Bocca Di Lupo & Gelupo

Zucchini Flowers

The other friday I wasn't feeling to hot & had an amazing hunger for Italian food for lunch. I tend not to eat much Italian out because I love eating my dad's cooking but I needed some sort of pasta. So I phoned up my friend Will from Bristol who happens to be working in London for a month & told him to meet me at Bocca Di Lupo on Archer street. They cook across Italy's twenty regions, so there's some amazing dishes & they do small or large plates so ideal for sharing. There is a desert from my dads region, Abruzzo, called Sanguinaccio which is a pigs blood dessert mixed with chocolate. Pretty delicious, like an intense Nutella served with bread.

Anyway, back to lunch! We sat at the bar which is great fun getting to watch the chefs in action & ordered a starter to share of "Courgette flowers with mozzarella & anchovy"! It was delicious, the batter slightly greasy & crispy but in a good way & a lovely taste of the saltiness from the anchovy. Very tasty indeed.

More rabbit then Sainsbury's

We then ordered mains from A the one dish lunch menu. I ordered "Bucatini al coniglio all'Ischitana" (which translates as Rabbit braised with chilli & tamato; bucatini in the sauce thereof) which is from Ischia & Will ordered "Grilled home made spicy Italian sausages with soft golden polenta & grilled Treviso" (no translation) from Veneto.

My main was a knockout. A really lovely bit of rabbit with bucatini, which is a thick spaghetti like pasta with a hole running through the center, lovely spicy tomato sauce with parsley sprinkled on top & a dried chilli on the side. Will had food envy even though his sausage & polenta was equally delicious.
                                                                                           

Phenomenale

Rather then have dessert at Bocca Di Lupo I popped over to Gelupo, I've mentioned them before & had a espresso, they do a great espresso with a watermelon & clementine sorbet! I'm not joking when I say this but there ice cream really is phenomenal! I've had so much ice cream since a baby & Gelupo wows me every time. Goooooo there.

Alice Waters & Lina Stores Ltd

Whilst looking on the penguin books website I came across a series of cook book's that have been re- released a few months back http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/penguin_food/index.html, which is a 20 book collection of food writing over the last 400 years. The book that I wanted to check out the most was by Alice Waters called "A Delicious Cooking Revolution". She is a founder of a restaurant called Chez Panisse in California & part of the slow food cooking movement. The recipes are very straight forward & easy & I really liked the sound of her orange & olive salad, so I bought it!

Boar

There is a section on seasonal menu ideas & one idea in the summer section I liked the sound of for lunch was sliced tomatoes with basil! So so simple but with the right tomatoes, delicious. I work around the corner from a lovely Italian Deli in Soho called Lina Stores Ltd on Brewer street so been popping there quite a lot this summer & getting amazingly tasty plum tomatoes, a bag of basil & some lovely focaccia bread as well as the odd slice of Chocolate souffle cake, slices of Wild boar Prosciutto & Pecorino cheese. My friend Jason had a lovely looking Parma ham & aubergine Focaccia (coming atcha) sandwich which they make up fresh. Definitely worth checking out!

So anyway this is how I've been preparing it & I've been using Alice Waters recipe for Vinaigrette for the sauce. 

2 Plum tomatoes sliced diagonally

Salt & Freshly ground Pepper seasoning

Good handful of basil chopped finely

A lovely Slice of Focaccia or crusty bread

Tomatoes & Basil

For the Vinaigrette 

Pour into a small bowl 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar then add Salt & Freshly ground Pepper. 

                                                                         Stir to dissolve the salt then use a fork to beat in a little at a time 3 to 4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Thats it! 

Then pour the Vinaigrette over the tomatoes & basil, add some Salt & Pepper & Hey presto. Obviously bread to soak up the everything, delicious. 

This takes around 10 minutes to prepare, is very light, healthy & tasty. Perfect for the rest of our sunny summer (perhaps not).

St John Hotel

St. John is an amazing nose to tail restaurant that first opened by Smithfield market in 1994 followed 9 years later by St. John Bread & Wine opposite Spitalfields market where I had an amazing Mutton stew last winter & now they have opened up St. John hotel, http://www.stjohnhotellondon.com/, which is just off Leicester square. I was pretty excited when I found out!

Me & Daisy went on a Monday night so got a table pretty easily. First impressions were that it looks very clinical & white but fortunately there were quite a few people chattering away, so a nice buzz about the place & we got a table right by the open kitchen so could hear & see everything being prepared. 

We ordered the house White wine which was fine & then I started with the Blood cake & Bantam egg. This basically was a slice of amazingly tasty black pudding with a delicious fried egg on top, very tasty. Daisy was a little squeamish about ordering the Sweetmeats with Runner beans but they were very simple and deliciously cooked.

Trout

For mains we both went for the Sea Trout with Fennel & Samphire! It was a big slab of trout, very tasty I thought but maybe it a little dry but the skin was lovely & crispy & the fennel & samphire were delicious. We also had a side order of pickled cucumber that was very tangy & went with the trout amazingly. A very hearty main.

Sweeeet

Luckily, there was still room for dessert & I had one of the best desserts of the year in a Sundae, to be precise it was a blackberry Sundae. It came with an amazing blackberry sorbet, almonds & a homemade wafer biscuit! Daisy went for Honey Mousse & Rapberries which she thought was lovely but maybe a little to soft & overly sweet. It was a little like a pannacotta with honey poured on top & a shortbread biscuit on the side. I thought it was sooooo good!

Sundae

This was all finished off with cognac & coffee, mmmhhhh. If any one is around Leicester Square & looking for something a little different, British & tasty then head here! Excellent.

Oh & it was so good I went back the next week for breakfast & had a cafetiere of coffee with Peaches & Yoghurt which was lovely. Breakfast starts from 7am if anyone is up early enough.

Peachy

Pollen Street Social

Daisy sent me a link to Pollen Street Social http://www.pollenstreetsocial.com/ & said we should try it! I had a look & realised the head chef was Jason Atherton who used to cook at Maze, A Gordon Ramsay Restaurant where I remember having one of the most amazing meals ever, a sort of tapas/asian fusion with lot's of other things going on. One of my old friends Grant was coming to London for the night so I booked lunch for the three of us, which at £23.50 for 3 courses sounded like a great deal.

We went on a lovely sunny day & I don't know what it was but there seemed a very relaxed atmosphere in the room, very bright & airy. One of the staff had given Daisy a key with a number on which we had to give in at the end of a meal to receive a special gift, very intriguing. Service was very friendly & I went straight in for a bottle of Italian Red wine, just to ease the journey. On the set lunch menu there were 3 starters, 3 mains & 3 desserts so a perfect & easy way to order because we all ordered different things.

Curd

I chose for starter the "Innes Farm goat’s curd, beetroot, pine nut" which I actually thought was going to be boring but I thought it was the best starter of the 3. Everything on the plate just seemed to go together & just the right amount of seasoning. Daisy had cold "Vale of Evesham pea soup “hot or cold”, mint oil, English crayfish, pea sorbet" which looked lovely but Daisy said it could of done with out the crayfish & the sorbet disappeared straight away. Grant had the " BBQ mackerel, cucumber chutney, frozen ajo blanco" which looked lovely & tasted nice but I got the best starter.

Cod

For main I went for the "Scottish cod ‘aioli’, vegetable salad, cockles" which was very light & fresh. The cod was lovely & tender but could of done with a little bit more seasoning. Someone on the table next to us asked for salt & pepper & the waiter said they didn't have any for customers so I didn't bother asking. Daisy went for the "Roasted Holly Farm chicken, gravy, sage & onion, bread mousse" which looked & tasted delicious. The bread mousse was wonderful & the chicken was very tasty. A great roast. Grant went for the "Roasted Cotswold lamb rump, Summer vegetables, creamed goat’s curd, gooseberries" Which was equally amazing & I think the best dish of the day. The lamb was delicious & I had a lovely crispy bit on the outside, MMMhhhhhh.

Sangria Mousse

For dessert I went for the "Sangria mousse, citrus cream, blood orange granita" which was fluffy, light & had a good wobble to it whilst Daisy & Grant both went for the "Apple caramel “puff”, vanilla ice cream & Calvados" which looked lovely but the "puff" looked a little to crispy to me & everybody else. All pretty tasty though.

Puff

At the end we handed our key in & got given a little box full of....... better not give the surprise away, hahaahahah . Lovely meal though & definitely would go back. Even saw Gary Lineker there to looking rather happy with himself!

Herman Ze German

Ze Sausage

Whilst Coiffing a few glasses of wine with my old friend Si at Gordon's Wine bar I was Filled with a sudden hunger for some sort of dirty food! Si knew a place just up the road that specializes in Bratwurst sausages called Herman Ze German, http://www.herman-ze-german.co.uk/. He's been talking about it for a while so I was quite interested & very hungry.

When we got there I wasn't sure what to have mainly because there were 4 types of sausage -  Bratwurst, Chilli beef, Bockwurst & Flat Sausage which you can have them in a roll with sauerkraut & all the sauces or you could have the sausage shredded with curry sauce on top with frites! This is called Currywurst. I've read about this recently & how it's been massively popular in Germany. So that's what I ordered. To be precise I had a chilli beef Currywurst with Frites & I kindly asked for a little bit of sauerkraut on top.

Chips

It was absolutely delicious. The curry sauce tastes very different to the usual curry sauce you get at the chip shop, a little bit more spicy, the sausage was quite tender & the frites were crispy & delicious. Also it was under £5 & I felt pretty stuffed as well as a bit dirty. Well worth a try & much better then most fast food joints.

Lemon Granita Recipe

This is a recipe I tried out from the La Grotta website http://lagrottaices.tumblr.com/. It's quite tart but very refreshing & so so easy to make! Perfect for the weather we have been having at the mo.

So you need

500 mls Lemon Juice (from 7 large Lemons)
150 mls Soda Water
All of the lemon’s zest
300 mls Simple Syrup

Make your sugar syrup by heating 190 mls water & 190g golden granulated/caster sugar together until sugar dissolves
Zest lemons directly into warm syrup
Squeeze lemons, strain juice then add juice to syrup
Stir in cold soda water
Freeze directly in a stainless steel container, rectangular one is best. Once it has firmed up enough, cover with parchment paper so granita is not exposed to freezer-air and wrap in cling film. Freeze at least 12 hours.
To serve, place granita in fridge for 10 minutes then scrape along the top with a heavy duty ice cream scoop or metal spoon to create slushy ice crystals.

La Grotta suggested serving cold unsweetened whipped cream with the granita or cream beaten with Marsala wine & candied lemon peel which is what I tried. The Marsala cream just took a bit of the sharpness off the granita which was quite nice but next time I think I would use unsweetened Whipped cream!

Spuntino!

Me & Daisy went to try Spuntino http://www.spuntino.co.uk/, one of the restaurants run by the same people who run the Italian restaurants Polpo & Polpetto in Soho. Spuntino is also in Soho, on Rupert street to be precise & on one of the saucier streets around.

In fact I had been walking past Spuntino quite a few times & never realised it was there because it has no boards or signs up, just a scrawl above a frosty window with Spuntino written on it.

We went around 6 on a Thursday night & it was already quite busy. We only had to wait for 10 minutes though & like Polpo they do not take reservations so the wait can be a while in the evenings so we were lucky. 

It's quite beautiful inside, the walls are tiled & it's lowly lit giving the room a mellow & old school feel. We sit at the bar & start off with a Negroni cocktail & Scan the menu. There's lots of little dishes, same as Polpo which I have ate at before, but there is also an Italian/American feel to the menu with dishes such as Mac & Cheese. 

We don't order this mind you & start with a pulled pork & pickled apple dish which is like a mini burger on a small brioche bun. It's pretty delicious & I wish I had a whole one to myself! Our eggplant chips come at the same time which are coated in breadcrumbs & sesame seeds & served with a yogurt dip which are pretty interesting as well as some stuffed fried olives which taste very meaty & delicious. My dad used to cook aubergine chips when I was a kid & I preferred those a lot more but these were very tasty. The worse dish was a salad of duck ham, pecorino and mint salad. There wasn't much of the duck ham & I can't really remember it tasting of mint much either. 

Then we moved onto the Truffle egg toast which I had heard about & was looking forward to trying. It was "egg"cellent (sorry). It basically is a lovely crusty piece of toast covered with Fontina cheese, truffle oil & a soft boiled egg placed in the middle so when you cut into the egg, the yolk oozes out all over the bread base. This was wonderful, very rich & filling. Me & Daisy were pretty full but I just wanted to try one more dish so went for the Soft shell crab with a spicy aioli dip. This was equally excellent, crispy & the spicy aioli dip actually had some heat to it. I would of liked to of had dessert but actually felt a bit to full after all of this but next time I go the peanut butter & jelly sandwich is definitely going to get tried.

With the meal we had a carafe of house white which was very nice & will definitely go back sometime soon. In fact I preferred Spuntino to Polpo where I had a very average dinner & an pretty good lunch but I do have to go back again. Oh & after I managed to get a dessert but it was ice cream at Gelupo http://www.gelupo.com/ which has to be the best ice cream in London that I've tried at the mo. The other night I had Lemon curd ice cream & the day before that I had black forest gateaux ice cream! I've been going for months & every time I go there's something new & amazing to try.  Definite must!