Because It's Worth It - Bistrot Bruno Loubet

The first time I walked into Bistrot Bruno Loubet, it was a Tuesday lunchtime, around noon. The man himself was in the kitchen, in his whites. A good sign. I had offered to "research" venues for a work Christmas lunch, and was nobly pounding the streets looking for a suitable place, perhaps sampling here and there as I went. They didn't have room for us for our lunch, but I decided to sit at the bar and order a little cheeky lunch of my own, while I was there. I am not the kind of person to whom solo dining comes naturally, but from the start I could not have felt more comfortable. Second good sign. Anyway I love sitting at the bar. Service always seems to be better because you can always attract someone's attention. Not wanting to overdo the whole treating-myself-for-no-reason thing, I skipped the tempting starters and stuck to a main course, with a glass of wine as a condiment. Choosing from the menu was agonising, but I plumped for a seafood cannelloni, and resolved to return many times. They brought me the bread, which is up there with the best restaurant bread I have ever eaten, the onion bread in particular. The good signs were piling up. Being a solo diner I got a whole basket of it to myself. The cannelloni was delicious, a great dish perfectly cooked, as they might say on Masterchef. Afterwards I had a coffee, which came with a little chocolate, and the bill came to less than £30, for what had felt like an utterly luxurious and stolen lunch.

Since then I have been back, both solo and accompanied, to sample the Hare Royale and other things I had missed on that first visit, and have never left disappointed. Recently the menu was overhauled, which gave me the excuse I needed to write a blog post about it. A dinner for four was arranged, and as expected, every dish was delicious, with the possible exception of an ever-so-slightly dry flourless chocolate cake. Wonderful bread as usual, incredible guinea-fowl Boudin Blanc in a small Garbure soup, braised oxtail, saddle of hare. (Sounds good, right? It is.) Mashed potato that is done in that proper way I never seem to manage at home. Tonka bean crème brûlée. I had been slightly nervous going in as I had raved about the place so much to my companions, who had never been before, but I shouldn’t have worried. The place is a banker. The good kind of banker.

I have no idea whether Bistrot Bruno Loubet has a Michelin star or not, and I don't care. I get the impression that the owners care much more about customers having an enjoyable time than they do about any Michelinigans. What I do know is that the value is outstanding. It is not a cheap restaurant, but for the quality of cooking, atmosphere, and service, I struggle to think of where you can get better value for money for this kind of meal. It is fancy and luxurious, but not at all stuffy, quite relaxed in atmosphere. It feels like the owners have really tried to make it the kind of place they would like to go to themselves. When you want a really nice, table-clothy kind of meal, without having to pay through the nose for it, and you don’t want to travel too far, this is the place. Or if you are just passing by yourself at lunchtime, you could always pop in and treat yourself. I won’t say "because you’re worth it". That would be cheesy. I’ll just say that Bistrot Bruno Loubet is.

Bistrot Bruno Loubet

St John’s Square

86-88 Clerkenwell Road

London EC1M 5RJ
http://www.bistrotbrunoloubet.com

Old School - M. Manze

If you go to restaurants and eating places a lot, their appearance and menus can start to look a bit samey. M Manze, one of the few remaining traditional pie & mash shops in London, will take you on a proper little mini-break back in time, and feels more like stepping into another world than many places that consciously strive for that effect. Plus, a visit here is considerably cheaper than a visit to Bob Bob Ricard. And its not just the natural, time-worn, un-designed, old-fashioned appearance of the place that I like.

M Manze is full of older people, and they are welcome and at-home here. London spends a lot of time patting itself on the back about how far it has come as a city over the past twenty years, how culturally diverse it is, and how great the food is these days (and of course, I am as guilty of this as the next foodie), but it has some way to go when it comes to being properly inclusive of the old and the young in the way that seems so natural in, for instance, Asia or Southern Europe. One of the best things about New York is that you actually see people in their 80s eating alone or in couples in buzzy restaurants, in areas like the West Village. Restaurants should have grannies in them, and they should have children in them. Anyone who doesn’t like it can bugger off and found a Logan's Run-style community somewhere and live trendily ever after.

OK sorry, rant over. As I was saying, I like this place. The food? Well, the pies are the thing. Mmm pie. (Jellied eels, not so much.) Delicious and appetising pastry is the essential feature of a pie, and these babies have it in spades. You can forgive a bit with the filling if the pastry is done right. The mash, scraped onto the side of the plate in the traditional way, is proper mashed potato, the right thick texture for shepherd's pie or .. er .. pie & mash. Its not buttery and its not creamy, but it is potatoey, fresh and genuine (i.e. made of potatoes, unlike whatever it was I used to get served at school). Being a pie & mash shop, the food here is, as Michel Roux Jr might say, "not refined", but it is good wholesome comfort food, and just the thing if you are struck by hunger while browsing iPhone covers in the market. If you are really hungry you can have double pie & mash, or double pie & double mash, until you’re ready to quit. The liquor, yes, it is very bland, but inoffensive to my taste buds ... a bit like school dinner food.

I have heard people talk about other pie & mash shops that are supposed to be better than this one, but they always seem to be located in the middle of nowhere (i.e. South London somewhere), and frankly, I’m not prepared to travel that far for pie & mash, however good and however cheap. But if you offer me a nice hot pie in a proper old-school gaff, conveniently situated Up Chap (that is, for the benefit of any non-Islingtonians, in Chapel Market), I might just pop in once in a while.

 




 

M. Manze

74 Chapel Market
London N1 9ER

Yipin China, and Chinese Food in Islington

For a long time, if anyone had asked me to recommend where to go in Islington for good Chinese food, I would have said "sure, no problem, go to a tube station, get on the Picadilly line, and go to Chinatown or Queensway". And while I do my best with this blog to big-up worthy local Islington businesses, sometimes you just have to say that's not something we do that well around here.

Whilst I admired Youngs on Upper Street for it's staying power, that was roughly the extent of my admiration. Although I must admit to enjoying my meal on the few occasions I ate there, that was a reflection of my own low standards (i.e. I inevitably enjoy more or less any Chinese meal however cheesy or low-quality, and enjoy a greasy inauthentic takeaway as much as the next man) rather than anything of interest on offer there. Youngs has now finally gone the way of all restaurants, to be replaced by a branch of another long-standing stalwart of Upper Street mediocrity, Le Mercury. (I feel no guilt writing this since the place seems to be permanently packed regardless of anyone's opinion, so they don't need any help from me.)

There is the underrated and under-promoted Ye’s on St Paul’s Road, which does deserve at least a mention in a survey of Chinese food around these parts. The owners of Ye’s are from Dong Bei in North Eastern China, which from what I can make out is part of Guangzhou (correct me if this is wrong). They have that most maddening of things, a Chinese menu, which is given to Chinese customers but not Western-looking customers unless they specifically ask for it. The English menu is full of the standard Cantonese/British takeaway stuff with pineapples in it and whatnot. The Chinese menu has Dong Bei dishes and Szechuan dishes. So if you know what you are doing and probe the owners you can have stuff like whelks & cucumber, tofu skin salad, twice-cooked pork, morning glory with fermented tofu, and so on, but they don’t make it easy for you. There are often groups of young Chinese eating those steamboat things, but the place is not nearly as full as it could be. Foodies walk by on the street outside, on their way to Trullo a couple of doors down. If this place was promoted as what it really is, rather than what they seem to think people want, it would surely be packed out.

Anyway. The Hunanese restaurant Yipin China has turned up on Liverpool Road and is not nearly so shy about promoting its specialities. It really is a good restaurant, with an interesting menu unashamedly announcing and illustrating the duck’s tongue and pig’s intestine dishes in English and with pictures, alongside more standard offerings involving pork (Chairman Mao’s red-braised pork), chicken, fish and so on. I really like the slightly bizarre touches as well, like the TV screen facing the street advertising the dishes on offer.

Peanuts and pickled radish are brought as soon as you sit down. I may have said this before but I love places that give you something to eat right away, while you read the menu, to reduce risk of starvation. The menu has Hunanese, Szechuan, and Cantonese sections, and it is mainly the Hunanese selections which distinguish it from other menus. Cold dishes such as smacked cucumbers, ‘man and wife’ offal slices and spiced snails make a nice start to a meal for me. Cold meats always seem healthier somehow, even if they are swimming in chilli oil. Everything I have eaten here has been nice, and interesting – pork spare ribs on glutionous rice, preserved sea bass in liquor, which has a very concentrated fishy taste. I also like the Chinese approach to vegetable dishes, which is to put pork in them. Sometimes they seem more like pork dishes with vegetable additions. The best dish I have eaten here is dry-wok tofu, which naturally includes pork and is served in one of those things with a flame which keeps it hot, possibly to mask a certain fatty quality. Absolutely delicious.

Yipin China is by far the best Chinese restaurant in Islington that I know of, and the authentic Hunanese menu gives it a distinctive quality that would, finally, make me point people away from the tube station and down the street. May it stay as long as Young’s.

 

 

 

Yipin China
70-72 Liverpool Road
London N1 OQD
http://www.yipinchina.co.uk

 

 

Mmmm Doughnuts - St John

Ahh, St John. Is there a better restaurant in Islington? (No.) Is there a better restaurant in London? (Debateable.) Nothing much has changed at St John since it opened in the mid 1990s, apart from the menu, which changes every day in content if not in style. This is testament to the confidence and quality that was already there, intact, when it opened, and of the way in which it sits outside (above) temporary fads and fashions. When nothing changes, it doesn’t make it easy for the food blogger to find an excuse to write about the place. I know St John is not smoking hot foodie news that no one knows about, but I dare say it will be there long after the latest "flash hob" pop-up event is forgotten.

However, a reason to write about St John in the guise of reporting new developments has arrived, in the form of doughnuts. ("Doughnuts", Homer Simpson once asked, "is there anything they can’t do?") These are not just any doughnuts either, but generally acknowledged to be the Platonic ideal of doughnuts, which makes them really rather desirable things in anyone’s book. The doughnuts in question have, until recently, enjoyed a large cult following mainly from the bakery outpost in the Maltby St area in Bermondsey (actually in Druid St). A doughnut has to be one charming motherfucking doughnut to make me want to schlep to Bermondsey early-ish on a Saturday morning. Luckily, they actually are that good. But even more luckily, Islingtonians can now say goodbye to that schlepping-to-Bermondsey misery, because the famous dougnuts are available in the original Farringdon restaurant (nowadays referred to as 'HQ', 'Smithfield' or 'The Mothership') on Thursday and Friday mornings, if you get there early enough. I recommend the ones with custard fillings, or there are jam versions if you custardically-challenged, as my children, bafflingly, are.

You could even have some 'elevenses' while you are there. One of the many things I love about St John is the way that they revive forgotten or abandoned foods, meals, and traditions, and present them with a completely straight face, as though they never went away. Of course one takes a bit of seed cake with Madeira at 11am – what could be more natural than that? Unless, of course, you are having Eccles Cake with Lancashire cheese for your elevenses. (Just like you eat 'savouries' such as Welsh Rarebit, after you have finished your dinner of grouse.) I asked a staff member what you are supposed to drink with elevenses. He looked slightly bemused by the question as he answered "anything you like".

I have enjoyed wedding celebrations, birthday celebrations, and many memorable meals in this restaurant. Some of the very best meals I have ever eaten have been here. I have had many "what have they done to this?" moments with apparently simple ingredients such as venison or guinea fowl. I still have dreams about a walnut and date steamed pudding I ate here circa 1996. I was cured of my Pavlova-scepticism here. I have even had the odd bad dish, which is to be expected when the menu changes every single day for nearly twenty years. Unlike many restaurants, St John seem to enjoy serving large parties or celebrations, as it gives them a chance to do things which they can’t do when serving individual dishes. Suckling pigs, huge nursery-rhyme sized pies, or Grand Aioli. A pleasure here can be as large or as small as you like, whatever takes your fancy. You can hire a private room for a feast. Or you can have a solo lunch in the bar, usually around £15 for something delicious with something nice to drink, one of the best bargains in town in my book. Or you could just have a doughnut. But you might as well get two, while you’re there.

St John
26 St John Street
London EC1M 4AY
https://www.stjohngroup.uk.com/smithfield/