Ever since I started this food blog, I have come to realise just how tolerant my wonderful friends are. When we eat out together, they sit patiently by as I take photos of all our food. All the while they look hungrily on, twitching to start eating. I also suspect they silently groan every time I say “just one more photo”. But ever so supportive of my cause, they always let me taste their dishes without necessarily wanting to taste mine. One of my friends occasionally lets me order for her. (Am I spoilt or what?) I have therefore decided that there is definitely some merit in writing these restaurant reviews: I get to eat my food, and I get to try everyone else’s too. Could there possibly be a more winning combination? But in what was to be a first, I recently found out what it felt like to eat out with someone like me.

Tom Aikens

Having got in touch with a professional food writer recently, we decided to meet for lunch; our choice of venue – Tom Aikens, one of the restaurants currently taking part in London Restaurant Week. So here we were the two of us, at a one-star Michelin restaurant, with notepads in hand, scribbling madly away. And there was also the not so subtle matter of our photo taking: swivelling plates around for that ever better angle, rearranging the table for perhaps a more superior shot. What a sight we must have been to behold, both snapping crazily at the food like Japanese tourists! And oh no, it wasn’t just one photo, but at least two, three or four of every dish. At one point, I almost elbowed my dining companion in the face as I scrambled to take better aim. And we really couldn’t have been missed. With only five tables occupied during our sitting, less than half of those available, the black and white dining room was rather quiet and a little stark.

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The grey-leg partridge at Boundary

The month of January is already over. Jeez how time flies… Christmas only felt like yesterday. But January has proved rather memorable. Some events of note took place, probably the most notable being the inauguration of President Obama (yes, Obama’s in the house!), and also the not-too-minor matter of a certain restaurant opening in Shoreditch.

Ok, on a relative scale, the latter, a restaurant opening, does not quite compare to the former, a presidential inauguration, but in the context of the London restaurant scene and my much-nurtured belly, it’s rather big news. See, it’s the new restaurant from Sir Terence Conran; the patriarch of fine design, architect, writer, and restaurateur; the man who in 2005 was named by CatererSearch, the website of the industry magazine, and Caterer and Hotelkeeper as the most influential restaurateur in the UK. The Sir Terence Conran who is much revered as the pioneer of redefining the way in which the British public dine out. Big news indeed for it’s the first restaurant he’s opened since he sold his restaurant group to D&D London in 2006.

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There is just something so inexplicably attractive about Truc Vert that draws me back time and time again. A delicatessen by day where hordes of lunchtime crowds flock in to purchase goodies such as quiches, salads and scrumptious cakes, in the evening it transforms itself into a quaint and charming French restaurant with white tablecloths and tealight candles.

So what makes it so inexplicably attractive? The place has charm and warmth and it’s hard to miss from the moment you walk past its windows, peering into the restaurant as you do so, before eventually making your way over the threshold. It has a feel of a warm country cottage with its wooden furnishings and wooden floors and the simple touch of comforting paintings dotted throughout the room. It’s unpretentious and a seemingly safe haven from the throngs of shoppers that populate Oxford Street.

From the daily changing menu, the food is solid, competent fare, with few frills, but extremely tasty all the same. The ingredients are always fresh and wholesome, the dinner portion sizes satisfying, and all round the standard of the food is enough to make you think that £18 for two courses and £22.50 for three courses from the prix fixe menu, which is available between 6pm to 7:30pm, is truly great value. And there are a reasonable number of choices on the menu too, with five options for both starters and mains. For even more variety, there is also the a la carte menu where starters are priced at about £6 to £10 and mains at £15 to £18.

Sautéed squid with Thai style vegetables

On this visit, I settled on a sautéed squid with Thai style vegetables, bok choy, egg noodles and soy and spring onion sauce from the prix fixe menu. For a starter, the portions were overwhelming generous. The squid was exquisitely tender although the vegetables were overpowered by too much soy sauce.

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This restaurant is no longer open.

The humble cheeseburger at Flash

I was reading today about a piece of artwork commissioned by the Czech Republic, the current holders of the EU presidency. The artwork was meant to go on display at the European Council building in Brussels to mark the beginning of the Czech presidency. Completed by David Cerny, a Czech artist, the finished piece of work – the ‘Entropa Installation’ – is a mosaic of each of the EU members and the ‘national symbols’ of each country. The result has caused Bulgaria to lodge a complaint as the work of art depicts Bulgaria as a series of squat toilets. France seemingly fared better as a nation of strikeaholics. And Britain? Well, it isn’t even included in this particular piece of work.

I am sometimes amused by what can actually constitute pieces of art. When I read about the Entropa Installation, I simply laughed out loud. That was amusing in a funny ha-ha kind of way. At the other end of the spectrum, art can be amusing in a puzzling sort of way when it doesn’t quite connect with my brain. If you’re anything like me, you might have on occasion ambulated around an art gallery and stared blankly (or in confusion) at one of the pieces of artwork, and asked of yourself that all perplexing question: “Is this art”?

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Le Pont de la Tour

We had lunch last Friday at Le Pont de la Tour and I was ever so grateful that despite the freezing cold we’ve had to endure thus far this winter, at least this day turned out to be one of lovely sunshine beaming down over London. One of the endearing features of Le Pont de la Tour is that it has secured a prime location overlooking Tower Bridge, and so a sunny day makes for fine viewing indeed.

Le Pont de la Tour at lunch time is a place for the suits, if the attire of those dining at the three other tables at the restaurant were anything to go by. Certainly, it can be enough to make you feel uncomfortable if you are wearing anything but. And the price tag attached to the lunchtime menu (£19.50 to £25 for mains) might warrant most people to only lunch here if they’re on an expense account. I suspect Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, and the three colleagues he was dining with a few tables down would have been doing nothing but. Unfortunately they were seated a little too far away for me to be able to eavesdrop on any noteworthy gossip on the state of London’s affairs that I could share with you. But his presence paved the way for us to spend a good 10 minutes having a nice giggle (oh yes we did) about the sort of shenanigans we could potentially get up to involving Boris that might secure us a spot on the 6 o’clock news and a chance for our 15 minutes of fame.

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