fans and myriad photos of the owners' family down the generations and Bombay street scenes.

My guest for dinner was Pete Butler, the genius behind last year's phenomenally successful charity effort The Mince Pie Project. As a man who's spent time working in the kitchens of some pretty serious restaurants Pete knows far more about food and technique than I do  - although that's not saying much - which in addition to his abundant charm and flair, not to mention cute dimples, made him the ideal dining companion. We cast a desultory eye over the menu before deciding that the set menu, at £27.50 for seven savoury dishes, a cocktail, dessert and chai was the way to go.

With the cocktail - a punchy chilli chocolate Martini - we enjoyed some paper-thin tangy Café Crisps, then excellent calamari in a zesty, brown-sugar-and-vinegar laced crumb. Bhel, a street food classic incorporating puffed rice and pomegranate, could have been crispier but was tasty nonetheless.

The rest of the food was all brought together to be enjoyed in whatever combination we saw fit. Chicken berry biryani was great, ample chunks of breast combined with aromatic rice and not in the least dry as biryanis can be. Even better was a Malabar Coast prawn curry; not available on the a la carte, it would have been worth ordering the set menu for this rich, sweet dish packed with huge fat prawns alone.

Accompaniments matched the curries for quality. A comforting, creamy house black daal was unrecognisable from the sometimes mealy gloop common to many Indian restaurants, and delicious scooped up with the lavishly buttery garlic naan. Even raita, a simple mix of yoghurt, cucumber and mint, felt expertly done, and delivered a blissful cool contrast to the exhilarating black-pepper-and-chilli heat of an additional order of smoky, spicy lamb chops.

Portions were huge, so we were relieved that desserts were not. Gola ice, shavings from a block of passion fruit and ginger flavoured ice, was a palate-cleansing Indian take on granita, while pistachio kulfi was a super-sweet, if not discernibly pistachioey, posh Mini Milk. The set menu also included a house chai; we upgraded to a couple of boozy variants, the aptly named 'Naughty Chai' with chocolate syrup and bourbon, and a Baileys chai with...well I'm sure you can guess.

The drinks list has as much to appeal as the menu. In addition to chais and a concise well-considered wine list, there's an imaginative, Indian-inspired selection of lassis, coolers and cocktails; purely in the name of research Pete and I worked our way through about half of them including a rum bhang lassi (bhang being an aromatic, aniseedy spice blend), a rose, lychee and raspberry Bollybellini and my favourite, a Bombay Colada featuring herbs and spices in addition to the usual pineapple and coconut.  They were all great fun - increasingly so after the third, or was it fourth? - and very good value at around £6.50.

Service was brisk and super-friendly, if perhaps at times a little overly so - "So you're writing about this? So you're getting everything free? So you'll say nice things right?" was perhaps not the best introduction, but was at least well meant and certainly not grounds to not say nice things. 

My only complaint about Dishoom, and it's a serious one, is that they insist on charging £1 for filtered water, from which, the menu explains, 20p is donated to Plan India to provide clean water in a Bombay slum. I've absolutely no issue with schemes like this in principle - Pizza Express's comparable 25p levy on its Veneziana pizza has raised millions of pounds over the years - but what annoyed me was the question no-one seemed able to answer, namely: what happens to the other 80p? If this is skimmed off as profit - and I don't care how fancy or expensive the filtration process is, that's still almost pure profit - the company is making four times as much money as it gives to charity, and that sucks. Charge 20p, 50p, hell even £1 if you like, but it only means anything if you're giving away 100%.

That aside, Dishoom is a stylish operation and packs as much punch as the sound effect it takes its name from. For a restaurant that is so far the only one of its kind, Pete and I agreed  that the obviously extensive thought that has gone into every part of the package points to this being the template for a chain. Based on our brilliant experience, I couldn't be more pleased if branches of Dishoom were to start cropping up across London like the Irani cafés in Bombay before them.

Dishoom, 12 Upper St. Martin’s Lane, London WC2H 9FB Tel: 020 7420 9320 http://www.dishoom.com



 


I was invited to review Dishoom.

The Cinnamon Club

After coming into a little money some time ago, I wanted to take my best pal Andrew for a blow-the-budget feast and invited him to take his pick of any of the capital's finest diners. Having heard good things about it in the Westminster corridors of power through which he daily struts, Andrew chose haute-Indian The Cinnamon Club, in the old Westminster Library on Great Smith Street.

We were impressed from the off as we were ushered into one of the most beautiful dining rooms either of us had seen in London. The library's wood panelling and high-rise shelving has been largely preserved, and a mezzanine overlooks the main room and its enclosed, private dining offshoots. Even at just after 7.30 the restaurant was very nearly full and within a short time every table was occupied (one close to ours by a gaggle of screeching Americans, sadly) and the atmosphere buzzing. Whilst perusing the menu we enjoyed a cocktail from the cleverly put-together list; the cocktails, somewhat like the food, are familiar European favourites given an Indian twist and my Spice Martini, with its hint of cardamom, was fantastic.

Food was difficult to choose given that everything sounded absolutely mouth-watering. Despite being relatively compact - nine starters, eleven mains and a couple of specials and tasting plates - the menu covers all bases in that it offers meat, poultry, fish and vegetarian choices all of which tempted us enormously. (NB: for those unable to decide, or feeling particularly adventurous, or both, there's an eight-course tasting menu.) On top of this, you're also able to choose from a small selection of 'showcase' dishes from another high-flying restaurant, in this case superstar chef Eric Chavot's two Michelin-starred The Capital. I loved this idea, one I'd never come across before, and so I opted for Chavot's crab risotto with truffle cappuccino to start while Andrew went for seared scallops with stir fried mushrooms and coconut and mussel broth. Both were superb, proof of the extremely high quality of the seafood used in each dish being in the eating. My risotto was perhaps a little heavy on cheese, but the pan fried king prawns it came topped with more than compensated for this.

Staying with a seafood theme for his main, Andrew chose grilled wild African prawn with tomato lemon sauce and coconut rice, while I went onto dry land and (blocking out all memories of Bambi) went for roasted saddle of Oisin deer with pickling spices. Both were gold-star, merit badge, top of the class standard; Andrew's 'prawn' turned out in fact to be three huge prawns each the size of a small lobster and gorgeously smoky from the tandoor, while my deer, cooked perfectly pink, tasted deliciously spice-hot and tart. Confident that desserts would be as good, we both ordered the coconut plate and loved the 'three ways'-style treat with which we were subsequently served; a scoop of creamy coconut ice-cream, a miniature brule and a warm, fried donut-y beignet.

It wasn't only the food that delighted us; service from the moment we sat down, throughout every course, and as we left was a joy; warm, courteous and very respectful, but without a trace of the stuffiness one might expect from a restaurant known by some at lunchtime as 'The Commons' Canteen'. The bill...well yes of course at the end of all this, what with cocktails, three courses, moderate wine (honest!), coffee and service, was none too pretty at £180-ish, but the night had always been planned as a special celebratory treat and it fitted that purpose exactly. Eating at The Cinnamon Club will never be a cheap night out anyway, with starters ranging from £7.50 to £15 and mains going as high as £32, but if it's bargain Baltis you're after then there are tens of thousands of local Indian restaurants who will very happily oblige. If, like we did on the other hand, you want a very special meal and to experience something new culinarily, then the Club should certainly feature highly on your list.

The Cinnamon Club, The Old Westminster Library, 30-32 Great Smith Street, London SW1P 3BU Tel: 020 7222 2555 www.cinnamonclub.com