[REVIEW] Eggs Benedict / Austin Java / Austin, TX
Austin is blessed with a plethora of fine breakfast emporiums, and as American coffee goes, Austin Java is pretty good. There are a few different locations around the city (including a kiosk at the airport) but our favourite is the Parkway spot; it has a lovely deck out the front where you can enjoy a sunny Eggs Benedict.
Great muffins and a serviceable hollandaise make this worth the stroll out of downtown proper, and if you’re in Austin during SXSW, we can guarantee this is far enough away from the throng of more central breakfast spots.
Their breakfast quesadilla looked pretty special too, and stick to filter coffee. Espresso round these parts isn’t anything to write home about.
[PREVIEW] A little S02E01 photo gallery
Rob is finishing up the edit. Here’s a little gallery preview of what to expect.
- Can you guess what it is yet?
[REVIEW] Eggy Bread with Honey Roast Ham, Cheese & Béchamel & Honey Mustard Dressing (AKA The Monte Cristo) / Foxcroft and Ginger / London
Sandwiches rule.
Bang all kinds of shit between two slabs of cooked dough and then eat it. Simple.
Everyone’s got a favourite but, in this guy’s humble opinion, the greatest sandwich of all time is the Monte Cristo - usually a ham and Swiss cheese sandwich dipped in egg and grilled like French Toast, sprinkled with sugar, drizzled with maple syrup and served with a side of blueberry jam.
Yeah, sounds ridic doesn’t it? Done right, I fucking love this sandwich.
Regretfully, I’ve only found one place that sells a Monte Cristo in London town, the Diner, and it was piss poor.
Foxcroft & Ginger’s effort, to all intents and purposes, is a low-key, anglicised bastard child of the Monte Cristo, but it’s close enough. It’s all rather petite, polite and user friendly, much like the establishment producing it.
A Monte Cristo lite, if you will. And it’s rather pleasant.
While it had soaked in the sweet, slightly nutmeggy egg mixture, the bread was still light and fluffy, the way good French Toast should be. The melty cheese mixture over the ham was mild and a touch nutty, and the honey and mustard drizzled over the top, whilst tear-jerkingly sparse, added a spicy sweetness to it all. And it was cheap as! No blueberry dip, but then again, it’s not a Monte Cristo, is it?
If you’re up for a coffee and fancy a bit of a snack as well, you won’t go far wrong with a visit to F&G. Just don’t confuse them with the deceptively similar Fernandez & Wells. No Monte Cristo there.
- Rob.
Cheeseburger Macaroni Cheese from the MacBar, New York.
[REVIEW] BC Burger / Ben’s Canteen / Clapham, London
“…it’s the second instance of DOUBLE BEEF we’ve encountered this year.”
South West London.
No, I don’t like it either since I am neither of Australiasian descent nor did I grow up in Surrey. However, sometimes we have to go there, crossing the length of the TFL network tolerating trains that stop at “Bookham” and “Berrylands” and other places that probably don’t actually exist.
But Clapham-gripes aside (and I could go on), we’re there to visit Ben’s Canteen.
Now Ben’s, with its stripped floor aesthetic and dog-and-pram wielding clientele feels much more like South West Goes East. It’s very relaxed and we arrive at midday on a Sunday so they have a full brunch menu as well as Roasts on the go. Things could be worse.
And so to the burger. It’s a fancypants take on a cheeseburger, and it’s the second instance of DOUBLE BEEF we’ve encountered this year (the first being the Ad Cod’s delightfully deranged Ox Cheek Chilli burger). A fine thick Angus patty sits atop tomato and lettuce, with a slice of homemade corned beef on top (not the tinned one you had at school) a violently orange secret sauce and a slice of smoked cheddar.
The genius of the double beefing on this occasion is that the cheese has melted into the corned beef. Dave the Chef preps his own corned beef by trimming and rolling a nicely aged topside of Orkney beef, brining it for 24 hours and then cooking it with stock and vegetables. Once the burgers are ready, it’s sliced and popped under the grill with the smoked cheese on top. The melted cheese warms the beef from the top, and then once it’s part of the burger, the freshly grilled patty warms it from the bottom. This gives the whole sandwich a nice consistent texture and temperature, and the bun which is considerable but soft manages to keep it all together somehow.
A quick Google of previous reviews of Ben’s Canteen and you’ll see the BC Burger has been under much revisioning in the few short months it’s been open. I think Dave has cracked it: different enough to stand out from the crowd, gourmet enough to please the locals and appease the price point and well constructed enough for geeks like me to walk away happy.
Looking down the length of the menu at Ben’s and you can really appreciate the wealth of choice on offer. We got to try the brisket sliders (which weren’t reeeeally sliders), the deep fried pork cheeks (totally excellent, especially the dip) as well as a few bonus hunks of their Sunday roast beef (flawlessly cooked and you really can taste its pedigree). On top of that, they do a mean eggs benny.
If there was only one flaw, it would be the comedically poor service from the French waiter. Long waits, borderline aggression and impossible to attract his attention, it was fortunate we didn’t have to be anywhere in a great hurry. We didn’t experience bad service from any of the other staff, but this guy is so bad it was almost a joke. Other folks I know have come across him too, and we’ve verified the OMG-Is-That-Guy-For-Real sentiment. So they should sort that really because he’s certainly not ‘on brand’, so to speak.
Go for the burger. Go for brunch. Go for Sunday roast. They’ve got it all.
Oh and the Scotch Egg is great.
- Simon.
[REVIEW] Fish Tacos / Luardo’s / Brockley Market, London
The only other London burrito slingers to our knowledge that serve a fish taco are Wahaca.
Much as I love Wahaca, they have a tendency of being a bit snooty toward Californian Mexican fare, then putting it on their menu and botching it.
The Luardo’s version is far closer to tacos we’ve had in SoCal. The Coley is nicely cooked but the liberal amount of lime juice, mango, coriander and wonderful creamy guacamole brings a little piece of the west coast to a wet car park in Brockley. Without any local point of comparison then, we can say quite conclusively that these are the best fish tacos in London.
Sadly, the fish taco is only available on Saturday lunchtimes at the moment, and not during their more popular Whitecross Market or Eat Street residencies. This is because it’s nowhere near as popular as their standard meaty burrito options, which is a massive shame.
Fish tacos are a great differentiator for Luardo’s now that the London burrito scene has become so shamelessly identikit. Let’s hope they roll them out more regularly. And that people buy them. Please buy them. Supply and demand and all that.
- Simon.
