Silverbrow on Food

Paradise

This is supposed to be a review of Paradise, an Indian restaurant in South Hampstead. 

With a name like that you're setting high expectations.  Whereas calling a food business that specialises in gluten, wheat and dairy free products OK Foods is an excellent example of expectation management.  

Back to Paradise.  I'd heard so many rave reviews from friends and family, I had to try it.  Might there be a Tayyabs lurking in a bucolic corner of North London?  No, unfortunately not. 

But it is a perfectly decent Indian.  The food was very nice, but pretty standard curry house fair.  The room is airy, the wallpaper is modern flock, the staff are lovely and attentive and the food is tasty.  My vegetable biryani was a very close approximation to one I had at Dishoom last week - and that's no bad thing.  This was a good or at least solid meal.  

That's all I have to say on the meal.  The restaurant is fine, but it's a long way from a must visit.  So why bother with a write-up?  Because I want to parlay into an amusing vignette. 

It's one of those stories that the subject thinks is brilliant, and the rest of the world yawns.  It's my blog, so prepare to stifle.

Father of Silverbrow and I were standing next to our table, waiting for the staff to finish clearing the previous diners' detritus before we sat down.  My eyes wandered across the room to the door, where a tall blond man seemed to catch my eye, smiled and mouthed "four" whilst holding up four fingers to his chest in a Tic Tac moment.

I realised it's none other than spinner almighty, Alastair Campbell, with family in tow and looked behind me to see who he's talking to.  There's no-one there.  I looked back at him and this time, assuming he's speaking to a dullard he says quite loudly "I'd like a table for four please".

The penny drops.  Quick as a flash I point out I'm not actually a waiter, but am also waiting for my table. 

Hilarity and laughter follow.  I gave good tweet, invoking both a current advertising campaign and a bit of self deprecating humour.  I remain desperate for him to reply apologising for the incident (he may have said sorry in the restaurant but we'll overlook that, I want it in writing) so I can claim to be the only man in London to get Campbell to apologise for anything.

I told you it was a brilliant story.  Wakey wakey.

Google Maps

Paradise, 49 South End Road, Hampstead, London, NW3 2QB, UK
Tel: +44 (0)20 7794 6314

Lilith

As with Sima, I'd heard about Lilith, a French influenced restaurant in Tel Aviv, on Daniel Rogov's food forum and had read with interest his review.  He clearly enjoys the place and regularly refers to it as an excellent restaurant that happens to be kosher.

I appreciate some might be a bit perplexed at this. It is fair to assume that in Israel, given the sheer quantity of kosher restaurants, many must be excellent.  Sadly making such an assumption is incorrect.  There are many good kosher restaurants in the bottom and mid-range but the country's cup does not overflow at the top.  I'm not sure why, other than Tel Aviv is at the forefront of the country's dining scene where it's easier to find something porcine than it is to find a kosher restaurant.  I am absuing only a modicum of poetic license.

Which is why I was excited at the prospect of eating at Lilith, I want more than anything to find a really good restaurant that just happens to be kosher.  Unfortunately, my expectations were not met.

The room is lovely (once you walk through the office block to reach it) the service was impeccable. But the food was generally a real let down.

It started well enough with some deliciously smooth babaganoush and a stunning fruity olive oil. But those high notes were short lived.

I started with the chicken's livers.  I was intrigued to see what a supposedly very good kosher restaurant would do with an ingredient at the (stereotypical) heart of Jewish cooking. 

It was quite amazing.  They managed to both overcook and undercook it.  The overcooked lobes were chalky, the undercooked ones were slimy and made me feel rather queasy. The toast the livers were sitting on was burnt.  The accompanying caramelised banana was quite a pleasant touch, but not sufficiently so to rescue the dish.

For main course I could not ignore the special of duck confit. I cannot remember ever having eaten it and assuming the starter was an aberration I figured this was going to be special.  I've heard so many people wax lyrical about this gallic speciality and have read recipes avidly.  I find it hard to believe it's meant to be as uttlery tasteless as the version I tried.

In addition to the confited leg, other bits duck were on the plate, including a lobe of something doing a poor impression of foie gras.  The meat sat on top of two asaparagus spears that were beaten into submission by overly sweet purees of various fruits and pumpkin. The asparagus vs sauce concept underscored some wide-of-the-mark thinking in the kitchen. 

Mrs S had pasta.  It wasn't bad, it was as I recall perfectly fine.  But it was vegetarian, the ingredients were good.  I don't really have a lot else to add.

Dessert of sorbets was similarly dull.  Which is a bit of a disgrace, along the lines of the chicken liver massacre, because with the prohibition of mixing meat and dairy, desserts are the hardest course for kosher meat restaurants.  Sorbets should be their ideal dessert, it should be simple for them to take some beautiful fruit, make a syrup, combine, churn and freeze.  Instead we received some mildly flavoured crushed ice.

And I'm gutted, because I wanted to enjoy this meal and revel in its deliciousness. Yes the room is beautiful, the service was good and the clientele were glamorous.  But none of that makes up for disappointing food. 

Google Maps

Lilith, 4 Weizman, Tel Aviv, Israel
Tel: +972 (03) 6091331

What others think

Daniel Rogov - All of which gives no cause whatsoever for complaint as Lilith remains the very best kosher restaurant in the country and certainly of interest to sophisticated diners even when kashrut is not important. (UPDATE I've amended this reference and link following RotemAR's comment below.)
Frommer's - Lilith combines quality ingredients with a kitchen that's always interesting but not overblown with forced inventiveness.

Sima

Gizzard is not a lovely word.  There's an onomatopoeic quality to it: it sounds gristly, surely it's not going to be good eating.  The same must be true of spleen. I'm no anatomist but doesn't the spleen do something fairly important with blood? So again, not something you crave to see on your plate.

But what if you fry them, maybe add some hearts (depends whose heart of course), a bit of liver, some diced lamb.  That's sounding a bit better.  And then fried onion, the sine qua non of Jewish anti-cardio/Ashkenazi cooking.  And then, and then some spices that no-one can ever quite pin down.  Well then you have a dish that makes for great eating.  And so it was when we had dinner at Sima.

Silverbrowess is not as obsessed with food as I am and frankly finds my 'hobby' more than a little frustrating at times.  Especially when we are on holiday and I plan entire trips of several thousand miles around meals I would like to eat.  So for the sake of marital peace I've calmed down a bit. I've got wise to the fact that she wasn't delighted to spend her 30th birthday in a car driving down to Cornwall for lunch that we were two hours late for - but that was fantastic. 

Now, I do it all surreptitiously.  I plan and organise where I want to eat (Google Maps' My Maps feature is perfect for anal restaurant planning) and forget to mention it to Mrs S.  Then when the inevitable question of breakfast, lunch or dinner rolls around, I can nonchalantly suggest somewhere, as though I've just picked it out of thin air.  Whereas the truth is that my anticipation at eating there has been building for weeks, I'm about to pop and here's my chance to get my way.

It was during such planning, in particular on Daniel Rogov's Israeli focused food & wine forum, that I had been alerted to Sima and the restaurant's particular speciality, the Jerusalem Grill. 

Although Rogov advocates eating the grill in a pita with chips out on the street, being with Mrs S and Silverbrowlette meant sitting in the back of the restaurant, with other families out for some reasonably priced grilled meat. 

Instead of chips we had mujadarah, a Middle Eastern rice dish laden with lentils and fried onions (again).  We also had some sides of salads.  You need a little bit of fresh stuff to cut through the fat of the food.

The Jerusalem Grill was sublime, easily as good as billed.  There was a depth of flavour I'm having trouble describing in words.  People think that offal is an acquired taste and the ferrous, bloody quality of this offal overload is thankfully a long way from bland.  The meat was balanced with the sweetness of the onions and some subtle heat from the spices.  Mrs S is not the generally drawn to offal but had little difficulty helping me seeing off the very large plate of food.  Which reminds me, the portions are massive and with the obligatory salads that all restaurants in Israel serve when you sit down, plus a couple more we ordered, one main course between two really is enough.

A word on Sima's location.  It is next to Mahane Yehuda, Jerusalem's main food market.  On a Friday the place is brilliant bedlam.  As the increasingly religious city of Jerusalem prepares itself for Sabbath, a day when shopping, cooking and much besides is forbidden, Mahane Yehuda is where Jerusalem comes to prepare.  I imagine an early lunch at Sima on a Friday would be pretty special.  I say early because everything shuts down just after lunch in preparation for Shabbat. 

Google Maps

Sima, 82 Agrippas Street, Jerusalem, Israel
Tel: +972 (0) 2 623 3002

What others think

Daniel Rogov - ...this is marvelous fare and a huge portion of the truly excellent me'urav yerushalmi packed into a pita, and served with small but adequate side-dishes of really good coleslaw, pickles, olives, Turkish salad and a soft drink or beer will cost well under ten dollars, surely one of the best values for money to be found anywhere on the planet.

Pierre Koffmann at Selfridges

I've thought long and hard about whether or not to write up tonight's dinner because frankly the place was overun by some very good bloggers and a very good reviewer and I'm not sure what more I can add to what they will inevitably write. UPDATE: See the comment below, turns out Jay was there for fun as well.

However, I've decided to because I want to make a point that I assume, although can't be certain, the others will make.  The food was excellent, but most importantly the evening was great fun. 

Maybe it was because I was taking my Mum out for dinner, perhaps it was the venue, a pimped-up marquee on a balcony at Selfridges.  Maybe it was constant shuddering of the floor - not sure if it was the wind, or the aircon - that made us question the safety of the venture.  Maybe it was the service that didn't quite live up to the food.  Or maybe it was the sheer delight of those eating there to be tucking in to Koffmann's scoff once again.  Whatever it was, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.

After having a chat with Pierre's lovely partner Claire, I figured out it was the best part of 15 years ago that I ate at Tante Claire.  I don't remember anything about the meal other than the wedgwood blue walls - a feature that has been replicated at Selfridges - not that Claire had noticed until I pointed it out.

She said that one of her favourite things was to stand in the bar and listen to the hum of the restaurant.  She was enjoying herself.  If the deft touches on the plate were anything to go by, so was the kitchen.  My starter of leek terrine was summer on a plate - sweet, light and carefree.  My cod was good but not exceptional.  My pistachio souffle and ice-cream was outstanding.  Shame about the false alarm of a hair lurking - turned out it was a bit of a pastry brush. I'd have thought modern technology could overcome such issues.

Sometimes we forget the dining is about pleasure and therefore fun.  Koffmann's got it right at Selfridges.  There's little doubt he's looking to return to a full time kitchen after the hiccups at Brasserie St Jacques and guest spots elsewhere.  If he can bottle the pleasure factor and food of this quality, he's on to a winner. 

It reminds me that that was what Ramsay's shtick was in the early days: serve great food and keep the punters happy.  It's not a quadratic equation, but a sum that is nonetheless easy to get wrong.

Google Maps

Pierre Koffmann at Selfridges, 400  Oxford Street, London, W1A 1AB UK
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7318 7778

Not letting sleeping dogs lie

To rehash an old argument, if a blogger had got a top chef to cook for them for the sole purpose of writing a review on a restaurant that isn't yet in existence, it would have caused a right hoo-ha. There is no way any of us could replicate this meal as it is a one off specifically requested by Giles so he could write a review.  It also reignites the hoary issue of the anonymity of reviewers. 

Nonetheless, it did suitably whet my appetite for my imminent dinner at La Tainte Claire so I guess everyone wins: Giles for getting the master's attention and what sounds like a fantastic meal, the restaurant for the PR and the diner for being on tenterhooks. 

It reminds me that yes reviewers on national papers are in a priveleged position and no they may not experience the same meal as us.  But it doesn't make their copy worthless or any less interesting.

Ginger & White

Hampstead.  As place names go, it's pretty evocative: money, culture, the Heath, swimming ponds, miscreant ministers, European fishermen.

Yet this money and culture does not buy good food.  Jin Kichi does fairly good sushi and The Horseshoe is a solid gastropub.  But the majority of the restaurants in 'the village' are chains, ditto for the cafes. 

I can't help but feel ever so slightly embarrassed eating in Hampstead.  It's like farting at a dinner party.  Whilst the act itself might make you feel a bit better, you feel dirty and sullied and frankly you've darkened an otherwise enjoyable occasion.  Restaurants are Hampstead's festering, suppurating wart that lie hidden beneath the Hermes scarf.

It was with a high degree of certainty therefore that I was able to argue with Gemma at BouTea (very good tea by the way, in Covent Garden, not Hampstead) that no, there wasn't a really good new coffee shop in Perrin's Walk that sold handmade cakes and Square Mile Coffee.  I pointed out that she was confusing a rather non-descript greasy spoon on Perrin's Walk and Gail's, the very commercial purveyor-of-excellent-chelsea-buns on Hampstead High Street. 

Turns out Gemma was spot-on.  It's not often I'm so catastraphocially wrong and it's rather depressing when I am.  But she was right.

Ginger & White is, it has to be said, an almost perfect, relaxing, if rather self-consciously trendy cafe on Perrin's Walk.  And they serve Square Mile coffee and Montezuma chocolate. 

Writing this I'm suddenly struck by a mixture of guilt and reticence.  I realise I've only had toast and coffee there - lots of both, but still that's it - and a bit of yoghurt and fruit.  Can I give the place a fair outing?  Maybe the cakes taste like poo.  The home-smoked baked beans might just be Heinz a la fag. 

But the coffee was very good and the toast was pretty fine as toast goes.  And there's the peanut butter.  It's homemade.  They add some honey.  And kids turn away now, it's FUCKING AMAZING.  Seriously good.  There is no bread on this earth that can't be improved with lashings of the stuff.  Actually, sod the toast and ignore anyone watching you, just use your pinkie.

I imagine making peanut butter is not tricky, but how many people go to the effort?  It says a lot that the Ginger & White bods do, almost enough to allow me to stop here and ignore the fact I haven't worked my way through the menu.

At last, there is somewhere in Hampstead that is not an embarrassment. Sir Arthur would have approved.

Google maps

Ginger & White, 4a Perrins Court, London, NW3 1QS, UK
Tel: +44 (0)20 7431 9098

The Bull & Last

Thomas Friedman's Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention has been discredited, but I feel that the academic field of peace studies has a lot to learn from my contribution. 

I've never claimed to be a social scientist (although I am by training, but let's ignore that) so I want to revise my thesis and argue that in fact toasted cheese sandwiches are the answer to peace.  A great cheese sandwich is the apotheosis of a great civilisation. Think about what goes into it: the right bread; cheese that melts to the correct extent; cooking time - do you want bubbling or burnt cheese? and finally, condiments if any.

And I think that The Bull & Last's cheddar and spring onion toastie might just be what the world is after.  You might feel a cheese sandwich is a bit prosaic for the high-brow Silverbrow, but good places get the basics very right.

What I got was two not-quite doorsteps of toasted granary, between which was oozing cheese and onion.  Admittedly it turned up on a rather fussy wooden board that wasn't big enough to stop oniony cheese streaming onto the table, but the sandwich itself was delicious.  Maybe I'm not sufficiently inventive, but I'd never thought about combining spring onion in a toasted sandwich.  It's far from the craziest combo, nonetheless, not one I'd considered for a toasty.  And it works so well.  So well.  And the sweet pepperiness of the sandwich was nicely offset by the not-too-sweet onion pickle.

Now, although I say getting the simple things right is the sign of a great restaurant, they do sometimes get things wrong: my green beans with garlic were overcooked, tasteless and a oily.  But I'll ignore that because at the same time as delivering my very spicy tomato juice, the very sweet waitress also put on my table a jug of water WITH ICE and bread and butter.  Very cold water, bread and butter are all things that make me a happy diner.    

Oh and good ice-cream only makes things better.  I had wanted one of the cartons of chocolate ice-cream but was told I wasn't allowed them as they are for take-away only.  I had to stay on-menu.  I found this slightly odd as I was there mid-week and there was barely anyone else around, they weren't about to run out of take-away pots.  Nonetheless, I was convinced to try the Ferrero Rocher ice-cream when I was assured by the bar man that it wasn't ice-cream made from Ferrrero Rocher, but ice-cream flavours that constituted the chocolate ball (chocolate, gianduia, hazelnut nibs) and it was very good.  Someone in their kitchen is a dab hand with frozen custard.

What was supposed to be a quick working turned into a thoroughly enjoyable meal that promises a lot for bigger, better experiences.  At long last North London has a gastropub it can be proud of.

UPDATE: I had dinner here last week and it was just as good an experience as my cheese sandwich lunch.  I implore you to try the anchovy beignets if they're on the menu.  Large anchovies, deep fried in a perfectly crunchy, unsoggy batter, served with the best tartare sauce I can remember eating - a reminder that sauces should be more than an afterthought to pep-up dull ingredients.

Google Maps

The Bull & Last, 168 Highgate Road, London, NW5 1QS, UK
Tel: +44 (0)20 7267 3641

What others think

Giles Coren - I’ve been back and back and back. Ten, maybe 12 visits.
Dos Hermanos - The Bull and Last is an absolutely terrific gaff.
Gourmet Chick - The. Best. Chips. In. London.