Brasserie Zedel

Chris Corbin & Jeremy King are for good reason held in high regard in the London restaurant world. They are credited with bringing us Sheekey's, The Ivy, The Caprice.  Their group, Rex Restaurant Associates, currently owns The Wolseley, The Delaunay and new kid: Brasserie Zedel.  They have two further projects on the go, Colbert, a brasserie and The Beaumont, a hotel.

Anything strike you about that list?  It's long.  Five establishments and two men.  Two men famed for being hands on, always around, keeping an eye on things making their guests feel special.  Don't underestimate how much their guests want to feel special.  They want the reassurance of people realising that they have managed to get one of the most-wanted tables in town.  Even better if one of proprietors of these evergreen deluxe joints comes over to say hello.

So, how to maintain that level of intimacy and quality over five venus? Ah, well that assumes the plan is to maintain that intimacy and quality.  Based on my lunch at Brasserie Zedel, it's not.

My impression is that Zedel is the restaurant in the Corbin and King stable that allows the masses to say "I've eaten there".  It is I fear, a place for tourists and the bridge and tunnel brigade.  I know I should be shot for using such a horribly snobby term, but it's true.

I've seen some reviews that have reported in some wonder at just how cheap it is.  Barely £4 for some starters or main courses.  The cynic in me says it's a reflection of a need for people to justify return visits and possibly, just possibly, lower quality ingredients.

Despite the aforementioned skill of Corbin and King in creating restaurants people want to eat in, I'm a bit ambivalent about their restaurants.  I do not like The Wolseley.  Over the past couple of years I have not had a decent meal there.  The service is ok, but the food is poor.  They seemed unable to poach an egg that was not either raw or had the consistency of a rubber ball.

However, I love The Delaunay.  It consistently hits the right spot of good food, great service and a nice space.

One of the things that really struck me in Danny Meyer's book Setting the Table, was his obsession with hospitality.  Meyer, founder of the Union Square Hospitality Group which owns New York stalwarts such as Gramercy Tavern and The Shake Shack, knows a thing or two about restaurants. And until Zedel, I would have said that Corbin and King were utterly focused on hospitality as well.

First off it's remarkable how impersonal the whole place is.  As you walk in, there's this weird tiny cafe, with no one in it. Then to get to the main restaurant and bars you walk down and round and down and round without anyone or anything to confirm you're heading in the right direction.

You find your way to the dining room because of the din. It's enormous, with massively high ceilings and a vast cavernous space.  And it's very very bright, weirdly so given how deep you are and also they're good at the lighting, as both The Delaunay and Wolseley testify.

The room is pretty gross.  Not just in the German sense.  There is a lot of marble (fake?), wood pannelling (from Ikea?) and gilding.  

On to the meal.  The menu is ok, but strikes me as odd that it is all in French, with some explanations in English. Stick to one language or another and given we're in the UK, let's make it English.  What with almost cartoon-like vastness of the room, it feels like Disneyland.

After sitting down, it took about 25 minutes and a bit of handwaving to get attention to be served.  I started with a herring salad and went on to have a grilled seabass.  My spicy virgin mary was ordered but never arrived.

The herring was a good piece of fish, but it had been molested by a very oily potato salad.  Herring is oily enough, it doesn't really need much in the way of oily accompaniments.  I know that filets de hareng, pommes à l’huile is a classic, but this did not seem to be an effective execution.  The potatoes added some starch, but not much flavour.  Frankly a traditional potato salad, with a dash of mayo and lemon juice would have been a much better contrast to the already oily fish.

I'd been warned when ordering my seabass that it was a whole fish.  Fine, happy with that I've no problem filleting it.  What turns up is, as warned, a whole fish.  As I go to work demonstrating my fine dexterity it's clear that it's already been filleted.  I found it (perhaps unduly) disconcerting that this entire fish turns up, including head and a lopped off tail, but there's no skeleton.  What was inside was some overcooked fennel. The fish itself was flaccid and lacked any taste. It may have been grilled, but the skin was soggy.

It was served with what they described as pilau rice.  It seemed to me to be just ordinary white basmati rice.  Fine but dull.

I ordered a side of tomato and shallot salad.  The tomatoes looked pretty enough, lots of different hues and sizes, but lacked taste.  It had none of the sweetness of tomatoes or slight kick of oil and vinegar that you get at say Sheekey's with their version.  It was this dish more than any other that made me question the quality of the ingredients.  I was reminded of those multi-coloured boxes of tomatoes you can get in any supermarket.  They look good, but lack flavour.

In a state of some despondency I needed something to revivify me and so ordered an espresso.  It was grim.  It didn't look like an espresso, there was no crema and it had that horrible, over-extracted taste that I'd hoped had been banished from London restaurants.

I wonder whether Corbin and King are genuinely proud of Brasserie Zedel.  I'm sure it will be a financial success, but that alone has never appeared to be their driving motivation.  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for restaurants making money, they are businesses and need to make a profit.  I'm well aware of the problems of profitablity at the top end.  But this just felt so cynical and so much like the Corbin and King diffusion range.

Google Maps

Brasserie Zedel, 20 Sherwood Street, London, W1F 7ED, UK
Tel: +44 (0)20 7734 4888

What others think

Zoe Williams - It's vulgar to harp on about the money, but at these prices it's churlish to complain. The quality is solidly good, and the atmosphere swanky. Nevertheless, I feel that they're not giving themselves enough freedom. Even the slightest kink or experimentation would liven things up a bit.
Matthew Fort -  Zedel is a dream of Parisian brasseries as they never were, bigger, grander, more theatrical, dare I say better.

Smoked salmon gratin dauphinoise

I don’t think I’m being immodest by saying that generally I’m an upstanding kind of guy.  But every so often I like to go off the rails, I like to do something bad, wrong and downright dirty.  Usually that involves food.

Gratin dauphoinise is one of those dishes I love to eat but can never justify ordering, let alone making it because of the stodge.  That is until someone leads me astray and tells me I can make it. Well if I’m told I can do something then that’s fine isn’t it?  According to Supper Club, Kerstin Rodgers' (aka Ms Marmitelover) book and host of The Underground Restaurant, her salmon dauphoinise is a perfect summer dish.  Well that’s perfect because it’s summer - if served with a salad - it’s healthy - and a glass of crisp white wine - for essential lubrication, obviously.  So I am easily led astray. 

I served this as a main course on just such a wet, summer’s evening, with a salad of baby spinach leaves and a walnut oil dressing (walnut oil, white wine vinegar, diced garlic, salt and pepper).  I fear though that following it with Eton Mess might have been a bit too much cream for one night.

I should say, I’ve tweaked the recipe a bit.  She recommends it being no more than three layers deep, I did about five in my favourite dish.  I also used a bit more smoked salmon than she recommends.  In her recipe she says 250g, I ended up using 300g.

Serves 4 as a main-course (you could however serve it as a side)

• 4 large baking potatoes (e.g. Maris Pipers or King Edwards)
• 1 clove of garlic
• Butter
• 300g smoked salmon
• 2 fresh bay leaves
• 600ml double cream

Preheat the oven to 180C.  I’d recommend sitting the dish you are using for this recipe in a roasting tray or similar.  If it spills in the oven, it can get messy.

Peel the potatoes, then slice them very thinly - I use a mandoline.  Alternatively, if you’ve got a food processor there’s a good chance it comes with a slicing blade.

Slice the garlic and rub your baking dish with it.  Throw away the clove.

Grease the dish with the butter.

Arrange a layer of potatoes on the bottom.  Kerstin recommends a fish scale pattern - basically, overlap them around the dish.

Salt and pepper the layer.  Not too much salt as you’re about to add smoked salmon.

Add a layer of smoked salmon.  My layers of smoked salmon did not cover the potato entirely, rather about 75% of it.

Then add another layer of potato, salt and pepper, smoked-salmon and so on.  Topping out with potato.

Don’t fill it right to the top with potato as you need space for the cream.

Salt and pepper the top layer of potato and lay the bay leaves on top.

Pour over the cream - you will end up with a generous amount of cream covering your dish.  

Cover with silverfoil and place in the oven for 30 minutes.  Remove the foil.  I found it needed a further 25 minutes but note that Kerstin recommends only 15 minutes.

Skewer the potatoes to check there is some give, assuming there is serve.  If there's not, put it back in the oven for a bit.

London 2012

Just over seven years ago I started to get excited that London had been awarded the games.  Two days later, some arseholes decided to bring their insanity to our streets.

Well, seven years on here we are.  We are still stalked by fear, but let's focus on the joy of the games.

This should be a wonderful couple of weeks - kicked off by Bradley Wiggins' stunning victory of Le Tour - let's all enjoy it.

Shrimpy's

The British national trait of self-deprecation is way over the top.  The weather isn't always terrible (despite current appearances), not all trains are delayed and the food is pretty good.  We like to think we're particularly bad at big infrastructure projects, 'oh the tubes, where's the air conditioning?', 'ach the M25 is a nightmare'.  

Au contraire, recently as a nation we've pulled our finger out and delivered some pretty special things. Exhibit A is the redevelopment of Kings Cross.  I'm not commenting on the social impact of the redevelopment (for more on this it is worth watching BBC1's brilliant The Secret History of our Streets episode on the Caledonian Road) rather, the impressive use of land.  First there was the new St Pancras terminal and the redevelopment of Gilbert Scott's stunning St Pancras Chambers, with the soaring train shed behind it.  Now the redeveloped Kings Cross station has been opened, with its stunning lattice roof and cavernous ticket hall.  Behind it is the redevelopment of land going almost the entire length of York Way and straddling the Regents Canal.  As part of that renovation they've ensured a healthy injection of cool with the relocation of Central St Martin’s School of Design from its original home on Charing Cross Road.  Also there, on an otherwise unremarkable path is Eat.St - a collective of food trucks.

Back to the Regents Canal and York Way. Let’s not beat around the bush, for most of the time London has been a major city, it has been a bit of a shit hole.  I always got a thrill driving down York Way wondering if I was about to be ambushed by some modern day highwayman.  It never happened, but the soulless, vast wasteland made it a distinct possibility.

The canal is nice in places, but is also rather stinky and fetid in others.  As I learned while attending a couple of conferences recently at Kings Place.  It is opposite Kings Place, in what was a BP petrol station, and is now called the Filling Station, that Shrimpy’s currently exists.  I say currently because it is one of these longish-term pop-ups like Roganics, just popping up for a couple of years.

Perhaps it is because of this impermanence that they try to make the whole experience last longer by making accessing the place so difficult.  Constructed from what looks like corrugated plastic, the entrance is cunningly located around the back, overlooking the canal, not by the road.  Unhelpfully there are no signs, smoke signals or even smells (beyond the canal) to guide you along.

The restaurant itself is tiny.  I would guess that at the tables they cannot sit many more than 35 people in any given sitting, with about another 8 or so at the bar.  Not having booked I perched at the bar.

Being owned and run by the team behind Bistrotheque - who let's not forget also ran one of the first pop-ups in this current wave, The Reindeer - it is very cool.  It's all creams, soft lighting and colourful doodles on the wall.  It feels like you're walking into your idealised New York restaurant for brunch. Staff are dressed in chef's jackets that makes them look like a throw-back to Oslo Court.

Their natty attire does not seem to equate to attentive service.  I was one of only three people at the bar and it was about ten minutes before anyone spotted I was there. And I’m not of the size where it is easy to miss me. Waiting did give me the opportunity to watch what was going on and it was clear that this was a very trendy crowd, or at least a crowd who remembered being trendy at some point in the late 90s.  Service seemed friendly (especially if your hair was sufficiently distressed and your lip-stick a livid hue) but was also rather hectic and disorganised.  

There was an air of fun to the room however and I hoped I was about to be let in on it.  Unfortunately the lurching start set the tone and lunch consistently felt like it was slipping a gear.  

When I eventually got a menu, water was poured into my glass (good), the water was tepid (not good). The Virgin Mary I ordered however was spicy as requested and well chilled. So they can't add ice to water, but can add horseradish to tomato juice.

A cheese and pimento toasty, from the snack menu is a delicious gooey, lightly spiced delight.  Perfect ballast.  If I have any complaint it's that it's not big enough - or perhaps I just wolfed it down far too quickly.  And then it came stuttering to a halt again with the smoked trout salad.  It was so utterly bland not much more can be said about it than it comprised of pale fish and green salad.  The trout lacked flavour and it was hard to see what the point of the dish is.  

There was a tuna tostada.  I felt a twinge of guilt ordering this, given the problems with tuna and felt even more guilt when I ate it as the fish, like the trout, died in vain.  There was none of the freshness and lightness that can make good Mexican food such a pleasure. This was just some chopped up protein on a crunchy corn crisp.

I finished with the salt cod croquettes.  They were delicious - nice and crispy, not greasy, with a good flavour of the preserved fish.  The croquettes were ably assisted by a delicious, but suspiciously white aioli.  At the least, it ensured the meal ended on a high - relative to the lows.  

There is a lot of buzz around Shrimpy's and as far as can tell, that is because the reviewers forgive the crap food for the buzz.  None of the problems I had are catastrophic and perhaps once the restaurant settles down things will improve.  But this restaurant is not setup by newbies.  There must have been extensive menu testing before opening.  I can only surmise this is more about the cool than the food. I’m all for a dose of cool, but in the end for me, it's always about the food.

Google Maps

Shrimpy’s, King's Cross Filling Station, Good's Way, London, N1C 4UR  N1C 4UR

Tel: +44 (0)20 8880 6111 

What others think

Marina O'Loughlin - "Yes, yes, I know I haven’t got to the food yet. That’s because, despite loving the restaurant, it’s the least successful element.”
AA Gill - "A hot salsa was hot and the tuna tostada was as forgettable as the Christmas sales. The octopus was like chewing condoms out of the canal."

 

My Dining Hell: Twenty Ways to Have a Lousy Night Out

It may be the height of vanity, but I have always wanted to appear in a book. It was a simple wish I thought would never be fulfilled.  I never really gave much consideration to whether it would be fiction or not, I'd be the hero or villian.  

It never dawned on me I might be named in a compilation of a restaurant reviewer's worst meals.  That wouldn't be great. And yet my dream has come true in My Dining Hell: Twenty Ways To Have a Lousy Night Out, Jay Rayner's latest offering.

I think it must have been vanity that drove me to such inky dreams because even with this ignomy heaped upon me, I am still thrilled to be there.  It was with a tingling sense of doom that I came to the Blooms review.  I had been guffawing at the awfulness of his meals at some terribly misconceived restaurants, and then it dawned on me that I had been with him on that fateful night in Golders Green.

In the introduction to the book Jay notes the perverse delight of bad reviews.  He is right, they make for good reading.  Perhaps that is because we're not the ones doing the eating, or the paying, we can vicariously enjoy someone else's disaster.

So much comedy is reliant on cruelty, but for it to be funny rather than gratuitous takes careful scripting and delivery.  A bit like a review.  In this little compilation of his Observer reviews, Rayner delivers.

No doubt, if you're a restaurant on the receiving end, you're unlikely to get the humour and will forever be haunted by this appalling critique of your love and joy.  Although that assumes the owners of the disasters care. 

Every one of the twenty reviews has a common feature, bad food.  Service, decor, location all vary in quality and Jay's appetite for them, but if you serve him bad food, prepare to be ripped apart.  And so it should be.  It takes a very particular masochist to willingly hand over money for an awful meal.

A word on the format.  I think that some will complain about only being able to buy this as an ebook.  Others will wryly note that they can get all Jay's reviews for free from the Observer, so why fork over £1.99.  To address the former, no doubt it is because you can get them for free that they are chosing to limit the cost of publishing this compendium.  And to the latter misers, I'd point out that journalism costs and this is Jay's career so fair enough he should be paid for it.  I assume that the Guardian Media Group get some sort of cut as they must own the copyright to the reviews, but I also assume that the sums of money involved are not huge.  A feature of journalism today.

So don't moan.  Download the book and enjoy the fact that you didn't have to eat those meals, but someone with a decent way with words did.  If you are a restaurant owner then read and learn the simple lesson that if you serve your customers good food, you will avoid being mentioned in volume two.

Not just a chicken bagel recipe

I was asked to write a piece for The Forward's Jew & The Carrot blog on my favourite Shabbat meal.  As I say in my piece, they tend to be fairly uninventive.  I wanted to write about chopped liver, but turns out they already had that covered.  So instead, I turned to an old standby that is a pre-dinner snack, rather than dinner itself, heaven forfend.  Perhaps it is somewhat denigrating to refer to it as a snack.  

--------------------

This was originally posted on The Jew & The Carrot.

Being from solid Ashkenazi stock, Friday night dinners invariably meant several ways with chicken: chopped, boiled and roasted. Although it was the least glamorous — the boiled chicken — that most excited me.

Chicken soup is a much loved dish and I’m always partial to a bowl or two, especially with my mother’s kneidlach. But it was the by-product that got my taste buds going.

I shouldn’t call it the by-product because the chicken is the main event, everyone just forgets about it and goes straight to the diluted version — what is soup if not a watery take on a solid? Chicken soup is genius in so many ways, but particularly because you can remove the primary ingredient and the soup is in no way diminished and the chicken tastes delicious.

I realized this curious fact early on in life and it led to a pleasurable pre-Shabbat ritual. Returning home from school I would sneak into the kitchen and sidle over to the large glass rectangular dish that contained the chicken. It would sit there looking somewhat wan. The skin had probably fallen off in the pot and other than boiling water and some aromatics, there was nothing to give it a hint of color. But I could readily overlook the aesthetic shortcomings. I was focused on a sandwich and no good sandwich will ever get mistaken for an oil painting.

Ideally the chicken would be warm but not hot and sitting in some broth that is mostly liquid, but at points is quivering into jelly. I would take aim at the breast, barely having to exert any pressure as the meat gladly parted company with the carcass.

Once enough chicken had been liberated I’d root around the bread bin to find a fresh sesame-seed bagel. Still with the merest hint of warmth from the bakers oven, they were nutty from the sesame, had a hint of sweet and salt and the all important features of a bagel, a chewy crust, but a forgiving center.

Split in two I would now be at a crossroads. The only one in this process. Either I would go down the purist route or I’d pimp my sandwich a bit. The purist route would be to pile the chicken onto the bagel, add a little squeeze of ketchup and generous dousing of chicken soup to ensure continued moistness, taking full advantage of a bagel’s rigidity.

The more outre version was to add half of a thinly sliced avocado, a dab of mayo and a couple of spritzes of Tabasco to the purist.

I like to think of this wonder as the kosher lobster roll. (I say that never having eaten a lobster roll.)

At this stage I was ready to retire to a quiet corner of the kitchen to contemplate the Shabbat meal that was just around the corner and ponder a question that had been vexing me for years: why was I never as hungry as everyone else when the chicken soup, chopped liver, roast chicken, roast potatoes and crumble made their post-Kiddush procession onto the table? I’m still wondering.

Makes 1 sandwich

• 1 breast chicken, taken from a bird recently used to make chicken soup
• 1 sesame bagel
• Tomato ketchup
• 1 tablespoon of broth from the chicken soup

If you’re going for the pimped version

• Half an avocado sliced
• Tabasco to taste
• Mayonnaise

Take a fresh bagel slice it. Ideally it is still a bit warm from the baker. If you don’t have anything that fresh, then put it in the oven to warm it. Don’t toast it. This is not a sandwich that requires crunch or crumbs.

Peel the breast away from the carcass. You can use knife and fork if you insist, but I prefer pulling it away with my fingers as it comes away in nice clumps. Remove any skin that is lingering on he chicken.

Take one bagel half and compose as you see fit. I tend to put ketchup first, then chicken, then avocado, mayo and Tabasco.

Pour the broth over the other half of the bagel so that the bread soaks up the liquid and close the sandwich.

Eat in quiet contemplation awaiting the arrival of Shabbat and your dinner.

Debating the future of kosher food in London

This was originally posted on The Jew & The Carrot.

Fressing and kibbitzing. Eating and talking. It’s what we Jews do so well, which is why on an unseasonably cold Sunday, the beautiful Ivy House, HQ of the London Jewish Cultural Centre, was heaving with over 500 people for this year’s Gefiltefest.

Setup in 2010, Gefiltefest — a British celebration of all things food and Jewish related — is now in its third year. Organized by the perennially cheerful Michael Leventhal, it is the ultimate Jewish food conference across the pond. Warmed by fragrant samosas topped with chili and yogurt made by a collective of North African women who call themselves Spice Caravan, people gathered for a mix of talks, panel debates and stalls more or less all focusing on the wonder that is food. Topics ranged from the silly — making edible portraits for kids — to the more serious like the panel debate I hosted on the future of kosher food.

The other panelists were all kosher restaurateurs, of one shade or another. Kenny Arfin runs Bevis Marks The Restaurant, one of London’s smarter kosher restaurants; Elliot Hornblass is one of the backers of The Deli West One, a New York deli style restaurant and Amy Beilin is the force of nature behind Kosher Roast, London’s first kosher pop-up (as far as I’m aware).

The first question I posed was whether it matters if there is a future for kosher food. With the Jewish population in the UK at under 300,000 realistically how many people are religious enough to care? And even if they do care, are there sufficient numbers to make it commercially viable.

The conclusion was that there is a future because even if the market is small, there are enough people who care passionately to keep it going. Where the panel had differing views was on the cause and cure of the current stasis in the market.

There was consensus that suppliers and religious kosher authorities don’t help the situation. One example given was chickens. There's only one major supplier in the UK for kosher chickens, meaning limited price competition. Similarly, there are only a handful of kosher certifying authorities and they err towards a conservative approach.

These are not uncommon complaints from kosher restaurateurs, but one area of difference among the panel was the role of the customer. Kenny felt that the customer invariably is conservative and expects traditional Ashkenazi fare when they eat out, reflecting views of what “Jewish” food is. At an event he recently catered, he tried to serve pareve cheese on top of hamburgers, but these were widely rejected.

Amy took a different line, she felt that her experience showed the kosher customer wants more innovation, that there is an expectation of good food, clever marketing and a decent drinks menu. Surly waiters and meat with the consistency of shoe leather — two features of sorely missed Blooms restaurant — are a thing of the past. If she’s right the kosher consumer is catching up with their secular cousins. At long bleeding last.

If questions from the floor are anything to go by, Amy’s view, supported by Elliot are a fair reflection the London Jewish community. Kosher keeping Jews are clamoring for their food to catch up with their values. It’s no longer good enough for food to be kosher — provenance, appearance and flavor have entered the kosher lexicon.

It will be interesting to see whether the market changes over the next year and by Gefiltefest 2013 we are talking about how the public has at long last got what it wants.