Somethin' Hot - Kiln

Sometimes there's nothing quite as glorious as an afternoon in your own company. A position I found myself in a couple of weeks ago when, at a lose end in the Big Smoke, I spent a happy hour or so drinking the fabulous cask Harveys and equally fabulous keg Kernal at the fabulous Harp in Covent Garden. 

Buoyed by booze and getting peckish, (the Harp does offer pork pies, as all good pubs should), I decided to schlep along to Soho where I hoped to find a stool to balance precariously on at Kiln, the Thai restaurant that everyone's still (just about, see below) talking about, that has just secured the top spot at this year's National Restaurant Awards.

In case you were wondering how this one ends, the answer is happily and without incident (unless you count the splashes of curry sauce over my favourite blue work shirt), but I feel it would be remiss not to at least mention the 'Boring Thai' racist chef storm, involving erstwhile Som Saa chef Shaun Beagley, that engulfed Twitter the very day after my visit. 

Now normally I avoid anything faintly concerned with currant affairs on the blog - not because I don't care about such things, but who wants to read about the depressing real world when you can read about how many puddings my wife has eaten this week (four, for the record. It's Wednesday). But this exploded in such a timely fashion that it seemed odd not to at least mention it, and the fact that racism, sadly, still seems insidious, and often in the places that you would least expect. So, if it even needed saying, don't be racist and don't be a dick, but, for now, back to the joys of my solo adventuring.

As I arrived pretty much as they opened for the evening (you can only book the downstairs tables, for larger groups) I got my pick of stools along the ground floor counter. Obviously, I headed straight down to the far end of the counter to the one seat that was little set away from the others, while the staff nodded approval in endorsement of my choice, and it's certainly a grand spot for people watching while not having to actually engage with anyone. Perfect. 

From my vantage point I could see the lamb skewers being cooked over charcoal, so it would have been remiss not to order one, alongside an icy cold tankard of Hop House 13 lager. I suppose the big question is do they measure up to Silk Road's lamb kebabs, to which I say probably. And while you can have two and a half skewers at SR for the price of one of these, any saving is cancelled out by the bus to Camberwell.

Larb is probably the only dish ever to have made mince sexy. A 'meat salad', the most fabulous juxtaposition of words, that is most commonly eaten in Laos and the Isan region of Thailand. It can be prepared in a multitude of different ways, but I've mostly enjoyed it dressed with lime juice, fresh herbs and fish sauce and mixed with roasted ground rice.

Here it was made with roughly chopped raw beef and a healthy dose of chilli, like a tartare on steroids. Chunks of cucumber helped salve the thrilling spicy/sour burn of each bite. Not flavours for the faint-hearted, but an utter joy, and all mine.

The sour turmeric curry with turbot was outstanding. When I’m pretending my opinions are important (quite a lot of the time) I like to opine that turbot is my favourite fish. Mainly because my Mum bought some when I went round for dinner years ago, from the Transit van that used to come down one a week from Grimsby, then spent the whole time telling us it was seventeen quid for three pieces, which seemed like the most incredible extravagance for a Tuesday. 

It was bloody nice though; as was this, the meaty tranche of fish just about staying on the right side of perfectly cooked while bobbing in its fragrant bath – which was all at once rich, complex, refreshing and soothing, as good Thai food should be. It was also ten pence under a tenner, which, considering inflation over the last fifteen odd years since the infamous visit to the fish man in rural Buckinghamshire, makes it seem even more of the bargain for central Soho.

As I was flying solo I treated myself to a glass of one of the most expensive wines on the list, a Sonoma chardonnay that looked, and tasted, rather like scrumpy. Kinda weird, but I kinda liked it and perfectly pitched to stand up to the salt and the smoke.

If they had a signature dish (the majority of the menu changes daily, depending on what’s available), it would have to be the ever present claypot glass noodles with Tamworth belly and crab. I’m normally not a great fan of glass noodles, finding them gloopy and tasteless, but the dish here did much to change my mind, in no small part down to the fatty pork and rich brown crab meat that infused the noodles with a glorious piggy, crabby funk, lifted by the verdant green chilli sauce alongside.

There's no dessert menu at Kiln but the ever-reliable Gelupo is just around the corner, so I decamped there for a double scoop of bonet - still a fave, years after my first visit, and tiramisu gelato. As Saint Delia said, one is fun, but I can't help feeling that having the Ewing there to help me finish my second scoop is always better.

Snappy Birthday at the Crab House

As Phil and Kirsty have spent the last decade telling us every time you switch on Channel Four, it’s all about positioning. And as far as locations go - with its spot on the edge of a lagoon, overlooking Chesil Beach and the Atlantic Ocean beyond - the location of the Crab House can’t really be beat.  All of which made it the perfect choice for this year's Official Birthday Dinner.

Their ethos is based around sourcing local ingredients, with their eponymous crabs being caught in the English Channel and their fish all landed in local waters within a 40 mile radius of the restaurant. The Portland oysters come from even closer to home, being grown from seed on the oyster beds that run adjacent to the restaurant. Meaning you can take an preprandial stroll along the shore and get a look at your dinner before you sit down to eat. 

As well as farming their own oysters, these guys have their own beer Crab House beer – an ale and a stout, brewed in conjunction with Hunter’s Brewery in Ipplepen, Devon. The former was a decent enough common-garden ale, while the latter was lighter than a normal stout, with a sweet smokiness that was perfect for seafood. A Picpoul, one of my favourites with fish (or with anything, I'm not fussy), was chosen from a comprehensive and well-priced list that included fizz from the Furleigh Estate in nearby Bridport.

The warm loaf of complimentary bread was just like the traditional malted granary my Mum used to buy for us as a treat when I was a kid, which I would eat in doorsteps, spread with an equal thickness of butter. Here it was served with the far more modern accompaniments of balsamic and olive oil and was only hampered by 'slices' still being attached at the bottom; meaning that trying pull them apart, combined with the very friable crust, meant a breadcrumb blizzard that soon covered us all in a fine crispy dust.

I shotgunned the Ewing to first dibs on starters and chose the Black Cow vodka-cured sea trout with fennel, cucumber and lemon from the specials board. All my English teachers would, I’m sure, be very disappointed to see me describe it as pretty as a picture, but if the cliché fits, wear it. And when the only criticism is you could have easily eaten twice as much – sublimity does not always equal satiation - you know things are off to a good start.

I'm not sophisticated enough to care much for oysters, but the Ewing loves the salty globules of wobbly mollusc and she very much enjoyed her sweet, plump Portlands, served raw on the half shell. Those with my aversion to their slippery natural state might prefer them grilled and here you can order them topped with pesto and parmesan or country style with bacon and cream.

I always think of red mullet as one of those ‘cheffy’ ingredients - like gooseberries or game or globe artichokes - that seem to crop up with wild abandon in recipe books and cookery shows, but are sadly absent from the shelves at Tescos.  So after seeing it on the menu -  albeit served with the unseasonably summery flavours of red pepper, goats cheese and basil stuffing - it made my main an easy choice.

Overall it was very pleasant - if all rather delicate flavour-wise, considering the bold ingredients involved – but the enormous amount of tiny bones made each mouthful feel somewhat hazardous. Especially as I still have flashbacks to a fish bone related incident in Venice that involved a makeshift rescue operation involving a hotel table lamp and some tweezers.

A better choice bone-wise was my Mum’s skate - from the specials board - which was served as a central tranche of a larger specimen, rather than a whole wing of a smaller fish. Beautifully cooked, served with a punchy chorizo, smoked paprika and spring onion-flecked sauce, the pearly flakes of fish slipped from the cartilaginous bones with ease.

The Ewing's monkfish curry successfully balanced toothsome nuggets of delicate tail with a deep and fragrant sauce of plate-licking deliciousness (she just about managed to restrain herself). Add fluffy lemon and coriander scented rice and the obligatory poppadom and you had the surprise hit of the evening.

Sam also chose from the specials board and, lacking any pictures and a memory like the netting at the bottom of an oyster bed, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it was turbot. Whatever fish it was, it was a fine-looking specimen that had been roasted on the bone and served simply with new buttery spuds and seasonal veg.

After numerous awkward moments trying to swallow snotty whelks or hairy pig’s feet I’ve pretty much given up ordering strange things on menus, but the temptation after seeing cucumber panna cotta with strawberry soup on the desert menu was too great to resist.

Of course, I should have known better; while the cucumber flavour wasn’t too odd and the strawberry ‘soup’ was pleasingly sharp and refreshing, the panna cotta - to match its colour - was set to the consistency of a tennis ball and the flavours were far more redolent of a balmy summer then the encroaching chill of early October.

Better was the two-tone chocolate mousse with a crunchy carapace of bitter chocolate giving way to a light and milky centre and accompanied by a couple of plump, purple figs soaked in coffee. Perhaps a plate would have been better than a wooden board, but perhaps I’m being grumpy. A slice of almond tart also more than passed muster, evidenced by lack of photos due to its swift demolition.

Of course if you have fish this fresh, a deft hand in the kitchen and a more than competent front of house, you could be eating dinner from a damp portakabin in a lay-by on the M11 and it would still taste good. But add in this view, looking across the oyster beds as the sun slips over the horizon, and everything seems to taste, just like the oysters, just that little bit sweeter.