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On a freezing cold evening in early December we slipped and slid and skated our way through unlovely Kennington streets in search of a meal. I used to live round here, and for better or worse it hasn't changed much in five years - the Fentiman Arms is still a comfortable if somewhat corporate "gastro" pub, and over a pint of Staropramen before the meal I tried to think if there was anything I missed about the place. Being two minutes from Oval tube station was handy, obviously. And there used to be an interesting little French deli around the corner. But other than that, not really. It's a strange no man's land between the urban charge of Brixton and the more salubrious attractions of Clapham and just feels even now like a giant, ugly corridor designed to efficiently herd traffic through to somewhere more interesting. Here we were anyway though, and here too was Adulis, an Eritrean restaurant that has been serving injera and foul to the attention-starved residents of Brixton Road since 1996.
It was Zigni house, back in August, that first really turned my taste buds on to Eritrean food. Not a perfect restaurant by any means - service was reclusive and we had to shift tables a couple of times until we found one that wasn't excruciatingly painful to eat off - but it was nevertheless thoroughly enjoyable; fresh, spicy, exciting and - most importantly - cheap. So my hopes for Adulis were similarly high, even once I'd noticed that the price points on this menu seemed a notch or two above the other place. We took a scattergun approach to ordering in order to build as varied a meal as possible, and hoped it would all be worth the effort.
Things started well. Foul (pronounced "fool") was a warm oily broad bean and onion mixture, served with piping hot pita bread and was remarkably deeply flavoured for a vegetarian dish - I particularly liked the topping of (presumably home made) cottage cheese, which was slightly annoying because we had been told the cottage cheese as a standalone dish wasn't available. Three crunchy stuffed chillies were notable mainly for the sheer eye-watering level of chilli heat, although I did still like the refreshing tomato/onion salad inside. Best of all though were sambusa, sort of an African samosa using delicate filo pastry, which contained a lovely balanced meat (beef?) and onion mixture.
I'm prepared to admit it was mainly our fault the mains didn't live up to the starters, as the stew we'd ordered for the main injera platter - the Adulis Special lamb - was really too dry to create the lovely gooey injera-based slop we'd enjoyed at Zigni House. Having said that though, I would have appreciated a member of staff being more pro-active in offering advice to two clueless Eritrean cuisine beginners. The spicing in the lamb was great, and I loved the way they brought it out on a little sizzling pot over flames, but there wasn't enough richness or moisture to fight through the sour bread, and I'm afraid the end result was rather disappointing. Not inedible, just disappointing.
At a full £10 more each than Zigni House (just under £30 a head with a bottle of wine), Adulis had that much more to live up to, and I can't really say it did. In fact, if anything the food here was slightly less exciting than our meal in Islington, even taking into account the superb sambusa and the (for me anyway) still entertaining novelty of eating without cutlery. But, if you find yourself in Kennington, or God forbid if you live here, there must be far worse places to spend your money and at the very least our meal was tasty, fresh and served with enthusiasm. As for whether I'd go back, well, the next time I'm hungry in Kennington I'll certainly consider it. Although, the next time I do find myself in Kennington, there's a very good chance I'll just be halfway to somewhere else.
6/10
Every neighbourhood of London deserves a Hot Stuff. It is the kind of idiosyncratic, homely and budget-friendly restaurant that the residents of Vauxhall must be proud to call their local, but then thanks to various glowing reviews in the national press, and of course a smattering of equally positive blog posts its reputation has long since crossed the borders of SW8. In fact, living just ten minutes up the road in Battersea I'm not quite sure why it's taken me this long to pay a visit, but based on the lovely - and incredibly cheap - dinner I enjoyed last night, you can consider me its latest fan.
The tiny dining area of Hot Stuff has two main characteristics - it's noisy, and (at 6pm on a November evening at least) it's dark. Because of the former, it was difficult to hear exactly what our (otherwise charming and efficient) waiter was telling us about our food, and because of the latter, none of my photos came out. Added to this, the done thing at Hot Stuff is to tell them if you have any particular preferences or dislikes or dietary requirements, and they just prepare a selection of dishes they think you'll like, so there was no menu to take a photo of either. My descriptions of the food, therefore, are likely be vague bordering on useless, so perhaps I'll just focus on a few highlights.
Of the starter-style fried items, my absolute favourite was something I think they called Eminem, though I can't be completely sure. It was a flat pancake containing lamb(?) mince, spices and egg, served with a yoghurty sauce, and was a brilliant and surprisingly light combination which displayed (so I was later told) the restaurant's East African heritage. Apparently back home in Kenya these things are often much bigger and form a main course for sharing. Chilli paneer had a good kick of chilli heat and the paneer was nice and solid, although I did find the overall effect rather one-dimensional, especially as I was tipped that this was one of their best dishes. There was also some kind of deep-fried cheese ball served with a tangy sauce that wasn't anywhere near as stodgy as it sounds.
From the mains, I was as surprised as anyone to discover that my favourite dish was a vegetarian marrow curry, which was not only perfectly balanced in terms of spices but also managed to keep marrow as the primary flavour - not always easy with all those different ingredients vying for attention. There was a lovely masala fish, too, in a rich red curry, and a wonderful dish of plump, juicy prawns in a garlicky tomato sauce. The house naan bread was denser and doughier than varieties you will find elsewhere but was seasoned well and mopped up the leftover sauces very competently.
All of the above arrived in good time - not too quickly and not too slow - and this after having made them wait half an hour before ordering due to a delayed member of our party. The flexibility shown by the waiting staff, in fact, was remarkable - as well as our table of 5, there was one table of 4, a couple of 2s and one gigantic row of 18 in the centre of the room, and yet despite what must have been a difficult flow of orders to cope with, you would never have known it from our perspective. And for this brilliant service, on top of all this tasty, ridiculously cheap food, guess how much extra they charged? That's right, nothing - take note Rest of London. The final bill came to around £15 a head, to which we voluntarily, quite happily, added a couple of extra quid. They didn't even charge corkage for our BYO wine.
We spilled out onto the streets of Vauxhall with full bellies, happy hearts and with our wallets barely noticeably lighter, and yet on the bus home the elation of my new discovery was tinged with just a tiny note of frustration. If it really is possible to run a fantastic little place like this in the centre of London, without turning tables like a madman or charging way over the odds, and still turn a profit and have it full of happy punters every night, then why the hell aren't the unloved neighbourhoods of London teeming with restaurants following their lead? Hot Stuff makes it all look so damned easy - great food, low prices, friendly service. Where's the mystery in that formula? Can it really be that hard? Then again, the idea that Hot Stuff could have found investors and trained up more staff and expanded across the capital and chose not to, well, that makes this little spot in South West London all the more precious.
8/10
Before anyone accuses me of breaking the Blogger's Code, yes I did use a flash for that last shot. But I don't think anybody noticed so just keep schtum, OK?
One of my favourite places to eat within walking distance of my office - in fact, come to think of it, the only decent place to eat within walking distance of my office, is 32 Great Queen Street. It's a lovely, buzzy place with charming staff and tasty, uncomplicated food and I've never had a bad meal there. One of the reasons I prefer it over its sister restaurant, the Anchor & Hope in Waterloo, is that you can book a table and therefore avoid the hassle and stress of fighting to get there early or queuing for hours or - even worse - being shown to the last two seats on a large table of friends who spend the evening talking loudly and passing food around to each other while you sip quietly on house wine and wish they'd hurry up and leave. This has happened to me once at the Anchor - it's not much fun.
Sadly, the Canton Arms, the latest member of the family, takes its booking policy from the place in Waterloo and not the eminently more sensible GQS. I dashed out of work in a panic yesterday at 6pm, determined to get to Stockwell before the hordes, appetites whetted by so many good reviews, beat me to the front of the queue and ruined my evening. As it turns out, I needn't have worried - not a single other soul arrived to eat before we'd finished our main courses. But I was happy I made sure.
The menu was short and to the point. Normally this is a good thing, but my heart fell on realising there wasn't any of the delicious game that GQS does so brilliantly - no roast pigeon or teal or anything else small and feathery. It read like a slightly more stripped-down and simplified version of the A&H and GQS menus, and while you can possibly defend this given its location and style (while GQS and the A&H feel like wine bars with a restaurant attached, the non-eating section of the Canton Arms is very much an old-fashioned boozer, and none the worse for it), it was still disappointing. They do, however, offer a familiar 4-hour roast shoulder of lamb for four and a steak pie for two, so it's nice to see some traditions continuing.
My starter of smoked sprats were rustic in presentation and preparation but had a nice flavour. Unsure of the best way of eating them I ended up cutting off the heads and swallowing the body whole while holding onto the tail - it meant crunching through quite a bit of bone but when I tried an alternative filleting method I didn't get very far at all - the flesh was too pasty to separate from the bones. So I think I was right first time.
A friend's cuttlefish, chickpeas and aioli was much easier to eat, with lovely tender seafood. Presentation was, again, pretty rustic and whatever sauce the squid was in had turned the flesh a strange shade of pink, but the overall effect was pleasant enough.
Mains were far more interesting. A whole grilled sole was cooked incredibly well, the flesh pulling off in satisfying meaty chunks and served underneath a good butter herb dressing. To get a lovely fresh bit of fish like this for £15 is a bargain, even though it didn't come with any sides and necessitated the purchase of a £2.50 bowl of greens.
Onglet and chips was also of a very high standard. Chips in particular were superb and were happily dunked in the house Bearnaise (containing, rather oddly, tiny chunks of what I think were capers, which although hardly traditional didn't do any harm). The steak itself was, as you'd expect from this cheaper cut, rather chewy, so I could have done with a serrated knife to help with chopping it up. But it had a great flavour and had been cooked correctly medium-rare - just as well, as I wasn't asked how I'd like it on ordering.
I liked the Canton Arms. Even as a kind of Great Queen Street 'Lite', it's a cut above most other gastropubs in London and uniquely for this group has managed to still retain the feel of a normal local drinking den whilst serving braised duck leg and foie gras. Ah yes, the foie gras. Some of you with a more than healthy obsession with the latest restaurant trends (don't worry, you're in good company here) will have heard that the Canton Arms does a foie gras "toastie" - a generous layer of duck liver inside slices of white bread, fresh from the Breville. Unforgiveably, I had completely forgotten about this until I was walking out and spotted it on the bar menu. I suppose it provides a reason to return. Happily, despite the no booking policy, it's not the only one.
7/10
