[POP UP] Hot and Steamy Shacklewell Nights - Dalston
The chefs wear whites and everything. The big leagues.
It’s funny how it’s only really been nine months or so since I started visiting East London’s supper clubs, and the speed with which they seem to be proliferating and evolving.
We were lucky enough to visit Shacklewell Nights’ first evening of service, run by Claire from Green Onions and Jonathan from a little restaurant you might have heard of called St John. The concept, in their words:
They have joined together to cook the very best of seasonal British food to be enjoyed by diners in the relaxed and informal surroundings of the old clothing factory.
So essentially we have a highly experienced supper clubber teaming up with one of London’s most respected proper-British-type restaurants. And probably more of a focus on the dining room too rather than just the food. Expectations were high.
Shacklewell is divided into about four or five large communal tables in a buzzy, top floor industrial building. Dishes are served per table, with everyone passing them round.
We started with an excellent brown shrimp, samphire and potato starter, dressed to perfection. Just enough bite to the shrimp. Fresh and summery.
Following that was a platter of beautifully cooked duck legs on a bed of white beans and bacon. Both of these dishes were very simple with big, bold flavours. Very St John. Very seasonal. Most enjoyable.
Pudding was a sorbet with vodka shot palate cleanser followed by a blackberry fool with the most perfect shortbread biscuit you ever did taste. A well rounded meal with great like-minded folks, run like a ‘proper’ restaurant.
So Shacklewell certainly isn’t a supper club. It’s way too slick. You’re paying for those top-end ingredients and proper-restaurant service (the room seats fifty I think). The chefs wear whites and everything. The big leagues.
Of course, now I’ve written this, Shacklewell won’t be popping up again for another two months. So keep an eye on the Twitter account, and if you fancy a lovingly prepared British four courser with a friendly, knowledgeable crowd then it’s well worth a visit.
Shacklewell Nights - Dalston E8 Bookings via their website £35 for four courses and some wine + BYO
[FOODTRUCK] The Meatwagon / Cheeseburger / Peckham Rye SE15
There’s a movement gaining ground in London at the moment. As Byron Hamburger spreads across the capital with breakneck speed (and eventually capsizing aging Hamburger Unions and weary GBKs in its wake), the joy of finding a decent hamburger in the capital is becoming less of a rarity. I’m a big fan of Byron. They’re mainstreaming and quality-controlling the expansion of a decent burger experience. This is something London is not used to.
At the opposite end of the scale, away from the building sites and the neatly printed menus and expensive agency branding, you’ll find The Meatwagon. Behind a large van in a very typical Zone 2 industrial estate a few minutes walk from Peckham Rye station, sits an unbranded, unassuming little food van. This is the celebrated Meatwagon. I first came across the ‘wagon from a similarly burger-afflicted friend who pointed me in the direction of their Twitter account. It said they weren’t going to be around for a few weeks. Harrumph.
And then, on a Wednesday afternoon, an update. It’s back. Thursday and Friday. From 12pm ‘until we run out’. Ominous. Tempting. Only nine minutes on the train from London Bridge.
A flurry of instant messages between me and another burger critic, and we’re set for Friday.
After stumbling through some leafy Peckham side streets, getting a bit lost, and a quick ‘that can’t be it’ double-take, we’re standing before a beaming Yianni, who gleefully tells us he can do a cheeseburger, bacon cheeseburger or chilli burger. With chips. Triple-cooked. Obvs.
I think the pictures do these justice, but there’s a few points to make here. Yianni uses 100% chuck which he pulls out of a little fridge in big fistfuls and bashes them into patties in front of you. Salt and pepper. The bacon is interesting. He boils up a side of bacon, shreds some off and bashes that into a patty too. It’s thick and chewy, like American crispy bacon without the fat, chemicals and over-saltiness. As for the chilli, it’s half a green chilli fried in butter with a touch of stock. Genius. Both are thrown on top of the patty on the grilling plate before the piece de resistance goes on last. The cheese.
Two slices of it come out of the fridge. It looks like Kraft. We ask if it is Kraft, like a pair of over-excited children. Yianni smiles and says “No, it’s real cheese. It’s taken me ages to source this and it’s my secret. I’ll happily tell you about the rest of the process, but the cheese is my secret weapon”. We don’t push.
The buns are locally sourced white sourdough. Soft. Unseeded. Exceptional. Yianni carefully lattices mustard and ketchup on each side so they have a perfect covering.
And when we get to eating it, the fact we’re standing next to a bin in a glorified car park in Peckham just melts away. The meat is juicy, flawlessly pink and perfectly seasoned. The cheese which has since melted into the patty renders us speechless and is as close as you’ll ever get to a west coast In’n’Out-alike. The meat-to-bun-to-condiment ratio is perfect. We are ecstatic.
If you’ve got anything more than a passing interest in quality burgers, then follow the Meatwagon. Yianni said he’ll be back in a few weeks time. The Meatwagon is his part-time dalliance when he’s not doing proper catering jobs. Get down there. It’s an adventure and it’s London’s best burger. It’s a damn sight better, and 100% more Guerilla, than that other place.
[REVIEW] Guerilla Burgers / Opening Week Disappoinment in the West End
“I could have cleaned my bath with that burger”
Oh dear. We’re not off to a good start.
Guerilla Burgers opened last week, and we popped in for an evening burger on their second night.
You can still smell the paint on the walls and it’s nestled on James St where Tootsie’s used to be: a culinary black hole of touristic medicocrity. So keeping its youth, inexperience and location in mind, let’s see how they did.
Despite a friend being able to order a medium/rare burger earlier in the day (and enjoying it too), I was denied the same patty treatment and proffered the ‘health and safety’ excuse. Irritating.
Of course when they did show up (roughly 25 minutes later), they were hideously, unforgivably overcooked. Literally crunchy on the outside of the patty. Arid in texture despite pouring over all the sauces we had to hand.
This is a heinous crime when your raison d’etre is making burgers, and a hefty proportion of your overlong menu is given over to a poorly written quasi-diatribe on what makes ‘the perfect burger’.
PS: it’s not burning it.
The burger itself is served in a stainless steel dish (the kind you would typically expect to contain a curry) with the condiments on the side. The buns were neatly toasted, but Rob simply stated through dried-out lips “I could have cleaned my bath with that burger”.
It doesn’t stop there, they serve up crinkle cut chips. Like the ones out of the freezer you used to get round your best mate’s house when you were nine years old. And they haven’t changed a bit from how you remember them: spongy, cold in the middle and not abundant enough to justify their £4 price tag. We also made the error of going for the ‘smothered fries’. Smothering consists of three small morsels of cheddar and a large dollop of sickly veggie chilli. Avoid that upsell.
Something fishy…
The fish tacos are also a country mile away from what fish tacos should be. They’re marinaded salmon, with no breadcrumbs and shop-bought tzatziki slathered over the top. And are cold. So it seems Wahaca still remains the only purveyor of a fish taco resembling something similar to its delicious Califonian brethren.
There are some enormous menu issues going on here. It’s too long and unfocused.
Check out the PDF on their website and witness the layout issues and bizarre menu choices (the LA burger has cottage cheese in it, burger sauce is called ‘Russian Tarragon Dressing’, sliders are called skaters for some incomprehensible reason, I could go on).
Saving graces?
Well the staff were very much full of first-week perk, which would have made us feel guilty about complaining about the food. They were trying really hard, and I can’t blame them for what came out of the kitchen, although arguably a quality control process should be implemented to stop overcooked meat going out.
If they sort out the menu and do some proper testing I might give it another go, but when you’ve got Byron within schlepping distance, then I can’t think of a good reason to go here.
The thing is, it won’t really matter if the food doesn’t get any better. James Street serves the post-Selfridges tourist crowd (we had to wade through big yellow bags on our way out), and it will make no difference to them if whingy blogger types like me continue to opine Byron’s simple genius over GB.
This review is a slightly more focused version of the one I originally posted on Qype
[ON TOUR] Kitchen Galerie Bis - 75006, Paris
…you just don’t get the same Parisian service that you did five to ten years ago, but they’ve really got it right here
Being a former Englishman domiciled in Paris, I always savour a return to a city that in my experience has been equally enchanting and exasperating. The unfortunate consideration during my student run in Paris was that I couldn’t really explore the celebrated side of the local cuisine owing to the obvious financial restrictions. That was back in the early noughties, so now when I do return, I always like to find out where to go thanks to a network of old friends.
I’m no longer a fan of doing the de rigeur Bistro/Bourguignon combo when I do visit; I’ve long since had my fill, and in my opinion, Paris’ once untouchable standards seem to be slipping in the flawless dining department. Maybe it’s the Euro. I don’t know. But time, and mealtimes, is short on these fleeting visits, so mealtimes must not be wasted.
Kitchen Galerie Bis is a very new, very hip, very shiny offshoot of Ze Kitchen Galerie. ZKG is the home of William Ledeuil, who I now know to be the papa of new wave Parisian fusion cuisine. Asian mystique and umami combined that somehow manages to stay unmistakably French and avoids any unpleasant 80s-ness.
It was to a friend of a sibling, known only as ‘French David’ that our KGB visit can be accredited. It’s not been open long, and is the mini-er, slightly cheaper edition of Ledeuil’s Ze Kitchen Galerie.
The room is well-lit, airy and dotted with various horrendous works of vomity art. That’s the galerie part.
The menu is short and punchy, with two extra specials for the mains. We had six of the zors d’oeuvres, because we’d been told to. They’re the highlight, and the up-sell for the more expensive tasting menu located just down the road (which worked too, we’ll be booking a table there next time, budget be damned). Here’s what we got:
Having only managed to capture about 30% of the accompanying description from the staff, we dived in. Each of the six was a work of art itself. Very intense, well conceptualised and executed little dishes that were bursting with flavour, each obviously being a bit of a surprise. Lots of foam and lots of flavour.
Umami central
The mains are all served in bowls, and we had the barbu fish special and the suckling lamb. The former was meaty, delicate and incredibly complex at the same time - lemongrass and star anise were definitely in there as well as Japanese Mandarin, but there’s so much going on it’s almost too much for the palate.
Foamy subtlety that gets right into your head and stays there. Extraordinary and unexpected.
The lamb was beautifully soft and pink, but not in the same other-worldly league as the fish:
The apricot and curry spices worked marvellously, but it didn’t have that same wow factor that an amazing piece of fish can give you.
The winelist was flawless as expected (we had a 2008 Freesia that complimented the intensity of the food brilliantly), but what I must single out KGB for is their service. As briefly mentioned earlier, you just don’t get the same Parisian service that you did five to ten years ago, but they’ve really got it right here. The staff were genuinely friendly, courteous and always there when you needed them, an increasing rarity in this price range at both ends of the Eurostar line. They were all clearly fans of what the kitchen was churning out too, and how often does that happen?
If you’re after something a little bit different, and love fish and fusion, then KGB is definitely worth a visit. Really interesting concept, flawlessly executed on all fronts. Apart from the galerie itself.
Go and have a look at the rest of the pictures, including all the individual zors d’oeuvres, over on flickr
[HOW TO] A Diner’s Guide (and Open Love Letter) to London’s Supper Clubs
…the social implications of just being there and meeting other diners creates a bonhomie that no typical restaurant experience can match
It’s been a short but delightful relationship so far. Having only heard of supper clubs whispered discreetly among those more in-the-know than I, it was October’s visit to Fernandez & Leluu that started it all off.
Tucked away on a secret Hackney side-street was their makeshift dining room. It was full of tables, plates, cutlery and character. We, being the first to arrive, scampered into the garden for some wine. As others turned up, exchanged knowing glances, we settled into a six hour gastronomic experience that was far superior to many of the more official eateries in recent memory. Since then we’ve attended F&L two more times and witnessed the founding of the excellent Trail of Our Bread (also in Hackney).
So after not really knowing what to expect, here’s a few tips if you’ve been thinking about signing up to the supper club experience:
1. It’s not a restaurant.
So don’t treat it like one. It’s someone’s house. Try not to break things, don’t expect fresh cutlery for each course, don’t expect each course to arrive with rapid fire precision. It’s highly unlikely anyone’s actually worked in a proper restaurant.
2. It’s really not a restaurant.
You’re not paying for a service from a business. You’re donating time and money to be part of a fun experiment. You’re the subject of someone’s passion. A supper club attendee has been chosen. Pre-selected. Almost vetted, really. So the social implications of just being there and meeting other diners creates a bonhomie that no typical restaurant experience can match.
3. Pay fair.
We’re British. Therefore we’re useless at dealing with, and asking for, money. On the off-chance you didn’t like the food, and even if you’re the sort of person who refuses to pay for things in restaurants, don’t dick the club out of its donation. Pay at least 10-20% over the suggested donation. Take plenty of cash with you, because if it’s really exceptional, then it’s still going to have cost you less than going to a restaurant.
4. Don’t be picky. Or flaky.
Well, to be more specific, if you’re the picky type, then supper clubs aren’t for you. We’ve had everything from frog’s legs to sashimi. Things that might make you go bleurgh. I’m one of those people that’ll try anything once, and my favourite menus are those that are just presented to me. I don’t know what’s best, I’ve not cooked it. If you can’t handle that as a concept, then you won’t enjoy yourself. But if you love the surprise of each dish arriving, you’ll have a brilliant time.
And for goodness sake, don’t cancel. Cancelling a reservation at a supper club is the baddest of bad form. Only cancel if you’ve lost a limb, or died. It hurts everyone else involved with the endeavour. Seating plans and portion sizes are the main victims, and they’re very carefully planned. If you’re taking a large group to a supper club then make sure none of your flaky mates are invited. It will reflect badly on you otherwise, and you’ll struggle to get another table.
5. Be nice.
Nicer than default restaurant mode. You can make friends at supper clubs. As previously mentioned, most of these folks haven’t had professional training. So compliment loudly and often. More than you’re used to doing. Ask for recipes, be specific about what you liked. Be honest about what could have been better.
But even more importantly than all that, remember that the geographic locations of these clubs is a secret. I’m no expert, but the legality of these clubs is dubious. So don’t add them to FourSquare.
6. Take plenty of booze.
It’s a long night. Don’t plan on having anywhere else to be. If you get out of there before midnight, you’re doing it wrong.
And pace yourself.
