Restaurant review: TEN TEN TEI (Piccadilly 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+

Two buffet meals this week.

Diwana, Euston. £6.95 for vegetarian all you can eat.

 

There was a seriously excellent selection of food on offer, and the majority of it was cooked better than you standard bargain basement Chinese buffet. Such was the usage of quorn supplements that, like Kailash Parbat, you didn't notice the lack of meat in your meal. And the fact that it's a buffet means you can stuff your face to your heart's content, for a modest price :)

 

However, what let this place down was the horrendous, horrendous service. Abrupt waiters who didn't register a request and had to be prodded into reminding, and when you did remind them they glared at you like, gee, I don't know, it wasn't their job to serve us or something. One was in my way and didn't even have the manners to step aside. Charming.

 

So, for that, I'll have to give this place a B-. Shame as the food was lovely, but the waiters there really need to be schooled in etiquette, just truthing.

 

Pizza Hut, Oxford Circus. £7.50 for all you can eat.

 

 

I went to Pizza Hut's lunchtime buffet out of nostalgia for when I did it as a kid, but was disappointed to discover that both the quality of the food, and the quantity, is nothing like what I was used to all those year's ago. There was one flavour of pizza that came out consistently: margherita. Also known as the most boring pizza flavour. The pepperoni one tasted flat and flavourless, and the less said about ham and tuna the better. Only the veggie pizza have anything going for it. The salad bar was also extremely paint-by-numbers and dull.

 

Factor in awful service (we ordered bottomless cokes and they seemed extremely reluctant to top them up, knowing that they weren't going to get any extra money for it) and the fact that every time I tried to make eye contact with a waiter, they purposely looked away, and I can safely say I will not be going back to this dive in a hurry.

 

Grade: D

Restaurant review: MASSALA HUT (Euston)

Following the roaring success of Raw Spice, here was an Indian restaurant I was far less impressed with. As with the previous place, I ordered a prawn dish, as I thought I’d compare the quality between the two kitchens. It was distinctly lacking here – there was plenty of jalfrezi, but basically no prawn. 

On closer inspection of the vegetables in my dish, and I’d be extremely surprised if they weren’t past their sell-by-date, and the cooks had clearly piled in the spices thinking “Jalfrezi! Ah! That means spicy!” without any consideration for the customer’s taste buds. 

I was not happy, particularly given the menu makes it sound like they were going to be generous with the prawn quantities. The other dish, the lamb pathia was even worse. Liquidy and runny, it was basically an extremely spicy soup! Such was the consistency and the hotness; it also meant that barely any of it could be eaten. So there’s your waste of food, which only exacerbated my mood (I hate leaving leftovers).

The pilau rice was pretty uninspired, meaning that the highlight of this excuse of a meal was probably the coconut naan bread; the one item the kitchen managed not to ruin And if the bread was the best thing about the culinary experience that is dining at Massala Hut, you know it’s not going to be somewhere I’m recommending to friends.

Grade: E

Restaurant review: RAW SPICE (Hendon)

With a distinctly bar-type vibe to the place and Las Vegas-level brash lighting, Raw Spice was different from any other Indian restaurant I’d been to before. Thanks to a menu that offered a lot of range as well as my mate's Tastecard, I ate extremely well, and huge quantities (with enough to take home for the family), for just £12 covering tip! Glorious!

Between us, for mains, we ordered a lamb dish, a chicken dish, and a prawn dish. We also had two portions of rice (which as you can see in the photo, is a pretty healthy portion), two starters and some naan bread to share. They were all brilliant, and thanks to the kitchen cooking all the meat dishes on mild, they were tangy without causing my nose to run and eyes to water, which is all too common an occurrence when I eat spicy food, unfortunately.

The best dish was the prawn one, which graciously actually had prawns in them (I went to another Indian restaurant the following day and there were about three prawns in total in the plate I’d ordered; disappointing to say the least). The other two meat dishes didn't skimp on actual meat either, which was refreshing, because usually in restaurants they'll excel at a couple of dishes but sell you short on another. No such case here. 

The “chicken lollipops” which we had as one of our starters weren't, as I’d feared, undercooked or over-seasoned, but rather, totally edible as a meat-on-a-stick type thing and didn't even require any sauce, so crunchy and spicy were they on their own. 

Compared to other restaurants in London, booze was also extremely well-priced (in the range of three quid rather than four or five), and the menu boasted some fantastic cocktails and mocktails, all very-well created.

Possibly the only foible with the place was the service, which was a little pushy, a little patronising (we'd arrived before the kitchen opened, 6. We were told that fact, and we gladly said we'd have drinks in the meantime, but then they hammered the point home that the kitchen didn't open until 6, as if we were thick. C'mon now). 

I would also suggest that they could have offered us a wider range of dips to come with the poppadoms (there were two, I'm usually used to three or four in other places). But in terms of food (both palate of flavour and geneorisity of dishes), vibe, and value for money, bung a Tastecard along and you really can’t do much better than Raw Spice.

Grade: A-

For more of my restaurant reviews, click here. If you would like me to review your restaurant, drop me an email at lemon_and_lime7@hotmail.com

Restaurant reviews: ASSA JAPANESE and ASSA KOREAN (Tottenham Court Road)

Since attending a central London-based university at the beginning of October, I’ve wined and dined at several of the restaurants situated around the Tottenham Court Road/Oxford Street/Goodge Street area. Terrific for my tummy, less so for my poor River Island purse!

I went to the Japanese Assa a month ago, for lunch.

 

Being a sucker for salmon, I opted for the salmon tray, and had Japanese beer. It was a very well-presented dish, and I have absolutely no qualms with the quality of the salmon, which was tip-top. The sushi and dumplings also tasted great. In fact, the ensemble was only really let down by the lump of rice, which was presented unimaginatively, and tasted completely bland. 

There was also not nearly enough. I don’t eat half as much as I do for dinner at lunch, so I shudder to think how starving I’d be had I come here in the evening, but even for a quick lunchbreak between lecturers, even with the extra calories of a beer, I wasn’t near fed enough. 

My friend had a similar-style dish, again, presented stylishly enough, but not enough there. Thus, in terms of efficacy of a restaurant, I’m afraid I have to give Assa Japanese a C-.

The Korean Assa was visited on Monday evening, and I had a much better gastronomical experience, for smaller prices! 

We had a seafood pancake to share for starters (wonderful, and delightfully moreish), and for my main I had spicy chicken stir-fry, which, gracefully, didn’t burn my tongue off, but tasted great. 

The fact that drinks were on the house (cold Korean tea) added to the appeal of visiting this place, and for central London, it was very reasonably priced indeed. I can definitely see myself going back, particularly as it’s so close to my uni. A-

Album review: MIDNIGHT MEMORIES (One Direction)

(this review is of the Deluxe addition of Midnight Memories, which features three more songs than the standard version).

A year on from Take Me Home, the nation’s most lusted after boyband have gotten up to all manner of adventure, from Harry’s failed relationship with Taylor Swift irking her so much that she felt the need to blast him on various public occasions, to Zayn being accused of cheating on Little Mix’s Perrie, only to follow it up with a proposal, classic. 

The boys have shown they are now fully-fledged #adults by inking various parts of their body (even little Niall has a tattoo now!), and in between that, they’ve managed to star in a Morgan Spurlock documentary, and, oh yeah, make some music.

The album opens with the somewhat ambitiously titled Best Song Ever. It’s not quite that, but it’s a sufficiently cheerful pop number with a catch chorus, making it a shoo-in for playlists in upcoming Christmas parties (I’ve already heard it in upmarket bars!). Happily has a charming country music vibe to it, all strings, banjo, and feet-stamping. Perhaps I’m biased, but I really don’t see the criticism that the boys can’t sing, especially when their voices sound so strong on this track, all without an autotune in sight.

Story of My Life has deepness and maturity that we normally expect these five to eschew, featuring Zayn’s heartfelt delivery of “but baby, running after you is like chasing the clouds”, a gorgeous line of poetry that drives home the sad point that no matter how much you love someone, love alone may not be enough. Unfortunately, it was slightly let down by the Mumford and Sons-esque riff in the background, a band I associate with mawkishness. 

Don’t Forget Where You Belong channels Take That, in a good way, with a cheeky What Makes You Beautiful nod: “and the proof is in this song”. The refrain is absolutely swoon-worthy, exhibiting the vocal talents of the band’s two fittest members, Louis and Zayn (just dictatin’), who’s voices complement each other’s terrifically.

It doesn’t take Alfred Kinsey to work out that in the three years since the band’s inception, One Direction have racked up a few notches in their bedposts, and this worldliness comes across in their music, which is more adult, more self-assured. The album’s title track Midnight Memories serves up GQ-type swagger, boyband style. The line “5 foot something with the skinny jeans” hails 30H!3 Starstruck and its more lascivious “tight jeans, double DDs” with a sultry, rock-style, whilst teetering on the right side of naughty (“Same old shhhh but a different day”) such that pre-teens’ parents won’t refuse to buy the album. 

Little Black Dress, a throwback to vintage rock that Louis and Liam helped co-pen, simply exudes sex, and is all the better for it. And Alive, which casually glazes upon the topic of sex addiction, features angel-faced Niall reciting “I whisper something in her ear that I just can't repeat”, which is certainly something.

These days, it seems an album isn’t anything without a cheeky bit of dubstep on it, and the token dubstep track of Midnight Memories is Little White Lies, a song which addresses an issue that is under-represented in mainstream pop music by men: that woman want sex just as much as guys do. “I know you want it/ I know you feel it too/ Let's stop pretending/ That you don't know what I don't know/ Just what we came to do” they sing in two-beat, and because this is One Direction, the topic of female desire makes for jaunty music-making, whereas in the hands of Robin Thicke, it just sounds creepy. You see, presentation is everything.

With 18 songs, the law of averages would dictate that there will be some non-entities, and this album has (possibly more than) its share. Diana is filler song in motion, and the Tears for Fears vibes of Everyone Wants to Rule the World-sounding in the background cannot redeem the ambiguity with the lyrics “I don't think you even realize baby you'd be saving mine” with regards to whether the song is about Princess Diana puts it in the vaguely poor taste category. 

You and I isn’t as affecting or sweet as their other love songs, and “not even the gods above can separate the two of us” reminds me of the first song (can’t remember the name) on Miley Cyrus’ Bangerz album. It’s never good when a song reminds you of Miley Cyrus, just truthin’. And Strong is a tad corny for me, whilst Does He Know is forgettable, and two of the few songs I would angle the “all One Direction songs sound the same” criticism at. And whilst Midnight Memories had a tolerable amount of Mumford and Sons similarity, Something Great sounded too much like M&F than I felt permissible.

Where I complimented the lads on their braveness to try their hand at falsetto in the Take Me Home album, they clearly had fun doing so, because there’s some more on Right Now, with Zayn pushing his vocal range at “You know I can't fight the feeling” like a pro. 

The final song of the deluxe edition, Half a Heart, seems a gloomy tone to depart on, but what it lacks in happiness it makes up for in pure emotion, with Zayn belting “I'm half a man- at best / With half an arrow in my chest/I miss everything we do/ I'm half a heart without you”. It really is true what they say; an artist has to suffer to produce true art, and in the same way, it helps, as a someone appreciating the work if you’ve suffered the pangs of disappointed love, because the lyrics of Half a Heart really resonated. And it seems quite apt that the legendary Casanova of 1D, Harry, ends the song, and the album, with the last sad word.

Persevere with Midnight Memories. Sticking two filler songs within the first five tracks of the album wasn’t too shrewd, but there is quality on it, not to mention some emotional lyrics that render some of the songs almost as layered as an onion. 

That being said, I don’t think it surpasses Take Me Home. It ends with less of a bang, and whereas even the filler songs of Take Me Home survived the repeat listening test (I’ve since completely altered my view of Heart Attack, which I’ve decided is brilliant), I imagine you’d have to pay me to re-listen to some of the duds on this album again. However, it’s still better than 99% of the crap that’s out in the music industry, and once again, exhibits that One Direction are so much more than just five pretty faces.

Grade: A-