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Dinings

Dinings
22 Harcourt Street
W1H 4HH

Date of Last Visit: Thursday, June 25, 2009

The Victims: Craig, Leann, Mikaela, Jen

The Damage: About £40 each

The Background: Craig is my sushi buddy. It started many years ago, at Kurumaya in the city. A great little place that you should really visit. (Even the skeptics on London-Eating.co.uk like it.) (Get a booking for downstairs.) Last summer, Craig invited me along to check out Matsuri St. James. For some odd reason, I still haven't taken him to Pham. One of these days. Anyhow, Dinings was next on our list.

 

The Entrance: Dinings is small. Very small. Much smaller than I expected. We're shown downstairs to a small room that we end up sharing with that one other table in the photo. It's perfect, really. Although it's a bit hot. Just a bit.

The Service: Exceptional. I had run into our server the previous weekend at Taste of London--she was working the Dinings booth--but she had no recollection of me whatsoever. Before we figured this part out, I asked for a run-down of her favorites. Total enthusiasm for and great knowledge of the menu. She was so good, I asked her to do the whole thing again when the rest of our party arrived. Some might have found this annoying. But she obliged. And it was even better than the first time.



The Food: We followed all our server's recommendations and the food just kept coming.  We started with the seabass carpaccio with truffle salsa and ponzu sauce. Lovely. Clean. But my absolute favorites were grilled eel and foie gras maki with summer truffle and the pork belly. The pork belly! Really, the pork belly.



The Verdict: I liked it here. A lot. Nice service. Really interesting menu. This is not a California rolls kind of place. Really great food. Not cheap though.

Saki

Saki
4 West Smithfield
EC1A 9JX

Date of Last Visit: Saturday, June 6th, 2009

The Victims: Stacey, Feathers

The Damage: £50ish each

The Background: Stacey and Canadia Boy had a baby last month (yey!) and tonight is Stacey's first night out alone. She feels like sushi--I didn't ask, but I'm guessing it's because she didn't each much raw fish during her pregnancy--and we want to stay in the general neighborhood, so Saki it is.

The Entrance: The ground floor of Saki houses a little shop. That's their sake and beer collection there. I liked this. The restaurant is downstairs, and I didn't like it so much: it's a bit worn around the edges. Maybe that's just because I was eating in a basement. I'm not a big fan of basements. I need to go back and re-review and look more closely.

The Starters: We order the three-course chef's menu. The menu's not online so I can't tell you all the choices, but I went with the pork katsu to start. It was nice, but we couldn't figure out what the pork was rolled around. Our server told us it was celery, but it seemed a lot more gelatinous than that. Maybe they did something weird to it? Not sure. I thought this dish was nice.

The Tempura: This was good tempura. But maybe I just don't know tempura dipping sauces enough because again, I thought it was pretty bland. I expected a bit more saltiness. The batter was good though. Crisp.

 

The Sushi: It looks lovely, doesn't it? It was lovely. But still not as good as what I had at Chisou. Must go back to Chisou and see if I was imagining things.

Dessert: Green tea tiramisu. I thought this tasted pre-prepared and it was overly cold. It didn't do much for me.

The Loos: The Xcelerator! (The other Dyson Airblade.)

The Verdict: I thought this was good. Not great. Just good.

Yoshino

Yoshino
3 Piccadilly Place
W1J0DB

Date of Last Visit: Saturday, May 30th, 2009

The Victim: Myself

The Damage: £30

The Background: I used to rely on my blog to remind me what I was doing on any given day. (Very helpful in my application for Indefinite Leave to Remain, for example.) Now I rely on Twitter. What a crazy way to diary your life.

That being said, I apparently didn't tweet about the 12 loads of laundry I did on Saturday, May 30th. (Oh, for an American washing machine! Really, people, how we live here without one, I do not know.) But then again, the Twitterverse probably doesn't want to know about that stuff.

Laundry works up an appetite. And I felt like sushi. I was willing to travel, but maybe not THAT far. (Like Sushi Say or Sushi Hiro or any of those type of options.) And as it turns out, a lot of Japanese places in Central London are closed for lunch. They're just open for dinner.

So Yoshino it was. Despite warnings and a bad review from Beas of Bloomsbury.

The Entrance: Yoshino is empty at around 2 p.m. when I enter. Very empty. There is one other customer on the ground floor and she is Japanese and happily chatting away with the staff. She later leaves and is replaced by an elderly Japanese man who also happily chats away. In Japanese. I feel left out.

The Staff: Are totally in a Madonna video from Blond Ambition. Headsets. Who are they talking to? My server is also kinda hot.

The Food: I just ordered a combo. And some agedashi tofu. The tofu itself was okay. The dipping sauce was bland, bland, bland. The sushi combo is fresh. The mackeral is particularly good. So good that I order more. And yes, my camera phone does totally suck. I know that. Thanks for reminding me.

The Decor: I think most restaurants should paint their high-volume areas at least once a year. Yoshino needs a good lick of paint.

The Verdict: This was okay. Of all the Japanese places I've reviewed lately, I still think I like Chisou the best. (For the food. Not the service.)

Tsuru

 

Tsuru
4 Canvey Street
SE1 9AN

Date of Last Visit: Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

The Victims: Too many to mention

The Background: Every so often, I get invited on a PR thingamajig. I'm never quite sure what to do. Because you know, I've spent (and continue to spend) a lot of time with economists and, well, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Would you accept a free meal? Free drinks?

And if you did accept the free stuff, would you feel obligated to write a good review?

Think about it.

So, I'm invited to a sushi and wine tasting at Tsuru on the South Bank. You know I love sushi and wine, so it was really hard for me to say no.

I just hoped they wouldn't f**k it up.

The Entrance: As usual, I am one of the first ones there. Why people have to be fashionably late, I don't understand. Someone brings me a beer and Denise from The Wine Sleuth and I catch up.

Eventually, we take our seats and we're guided through six wines that Damien Tillson, the Deputy Director of Wine at Sotheby's, has selected for our meal. What I really liked most of all about the evening was when they described their markup policy on wine. It's like 30%. That's NOTHING. Restaurants in London don't do this!!! They all charge a fortune. In New York, 30% markups are the next big thing. (Based on my very small sample size.) So Tsuru is a little bit ahead of its time for a London restaurant, and for this fact alone, they earn some points in my review.

The Wine: Of the six wines we tasted, I liked these two wines the best:

Sancerre, Domaine Bailly-Reverdy, Loire France, 2007. Sauvignon Blanc. This one was vaguely peanuty, buttery, and yet still flinty.

La Tunella, Colli Orentali del Friuli, Italy, 2005. Cabernet Franc. It was green and complex and tasted of cedar wood, in the best possible way possible.

The Food: Here's the bad part. After enjoying so much wine, I wish I could say I loved the restaurant's food. I didn't, and that makes me feel like an ungrateful guest. I thought it was all just, well, good.

 

The Verdict: I liked the concept of Tsuru. They use line-caught yellow-fin tuna, which is nice. (They don't say where from, however.) And their salmon is fresh from the Shetland Islands. Their chicken is free range from the West Country. (As an American, I have no idea where that is, but it sounds good.) Their wine is an EXCELLENT value--but they don't given themselves any credit for it, based on the menu I took home with me.  

If I were them, and if I were wearing my marketing hat, I'd make a much bigger deal about how small their wine markups are. Because nobody else is. That's for sure.

Restaurant Toku (The Japan Centre)

 

Restaurant Toku
212 Piccadilly
W1J 9HX

Date of Last Visit: Saturday, January 17, 2008

The Victim: Me

The Damage: £30. And so not worth it after Chisou.

The Background: I have some errands to run. I'm going to Milan next month and I need some English-y gifts. So I want to go to Fortnum & Mason. And then I'm heading over to Bryan & Stacey's for dinner (Three roasted chickens! Three!) and I'm in charge of the cheese plate. So I triangulate, and come up with Toku for lunch and Paxton & Whitfield for cheese.

The Entrance: Resturant Toku is packed. And a little worn around the edges. That's okay. So is Pham. Eventually, they seat me at the bar. Normally, I love the sushi bar. But nothing in the sush bar window in front of me looks appetizing. It all looks a little warm. And there's a lot of saran wrap (i.e. clingfilm) on display. Now maybe this is a good thing, keeping things fresh? But I don't know. It's a lot more saran wrap than I've ever seen in a sushi bar.

The Food: I order some of what I'd call Gomae--spinach in sesame sauce. But they call it something else. That's fine. Then, I just order the sushi combo. It arrives, and it does look very pretty at first glance. But then if you look at the fish, it just doesn't look as pretty as the fish did at Chisou. Should fish shine? I don't know. The fish here just looks dull. And it tastes dull here too. My gomae is nice though.

The Verdict: Eh. For £30? I'd go back to Chisou. The food is better, and I don't feel like my purse will get snatched at any second.

Chisou

 

Chisou
4 Princes Street
W1B 2LE
http://www.chisou.co.uk

Date of Last Visit: Thursday, December 18th

The Victim: Me

The Damage: A lot for just one person. £30?

The Background: I've got the day off from work, ostensibly to do some Christmas shopping. I wander listlessly through John Lewis and House of Fraser and then in and out of the shops of Regent Street. EVERYTHING is on sale. An economic train wreck if I've ever seen one. I've never seen anything like it.

It makes me wonder. Restaurants aren't putting up signs screaming "70% Off." Hmmm.

The Entrance: Sushi it is. I don't have a booking at Chisou and despite it being 12:20 p.m. on a Thursday, they really want me to have one. I have to agree to eat my food and be out of there by 1 p.m. Lucky for them, no one has ever accused me of being a slow eater.

The Food: Agedashi tofu is soft and nice, but it's missing something. The broth is bland. Hmmm. Better is the vegetable tempura. It's hot and crunchy. Best however, is the sushi. Really. Fresh. Soft. Buttery. Lovely. Even the rice in the roll is nice. It's slightly warm. The sushi chef is right above me and asks me how I am and how I like his food. And although he doesn't look Japanese, he sure speaks Japanese. (Not that I understood a word he said.)

The Weird Thing: All the tables around me were full of Americans. The well-dressed sort.

The Verdict: I would go back here. With a booking of course.

Ten Ten Tai

Ten Ten Tai
56 Brewer Street
W1R 3PJ
Tel: 020 7287 1738

Date of Last Visit: Saturday, October 25th, 2008

The Victim: Me

The Damage: £15

The Background: I came down with a cold late last week that knocked me out Thursday night during the Wine Show and sent me home from work on Friday. Saturday wasn't much better, but I really had to get out of the house. At the very least, I needed some movies.

I had this idea that I would go out in search of non-Waga ramen noodles. Ramen would make me feel better. A bit of research and all signs pointed to Brewer Street in Soho, so I headed in that direction. I passed Inn Noodle on the bus and hit myself for forgetting all about it, and it would have been so much closer too. Next time.

Well, as I was walking down Brewer Street, I passed Ten Ten Tai just as a wave of exhaustion hit me. I didn't want to walk any further.

The Food: Some agedashi tofu. Which had been heated up because the tofu was cold in the middle but warm on the outside.

Some goma, spinach in sesame sauce, which was really excellent. (You can see a bit of it in the tofu photo.) But then again, I am a sucker for goma. And some hand rolls, all washed down with some miso and some green tea. Miso makes you feel better.

The Ambiance: None.

The Verdict: A little dingy. Service is sweet. I might give this another shot someday.

Jin Kichi

Jin Kichi
73 Heath Street
NW3 6UG
Tel: 020 7794 6158
http://www.jinkichi.com

Date of Last Visit: 4 October 2008

The Victim: Me

The Damage: £25

The Background: I spent most of Saturday morning working on my sorely neglected blog. I got sucked into a big black hole. Hours, we're talking. Hours. And what do I have to show for it? Now you can see links to Delicious and Digg after each of my posts. (You may have noticed some other changes too a week or two ago...Inspired by fellow London food blogger Silverbrow, I signed up for Typepad's Blog Services.)

So I needed to get out of the house. And more than anything, this London restaurant blogger needed a manicure. Typing and surfing. I tell ya.

I also, not surprisingly, needed lunch. So I headed north. And ran into Bryan and Stacey and friends on the way. They were heading to Borough and although sorely tempted, I had places to go, people to meet! Nails to get done.

The Entrance: I head up to Hampstead for lunch at Jin Kichi, a Japanese restaurant that I had read about previously on various Web sites. And conveniently, it's located right across the street from California Nails.

Happy, very happy, shouts greet me as I enter and I wish I hadn't totally blanked out on all the Japanese I picked up in Tokyo. I am given a seat at the sushi bar, which isn't really a sushi bar. It's a yakitori bar. Behind the counter, a gentleman is grilling what I can only guess are livers. On a real grill. Cool.

I skip the yakitori, which might be a mistake. But I just want some spinach. And some tempura. And a spicy tuna roll. So I have all that, watching the yakitori show the whole time. Service is sweet and apologetic. At one point, they tell me that the chef is very very busy and it will be about 10 minutes for my spicy tuna roll. This is the first time a member of waitstaff has every proactively notified me that they're running a bit behind. Normally when this happens, they try to avoid eye contact.

The Verdict: I liked it here. I thought my food was average. Nothing super exciting. But I still liked it.

P.S. Don't forget...blog about Your Perfect Day in London by the end of October. I'll summarize all the blog posts for all to publish on their blogs as a traffic-building exercise...

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: Matsuri St. James

Matsuri
15 Bury Street
SW1Y 6AL
Tel: 020 7839 1101

Date of Last Visit: June 6th, 2008

The Victims: Craig, Leanne, Mikaela

The Damage: Unknown. Craig paid!

The Background: Craig is back in the U.K.! Craig was my dining companion during the summer of 2004, when he was in London for work. He discovered Kurumaya for me back then, still once of the nicest little sushi places. We also checked out Sweeting's together, which I'd really like to get back to one of these days. And just a few weeks ago, we explored Sakura and Abeno Too.

He's invited me out for sushi (of course) with his wife and daughter and he's done his homework and we find ourselves at Matsuri St. James. (You may remember Guest Blogger Jon from Oishii Oishii who reviewed Matsuri Holborn the other month.)

The Entrance: The staff is very happy to see me. There's a lot of bowing and they take my coat and show me to the bar. I chat with the bartender and a businessman who is waiting for his Japanese guests. (Good sign, right?) The bartender tells us funny stories about people missing the entrance to Quaglino's right up the street.

Craig has booked the sushi bar downstairs. Most of Matsuri seems to be made up of teppanyaki-style seating, with the exception of the sushi bar in the corner.

The Food: We proceed with the ordering. I know I only have to vaguely mention soft shell crab for Craig to say yes and they arrive and they are gorgeous. There are many rolls and some vegetable tempura and some sashimi--the scallops are particularly lovable. We are all very very happy. But we forget to take any pictures, so Craig takes a photo of the tuna roll the guy next to us is eating.

The Verdict: I like it here. I'd go back.