I’ve travelled all over London in search of better pizza, but La Porchetta, we were at the Holborn branch last night, is yet to be beaten. They’ve smartened up their menus a bit, and bumped the prices very slightly in the process, but it is all still about great pasta and (especially) pizza. Last night I had a La Porchetta pizza and, whilst it was totally lovely, I prefer a Messicana. The Calzones are top bunny, too (but don’t get the filth vegetarian one). My original review is here.

Branch addresses on their website.

I’ve reviewed Hawksmoor (London’s best meat restaurant) before here and here. The basic message is that it is a top meat establishment. This will not be another review as such, more a collection of pictures from last night’s visit. Firstly, the potted beef starter was really delicious; meaty, fatty, tasty!

Then a sirloin steak served on the bone. Totally lovely!

And finally, a dessert. Prosecco jelly with strawberries.

We ate other things as well, but it is just that with a not terribly expensive digital camera it is a bit hit and miss as to whether the pictures come out if they are taken in a less than perfectly lit establishment.

For the record, the food was excellent. We all really enjoyed our pieces of meat. Going on a Monday night is a Good Thing as they allow you to take your own wine and pay a fiver corkage. Hawksmoor is just a really great place, book your table now!

This is how pros make top mashed potato, and I am a freaking pro, alright.

So, get 2 big Maris Piper potatoes per person and prick them all over with a fork. Bake them at 180 Celsius for 90 minutes. Then slice them open, scoop out the middle into a pan, put the pan over the lowest heat you can manage and get mashing; this won’t take long. Add about about 25g of unsalted butter per person and mash like crazy. Add a splash of double cream and mash it in, then serve them. Tell your diners they’ll need to add pepper to taste. Delicious.

My mash with boiled potatoes is nigh unbeatable. To be specific, it can only be beaten by this mash.

Sometimes a restaurant will give hints that it is going to be good. That Salt Yard was heaving with punters was a pretty good sign, but what did it for me was the sherries they had on offer. Anywhere that has Hidalgo Manzanilla La Gitana and Manzanilla Pasada Pastrana is going to be a quality establishment. Our food was washed down with plenty of the latter and it was bloody marvellous.

So after I’d scoped out the booze offerings, and there are other good wines to be had, it was time to look at the menu. My mood lifted with each dish I read about. We were both surprised that even some of the vegetarian offerings sounded nice (but please don’t tell anyone we know).

As we waited for our table to be prepared we had a couple of bar snacks with our glass of Manzanilla. Six quail eggs with paprika infused salt were a good introduction, the salt having a pleasing smoky character. Better than this was a plate of pork rillette with crostini. The pork was properly flavoursome and good enough to make us eager to sit down and order more food.

When we got a table we decided to hit the menu hard. First up was a plate of Jamon Iberico from Castro y Gonzales, cut straight from a leg. Whilst we’ve had better Jamon, all over the Basque country, this was perfectly fine. The texture was meaty and it had a good sweet richness to it. There was a reasonable amount of it, too.

Accompanying this was a selection of three aged Italian hard cheeses with truffled honey. The cheeses were in good nick, although we wondered why they served Grana Padano alongside decent Parmesan as the latter will always outshine the former. The truffled honey was one of those occasions where you finally see the point of a particular food. Honey rarely does it for us, but we lapped up the truffled version with its complex, delicious, forest floor flavours. It worked terribly well with the cheeses.

Next up was crispy squid served with arroz negro, chilli and fresh basil. The squid was a total delight, crispy with great flavour and a wonderful texture. The squid ink risotto blew our socks off, and when I hit one of the (few) pieces of chilli I was totally charmed by the combination of flavours.

The next dish caused much debate about which part of it we liked best. I loved the roasted tiger prawns, totally tasty, I tell you. I got one more of these than Daniel on the condition that I allowed him to finish up the lentils and speck they came served with. The stock in which they were cooked was fortified with prawn heads and brandy, so had a super taste, but the lentils and speck themselves… ah… what can I say? Little pleasures, I suppose, they make us realise that life is good. Tits good, in this case.

The following dish had me moaning and growling with unadulterated pleasure. I am often telling people that sausages, if they are good, are one of the best things you can eat. Consequently, char-grilled chorizo with roasted peppers was directly targeted at my pleasure centre. The sausages were super meaty and just spicy enough. They had been cooked to total perfection. I suppose the peppers were nice, but ooooohhhh those sausages…

Straight from the very top shelf of food porn was confit of Gloucester Old Spot pork belly with rosemary-scented cannellini beans. The pork was totally tender and exploding with flavoursome richness, with a great layer of crackling on top. We ate with glee, stopping only to chortle with mirth from time to time. Then there were the beans, just soft enough and cooked in a super-piggy stock. Wow, such a small plate of food can be so mind-bendingly enjoyable; this is how we like things.

We did encounter a dish which, on first taste, seemed a bit more pedestrian, but we ended up quite enjoying it. Roasted Gressingham duck breast with broad bean puree and mint vinaigrette. The duck breast was properly pink and meltingly tender. Its flavour was faultless. It took us a couple of tastes to appreciate the bean puree, but we ended up liking its butter and cheese-infused richness.

Our final tapas dish was bloody vegetables, do we really care about such things? Patatas fritas with romesco and aioli: chips, basically. Yeah, they were pretty good, nicely seasoned with paprika, but when you have just been necking quality meat will a small bowl of chips transport you to another realm? No. Daniel’s triple-cooked chips blow these away (I’ll get him to post the recipe next time he makes them).

By this stage we were grinning broadly and repeating to each other how we liked certain dishes, so it seemed like a top idea to try their dessert offerings. Caprini cheesecake with amaretti and macerated strawberries was an unqualified success; lovely, creamy, fruity and the amaretti base was freaking A+. I could not have asked for a better dessert. Then I swapped plates with Daniel and got one. Rhubarb and mascarpone custard with orange caramel was basically a vanilla-free creme brulee with rhubarb. The acidity of the rhubarb really balanced the richness of the dish. I was thrilled, charmed and eventually sated. This was as good as desserts get. We drank a couple of glasses of what I shall euphemistically call ‘interesting’ dessert wines, but after so much good food we were positive enough to see the fun in these weirdies without being too bothered that they were differently drinkable.

It is always a great pleasure to dine at an establishment where they care about what they cook and serve; a lot of attention went into the selection of ingredients and how they were prepared. As such, this was the best tapas we’ve had in London, far, far better than the Brindisa joint near Borough Market. Based on the quality of the food we had, I think you could order anything from the menu and feel you had done well. Drink their Manzanilla, eat their food, smile and feel at ease with the world.

Contact: Salt Yard, 54 Goodge St, London W1T 4NA Tel: 020 7637 0657

This was a winning recommendation from Mark Locke, clearly a chap who can tell good from bad. We must meet for lunch or dinner one day, Mark. Lunch is a good meal, don’t you think? Especially a long, Burgundy-fuelled, baroque feast of a lunch.

I’ve been thinking about my trip to Fuzzy’s Grub and this has led me to think of what roast meat I’ll have on my next trip there. Roast meat is such a pleasurable thing to eat, but which is best? This calls for another fantastic Elitist Review poll!

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I’m going to have to think about this for a bit before I commit myself, there is just so much happiness in different flavours of roast hunks of protein.

Once again, readers of my RSS feed will have to come to the site proper to vote.

The chef Gordon Ramsay is in the news. My opinion of his has dropped somewhat since I first went to his flagship joint in Royal Hospital Road.

My first meal there about nine years ago was exciting, with thrilling, inventive and wonderful food. However, the food pretty much stayed the same over the years. When he expanded into other restaurants the food was pretty similar at those too; shadows of the main establishment’s food. Then his television career took off and he is now better know as that chap who swears a lot than as a chef.

I worked at one of his establishments for the grand total of a week. I spoke to him a couple of times. He complimented me on my shoes (in comparison to someone’s less spiffy footwear). He stuck me as a very focussed and driven businessman. That is all very well and good but people who make good food are amongst my favourite type of people, more so than rude businessmen.

If he had continued to be an inventive chef I’d be frequenting RHR a lot more often. I go to l’Arnsbourg more often now. Now there is wonderful food and it stays up with the game.

Today’s brunch comes from the best pork butcher in Town: Sillfield Farm. I had a good chat with the butcher about the quality of sausages and how important it is for them to be really meaty. We had Sicilian sausages (which are my favourite sausages ever, but these had a touch too much chilli), dry-cure steaky bacon and fried eggs.

That drink in the background is a tequila sunrise.

After our highly successful breakfast at Fuzzy’s Grub I decided to trek into Zone 1 to meet up with Daniel and try lunch there.

At lunch time they do a selection of roast meat sandwiches and I was keen to try what can be one of the most satisfying sandwiches it is possible to make: roast chicken on buttered bread with a good grind of salt. Simple, eh? But if the chicken and bread are good, there is real butter and enough salt this sandwich can be magic.

I ordered mine is one of their excellent baps, which I praised in my last review of them; the bap had real flavour and a great texture. They used real butter, which melted into the bap because the chicken was warm. The chicken itself was wonderfully good; moist, flavoursome and there was a lot of it. It was also subtly seasoned with herbs, which added to rather than masked the flavour. They put enough salt on it. This was a great sandwich, it made me happy.

The locations of their branches are on their website. Find your closest one and get there for lunch ASAP!

The second restaurant we visited on our little jaunt to Sweden provided quality Italian food. Once again I was impressed that Stockholm could reach such culinary peaks.

The dining room was pleasingly elegant, and I am always happy to see a large ham in a restaurant ready to be carved. We skipped the offer of the tasting menu as the a la carte options sounded so good. We were right to do so.

We all chose the same first course, veal carpaccio. This consisted of little rolls of raw veal stuffed with grated parmesan and rocket. Quite, quite delicious; meaty enough with a brilliant parmesan character. This really made me think we were in for a good time.

We then had a pasta course. Daniel had some ravioli filled with scallops. They had a good scallop character but were a tad under-cooked. Leena’s seafood risotto was a slightly over-cooked, but it was so bursting with fishy goodness that this didn’t really matter. I stole quite a lot of it from her plate. My cannelloni stuffed with veal, Parma ham and spinach was totally faultless. It had a great meaty character, wasn’t dominated by the spinach (who wants to eat plants anyway?) and was cooked to perfection. I really enjoyed it, so much so that it was painful to pass on forkfuls for Daniel and Leena to try.

The option of a grilled veal chop for the main course was too tempting for Daniel and I to turn down, so we both had it. It was cooked very well, properly grilled on the outside and moist in the middle. Most enjoyable. Leena had saltimbocca, veal escalope with Parma ham, which was buttery, tasty and tender. Good stuff!

For dessert Daniel had a a hazelnut ice cream truffle, Leena chose a chocolate delice. The considered opinion about these is that they were perfectly good but not the most stellar of desserts

The wine list leaned quite heavily toward the expensive side, but all wines lists do in Stockholm. We had an agreeable bottle of Primitivo, from a producer whose name escapes me, and a great bottle of Tignanello 1999 which didn’t seem so outrageously priced. They had an interesting selection of Italian sweet wines by the glass to have with dessert. We tried three different ones and were entertained by their weirdly pleasurable characters.

The meal was quite satisfying, by the end we all felt we had done well. What more can you ask from a restaurant? Clearly a worth a visit if you need good Italian food in Stockholm.

Contact details: Mancini, Tunnelgatan 1, 11137 Stockholm, Sweden. Telephone (+46) 8 21 53 10.

It was Daniel’s mother’s birthday on Friday and we went over to Sweden to help her celebrate. After my first couple of trips to Stockholm I found it somewhat surprising that there were now (at least) a couple of quite serious restaurants to visit. First up was Rakultur, which delivered quality Japanese food that certainly impressed.

Sadly we had failed to deal with one of the better aspects of the restaurant: it has no alcohol license. If we’d have known we would have brought along some refreshing beverage. Every table has a little transparent teapot filled with green tea, but green tea is a pointless and largely nasty drink so we didn’t bother.

The menu was brief but had a reasonably interesting selection of Japanese goodies. We ordered a starter and main course each.

The starters were quite lovely. Leena ordered turbot sashimi with yuzo butter. The turbot was very extremely tasty with a great texture. Delicious. Not as lovely as my starter, though, which was hilariously rare beef in fish sauce with a little sprinkling of dried chilli on top. The beef was extremely high-quality and tender and it worked a treat with the nam pla and chilli. This was quite like the hot and sour beef salad we often prepare. I enjoyed this so much that thought this would easily be the best starter, then I tried Daniel’s lime-acidulated mackerel in endive leaves. This had a wonderful progression of flavours as you ate it and the texture was very pleasing; an excellent dish.

We then moved onto our main courses. Leena had a noodle dish that she turned her nose up at because it contained coriander. I had a little taste of the broth and thought it most tasty. Daniel and I ordered  two different plates of 15 pieces of sushi. One of these selections was specifically made from fish caught in the North Atlantic. It was very good that all the fish was at room temperature, not straight out of the fridge. This resulted in the flavour not being muted. All of the old sushi favourites were there, skilfully  pre-seasoned with wasabi. The king fish from the North Atlantic merits a special mention for its rich, mouth-coating flavour and wonderful, dense texture. The zander (aka pike-perch) was also top bunny. This was properly good sushi prepared very well.

It was a pleasant dining environment with good sushi and great starters. The staff were helpful and attentive (and spoke English faultlessly). A fun time was had by all. It would have been improved if we had brought some bottles of Kirin, but then even we don’t need to drink all of the time. This was easily one of the best places I’ve eaten in Sweden, definitely worth a trip.

Contact details: Råkultur, Kungstengatan 2, 114 25 Stockholm. Telephone: (+46) 08 696 23 25.