Mishkins & The Brass Rail

Dumpling

So the other Sunday me & my friend Jason were in the Covent Garden area feeling a little peckish for a snack rather then a full blown meal so we popped along to Mishkins, http://mishkins.co.uk/?referrer=true "A kind of Jewish Deli" as they call themselves. It was around 4 in the afternoon so they didn't have the full menu on, to late for lunch & to early for dinner.

They had a couple of things we wanted to try & I went for the "Chicken matzo ball soup" & a Strawberry malted milkshake. The matzo ball is a Jewish dumpling in soup & in general the soup was pretty tasty. Pretty simple I suppose, a few bits of carrot & chicken here & there but was nice & warming & a good snack. The milkshake was not bad to.

Jason tried the "Severn & Wye lox beigel with house schmear" & went for a chocolate malted milkshake. As beigels go it was very tasty salmon with cream cheese & served with a perfectly cooked runny egg. Not sure if it was better then a beigel on brick lane but very tasty & I believe the chocolate shake was good to.

Banana pud

Had to try a dessert so we went for the "Bananas foster" which is bananas cooked with butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, rum & then vanilla ice cream scooped on top. It was pretty damn tasty & me & Jason had actually created something like this before but didn't know it actually had a name. Basically it was a comfort dessert, boozy & stodgey, in a good way.

Mishkins is a pretty cool place, you can sit at the bar as well & they do nice looking cocktails. Service was a little slow & maybe disorganized but friendly & I really want to go back to try there "Reuben on rye" which they apparently toast. The Reuben is not always which brings me to....

The Brass Rail at Selfridges! I went there with Tony (my bro) to try out there Reuben. A Reuben is basically salt beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, gherkin & Russian dressing. It's a whopper of a sandwich!

The Reuben!

It's been a famous spot in Selfridges food hall for a long time & we queued up with our tray & ordered a Reuben on rye bread each, I believe they usually serve it on sourdough bread but Tony explained how heavy & large it is, so the main carver who has been there over 33 years apparently, carved us up a Reuben on rye.

It was so big that I had to split the sandwich in half. It was tasty, the salt beef moist & the sauerkraut tangy & sweet. It did need some sort of punch so we ended up smearing loads of sachets of Colmans English mustard on. Overall very tasty & very large, though you can definitely share it with someone rather then getting a whole one each. It was a struggle to finish so had to leave the bread & just eat the contents. Mishkins for the Reuben next I think...

The Canton Arms & Great Queen street

The Canton Arms http://www.cantonarms.com/ is a lovely old school sort of pub between Stockwell & Vauxhall that does amazingly good British food. It's owned by the same people who run the Hope & Anchor on the Cut & Great Queen Street restaurant in Covent garden/Holborn http://twitter.com/#!/greatqueenst. Earlier this year I had a great fish dinner there with Daisy & one Sunday a month or 2 ago I popped there for lunch. I had been to meet a letter carver called Richard Kindersley http://www.kindersleystudio.co.uk/ who has a studio in Kennington. He was seeing what my lettering skills were like (not very good), so after my test I felt a little peckish so got the bus down the road to The Canton Arms.

Inky

I sat at the bar & ordered a little carafe of lovely house white wine. I can't say I was starving so I ordered 2 starters. They consisted of a plate of squid with fennel on toast served with it's ink which was perfectly cooked & very tender & a very refreshing salad of courgette, mint & pecorino! Both were absolutely delicious! I had to have there version of a tiramisu which was amazing. Probably one of the best tiramisu I've had out! It had a real nice crunchy biscuity thing going on & I could of had 2. They also do toasties in the pub section that look excellent & alway's have great ales on tap. A great pub with amazing food!

Bloody good!

Onto Great Queen Street which I've been to many times but had to mention because of a fantastic meal I had the other night. The last couple of times had been a little disappointing. This was mainly for not so great service & a radish dish that involved dipping them into a soft boiled egg which was way overcooked!

So the other night me & daisy (after La Traviata at The Royal Opera House, lah di dah) decided to go. The bread & butter that was given was lovely & we scoffed it down. We also had a carafe of chilled red wine which was very tasty. I went straight in for a pork chop with pureed peas & Daisy ordered hare ragu with spelt, which googled say's "Species of wheat". The pork chop was fantastic! It took 25 min to cook (they did pre warn) & had all the crispy, fatty bits in the right place.The pureed peas were sweet & yummy & we also had a side order of greens (cabbage) that were perfect. Daisy's hare was very tasty though I think she had a bit of food envy! For dessert I had 1 scoop of damson ice cream which was really fruity & delicious. The atmosphere is always great & the service was excellent. Very friendly & charming so will keep on going back many more times.