Re-visit: Pizza East Portobello

Food is still great, we arrived shortly after 6:30pm on a Saturday so no need to wait for a table, woohoo! Service was poor (aka. London style) and this time, tinged with Italian surliness for good measure:

Me: Can we get the lamb chops.....

Waiter: We have special starter of "x", you want?

Me: No thanks, we'll go with the lamb chops and fritto misto

(Silence)

Looked like there were lots of people (including one front of house wearing an inappropriate length dress and the other wearing a see-thru dress. For the latter, if you are going to do that, at least make sure your bra and pants match!) running around not doing a lot meaning the whole place was in the weeds by 8:30pm!! Pretty piss poor. Didn't bother us since we were almost leaving but I can only imagine how many rich neighbours from nearby Notting Hill getting mightily cheesed off with this?! Ah well.....

Couldn't resist - pork belly and mushroom pizza again for moi :)

Promising a lot and not really delivering: Beas of Bloomsbury and Briciole

I had popped into Bea's of Bloomsbury a couple of years ago and tried my first ever red velvet cupcake there as well as a delicious vanilla passionfruit cupcake so had good memories of the place. I decided to head back after I finished work one Friday evening and hoping to sit down to some nice tea and cake before meeting JD for dinner. Unfortunately, the lady in front plumped for the last passionfruit cupcake so had to settle for a lemon meringue one instead. I placed my order at the counter and then went and bagged a seat. Now that I also work in a cafe, I was very conscious of customers waiting and just how long is acceptable. I wasn't really in a rush which was fine but I reckon I was sat waiting sans food and drink for a good 10 minutes. On the plus side, it demonstrated to me that people are prepared to wait that long. When my tea and cake arrived, I took a bite and was surprised to find there was no lemon curd inside. Perhaps, I hadn't bitten into the centre enough? 2nd and 3rd bites and still no lemon curd......just at that moment, one of the waitresses walked past and asked if there was any curd inside to which I replied there was not. She very kindly replaced it for me and said that the chef must've forgotten on some of them. I did get another cupcake which had curd inside this time but they weren't exactly over-generous with the stuff??!! As a pastry chef, how can you be finishing a batch of cupcakes and "forget" to add curd to some? Surely, thats blatantly obvious before you top with meringue? Oh wellos....perhaps not really a proper pastry chef in the kitchen, huh? (ie. the obsessive compulsive exacting perfectionist super-anal types and usually most talented of the profession) 

I had read great things about new Italian resto, Briciole near Edgware Road and how it was serving delicious, authentic Italian at rock bottom prices, which prompted Time Out to give it a rare 5-stars and lauded by the likes of Marina O'Loughlin. With that in mind, I thought it would be impossible to book a table a week before dining but we managed, woohoo! The excitement of bagging a table in London knows no bounds!!

The dining room is very relaxed and comfortable with attentive Italian staff at your beck and call. We ordered a number of dishes to share between us including bread, burrata, meatballs, a pasta dish with fish ragu, some steak and sides of beans and grilled vegetables. Hate to say it but nothing really stood out and eating the food did not even give us the same satisfaction of our local Italian. It was so disappointing that I don't even have the full array of pics of what we ate. I skipped pudding but JD plumped for a tiramisu - dead easy to make but this was a bland liquidey splodge in a cappuccino cup with some coffee infused biscuits hiding at the bottom, not tempting.

I guess at least we tried the place but its too much of a trek to be heading back to not so great grub :(

 

Zucca

I have read great reviews about Zucca and have been meaning to visit for a while but been put off by the rather long trek to Bermondsey from our pad out west. Zucca is also one of the restos at the mo which is widely popular so practically impossible to get a spot for dinner (at a decent time) unless you are prepared to book 3-4 weeks in advance. We were very keen to try the place hence the putting up with an early dinner reservation on a Saturday night at 6:30pm.

It was our first time walking down Bermondsey Street and we were surprised to find a little, cool neighbourhood.....a bit like Shoreditch but no hipsters and no trying too hard. Zucca itself was lovely, the resto was bright, airy, contemporary and very relaxed - kind of what I imagine River Cafe is like......or would like to be :)

Service was impeccable, food was simple and delicious - hands down the best Italian resto I have eaten in here in the big smoke. If only Zucca were in my neighbourhood!!

Open kitchen :)

Delicious bread - I could've eaten those grissini ALL DAY!!

Starter of pork belly with pea shoots - not what I am used to for pork belly but tasty nonetheless

Roast cod with borlotti beans and clams - fish was very well cooked but the star of the dish was the broth, yummers! Slight gripe in that the dish could've with more than just 2 clams, otherwise don't advertise it on your menu!

We ordered a side of purple spouting broccolli - perfectly cooked and delicious. I loved the purple flecks of juice left on the dish :)

 

My dessert of hazelnut cake with poached rhubarb - nice but not particularly sophisticated and a slight stodgey end to a meal.

JD's pannacotta with pears - perfect!

Very happy to see Zucca using a Faema machine but disappointed to see the hopper in the coffee grinder filled to brim so the likelihood of getting stale coffee was very high. I was also the first person to order coffee for the night and my espresso wasn't particularly pleasant, oh wellos :(

Polpo

JD and I often walk past Polpo whenever we are in town and always make a mental note to pop in there one day to grab a bite to eat. I suppose one of the things that has put us off in the past is that they don't take reservations and we don't particularly like waiting for food ;)

Bearing all this in mind, we chanced our luck and rocked up on Saturday for a late lunch around half 2 and got seated, yay! Polpo is supposed to be a bacaro, aka. Venetian wine bar where one eats, drinks and generally is merry, I guess? Am not sure myself what a bacaro is supposed to look like but the decor of Polpo definitely reminds me of Spuntino, also owned by the same folk. I have to say that on the whole, the food at Polpo trumps Spuntino plus there is a lot more stuff on the menu that I would happily go back and try out. Polpo's website says they are open for lunch and dinner with a break in between but on our visit, we were told that they had recently started opening all day on Saturdays so good news for anyone looking to try out their grub!

Main dining room, we were seated to the side of the bar area (see below) 

 Arancini - deep fried cheesy risotto balls. I liked them but JD found the thyme a little overpowering.

 Fritto misto - my favourite dish of the afternoon. So simple but so so yummy......and the batter was so light, wow! 

 JD's favourite dish - mackerel tartar with horseradish and pane carasau. Really wish everyone served their pane carasau like Sardo (ie. brushed with olive oil and salt and lightly toasted).

 White pizza with cheese, thyme and red onion - good, but not Princi good!

Roast spuds with garlic and rosemary - am a sucker for the simple things in life! :)

Flank steak with rocket and porcini cream - lovely and the portion was super-generous!

 The one disappointing dish of our meal - purple spouting broccoli with anchovy dressing. Broccoli was overcooked and dressing was bland - frankly, overcooking veg is taking the piss a bit.

Scrumptious pizza - Pizza East

JD and I hopped on our vélos on Saturday and headed down to trendy Portobello Road to meet one of my friends who was setting up a market stand at the farmers market there (it was her first weekend so went down for support). As usual, we were out and about during lunchtime so after the market, we then had to find somewhere for a bit of grub. I remembered the last time I was in the same neck of the woods, I had driven past a Pizza East (pizza place with its original resto in Shoreditch and now with an outpost out west) and thought it looked pretty cool. I was sceptical about us getting a table on a Saturday afternoon but we chanced our luck and got seated at the bar by the pizza ovens. The place was pretty funky/trendy (retro chic decor) with a  somewhat "interesting" clientele (preening is the name of the game!).  

We ordered a couple of small dishes (meatballs and grilled squid) to start followed by a couple of pizzas. Our meatballs arrived which we polished off and then were left in limbo for a good 15-20 minutes with no sight of our squid. One of the front of house (slimey Bradley Cooper, the other was Heather Locklear wannabe) noticed we were sat waiting for a while, went off to investigate what had caused the delay and returned apologising profusely that our order had gone to another table but we would have ours very shortly and offered extra drinks on the house whilst we waited. In fairness, it was very courteous and over and beyond what we would've expected.......but he should've left it at that and not insisted on giving us embraces every time he came to check on us?? (definitely not a fan of touchy feely staff) Our squid came promptly (which was scrummy) followed closely by our pizzas. I have to say it was seriously good pizza and for me, even topping Franco Manca! JD concurred to a point but said he would like to try a few more other types on the menu before coming to a conclusion. We were too stuffed to try desserts but perhaps that will be an excuse to return some other time? As we were leaving, "Bradley Cooper" came over to bid us farewell and we were gifted with some hilarious soundbites ("That's the last time you will have to wait" and to another table, "We'll set it up all nice.......cos we're professional!"). I have since found out that Pizza East is affiliated with Soho House which takes a bit of a shine off things but I honestly could not fault our visit - oh wellos, gotta give credit where credit's due :)

 My pizza of pork belly (including bits of crackling!) and mushrooms - different by really good!

Pizza base passes Pa Chan's test of cleanliness, haha!!

 JD's pizza of anchovies, capers and chilli

Pre-cinema grub - Jamie's Italian

Since we weren't dining at peak dinner time, we decided to chance our luck at Jamie's Italian  for some sustenance. Normally, I wouldn't have bothered given the popularity of the place and the fact they don't take any bookings. However, we did not have to worry cos we didn't realise just how HUMUNGOUS the resto is??? (the last time we visited, we were sat at the front and hadn't noticed that there was an extra dining room out back which was where we sat this time).

Decent food at decent prices with attentive service - can't argue with that, really! :)

 Deep fried calamari

 Burrata - mint and chilli a little uneccesary, the version at our local Canta Napoli is far superior

Panfried monkfish tail in a tomato chilli sauce with clams and new potatoes

A dinner of 2 halves - Bocca di Lupo & Toku

I've been meaning to make a trip back to Bocca di Lupo ever since our impromptu lunch there last year - I finally got around to organising booking a spot midweek for dinner and was looking forward to chowing down some nice food :)

Unfortunately, there were no tables available at the back for the time which I had requested so we had to make do with sitting at the bar instead which wasn't so bad. We settled for a small portion of orecchiette with spicy sausage and octopus with peas and basil as our "starters" before splashing out on a tagliata of rib of beef as our main. The orecchiette arrived pretty swiftly and was very tasty. Shortly after finishing this, there was a lot of movement around the open kitchen and a fair bit of jumping up and down to cover smoke alarms. Eventually, we were told that there was a problem in the kitchen which meant that we would not be able to order any more hot food for the night. Our octopus was probably the last dish to be cooked which was OK......we did try to pick other dishes from the menu but nothing took our fancy so we decided to call it a night after our starters. Not exactly the meal that I had hoped for but the manager was very nice and comped our entire meal.

Still feeling peckish, we rounded off our dinner at Toku down the road, me with a bowl of ramen and JD with a katsu don - an interesting dinner to say the least :)

Chrimbo dinner - Sardo

Since JD and I were heading back to our respective families over Chrimbo, we decided to head to one of our favourite restos in town for a bit of a treat! The resto was pretty busy with a number of Xmas parties taking place, giving the place a nice festive atmosphere. As always, the food was scrummy - we had booked a few days before and there was no problem with securing a table for 8pm (woohoo for somewhere not trying to squish 2/3 sittings a night!!). Service for the most part was OK.....competent at the very least (yep, am still grumbling about my Hix experience!). As usual, we rolled out of the place cradling our tummies filled with yummy food! :)

 Bread basket - very hard to resist!

Spaghetti bottarga (salted fish roe) - a Sardinian speciality, tasty but very rich! 

 I plumped for one of the daily specials of pan fried duck and braised duck leg with broccolli - delish!

 Pannacotta with berry coulis - pretty wobbly this time!

Sugar packets with JD's coffee - me Libra, he Cancer :)