One-O-One Restaurant situated at 101 (yes) Knightsbridge is merely a stone’s throw away from the glamorous retail shops of Knightsbridge. Specialising in seafood, it probably has the unfortunate distinction of having one of the ugliest restaurant frontages in London. It’s attached to the Sheraton Park Towers, a monstrosity of a grey building that dates back to the 1970s. The interior of the restaurant fares better than its exterior but is quite formal and somewhat soulless. But what is attractive about the restaurant is that it has received a variety of accolades including recognition as the Fifth Best Restaurant in Great Britain in The 2012 Sunday Times’ Food List.

Also attractive about One-O-One is that it seems to regularly offer discounts through TopTable that makes a dining experience at the restaurant much more affordable as their prices are high. Starters range between £11 and £28 and mains between £28 and £39. My booking provided for a fabulous 40% off, but I pity the poor tourist souls who stay at the hotel and have no knowledge of this insider’s tip and simply walk into the restaurant to pay full price.

The meal kicked off with an amuse bouche of salmon rillette with croutons that was very good. The rillette was pleasant with a nice salmon flavour and nicely creamy.

Salmon rillette with garlic croutons

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Aside from dinner at Momofuku Daisho, I also managed to get my teeth into a number of other restaurants during my stay in Toronto. I hereby present to you Canoe, Acadia and Pure Spirits Oyster House.

CANOE

Canoe Restaurant is part of the Oliver & Bonacini Restaurant Group, a partnership founded by Peter Oliver and Michael Bonacini in 1993, a pair of restaurateurs who have since created a string of 11 successful fine dining restaurants in Ontario, Canada. Their restaurant, Auberge du Pommier, ranks highly in the guidebooks as being one of the best fine dining venues in Toronto.

Canoe bar

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View of the Shangri-La

Momofuku is a household name. The first of the Momofuku restaurants opened in New York in 2004 and within a year it had captured the public’s imagination with its innovative approach to Japanese noodles. Chef and owner David Chang had spent some time cooking at a soba bar in Tokyo, which was the source of his inspiration for Momofuku, a term that translates as lucky peach. A second restaurant soon followed in 2006. Known as Momofuku Ssäm Bar and serving burrito-style Asian food, it again tantalised the public with its originality. More successful than the first, Momofuku Ssäm Bar headed into the San Pellegrino’s 50 Best Restaurants list in 2009. It held onto a top 50 position until 2013 when it dropped to 86th.

But Chang’s third restaurant, Momofuku Ko, was to become his pièce de résistance‎. Opening in New York in 2008 as a tiny 12 seater that only accepted reservations six days in advance on an ‘online first-come-first-serve’ basis – a policy that infuriated many – it went on to win two Michelin stars, cementing Momofuku’s worldwide fame.

When a restaurant becomes that famous, the only way to go is to think like Nobu and franchise. Consequently restaurants have sprung up in Sydney and Toronto with four Momofuku branches in Toronto alone: the Noodle Bar, Daisho, Nikai (the bar) and Shoto. The latter was recently revered as the best restaurant in Toronto and offers a 10-course tasting menu that changes daily. It is the more food-centric of the Toronto Momofukus and while it sounded good, it also has a painful ‘you must go online to book at 10am on the day policy’. So we decided on Momofuku Daisho, the more casual dining restaurant where the reservations policy is far less stringent.

Momofuku in Toronto stands adjacent to the glamorous Toronto Shangri-La Hotel and spans over three funky floors. Daisho sits on the top floor and its glass ceiling not only gives the space a great sense of light, it also offers a bird’s eye view of the architectural success of the hotel. The menu is group friendly and offers a selection of big format dishes such as bo ssäm, a whole slow cooked pork butt with a dozen oysters, white rice, bibb lettuce and a Korean ‘ssäm’ BBQ sauce (serves 6 to 10, $240 – about £150). But the most delectable sounding of the big format dishes was the prime beef rib-eye which is dry-aged for 65 days and roasted for about 2-3 hour (serves 6 to 8, $600 – about £387). Reading about the big format dishes made my mouth water, but as we were only two we settled on the smaller plates on the menu.

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Back in the day, Katrina Kollegaev from food blog Gastronomicalme use to host a series of lunch clubs at her home in North London. Being of Russian decent, her focus was on food with Soviet roots. The lunch I attended centred around Ukrainian food and it proved to be tasty and interesting. It was also an insightful glance into the eating habits of Ukrainians (for that post click here).

Since then, Katrina has gone on to form the Russian Revels with another Russian lady Karina Baldry. Russian Revels specialises in hosting Russian themed supper clubs with a twist, and their latest project is a series of Secret Soviet Suppers at a secret location near Farringdon.

The backdrop of these Secret Soviet Suppers is 1920s Russia, and in keeping with this theme the location was kept secret until two days before the event. We were charged with a Soviet ‘bourgeois’ dress code and impressively almost all the forty or so guests made an effort to dress up. We were also given a Soviet identity and an ID card for admission (I was Olga, a nurse), as well a special, secret password for use at the door. How fun!

Soviet ID

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An Italian Restaurant aptly named 5 Pollen Street previously occupied the address of 5 Pollen Street. The cooking was good, but the portions were miserable and the prices were exorbitant. I remember my meal there as being one of the worst value-for-money that I had ever had in my life and I left the restaurant feeling wracked with guilt that my friends had to fork out so much money for so little. It is therefore unsurprising that the restaurant closed down last year. On a Saturday night not long after I had eaten at 5 Pollen Street, I walked past it to discover that it was bordering on empty. Clearly, the restaurant had gotten its pricing formula wrong. But it has now been taken over by Jason Atherton and converted it into a charming French bistro endearingly named Little Social.

Little Social sits across the road from Pollen Street Social, Atherton’s flagship restaurant that he established after leaving Maze and the Gordon Ramsay fold. Pollen Street Social registers on the upper end of the scale. It’s fine dining through and through with a one-Michelin star to boot.

A pork head and foie gras terrine starter (£11.50) packed a meaty, rustic flavour, but was also strangely a little tangy. The piece of foie gras holding centrepiece in the middle of the terrine was delicious, but meanly portioned as it was quite small. In fact, the slice wasn’t particularly generous. The tea and prune purée was a good match for the pork, and the sourdough was springy and tasty if a little burnt. As our second starter, half a dozen oysters (£15) from Cornwall were fresh and delicious.

Pork head & foie gras terrine

Oysters

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Mount Gay Black Barrel

A couple of weeks ago I attended ‘A Storied Supper’ evening hosted by Mount Gay Rum at The Anthologist Bar and Kitchen. A brand synonymous with sailing, sun and fun, Mount Gay Rum had its origins in Barbados in 1703, making it the oldest rum in the world. The idea behind the Storied Supper evening was to pair a variety of different rum cocktails with a three-course menu to showcase its versatility when eaten with food. And along with each cocktail, there was a ‘story’ shared by the ambassadors from Mount Gay Rum about the origins of the cocktail for some added joie de vivre, the very essence of what Mount Gay is meant to represent.

The first course was a the “Fire & Ceviche” – sushi grade tuna with coconut milk and a lime citrus sauce topped with shaved red onion, chilli, coriander and toasted coconut. The tuna was fresh and the coconut added a lovely crunch to the fish. However more coriander and chilli would have made the dish more aromatic and the tuna could have done with slightly more seasoning.

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My last meal at Launceston Place was around the time Tristan Welch was competing on The Great British Menu. He came across as such a likeable fellow, and the rhubarb and custard crumble served in a cone with ginger and orange sauce that he prepared on the show seemed so enticing that I was really excited to try it at Launceston Place. Things have moved on since then and Tristan has long left to be replaced by Chef Tim Allen who took over the reins in February 2012.

Allen has done what Welch wanted to achieve but was never able to at Launceston Place, and that was to win the restaurant a Michelin star. Having come from a two Michelin-starred background after seven years at Whatley Manor in The Cotswolds, and having worked at The Landmark and the Michelin starred L’Ortolan in Berkshire prior to that, it was perhaps unsurprising that this Michelin success would flow over.

Launceston Place is part of the D&D restaurant group and is located in a regency house tucked away in an adorable part of Kensington. The street is beautiful and grand. As for the décor, it remains very formal and austere with its dark, greyish colours.

For a Michelin restaurant, they do a surprisingly good value Sunday lunch menu with three-courses for £29.50. Unlike some set lunch menus, there were a good range of options within each course. Furthermore, there appear to be only minor differences between the options on the lunch menu and those on the a la carte menu priced at £48 for three courses.

While we deliberated on what to order we started with some G&T’s, delectably served with a thyme-infused ice cube in a very stylish glass. What a great refreshing way to start a meal! We also snacked on some lovely gougères with béchamel that were really nice – the choux pastry was fluffy and warm, and the béchamel was gooey and soft.

G&T

Gougères

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Russell Norman and Richard Beatty, the people behind the successful eateries Polpo, Polpetto, Spuntino and Da Polpo, have produced another offspring with Mishkin’s in Covent Garden. Mishkin’s bears the trademark of the other Norman and Beatty restaurants in the sense that it is cool, hip and happening, but deviates as it steers away from their Italian tapas theme. With Mishkin’s they’ve tapped into the vein of a New York styled Jewish deli, one that also serves cocktails.

The restaurant has a grungy Lower East Side vibe to it with its exposed brick work, metallic topped bar and banquette seating. And let’s not forget the cramped space which makes it feel even more like a New York eating hole. Towards the back of the restaurant were some tiny tables, and it was on one of them that were placed. Our particular table was lopsided. It was unclear to me whether this was a deliberate attempt to be avante-garde , but irrespective, it was rather impractical as our matzo ball soup split when it was placed onto the even table. The chicken broth in the soup (£6) had a nice chicken flavour running through it, although it was rather too peppery. The matzo ball itself held together well and had a light and springy texture.

Chicken matzo ball soup

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