This past Wednesday I attended the ETM bloggers bar crawl which was super, super fun. Blogger friends who came along included Greedy Diva, LondonFoodie, WineSleuth, Missimmo, Teatimeinwonderland and Faerietalefoody. ETM operate a number of gastropubs in London and we hopped along from one ETM bar after another, sampling food and drinks (listed at the bottom of this post) along the way.

First up was the lovely, elegant Chiswell Street Dining Rooms where we tried a number of canapés such as seared Isle of Man king scallop with crispy bacon and pea purée; smoked eel with horseradish; foie gras ballotine on brioche with Madeira jelly; leek and wild mushroom tart and soft boiled quail’s egg with truffled duxelle. Particularly delicious was the mini Aberdeen Angus beef Wellington as the meat was plump and juicy.

At The Hat and Tun we had a starter of Herefordshire snail & smoked bacon pie with a Guinness and mushroom cream sauce. The snails were nice, but the sauce was very runny, and both the filling and the pastry needed more seasoning.

Snail & smoked bacon pie

(Continue reading her story…)

Ludlow in Shropshire is a gorgeous country market town which at one point boasted of more Michelin starred restaurants per capita than anywhere else in the world. One of these included Hibiscus before Chef Claude Bosi relocated the restaurant to London (Mayfair) in 2007. A brave move many said, but it seems to have worked out just fine for Hibiscus. Not only did Hibiscus regain its second Michelin star which it lost when it first moved, but it also now holds a place in The San Pellegrino 50 Best Restaurant’s Awards.

With Fox and Grapes, Bosi makes another mark on the London dining scene. Brother Cedric manages the day-to-day while Patrick Leano, formerly the sous chef at Hibiscus, runs the kitchen. The site of an old London inn on Wimbledon Common, the gastropub retains many original features and is lovely and quaint.

It was hard to think that Fox and Grapes would be any ordinary gastropub given its affiliation with Claude Bosi. That said, the mains on the menu were fairly uninteresting (sausage and mash, gratin provencal (ratatouille), mutton moussaka, pollock, chicken, and steaks, etc) and not as inspirational as it could have been given the Michelin-starred status of the gastropub’s patron.

We kicked off with some bar snacks including a wild boar scotch egg (£4.50) which gave way to a runny yolk centre. But the boar meat, whilst well cooked and decidedly gamey in flavour, was too peppery.

Wild boar scotch egg

(Continue reading her story…)

When Gordon Ramsay took over the freehold of The Warrington and launched a gastropub there in February 2008, I lamented the lost of Ben’s Thai Restaurant. Ben’s Thai was situated on the first floor, above the pub (which is where the gastropub is now), and although it was far from perfect, it had personality. Its off-the-wall décor fit in with the quirky charm of the pub below – a lavishly decorated outfit with art nouveau stained glass windows, carved wood works and a marble topped mahogany bar. For added character, it was rumoured that the building was once used as a brothel.

But under Gordon Ramsay, the gastropub, aptly named The Warrington, became cool, stark and a little austere. When I first went there for dinner soon after its opening, it was hard to reconcile the sleek, new dining area with the pub below that was bursting with old world charm. Other than this oddity, I remembered the food being pretty decent.

(Continue reading her story…)

Sunday lunch was at The Cadogan Arms, a gastropub which is owned by the ETM Group who also own other well known gastropubs such as The Well, The Gun, The White Swan and The Botanist, etc. The Cadogan Arms closed for extensive refurbishment in December 2008 and reopened for business in April this year. Although I have had some good meals at the various ETM establishments in prior years, my last outing was a far less positive experience. We were at The Botanist last year (pre-blog) when we were served bread that was still frozen. This was probably a one off, but I just got the feeling that on that particular occasion the food was not going to be good and that we would be better served to simply abort our mission and leave before our mains.

Scallops with smoked pork belly & pea puree

We didn’t get good bread at The Cadogan Arms either. Our sourdough bread was dry and tasted a little stale. A starter of seared scallops with smoked pork belly and pea puree (£9.50) was also disappointing for the scallops were rubbery and bland. Unevenly sized to the point where one piece was about double the size of the other two, this bigger piece surprisingly released a noticeable amount of liquid when I sliced into it, as if it might have been cooked from frozen and was still defrosting on my plate. The pea puree was tasty, although the smoked pork belly wasn’t particularly smoky. The presentation of the dish was also poor for some of the balsamic dressing had smudged on the plate. This dish was unappetitising and I was unable to finish it.

(Continue reading her story…)

Having been away for a couple of months, it was nice to make steps towards settling back into life in London again. My first foray back onto the London dining scene was to the ‘gastropub’ The Oak on Westbourne Park Road in Notting Hill, which turned out to be a far more pleasant experience than another first, one that involved going back to the gym (ouch).

Other than the usual starters, mains and desserts, The Oak also offers a selection of ‘small eats’ and antipastas, but they are probably best known for their wood fired pizzas. We started with paprika deep fried squid with rocket, chorizo, aioli and cherry tomatoes (£8.50), and chargrilled octopus with San Marzano tomatoes and rocket (£9.25). The accompanying salads were lovely and fresh, although the squid was slightly overcooked and chewy, and the octopus was extremely soft and limp – a firmer texture would have been more appetitising.

Paprika deep fried squid

Chargrilled octopus

(Continue reading her story…)