Imli Restaurant

Imli Restaurant, 167-168 Wardour Street, London W1F 8WR
Nearest Tube: Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Rd
Cuisine: Modern Indian
Telephone 020 7287 4243

Where best to take a friend who has just spent two weeks attending an Indian wedding with family in Toronto than an Indian restaurant in London. A rather odd choice, but he looked forward to experiencing Modern Indian.

Imli is the more laid-back cousin of Tamarind, London's only Michelin-star rated Indian restaurant. The warm orange tones complement the dark wood-grain furniture and Indian accents like beads, prints and the odd sculpture give a chic and stylish feel to the place. Lots of natural light flood the place giving an airy and vibrant atmosphere.

The waitstaff seem to be divided into a sort of hierarchy. The friendly woman who attended us was helpful and knowledgeable, but the others who brought dishes out seemed uninterested, perhaps shy. The manager on the day seemed tense and on-guard.

The highlight of Imli are its juices, made on premises. My thyme lemonade had a herbal and refreshing tang, the mango passion was fragrant with the slight grittiness of fresh passionfruit seeds and the lychee pear juice had a floral berry-ness to it.

Our waitress informed us of the nature of Imli: Indian Tapas. Dishes are priced from £2.95 to £6.95 with most being around the £4 to £5 mark. The portions are small, but it's recommended that everyone order three to four dishes each to share. Nine dishes for three of us was more than enough.

The tender bulgar bean salad had a slight tart aftertaste, perhaps because of excessive bicarbonate used when soaking the beans. This was cooked in flavoursome vegetable stock and seasoned with a hint of asafoetida. The mushroom tikki came as three crumbed oversize nipples, or giant Hershey kisses; deep-fried crispy 'kebabs' flavoured with ginger and coconut. My favourite was the aubergine masala: succulent eggplant morsels in a thick dark gravy, served with rice or pratha. We also had a roasted vegetable salad, crispy chicken wings, deep-fried seafood platter, fish curry, masala grilled beef and pav bhaji - cumin-flavoured vegetables served with a fried bun.

A sweet and rich base of ghee-sauteed onion and garlic provides the general flavour of most dishes. Green curry leaf, tomato paste, ginger, mustard seed and fresh coriander provide variety and accents to the sauces. I prefer lighter, less rich Indian; the dishes were on the satisfying side. On a hot day, I'd stick to the light-and-refreshing section and maybe choose one or two from the other parts of the menu. Just under half the dishes on offer are vegetarian - a sizeable but not unusual number for an Indian establishment.

Dessert provided a small range of exotic treats. We chose an Indian caramel custard with coconut and jaggery, carrot fudge and raspberry and black salt sorbet. My Indian friend informed me that black salt is pungeant, strong and tastes like pork crackling: his father hates it. However, it pleasantly complemented the raspberry, offsetting the berry tartness with a slight savoury edge. The minute flecks of black on deep pink were also attractive. The silky-smooth caramel custard and the bitter caramel sauce paired well with the rich coconut. Our resident expert thought the carrot fudge ordinary, but I found it tasty as it was my first time sampling this. Sweetened milk is reduced with shredded carrots, melon seeds and raisins to give something resembling moist cake-crumbs.

Imli is the perfect location for a quick pre- or post-theatre snack, afterwork drinks and nibbles or a casual drop-in for lunch. The small portions allow one to sample a great variety of tastes and the fresh juices are a must.

£5 or just under in London can get you:

Two and a half cappucinos/espressos/lattes

Two Starbucks/Costa/Caffe Nero coffees

7.8 kg of bananas
3.6 kg of organic bananas

Four loaves of decent supermarket bread

Two one-serve ready meals

Fruit salad with mango pieces and a chocolate bar at Marks and Spencers

Five egg and cress sandwiches from a supermarket

Two egg and bacon, chicken and bacon, or chicken club sandwiches from a supermarket

Two pieces of roti chanai with curry gravy and a teh-tarik from Malaysia Hall

Nasi Campur with three choices from Malaysia Hall

Nasi Campur with two choices (plus some change) from Nahar Cafeteria

Two and a half breakfast-sized serves of Nasi Lemak from Malaysia Hall

A tiny plate of roast duck and undercooked two-minute noodles from Jen Cafe in Chinatown Newport St, Soho

£5 = US$9.20, AU$12.60, NZ$15.00, JPY1068, €7.30, SG$14.80, MYR33.70 (as at 19 June 2006)

Le Domino in Cannes, France

Le Domino Restaurant - 7 rue du Pré - 06400 Cannes, +33 492 980 787

Prix fixe: €13.90, two courses.

Wandering along the streets of old Cannes looking for where the locales eat, we stumble across what must be the only gay run restaurant in town. Perhaps this subtle attractive force could be a new fundamental one - mediated by the homon force-particle? We walk up another one of those charmant winding streets in the suquet to find the only cafe amongst four with bustling tables. Two 40+ trim men with tight cotton t-shirts, identical cargo shorts and military-style haircuts natter away to their customers whilst taking orders. One spots us and cheekily quips, "Depechez-vous vous asseoir, uh! (Hurry up and sit down, you two!)" The food is a good price and of good quality - good value compared to 'film festival prices' down on the Croisette. It's so easy to serve fantastic food when you have great ingredients - decent produce, treated well. I chose a mignon de porc avec sauce miel (pork eye-fillet with honey sauce) and a tarte aux fraises (strawberry tarte). This was cooked well, without ostentation and good value.



Throughout the meal I tried to gather evidence, for I wasn't quite 100% sure, that our hosts were indeed Friends of Dorothy. I decided definitely when Monsieur Un came over and pretended to do a little striptease with his cargo short on the front step to his customers. They pegged us too as Monsieur Deux bustled around and dropped a grand wicker basket of gay-club flyers and other community information declaring in hushed tones, "I'll give you some addresses to go out to, ok?"

It felt so welcoming to find 'instant' community. I've never encountered such warmth from gays before. As their friends and acquaintances arrived, we were introduced to his 'sister' and his 'aunt'. A painter friend asked if I would pose nude for him "or even in your underwear will be ok, no?" Flattered, I didn't think I had the time and politely declined.

Secret Malaysian Hide-outs

I think I've found the cheapest South-East Asian eats in central London. I've previously raved on about C&R Cafe but two recently discovered establishments leave it in the dust.

My mother always made a great deal out of chef pedigree - for how can a Chinese chef make real beef rendang if he (or she) didn't grow up living and breathing it, if it weren't part of the very fabric of their existence. As such, C&R being a Malaysian-Chinese run joint, although doing an admirable beef rendang, is not the best that it could be.

Leon unearthed two Malaysian eateries through his blog-trawling - two hidden gems accessible only to those in the know and completely hidden from public view. They're not advertised and there is no sign. You only know you're there because you're at the correct street number and there are tables and chairs to serve food.

Lest I give away my secrets and overwhelm the establishments with clientele (thus irrevocably changing what I seek to partake with minimal disturbance), I shall remain decidedly vague about their locations and you can email me for me to tell you about them. I expect great favours for my largesse - payments in kind also accepted.

Nahar Cafeteria is in Paddington and I suspect the canteen of the Mara hostel in London. MARA is a kind of technical training institute in Malaysia and why they have a hostel in London is beyond me, but I'm grateful for the extremely authentic Mamak-style food this place makes. This place is very basic with melamine tables and plastic chairs, but who cares - the fish curry is divine and the mee mamak aroma dark with Indian spices. Nasi Campur with 3 choices at £4.50 is the best deal. The menu is extensive and they're open till 11pm. I felt out-of-place speaking in English as Bahasa Malaysia flowed around me; I nearly did, but used English as I could barely string together, "Satu, ini [point, point], terima kasih."

The second establishment, Malaysia House, is in Bayswater and most definitely the canteen for the Malaysia House hostel in the same building. Although a more basic menu compared to Nahar: Nasi Campur (£4.50) and a few variants of mee/nasi goreng/bandung/sup - their ace in the hole is home-made roti canai (£1.50 with gravy). I could not believe it. But 'tis true. It's official that London has better Malaysian food than Sydney.

Very few non-Malaysians know or visit these establishments - a good sign that they cater specifically for the Malaysian palette rather than anything else.

Leon revealed that he prefers the oilier and greasier machine-made roti, simply because that's what he's used to - poor deprived thing. Never mind, I'm going to be eating both our shares of Malaysia House roti. They also do breakfast from 8 to 10am (Nasi Lemak and roti canai).

London has finally lived up to its reputation for being one of the world's most cosmopolitan cities.

S&M Cafe - near Liverpool St Station

S&M Cafe
Originally uploaded by daveyll.

In case you're wondering, the S&M stands for Sausage and Mash. Could it be some play on the Vore fetish? "I'm so delicious, eat me! EAT ME!! Oh please won't you eat me?!"

At any rate, the sausages are delicious but I'd stick to the plain ones. The fancy ones may appeal but the true taste is in the pork.

Good traditional English food done very well - from sausage to mash to gravy.

Pork

British pork is very tasty. The take pride in their pork, to the extent that named pigs are now the feature in the top restaurants, "Today's pork chops are from Rosalie. She's a duffel-coated black spot pig raised on acorns and olive oil in the wilds of Surrey." Well, not quite, I exagerate.

But another pang of homesickness made me create these dishes of my family.

Steamed pork mince with pickled cabbage (tung choy)
- I flavoured this also with white pepper, shao xing rice wine, ginger and garlic

Stir fried pork with spicy ham choy

Snake bean omelette.

Flat white Cafe

Berwick St, Soho, London

Antipodeans in London (or anywhere else in the world) will know of that strange epi-phenomenon that is the absence of the otherwise ubiquitous 'flat white' on the standard coffee menu. But o-ho, this is fixed for my resourceful bf has found it: probably the only place in London that serves this exotic drink.

And the name of the locale? Why, Flat White, of course.

An antipodean duo own and run this cafe, which also sells L&P and Bundaberg ginger beer for the same price as a coffee (£2). They also do damn good vege bagels and a decent range of snacks. Service is quick and friendly - you order and pay at the counter and they bring you the food afterwards - just like in Australia/New Zealand. Even the barista's accent brought back memories.

Nahm

The Halkin, 5 Halkin Street, London, SW1X 7DJ
Nearest Tube: Hyde Park Corner
Cuisine: Thai
Telephone: 0871 2238097

With much anticipation I finally get to try the great Nahm - the world's only Michelin-starred Thai restaurant. After eating at his first restaurant Sailor's Thai in Sydney several times and reading his extremely well-researched tome on Thai Cookery, I looked forward to tasting the cuisine of the man the Thai government asked to establish a Thai cookery school in Thailand.

We chose the traditional thai nahm arharn meal (£49.50) consisting of 6 shared courses: an hors d'oeuvre, a salad, a soup, a relish or light curry, a substantial curry and a stir-fried or casserole dish. Individual ordering is also possible with dishes ranging from £8 to £15 to suit tastes or budget.

We started with an amuse bouche of mar hor (minced prawn and chicken served on cucumber slices) which was followed by latiang. This amazing egg-net construction encased chewy strands of sweetish-coconut flavoured with crab. The pomelo and crispy trout salad with toasted peanuts yam som oo pla tort was a maze of textures - refreshing pomelo chunks, crunchy fish and reslient lime leaf - flavoured with a sweet and savoury sauce. We'd all elected for different soups and my spicy oxtail soup with onions and tomatoes sup hang wua tasted earthy and rich, full of beef flavour and redolent with mysterious aromatic spices. A chiang mai grilled chilli relish with grilled zander-fish followed. This small red pile of chilli and ground dried shrimp was pungeant with garlic and shallots and accompanied the raw cabbage and vegetables well.

Our two curries followed: an extremely hot jungle curry of chopped prawns with heart of coconut and chillies made me gasp but that is the nature of jungle curries. The chiang mai pork curry with shredded ginger, pickled garlic and shallots had a refreshing and aromatic ginger tang and was again very pungeant with onions.

My favourite dish was the double steamed rabbit with pickled mustard greens (known as ham choy in Cantonese) and daikon. This earthy peasant-style dish with the savoury pickles and sweet rabbit meat married perfectly with rice. We also had a firm and translucent deep fried royal bream with a rather sweet three flavoured sauce.

We dined in subdued lighting in a warm light-golden room decorated with subtle South-east Asian accents, e.g. bright red corded ropes in the atrium. The extremely friendly Thai staff gave elegant and knowledgeable service. Although we were only supposed to have one curry and one casserole she offered to make us two smaller serves of each because we couldn't decide.

An exotic range of desserts beckoned and I had a coconut ash perfumed egg custard with jackfruit - quite delicious.

For most people, Thai food is what's eaten on the streets in Thailand, usually cooked in a blazing hot wok seasoned with fish sauce, lime and peanuts. In reality, this method of cooking comes from the large contingent of Chinese traders that lived in Thailand. The old Thai cuisine as developed before Chinese influence made use of slow coal fires and gradual simmering. As such, you don't get the vibrant fresh flavours associated with stir-frying over high heat but an interesting blends and layers as the slow extraction processes develop and release aromas. I also found the food a little too pungeant and strongly flavoured for my liking, but I'm sure it's authentic and what's proper - I'm just not used to it.

If you like your pad thai and green chicken curry as served in pubs and are expecting just a 'better' version, this place is probably not for you. Nahm is quite a different concept and serves Thai food rarely seen outside of Thailand and the royal houses.

Lunch today - Tapas in my House

The most expensive ham in the world (£7.99 /100g) is Serrano ham (San Danielle) bought in a West End London suburb. It's about half the price in Spain, but the cost of an airfare would have evened things out (just). Although she assured me that it was indeed the acorn-fed pigs, I had my doubts. But she gave me a free sample, and it was just as delicious as I've had in Spain. What you can see in the picture cost me £3.50, eek, but Leon was feeling tired and un-hungry, and I'd made it my mission to tempt him to eat.

I also bought some boquerons (marinated anchovies), giant Kalamata olives and made Matzo brei - an omelette made with rehydrated crumbled Matzo crackers. I'd seen this recipe in the book Garlic and Sapphires. We're having this with warmed seed baguette, roasted red pepper strips, fresh tomatoes and cos lettuce. There's a small square of English blue cheese that you can't see in the photo.

Ayam Masak Merah

(adapted from a Cyberkuali recipe)

Dry spices:
cinnamon stick
anise seed
cardamon pods

eschallots
garlic - both pulverised in a blender

lemon grass

tomato paste
small can of chopped tomatoes

ground cashews

Trawling the streets of my local Middle-Eastern district, I was hard pressed to find the Indian spices necessary for this Malaysian dish. Lots of pre-made packets of felafel and shawerma spice, but nothing Indian. This dish is usually made with candlenuts instead of ground cashews and star anise, but I couldn't find any on Edgeware Rd. I think the Spice Shop in Notting Hill sell all of what's required (even white Sarawak peppercorns) but as with all things in London, you can get anything you want, at a price.

I should have fried the onions and garlic for longer as a slightly sulfurous raw taste still permeated the dish at the end. This could have been fixed with some sugar, but I'm loathe to add sugar to curry dishes like this.

Song Que Vietnamese Restaurant

134 Kingsland Rd

A whole bunch of work colleagues and I went to dinner at this wonderful Vietnamese restaurant last night. This place serves a great pho, but because this was a group of 10, we ordered more Chinese style dishes to share. However, we did get some of my favourite Vietnamese treats for starting with.

I love Vietnamese food and its use of fresh herbs. It's so distinctive and difficult to do in London. I recently discovered that South East Asian herbs and vegetables are air-freighted once or twice a week from Thailand and surrounds. Outside a grocery store in Chinatown I saw masses of big white styrofoam boxes with labels from Thai airways containing bitter gourd, pea-eggplant and numerous other greens. Song Que does the whole gamut of traditional Vietnamese food with authentic herbs (as well as supply will allow it) and it pulls it off very well. We did notice that they stinge on the herbs and beansprouts if a non-Vietnamese is ordering. I guess these are the most expensive part of the meal and unless you appreciate it, most people might see it as some sort of garnish.

And at £5 for a bowl of pho, you can't really beat that.

Our meal cost £14 a head including beer and wine. Service is quick and efficient but gruff in the usual way - you're here for the food.

Entrees:
Summer Roll
rice noodles, herbs and pork or prawn wrapped in rice-paper with a dipping sauce of chilli, sweet-bean and ground peanuts

Barbequed beef wrapped in betel leaf
served with lettuce, mint, shiso (large purple serrated leaves), pickled carrots and radish and rice vermicelli. Vietnamese chilli dipping sauce

Mains:
Chicken with chilli and lemongrass
yellow coloured slices of chicken with large chunks of chilli

Shredded crispy beef in sweet and sour sauce
thin strands of deep-fried beef in orange sauce with tomatoes

Singapore noodles
rice vermicelli with shrimps, shredded barbequed pork, beansprouts, onions and light curry seasoning.

Lamb with ginger and spring onion

Freshwater bream with crystal noodles
whole fish with black bean sauce served on mung bean thread noodles (served on a big square plate)

Duck with pineapple
boneless duck pieces in a sweet and sour sauce with pineapple

Tofu, pepper and aubergine stuffed with prawn paste

Pork with shrimp paste
served with cucumber, chilli and other vegetables

Stir fried ong-choy with garlic

Saturday morning market in Poitiers church square

Saturday morning saw us at the local market in the church square, a bit of a French institution. Wow, is all I can say. The freshest, best produce, meat and cheeses I have ever seen. All totally French, the most exotic thing I saw was a vanilla pod, but the myriad of cheeses and strange traditional root vegetables that are unknown to me.

French (goat) cheeses, just a small selection from the local Saturday market

These pink and white radishes were recognisable, but there were also some incredible gnarled deep purple-brown tubers, they looked like fibrous yams or something.

Bistro eating in Poitiers

The other meals we partook at various bistros around the city centre.

Steak cheval hâché avec frites (horsemeat hamburger and chips)

La Serrurerie is a very popular and busy bistro serving what I would describe as French ranch food. Hearty big serves with vibrant flavours. The menu ranges from Soup á l'oignon (onion soup) served traditionally with a big chunk of baguette in the soup, covered in grilled cheese to Thai flavored barbequed prawns as long as your hand.

Restaurant eating in Poitiers

Leon and I went to Poitiers, France a few weekends ago. While the town is charming, quaint and full of old shit (there're about six ancient and crumbling churches alone) it is very small and we really didn't need a whole weekend to experience it.

Our first dinner in France we ate at a local restaurant that was delicious, but in my mind, unremarkable. Nothing too exciting or scintillating here but everything well presented and flavours well balanced. I can't even remember the name, Alain ...something (not Ducasse), within walking distance of Le Grand Hotel (The Big Hotel) in town. We chose the set menu of E32.

Sorry for the crap layout, but I'm clueless when it comes to these HTML thingamies.


A happy smiley Leon with our first plate of French food in France.



Home-made pate with crispbread


Scallop hearts with endive


Pan-fried whole frog with white-wine reduction


Beef with parsnip souffle


Venison with offal and berry flavoured jus


Almond ice-cream, chocolate truffle loaflet, pear and ginger sorbet, rasberry coulis

Waitrose stock duck eggs and these pretty blue hens' eggs. Quite charming with vibrant yellow (almost orange) and thick yolks.

Madrid

I went to Madrid with Leon, but wrote about it in my other blog.

Eating at the Plaza Mayor
Intestines at the market

Black risotto

More adventures in risotto have led to this exotic little number. The actual recipe is quite basic: onion and garlic sauteed in olive and butter till soft, then the addition of vialone nano rice and the stepwise addition of stock. The black colour arises from a small sachet of cuttlefish ink added at the end. I don't know if there's actually any flavour to this ink as the stock was quite strongly flavoured.

I'd bought langoustine and fresh black mussels from Appleby's Fish at Borough Market the morning earlier hoping to get the meat out and use the shells for stock. After peeling most of the langoustines and discovering soft mushy flesh, terrible for eating, I put them all into a pot to boil down into a tasty stock. That they did, but I did amp it up with a teaspoon of powdered Marigold vege stock.

The mussels, however, were fantastic. Small, sweet and so juicy with the slightest bit of give when just-steamed. Only 3 out of more than 20 hadn't opened so they were indeed fresh.

Oh, then a drizzle of fragrant truffle oil and a crumbling of pecorino nero before serving and you have a meal fit for two lovers.

Ranoush Kebab

You know those crunchy, tasty brown bits you get when you roast lamb? How they always seem so little when compared with the rest of the roast - it's almost like we make do with the soft succulent pink interior because of the tasty brown bit shortage.

Walking past Ranoush Juice, the lure of the Shawerma kebab called me. I fought it off, but when I saw what was on the vertical rotisserie my tastebuds got the better of me: an entire chunk of rotating crunchy brown bits. I waited patiently while the cashier answered the phone - another belligerant Middle Eastern man with thick black eyebrows. He spoke angrily in Arabic down the phone, then looked at me and made the smallest of gestures with his index finger: I knew what to do.

"Lamb shawerma, please."

He continued the conversation, now sounding mollified but still with a thin edge of violence. I imagined that he was organising the next White Slave auction in Yemen. I paid my £3 and the woman behind me also got the look and gesture, but she had a question so he was forced to stop his conversation and attend to her.

One of the chefs daintily patted the viscous hommous down in the cold tray while I waited for the other to make my kebab. He laid down a small piece of khobez bread, a streak of tahini/garlic sauce, two slices of tomato, a long slice of pickled cucumber and some onion. He shaved the lamb, removing the maximum of crunchy brown bits to reveal pink succulence underneath.

Biting into my kebab rewarded me with juicy pieces of lamb fringed with crispy tasty edges. The meat was marinated with a complex but subtle spice mixture perfuming each mouthful. I'm not used to deconvoluting Middle Eastern spicing so I can only guess at what was present. I detected sumac and cardamon, but also something vaguely floral, rosewater perhaps, although that seems far too delicate for the roasting process.

The way the lamb chunks are speared onto the rotisserie means that all those edges get to go brown and crisp unlike a whole leg of lamb. You can only get lamb and chicken kebabs on Edgeware Rd, unlike the beef ones in Canberra. Mind you, those were never worth getting because Ali Baba only ever used low-grade minced beef.

Ranoush Juice is part of the ubiquitous Maroush restaurant enterprise. The Ranoushes seem to be the cafés and casual affairs whilst Maroushes are sit down restaurants with varying degrees of poshness. These 'oushes are not to be confused with the Fatoush chain (which incidentally is a kind of Arabic salad) that are competitors along with Al-Dar who have three restaurants.

I don't think you can find a tastier hot meat roll for £3 in London.

Comforting Food Memories

Comfort foods soothe mini-attacks of homesickness - or in this case salve the difficulties of new cities and brutish crowds. For me, my comfort foods are a mish-mash of Chinese and Western. Traditional comfort foods such as mashed potato, roast chicken or lasagne seem exotic to me - these are what you'd eat for special occassions.

Some of my comfort foods are:
Chicken curry made with Malaysian curry powder and a hint of belachan
Fried rice with bacon and egg
Egg-rice (daan faan)
Pork with potatoes and soya sauce (lou chi yeuk)
Steamed pork mince with preserved cabbage (ching chi yeuk)

When I was growing up, my mother attended a cake-baking course in the evenings after work. The whole extended family used to look forward to her coming back because she would usually have a slice or several of what she had helped make. Western style cakes where highly prized as exotic delicacies in Kuala Lumpur during the 1980's and very expensive; mainly because the ingredients (eggs, butter, cream, western fruits) where all imported.

I remember my mother sourcing and testing all manner of ovens (well, two) in her cake making endeavours. She'd already experimented with hand-held beaters (unsatisfactory) so invested in a Kenwood Chef. She had some success with what looked like a camp-oven - a round silver dome that sat on the floor with a glass viewport. It used to get very hot and my mother always cried at us to keep droplets of water away from the glass in case the rapid cooling cracked it. Finally she found the perfect baking oven with both upper and lower elements.

This beige and brown cube sat in the store room and presided over many date cakes, chiffon sponges, pizzas and breads. My mum was especially fond of making date cake (which as a child I never saw the appeal of those brown sticky loaves) and bread. I remember once my aunts were using the oven to make a cake. My mum had just come home and asked which tin they used to put the batter in as she saw that all of hers were still in the cupboards. Suddenly my aunts rushed to the store room as they realised they'd put a bright yellow plastic container into the hot oven. It came out looking like a muffin with lurid yellow frosting on the edge. It smelled good, if a little plasticky, but health-considerations meant we threw it out.

During my stay in Australia I started a book of personal mementos and recipes. My mother gave me two of her favourite cake recipes from her baking days. Today, whilst sampling the sushi at the Selfridges food hall, I spied a Walnut and Coffee cream cake. This kind of cake reminded me of my mother and the flavours that she likes in cakes and desserts. Of course this was far too unhealthy and sweet with its sugary buttercream frosting and not nearly nutty enough according to her recipe, but I thought of her when I tucked into my slice.

Sushi at Selfridges

The proprietress at Silverside meat let me in on a little secret about fish in London. She used to be the buyer for the Food Hall at Selfridges and said that the best value sushi in London comes from that very same place: next to the smoked salmon, but not Yo! sushi (heaven forbid!).

I bought a £10 tray of pre-prepared sashimi after watching the chef prepare special trays of takeaway for a Singaporean lady. There were cheaper trays available, but I wanted to try the sweet shrimp and surf clam.

Overall the sashimi is pretty good, better than the Sydney Fish Market, but a poor second to what I've had in Japan - the only other place I've eaten sweet shrimp. In Nagoya, these were crisp, fresh, succulent and almost floral in their sweetness. Here, they were okay, albeit a touch too soft and borderline slimy. The meaty surf clam was tasty and the tuna the best I've eaten outside of Japan. Sydney Fish Market tuna is just not cut correctly and contains a lot of ligament and stringy bits. These red slabs were tender but firm yet melting in the mouth. My favourite sashimi fish is salmon, usually because it's hard to go wrong with salmon, and these large, smooth and thick slices of orange shot with white slid into my mouth meltingly. I didn't think much of the sea bream present, perhaps I should have asked for a customised plate with the wild sea bass. Sea urchin roe was also on offer, but for £5 /100g, it was a bit dear.

One thing I did find disconcerting was the intensity of the soy sauce in those cute fish dispensers. I thought it too packed with flavour enhancer for the delicate fish. I would have preferred a lighter touch.

This sashimi dealer supplies Nobu, my source at Silverside told me. So I feel assured that I have experienced the best takeaway sashimi that London can offer. I didn't find the prices exorbitant either but just in line with everything else in this expensive city.

If I were to have a sashimi party I would order here, but probably stick to tuna and salmon until I've built a rapport with the sashimi-chef and he can tell me if other fish are worth getting on the day.