Moo and Modernism too

I usually find family occasions fraught with difficulty. Not, as you may think, because I don't like my my relatives - in fact, quite the contrary, I love spending time with them - but more the difficulty in finding things that are going to please everyone, with ages ranging from six months to sixty something, especially when it comes to eating. 

A case in point came recently when I found everyone would be descending on East London for a mini reunion. My first thoughts, after the excitement of seeing everyone, of course - turned to Tayyabs lamb chops, Beigel bake's hand carved salt beef and Orange Buffalo's spicy wings. Well, at least until I heard my cousin - a former globetrotter who now has two young children under five - suggesting to my aunt 'chain restaurants are good, all children like chips'.

 

He's right of course, chains can be great and there's plenty of examples where I'd be more than happy to eat fried potatoes with the young ones (sadly not me anymore). So when my aunt sent me the details to our reservation at Moo Cantina - a mini chain with a branch on Brick Lane and a meat-centric menu - for our family lunch, the steaks were high (boom, boom).

Things got off to a good start with a large bottle of Quilmes, a popular (a pretty much the only) Argentinian beer. As with a few weeks ago, when I was chugging cans of PBR along side my fried chicken, it's  sweet, malty beer that doesn't have much going for it on its own, but when served cold slips down deceptively well alongside grilled meats and salty foods.

The sharing starter board, given an atmospherically fuzzy glow through my grease-speckled camera phone lens - was a tasty and interesting assortment of Argentinian chorizo sausage with roasted peppers and onion, lightly battered fingers of fried squid with garlicky mayo, hunks of baguette with a punchy chimichurri sauce and disc that resembled a pancake, but was comprised of gooey, grilled provolone cheese.

It was nice to see chancho, a hunk of grilled pork collar, on the menu, and it didn't disappoint. Served simply with a sauce criolla - a fresh onion, pepper and tomato salsa - a rocket salad, and a side of excellent sweet potato fries, and all with change from a tenner.

We also sampled couple of incarnations of the eponymous 'free range beef sourced from lush grass fed cattle'. Firstly a flank steak - 200g, grilled and served with a salad and fries for £12 at lunchtime, which proved a well-flavoured strip of meat, served with charred edges and a nicely pink centre. There was also the Lomito Porteno a rib eye sandwich with roasted peppers and provolone cheese advertised on the menu as 'one of the top ten sandwiches in the UK'. While I'm not sure who made the pronouncement, I'm pretty sure my cousin Will was in agreement.

While tempted by the smoke sausage platter, served with the curious addition of guacamole, in the end the Ewing attempted to compensate from the previous night's excess with the 'seasonal' salad. Thankfully chunks of avocado meant she didn't miss out on her vitamin E, alongside flame grilled peppers and fresh peppers, and crisp chicken strips, all nestled on a bed of well-dressed leaves (insert joke about East London fashion here). 

The younger contingent were also well catered for with a very good grilled chicken sandwich, stuffed with mozzarella and tomato; Moo burgers and chips; and a big platter of nachos to share. We also shared some interesting sides including the Salad Olivier, a kind of ensalada russa of diced boiled potato, carrot and peas, dressed with mayo; and a Revuelto Gramajo, a dish of scrambled eggs with 'onion, ham, peas and fries'.

Who could resist the lure of a desert named Sweet Tony, a toffee and chocolate mousse with cream and strawberries. Certainly not the Ewing, who enjoyed it, although not as much as my Uncle enjoyed his carajillo (coffee with cognac, or in his case, amaretto) the beloved beverage of Spanish bin men, served here in wine glasses and a steal at only four pounds.

From being somewhere central, where we could all get together and eat chips and drink wine, Moo ended up exceeding all our expectations. While the food was decent, and decently priced, where they really impressed was with the charming service. From stowing our assorted luggage, to re-configuring the furniture, to expertly dividing sandwiches to stop pre-teenage squabbles, and being delightful with baby Louis, nothing was too much trouble.

While the rest of the family rolled, contentedly, back towards Stoke Newington, we took the opportunity to chalk off stop three of the Brutal Tour with a visit to One Moorgate Place, home of Institute of Chartered Accountants' Hall. More accurately we where here to see William Whitfield's 60's extension, constructed in a Modernist style that's quite at odds with the Victorian neo-Baroque styling of the original building.

When I was growing up our neighbours, who lived directly opposite, decided to paint the front of their garage with large colourful blocks that resembled a Mondrian painting. Which might have looked pretty incongruous on a warehouse door in backstreet in Whitechapel, but rather less so when attached to a house in leafy Buckinghamshire.

While I’m not sure their impressionist recreation was quite to my parent’s more modest (not modernist) tastes, I was rather a fan of the bold colours that brightened up my dreary provincial view; which is exactly how I felt when I saw the Brutalist extension to the Hall. The incongruousness of the addition is, for me, the epitome of what makes the juxtaposition of London’s architecture – this time as part of the very same building - so thrilling. 

You can read more about the whole building here. I'm just waiting for the currant refurbishment works to take place so I can go for lunch at One Moorgate Place, the restaurant found in the basement of the hall. I wonder if they serve chips...

Eastern Sunday

I have no spur

To prick the sides of my intent, but only

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself

And falls on th' other.

Most people have rather lofty, or at least exciting, ambitions and ideas; if you’re Miss World then, naturally, it’s world peace; the Ewing wants a dog and a self-watering allotment (or perhaps a dog that will water the allotment) and Stealth quite fancies a pad in the Barbican.

Since accepting the simple things in life really are often the best – the first hard cox in autumn (steady), a letter through the post from my Nan, breakfast in bed with the Ewing – my recent, and rather more modest goal, was getting to Wapping Market on a Sunday morning before all the Crosstown doughnuts and Dark Fluid coffee ran out. (I do still harbour a secret dream to drive through all the mainland States in a faux wood panelled station wagon while living off cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and Kraft macaroni cheese cooked on a camping stove.)

Since the market - sister of the burgeoning Saturday market at Brockley, which also proved quite an effort getting to - opened at the beginning of the summer, I have been taunted with an endless Instagram feed every Sunday of fried chicken, ice cream, local fruit and veg and, of course, the famed coffee and doughnuts.

Finally, after feeling thoroughly down in the dumps most the preceding week, I decided the only way to shake the gloom and spin out the last hazy day of August was by eating, drinking and generally making merry. So I roused the Ewing from her precious weekend slumber and dragged her all the way down to Brussels Dock for breakfast. Well, by the time we actually arrived, more lunch-ish.

First stop was a dash down to Crosstown for our fried dough fix. The Monmouth coffee custard stuffed square was a given, but the second choice was more difficult and saw a squabble ensue over whether to pick the ring doughnut stuffed with chocolate ganache or the salted banana caramel. the former won out, although I would have been more than happy with the cinnamon and sugar dusted number, while the chatty guy serving us had plenty of praise for the seasonal nectarine flavour. Decisions, decisions.

After nabbing a brace of 'nuts I patiently joined the queue for our iced coffee and americano from Dark Fluid, SE London based bean roasters with a mobile coffee cart, before finally find a spot down on the wharf wall to scoff our haul.

While I was impressed with the effort of stuffing the rich ganache into chocolate truffle ring doughnut, I found the crumb itself a little dry. Far more successful was the coffee number, which oozed it's caffeine-spiked loan obscenely with every bite and went down perfectly with my, very decent, cup of joe.

Of course it wasn't all stimulants and sugar, the Ewing also hit the Roadery's van to grab a pretty spectacular sandwich that saw slices 5hr slow cooked ox cheek being paired with peppery salad leaves before being stuffed between two slices of toasted milk'n'honey sourdough bread.

Highlight of our visit came, unexpectedly, in the form of a cone of apricot and Amaretto ice cream from the Ruby Violet van. Apricots don't normally do it for me (I'm pretty sure that's why the Ewing chose it as we were going to 'share'), but this was utterly exceptional. The flavour was sharp and bright, while the texture was butter soft and a little fuzzy - just like the skin of a perfect, juicy apricot - on the tongue.

There were also a few treats to take home; the first ears of the autumn corn, a big bag of greengages and a punnet of Victoria plums, as well as some proper English muffins and gingerbread. My favourite take home purchase was the Graceburn cheese, a soft cow's cheese in oil with herbs and garic that's made with unpasteurised organic milk by Blackwoods in Bromley. Very good with homegrown tomatoes and sourdough toast (or out the jar with a teaspoon).

After sunning ourselves with the friendly crowd that had assembled down by the water it was time for some proper refreshments. The market is, quite literally, a stone’s throw from the old stalwart and favoured drinking hole whenever I'm in these parts, the Prospect of Whitby. This time however we eschewed it for a visit to the Captain Kidd, back down on Wapping High Street, after we had to skipped past it on our last pub crawl.

The Captain Kidd is a Sam Smith’s, pub, a Yorkshire brewers known for its impossibly cheap and rather mysterious range of own brand beers, ciders spirits and mixers. You can imagine the disquiet this must cause the average drinker when they call in looking for their favoured American piss or pint of wife beater and instead are faced with ‘Alpine Lager’ or 'Yorkshire Stingo'. Something that’s apparent by the mild irritation of the staff and the slightly sticky laminated menus they have to provide that describe the different libations actually available.

Overall the Captain Kidd's a decent enough pub; the Ewing rates the Extra Stout and it also boasts the best garden and river views of the trio of hostelries that run from the Town of Ramsgate to the Prospect. There was also a particularly vocal, and very amusing, group of locals trading salacious stories at the bar on our visit. An increasingly rare find in the Big Smoke.

The beers themselves or the ones I’ve had the pleasure to try - mostly at the John Snow, a labyrinth-like Sam Smiths in the centre of Soho - range from the pretty decent to pretty unpalatable, but at £2.70 for a pint of the Best Bitter it’s hard to care too much. Yo ho ho and a bottle of (own brand) rum, indeed.