Sunday Bunday

So, it finally looks like Grandad's on the move. After nearly 89 years in Harrow and it's surrounds (discounting the 'lost' teenage years spent working in a shoe shop in Leigh-on-Sea and a stint serving in Germany during WW2), he's moved down to Wimborne for some southern sun and sea air.

While, hopefully, this change of scenery is going to be a good thing for him it means that we won't have the need to chug up the A40 come the weekend. Deciding to fit in one last hoorah we headed to the inauspicious surroundings of the East Pan Asian restaurant, found above the Loon Fung supermarket in Alperton before a Sunday visit for tea at Grandad's.

While it doesn't look like much from the outside, upstairs is a large and modern restaurant that was teeming with Chinese faces and empty dishes. Always a promising sign. Daytime dining means the choice of large dim sum menu, while they also offer a decent selection of sushi rolls sashimi and tempura (with fresh fish from the supermarket below), alongside rice dishes, soup and noodles.

One of the delights of eating dim sum is filling in the menu yourself. Who would have thought being given a stubby pencil and a sheet full of unintelligible squiggles would be so much fun - and while most the dishes have translations, a few don't. Probably, I'm guessing, as they contain some variety of internal organs. Worth a try if you're feeling lucky...

To drink was an endless pot of jasmine tea, another source of amusement for our simple minds as the Ewing and I always insist of serving each other and tapping the table in some ham fisted attempt at Chinese decorum. 

Also, unlike most meals, dim sum doesn't seem to miss an alcoholic accompaniment. Yes, a cold lager will always do nicely alsongside, but the tannin in the tea does a very fine job of washing away all the salt and fat and doesn't make you feel quite as much of a lush. And without those 'essential' bloody marys and bucks fizz, it also makes it the most affordable of brunch options.

Cheung fun stuffed with beef and water Chestnut Steamed and Pork & Prawn Bean Curd Roll were the first out. Both solid were choices; the slithery rice dough of the cheung fun that I found so strange the first time I tried it (on a failed date in Chinatown, the lack of romantic spark not down to my table manners) has become one of my favourite dim sum picks.

Next was a tower of steamed goodies. Lurid wasabi infused dumpling wrappers encased a juicy prawn filling, although the Japanese horseradish kick was notably absent. Steamed pork buns, a must with the Ewing around, did the job without too much fanfare and the scallop dumpling were delicate and sweet - although our over-eager waiter whisked away the third one away unbidden, causing some divisional consternation (always try and eat dim sum in multiples of three people, unless you want arguments).

Best of all, from the weekend specials, was a plate of mixed roast meats that included the distinctive red-edged char sui tenderloin, slow cooked belly pork with its creamy frill of fat and a magnificent duck breast, with a crisp bronzed and lacquered skin that wouldn't have looked out of place on TOWIE.

Alongside - following the only bit of advise I have ever heeded from Giles Coren, a self-confessed expert in eating Chinese food - we chose a dish of greens to add a modicum of fibre to proceedings. This time it was stir fried gai lan, or Chinese broccoli, with a touch of oyster sauce and plenty of garlic and ginger.

We finished with little fried custard buns (only at the weekends, although you can get the steamed version all week) which were like a superior fairgound doughnut - the puffy and crisp outer casing giving way to a dense, sweet eggy filling. Better than jam and caster sugar, any day of the week.

Grandad may have moved south, but we'll be back soon to enjoy this piece of the East in West London - especially when the supermarket below sells such delights as the Lonely God vegetable flavoured maize snack. Befriending a packet of these after a bun feast sure beats church on Sunday.

King John the Second

Being both greedy and lazy I don't usually write about things twice (I would have also said it's because I avoid repeating myself, but some of you know me in real life...). But a recent weekend at my Mum's, with two meals of beautiful simplicity from my Mum's local, The King John Inn, caused me to reconsider. Well, that and the fact I seem to have  gone home via the pub a lot recently, leading to a reasonable amount of Curry Club and Steak Night, which isn't nearly as photogenic.

The first meal of the weekend wasn't at the pub proper but the Old Cartshed (or village hall to any one not from these parts), a few hundred yards down the road. Pictured above during the Jubilee celebrations.

Once a month, on a Friday night, the locals convene here for fish and chips - pre-ordered and cooked at the King John before being carted down the lane by the locals - and enjoyed with BYO beer and wine and pots of tea, followed by a quiz and then a singalong around the old joanna (I may have made that last detail up). Before returning the pots and pans back to the pub and washing down dinner with a few more ales.

Our motor down was hampered somewhat by sheep in the road, and a little more by roadworks around Basingstoke, but Mum had popped our fish in the oven to stay warm. Despite it's tin foil incineration, the batter carapace on my monster cod fillet had stayed admirably crisp, the fish within firm and flaky.

Homemade tartare sauce - rich mayo studded with poky capers and gherkins - was spot on and the crushed garden peas, Sarsons and Heinz were all present and correct. The only grumble came with the chips. These are more rustling fries than familiar fat battens of potato that usually accompany this British staple, and are something of a bone of contention amongst the more old school villagers. True, they might not be traditional, but are still mighty good. To top things off we also won the quiz with our superior knowledge of the length of the M1 in the tie break (193.5 miles if you were interested)

The following night we made it back down the pub proper for dinner. Starting with, amongst others, my Mum's dish of choice when she dines here, the Portland crab on toast. It's hard to tire of spanking fresh Dorset seafood, mixed with a a lick of mayo and lemon and served on crisp toast made from their house baked bread - but at ten quid you might expect it to be pretty good.

I was nearly swayed by the pigeon salad with bacon and croutons but in the end the simplicity (and because it sounded so lovely) of the chalk stream trout sashimi won out. It was without superlative; fatty, sweet slices of beautifully fresh fish, with none of the dank muddy flavour that sometimes blights these river dwellers, and served Japanese style with soy and an eye watering blob of wasabi; a cracking plate to start.

Mains were equally noteworthy. A brace of pan fried baby dover sole with hollandaise sauce, purple sprouting broccoli, spring greens and cute as a button (and not much bigger) Jersey Royals was simple seasonal cooking at its very finest. Last time I ate here a single (larger) fish cost a pony (in the Cockney vernacular, not a relic of livestock trading), but this came in at an entirely reasonable (if hardly cheap) 17 pounds.

 

My Mum's majestic looking pie with a proper suet crust pastry also deserves a mention. There is something wonderfully old fashioned about a suet crust, and this example was properly crisp on top and nicely soggy beneath, filled with simply braised local lamb and served with a pile of buttery mash and greens.

My pud was a white chocolate terrine (they also do a great dark chocolate one, served with a Seville coffee) with early English strawberries and cream. This had an admirably light texture while still being creamy and rich but, with the ripple of jammy berry compote swirled through, a touch too sweet for me.

Better were a plate of their signature beignets. On the left are apple-stuffed balls of freshly fried dough, served with a salted caramel sauced (and a spiced cider shot), that I enjoyed last time we ate here. On the right is the Ewing's lemon curd doughuts served with a sharp lemon posset. These were peerless as ever

The King John isn't a bargain (although my Mum reports a recent £20 prix fixe at lunchtime) but it does have a (very) local and seasonal menu of well cooked food. For those not wanting to eat the beer is well kept  - often featuring Sixpenny brews from a couple of miles up the road, alongside Ringwood and Badger - there's log fires in the winter, a leg of ham carved to order on the bar and plenty of corduroy, gun dogs and gin. Perfect for a proper weekend in the sticks.

Winner, Winner

Once, long long ago and suffering from a hangover that Pot Noodles and Monster Munch were simply not going to shift, we were blacklisted from Pamir's Chicken in Bournemouth. True, we had commandeered Stealth - with her clipped Home Counties mumble - to order the grub for the ten or so beleaguered souls that were sprawled on my sister's living room floor, but having our order rudely terminated by a disbelieving Pamir dented my faith in fried food somewhat. We phoned out for pizza instead.

However deep the disappointment was, it couldn't dent my deep love of our feathered friends. And, back in my familiar London stomping ground of the Walworth Road, I was excited to see new opening, CheeMc, 'Korean Chicken Dish Specialist' - complete with a neon giant glowing chicken emerging from a beer glass on its sign. 

We kicked off with some gratis cubes of crunchy pickled radish and a plate of, pretty perfect, kimchi from the list of snacks/starters. Sadly the (flavourless but authentic - and cheap) Hite was out of stock, so we made do with a couple of - not quite cold enough - Asahi.

The menu is hugely comprehensive, with a dizzying variety of bimbap and stir fries and other weird and wonderful things, helpfully illustrated by a photo guide. One thing that was missing are any recognizable side dishes to go with the chicken. I quite fancied a few simple carbs to help with all the spice and fat, but the closest I could find were some taro chips with strange vegetable powder coating.

Thankfully the chicken was so good it didn't need anything to distract from it's majesty. We ordered a whole bird, one half sweet chilli and one half soy and something? (after my first two choices were off the menu I allowed the waitress chose, with the proviso it was spicy). When the dishes arrived, my half draped with fiery fresh chillies and glowing a menacing red colour, I knew she hadn't let me down.

This was hawt with a capital H. The kind of chilli heat that, as you gnaw the crisp-crusted chicken from its bone makes your lips start to tingle and puff up rather like Leslie Ash melded with the Bride of Wildenstein.

It's also incredibly messy, sticky fun. The whole bird is cleaved into pieces before being coated in the crackly carapace and freshly fried. If you don't like teasing flesh from the grisly bony bits (as the ungrateful Stealth proclaimed when we took her the leftovers) you probably need to go a few doors up for the KFC boneless box.

As it was, we had no issues divesting all the flesh from bones, and bloody good it was too. Whilst, blowing my own trumpet somewhat, my homemade Korean fried chicken gives it a run for its money, I've sacrificed my deep fat fryer for the Ewing's Nutri Bullet. So it looks like I'll be decamping to Stealth's even more frequently than I do now for a fried food fix. 

Whilst we may have been blackballed by Pamir, new pretenders Chicken Shack (now renamed Chicken and Blues) have opened in Bournemouth and the Ewing and I took a stroll to their Boscombe high street branch for a poultry-based dinner.

It's a tiny little gaff, with bench seating along the right side, a serving/takeaway hatch straight ahead and a menu that's pretty similar to another, rather well known, London chain with chicken in the title, even down to the apple pie for pud (although, sadly served with ice cream and not cream).

The beer was Red Stripe, standard gig lager from my teenage years, where my friends and I would spend the empty hours between the doors opening and the band finally making it on stage smoking ourselves into an early grave and swigging warm cans of Jamaica's finest yellow water. Here - just like at CheeMc - it was served at a little below room temperature, bringing back a few nostalgic memories (sadly I didn't have s packet of B&H in my top pocket to go with it).

The main draw was excellent; barbecued chicken served au naturel or with housemade sauces - including (very) spicy, sweet or smokey  - and served with a pleasingly comforting macaroni cheese and a very good avocado and butterhead lettuce salad with a honey mustard dressing. There was also a decent mixed cabbage coleslaw, with the only criticism being it was too mayo heavy, even for me.

My fried chicken love has been well documented here, I even chose it as this year's Valentine dinner (extra gravy obligatory). But with birds this good in the hood, the Ewing may have a rival for my affections.

I Don't Like Mondays - 7Bone Edition

Finally the day had come - my last Monday unshackled by the horror of work had arrived (I had spent the penultimate Monday gorging rare steak and sticky toffee pudding, washed down with rioja with my Aunt and Uncle at Hawksmoor). Luckily for me it was also Easter Bank Holiday, so everyone else was off work to enjoy it with me. 

After a stroll along the beach (making time for an obligatory Mr Whippy) we found ourselves at 7Bone Burger Co., the second branch (the original, in Southampton featured on Russell Norman's Restaurant Man, no less) of a kind of Pitt Cue/ Meatliquor hybrid with the usual roll call of burgers, ribs and dogs topped with a smattering of cock scratchings - here not an embarrassing itch you pick up after a drunken fumble - that show no sign of falling out of fashion. But could a healthy dose of grease, smoke and booze rouse us from our pitifully hungover state.

The only way to find out was to start with a stiff hair of the dog and after necking a pint of Erdinger in the nearby Mary Shelly (an insalubrious gaff with very cheap beer) to start, I quickly moved on to a pickleback with a Dead Pony chaser. They also serve a range of Kernel and Beavertown beers, Hawaiian Kona and, rather incongruously, Delirium Tremens, the 8.5 percenter from Belgium.

We also drank our way through large swathes of the rest of the menu, including multiple Coronas (no lime), local Boondoggle ale from the nearby Ringwood Brewery, a 24 Unanswered Voicemails cocktail - rum shaken with fresh lime juice, campari & (com)passion fruit - very bitter, but rather nice, and, for the Monkey, the Game Over, a cocktail containing a myriad of different rums and topped with tropical fruit that is so potent it is limited to two per person. He, of course, drank three.

The chilli cheese fries were what I would choose to have fed to me on my death bed. Although I fear too many of the former would expedite the latter. The chips were crisp, the fiery ground beef chilli complemented by the blanket of gooey American cheese sauce, all crowned with a scattering of pickled jalapenos.

The superlatives continued with the rest of the sides. The Wings an’ a Prayer were served buffalo style with a ranch type dip although the liberal dousing in vinegary hot sauce was a little too lip-puckering, even for me (and I have been known to drink neat Sarsons on occasion).

The frickles were the best I've ever eaten, hands down, perfectly crisp and with a carapace of batter that adhered perfectly to the gherkin instead of slipping off in soggy strands.

For the main event I oscillated between a lump of protein from their smoker and a burger. In the end meat in a bun won out and I picked the single Prince Charles is Overrated with aged beef, bacon, cheese, shredded iceberg, pickles and dirty spread. 

Phenomenally shiny brioche bun aside, this is a pretty average looking burger from the outside; inside, however, it's a whole 'nother level. The meat was a perfect pink hue, and with just the right balance of grease and smoke and the gooey American cheese oozed seductively across the patty. Retrospectively, the advertised bacon was innocuous in the mix and the salad a bit lacklustre, but why weigh down a good burger with errant green stuff.

The Monkey inhaled his double Shuffle to the Straight Time - a simple beef patty, kansas style fried onions, cheese and american mustard combo - whilst the Ewing enjoyed her more outre Robert Johnston, stuffed with gloriously funky truffled garlic shrooms and truffle mayo.

The Lion picked a menage a trois of little three ounce sliders, the beefy Prince Charles and the Shuffle to the Straight Time alongside the Winner, Winner, a buttermilk fried chicken breast, charred baby gem lettuce, 7bone caesar dressing which possesed - or so the others told me, as I didn't seem to get to try it - impossibly tender chicken that even beat the bucket of California Chicken - alongside five bottles of red wine - we had chowed down on the night before.

For pud I went with the ice cream stuffed doughnut (you can also get a waffle). It feels like sacrilege to say it (I haven't yet found a custard I didn't like, even the NHS version that is pretty much served in slices), but I found the cereal milk custard the ring of fried dough sat atop of kinda strange. Didn't stop me polishing it all off, though.

We also shared a, decent enough, (S)knickers in a Twist shake - peanut butter, chocolate ice cream, caramel sauce and two shots of bourbon - whilst the Ewing, thwarted in her attempt to order the Scrappacino coffee shake as they had 'run out of coffee' made up for things with a gigantic coke float. The sugary taste of childhood. (The sugar content sent me hysterical - TE).

Walking back across the sand, watching the sun go down on a final Monday of freedom and with a belly full of beef and hangover already slowly encroaching, I couldn't have asked for a more fitting send off into the world of 9-5.

Oxford Blues

Following on from the first of my countdown to working Mondays blog posts, which saw me eating pork pies in drizzly Birmingham, my antepenultimate Monday off meant dragging the Ewing up the M40 to bask in the Oxford sunshine.

Whilst it may have a reputation for bucolic British beauty Oxford also has its share of ugly urban sprawl, and none more so than the Eastern side of the city. Previously this was the site of the outer ramparts of the castle, now it's home to humdrum expanses of grey concrete. It's not all doom and gloom in this part of town however. For here, incongruously tucked under the Bridge nightclub on Hyth Bridge Street, you'll find lauded szechuan restaurant, Sojo.

As well as szechuan dishes there is also a roll call of standard Cantonese and Shanghainese staples  - think sweet and sour chicken, spicy yellow bean chicken and, err, 'mouth watery' chicken - alongside a good looking lunchtime dim sum selection, but what's the point of going somewhere with 'SSS = Mind Blowing Spicy' dishes on the menu and not trying one. In this case the triple rated Szechaun pork for me and the beef and aubergine for the Ewing.

After such a menacing warning - the waiter even bought us glasses of iced water, unbidden, with our meals - the food wasn't too spicy - and no, I don't say that in the surreptitiously squinting, sweat breaking out on the brow manner of a lager-filled masochist trying to impress his mates on a Friday night. 

What is was, however, was delicious, the shreds of pork and crunchy strips of veg possessing just the right amount of tongue tingling from the fresh chillies and lip numbing from the szechuan pepper to provoke a pleasing glow. The Ewing's dish, with it's slippery curls of soy drenched aubergine and chunks of sweet beef, may have been even better (this is unheard of! - TE).

After cranking the heat up it was time to cool down again, and where better than one of my favourite ice cream parlours, G&D. As we were on the wrong side of town it was the perfect chance to try out the mini-chain's original branch, George and Davis, having previously frequented George and Danver on St Algates and the seasonal ice cream cart that appears on the street in the summer.

I had what I originally thought was the Oxford Blue (blueberry)but  was actually probably the Black and Blue (blackberry and blueberry). Soft fruit semantics aside, it was completely awesome. Whilst not normally a fruity ice cream fan, this balanced the sweet dairy and sharp berries perfectly. The Ewing got her buzz on with a cone of Kenyan AA, a coffee flavored ice that was demolished too quickly to capture (Too slow, Roscoe - TE).

It's pretty impossible to come to Oxford without imbibing a pint in one of their historied hostelries, and this time we headed off to the Turf Tavern, hidden down a narrow winding alley between Holywell Street and New College Lane.

The Turf Tavern is crammed (there isn't much room in here) with history. Not only has it had a role call of famous guests, including Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, CS Lewis and Margaret Thatcher. but it was also the the site of former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke's Guinness World Record, where he sculled a yard glass of ale in 11 seconds. Legend also has it that the the Turf is where former U.S. president Bill Clinton, while attending Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, infamously 'did not inhale' on a herbal cigarette. There's even a plaque attesting to it, so it must be true. 

It's also, most excitingly for me, it was one of Inspector Morse's favourite locals. Hoping to inherit some of his curmogeonly intelligence by the osmosis of my surroundings (I'm pretty sure I'm already halfway there - I concur -TE) I tried the Turf Tavern's Landlord's Choice, 'an education in intoxication' and a fair enough pint to sup on a Monday afternoon.

The Ewing went with the topical Richard the III ale, Blue Boar, from Everards. 'An amber ale brewed with medieval taste of honey and mead with delicate spice and citric notes'. Scientists have recently revealed that King Richard III regularly drank around three litres of beer and wine a day, and liked to snack on the occasional swan. Which is probably how he ended up in a Leicester car park.

The skies may have been darkening ominously but of course there still had to be a library in there somewhere and nowhere seemed more fitting than a walk around the Radcliffe Camera, the neo-classical home of the Radcliffe Science Library and now part of the bibliophile's dream, the Bodleian.

'And that sweet city with her dreaming spires. She needs not June for beauty's heightening'

Matthew Arnold

Second City Scenes

After nearly a decade of starting my week on a Tuesday, I now have to prepare myself to face the greatest horror of the working man – Monday mornings. A few weeks to go before the start of my new job I was determined not to waste any remaining vestiges of Monday freedom and so decided on an impromptu visit to the Second City for beer and pork pies.

I have a strange attachment to Birmingham, it being the scene of many rendezvous with Stealth when she was at uni, and a frequent stopping point (for gigs at the Glee club and post-booze food at the, sadly now defunct, Urban Pie) on trips to see Pavematt’s family in Wolverhampton.

In all my many visits I have never alighted at Birmingham Snow Hill, so I decided to throw caution to the wind and ride right to the end of the line, lured by the prospect of the recently opened York Espresso Bar directly in front of the station’s exit.

Well, it would have been if I had taken the same exit as everyone else. As it was I quickly became hopelessly lost, although whilst huddling under the cold and wet railway arches trying to right myself I did get to see some pretty cool pasted paper graffiti on the side of an old building down by the canal.

Finding the younger sibling to the original Yorks Cafe proved worth the effort, and I was soon ensconced in a window seat enjoying a Caravan pour over and a compost cookie whilst watching the commuters hurry past in the rain.

They area also the first place in the UK to serve cold brew coffee on tap. Here it is dispensed with nitrogen from a beer style ‘kegorator’ on the bar. Apparently many US offices now have one of these dispensing liquid caffeinated joy next to the water cooler; sadly I’m still making do with PG Tips in a cracked mug (well it got smashed this morning, so you won't have to put up with that any longer - TE).

Fully caffeinated and with the sun over the yardarm, I moved on to Pure Bar and Kitchen - an ever so trendy, and slightly odd sounding, mash-up between Birmingham's Michelin Starred Simpsons and Purity Brewing Co, based in near by Warwickshire.

Inside the incongruity continued; unsure whether to wait to be seated at the 'posher' tables to the rear, or to go and order straight from the bar (already looking retro with its exposed pipes, concrete and bare wood), I opted to head straight for the beer pumps and retreated across to the communal bench area with my drink and bar snacks. 

The last time I was in Brum I had enjoyed a pint of Purity's Pure Ubu, a traditional amber ale. This time I tried a pint of the new Longhorn IPA, their attempt to emulate the footsteps of the 'craft' keg pack leaders. An unfiltered golden ale that's triple hopped with big pine, peach and tropical fruit flavours, Longhorn is a big tasting, and very enjoyable, beer at a small 5% ABV. My accompanying pork pie, served with home made piccalilli, was even better. The very best of the West Mids.

After enduring the horrors of the Bull Ring shopping centre, I retreated to Five Guys for a well deserved treat. This rapidly expanding Stateside burger chain has become known for their impossibly huge portions of peanut oil fried cajun fries and fancy drinks machines that churn out literally hundred of different flavour combos of soda or milkshakes (melon and grape Coke or malted bacon shakes anyone?). 

Following my simple burger rule (either salad with mayo, or pickles with ketchup) I chose the cheeseburger with raw onion, extra pickles, jalapenos, ketchup and mustard. As a fast food burger I've got some time for Five Guys. Yes, it's pretty greasy and the patties are more on the grey side than pink, but the beef always seems nicely charred and well seasoned, the cheesy suitably cheap and gluey and they don't skimp on the fillings.

The one criticism that is often levelled at FG is the price. Eight quid just for the cheeseburger isn't cheap, no matter how many handfuls of fried potatoes they throw in the bag to distract you; and it's hard - if you're in the Big Smoke at any rate - not to think of P&B, Shake Shack MEATliquor et al at a similar price point. But, although contributors to the Guardian comments section may disagree, there is life outside London, and often Five Guys may well be your best provincial beef-based option.

With the sun finally putting his hat on, I had to take one of my last busman's holidays to the magnificent Library of Birmingham, where I thought of local lad and sci-fi author John Wyndham's words “And we danced, on the brink of an unknown future, to an echo from a vanished past.”