Offbeat Eats

I’ve finally blogged my way through my last UK/Spain trip (although, sadly, as I write this, I’m already starting to pack for my next UK trip). After two weeks of more eating and drinking around London, we had to get up fairly early in the morning and catch our flight out of Heathrow. Being 7:30 in the morning, we decided that this would finally be a good opportunity to check out Pimlico Fresh, which is just down the road from my brother’s flat. We’ve walked by a many times on the way to/from the local Sainsbury or Victoria station, but had never been inside before, since the place is usually packed to the rafters. But at 7:30 in the morning? No problem. We walked in right as they opened.

Those that have been reading the blog for a while know that every year I participate in the annual Menu For Hope fundraiser (and last year I even sponsored a prize). I’ve traditionally had very good luck winning prizes (including a walking food tour of London in 2008). This year was no exception, with my winnings include a “Chelsea Chocolate Ecstasy Tour” from ChocolateEcstasyTours.com. So Carol and I invited my brother and sister-in-law along for a 3 hour walking tour of high-end chocolate stores in and near the Chelsea neighborhood (I’ll try to carefully avoid defining the borders of London neighborhoods, that’s always a mild issue of confusion and dispute).

(Closed) The real-estate bust hit London as well as the US, and a byproduct of this was the “Pop up restaurant”. Basically a temporary restaurant, you find some cheap and available retail space (or another restaurant), set up a kitchen and a dining area, select a limited menu, and run a restaurant as a temporary endeavour, without all the overhead costs. One example of this is “The Dock” off Portobello road. The Dock started as a popup restaurant for the London Design Festival, in space used by design Tom Dixon, the concept worked well enough that it’s more-or-less permanent now.

After we returned from Gloucestershire, my brother was craving Persian food, so we went to Mohsen, which is walking distance from the Earls Court tube station. Mohsen (I had to look at the reviews on the wall to find the name of the place, since the sign outside only has Persian writing and the words “Persian Restaurant” on it) is your typical Middle-Eastern place, a nice cozy little restaurant with a bunch of tables crammed into a fairly narrow storefront, Persian decorations, and some travel posters that look like they date from the Shah’s era.

Our next stop in England was going to visit my brother’s in-laws’ new house in the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire. After a ~2 hour train ride across England, the train enters into a tunnel and emerges into the rolling hills of Gloucestershire. After being picked up in Stroud by my brother’s father-in-law (Paul, who I will refer to now by name to avoid saying that phrase over and over) and settling into their house in Sheepscombe, they invited us out for a pleasant walk in the country as we made our way to one of the local pubs, the Woolpack, down the road in Slad.

After returning to London (via an unanticipated extra night’s layover in Madrid, courtesy of Iberia Airlines), my brother and his wife decidd to celebrate our return to the UK by taking took us out to Roast. Nestled nicely above Borough Market in what used to be the portico of the Flower Market, it’s a really pleasant and open dining space, and a restaurant known for high quality roasted meats, including game meats (“warning, may contain shot”). Their motto is “Deliciously British,” and they pursue this with classical British cooking (think roasts, games, and classic British desserts) using the seasonal produce and locally-procured meats.

After a day of trekking about London (this time visiting the Imperial War Museum and the Tate Modern), we met up with my sister-in-law at The Founders Arms pub, and walked to dinner at The Table café in Southwark. The Table is a modestly sized café that focuses on making meals with as many locally sourced meats and organic produce as possible, particularly from Essex, Surrey and Mersea. They are well known for having quality meats for dinner, and supposedly for having a great breakfast as well, although I haven’t yet taken that opportunity.

While I mostly focus on the truly offbeat eats here, every once in while I encounter a chain restaurant that is notable for its quality, its novelty (especially chains in regions outside my normal travels), or both. One chain that I’ve enjoyed for many years for many trips to London is Wagamama. For those note familiar with it, Wagamama has been around since the early 90s, primarily in London, and is based upon a somewhat loose interpretation of the Japanese Ramen Bar concept: serving up fresh bowls of noodles or rice on long bench tables to customers, focusing on quick but good food.

During our trip to the UK, we took a side trip up to the walled city of York. We rather enjoyed the city, with nice walks around the city wall, touring York Minster, shopping, and checking out the original “shambles”. However, one of the things York is known for is having one of England’s highest number of pubs per capita, with all sorts of pubs distributed through the city. Nicely located just about 100 yards from York Minster, and just about as close to the B+B at which we were staying, the Three-Legged Mare pub is a York Brewery pub…

On last month’s trip to London, we decided that at least one fancy dinner with my brother and sister-in-law was in order, and my brother got reservations at Amaya, an Indian place in Knightbridge. Indian food in London has gotten to be almost a cliche, with all sort of little takeaway curry shops open serving out such dishes as Chicken Tikka Masala and various Baltis. But there are a few places that really stand out from the crowd, including The Punjab (in Covent Garden, one of London’s oldest Indian restaurants), and the more recent efforts of Masala World (of which Amaya is one).