La Famiglia
111 Cleveden Road, Glasgow 0141 334 0111
First published in Sunday Herald 13th May 2012
When a restaurant is named La Famiglia, and the chef is called Nico Simeone, there’s a not unreasonable tendency to assume that we’re looking at an out-and-out Italian outfit. So arriving for dinner at the aforementioned restaurant in Glasgow, it took a few minutes to process the fact that here was one of those tricky to classify restaurants, sitting most comfortably, perhaps, in the all-purpose, loose-fitting ‘Modern British’ category. Shoe-horn La Famiglia into the Italian category if you like, but it’s not an easy fit, although the good value, fixed price menu certainly speaks with a more pronounced Italian accent.
“I use the elegance of traditional Italian flavours and add a contemporary twist” writes Chef Simeone, a statement that I initially found slightly puzzling and mildly worrying. La cucina Italiana is defined by its authenticity, honesty, simplicity and lack of pretension. Leave elegance to the French. And as regular readers may have noted, experience has made me somewhat edgy when the phrase ‘contemporary twist’ is employed, flagging up, as it so often does, a evangelical propensity to torture ingredients in the name of novelty.
Never fear, diners are in good hands with chef Simeone. There was nothing outlandish about what he put on our plates, but it did feel fresh. It’s not just that the ingredients tasted well-sourced, and had that just-delivered-to-the-back-door quality, nor the fact that vegetables get more of a showing than is customary in most establishments, it’s also that you get the sense of someone at the stove who still feels excited about what he does, rather than a time server, diligently going through the paces day after day.
A pleasant surprise indeed: shopping parades in leafy suburbs rarely sprout restaurants that have a whole lot going for them. The location is significant though. La Famiglia has an upmarket cafe feel. Service is functional, rather than polished, so there isn’t that special occasion, celebratory feel that you might expect in a city centre establishment charging similar prices. Having Sinatra crooning his way, sorry My Way, through his most hackneyed hits for the entirety of a dinner does tend to add to the feeling that you’re in a suburban backwater, not a finger-on-the-pulse contemporary eating place.
But then you just have to love any chef who goes to the bother of tracking down springy, sweet, hand-dived scallops so fresh they could have been straight out out the briny, rather than serving up the bloated, super-sized, water-soaked sort, especially when he sears them so perfectly, adding a quail egg fried in crisp crumb by way of a flourish. Rabbit terrine, served in an elongated rectangular shape was an object of beauty. With its mosaic of succulent pink and white meat, dotted with green pistachio, it tasted every bit as good as it looked.
Both our main courses came on a bright sea of vegetables, cooked not as an afterthought, but as an essential component of the dish. Hake had remained fleshy inside its fragile roasted jacket of friable Parma ham, and was ably supported by a fondant ratatouille that testified to hours of patient cooking. Exceptionally high quality lamb (full-flavoured, fabulous fat, totally tender) sat on a slightly sweet stew of Borlotti beans and juicy vegetables with crusty squares of fried polenta helping to soak up an emollient, buttery gravy, freshened up with a fresh herby emulsion.
Chef Simeone’s ice creams show sound technique and a discriminating palate: the vanilla roundly rich and creamy, perfumed with that unmistakably blousy Bourbon scent, the pineapple fruity and delicate, the raspberry refreshingly tart and full-bodied. In an otherwise promising Tarte Tatin, however, well-caramelised apples were let down by humdrum puff pastry.
We tired slightly of the pace of delivery- overlong gaps between courses underlined how the front of house operation is more that of a daytime cafe than evening restaurant- but not enough to skew a generally positive impression of a dark horse, out-of-the-way establishment with a whole lot going for it.
llustration by Adrian McMurchie www.amcmurchie.com
Fintry inn
23 Main Street, Fintry 01360 860224
First published in Sunday Herald 18th March 2012
When I see one of those 3-D Tennent’s T signs hanging outside a pub, it doesn’t inspire confidence. The familiar red T takes me back to the bad old days when pubs reeked of fags, your shoes stuck to the shandy-sodden carpet and feminists had not yet ousted busty blondes from the back of beer cans. Mind you, that characteristic T sign can now be deemed so vintage that’s it’s almost ripe to become trendy. Perhaps it will one day attain the same nostalgic status as Edinburgh Rock or Tunnock’s tea cakes.
The amusing thing about the T sign over the door of the Fintry Inn is that it is a complete red herring. Staropramen has long since replaced Tennent’s as the beer on tap, and although it still looks from outside like the typical deadbeat country pub where a microwaved muck off a truck and a greasy pie might be your lot, the food, much of it local, is cooked on the premises to exacting standards. If I tell you that even the tomato ketchup is home-made, you’ll have some idea of how seriously this establishment takes its edible offerings.
Settling down in front of the wood-burning stove, we were quite amazed by the menu. No fine dining nonsense, no phony Cajun this and fake Thai that, you choose from a sensible menu that embraces traditional (and some modern) pub classics, but delivers them in their very best forms. So here, instead of the customary claggy over-fishy paste, the beetroot and mackerel pate was a dream: light, fresh, lemony, with the powerful fish providing a deep, savoury base, not a bullying presence. Most squid rings served in pubs are bought in frozen and refried to order, but for a fiver, the Fintry Inn served us a generous plate of sweet, tender fresh squid, full of flavour, in a light, clean-tasting crust of crisp lemon and parsley breadcrumbs. Both these starters came with a side salad made with interesting leaves in perky condition, and a good few cherry tomatoes, all tossed in well-balanced vinaigrette, making them almost a light lunch in themselves.
So many inferior products with nasty pastry and mean amounts of poor meat bear the name ‘beef and ale’ pie that it pays to be wary, but not at the Fintry Inn. The Cornish pasty-shaped pie made with airy, golden-brown pastry, the sort that doesn’t form that horrible wet doughy layer down below, was stuffed full of lean meat evidently braised in a natural ale gravy. Flanking it were elegantly roasted parsnips, carrots and halved shallots, and slightly sauteed kidney-shaped potatoes with a rosy skin hue and earthy flavour that suggested a heritage variety such as Roseval.
My thick, generous venison burger was most definitely not from a packet, but formed by hand by someone who has a good palate for seasoning. It came with brilliant thick-cut chips, perfect for dipping into the spicy, appealingly un-sugary home-made ketchup, classy Tiptree Brown Sauce, and a fragrant beetroot and orange chutney, also made in the kitchen. A daily special of classic Gratin Dauphinois was slightly disappointing, only because the potatoes were very marginally undercooked, but with its voluptuous caramelised cream edges and sweet purple sprouting broccoli gratinated on top, we weren’t complaining.
Desserts- you barely need to ask- are all home-made, although the kitchen does serve Katy Rodger’s milky ices made on the farm down the road. Warm chocolate brownie with vanilla ice-cream and toasted marshmallows, and a crumble made with pink, forced rhubarb alongside a natural-tasting frozen raspberry yogurt, could never be confused with those bought-in puddings so often served in pubs.
In fact, if the Fintry Inn was in the Cotswolds, or the Lake District, all the metropolitan restaurant critics would be beating a path to its door, the 4x4s would be lining up outside and its shabby chic interior would have been given a makeover. Here, it’s an uncut gem, offering everything you’d hope for in a country pub, and rarely get- careful, mature home cooking using thoughtfully sourced ingredients- at a democratically low price.
Kyloe
Rutland Hotel, Princes Street, Edinburgh 0131 229 3402
First published in Sunday Herald 19th February 2012
The architecture of the steak menu is changing. Hideously expensive fillet and boned sirloin traditionally used to sit at the top of the UK hierarchy because British diners like, or have been encouraged to like, lean, boneless muscle cuts. We swallowed the public health mantra that fat was the devil incarnate, so these became the ‘healthy’ choice. And to a squeamish nation reluctant to look in the eye the visceral aspects of meat, fillet or sirloin has fewer potentially troubling connections with dead animals.
Down in Latin America meanwhile, rump steak has always been preferred for its superior flavour. In the steak houses of Buenos Aires, the picanha steak- what butchers here call the cap or point of the rump- is the steak cut of preference for discerning diners. Of late, rib-eye steak has become a bit trendier in Britain, mainly because it’s that little bit cheaper.
In France, a nation with a long and purposeful history of using up every little last bit of a carcase in inventive ways, more attention has been paid to the cheaper ‘secondary‘ cuts, such as onglet (hangar steak/skirt), bavette (goose skirt) and feather steak (paleron). The popularity of these as steak cuts isn’t just down to price. In taste terms, they can beat fillet and sirloin hands down, providing they are cooked as they ought to be, that is, very briefly, otherwise they can be a bit of a chew.
Kyloe in Edinburgh describes its self as a steak restaurant and grill. Given its desirable location on Princes Street and its ability to pull in the crowds, this might sound like a well-trodden, predictable formula. With its glitzy Hello! magazine decor, you might take it as a place for drawing in budget airline tourists and the rugby crowds, with food quality on the back burner. But Kyloe makes an impressive job of reinventing the tired old steak house concept to fit a changed 21st century landscape, while still addressing a popular, non-exclusive audience.
The beef is all Aberdeen Angus Scottish from the Borders, 100 per cent grass-fed (better for health and the environment) and hung for a minimum of 28 days. There’s a 45-day aged rump for those who crave both flavour and melting tenderness. Provenance is matched by expert cooking. The reasonably priced and interesting steak board of forgotten cuts- bavette, paleron, onglet- was definitive evidence of how wonderful these can be as steaks rather than stews. With a side order of bone marrow, creamed horseradish and truly fantastic chips cooked in beef dripping it might even make me a steak convert.
Meat apart, the cooking, as one has come to expect of chef David Haetzman, is sound. Ceviche of sea bream, chilli, pink grapefruit, pickled fennel, pomegranate and coriander was quite definitely the most exquisite fishy dish I have eaten this year. A tart of warm fondant onions and crumbly, sharp Grimbister cheese with truffle felt as comforting and classy as cashmere. Its friable pastry flagged up the self-evident skill of pastry chef Amanda Jordan, whose refined dessert offerings proved to be a pleasure. She fielded a stunning blood orange tart with tremulous curd and biscuity pastry, flanked by a humid lemon drizzle cake and zesty mandarin sorbet. Her Valrhona milk chocolate tart was a stunner too, all caressing and velvety in its ready-to-shatter crust. The accompanying salted caramel parfait and stiff vanilla bean mascarpone simply layered delight upon delight.
One dish-roast chicken- was mildly disappointing. It was mainly breast, mainly boned and with gravy, stuffing and mash, a bit too close for comfort to a boring Christmas offering. If Kyloe applied the same iconoclastic thinking to its poultry as it has to its beef, then it could be much more exciting. A half chicken, on the bone, perhaps flattened out spatchcock-style and char-grilled or briefly roasted, served with those great chips, or sauteed potatoes, now that could be fantastic. Haetzman has already reworked the burger riff, serving three sliders: venison and redcurrant, wild boar and apple, and Aberdeen Angus fillet with smoked cheddar. With some creative input, and decent free-range or organic birds, poultry suggests itself for similar treatment.
Delizique
70 Hyndland Street, Glasgow 0141 339 2000
First published in Sunday Herald 22nd January 2012
The experience of sitting under an ancient olive tree, eating great food, is always one to put you in a positive frame of mind. It’s no wonder that when big companies want to flog us their latest revolting margarine-type spread, they treat us to adverts featuring Tuscan octogenarians pole vaulting through olive groves.
Everything about olive trees is splendid, a point brought home to me when I got lost in an olive grove in Crete, giving me ample time to figure out that unlike the Leyland Cyprus, Thuja and other brutalist trees, no silvery-leafed olive tree ever looks quite like another. Each is an individual, with its gnarled trunk and distinctive shape testifying, more often than not, to hundreds of years of growth. And while suburban barrier trees provoke many an ugly neighbour dispute and mark division, the olive tree creates a natural, inclusive canopy that encourages conviviality and pleasure.
This is not an experience I expect to enjoy in Glasgow, but then Mhairi Taylor, proprietrix of Delizique, once my favourite West End food shop, is an admirably outward-looking Scot and an internationalist in the best sense of that word. Perhaps she takes that from her grandfather who fought in the International Brigade. She has some of his bravery too, that’s clear. Who else would seriously consider moving a massive, mature olive tree from its Mediterranean soil and reinstalling it right in the middle of a cafe? But she has, and the tree not only looks fabulous but also appears to be reasonably content in its new Glasgow home.
Its arrival marks the reinvention of Delizique as a deli-café. With characteristic intelligence, Taylor has played to her strengths, in particular, the amazing bakery that was formerly the linchpin of the shop. Its offering were always good, but now the bread is better, and even more artisan that it was before, if that’s possible, and it provides the core of the deli’s hot offerings: utterly delicious sourdough pizzas.
I should stress that I have very little time for pizzas. Even in Italy, they are all too often rounds of stodge that rapidly lose their appeal as they begin to cool, and increasingly, I am persuaded of the advantages of low-carb eating. But with pizzas this good, I make an exception, because they are simply too wonderful to miss.
It makes me hungry just remembering my pizza with its glorious topping of waxy new potato slices, matchsticks of pancetta, Parmesan shavings, sea salt crystals and fresh rosemary. The dough is utterly brilliant, pliant, airy, grey-white (not the pappy bleached white stuff made with commercial ‘improved’ flours) and baked to perfection with a crust that’s made in heaven, the whole thing anointed in extra virgin olive oil. I’ll be back to taste the pizza spread with sobresada (a traditional Balearic chorizo-type sausage), Manchego and watercress, and/or- I can’t decide!- the one with avocado, pancetta, and lemon oil.
Delizique does excellent platters to partner the great bread. The marinated brisket, which is cooked in the cooling bread oven overnight, was a dream of moist, velvety meat and terrific tasty fat, but I bet the Puddledub ham, boiled, glazed with marmalade and roasted in the oven is worth having too. Or you can have a piece of the giant ‘piece’ - one huge focaccia, cut to order- with the filling of the day.
I have tried to contain my breathless enthusiasm for Delizique, but that’s like trying to hold back floodgates. The dark horse, left field olive oil and apple cake with its stunning maple syrup topping, so original in conception, was a total joy. Tarts come in manageably small sizes so you can have two if you fancy it. I did, needless to say- crème brulée and chocolate, both excellent. Next time it’ll be the squidgy blackberry friands, moist, flourless fig and orange cake, baked apple with Pedro Ximenez sherry and orange reduction, or the rhubarb and custard crumble tart. Probably the latter- the custard is the clincher.
Delizique is an outright triumph. Taylor’s sheer nerve and boldness deserves admiration, as does her obvious commitment to serving authentically cooked, well-sourced ingredients at prices that will never raise an eyebrow.
Martha’s, 142a St Vincent Street, Glasgow 0141 248 9771
First published in Sunday Herald 15th January 2012
You can spend an awful lot on lunch without even eating well. A takeaway sandwich or salad, and a sweet bite to finish, will easily clock up £5 a day, and it’s likely to be crap. The person who thought up the idea of chilling sandwiches should be shot: refrigerating bread is a bad US habit. And you can’t taste a salad when it’s chilled to Siberian wintertime.
My heart sinks when I find myself in a location where all I have to choose from is that loft insulation-style bread, factory farmed chicken, push-button cheddar, cotton wool tomatoes and aged iceberg lettuce. Those revolting chain store salads that taint the mouth for hours after with dressings made from larger-than-life industrial ingredients, such as ‘lemon extract’ (whatever that might be) are possibly even worse, what with their aggressive flavour profiles and fraudulent tastes.
Organised, financially prudent people bring a packed lunch to work, recognising that not only do they save a fortune, they eat better too. And when I get my act together, I’m always favourably surprised by how last night’s leftovers, and random bits and pieces of food from the fridge, taste pretty good the next day. But not everyone has the time or the inclination to make their own lunch. The nearest sandwich bar has a captive audience.
With the opening of Martha’s in Glasgow’s office land, I sense a major breakthrough. This new takeaway/café obviously takes inspiration from the Leon chain in London, which revolutionised fast food, offering people cheap, nutritious, tasty options to be eaten on the hoof. There are Leon-like dishes: Moroccan meatballs, falafel wraps. But Martha’s has developed the concept considerably, emphasising seasonality and local sourcing. What’s more, the kitchen has a team of chefs cooking and baking food from scratch on the premises, much of it served hot. The result is far too good to be left to office workers. Martha’s serves the most affordable, high quality, healthy food you’ll find in central Glasgow.
Martha’s menus are inspired by the best seasonal Scottish produce. It suppliers are small, progressive producers. An ethical awareness shows in items like Freedom Foods chicken, free-range pork and Fairtrade beverages. It’s so easy to eat healthily here, yet also have absolutely delicious food. Martha’s does show a keen interest in super-nutritious, seasonal foods, but you can tell that foodies rule the roost.
We sat in; Martha’s is clean-cut, spacious and modern in bright, warm, cheery way. A feast that, in retrospect, would have served four, came in at under £30. It was all good stuff and so patently ultra-fresh. Any trepidation that we were in the hands of well-meaning health freaks was blown away by the hot, char-grilled chipotle chicken with avocado salsa, which showed a mastery of flavour with its absolutely addictive smoked jalapeno chilli sauce. I haven’t had a better or more generous-hearted mackerel salad, with its vibrant green spinach, golden and purple beetroot, airy quinoa, crunchy seeds and sprouts, matchsticks of sharp apple and knock-out lemon and horseradish dressing.
The pearl barley and chicken soup, a snip at £2.65, was just what you crave on a dismal winter day. Main courses come with nutty brown basmati rice and Martha’s slaw, a seductively crunchy alliance of cabbage, kohlrabi, carrot in a light yogurt dressing. The warm winter salad was unstinting in its abundance, full of grilled plum tomatoes, nicely charred and roasted carrots, parsnips and celeriac on a bed of lemony borlotti beans, with crumbled feta and salsa verde on top.
The homemade lemonade is restrained in sweetness and there’s a long list of herbal teas, but don’t be under any illusion that Martha’s is some sort of health spa. It has a pastry chef who produces dream-like wobbly panna cotta with Alphonso mango, a wicked deconstructed millionaire shortbread (with salt caramel) and spectacularly good hazelnut praline tarts with textbook short pastry.
Martha’s bursts on the food scene with it high standards, great palate and affordability. Much more than a sandwich bar, it’s an extraordinarily useful city centre asset to be used throughout the day, for breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea.
Joanna’s Sunday Herald Top 10 restaurants visited in 2011
£= Cheap ££= Moderate £££= Pricy
Divino, 5 Merchant Street, Edinburgh 0131 225 1770 ££
Cooking style: Italian
Uncannily like an authentic enoteca (wine bar), oenophiles will love the ‘flights’ (25ml tasters of 5 wines) of outstanding Italian regional wines. Simple cooking of high specification, often artisan Italian ingredients: DOP salumi, cave-aged cheeses. Sophisticated, intimate, this is a civilised, intelligent place for grown-ups.
Barolo Grill, 92-94 Mitchell Street, Glasgow 0141 221 0971 ££-£££
Cooking style: Italian
Stylish Barolo casts a fresh eye over the predictable Italo-Scottish menu and updates it for the more sophisticated post- River Cafe/Jamie Oliver generations. Shows considerable cooking skill, care, good taste and scrupulous attention to detail. Amazing beef carpaccio dressed with lemon-infused Colonna Granverde olive oil. Great pastry work.
Punjab’n De Rasoi, 122-124 Leith Walk, Edinburgh 07865895022 £
Cooking style: Indian home cooking
This simple café environment come social enterprise is run by a spirited bunch of demonstrably capable Sikh women, offering proper home cooking at heartwarmingly low prices. Fish curry and fish pakora to die for. Revelatory samosa. Odd opening times, so phone to check.
Limelight Bar and Grill, 75 Waterloo Street, Glasgow 0141 226 7726 ££
Cooking style: Modern British
In a swanky setting with a thoughtful contemporary brasserie menu the chef blends crowd pleasers with dishes that extend the culinary boundaries. There’s plenty evidence of ingredients of good provenance and emphasis on seasonal produce from small producers. The selection of six dessert pots is a must for those who like their puddings. Well-priced wines.
John Paul at the Marine, Cromwell Road, North Berwick 0844 879 9130 ££-£££
Cooking style: Modern British
The food served in this rich, red, almost theatrical seaside dining room comes as a delightful surprise to those with low expectations of provincial hotels. The chef does dreamy things with Arbroath smokies and slow-cooked meats and turns out hand-made pasta silken beyond belief. Hidden gem.
Mithas, 7 Dock Place, Leith, Edinburgh 0131 554 0008 ££
Cooking style: New wave Indian
Plucky Mithas represents a brave tour-de-force challenge to diners’ preconceptions of sub-continental food. It amounts to accomplished, innovative Indian cooking predicated on knowledge of and respect for traditional techniques. Spinach and fig ‘tikki‘ (soft rissoles) are vegetarian nirvana. Griddled seabass with coconut, fresh green herbs and chilli crust served on banana leaf is food fit for the gods.
Opium, 191 Hope Street, Glasgow 0141 332 6668 ££
Cooking style: New wave Chinese
A restaurant on a commendable mission to rescue the generally low reputation of Chinese cuisine in Scotland, determined to bring about a step change and jack up the whole category. Stunning diaphanous, half-moon-shaped crab and chive steamed dumplings. Refined fragrant food that sings with scents and flavours, served in a tranquil modern Asian atmosphere .
Mark Greenaway at Hawke and Hunter, 12 Picardy Place, Edinburgh 0131 557 0952 ££-£££
Cooking style: Fine dining
Cutting edge professional cooking with classy, expensive ingredients served in approachably plush setting. Watch out for the pyrotechnic Loch Fyne crab ‘cannelloni’ with its satiny cauliflower custard, jewel-like lemon pearls and puff of applewood smoke. The roast and confit of 12 week-reared, free-range chicken with a glorious confit garlic gravy fit to sooth the soul. Keenly priced.
Scottish Steak Club, Inchyra Grange Hotel, Grange Road, Polmont 0844 879 9044 ££-£££
Cooking style: Brasserie
It’s a pleasure to find such surprisingly good food and stylishly bovine restaurant décor, particularly in an unpromising location that is conspicuously short on decent places to eat. High points include rugged rib eye steak, cut from the centre of the rib and still on the bone, cooked on a Josper charcoal grill and farmed salmon-free fish cakes with a crunchy golden crust spiked with lemon and green herbs, served with mellow caper mayonnaise.
Southern Spice, 325 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, G2 3HW 0141 333 9977 £ Cooking style: South Indian
No standard curry house. Authentic enough to find favour with people who know what the real thing should be like. The heart of the kitchen lies in southern Indian, where vegetables and legumes are king, while fish, and to a lesser extent, meat, are simply hangers-on in the courtly retinue. Get to know the bonda, the vada, uthappam, idli and dosa. Thrillingly cheap. Solicitous service.
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Mithas
7 Dock Place,
Edinburgh
0131 554 0008
Review published 26 September 2011 in Sunday Herald
Illustration by Adrian McMurchie www.amcmurchie.com
Mithas, a new-wave enterprise in Leith, may have to take a few deep breaths and hold its nerve. Its food is exciting and represents a real shift in the cosily familiar “Indian” category. When it launched, the menu started off challenging diners’ preconceptions of sub-continental cooking. It is neither a standard curry house nor an authentic traditional outfit. Rather, it follows in the steps of restaurants in London such as Amaya, Zaika and Tamarind, establishments that blend tradition and innovation to create a new, dynamic fine dining Indian category.
Thus far, Mithas has had to pander to diners’ and critics’ expectations by moving away from its opening strategy where all dishes arrived as they were cooked (like tapas), and reverting to a starters and main courses structure. Happily, it has not changed its recipes, which to my mind are distinctive, highly accomplished, and constantly push the limits of Indian restaurant comfort zone cooking.
Mithas comes from the same stable as the perennially popular Khushi restaurants. (Khushi Mohammed was the first generation Punjabi who introduced Edinburgh to Indian cuisine.) Now the family is embarked on its 21st century mission: broadening and developing Scotland’s concept of Indian food. A natural evolution perhaps, but a more demanding undertaking than it might seem. In order to get people to grasp what it is doing, Mithas will have to challenge lingering neo-colonial attitudes that condemn sub-continental cooking to perpetual second-class status.
Mithas is a smartly designed, stylish and distinctly glam restaurant. Whereas most Indian eateries rely heavily on curries, which are either pre-cooked, or more likely half-cooked then finished off at the last minute, Mithas cooks everything from scratch to order, using an open flame grill, the clay tandoor oven and the tawa (griddle). We were fortunate to order before Mithas had to bend the knee and restructure the menu, so dishes arrived in a sequence depending on how long they took to cook. Going back, I’d ask them to do the same again, because it was a refreshing approach and the serendipity of wondering what would turn up next made the whole meal much more fluid and good fun.
We were really knocked out by the cooking and the veracity of the spicing, which showed great finesse. You are served a mix made from 19 different ground and roasted spices to use as a condiment throughout your meal. I identified a couple I think, some more unusual ones like oniony asafoetida, sour amchoor (green mango) and thyme-like ajwain. Whatever the exact make-up, you know this didn’t come from the local cash and carry. Everything at Mithas is fresh, fresh, fresh. The customary short-cuts available to curry house chefs are forbidden.
Our palates were primed by cubes of grilled home-made paneer, marinated, I’d guess, in a yogurt and spice emulsion. Silence descended when the fresh spinach and fig tikki (soft rissoles) were set down, a silence broken only by soft moans of pleasure and appreciative purring.
A fillet of griddled seabass with a nutty crust of grated coconut and fresh green herbs and chilli felt like food fit for the gods. It looked stunning too on its raft of fresh banana leaf.
I can’t remember ever eating better monkfish. Three large chunks had had their tough membrane meticulously removed and been bathed in a spicy, yogurt marinade before being cooked hot and fast in the tandoor. Result? Extreme succulence and juiciness within a dry aromatic crust. I couldn’t have bought the fish in a fishmonger for the menu price. There is, though, the odd aberrant item, such as the tandoori duck.
Mithas is keenly priced, particularly when you understand the quality of the ingredients and the time lavished on them, especially for the vegetarian dishes. Highly original skewered kebabs made with raw green banana were extraordinary. The perfume of basmati rice was enhanced by a sprinkling of rosewater. Our only weak dish was lamb chops that had been grilled in caul fat – a puzzling addition because the lamb itself is fatty enough.
Mithas has a proper pastry chef, so desserts are fantastic. Stunning passion fruit tart, strawberries in sour-sweet tamarind sauce, hot chocolate mousse cooled with ginger ice cream and pulpy orange sauce, such delights are not to be missed.
Opium
191 Hope Street,
Glasgow.
Review published 23 September 2011 in Sunday Herald
Illustration by Adrian McMurchie www.amcmurchie.com
An English friend who runs a food business is eating his way down the San Pellegrino list of the world’s 50 best restaurants.
So far, he has been to 19 or thereabouts, and shows no sign of running out of stamina for getting round the others. So when he strongly recommends a restaurant, I take it for granted that he knows what he’s on about. He emailed me with great enthusiasm the other day to tell me that when left to his own devices in Glasgow, he found himself dining in Opium, the newish oriental restaurant. “It is always a leap of faith going into an empty restaurant, but the look of the restaurant and the menu was intriguing” he wrote “and I have to say that the meal I had was fantastic”. His conclusion? “A lovely restaurant doing something genuine.”
Following swiftly in his footsteps, I am pleased to report that I share his assessment 100%. Reviews from the early days of opening that I have subsequently read online were not great. But Opium – which is run by a well-regarded Manchester restaurateur with a chef trained at the Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant in London, Hakkasan – has very clearly got it act together, and now the food is excellent.
As soon as the starters turned up, it was evident that the cooking was in a different league entirely from any other Chinese restaurant I have visited in Scotland. Still incognito, but chatting to the owner after the meal, I learned that he is a man on a mission to rescue the generally low reputation of Chinese cuisine in Scotland, someone determined to bring about a step change and jack up the whole category. Other Chinese restaurateurs need to check out Opium smartly to see how definitively it has changed the rules of the game.
Our crab and chive steamed dumplings looked pretty as a picture, with juicy nuggets of white meat and pink prawn flecked with thick Chinese chives only just visible through a diaphanous, translucent outer skin, crimped and formed into a delicate half-moon shape. The pan-fried mooli (turnip) cake with its tiny dice of air-dried Chinese sausage and pungent dried shrimp throughout, combined an almost sticky, molten centre with a cleanly fried, but crusty-dark exterior. A dab of rocket-strength chilli oil rendered it little short of addictive.
Opium’s chilli salt and pepper squid was streets ahead of other dishes that bear that name. The squid in its airy batter was chewy, but in a good way, where the flavour seemed somehow intensified. It had been dusted with something best described as a crunchy powder, absolutely singing with flavours: salt, pepper and chilli, of course, but with a lingering hint of fruity Sichuan pepper and sweet five-spice mix. As for the sesame prawn toast, it was a revelation. Delicate fingers of golden crust were topped with a generous layer of tasty prawn meat enlivened by the slightly medicinal presence of vibrantly fresh, leafy coriander, while thin ribbons of fried seaweed added a lingering marine flavour.
It is tempting to make a meal out of the dim sum, but then you would miss the larger dishes. The home-made prawn cake was fabulous, slices of succulent shell-pink meat with real crustacean flavour, anointed with garlic and ginger juices, sat on a bed of vibrant green choi sum, the latter matching the prawn cake’s slightly bouncy texture with its uncompromising crunch. Hong Kong beef flank cooked in a clay pot demonstrated how some Chinese slow-cooked dishes have echoes of British stews. Here, the full-flavoured meat had been braised with baby leek and mooli, and it made a gloriously rich, dark brown gravy with gingery heat and five-spice notes underpinning it. Fragrant steamed jasmine rice introduced itself with its calling card perfume long before we stuck our chopsticks into its smooth, polished depths.
As for the place, it has a tranquil modernity, unobtrusively designed to a serene black and white, faintly Asian theme. Prices are moderate for such a class act. It gave me great pleasure to tell my friend is that Opium was more or less full when we visited on a Monday evening. Clearly, the word has got out.
Lobster Shack
North Berwick, East Lothian
07910 620480
Published in Sunday Herald 05/09/2011
Pop-up restaurants and dining clubs are all the rage, a creative way to set up in catering if you don’t have the cash or the credit that would allow you to commit to an expensive lease and all the associated costs of a restaurant proper. There’s something about these more informal eateries that captures the mood of austerity. Their indy, scruffy character and modest bills feel right at a time of recession, riots, cuts and corporate crime.
The Lobster Shack, which has sprung up in the East Lothian port of North Berwick is a delightful irony. The name is oxymoronic. We think of lobster as Cadillac alley food. A shack is for the down-and-outs on the other side of the track. How can the two combine?
The Lobster Shack is indeed a shack, albeit a cheerily painted one, with dimensions that resemble a large garden hut. It sits on the breakwater at the harbour with a huddle of tables and chairs around it, wisely sheltering behind a substantial stone wall. The picturesque location comes with stunning views, both out to sea and over the bobbing masts of fishing boats. No need to contrive a maritime atmosphere here.
Lobster Shack’s USP is that it sells freshly caught lobster and crab direct from fishermen. It is registered as a ‘first buyer’, which means that it sources direct from the boats as they drop anchor in the harbour. Its motto is ‘Fresh-Fast-Local’. You wouldn’t think so looking at the rudimentary cooking facilities, but the cooking here is surprisingly good, serving up sparklingly fresh seafood at a price no restaurant could hope to match.
We began with Firth of Forth langoustines. They weren’t, in all honesty, the best langoustines I’ve tasted, being a little mushy, but they were still pleasant and gained something from being cooked in the Iberian style with slightly piquant pil-pil oil. They came with a gentle alioli dip, a disappointingly standard crusty roll, and some allotment-fresh salad leaves, a mix of several diverse, interesting varieties.
Crab cocktail was off – the capriciousness of crustacea supply makes this a permanent possibility – so we went for what sounded like second-best, a smoked haddock and tomato soup. But it turned out to be quite special, with generous flakes of the smoky fish underpinning the acid sweetness of the tomatoes.
There was no overlooking the lobster, grilled with garlic, lemon and parsley butter. We had the half (£8.50) not the whole lobster (£16.50), and it was perfectly filling as a main course. Although with lobster that was this fleshy and bathed in buttery shellfish juices, it would have been all too easy to eat a whole one. Either way, the lobster here is about half the typical restaurant price. All the main courses come with the aforementioned impeccable salad leaves, dressed with good vinaigrette, and irresistible chips – the hand-cut sort, offering soft floury potato in a crunchy crust. Snowy-white fillets of unimpeachably fresh lemon sole with melting caper butter got the same treatment.
Lobster Shack could present a litter problem as the food is served in disposables. But these have been sourced carefully, so you get biodegradable cutlery made from corn starch, compostable glasses, recycled cardboard and obvious bins, so debris shouldn’t pollute the attractive setting.
What you ‘save’ on the well-priced shellfish you can blow on a bottle of reasonably priced Jacquart champagne. More temperate types may settle for organic lemonade.
Lobster Shack offers the best children’s menu I have seen. Fish goujons and grilled mackerel cost £3.95, or let them get stuck into creamy mussels for 50p less.
We left Lobster Shack looking for dessert, which we found a few miles along the coast road at Gullane, where the consummately professional ‘konditormeister’, Falko, turns his hands to ice cream as well as meticulously hand-made loaves and accomplished cakes. Like everything Falko makes or bakes, sugar never dominates. Even the caramel ice cream is a model of restraint. My current favourite is his orangey almost citrus-tasting sea buckthorn ice cream, a toothsome seaside treat to round off a fishy feast.
Punjab’n De Rasoi
122-124 Leith Walk,
Edinburgh, EH65DT
07865895022
Published in Sunday Herald 8 August 2011
Home cooking has international appeal. East, west, home’s best, as they say. Italians take this philosophy to extremes. Nothing can ever compete with mamma’s cooking, and as for nonna’s (grandmother’s), now that has sacred status. British Michelin-starred chefs dream of their mum’s Sunday roast, or rice pudding. The unpretentiousness of the food is part of its charm. Home cooking isn’t trying to be fancy, quite the opposite. Familiarity, reassurance and reliability are the cornerstone of its charm.
Out of the home, this characteristically feminine type of cooking is almost impossible to find. It’s not about the gender of the kitchen personnel. Even in kitchens with female chefs, restaurant cooking – for which read male cooking – takes over. The key difference here is that the male (restaurant) school of cooking is predicated on advance “prep” of ingredients, then last-minute cooking and assembly. Timing is critical and presentation is a preoccupation. Home cooking is more laid back. You mainly prepare it in one continuous time frame and either serve it at an appointed time, or reheat it as necessary. It’s not about looks, but taste.
Sikhs know all about homely food. In India, every Sikh place of worship (gurdwara) has a kitchen (langar) that serves simple, nutritious and free food, both to those attending and to visitors. At Punjab’n De Rasoi in Leith, the food isn’t free, but it is extremely cheap and brought to you by Sikh women serving the traditional home cooking of the Punjab.
The cafe got off the ground with a grant from the Scottish Government’s Third Sector Enterprise Fund, aiming to empower Sikh women. Eating there, it’s obvious that these ladies are immensely capable. The food is a treat. After a great lunch, I found myself remembering the words of that old song, “I’ve got a granny, a Hindustani Granny” and in particular, the line “When she feeds me chapatis, curried mince and tatties, I’m vindaloo all day”. The women running Punjab’n De Rasoi are young and dynamic, and most certainly not grannies, but they did send us away purring with contentment.
We could taste the feminine touch in the pakoras and samosas, which were in another league from the greasy, heavy offerings that often bear that name. The cod pakoras – ask for Sikh rather than Scottish levels of spice and chilli – were a dream: feather-light batter, stiff with fresh, firm flakes of fish. The potato and onion filling in the samosas was green with fresh coriander leaves and encased in delightfully friable pastry. Both came with home-made chutney, which was hot, fruity and not too sweet.
In the daal, too often an indeterminate, underpowered sludge in other restaurants, split peas had been seasoned with a lovely fresh “tarka” oil. A potato and aubergine curry managed to be positively light and aromatic with spices. First-rate chapatis and perfumed, free-flowing, impeccably dry, unsticky rice showed years of experience.
The biggest delight of all was the fish curry. I’m not sure I’ve eaten one better. It was top-loaded with generous amounts of harbour-fresh fish. The spicing – cumin, fresh chilli, lots of turmeric – along with fresh tomato and coriander, really added to the fish in a punchy way, without masking its essential taste. An unbelievable bargain at £5.25 – and this is one of the dearer items on the menu.
I usually find gulab jamun way too sweet and often pretty leaden. But at Punjab’n De Rasoi, they are airy, spongy pillows, bathed in a light-touch syrup. But by way of comfort food, this was eclipsed by the Punjabi dessert speciality, gajrela. Basically, you cook grated carrot very slowly with milk, cream, raw (palm) sugar, cloves, cinnamon and cardamom, raisins and nuts, until it turns into a gorgeous, gooey, sticky mass. Now this is what you want your mum to serve you when your appetite is tentatively returning after an illness. It slips down a treat.
Punjab’n De Rasoi is a bright, functional but cheery space. You can take £15 cooking classes here, and they’re not women-only either. I’m tempted, but to be honest, these Sikh ladies cook so well, I’m not sure I want to learn.
