Balans

Description: Trendy London-based restaurant chain, serving international dishes and cocktails that are not half bad

Location: Soho and Chiswick (other untested branches in Westfield, Earls Court, Kensington)

Nearest station: Soho (Leicester Square or Tottenham Court Road) / Chiswick (Turnham Green)

Offer: With a Balans ‘Royalty Card’ card, for every £1 spend your card will be credited with one point; on earning 250 points you will be entitled to receive a credit of £25 to spend in the restaurant. Also, ‘Happy Hour’, 4-6pm Mon-Sat, means buy-one-get-one-free cocktails!

Best seat in the house: When heading to the Soho branch, ask if you can sit at the back of the restaurant in one of their circular booths for more privacy/ when with a larger group

Top tip: Fancy a late one with friends? Balans is open until 5am on Mon-Thurs and on Sundays, and until 6am on Fri-Sat (serving food and drinks all the while). With locations spread across London, this is ideal for post theatre/ gig/ drinks etc!

Website

Located at 60 Old Compton street, Balans Soho is ideally situated in an easy to find, central location. This branch is dark and not especially spacious inside, but it does have a lively and trendy atmosphere.

What’s great about this restaurant is that it has a number of attributes that you rarely find in such a central location; it is generally easy to get a table, the staff are cute and fun, food is typically delicious and not overly expensive, and the portion sizes tend to be huge.  The fact that it is open until the early hours (shutting for a mere 3 hours most days, to prep for breakfast which starts at 8am), is unusual and worth remembering. The idea of being able to reserve a table for drinks in the wee hours is unheard of, no?

The menu at Balans is broad and international, but unlike most restaurants with expansive menus, Balans gets the majority of its cooking spot on. The starters are best: the truffled chicken liver parfait is rich and luxurious, served with sourdough and red onion marmalade; the chicken gyoza, a plate of five Chinese style dumplings served with a spicy chilli sauce, packs a punch; and the greek plate is a generous assortment of tzatziki, houmous, taramasalata, feta, kalamata olives and flat bread. Priced between £5.75 and £6.95, the starters offer good value and are great to share (excluding the seared scallop dish, which is disproportionately small in comparison).

Equally, the main courses are varied, tasty and HUGE. The seafood jambalaya (£13.50) is another sumptuous dish, generously portioned and choc-a with shrimp, clams, mussels and chorizo. The Roquefort, endive and fennel salad (£7.95), served with iceberg lettuce, candied walnuts and citrus dressing, is also a delight. The only criticisms I’ve come across with the main courses relate to the burgers (£11.50) – lovely meat, stale bread – you have been warned!

And to finish, (and to start, and several throughout), the cocktails! I’ve found these patchy – sometimes the ‘Sicilian Kiss’ (£6.85) is a dream - citrus vodka, lemoncello, passion fruit liqueur and sicilian lemonade over crushed ice – d r e a m! On off days, it’s a voddy squash. The ‘Porn Star’ (£8.25), made up of vodka, vanilla sugar, vanilla syrup, passion fruit puree and a champagne shot, is consistently delish – boom!

To sum up, I think Balans is a great place – its stylish without being pretentious, and reasonably priced but with a strong menu full of generous dishes with “bold flavours” (Greg Wallace, eat your heart out – literally, please). It’s a find, and a good place to keep under your hat for when you find yourself wandering the Soho streets at 4am, which happens.

The Hand and Flowers

Description: Unpretentious Michelin starred pub serving modern and rustic British and French dishes

Location: 126 West Street, Marlow, Buckinghamshire, SL7 2BP

Nearest station: Marlow Rail (1hr 10 minutes from London)     

Head chef: Tom Kerridge

Offer: Set lunch £12.50 for 2 Courses /£16.50 for 3 Courses (Mon-Sat)

Best seat in the house: Table B2 was recommended as the best table for two, with table 10 suggested for groups of four plus

Website

When Tom Kerridge’s slow-cooked duck with duck fat chips and gravy (link to recipe) main course whooped the competition at the BBC’s Great British Menu 2010 finals, I think we were all thrilled. The dish was presented simply and beautifully and looked delicious, but, most significantly for me, the chef himself seemed like an absolute gent. When he took the prize again at this year’s competition, I was equally chuffed. What’s most intriguing for me is when you see chefs competing on television cookery programmes behaving in an aggressive, snide or cocky manner. I genuinely don’t understand what they are looking to gain in doing this, a little like when those Big Brother ‘celebrities’ went all racist a few years back, (dude, you’re on national television – seriously?). Surely these ambitious young chefs realise that these TV shows are the perfect platform for them to use to communicate with their target audience and potential customer-base. We are by now well into the age of the ‘celebrity chef’, with veterans like Rick Stein and James Martin showing how far skill and charm can take you (doesn’t Stein own Cornwall now?). When Britain loves an under-dog, how far is bitchy banter really going to get you?

Not that Tom Kerridge is by any means an underdog; he just has the friendly, down to earth charm and easy manners to make him stand out from the pack. He is also very huggable.

The Hand and Flowers is a fantastic ‘pub’ with incredible looking and tasting food. The creative and delicate touch of these dishes really encapsulates the pleasure that can be gleaned from top level cooking. Being able to enjoy top quality dishes surrounded by friendly, unintimidating staff, in a relaxed cottage environment, without breaking the piggy bank, is the dream. During my most recent visit to The Hand in Flowers I tasted the most unexpectedly delightful Moules Marinière with warm stout, served sans shells and with a rich, foamy sauce. I’ve almost certainly eaten my family’s body weight in mussels over the past 25 years and I’ve never met a mussel like this before. Tom’s signature duck was truly sumptuous, but the highlight of the meal for me was the tonka bean panna cotta, with rhubarb and ginger wine jelly. Bloody hell. The look of this dish was spectacular and every tiny element tasted fantastic. I know I’m maybe overstating it a bit, but that dessert was hot to trot, and I miss it.

To sum up, The Hand in Flowers is definitely worthy of a visit. Generous portions, innovative dishes, attentive staff... a winner.

Antepliler

Description: Turkish restaurant in North London, specialising in pide, lahmacun, tava and kebabs

Location: 46 Grand Parade, Green Lanes, Haringey N4 1AG

Nearest tube:  Manor House (exit station, turn right and walk straight for approximately 10 minutes) 

Offer: This isn’t an expensive restaurant but there were no offers that I could see

Best seat in the house: Sit down and share one of the long tables and you’ll find yourself recommending dishes to your neighbours and discussing how nice the toilets are (a definite quality mark, no?)

Tip: If you and your party are prepared to wait 45 minutes, why not try the house speciality tava stews?

Antepliler is my favourite restaurant in London. I know this because I keep recommending it to people, the same people, over and over again (apparently). This Turkish delight in Green Lanes, North London, ticks all of the boxes: the menu is littered with tempting treats, the atmosphere is sociable and unpretentious, the waiters are charming and the price is right.

This is what I call a third date restaurant – a great little place to take someone somewhere they won’t have been to before and will love, allowing you to prove your cool London insight and excellent taste. (This is not, however, a first date restaurant – if you both love the venue but hate each other, there’s potential for future awkwardness that is best avoided).

The food at Antepliler is enjoyable in every way; during a visit you will discover new, tasty and generous dishes, such as the ‘Cig Kofte’, a starter of bulgar wheat and spiced raw lamb (I know, but see past it!), finely diced and served with a fresh tomato and onion salad and lettuce leaves, in which to roll the filling. I will never go to Antepliler and not order this dish - it’s great to share with a suspicious but ultimately receptive table of newbies. Just watch, they’ll all be in there. The ‘Lahmacun’, a thin pizza shaped dough topped with mixed lamb, parsley, onion and tomato, is a tasty and exotic alternative to bread. It’s great to share and is a very reasonably priced side dish.

The main courses, for me, are less exciting than the starters, but certainly the kebabs have a nice, full flavour and are very filling (but I just prefer starts generally, so maybe I’m biased). I went for a ‘Fistik Kebab’, a lamb kebab with cheese and pistachio – it was hearty and enjoyable, but by no means the most exciting thing on the menu. With a bottle of beer costing a very reasonable £2.50, starters ranging from £1.50 to £4.50, and main courses coming in at around £9, the whole experience can be a cheap one.

There is something about this restaurant that makes you want to come back and bring the people you like most in the world with you. With the pretty tiled surroundings, collegiate shared tables and vast igloo-shaped terracotta oven welcoming you at the door, Antepliler offers a sincere and authentic dining experience. Visit Antepliler and you will be planning your next visit before you’ve even finished your current one.                  Now I’m gushing.

Bodeans BBQ Soho

Description: Kansas City inspired BBQ joint and home to the Boston Butt and Pulled Pork hot deli- sandwiches

Location: 10 Poland Street, London, W1F 8PZ

                (other branches in Clapham, Fulham and Tower Hill)

Nearest station: Oxford Circus / Tottenham Court Road         

Offer: With a Bodeans BBQ ‘Q card’, depending on the day of the week, you can receive free nachos/ a free dessert/ a discount on your bill/ chicken wings.... sign up online

Best seat in the house: Inside has a buzzy vibe but if the weather’s game, a table outside is the place to be.

Website

Bodeans is the place to go when you want to leave your manners at the door, indulge in an over-sized bbq burger doused in hot sauce and test drive your best southern drawl. While I’m never too sure about the beer here (Blue Moon tastes like a weird orange juice/ ‘beer’ hybrid and so doesn’t count) everything else on the menu delivers strong flavours, generous portions and good value. It’s a fun, noisy place with a great smell, and some of the friendliest waiters in London.

Portion sizes tend to be huge; I would recommend a medium Boston Butt sandwich, which comes with excellent homemade ‘slaw and a pile of chips that you won’t finish. Along with a soft or hard (?) drink, this meal will normally come in at under a tenner, unless you go for a ‘slab of ribs’ or Bodean’s famous burnt-ends, ‘slow smoked chunks of beef brisket in a light bbq sauce,’ which start from £10.25.

You may have a few palpitations post meal, and you’ll never get that sauce out your t-shirt, but Bodeans has a lot of personality and is perfect if you’re looking for a ‘cheap meat deet’ in the centre of town, that will fill you up but leave you with enough change to go and buy a real beer somewhere down the street.

Pasta!

Firstly, I want to complain that very few supermarkets sell 00 flour! This bothers me – I thought supermarkets underwent a bit of a revolution years ago in response to the never ceasing wave of food cookery programmes, where “quirky” food products like dragon fruit, tahini and lemongrass made their way on to the supermarket shelves. Is 00 flour still considered too niche? With Jamie Oliver’s unceasing commentary that pasta-making is quick, easy and fun, how is it that neither my local Tesco nor Budgens stocks 00 flour? (FYI, Jamie, easy? Yes. Quick? No).

I’m told that 00 flour is best for pasta making because it is made from coarsely ground durum wheat, meaning the pasta holds its shape during cooking and has a rough surface so sauces are more readily absorbed. This is just hearsay of course (though no doubt true), however I used plain flour for my recipe, and you know what – it was delicious. And so, I wanted to share what I think is a very simple but very tasty pasta recipe.

Chilli and garlic prawn ravioli in garlic butter

For the pasta

225g plain flour (or 00 flour if you can find it)

2 medium eggs

2 additional egg yolks

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

For the filling

250g prawns

1 large red chilli (deseeded)

3 gloves of garlic (excessive? Maybe – but I love garlic so..)

2 tablespoons of cream cheese

A couple of knobs of butter

Salt and pepper

Preparing the pasta dough and filling

• Firstly, mix the flour and eggs in a bowl, add salt and pepper to season, and then mix thoroughly into a stiff dough.
• Add a drizzle of olive oil while mixing until a glossy dough ball is formed.
• Knead dough on a lightly floured surface for five minutes.
• Cover in cling film then leave to rest for 30 minutes at room temperature.
• While the dough is resting, finely chop the garlic and chilli. Fry in a pan with butter until cooked through, then leave to cool. Do not discard this pan; it will be used later to add a garlicky/ chilli flavouring to the butter sauce.
• Blend the prawns, cream cheese and chilli and garlic mix until a rough creamy filling is formed.
• Season to taste

Making the ravioli

• Divide the rested pasta dough into two (I find it much easier to manage this way).
• Feed the dough through the pasta machine at its highest setting five times.
• Gradually, feed the pasta one time through each lower setting, until you have the desire thickness. (So, for example, I ran the pasta through my machine at the highest setting, no 7, five times, then on the no 6 setting once, then on the no 5 setting once).
• When at the desired thickness, lay on a lightly floured surface and use a 4” diameter cutter (or a pint glass) to cut out the circles of pasta. Place these on a lightly oiled tray or plate so that they do not stick to the surface.
• Place a teaspoon of the mixture in the centre of each circle, then dab the outside rim with a little egg yolk to help the ravioli to seal. Being careful not to trap any air inside the ravioli’s centre (which would cause them to open during cooking and release all of the delicious juice into the water), seal the two circles together.
• Cook the ravioli in a pan of boiling water for approximately 3 minutes. While the ravioli are cooking, melt some butter in the pan you used to cook the garlic and chilli to add a subtle flavour.
• Serve, eat and bask in the deliciousness! Boom!

Dinner by Heston

Description Man of the moment Heston Blumenthal’s new restaurant venture

Location: The Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Knightsbridge, London SW1 7LA

Nearest tube: Knightsbridge / Hype Park Corner

Head chef: Ashley Palmer Watts

Offers: Set lunch £28 for 3 courses

Best seat in the house: ask for a window seat

Tip: The restaurant’s signature dishes are not included in the lunch offer (shocker) so I recommend ordering one set menu (which will deliver!) and one mixed three course meal (so as not to miss out!)

Website

Dinner is without a doubt the ‘hottest ticket in town’ (or whatever the restaurant equivalent is) and when I went in February of this year I was not disappointed. Somehow I managed to book a table for the restaurant’s second day open – I will never again be able to replicate this astonishing feat of forward planning/good luck but feel unbelievably blessed/shocked/smug/guilty at having managed to get in.

And what luck!

Throughout the meal we were surrounded by the who’s who of the food world. I was sat facing Mark Hix (British chef and star-gazy pie aficionado), a bounty of A list food critics including Giles Coran, Charles Campion and a gaggle from the Guardian (I was told), along with the man himself being interviewed at the next table.

For me, these guys are rock stars.

And the food... oh b’jesus. The famous ‘meat fruit’, a small but perfectly formed portion of chicken liver parfait coated in a mandarin jelly, was just perfect. It was pleasantly chilled and impossibly smooth and rich – enjoyable on every level. The ‘fruit’ was served with a sufficient portion of toasted brioche, a pleasant surprise when in so many restaurants they are determined to leave me wanting more bread (a constant bugbear of mine, and everybody’s??). The main course was the most succulent quail I’ve ever eaten (and the only quail I’ve eaten – but I’ve imagined eating more and it’s always been tough) with the smoothest, most delicate parsnip puree the world has ever seen. It’s the kind of puree you want to devote weeks to making yourself and mastering, then spreading on EVERYTHING, maybe even injecting. For dessert, I had a smallish cake and sorbet, but the main attraction was the caramelised pineapple and donut signature dish – very sweet, very delicious. Boom!

I couldn’t fault the service we received – as it was my boyfriend’s birthday, our lovely (if a little nervous) waiter took it upon himself to arrange a quick tour of the kitchens and a chat with Heston (who unfortunately had ducked out at the time, but a chat with head chef Ashley Palmer Watts was equally enjoyable!). The restaurant itself is light and airy with wonderful views over Hyde Park.

For those who, like me have dreamed of going to the Fat Duck for years, Dinner offers a good alternative if you want to know what the fuss about Heston Blumenthal is all about while still being able to afford a holiday this year.

A Good Menu

A blog for food lovers everywhere, served with a news & reviews valoute, caramelised shards of oak matured industry chat, in a light banter batter

The pleasure that can be derived from reading a good menu is, in my view, up there with watching a good play. Now, I realise how off-puttingly pretentious that sounds, but hear me out. When you sit down in a theatre and the curtain rises, you, or at least I, instantly think to myself: “Come on then, show me what you’ve got. Impress me.” And I ask the same thing of the restaurants and cafes that I visit, because they too are putting on a show for me, creating an experience which, when done well, should build anticipation and deliver highs of excitement, throwing in a few surprises for good measure and a healthy dose of enjoyment throughout. (I was tempted to go down the ‘a dash of this’ and ‘a sprinkling of that’ route, but I decided against it, you’ll be pleased to know). I realise that not all plays deliver these things, but I’m thinking more ‘Chicago’ and ‘Cabaret’ than ‘The Crucible’. Ok, correction: the pleasure that can be derived from reading a good menu is up there with watching a musical.*

For me, food is the ultimate. You know those irritating “I only eat because my body needs fuel” people; what DO THEY TALK ABOUT??? Everyone I know (and like) is always banging on about food and good restaurants, loving nothing more than to speculate about Masterchef or the Great British Menu. Food is a fundamental element in our lives and permeates every part. As a result of this food fixation, I have decided to create and dedicate a blog (I know, how self-indulgent) to food and the people that make it marvellous. It will include reviews, offers I have discovered, restaurant opening news, and general musings.

*For those of you not in love with musicals, substitute with your equivalent (and maybe give musicals a second chance? Jersey Boys, for example, is a delight!)