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Les Trois Garçons

Les Trois Garçons
1 Club Row
E1 6JX

Date of Last Visit: Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

The Victims: Bevin, Jimmy, Linda

The Damage: About £50 each

The Background: It's a Tuesday night and it's gorgeous out so we try to get over to The Boundary Rooftop. There's a 45 minute wait to get up to the top. So then we consider eating at The Albion, but I can't get excited about the menu. So I suggest Les Trois Garçons, a place I've wanted to try out for quite some time now, for the decor alone.

And maybe there's the rub. If you want to go to a restaurant mainly for the decor, maybe you'd be better off at the Rainforest Cafe.

The Entrance: It's really bright out, which is an odd look for Les Trois Garçons. It's the type of place that I think would do best at dusk or on a dark night in December. With candlelight. There are a lot of things, sparkly things, hanging from the ceiling. In the bright light of day--and particularly a day that's close to the longest day of the year--entering Les Trois Garçons feels like stumbling into a funhouse with the lights on. Not so fun.

The clientele is also pretty dressed up. We're a little, shall we say, casual. This doesn't seem to bother the restaurant at all, but I felt like I made the wrong restaurant choice on the wrong night. This is confirmed when we're handed the menu...£42.50 for TWO COURSES. Ouch.

The Food: Foie gras for me to start and it's smooth and buttery. I'm still smarting over the £21.25 price tag on it, but in for a penny, in for a pound, huh? (Probably more like a 1/3 - 2/3 split on the price, I know.) The only let down here are the toasts. Although they look gorgeous from a distance, they're sandy and crumbly. And although maybe that's meant to be a good foil to the foie gras, I just end up making a mess. (And yes, another night where I've left my real camera at home. Sorry.)

Jimmy and I both opt for the lamb as our main and it is pretty good. I like the soft cushions of gnocchi. The lamb could have been a little bit pinker, but overall, it's respectable. My only problem (besides for the price) is the size of the dish. I am not one to leave food behind, but I had to hand Jimmy my plate half way through as there was no way I could eat more than four slices of the lamb. Odd that I'm complaining about the price and then giving half my food away, I know.

The Loo: There's only one. And it was a bit of a mess when I visited.

The Service: They pulled the bottled water trick. We asked for still water. They brought us TWO bottles, and poured very generous servings. I didn't check the bill, but what do you think? £8 worth of water?

The Verdict: Not for me. The only way I'd go back is on a TopTable discount. Just too OTT (and a bit dated, at that) and too pricey.

Peggy's Cupcakes

Peggy's Cupcakes
The Backyard Market (the market across the way from the Sunday Upmarket)
Brick Lane

I was wandering around Brick Lane the other Sunday when I ran into Peggy's Cupcakes. You might know that I've eaten a lot of cupcakes in London. Peggy's are some of the prettiest. If I weren't on a huge diet at the moment, I would have had one. But I didn't. I just stood there staring for a while.

They don't make miniature cupcakes, if you're asking. Just these. Which is a bit of a bummer if you're subsisting on fruit smoothies. But again, still nice to look at.

Rosa's

Rosa's
12 Hanbury Street
E1 6QR

Date of Last Visit: Friday, January 30th

The Victims: Jen, Julie, Justine

The Damage: £20ish each

The Background: Fridays. Love Fridays. Don't make enough of them often enough. I don't plan ahead for them often enough. This time, we did. Feathers and Matt and others were over at The Drunken Monkey (which I've eaten at, but never written about for some reason or another), but we couldn't get another table, so we decided instead to eat in the general vicinity and then head to The Drunken Monkey afterwards for cocktails.

The Entrance: Rosa's is pretty modern-looking, for a Thai place. Good soft pink lighting. The Barbara Walters kind. I'm the first to arrive and I start chatting with the two people next to me...they loved, loved, loved their food. So I'm excited to try everything.

The Starters: Thai calamari. (Good.) Summer rolls. (Summery.) Chicken satay. (OK.) All in all, I'm not wowed. But the food is good. And hey, it's cheap.

The Mains: Three of the four of us order Pad Se Eu. I think like the noodles are too soft. Overcooked. It's just okay, maybe even a little less than okay for me. I still prefer the Pad Se Eu at Thai Thai and Suchard (another place I've never written about) better. And nothing will top the Pad Se Eu I had at The Regent, Bangkok many years ago.

The Verdict: The food is really decently priced. The atmosphere is a notch above your standard Thai place. The food, for me, is just so-so.

Le Bouchon Breton

Le Bouchon Breton
8 Horner Square
Old Spitalfield Market
E1 6EW

Date of Last Visit: Sunday, November 30th, 2008

The Victim: Me

The Damage: £20

The Background: The saga of my hot water heater continues. The manufacturer is sending someone out to take a look. He is, they tell me, scheduled to arrive between 9 and 9.

Yes, you read that correctly. He'll be there at some point after 9 a.m. and before 9 p.m.

I'm a prisoner in my own home. And I have NOTHING to eat.

I imagine the worst, me wasting away--starving--in my flat until 8:45 p.m., only to have him arrive at 9 p.m. and discover he's missing the parts he needs.

But, to my surprise, he shows up at 12:30 p.m. and is gone by 1 p.m. and my hot water has been plentiful and, well, hot ever since.

So it's time for lunch.

The Entrance: I wander around and around Spitalfields, looking for Le Bouchon Breton. It's upstairs. So look up! I enter and everyone is SO happy to see me. There are a lot of staff at Le Bouchon. There's someone to greet me. Someone to show me to my table. Someone to give me the menu and explain the specials. Someone to take my food order. Someone to take my bread order. Someone to take my drink order. I'm serious.

But you know what...they are all so darned CHEERFUL that I cannot help but be charmed. Some of the most cheerful service I've ever had in London. (The vast majority of staff seem to be French.)

The Food: French onion soup is nice. It's better than average. There are lots of onions and lots of cheese and the crouton is really toasted so it doesn't dissolve too quickly. My croque monsieur is thick and cheesy, although the ham seems a bit supermarketish in its thinness. I would have liked the ham to have been a bit meatier. The wine server suggests a Rioja to accompany my two dishes, which I was a bit surprised about, given that he appeared to be French and we were, after all, in a French restaurant. But it did the trick.

The Goodbye: As I went to leave, not one but four (if not five) separate members of staff bid me adieu. Not bad.

The Loos: Had a Dyson Airblade.

The Verdict: I was charmed by the staff. The food was okay. I would give this another shot.

Nude Espresso

Nude Espresso
26 Hanbury St
London E1 6QR

Date of Last Visit: Sunday, November 2

The Victim: Me

The Damage: £2

The Background: I had some time to kill before heading over to Sarah's for some brainstorming and some dinner. So I decided to wander Brick Lane. Joel at Tipped tipped me off on Nude, a little coffee bar on Hanbury Street. So I made it my destination.

The Entrance: Nude feels Scandinavian. But everyone speaks Australian. So I order myself a flat white (decaf) and test them out.

It's a very good decaf flat white. I ask "Monmouth?" And the answer is yes. I love Monmouth decaf. (For those of you new to my blog, I gave up caffeine on May 17th, 2008 when I realized I had had at least six, if not seven, cups of coffee at work the previous day. Stupidly irresistable high-tech coffee machine.)

The Verdict: I like Nude. Next up, I'll try Flat White on Berwick Street.

St. John Bread & Wine

St. John Bread & Wine
94-96 Commercial Street
E1 6LZ
Tel: 020 7251 0848
http://www.stjohnbreadandwine.com 

Date of Last Visit: Tuesday, September 9, 2008

The Victims: Feathers, Matt, Feathers' Little Brother

The Damage: £50 each

The Background: Feathers' little brother is in town for a visit. We had grand plans of Petrus and Royal Hospital Road and a meal out every night. Somehow, these grand plans of five fine meals in five days became two nights at St. John Bread & Wine and Geales. (More to come on Geales tomorrow.)

But that's okay because I've never been to either. So I'm excited. For one. (And for once.) Plus, last weekend, I went all the way to Denver and back without my Nokia N82 and gosh darnit but I missed it's 5 MP camera. And I'm also testing out Nokia's new Lifevine application, and tonight's my first night really using it. Yes, I've got a lot going on.

And God but I'm a sucker for GPS. Nokia's Lifevine (or nVine) in one sentence: It tracks me all over town and attaches the photos/music/movies to where I've been. It's neat. If a little weird from a privacy standpoint.

The Starters: The menu at St. John Bread & Wine is a bit unexpected. There are a lot of small dishes. And then there are maybe four large main dishes. So we order a bunch of small plates...the foie gras (nice), some langoustines (you know I don't work for my food, so I let Feathers' Little Brother eat all of these), an artichoke salad without any artichokes (we sent it back and got another--it was much nicer with the artichokes), and then a plate of zucchini and white beans that I would gladly eat every day for lunch. Our server made it seem like these were tapas size portions, but they weren't. They were just regular starter size portions.

 

The Mains: So they had grouse on the menu. I've never had grouse before. And nor will I ever again. It was dark and bloody. And cold. I like game. But this was too gamey for me. No photos for you, I'm sorry. You'll have to take my word for it.

But we also had the rabbit--rabbit for three! Unfortunately, the best part about it were the roasted carrots. I do like a nicely roasted carrot. But one cannot survive by carrots alone.

The Desserts: Now this is what makes me say I would gladly go back to St. John Bread and Wine. I like their desserts. Firstly, the blackberry meringue. Secondly, the cheesecake. The blackberry meringue, in particular, was one of the nicest things I've ever eaten. It was nice and chewy and sticky.

   

The Verdict: I wasn't so impressed with the starters and mains at St. John Bread & wine. But I haven't stopped thinking about the desserts since. Could one live by desserts alone? I think so.

Story Deli

Story Deli
91 Brick Lane (entrance on Dray Walk)
E1 6QL
Tel: 020 7247 3137

Date of Last Visit: Sunday, July 13

The Victim: Molly

The Damage: £13 each or thereabouts

The Background: Back when I was in college, my friend DeeDee and I (among others) spent a year at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, drinking beer and eating Schnitzel and pretzels.

DeeDee's friend Molly has just moved to London, so Deed asked me if I could show her around town a bit. We did the usual loop around Spitalfields and then wandered through Brick Lane, stopping at Story Deli for some pizza.

£11 pizza. This seems like a lot.

Interestingly, at 2 p.m. on a Sunday, Story Deli has a bouncer. A big one. But we liked him because he kicked some beer-drinking thugs away from the outdoor tables and got us two seats.

The Food: The pizza at Story Deli is served on something that's a bit more doughy that Sardinian Carta di Musica, but a lot less doughy that bread. It's very crispy. This was odd at first, but I got used to it. My pizza was chorizo and rocket...that's it there in the picture. When I was done with it, I felt like I had eaten a lot of snacks--like breadsticks and some chorizo slices and some buffala mozzerella, but I was still hungry.

The Verdict: I thought this was just okay. I'm not dying to go back. Plus, I felt like my purse would get stolen and at least one homeless person bothered us and someone else asked us to give money to charity. Not while I'm eating, please.

Salads: Chop'd

chop'd
2 Horner Square
E1 6EW
Tel: 0207 247 8757

Date of Last Visit: Sunday, June 22

The Victim: Me

The Damage: £6

The Background: God I love chop'd. I used to work by the one in Leadenhall Market and I would e-mail my order in most days. At the time, I had fewer--how shall we say--rounded edges--and I give chop'd a lot of credit for that. Firstly, there was the salad. Secondly, there was the walk to and from Leadenhall.

These days, I am ashamed to admit that I don't venure much farther than the Pret dowstairs from my office. So I had to sign up for a 10k to get my ass in gear.

The Entrance: I walk right in and pick up a chicken and strawberry salad. The sign suggests their balsamic vinegar as a good match for this particular salad, so I pick that up too. It all probably comes in enough plastic to destroy the ozone layer, which is the disappointing bit. (Maybe it's recycleable. They don't sell any Coke or Diet Coke, and people who don't sell Diet Coke are recyling sorts, right? I don't know.)

Later On: I race my salad home from Spitalfields, convinced of two things:

1. I've left the windows open at home with the burglar alarm on so the whole time I've been out, the alarm has been going off incessantly.
2. The rats that have recently infested my building (uggh...I don't even want to thnk about it) have broken through the walls of my flat to get at the bag of trash/rubbish I've left lying in the kitchen.

Luckily, neither of these things have occurred. It was just me and my very nice salad. Hanging out.

The Verdict: I love chop'd. And I don't care what you say, I'm tagging this as American.

P.S. I totally forgot that yesterday--June 26th--was my blog's fourth birthday. Happy Birthday, little blogling. My, how you've grown! (You've also, I'm happy to say, eradicated "yummy" from your vocabulary. Thanks for that.)

More Japanese on Brick Lane

Date of Last Visit: Sunday, June 22

The Victim: Me

The Damage: £5?

The Background: You might know that I am a becoming a little obsessed with Brick Lane and Japanese food. I just really like these little stalls. On Sunday, I dropped by the one I've never been to before for a salmon cake (good, but not as hot as it could have been) and some spicy prawns. All served up in a very cool faux paper leaf. Should have gotten a picture of that!

I'll be back this Sunday to try some more stalls out. There's a good thread on Chowhound with some suggestions. I kinda want to try the Peruvian stall next. Any other suggestions?

Japanese Food on Brick Lane

 My new favorite thing to do on Sundays is to wander over to Brick Lane for some Japanese food. Yes, you've read that correctly. Japanese food on Brick Lane.

Along with the okonomiyaki stand, there's at least one sushi stand, one teriyaki/curry stand, and one stand offering octopus balls. It's fantastic.

The first two photos are from the two really nice ladies who offer teriyaki and curry on Brick Lane proper. The last photo is from the Octopus stand, which is located on the western side of the Sunday Up Market.

I've checked with both and they are only there on Sundays--although the Octopus guys say that they have a stall in Camden that is open during the week. So make your plans!