Aand Another Vowel Please – Naamyaa, Isarn, and Thai Food in Islington

Thai food: the best of things, the worst of things. At its best, Thai food is a match for the best food in the world, and has an all-life-is-here quality. Certainly an all-flavours-are-here quality. On the flipside, nothing is more frustrating than the bland, overly sweet Thai food available all over town, in supermarkets, pubs, market stalls, and chain restaurants. I feel like thrusting David Thompson's brilliant 'Thai Food' book, with its oft-repeated phrases like "it should taste hot, sweet, sour, and salty" into the hands of those responsible. With Islington having been chosen as the first location in a new Thai "all day modern Bangkok cafe" chain, Naamyaa, from Alan Yau – he of Busaba Eathai, Hakkasan, Yauatcha, Wagamamma, etc. – it seemed like as good a time as any to do a blog about Thai food and what is available in the borough.

Thai food is responsible for many great food moments in my life. The first time I ever ate Thai food, in a restaurant called the Chiang Mai in Frith Street in the 1980s. A revelation, as it was to many at that time, new experience after new experience. Then the first time I ate real Thai food in Thailand, expectations low, in a non-descript caff in Phukhet called 'Mai Porn' (I have always assumed that means something different in Thai to the English meaning), with red Formica tables. I was absolutely blown away, and got high on the food. The first time I attempted Thai food myself, from a recipe in Keith Floyd's 'Far Flung Floyd' book .. well, the result may not have been great to an expert, but I was very pleased, amazed in fact, that I could make something that tasted that good so easily. Since then I have discovered David Thompson's bible and never looked back.

One of the things I love about Thai food tradition (apart from the awesome food) is eating with a spoon. It makes you feel like a baby, in a good way, i.e. in a the-world-is-taking-care-of-my-needs sort of way rather than a frustrated-and-powerless sort of way. My one strict policy with Thai food in London is never to order green curry. Although I consider it one of the ten best dishes ever invented, ordering it in London is bound to be disappointing, as it always seems to taste bland with neither a sufficient chilli kick, depth, or much flavour of chicken. Far better to make your own following David Thompson's recipe with good quality chicken (yeah I know, I’ll shut up about that book now) - easy to do, and always superior to anything you get in the street or restaurants in Britain.

On to Naamyaa then, and while I am not a huge fan of the Alan Yau model of founding a good restaurant or chain then selling it on (with the inevitable decline in quality that follows), it must be said that the guy is free to do what he likes and it's really none of my business. It should also be said that overall his activities have made a huge contribution to increasing the quality of food available in London and the UK.

Anyway, Naamyaa. I have to say I was attracted by the 'concept' (horrible word) of a Thai all-day cafe - I love anything that stays open all day, except Starbucks – which would be based around Khanom Jin noodle dishes and include a breakfast menu. First impressions of the interior were disappointing in that it didn't seem to match this idea at all, in fact it clashes with it quite strikingly – its all a bit pazzazzy and feels much more like the lobby of a snazzy New York hotel than a Thai cafe. It smells of money. Some people will like it I'm sure.

I did like the food though. The beef curry Khanom Jin noodle set was very tasty indeed, and I liked the accompaniments and the soup it came with. As soon as I put it in my mouth it tasted like proper Thai food. You know, like, Thai Thai food. I'll leave it up to any Thai London food bloggers out there to tell me whether this was actually an authentic experience or not. All I can tell you is that it didn't disappoint me in the way that Thai food normally does. I did not get as stuck into the menu as I would have liked, which is partly why this post is more about first-impressions and comparisons than a full 'review', but the food was definitely good enough, and good enough value, to make me want to return with a larger party and pig out. The menu also has a Laksa section, which is intruiging (I generally associate Laksa with Malaysia and Singapore), and even burgers, which I doubt I would ever get round to trying.

The beer selection is pretty boring for a new opening, and poorly matched with the food, but they are hardly alone in that. The one concession to proper beer is a very bland Meantime pale ale, while the food is crying out for a sharp bitter hoppy ale, or a good quality wheat beer. Places like this need to get with the programme when it comes to beer. London is changing. As Bob Dylan might say, something is happening here but you don't know what it is.

A little stroll up Upper Street from Naamyaa, Isarn has been around for a good few years now, and has always had its fans. My one previous visit, shortly after it opened, was a disappointment, particularly given the slightly overdone hype when it opened. I seem to remember there was some much-mentioned connection to Alan Yau at the time. On my return recently I sampled the £6.95 bento-style lunch sets, and I have to say it was incredible value. Tender chicken satay, delicious and hot duck red curry, again with tender meat (duck curry is so often tough) and some fruit. My return to Isarn was so impressive that I felt foolish to have ignored it all this time. As with Naamyaa I intend to revisit for a full a la carte meal soon.

We'll skip past the profoundly mediocre chain Thai Square, which gives me horrific acid-flashbacks of a time when I used to have to attend stilted work lunches in the City, on the occasion of somebody leaving or a dull executive type from overseas visiting. Hardly Thai Square's fault perhaps, but its not going to make me big them up any. And they don't need my help anyway. Mediocrity sells.

Nid Ting at the Archway end of Holloway Road is definitely worth a mention. It is a very nice local Thai, run by a charming family, and benefits from its location in Archway which, while not exactly a desert, is not overly blessed with good restaurants. It is too brightly lit and has daft Thai pop music piped into the restaurant, but that kind of adds to the authenticity for me. So, nice to have if you live nearby, but perhaps unlikely to inspire foodie pilgrimages. The Thai Corner Cafe on St Pauls Road is pleasant enough for a relaxed meal with friends, but it is definitely not going to win any awards. The Thai stall on Chapel Market is in the same vein as similar stalls around London – nice enough for a quick lunch in the park, but somewhat bland and a million miles away from street food as it would be in Thailand. I'd rather that such stalls were there than not there, I just wish they were a lot better than they are.

Naamyaa on first evidence then, has to be considered a good addition to the area and definitely worth checking out. Isarn is hanging in there too - highly recommended for a nice, good value lunch. Thai food in general remains yet another useful foodie metaphor for life – moments of joy punctuated with moments of disappoinment, but hopefully improving imperceptibly along the way.

Naamyaa Cafe
407 St John Street
London EC1V 4AB
http://www.naamyaa.com/

Nid Ting

533 Holloway Road

London N19 4BT

020 7263 0506

Isarn
119 Upper Street
London N1 1QP
http://www.isarn.co.uk/

Bricking It - Ben Spalding at John Salt

As you may have noticed, Foodie Islington is not really a finger-on-the-pulse, get-in-there-first type of blog, coming at you live from the opening of the latest gourmet pizza pop-up or the David Chang guest slot at the St John Hotel. But when I discovered that one of the most exciting and talked-about chefs in London, Ben Spalding (ex of Roganic, and the highly-regarded Hackney summer pop-up Stripped Back) was to be in residence for six months at John Salt, a new bar/restaurant smack in the middle of Upper Street, Islington, AND that an intrepid foodie friend was prepared to brave the reservations system and make a booking for a party which included little old me, well ... it would have been positively rude not to accept. So here we are, coming at you live from, well, not quite the opening of the place (it has has been open a week or so) but pretty close.

The site, just opposite St Mary’s Church, although a terrific space, does not have a particularly illustrious history. The previous trendy-bar incarnation, Keston Lodge, had its fans, but I was not sorry to see it go. Before that it was briefly an All Bar One, in the days when every other pub was an All Bar One. (Confession: Bless me Father for I have sinned. I ... I ... may have ... um ... liked All Bar One at the Angel when it first opened.) Going further back, this was once the notorious Murray’s Bar, which back in the days of being thrown unceremoniously out of pubs at 11:05 (by staff treating you as a despised enemy) was known as a place where you could pay a quid or so to get in and carry on drinking. You had to really want that last drink pretty badly to brave the charming young thugs who filled the place. It later changed its name to Xanadus and became more of a meat-market nightclub. I once saw a young woman punch another woman in the face for "looking at her" in here. Ah, those were the days ..

Sorry, drifted off into nostalgic reverie there. So, Ben Spalding is now at John Salt. The bar area has been nicely done out in not-too-pretentious fashion, and a range of interesting sounding cocktails are on offer along with a very decent selection of craft beer, including the likes of Kernel on tap, and nice imports from Bear Republic, Flying Dog, and Brooklyn Brewery in bottle. The bar menu is different and tempting, with all dishes under £10. Not many bar menus have sandwiches using crispy chicken skin instead of bread, or blowtorched lettuce. For the sake of thoroughness (in other words, for your sake, not mine) I plan to investigate the bar dishes fully in the very near future.

For now though, there were just the 12 courses on the weekend set menu to keep us going. I need to say right now that the food is incredible – surprising, playful, interesting, and most importantly, delicious. I should also say that the welcome provided by all of the staff is superb - warm, relaxed and professional. The chefs make a point of coming out to say hello to diners, but not in the wanky do-you-want-my-autograph way you get in some restaurants. They all seem like genuinely nice people who are happy to come out and meet people and exchange a bit of banter.

OK that's (most of) the fawning out of the way. We should get on to the food. Absolutely every course had something interesting and memorable about it. Firstly, the pre-menu nibbles are amazing, the short-rib 'bite' my favourite, but there are also crisps and a kind of miso soup. Then breads, with a variety of butters which are all different and all wonderful to eat. At the risk of sounding like someone on LSD, you find yourself actually thinking about butter, what it is, and how it is made. Then the 30-ingredient salad (there are plans afoot for a 50-ingredient upgrade, in case that's not enough for you), which is provided with it's own menu of flavours for you to identify, which is actually very good fun. Every mouthful has something different, a box of tricks. Then a superb mushroom course, Hen of the Woods, with lettuce and accompaniments, and a scallop 'sandwich' involving kiwi fruit, some kind of ham, truffle, and 'cider butter'.

The gimmicky dish which is getting a lot of attention, Chicken on a Brick, is very tasty indeed. Why is it served on a brick? I have no idea. It's a bit of fun. Perhaps, dare I say it, something of a piss-take. I can easily imagine a chef chuckling at the sight of a roomful of uber-foodies licking bricks. Whatever. The food is so good and so innovative I'm not sure I can be bothered with a pretension vs genius debate.

So there I was. I had come full circle from the Xanadus days, from being the chicken bricking it at the sight of aggro to being a trendy and with-it diner eating chicken from a brick. And then licking a brick. (At school they used to ask if you were "chewing a brick". They never used to ask about licking bricks.)

The brick is followed by a rainbow trout course involving 'rotten mango juice' (tasted fine to me), then a Vacherin risotto enhanced by a grilled cucumber dressing which made me resolve there and then to start grilling cucumbers more often. Heel of beef cooked in wine and kimchi was as delicious as it sounds, the kimchi element very subtle.

Palate cleansers were served in pre-Thatcher school milk bottles, then came desserts. It's not often you see desserts with names like 'Cucumber & Peanut Butter', and 'Fennel'. The first of these was an a-la-recherche-du-temps-perdu recapturing of a Ben Spalding childhood experience, the addition of muscat grape jam transforming it to a real dessert. I was reminded of a moment from my own childhood, perhaps not recalled since, eating peanut butter from the inside of a metal toy crocodile. (I'm not sure how it got in there. I suppose I must have put it there.)

The meal was rounded off with superb coffee, into which the same care and attention had gone as every other course. The smoothness and flavours were amazing. My only tiny gripe with the evening would be the volume of the music from the bar downstairs, but presumably this is a Friday and Saturday night thing. Lunch might be a better bet for a quieter meal.

I'm very glad that fine food such as this doesn't have quite the same you-can-never-go-back qualities as fine wine or (the cheaper alternative) high-quality craft beers. Otherwise I might find myself losing friends and possibly even family members by insisting on rotten mango juice with my fish, or only eating chicken from a brick. No, going back to marmite on toast is fine, and from what I hear that’s the kind of thing chefs eat when they get home as well.

We might not be eating here every day, but it really is pretty exciting to have a chef as ambitious, adventurous, and plain talented as Ben Spalding working and developing on our doorstep. I can only hope this thing lasts longer than the stated six months. I will be strolling back down Upper Street at the earliest opportunity for more adventures. If I can get another reservation. If not, there's always the bar.




Ben Spalding at John Salt
131 Upper Street
London N1 1QP
http://john-salt.com

Hix Oyster & Chop House (or, In Defence Of Hix)

Being relatively new to this food-blogging lark, I may well have missed a memo on this, but it seems to have become fashionable to slag off Mark Hix and his restaurants. The latest venture, The Tramshed, in an area I used to call Old Street but is now called Shoreditch or Hoxton or whatever, has taken a particular battering, including what I thought – without having visited myself - was a harsh review by the normally excellent John Lanchester in The Guardian criticising the place for having only chicken and steak on the menu. (Chicken and steak ... what's not to like? I can’t wait to go.) I love places with short menus. I like places where the waiters or waitresses tell you what to order. I like places that focus on doing one thing well, be it Pho, steak, doughnuts, or whatever. I would think the advice on The Tramshed would be: if you don't want chicken or steak, don’t go there. Lanchester's replacement at the Guardian, Marina O'Loughlin, of whom I am also a fan, was equally scathing in her review for the Metro, even suggesting that Hix's reputation was based on having friends in the right places. Various food bloggers have also weighed in to add to the sense that it is quite the thing to disapprove of Hix. I don't know Mark Hix, or anyone that knows him, but I will forgive him if he has friends, including friends in the same business as him. Likewise I hope his detractors have friends that would do them a favour if they could.

A notable exception to this is Time Out, who recently awarded The Tramshed their Best New Meat Restaurant award and generally seem inordinately enamoured of all things Hix. Perhaps their over-enthusiasm has helped spur the mini backlash. While I must admit I am not a huge fan of the Hix restaurant in Soho, despite having met food hero Bruno Loubet in there (he was at the next table so I shook his hand and played the fan boy), there is no doubt for me that Mark Hix is on the side of the angels, fighting the good fight, and has done good things for food in London and the UK in general. Foodies who deride the likes of Hix, or Jamie Oliver for that matter, remind me of Arsenal fans who complain about Arsene Wenger. Don’t they remember what it was like twenty years ago?

Anyway, who cares, right? We are only having lunch. And when it comes to lunch, I do very much like the Clerkenwell branch of the Hix empire, Hix Oyster & Chop House, which, as luck would have it for the purposes of this blog, is in Islington. It is a place I have been back to several times, with classy but relaxed decor and atmosphere, and good simple food. It ain't cheap, but then, I don't go there every day. The trick is to go when the city suit types are at a minimum - weekend lunchtimes are good, or maybe the quiet spell just after Christmas (which is a great time to go to restaurants in general). I enjoyed a lovely quiet lunch in good company one Easter weekend, in a half-deserted restaurant.

I should probably say something about the food. Anywhere that serves crackling as a pre-appetiser nibble has already scored several points on this blog and is half way to ten out of ten. Beer is served in ye-oldey pewter tankards, of which there are mini versions for children's drinks such as blood-orange juice. A starter might be some festive oysters, or a crab and samphire salad. When choosing mains, I generally find it hard to resist a Porterhouse steak for two, with Bernaise sauce. (Mmm Bernaise.) There are other tempting options like high-quality pork chops as well, they are just not as tempting as Porterhouse steak. Although generally a beer enthusiast, I do respect the fact that there are rules on some things for good reasons, and order red wine with the Porterhouse. On my last visit a doggy bag was requested for the steak bone, and a classy long black bag which looked like it should be holding champagne or perfume was provided.

Hix Oyster & Chop House is a place I have come to associate it with quiet, relaxed celebrations, and would heartily recommend it to anyone for that purpose. The emphasis is on quality British ingredients rather than anything fancy or ground-breaking. It may not be the latest thing with the foodierati, and there are no bubblegum-flavoured fois-gras sliders being served, but pick the right time to go and you will have a meal that is memorable for all the right reasons.



Hix Oyster & Chop House
36-37 Greenhill Rents
Cowcross Street
London EC1M 6BN
http://www.hixoysterandchophouse.co.uk