I have mixed feelings about set lunch specials at Michelin restaurants. They can be very good value, but as they often offer a limited selection, they are not necessarily a complete representation of what a restaurant has to offer. However, browsing through Quilon’s lunchtime menu online, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the number of choices available.

Quilon is a one Michelin-starred restaurant which specialises in South Indian Coastal cuisine. It opened in 1999, earning its first Michelin star in 2008. The lunchtime menu listed about 6 starters, 4 seafood dishes, 3-4 game and meat dishes, not to mention various accompaniments and vegetable dishes. Three courses and a side such as rice or bread costs a very reasonable £22 per head. A combination of price and choice lured me into a visit to Quilon.

For our initial little tasters, we were presented with tiny bite sized pieces of crispy, light poppadoms with coconut and tomato chutneys, both of which were nicely spiced.

Poppadoms with tomato and coconut chutneys

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Omelette Arnold Bennett

I first went to Bumbles about three years ago and remembered it for having really good food at very reasonable prices. In fact the food was so good for what I paid that I was pleasantly surprised. I discovered the restaurant purely by chance, through a friend who worked in Victoria where it’s located. It seems to the sort of place that hovers low on the publicity radar, but is well liked by locals and those in the know. Case in point – it was absolutely packed on the night of our visit.

So how did visit number two fare? Overall it was resoundingly excellent. The restaurant offers an `a la carte menu from which you can also choose three courses for £20. This works out cheaper than ordering those dishes individually, although certain items incur a supplement. There is also a cheaper limited option 3 course menu on offer for £10. We chose 3 courses from both the `a la carte and the £10 set menu so I will cover the dishes that we had from the `a la carte menu first, listing the `a la carte price of each of those dishes as I go along.

To start, an omelette Arnold Bennett with smoked haddock (£5.95) was superb. Made with a combination of gruyere, parmesan and cheddar cheese, the omelette was creamy, luscious and rich. There was a beautiful balance between the cheeses and the haddock was firm and tasty. This dish was plate-licking good although more care could have been taken in cleaning the rim of the plate before presenting it.

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Wild rabbit starter for two

I suffer from a disposition that I call ‘geographical disorientation’, an affliction which I liken to not ‘knowing’ where something is. It usually strikes when I am trying to remember where I have last parked my car, and most inconveniently when I am in a desperate hurry to go somewhere. I usually can’t remember, a debate ensues, which ultimately results in me having to guess. Living smack bang in the middle of my street, there is roughly a 50/50 chance that I have parked the car either to the left, or to the right of my flat. But it is not unheard of for me to occasionally guess wrong, which means that I invariably have to walk back on myself. Sigh – what to do?

The situation wasn’t particularly different when, over coffee the other day, I was trying to tell a foodie friend of mine, D, that the next restaurant on my agenda was the Harwood Arms in Shepherd’s Bush. ‘Oh no, it’s in Fulham’, she said. ‘No, I’m pretty sure it’s in Shepherd’s Bush’, I insisted, and so it went. But now that I have actually been to the Harwood Arms, the consequence of which was that I had to drive to, umm, Fulham, and not Shepherd’s Bush (and this was after finally locating my car), I now have no option but to swallow my words and admit to D that she was correct. Sigh, what to do?

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Selection of charcuterie

At first sight, Terroirs – a small French wine bar and restaurant – would not appear to hold the secret to anything special. But the moment you enter this homely eatery, you know you will be treated to a dining experience that will resonate with you, for its simplicity belies a Gallic menu filled with some flavoursome, earthy eats. Its head chef is Ed Wilson, whose CV reads with time at Orrery, The Wolseley, Galvin Bistro de Luxe and Sonny’s. Not all dishes work, but those that do are simply superb. And the pricing is surprisingly reasonable given its location in the West End.

But my biggest disappointment with it is that the food has the potential to defeat you. Take the example of my first visit to Terroirs. By the time the two of us had finished the platter of charcuterie and two side plates, we couldn’t make it to the main course for we were already full. How was this possible? And here I was, thinking that I was something of an eating machine with a limitless capacity to chow my way through each course. Fearing that I would be unable to provide a well rounded opinion without having sampled the mains, I gladly went back again. Or at least that was my excuse. Therefore this write-up is based on two separate visits, both within two weeks of each other.

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Okonomiyaki at Abeno Too

Last week, a fellow food blogger, 5 Star Foodie, contacted me to ask if I would guest post on her blog and I immediately jumped at the chance. Its always great to be able to share your love of food with other food lovers, but also extremely satisfying to be considered worthy enough to feature on another person’s blog. For this purpose, I wrote about Abeno Too, an okonomiyaki restaurant. So without further ado, please click on Abeno Too Review to read my post…

Abeno Too at:
17-18 Great Newport Street
London WC2H 7JE
Tel: +44 (0)20 7379 1160
http://www.abeno.co.uk/index_too.html

Goi, Vietnamese prawn salad at Viet Noodle Bar

I was running late. Worse yet, I was running late to meet my friend, J, who never ran late. If anything, she usually ran early. Having worked with her before, I knew her time keeping skills well, and punctuality was one of her core virtues. Personality-wise, as a cute version of Speedy Gonzales in a size four outfit, she used to zip around the office with the gusto of an Olympic ice speed skater. Highly energetic, she was so quick at what she did that I was never able to keep up.

The sweet irony is that I am generally, (occasionally?), reasonably, on time. In fact, more ironic was that I always seemed to be on time for those friends who run late for me. Take last week for example when I was due to meet a certain friend for a bite. For some perplexing reason there were no delays on Transport for London and I managed to arrive early. The friend then called me 10 minutes after we were due to meet to tell me he’d forgotten the time and he was only just leaving home. An hour and two glasses of champagne on an empty stomach later, I was surprised that I managed to still hold a conversation.

So feeling rather guilty when I finally showed up, I could do little more than apologise profusely. Being mid-week with certain work pressures in the office to uphold, it was just as well that we were having lunch at Viet Noodle Bar, where the service, like J, was lightning quick.

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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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Roasted partridge with white truffle broth

I once entered into a humorous discussion with an American about English slang. And by that I mean slang used by British people for he really didn’t consider it correct to call such slang ‘English’. He was American after all, and from cowboy country – Texas to be exact, with a cowboy hat to show for it. Newly arrived in London, everything was quite astoundingly strange to him. For those of you who have ever had the experience of being an expatriate, the feelings of perplexity around the unfamiliarity of a new country might resound. But perhaps the most perplexing thing for him was the ‘language’. “Bob’s your uncle?? Now what is that suppose to mean?” he would say.

Hmm, I take his point. I too am an expatriate in London, but I do know what ‘Bob’s your uncle’ means. Jamie Oliver has used it often enough on his cooking shows, but I don’t know why it means what it does. But then, I’m hardly one to ask. Not having grown up in Britain, I’ve not been exposed to certain ‘English’ slang. Take for instance the idiom ‘pig’s ear’. Goodness knows I had no idea what an ear of a pig meant until it was revealed to me at an eating expedition to the gastropub, The Pig’s Ear, as rhyming slang for beer.

The Pig’s Ear had come to my attention on account of a similarly piggy friend of mine murmuring into my little piggy ear something about having recently dined there and thoroughly enjoying it. Browsing through Peter Prescott and Sir Terence Conran’s book, Eat London, I also happened to stumble across the write-up for The Pig’s Ear. They rate it as one of the best gastropubs in London. This meant only good things, which was why my friends, S and T, and I went in search of a little piggy adventure.

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