Note: Viajante was awarded a Michelin star in January 2011, subsequent to this visit.

House sashimi

After closing his critically acclaimed Bacchus in Hoxton in 2008 and an-almost two year hiatus, Nuno Mendes finally opened his eagerly anticipated restaurant, Viajante, in March. Mendes’ career spans stints under Wolfgang Puck, Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Ferran Adria at El Bulli, and his travels throughout Asia and South America have helped to formulate the concept that is behind Viajante, a word that means travelling in Portuguese.

To get the full Viajante experience, a restaurant located in the Bethnal Green Town Hall, we felt nothing less than the 12 course menu would do. So when we arrived for our 8pm booking, JK wasn’t particularly pleased to be told that we couldn’t be seated. A table of 16 had just arrived, and even though our table was available, we were asked to wait at the bar so that the restaurant could even out the service. We were led to believe we had to book an 8pm table if we wanted to do the 12 course tasting, so it seemed a bit odd that we couldn’t be seated AT 8pm.

The table we got was great though – right in front of the open kitchen and in full view of all the cooking action. The décor is pseudo-Scandinavian and looks a bit like an expensive version of Ikea. Nevertheless, it’s very comfortable and quite informal. Six, nine and twelve course tasting menus are available at dinner for £60, £75 and £85 respectively. Menus are not handed out before the meal as they’re surprise tastings, but brief explanations are given by the server as each course is presented.

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There are some pretty exciting Australian chefs on the London scene right now, eg, Shane Osborn (Pied a Terre), David Thompson (Nahm), Skye Gyngell (Petersham Nurseries). Another is Brett Graham, who after opening The Ledbury at the age of 26, became the youngest Australian to ever win a Michelin star. This January saw Brett earn his second star, an achievement further capped when his sideline venture, The Harwood Arms, also won its first star. But then, Brett has always been on a steady climb. After arriving in London in 2000, he became a winner of the Young Chef of the Year award just two years later. Before The Ledbury, his time in London was spent working his way up to senior sous chef at The Square under Philip Howard.

For a two star restaurant, The Ledbury has one of the best value Sunday lunch menus around. Three courses from the a la carte menu costs only £40, with a similar menu in the evening being priced at £65. However, the only drawback of dining on Sundays (and Saturdays) is that Brett typically doesn’t cook during the weekends. Although, not having the head chef in action should, in principle, not make a difference.

Amuse bouche was a pomegranate macaroon with foie gras parfait and ginger crumbs. The parfait was creamy with the richness of the foie gras, and it married beautifully with the lightness of the macaroon. The touch of ginger added a nice zing to the combination.

Pomegranate macaroon with foie gras

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For about the last three years, the dim sum kitchen at Alisan in Wembley has been run by two ex-Hakksan dim sum chefs, Bao Chen and Seng Chow. Consequently, in 2007, the restaurant became a finalist in the best dim sum dish category as awarded by the Craft Guild of Chefs and Restaurant Magazine. So despite its Wembley location – which entailed three tube changes – I just couldn’t resist going to see just how good the dim sum at Alisan might actually be.

The restaurant is spacious and airy with lots of natural light. But with Wembley stadium in view, it’s hardly the most glamorous location. The surroundings feel a little like an industrial site, and the walk from the tube wasn’t the most exciting.

But it’s the food that counts, and we started with a perennial favourite, har gau (prawn dumplings) (£2.80). The prawn filling was wonderfully crunchy and tasty and possessed a strong aroma of sesame oil. The wrapper was nicely done but could have been a little lighter in texture.

Right in a clockwise direction: har gau, tripe & seafood rolls

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Note: This restaurant has now closed.

Wallace & Co.

Wallace & Co is the new cafe/restaurant (opened about three weeks) undertaking by Greg Wallace of Masterchef fame. You know, the self-proclaimed “cooking woman’s crumpet”. The happy chappy with the shiny skull and the big booming voice, who along with John Torode, came up with some rather memorable (or depending on your viewpoint – laughable) turns of phrase on the show. Wallace & Co is located in Putney, rather than the more competitive locales of Central London, and it looks the part of a wholesome neighbourhood restaurant. It’s cosy, airy and spacious, and decorated in warm green and beige colours, it feels so homely that you can’t help but want to go in and sip a cappuccino or two.

The centrepiece at the front of the restaurant is a huge wooden table, littered with scrumptious looking baked goods. There is also a take-away salad bar, and, something that should come as no surprise, vegetables for purchase (Greg is a wholesale greengrocer after all – his business is called Secrett’s Direct). Behind the front section is the split level dining area.

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Lobster noodles

For those of you familiar with the Royal China chain, it would be easy to assume that the Royal China in Putney is part of this established group of restaurants. It isn’t, although it was the original restaurant that spawned the rest. The Putney branch broke away some years ago and it operates as an independent establishment even though it still shares a name with the well known group.

My interest in Royal China Putney has been alive and kicking for a while now, spurred by a recommendation from the mother of one of my Chinese friends. She and her Hong Kong University alumni friends have tried this dish at various restaurants in London and they consider Royal China Putney’s lobster noodles to be the best in London.

But my motivation for coming here was twofold, as I also wanted to dispel the myth/rumour that exists in some food circles that Mandarin Kitchen in Bayswater has the best lobster noodles in London. In my opinion, it doesn’t. I tried their version about a year and a half ago (pre-blog) and was hugely disappointed. The noodles turned up in a few short minutes, suggesting that they had been pre-cooked and then reheated just before service. And that’s how they tasted, as they lacked that quintessential zing that comes with food that has been cooked à la minute. The lobster also lacked flavour and overall the noodles were lacklustre. Thereafter I hatched a plan to find something better in its place.

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Note: Kitchen W8 gained a Michelin star in 2011.

Salted cod fish balls

Kitchen W8, which opened about three weeks ago, is co-owned by none other than Philip Howard of the two star Michelined restaurant The Square, and Rebecca Mascarenhas of Sonny’s (which I also coincidentally visited recently). Wow. Philip Howard is some star backing. But Rebecca is no new comer to the restaurant dining scene either. She owns not only Sonny’s in Barnes, but Sonny’s in Nottingham and The Phoenix in Putney as well. With Kitchen W8 she has her fifth restaurant opening for it is located on the site of one of her previous restaurants, the appropriately named 11 Abingdon Road (the address of the restaurant), which closed in July this year and which subsequently made way for this new joint venture.

The premise for Kitchen W8 is simple – a neighbourhood restaurant that serves good “modern English style food with a French soul” at decent prices. The décor feels too glamorous to be a simple ‘neighbourhood’ restaurant, but then this is Kensington after all. It’s very stylish and warm – the walls are of a grey colour and the floor of a walnut wood. The lighting is also cleverly done to great effect – the restaurant is nicely dimmed, but there are individual spotlights illuminating each table for better visibility.

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A Taste of Love

I recently got the opportunity to sample a dinner prepared by pop-up restaurant extraordinaire Rachel Khoo. In the last year or so there has been a growing movement in the underground restaurant scene where home cooks prepare meals for members of the public in the comfort of their own abode. Its growth has no doubt been spurred by the fact that the idea is brilliantly novel, and there are similarities between her pop-up restaurant and the underground ones – you eat in someone’s home and the location is kept secret until you have booked and paid. But Rachel’s events are not regular occurrences which is why she prefers to call them ‘pop-ups’. Furthermore, Rachel always creates a different theme for each event, which on this occasion was endearingly called ‘A Taste of Love at The Loft’.

Rachel Khoo, a ‘food creative’ (stylist), has an Art & Design degree from Central St Martins and a pâtisserie diploma from Le Cordon Bleu and is now based in Paris. ‘A Taste of Love’ was the food theme for the evening; and The Loft, in a secret location in East London, is the personal test kitchen of Nuno Mendes who lends Rachel his digs for these occasions. Nuno, who trained at El Bulli, was previously the head chef of the now closed Bacchus in East London and will be opening a new restaurant, Viajante, in Bethnal Green next year. Nuno was on holiday and therefore did not join us for the evening.

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Rose & Crown

Sometimes, it takes me a while to make my way to a new restaurant, even if I am desperate to try it. I put this down to having too long a shopping list of places to visit (or maybe I am just slow!). Take Bocca di Lupo for instance – it look me months after it opened before I finally went. And Rose & Crown, a restaurant which opened in Highgate in February was no different in this respect.

What initially caught my eye about Rose & Crown back in February was that the Chef and proprietor, Gareth Thomas, had trained under Jean-Christophe Novelli at Auberge du Lac; at Le Quartier Francais, a boutique hotel and restaurant in the Franschhoek region near Cape Town, South Africa, and which was at the time number 46 in the San Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants; and under Gary Rhodes at the Michelin-starred Rhodes 24. It’s not a bad CV, which led me to wonder if I might be onto a winner. And seeing as there are so few reviews written on it, I was also wondering if I would be the one to uncover an undiscovered little gem. Make haste I thought, try and be a good little blogger, go before anyone else beats you to it. But no, in my usual slow crawl mode, I only made it there last week, some 3 months after I first heard about it.

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