Restaurant review: KILN (Soho)

Kiln is a Thai restaurant situated at Brewer Street, in the heart of Soho, an area that is graciously devoid of any franchises. Instead, the streets are filled with restaurants of which there are, at tops, two or three others in the UK, meaning when you dine in this area, you can be certain that your tastebuds will be treated to something atypical.

The dishes in KILN are inspired by the regions where Thailand borders Burma, Laos and Yunnan, whilst incorporating some Chinese herbs in their seasoning. Thus, for those who like their regional food to be nice and mild, some of the dishes at KILN may initially surprise you with their sharp flavouring.

The choice on the menu is quite limited - the current menu only features three starters, three vegetarian/salad sides, four fish dishes, four meat dishes, and three choices of rice or noodles. But the idea is that what they do serve, they do exquisitely. Below are the  Aged Lamb & Cumin Skewer, Isaan Style Tamworth Sausage and Slow Grilled Chicken & Soy:

Restaurant review: MY OLD PLACE (Liverpool Street)

A few weeks ago, me and two of my friends had dinner at My Old Street, a Chinese restaurant that, judging from the online reviews offers great value food, with no frills when it comes to the service.

Restaurant review: AL BASHA (Knightsbridge)

Because I seem to be a glutton for punishment who never seems to learn my lessons from previous crooked Groupon deals, I recently purchased yet another one: a 9-course-tasting menu for two at the Lebanese restaurant, Al Basha at Knightsbridge.

The meal was a bit of a mixed bag. It started with a chickpea soup that didn't look very inspiring, and was a bit too cool in temperature to serve its purpose: - 

Salvation came in the form of the mains, pictured in the first photo, as well as the meat, photographed below:

I really loved the humus dip; one of my favourite parts about middle Eastern dining, and the fact that there was an ample bowlful of it was very much appreciated. The spicy potatoes were also consumed rapidly. Both the meats - the beef, and the chicken, complemented the range of dips and vegetables extremely well.

Items I liked less included the macaroni & cheese, which, in addition to not sounding remotely middle Eastern, was also too cold (this seems to be a common complaint for food at this place, would it kill them to use the heater on higher power?!). I've had my share of falafels over the years and those served in Al Basha tasted rather unexceptional, too.

The service was also quite bizarre. Rather than leave a jugful of tap water on our table, as most restaurants do, in Al Basha, a woman walked around with a jug. This was inconvenient for both her and me as I consume a lot of water, so I had to keep calling her. When I asked her if we could just have a jug for the table, she pretended she couldn't understand the question. Hmm.

Finally, with the Groupon deal, you got a glass of wine. We both had white wine. Bad decision; it tasted absolutely awful. And I'm hardly a wine connoisseur; I'll gladly drink Tesco's own brand. But if the wine tastes significantly worse than Tesco's own brand, then a restaurant ought to be worried.

It's in the restaurant's interest to serve better-quality alcohol to their punters, because, who knows, if I was more inebriated on better-tasting drink, I might not be so critical of this haphazardly-run venue.

Grade: C+

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All my restaurant reviews are listed here. If you'd like me to review your restaurant, email me at lemon_and_lime7@hotmail.com and I'll see what I can do.

RESTAURANT REVIEW: Ermei Sichuan (Chinatown)

I went to Ermei Sichuan restaurant with a British person who didn't seem familiar with the principle that usually it's the worst foods that are flogged on the set menus, and, being too polite to bruise his fragile male ego, let him go ahead and choose the set menu.

The food was plentiful, and, some of it, delicious. The egg-fried was good compared to some of their lazier Chinatown neighbours, and the liquid element of the chicken soup (pictured at the far right) was precisely what one needed on a blisteringly cold January evening. However, the actual chicken component of the soup itself tasted underdone, and the meat thing (bottom, centre) was full of cheap fatty pork and practically inedible.

However, I'm willing to be generous, given that we basically did ask for the worst foods (anyone who knows Chinese restaurants you should stay clear from the set menus), and the wines were very reasonably priced. Furthermore, the waitresses were extremely obliging and helpful, especially, given the spiciness of the food, I asked for tissues and water countless times.

So overall, a very pleasant dining experience, and one I will probably visit (I hear they have karaoke booths). But in future, I will be attending with people who have enough street-smarts to know not to order the set menu, which almost always consists of the bastard stuff no-one wants to eat.

7/10

Sushi watch: work canteen.

£3.30. Grade: A.

Restaurant review: TEN TEN TEI (Picadilly Circus)

A cosy Japanese restaurant off Shaftesbury Avenue that graciously dabbles in more than just sushi, I went to Ten Ten Tei with eight of my coursemates to celebrate making it through term one (trust me, it was no cakewalk!). It was selected ahead of the neighbouring Kulu Kulu because when I called Kulu Kulu to book a table for us, they vaguely said they didn’t take bookings and that we could “just all show up”, which sounded a bit fishy to me. I like things that I’m certain of, and Ten Ten Tei’s keenness to actually find seats for us is what immediately put me in its good books.

The menu had a lot of variety, and between the nine of us we sampled six or seven different dishes, all proficiently cooked and presented. I’m a sucker for seafood, so I went for ten don. The prawns were absolutely brilliant; thick, juicy, generous slabs of the thing, and a big step up from Massala Hut, where I have a good mind to complain about false advertising, so meagre/non-existent were the prawn quantities. 

However, the rice was a little tasteless, and as I’d been a little carried away when ordering and asked for the large portion, there was also quite a lot of rice to slog through. Thankfully, the complimentary soy sauce on our table made the task much less gruelling.

To drink, I had the plum wine. The quantity-to-price ratio of this left rather a lot to be desired - £4.90 for a teeny, tiny glass, but it did taste wonderful, and barely alcoholic at all. i don’t know about the concentration of the drink, but I was feeling merrily light-headed after my meal despite the small glass size, so, it must have been doing something right.

We got complimentary miso soup with all our meals, a nutritional, flavourful treat, and I washed it down eagerly, vegetables included. From the remaining meals ordered, I detected that the meat parts were all artfully present and well-cooked, but the noodles and rice excited me, and the respective orderers, less. However, that could be said of pretty much all restaurants, and for the good quality offered throughout, nice portions and tasty meals, overall, my impression of Ten Ten Tei was a positive one.

Grade: B+

Local Friends (Golder’s Green) / False Advertising Kings

This week, I started a part-time Masters, the campus of which is in central London. We get 1 ½ hours for lunch breaks, as opposed to the half hour I get at work, which means I have quite some time to kill, exploring London. I like the make optimal use of that time by just hopping off at a random tube stop and ambling to the first restaurant that piques my fancy. On Wednesday, it was Golder’s Green, and a Chinese restaurant just a road across from the station, Local Friends. It was also a lesson, or should that be a re-affirmation, that when it comes to Chinese restaurants, if it looks too good to be true, that’s because it is.

They advertised a lunchtime deal that boasted a soup, meat and a side dish for £6.80. I thought this sounded great; I love being able to choose a whole “package deal”-type things. And you could choose exactly what meat you wanted, be it chicken/beef/pork, and what type of sauce (eg sweet and sour or black bean sauce). However, if you wanted a seafood dish, you’d have to shell out a bit more, which completely goes against the photo they put outside the restaurant, where prawns were featured.

The quality of the food was mixed. For soup, I ordered the hot and sweet sauce, which tasted like pretty much every other one I’ve had in Chinese restaurants; it’s very hard to get wrong, but always tastes wonderful. For main, I had beef in black bean sauce. The sauce was great, but I felt the beef was undercooked, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it was, as the food was laid out for me less than three minutes after I’d ordered it, which did seem like suspiciously swift turnover. As it turned out, it was. Add in the fact that the rice had absolutely nothing going for it, then I’d really have to say the lunch was more miss than hit, with the high point coming at the start with the soup.

The final unpleasant surprise of my Local Friends-going experience was when the bill came. The sign outside the restaurant quite clearly stipulated £6.80. We’ve already touched upon how the photos were misleading because the actual menu excluded prawn. Well, the price itself was yet another lie, because turns out, Local Friends aren’t so friendly after all: they helped themselves to a 10% service charge. That, too, was not on the sign. I learnt one crucial life lesson on Wednesday: the Chinese LOVE their false advertising. The next time I eat Chinese food in London will be at Chinatown.

Grade: D

(if you would like me to review your restaurant, drop me an email at lemon_and_lime7@hotmail.com and I'll get back to you.)