Douze huîtres

When we originally picked Leap Day as the day to finally tie the knot not having to celebrate annually seemed one of the selling points. Until I realised my wife actually wanted to celebrate on the last day of February and the first day of March. Roll on a few years and the lack of a definite day means the celebrations seem to now extend over a space of weeks.

Which is how we found ourselves at Bar Boulud, for a fancy lunch before seeing Massive Attack performing Mezzanine. Between realising one of my favourite albums is over twenty years old and I’ve been married for seven years (or one and three quarters, if you want to be pedantic about it) I felt sufficiently decrepit and was fully in need of a strong drink.

I fancied a dirty martini, which seems to have become a bit of an anniversary tradition, and while there is huge range of gins behind the bar, for reasons I couldn't fathom only a handful are actually listed on the drinks menu. Which seemed even stranger when the wine list resembled a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Of the suggestions made by our waiter the Cambridge gin stood out as one we hadn't tried (or didn't have hoarded in the cupboard under the stairs at home) although it wasn't until he bought our drinks that he told us the back story of this being the first truffle infused - with the prized white variety from Alba - gin on the market. So caveat emptor if you don't like your drinks with an earthy and funky edge. I thought it was delicious, although I was still tasting fungi for hours afterwards.

Despite not really ever managing to find raw oysters anything more than 'meh', I was keen we had a dozen to share anyway. The Ewing, who knows exactly what I'm like (I normally eat one and then declare I am done) suggested six, but I was hell-bent on a dozen and had spent the morning saying douze huîtres in a more and more flamboyant French accent, until she gave in just to get me to stop.

You can see I looked pretty pleased when the huîtres arrived. Probably as I hadn't eaten one yet although I was steeling myself with the fact that the glutamate levels of oysters (providing the umami hit) are apparently highest in February and March, imbibing them with even more natural MSG. These looked lean and lithe and briny, although I think I'd have found anything sexy after drinking enough of the heady truffled gin.

While raw oysters aren't my fave I love vinegar with an unholy passion, so a spoonful of mignonotte sauce helped two of my four happily down. Followed by one with lemon and one au naturel, which confirmed that snot that tastes like you've been sea swimming is still not really my thing. 

That left the Ewing with huit huîtres, which sounds like the perfect number when said in an annoying cod french accent. Well, it kept me amused. She enjoyed hers greatly, slurping and chewing happily between crusty hunks of bread and butter.

The burger was really what we were there for and I chose the flagship BB Burger - beef patty, foie gras and short ribs stuffed into a black onion seed bun with confit tomato, salad and horseradish mayo. The best way I can think to describe it is high-end basic. Quality ingredients compiled to taste like an excellent, messy ole burger, that drips down your wrists as you grapple with it – full points for bun integrity, that lasted until the last bite - and makes best advantage of the freshly laundered napkins. 

The smoky patty was nicely pink (medium rare is the furthest they will go), the slick foie gras, although subtle, added further layers of richness and shredded short rib added some toothsome oomph. The confit tomato was a necessary addition to cut a swath through the richness, but sadly the expected sinus prickle of horseradish was too faint to play a supporting role.

Is it ever worth paying twenty four quid for a burger and chips? Debatable when I could have bought 16 of my beloved  McDonalds double cheeseburgers with extra pickles, or three (and a mouthful) of Bleecker's bacon cheeseburgers or two and a half Dead Hippies. Although those prices are without fries and don’t come with a wine list that includes a Baron Thenard Montrachet 2008 at 125 pounds a glass to help it down. 

The Ewing wasn’t up for going halves, so I can only piece together what her Piggie (17 quid) burger - topped with pulled pork and housed in a cheddar bun - was like from her comments, which included ‘spicy’ (from the jalapeño mayo) and ‘beefy’. Probably good that she proof reads this blog, rather than writing it. Although she’s far less verbose than me (and more sarcastic - TE), so maybe a rare treat for the reader…. 

She did have lots of positive words for the chips, mainly they were comparable with Maccy d’s, her benchmark for a good fry. They also give you a ramekin of proper ketchup, not some sort of posh artisan chutney that always tastes of sweet sadness.

As everybody now knows I’m an anti-sugar evangelist (bore - TE) and love to tell everyone at every opportunity I’ve quit the piles of the white stuff (obviously I’m joking, there is literally nothing less interesting than people telling you what they eat/don’t eat). While my resolve remains pretty much intact (honey roasted cashews definitely don’t count) I had already decided the lure of the soufflé du jour was probably going to be too much to resist.

My intention was to share with the Ewing, but as it happened she couldn’t resist the lure of the Pom-Passion - with hazelnut dacquoise, roasted apple sorbet, passion fruit jelly and vanilla mousse - so we ordered both. The apple desert was fine, if a little sweet (not unsurprisingly) for me. I gamefully managed a couple of half-forkfuls, just to be sure, although I did like the mouth-puckering intensity of the passionfruit jelly.

Despite asking what the soufflé was on two occasions neither of us had any idea what the waiter actually said in reply. Being English, we ordered it anyway and were rewarded with the an ethereal confection that tasted just as majestic as it looked. The soufflé was definitely orange-based, possibly Grand Marnier (from Googling it, that’s what Jay ate here when they first opened) although it didn’t taste especially boozy. Although nothing would after that martini. The ice cream was defiantly chocolate, and went nicely with the orange, if you like that sort of thing, which I very much do, although I still let my wife polish most of it off.

It's been said that marriage is like a souffle; beautiful, satisfying and fragile. Although, quite honestly, I'd go with too much sometimes make you feel sick and leaves you deflated (harsh - TE). Not sure that would shift as many Hallmark cards though. Still, there's no one else I want to take long afternoon naps with when half-cut on a Friday afternoon (me neither - TE). Which is exactly what we did after finishing this. Here's to many more years of sleeping and eating with my very favourite person. (Hear, Hear! Chin, chin - TE)

Bucks Bites: Cheque it out

There’s nothing mad dogs and Englishmen love more than pub garden weather. Any hint that the sun might be coming out and we are there, balancing a pint of fizzy lager in one hand, while battling with the slightly damp parasol with the broken catch. 

From sitting in unmown fields on splintering picnic benches, to huddling on rickety pavement tables while breathing in the hot fug of traffic fumes, to concrete courtyards that are sticky underfoot and smell of stale fags, the sheer elation of being outside with a beer in hand seems to overcome all other circumstances.

While it is nice simply to be outside, swatting away wasps and getting slightly sunburnt, living in leafy Bucks means we are blessed with some very picturesque pub gardens to sit in. Having decamped from North West London as a child, this often meant family expeditions out into the gently rolling Chiltern Hills, with one of my Dad’s recent favourites being the Chequers at Fingest.

As he was staying with us recently, on a bi-annual visit from Oz, it seemed an apt place to go for dinner and celebrate the start of the great Heatwave of 2018 (can anyone still remember back to a time when they needed a coat, or shoes or trousers, or pretty much any clothes at all…).

Being a Brakspear’s pub, somewhat unsurprisingly, they serve Brakspear’s beer. Regular readers (Hello, Mummy P) may remember me talking about just this very drop when I went for a recent dinner at another charming Chiltern pub, literally but a stone’s throw from the Chequers. Which is handy, as I can just put in a link here and don’t have to bother repeating myself (not that that normally stops me)

It turns out my Dad is rather a fan of a pint of the famous double-dropped bitter as well, and we quickly made our way through three each, while the Ewing cursed being the designated drivernot, perhaps, because she particularly wanted to drink lots, but more the fact the decline in the quality of conversation and increase in beer drunk seemed to be directly proportional.

As much as my figure and Instagram feed may suggest otherwise, I don’t eat a huge amount of burgers. Yes, the word huge may be relative (literally and figuratively) but, as most of us have bitter experience, their proliferation on most pub menus does not guarantee something that you will actually enjoy eating. Especially at 15 pounds, as the cheeseburger costs here (a sum that would buy you ten of my beloved double cheeseburgers from Maccy D’s, the connoisseurs choice).

Still, we all ordered the burger anyway, although my Dad did initially attempt to order the sausages, being starved of a proper pork banger in Australia – where the grainy and perennial disappointing beef snag still rules the roost, despite the influx of Brits and Irish living – only to be told they were off the menu.

As far as burgers go, this was a champion; hefty in stature, but manageable without contorting your jaw awkwardly to eat; pink and juicy in the middle – the burger is made onsite – this was a squirter; topped with good cheddar cheese (nothing really beats plasticky American, but this was nice in a classy way) melted properly across the top; and served with lots of pickles, tomato and raw onion.

In fact, the food was so good that, with the heatwave extending into an almost unprecedented second week, the Ewing suggested we returned (sadly sans my father, who was heading back Down Under) a couple of days later, which, being the weekend, meant there was the added bonus of the pizza oven in the garden being fired-up for the weekend.

Pizza came topped with prosciutto, rocket and Parmesan, finished with a hefty glug of heady truffle oil - bringing fragrant joy or funky misery depending on which side of the tuber-scented condiment you come down on. For the record, I'm a fan, of the funk if used judiciously as this was. As was the Ewing, masterfully modelling her dinner in a surprisingly good-natured photo opportunity. A decade of my incessant photo taking has gradually worn her down.

The fierce heat of the wood oven had given the base the proper combination of chewy and crisp, with a smoky depth coming from the charred spots on the edge of the crust. And, while at fourteen quid for a disc of dough topped with a couple of slices of ham and a handful of salad, it could hardly be described as cheap, it still seemed fair value.

While the lure of the burger was strong, I plumped for the pork chop - served with a green peppercorn sauce, cabbage and mustard mash. While there is nothing particularly revelatory about the combination of meat and two veg, pork chops were my favourite meal when growing up and, on tasting this, it's fair to say not much has changed all these years later. 

Everything on the plate was perfectly judged from the punchy mustard mash, to the buttery crunch of the cabbage, to the crispy rind of the chop, best eaten alongside the briny pop of the bottled peppercorns in the rich cream sauce. Pub food at its finest.

Relaxing in the sun with beer, family and pork chops. At the risk of sounding like Homer Simpson (and surely there's nothing wrong with that), I'm not sure things can get much better.

OPM for the masses

Despite recent and relentless ubiquity, burgers have unfaltering kept a place in my heart, and around my waistline. I still like photographing them, I still like looking at them and I still like eating them. Especially the latter. 

They say pictures speak louder than words, I’m gonna keep this post (pretty) short; While I’m not known for my brevity, in this case even my blurry photos (a miracle any are actually in focus considering the gravy and burger sauce all over my hands) tell the story of how happiness can be sandwiched between two buns.

Nestled in a railway arch in Digbeth - they originally started life at the acclaimed Digbeth Dining Club – it’s got a kind of funky Bermondsey Spa Terminus vibe going on. Although, thankfully, here they seem to have also invested in some heating, so I didn’t have to sit there in my many layers as I did on many Saturday mornings at Kernel, back in the heady days when you could still sit and drink beer there.

The beer here is also good, with the draft stuff being provided by Siren; from leafy Finchampstead, near Reading. I had a schooner of the ever reliable Soundwave IPA, while the Ewing got stuck in with Forest for the Trees, their limited edition 8.6 percent winter DIPA. A steady start to the day, even it was mostly wasted on her, as she thought they had been swapped around she was drinking mine anyway. 

 As I’ve pontificated before, my ideal burger falls into two camps. My favourite is the simple and straightforward – based on the iconic McDonald’s cheeseburger; meat, cheese (plastic) onion, ketchup, mustard, pickles. Occasionally bacon; always streaky. Sometimes, however, it’s nice to mix it up a bit and go with salad; nothing too fancy, just shredded lettuce, tomato and mayo. A la the BK Whopper.

I’m usually pretty adamant about keeping the two burger camps separate, but the Cheesy E at OPM mixed gooey cheese with pickles, onion, lettuce and Boss Man sauce, a burger sauce based on the heavenly collision between ketchup and mayo. And it sounded pretty good. (and looked pretty FILTHY  too - TE).

It tasted even better; a mix of tangy sauce, crunchy iceberg, gooey cheese and juicy beef (doubled up, obvs) it just held it’s structural integrity long enough for me to hoover it up, although it was a very close-run thing. The best burger I have had in a long time.  

I had planned to have the naked chips, or maybe just the slaw, or maybe just share the Ewing’s chips…(but I don't like sharing, remember - TE) but when I saw the poutine special, I knew what I had to do. A traditional dish from Quebec consisting of fries, fresh cheese curds and sauce brune - essentially chips cheese and brown gravy – here the gravy is made from beer and onions and the whole dish is topped with pickled chillies. 

While I'm a Southerner at heart - I do love a saveloy and normally prefer my chips with ketchup – fried potatoes and gravy are the perfect bedfellows, especially with a bit of spice.

The Ewing, in an uncharacteristic deviation, chose the chicken burger. Mostly tempted by the fact they use battered thigh instead of breast, and that it was served with Alabama white barbecue sauce (you can also add Frank’s hot sauce to the mix). Again, this was a peerless example, with a special shout out going to the locally baked brioche buns (also used for the beef) with their perfectly blistered tops.

She also chose the, instant hit on Instagram, ODM fries topped with Cajun spice and slaw. Another fail-safe combo of hot and cool; the crunchy cabbage and fluffy spud peppered with the punch of coriander and lime, sriracha mayo, crispy fried onions and fresh spring onion.

Initially claiming not to be in the market for dessert, instead asking for the bill, it didn’t take long to retract our request and ask for some homemade sticky toffee pudding to share. A good call as this was a light and fluffy sponge with a good (if not liberal enough) helping of toffee sauce. While I think it may be the ultimate application for clotted cream (don’t at me) the vanilla ice cream served alongside was also pretty good.

While I’ve pretty much failed to show the brevity promised above, I’ll keep the wrap-up short. In conclusion: go here; have a burger and a beer; share some OPM fries (or, if you’re greedy like me, get your own); thank me later.

Big Easy like Sunday afternoon

As the #brutaltour rumbles to its concrety conclusion (fear not, the promised round up is coming in the New Year), one of the best things about it - apart from all the wonderfully hulking buildings - is the chance to see some erstwhile unexplored corners of town. And a Sunday visit to look at the brilliant red brick of the World's End Estate in Chelsea meant I could finally take the Ewing to the original branch of the Big Easy, stalwart of the Kings Road, for their bottomless Sunday brunch.

As well as the lure of limitless (with a few, sensible, caveats) alcohol, they also offer the option of the 'pig gig' - limitless barbecued meat and sides - or the 'lobster festival' - a pound of lobster served in the shell with lashings of garlic butter; mixed with mayo and stuffed in a fluffy brioche bun, or chopped up and baked with macaroni cheese.

After a frustratingly thirsty pause after being seated, we finally started with a glass of bubbles - Big Easy brew, house wine and frozen mojito slushies are also available with  brunch, and can be mix and matched throughout you meal for maximum hangover potential.

Interior wise it's a comforting sort of mishmash, reminding me of somewhere between the original Chicago Rib Shack in Knightsbridge, where my parents used to take us for a special treat back in the 80s, and a cosy French bistro; albeit one with a pig mural painted over the walls.

Ordering the Pig Gig brought a tray of barbecue chicken, baby back ribs, slaw pit beans, fries and fresh cornbread muffins. Like the decor, the food reminded me of meals from my childhood; soft meat bathed in a sticky sweet sauce. Authentic 'cue? Probably not, but still pretty tasty in a pleasingly nostalgic way and I managed two portions (with a little help from a friend).

Slaw (we seem to have lost the 'cole' since I was a kid) and beans were decent, but the fries were more like chunky oven chips. A childhood staple I'm not so wistful about. Best of the sides was the sweet, crumbly muffin; like having pudding with your dinner. The perks of being an adult.

The Ewing chose the lobster - she pimped it to a pound and three quarter specimen for an extra fiver - served with fries, although ours failed to materialise, and a side salad. A decent specimen, if a touch woolly, that involved much concentrated cracking to extract every morsel of crustacean. All while I attempted a one-sided conversation across the table. A standard Sunday, really.

Earlier in the afternoon, as we sat down at the table, the Ewing noted the sheer number of the fuse boxes and control panels on the wall, with their alarming number of buttons and wires. A prescient comment as, just as we were finishing our food, the fire alarm started up, followed five minutes later by two trucks (by half the crew of the Chelsea fire station. 

Throughout the thrilling episode we continued to doggedly munch on our remaining ribs - reasoning we were close enough to the window to make a quick escape should we see actual flames - and it was faintly reassuring to see that the guys in flouro stripes looked initially as bamboozled at the proliferation of switches and dials as we had, even if they were soon quick to identify and fix the fault (and get a round of applause for doing so, well done them - TE).

It was at this point - with the alarm still blaring but now with a bit of added eye candy, to distract us - the cocktails began to flow much quicker, and unbidden, from the bar. During one overlap between rounds I even managed to top off my frozen mojito with proscecco. Praise be for welcome distractions (and multiple alcoholic drinks dispensed from a slushy machine).

Multiple mojitos also left us vulnerable when the pudding menu appeared and the lure of the S'mores fondue proved irresistible. A cast iron dish filled with a raft of burnished marshmallows, bobbing on a lake of molten chocolate and served with a tin of graham crackers - the thinner, rectangular American cousin of the digestive - for dipping. This was very simple, very sweet and very good.

Service, at 12.5 per cent, is included, but that didn't stop our waiter - competent enough, if a little distracted throughout our meal - asking if the Ewing wanted to add another gratuity for him as the 'the first one is shared amongst all the staff'. An irritating, but apparently common occurrence here and one that even befell Grace Dent when she reviewed it in the Evening Standard; she wasn't a fan of thee practise (neither was I - TE) or the food... My tip? Come for the cocktails, crustaceans and 'cue but double check that bill.

It's all gravy

Despite my Brutalist London map only being published at the tail-end of last year, there has been a sense of growing worry around managing to see everything on the #brutaltour. Not, as you might expect, because of my inertia and poor planning, but as the realisation that many of the buildings/estates on the list – including Robin Hood Gardens, Thamesmead, and the recently sold Welbeck Street car park -  have been marked for redevelopment or are in the process of being demolished.

This was a fact that became all too apparent when I went to Google Keybridge House, an ex-BT telephone exchange once voted the ugliest office block in London that even Nikolaus Pevsner described as ‘foreboding’ – to find not only had it been condemned, it had already been razed to the ground.

Fortuitously, the sense of failure of not being even a third of the way through and already usurped by the plot to turn ‘Nine Elms’ into an extension of London's playground for the rich, was soon replaced by a lucky discovery. American artist Rachel Champion had been commissioned to create a garden using the rubble from Keybridge House, and it was on display through June as part of the South Bank Chelsea Fringe Festival. Which is how I came to be up bright and early on a Saturday, weaving past the Friday night stragglers in the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, on my way to try and salvage the situation (badum-tish). 

New Spring Gardens was, as promised, a 'garden' made of rubble in one of the railway arches on Newport Street. Whatever your thoughts on the hulking monolith from which this pile of concrete was wrought, I found it pretty poignant, standing amongst the clumps of grass and piles of brick dust, thinking of all the other buildings that may soon join Keybridge in a ignominious end.

As we were in the area, we took a little detour to see Jeff Koons's exhibition at the Newport Gallery. Officially titled 'Now', I unofficially christened it 'But, is it Art?', which was also the question I asked the Ewing every time she stopped to look at the exhibits (and a fine example of putting my art history degree to good use).

I think she was pretty happy when I left her in peace to look around the motley collection of plastic garden chairs, porn and stainless steel 'balloons', and went on a recce to find somewhere for a, well needed, beer. That somewhere was the Zeitgeist, Vauxhall's very only German pub, where all draught beers are a fiver a pint and pretzels grow on wooden trees on the bar. Now that's the kind of interactive installation I'm interested in.

At the risk of repeating myself every time I actually get my act together to write a blog (finally trek somewhere ‘on the radar’/ look at some concrete/eat lunch/have an ice cream), an afternoon in the Zeitgeist beer garden meant I was looking forward to finally visiting the original Clapham branch of Flip and Dip for dinner. 

Prior to our visit I had already spent a considerable while pouring over the glistening patties and squeezy cheese on F&D's social media feed, and in a saturated (boom) market it’s a testament that their offerings still manage to stand out  - mainly thanks to the addition of sliced roast meat (lamb or beef) and troughs of dipping gravy, based on LA's french dip sandwiches, that accompany their signature burgers. 

The drinks are notable too - we enjoyed jugs of Sambrooks Wandle, brewed down the road in Battersea and tin cups of extra thick Cherry Ripe milkshake, based on the Antipodean cherry and coconut chocolate bar, that got the Ewing grinning/grimacing.

The Flip and Dip, with roast beef and extra green chilli, was, hands down, the best burger I have had for a long time. It wasn’t easy to eat, nor was it dignified, but the combo of double beef (both perfectly cooked to a blushing pink) cheese sauce, pickles and chillies, with judicious dipping in to the drippings - saved from roasting their huge joints of meat - between bites (in case of bun disintegration), proves that southern girls love gravy, too.

Apparently, some people apparently don’t rate the cheese sauce - lurid orange stuff, that oozed like a magma flow down my wrists as I held my burger aloft – these people are wrong. It’s wonderful gloopy stuff, that can also be requested smothered across your fries, although we left ours naked for better gravy penetration. Only a great deal of willpower and my last remaining shreds of dignity stopped me licking the tray after taking this picture.

I have also decided - following my last blog and with the reasoning that I needed something to cheer me up after a ‘turbulent’ few weeks in the real world - that all blog posts over the summer (which is supposedly going on right now, if you haven’t noticed) will end with ice cream, Because everyone loves ice cream.

As there aren’t any puds on offer at Flip and Dip, we took the tube back to the Edgware Road, where the sultry humidity made it the perfect opportunity for booza al haleb, a pistachio-studded Syrian ice cream with the addition of mastic that gives it a ‘chewy’ texture while stopping it’s descent into a milky puddle in hot climates. 

A useful trait for a frozen dessert both in Damascus or sitting sweltering by the fountains at Marble Arch, from under who’s marbled columns I could just about see the Grade II listed Centre Point. The Seifert designed tower block may remain a divisive building - Pevsner called 'coarse in the extreme' - but it gives me comfort that there's still a future for concrete.