Goodman, Mayfair

The length of time it has taken me to visit Goodman is a crime. I'm not sure what my punishment should be but surely just having deprived myself of such glorious comfort food for so long is punishment enough? On a rainy Friday evening I emerged ravenous from a cathartic karaoke session at nearby Karaoke Box (Nobody Does it Better by Carly Simon in case you're wondering) and was hunting for a late night supper and chanced on a free table at Goodman. 

I can't remember what it looked like inside partly because it fulfilled my two main criterion of a) not being rainy and b) serving hot food. That's usually a good thing though. If I notice the decor too much its invariably because I see something I dislike (carpet at Alyn WiIliams I'm thinking of you and distressed plaster and brick walls at- well- every burger place ever). So it was at worst inoffensive and at best comfortable enough to allow you to be focused on the food. I do remember wood, brown leather and low hanging metal lights though. Lots of brown. Importantly for a girl, there was nothing "rustic" to snag your tights on (they are bloody expensive you know, even from M&S).

So, speaking of food- onto the menu. An unstoppable urge for steak meant that none of the starters were going to get a look in unfortunately. Had I paused for a moment to see beyond the beef-based mist clouding my vision, I would have gone for the lobster bisque, because- well, who wouldn't? A tray of raw meat is paraded before you by one of the very knowledgeable serving staff and, if you are as much of a meat geek as me, it becomes a personal challenge to identify each cut of beef. All the usual suspects were present and very, very correct; porterhouse, fillet, sirloin....

Despite being tempted by the tray I went for the Goodman rib-eye with 400g for £34. Cooked just enough to let the fat melt but still bloody enough for my gory tendancies, it was pink and oozing juiciness with the perfect crisp char on the outer. 

Honorable mention has to go to the whole roast garlic that you can add to your steak for a couple of quid. Never has there been a better steak topping than a mushed up roast garlic bulb in my opinion. 

Truffle fries were exactly that, emanating the distinctive heady, earthy burst of black truffle and not over salted. Pretty damned perfect actually. £5.50 is a bit on the steep side for chips but you did get plenty. Parmesan and truffle macaroni cheese was tasty but more with the sharp tang of parmesan than any truffle.  If you're forced to choose between the two (poor you!) go for the fries is my recommendation. 

A bottle of 2001 Chateau Musar was a great foil for the rib eye. Whilst the majority of Burgundy and Bordeaux on the list was the usual London 3x retail, Musar at £68 was just over x2 making it a comparative bargain. You would also be hard pushed to beat a Bekaa Valley blend with a steak and chips in my eyes. Rich and ripe with fruit and some smoky, meaty notes developing with age. This one is 13 years in now and truly at its prime. Glorious stuff. 

I expect the steak to be the main event at somewhere like Goodman and therefore dessert can become something of an afterthought but that wasn't the case here.

Apple and pear crumble with stem ginger ice cream was gorgeous, in fact so delicious that I've promptly tried to copy the ice cream recipe at home with some success (although I never will learn and always initially add too much ooze so it won't set). 

Doughnuts with cappuccino mousse were so light and fluffy with a crispy outer shell, I genuinely did try to play the not-licking-my-lips game but failed miserably. The memory of the doughnuts will stay with me for some time.

A bottle of sweet red Quady Elysium ensured a good nights sleep, if I'm being honest I may have dropped off in the cab on the way home but don't worry, I woke up after dreams of beef and chips. 

It wasn't all plain sailing but none of that was due to the kitchen or the staff, more the clientele. This is not somewhere you want to go on a Friday night if you want a quiet diner a deux. Its also not somewhere I'd take my family as it was a) very noisy and b) awash with clouds of testosterone. The majority of other customers were groups of guys all competing over who could order the largest hunk of beef. The waitresses did a fabulous job of keeping certain individuals under control and took a fair amount of abuse for it.

So am I now a Goodman convertee over Hawksmoor? From the various branches of both that I have been too, I think the pecking order now stands at 1) Hawksmoor Air Street 2) Goodman Maddox Street 3) Hawksmoor Covent Garden 4) Hawksmoor Guildhall. Goodmans City and Canary Wharf are still to come...

8/10

Goodman
Maddox Street, London 

Roxies, Earlsfield

Earlsfield seems to be taking on a bit of a new dynamic. I'm not suggesting that its the next Dalston or Peckham or anything but the food and drink horizon is definitely evolving. A few years ago your options were pretty much Amaranth thai and the now defunct Willie Gunns plus a smattering of chains and pubs. Since then, The Leather Bottle has upped its food game, Ben's Canteen is moving into the old Willie Gunn site and there are plenty of other small independents thriving. One of those is Roxie's.

Let's get the obvious out of the way first shall we? Its got a bloody awful name.  If someone asked me if I fancy a trip to Roxie's I'd suspect I was on my way to a strip club or at the very least a neon-lit bar where bright blue WKD is on offer for a pound and "laydeez" drink free on a Thursday. It sounds tacky. I know that I've probably just offended the owner's Mum after whom he named it or something but in all honesty it is off putting. It doesn't make me want to go running to eat there. Which is a shame as the food is really rather good. 

The menu has a South African lilt to it with Biltong on the snacks list and Boerewors on the mixed grill but it is a light enough touch to avoid the "theme restaurant" sentiment you get from the likes of Shaka Zulu. Its also not packed to the rafters with homesick Saffas in the way that Chakalaka in Putney used to be. Nonetheless, the South African owners clearly know their target audience as Roxie's now has three outlets located in Earlsfield, Putney and Fulham thereby neatly triangulating around the main South African population of London (Wimbledon branch to complete the quadrant any time soon guys?) 

So, the food. You're probably not going to love it if you're a vegetarian. There's a goats cheese and tomato caprese as a starter and a beetroot risotto main (with goats cheese) but other than that you're stuffed. That said, as a committed carnivore I have been heard to suggest on more than one occasion that "stuffed" might be the best possible outcome for vegetarians....

Ribs were smoky and tender and from the gradient of dark colouring on the outside permeating into the inner flesh they had been slow cooked for a long time. The photo doesn't begin to do them justice but the light was awful. Pickled red onions that accompanied them were really delicious, soft, tangy and juicy with a residual sweetness from the onion- none of that added sticky sweet syrup. The coleslaw was fine but nothing to write home about.

The main event at Roxie's, however, is all about the steak. In South Africa excellent quality steak is on offer at incredible prices - if you pay more than a tenner for fillet steak and sides you have been robbed. I can therefore understand why your average South African ex-pat in London balks at the idea of £30 upwards for a steak and chips which is pretty much the standard for a decent anywhere these days. The aim of the owners was therefore to source quality meat from a good butcher at a good price. They settled on a butchers in Smithfields market and quite right too as the cuts and quality are beyond reproach.  My fillet was thick and well hung and cooked exactly as I'd ordered it. At £15 for a surf and turf you can't complain. Yes you did read that right; it would have been £12 for just the steak. The prawns that came with it making up a "surf and turf" were a good size with plenty of them but coated in a rather odd, tangy, green marinade of unidentifiable origin so I might suggest just sticking to the meat. 

Speaking of meat, the Boerwors sausage on the mixed grill was excellent. Flavoured with hints of nutmeg and clove it belied its African roots without being overpowering and held its own on the plate alongside the steak. If you're looking for meat overload the strips sounds good, a mixture of sirloin, fillet and rib eye.

The wine list is extensive enough to please most palates and (sadly for me) not over reliant on South African wines. We opted for a Hartenberg Cabernet Shiraz, not the 2010 as advertised but a slightly young 2011.  It needs a couple more years in bottle to really show its best but it was a great drink with steak and barbecue flavours and not over priced at £30.

In summary, there are very few places that you can get a decent steak in London at the kind of price that Roxie are offering it so this is likely to become a neighbourhood staple for me. Its even worth travelling for. Because it isn't hipster trendy or with banging music its also a crowd pleaser. Its a great place for a date or a birthday party and equally I know my (quite fussy) Dad would love it. Will I be back? Yes definitely. 

Roxie Steak
585 Garratt Lane, Earlsfield. SW18 4ST
020 8944 9602

Steirereck, Vienna

In order to keep my greedy and rather fussy tummy happy I have to have a day job. A day job which involves a reasonable amount of travel. Business travel is a funny old thing; I'm not silly enough to try, as many do, to claim that its all a big drag and terribly tiresome as it can be lots of fun but there are times when it is genuinely a bit of a pain. Travelling from airport to hotel in the dark then straight to an office to cram in as much work as possible before eating whatever late night food room service can offer (usually a dubious quality margherita pizza). That isn't fun by anyone's standards. Occasionally though there are a few golden hours that can be snatched and I've learnt that you need to make the most of them.

A small window of opportunity arose during a business trip to Vienna. If its all you're going to see of a city then why not aim for the best you can? A quick Google search found Steirereck  serendipitously located a five minute walk from my conference hotel alongside the river in the middle of the city's Stadtpark and currently listed in 9^th place on the San Pellegrino list of the top restaurants in the world. Despite its 2 Michelin star ranking, naysayers on the internet have mentioned that they do not believe service to be of standard but that absolutely wasn't my experience. 

Each large round table has its own console table where cutlery for forthcoming courses is stored along with nifty little cards giving immense detail in English of the components of each course. Extra bonus points for the presence of my favourite totally frivolous addition; a handbag table (stupid I know but I love them)

My fellow diners on a midweek lunchtime were made up from an even split of locals, business lunches and tourists and the atmosphere was light and airy and not overly stiff. The ceiling is covered in beautiful ceramic flowers and leaves making it quite feminine but very very classy. It is a family owned restaurant, chef Heinz Reitbauer stays behind the hobs whilst wife Brigit runs front of house and circulates chatting to everyone.

Most restaurants make do with a bread tray but the in house bakery offering from Steirereck is so extensive that it requires a trolley. Over 12 different options were presented, in many cases still in whole loaves for fresh carving at the table. I tried three types in total including a honey and lavender loaf, a fennel and coriander Urleib and a bacon bread the latter fit to rival that of Pied a Terre which remains fixed in my mind some 5 years on. In essence; the bread is immense. 

Butter was presented in stripes on a slate as though it had been scraped on using one of those plastic tools that tilers use to apply grout behind bathroom tiles. Lemon salt ridges added another dimension to the home made butter.  A translucent sliver of cured Austrian ham was served as a canape pegged onto an odd but innovative food "washing line" (look out for that line again later at petit four time...).

A Prager Gruner Veltiner was typically crisp and light with sharp green apples and faint tropicals on the palate. I had intended sticking to just two glasses of wine it being lunch on a work day with a meeting to head off to later in the afternoon but the sommelier had other ideas. Once we go chatting it was clear I needed a much broader introduction to Austrian wine whilst on their home turf and I suspect by the time I left the other diners viewed me as some level of functioning alcoholic from the number of glasses on my table. 

The Cuvee Impresario from Weingut Paul Kerschbaum felt like quite a Bordeaux style of red from the velvety, vibrant, cassis and almost cocoa and tobacco nose so I was very surprised to find out there was only 20% Merlot, the rest being made up of Zweigelt and Blaufrankisch.  Another mystery wine turned out to be a 100%  Blaufrankisch; full of pink peppercorns was light on intensity but high on cranberry fruit.

A plate of cured wild boar's head was spiced with cloves, cinnamon and pepper but completely avoided being too "Christmas spice" as it was balanced off against a sweet pineapple mustard with a kick blobbed amongst a raddichio salad dressed with galangal balsamic vinegar. Cubes of jellied grape juice added bursts of sweetness. It might all sound like a hotch potch of flavours and textures but it really worked. Not only did it taste divine but it looked like a miniature work of art.

Crayfish with parsnip strudel & lime was the stand out dish of the meal. The strudel was actually a milk based gel wrapped around the parsnip puree. Spikes of parsnip crisp dotted along the top of the strudel added texture. The crayfish were beyond succulent and, whereas I plan on how I can recreate dishes I love at home, I know that I don't have a chance of anything coming close to this. Candied lime segments and noilly prat helped cut through the creaminess and contrasted beautifully with the crayfish.

The Wiener Schnitzel is surely a must when in this part of the world. It seemed a little incongruous with the two star dishes and service (kind of like having Shepherd's pie at the Ledbury or something) but I wanted to experience it. Served very plain with just parsley buttered potatoes and a lemon wedge, the schnitzel was tender and moist. What surprised me most, however, was the outer crisp. I've always thought of schnitzel as being breaded and quite heavy but this was more like a fancy tempura version the outside of which would have remained a shell even without its meaty filling. One of the things that appealed to me most about the restaurant was the fact that it prides itself on providing classic Austrian cuisine to an exceptional standard so I felt like I was experiencing something truly local. Spoilt princess comment coming up, but sometimes restaurants that fit the "Michelin mould" can start to feel a bit same-same. You could be in London, Paris or New York and not really be able to identify which city you are in from the decor, the staff or the dishes. Steirereck is an exception to this; waitresses wear a semi- traditional "dirndl skirt" kind of outfit without being Sound of Music-esque and breads, wines and ingredients are all so very obviously Austrian. 

Dessert arrived in the form of a carre of rectangles of heavy chocolate ganache on a shortcrust base along side a pineapple tartare. Pineapple and pericorn sorbet was served aloft coconut macarons. All in all it was rather a pina colada style confection and very tasty but not quite up amongst the lofty heights of the crayfish dish or the boar's head.

Feiler Artinger's Ruster Ausbruch was an incredible wine. Made from noble rot grapes it is deliciously sweet with creamy lemon and honey notes with some dried apricot. In my opinion it can rival the finest noble rot wines I have ever tasted. To my dismay the sommelier confirmed that nowhere in Vienna stocks it to buy as it is sourced from the cellar door. The good news for Londoners however is that those clever people at Fortnum & Mason seem to have adopted it as one of their house dessert wines (here) where it comes in at about £27 for a half bottle.

The "washing line" returned as a display line for various little sweets, the most interesting being a pink jelly envelope filled ravioli style with fruit puree. 

If you like this style of dining and you are going to Vienna please, please visit Steirereck, I promise that you won't regret it.

Meirerei Steirereck

Downstairs on the ground floor is the more casual Meirerei (or “dairy”) which is still rather on the swish side with white gloss tables and neon light art. Serving traditional Austrian and Viennese dishes but specialising in local cheese and milk based drinks. For less than £10 each you can get a large glass of decent local wine and a platter of cheese, each labelled and accompanied by a recommended order of eating. Most were delicious but unfortunately I'd have to counsel against the primeval ooze known as 'Vorarlberger Sauerkase' for all but those with the strongest of constitutions. I can merrily eat Stinking Bishop but this stuff made it look like Dairylea strength wise. I tried drinking wine, gulping water, eating crackers but nothing was going to remove the feeling that I had eaten a fetid rat corpse. 

Other much more positive cheese highlights included Bachensteiner (a soft cows cheese in the Alsacien style washed in brine and sometimes in wine- often available from La Fromagerie), and Osterkrohn (a strong blue but creamy hard cheese). A really good selection of Austrian wine is served by the glass or in little flights so its a good place to get an introduction to real local specialties.

So if you're looking for a glass of wine or a snack during a walk through the Stadtpark then I would definitely recommend Meirerei, it also has an outside platform which is gorgeous when the sun is dappling through the trees.

8.5/10

Steirereck

Am Heumarkt 2A / im Stadtpark
A-1030 Wien
Tel.  +43 (1) 713 31 68

Flesh and Buns

Flesh and Buns. It sounds rather sordid before you even arrive doesn't it?  Carnal cuisine. Descending down a staircase beneath a projector screen of manga cartoons you enter through red doors to a buzzy underground room where excess seems to be the order of the day. At one end of the long narrow hangar of a restaurant is a bar with Asahi on tap and row upon row of sake. At the other is the kitchen, open to the floor and populated by an array of generally rather tasty chefs churning out plate upon plate of glistening meat and steaming sweet hirata buns. in between the two sits a long high canteen style table populated by an array of different people. Lots of homesick Japanese girls relishing the type of food rarely seen outside the land of the rising sun, some random rockers with long hair and enough earrings to cause havoc at a Heathrow metal detector, confused looking tourists, groups of gossiping girls and the ubiquitous beardy hipster. In summary, there is something here for everyone. 

Yes, its street food best eaten with your fingers, yes, the conversation is loud and the atmosphere bustling so no, don't take your Mum or a business meeting; the lack of table manners required to communicate and eat would likely horrify both. Second or third date however, and this might be your ideal place. 

I've learnt my lesson the hard way with these quick and dirty street food style places, based on recent experiences at Chicken Shop and Dip & Flip; don't go for the wine. That's probably a slightly unreasonable prejudice here as the wine list is more extensive than I expected but I'm going down the sake and cocktail route tonight. I kicked off with ume no yado (or sake blended with yuzu juice to you and me) and bar a brief stray into lychee martini territory, the sake is where I stayed for the rest of the evening. 

F&B is always destined to be a place where your eyes are bigger than your stomach. Seeing (and smelling) plate upon plate drift past the table en route to hungry tummies, we overdo the ordering. The waitress recommends two or three small plates and one main course. We laugh. One main course seems bonkers so a second one is added. The menu is so good that we could easily have ordered twice as much again. We leave fit to burst. Prawn tempura is not cheap for a starter at £12 but by the time we'd devoured them felt like good value. Five absolutely giant prawns in a light, crispy batter come with a yuzu dressing sharp enough to make your whole face pucker up. 

Tuna tataki was seared gently around the edges served with a lurid green jalapeno sauce just the right side of spicy. As tempting as it was to carry on working our way through the small plate section (fried squid with japanese pepper and lime and the grilled asparagus with sweet miso will be definitely be getting eaten on my next visit) but there is the small matter of meat to attend to.

I'm utterly confident that a mushroom has never made me swear out loud before. It was so good it was ridiculous. Deep and smoky shitake meatiness stuffed with a sesame wafu dressing on yakitori sticks. The only time I have ever tasted anything remotely close to this (and even then it wasn't as good) was in an izakaya on Omoide Yokocho in Tokyo. 

So onto the meat. Roast piglet belly is succulent and juicy with a crispy skin on top cut into the most perfectly straight strips ready to pop into the buns. Served with a sweet mustard miso sauce and super thin slices of pickled apple they are like the best sort of oriental twist on a hog roast. 

The hirata buns are soft and fluffy and hot enough to burn your fingerprints off.  The salad was completely surplus to requirements the pickled something or other that comes with each "flesh" option is enough to cut through the grease and provide a bit of a tang. Apologies for the fact my only photo of a stuffed bun is one I had rather childishly poked eyes in.....

The duck was shredded at the table like at a Chinese and had properly crispy skin. A sour plum soy sauce  and shredded beetroot took it one step beyond the usual cucumber and hoi sin and the hirata buns are waaaaaay superior to the usual floury little pancakes. 

Sitting at our table smacking our sticky lips and rubbing swollen bellies, anyone might have thought we were ready to throw in the towel but the problem was that I had heard about the S'mores. 

S'mores have been much publicised but with good reason. A charcoal burner is brought to the table with your raw ingredients.  I am the god of hell fire and I bring you..... S'MORES. 

You get a slab of marshmallow on a stick which you toast good old campfire style over a fire pot. Having not done this since I was a kid I had forgotten quite what a fine art it is, hover for too long and it sets fire and you're huffing and puffing it out, too little and its not melty enough. or as L put it "quite flammable little buggers aren't they?" Just as its about to drop off the stick or completely incinerarate into charcoal you slap it on a biscuit, top with the green tea chocolate and sandwich with another biscuit. 

Kinako donuts are unusual little beasts, quite hard on the outside and more savoury than you expect (although that might be because my teeth were still smarting from the sweetness of the s'mores) the sugar coating is made from finely powdered kinako soya beans mixed with powdered sugar. Filled with a creamy paste they are nonetheless pretty darned good. 

A special mention has to go to the toilets, all decorated with manga cartoons. The photo above is one of the less graphic ones so if you do go to Flesh & Buns (and you absolutely must) make sure you pay them a visit.

I adore Flesh & Buns. It really is a first for London providing a truly accessible mainstream experience with genuine Japanese food that goes beyond the average perception of sushi and ramen as being the totality of all things Japanese, there is so much more (although go to sister restaurant Bone Daddies for great examples of ramen too).

So Flesh & Buns, it's sticky, its messy, its loud and it makes you groan and exclaim with pleasure, almost carnal after all then. 

They are currently offering a flesh, bun and beer offer for £15 on Mondays when you reserve in advance (yes, they take reservations- even better!) so there's no excuse not to get down there and indulge.

Flesh & Buns
41 Earlham St, London WC2H 9LX
020 7632 9500

Afternoon Tea at Fortnum & Mason

My eternally English obsession with afternoon tea continues but I think this time I've found something that really beats the usual sandwich and scone combo. Fortnums offer a wide selection of options for afternoon tea ranging from the (I hesitate to use the word really) "basic" option of "Afternoon Tea" (£40) to "Savoury Afternoon Tea" (£42) culminating in the "High Tea" (£44). I'd always wondered what the difference was between afternoon tea and high tea and now I have my answer. 

High tea is more elaborate and includes a hot dish followed by all the cakes and scones that come with the straightforward afternoon tea so is somewhere between tea and dinner. Despite being a few pounds more than the basic offering, for me this is the best option. My Lobster Omelette Victoria in lobster bisque sauce with shaved truffle was truly beautiful and was priced at £19 for that dish alone on the lunch menu. Large, tender chunks of lobster flesh punctuated the fluffy omelette whilst the bisque added a saffron tinted slick of richness. There are around 8 other options that you can choose from including kedgeree, eggs benedict and roast ham and cheese souffle but the lobster was a no brainer for me. Its not the prettiest thing you've ever seen as its covered in a grilled melted cheese gooiness but take it from me, if you like lobster and cheese then you will love it. 

I had initially been a bit reluctant at the price tag for what felt like tea above a shop but you are a world away from the craziness of the tourist infested tea-hunting frenzy on the ground floor of the shop. The cranky old wooden lift takes you sedately up to the top floor and you emerge into a light and airy, serene heaven. A gentle hubbub of chatter and the tinkling of a grand piano is punctuated by the chime of a tea spoon or the faint clatter of bone china cup against saucer. 

The tea offering is as wide as you would expect from one of London's finest purveyors of teas. If you really love tea then you will be left dizzy by the bewildering variety of options on offer.  I may have mentioned before that my ability to really enjoy an afternoon tea is a little hampered by the fact that I fundamentally don't like tea so I'm usually left hunting for one that won't be too icky. I plumped for the green tea with elderflower and shocked myself by really loving it (luckily they sell it in bags on the ground floor so I now actually do drink tea- amazing, its only taken the best part of three decades....) 

My general disdain for all things tea usually results in champagne being an obvious replacement- after all doesn't afternoon tea always feel like an occasion? Except this time I went English opting for F&M's house English sparkling in the form of Camel Valley. 

Very fresh and shouting green apples with a hint of pear, its an excellent choice especially in the terribly British surroundings of Fortnums. If you're a complete traditionalist though and need your fizz to be French then prices are not completely insane for the location. Billecart Salmon comes in at £58 or 2006 vintage Louise Roederer at £60 making the list prices a lot more competitive than most hotel afternoon teas.

So far so, well, pretty much perfect actually! In contrast, however, Mum wasn't faring quite so well with her "standard" afternoon tea as the sandwiches that kicked off were five rather measly fingers. Although they were well flavoured they were limited in quantity and not the most exciting ever. 

Scones are accompanied by your choice of a jar of jam and best of all you get to take the rest of it home with you. Buttery and crumbly and still warm they hit the spot.

A carousel of two-bite cakes appeared with something to please everyone; from chocolate to lemon to raspberry to praline it was all there. The rose petal eclair was my favourite- very delicate without being too floral. 

Even a jammy dodger or two snuck in......

As if you hadn't already had enough cake, the meal culminated in a choice of larger cakes -or a bit of all of them-  from a trolley (or Coronation Cake Carriage as its rather grandly named) in the centre of the room. 

Here's a close up of those cakes and yes I ate them all.......

I managed a mere mouthful of a very creamy, sponge finger raspberry confection before I feared I would explode and disappeared off into the fading sun with the rest of my little pot of jam and my new found love of elderflower tea bags. I would definitely go back for a special occasion it was all delightful from start to finish. 

Fortnum & Mason Diamond Jubilee Tea Room
Piccadilly
London