It's taken me a while to come round to the Argentinian approach to beef. An enthusiastic consumer of the dry-aged, US/European varieties, charcoal-grilled to perfection in London's best steakhouses (take a bow, Goodman and Hawksmoor), my experience of anything calling itself Argentinian was limited to chain pub steaks and the overpriced and mediocre Gaucho Grill. And so you can see why it was easier to think "Argentinian = cheap = bad" than entertain the idea that perhaps just because the cheapest steaks available in the UK were from Argentina, those were the ones most likely to be bought by the UK's worst restaurants.
But then, a couple of years back, I was invited to a friend's birthday meal in a little place near the Emirates stadium called Garufa, and halfway through a few hundred grams of ribeye that for once wasn't lowest-common-denominator menu filler, I finally started to understand what the deal was. Argentinian beef - good Argentinian beef - is lean and robust, with a gentle gamey flavour and very little of the buttery, minerally notes that characterised the dry-aged US and European cuts. If it helps, think of it as venison - the fresher the better, salted and seared over a parrilla, perfectly matched with a glass of Malbec. It's so different from traditional Western steakhouse steak it may as well come from a different animal, and once you release yourself from the idea that to be good a steak has to be cuttable with a butter knife and contain ribbons of yellow fat, there's plenty to enjoy.
Of course, you'll also need to find somewhere good to eat it. Garufin is to Garufa what Barrafina is to Fino, or Morito to Moro. Thanks to good pedigree and a light application of tasteful on-trend restaurant design (bare brick walls, uncomfortable seating, small plates, you know the drill) it manages to be buzzier, cheaper and more fun than the original, and is my new favourite work lunch spot. Providing you go easy on the booze you can walk away from a very decent meal for less than £20, and although the steaks are the real focus, there are enough interesting Argentinian specialities elsewhere on the menu to keep even the most demanding colleagues happy.
You know a place is going to be good when even something as simple as a tomato salad manages to impress. Crunchy and well-seasoned, underlined with a lovely smoked pepper sauce, the "Mixta" stands as proof that when restaurants get the basics right, it's that much easier for everything else to fall into place. Similarly, you may think it's not too difficult to mess up cheese croquettas, but numerous distressing experiences in lesser tapas bars across the city say otherwise; here a delicate crust contained strong provolone and the occasional toasted peanut, each sat on a light citrus dressing.
"Rescoldo" was perhaps the only dish I've tried at Garufin that I can't recommend. Consisting of slimy, underseasoned vegetables (some powerfully smoked) topped with a congealed slab of provolone, it was unbalanced and quite unpleasant, and though I can kind of see what they were getting at (a sort of Argentinian ratatouille) it needs a bit of a rethink. Their empanadas, though, were wonderful - particularly the spicy tripe & ox cheek one, a fluffy, crisp coating containing rich offal.
But to the main events. At £14.50, the "Lomo & caracu" is the single most expensive item on the menu, but fortunately was everything I was hoping it would be, a perfectly-seared chunk of tender fillet steak boasting that gentle gamey freshness, and marrow presented in a bisected bone for you to scoop out and eat with it. It's a lot for not a great deal of food, but if you ever needed convincing of the merits of Argentinian beef, it's a great place to start. And some Iberico pork, seared to medium and resting on a bed of creamy sweetcorn salsa, came with a black pudding croquetta - handily negating the need for me to order a separate side of black pudding croquettas. Because there was no way I was going to go to a restaurant serving black pudding croquettas and not order some black pudding croquettas.
The one dessert I've tried - cutely described as Dulche de Leche "Served in all its ways" was another heady helping of South American comfort food. I particularly liked the slices of banana with a DdL crust, and the excellent ice cream.
The fact that Garufin is less than 30 seconds walk from the office is, of course, a huge bonus to the restaurant desert that is Holborn/Bloomsbury and massively good news to me personally. But I'm sure that were it the other end of a 30 minute tube ride I would have been equally impressed by the cooking, the relentlessly friendly staff and the atmosphere of this welcoming little place. They are one of the first restaurants that really have a chance of convincing Londoners there's more to Argentinian beef - and Argentinian cuisine in general - than watery sirloin served at a 300% markup in the dark (yes I'm moaning about Gaucho again), but let's hope they won't be the last. If they can turn a die-hard dry-aged steak snob like me, they can turn anyone.
Even as the paint was drying at MeatMarket, the second outpost of MeatLiquor, I saw someone on Twitter describe them as a "chain". How running just two restaurants in the same city, with different menus, makes them the next McDonald's I'm not sure, but it got me thinking about what exactly does constitute a chain. "Lots of identical restaurants all serving exactly the same food" seems a straightforward place to start, and there are no shortage of examples that fit this description, although even McDonald's tailor and tweak their menu to local tastes, and the interiors of any Nando's I've ever been inside (not that many, since you ask) have been commendably diverse.
The word "chain", then, isn't so much a category of restaurant as an insult thrown at anywhere that looks like it's sacrificed individuality and care for corporate consistency and shareholder returns. The ETM Group, for instance, despite running ten sites across London, avoids the "chain" label because each of its pubs has a proper chef and a unique menu, whereas the Real Greek, which I'm reliably informed was once one of the tiny number of places you could get good Greek food in London, has long since expanded, sold out and is now a "chain". The Polpo restaurants aren't a chain, Carluccio's is. The Galvin restaurants aren't a chain, but Café Rouge is. It's all in the attitude.
Vinoteca, then, isn't a chain, even though there are three in London now - the original in Farringdon which is always rammed (no mean feat when you've got St John as a neighbour), one in Marylebone and this, the latest, just a couple of doors down from Polpo and right opposite Bob Bob Ricard. Perhaps they like to choose their locations based on the quality of the competition; I expect the fourth will be in Cartmel or Bray.
Sorry about the appalling photos; it was quite dark in our little corner of the room and they turned out badly even by the desperately low standards of this blog. Suffice to say that these three chorizo croquettas did not look like beached sea cucumbers in real life, and tasted pretty good despite the overly thick, greasy crust and not quite enough béchamel inside.
House bread did a good enough job, and a bowl of salty "Catalan" almonds (not sure whether they were Catalan by origin or cooking style) from the 'snack' menu were just about worth £3, but the first bit of proper cooking was a grilled mackerel fillet in watermelon sauce, a great charred skin and moist flesh demonstrating that someone in the Vinoteca kitchens knows how to cook fish.
Unfortunately, though, the same care and attention hadn't been shown to this artichoke, which was overcooked and seems to have lost most of its tender internal leaves, perhaps an over-zealous effort to remove the hairs from the top of the heart. The dipping sauce was OK but I've certainly had better artichokes.
Best of the mains was my rose veal and girolles, a generous portion of tender veal and silky mushrooms in a garlic butter sauce. At £18 it was at the upper end of what you might want to pay for this kind of thing, but you did get plenty on the plate for your money.
Baked tomato, ricotta & swiss chard "tart" was bizarre though - a square of pastry topped with tomato and chard, looking like a square pizza, and a huge mound of completely tasteless curd on top. The combination of everything in one mouthful wasn't unpleasant, but it's still quite far off what you might expect from something called a "tart" and I got the distinct impression this was just one of those token vegetarian options, the chef's heart not really in it.
So, serviceable food and for not a huge amount of money but not really anything to get the pulse racing. However, Vinoteca has a trick up its sleeve in the form of a huge and carefully built wine list, and I imagine it's for this that many will choose to visit. I am not a wine buff, and will always be more interested in what's on my plate than in my glass, but I know plenty of people who tend to match food to wine than vice versa, and as nice-but-not-exceptional, the food at Vinoteca is perhaps deliberately pitched to play second fiddle to the wine and provide those who appreciate such things a different way of enjoying an evening out.
And it's for that reason I can't be too down on Vinoteca. It's far too easy, in any blog post, to point out mistakes with the food than just say that, actually, none of it was disastrous and the atmosphere and service in this attractive building in the heart of Soho still meant that we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Service was attentive and friendly even before my cover was blown (I was invited to review but managed to slink in and find a table without giving my name) and judging by the happy crowd that had found their way into the centre of town as Olympics Mania raged all around them, it has its fans. Like those that came before in Farringdon and Marylebone, it's sure to do well.
I knew I was going to like The 10 Cases, newish (but not actually that new; it has apparently been open nearly a year) wine bar and bistro in Covent Garden, the moment they served me my first drink. I knew this because, unlike some of the smartest joints in town that sell wine by the glass, when I ordered 125ml of Chardonnay the nice man behind the counter simply put a glass in front of me and poured what looked like the right amount straight out of the bottle. I don't know when the rest of town is going to cotton on to the fact that measuring out wine into metal cylinders looks amateurish and miserly (and with who knows what effect on the taste of the wine), but thank Bacchus for anywhere that treats their bar staff and their customers like adults.
The wine, a 2010 L'Ocre Rouge in case that means anything to you, was fantastic - salty and complex and very unlike your usual buttery Chardonnays. I'm making a special effort to mention it despite my obvious lack of expertise in this area because clearly a lot of trouble has gone into creating a very interesting (not to mention pretty affordable) list and with every single option also available by the glass, working your way through it is a hugely attractive option.
But the wine isn't the only thing to get excited about at 10 Cases. The food - advertised around the room on chalk boards, some crossed off even quite early in the evening, a measure of the popularity of this pretty little space - reads like a Francophile's dream. Words like foie gras and beef get multiple uses; the cheeseboard includes such superstars as Langres and St Marcellin; and an "Aperitif" section contains fully 9 different ways of snacking, including potted crab and roasted garlic. I started with a £4 order of saucisson, presented with crunchy mini gherkins which offset the silky fat of the pork very nicely.
Sometimes the only thing that separates a good restaurant from a great one is attention to detail. House bread, for example - I don't know if 10 Cases bake their own, but it certainly tasted that way, the sliced baguette being warm and crusty and soft and utterly irresistible, especially when topped with half a sachet of (soft and room temperature - take note Other Restaurants) President butter. You can get decent baguette in lots of places; bread like this is a rare treat.
For some reason I was expecting foie gras en cocotte to be a kind of foie gras Wellington, but I think I was getting mixed up with en croute. Anyway, what arrived was a little ceramic pot containing a generous slab of seared liver, topped with a poached egg. It's perhaps a dish that in lesser hands could have been a bit sickly, but we found the mix of rich meaty foie and silky yolk dangerously addictive - and a nice crust on the foie meant the textures didn't get muddied.
Bacon egg and pork cheek "salad" is my kind of "salad" - ie. one that is largely made up of massive bits of pig. The bacon was more akin to expensive pancetta, and had a superb flavour, as did the dark slab of pork cheek (hidden under all that bacon) which split apart into moist chunks under the slightest pressure from a spoon. A poached egg lubricated it all, and the odd crouton gave crunch. This huge bowl of food disappeared in frantic, hungry seconds.
On the one hand, trout, spinach and potatoes isn't an earth-shatteringly innovative dish but when the everyday is done as well as this, you can't really complain. The skin on the fish was crispy and greaseless, the potatoes soft and buttery, and the spinach smooth and well seasoned. If I'm going to nit pick I suppose the huge chunk of garlic butter on the top was overkill; it was so massive it didn't have a chance to melt and so remained stubbornly solid after the rest of the food was polished off. But a small portion of fried octopus (£4 and from the "Aperitif" menu but easily big enough for a starter) was just gorgeous - crunchy and soft in all the right places, and coated in a rich herby, buttery dressing.
So let's just consider what we have here. A friendly, attractive little spot in central London, serving interesting wines and great food, at reasonable prices (our bill came to £67 for two with plenty of vino) and with a smile. The wine bar/bistro concept is hardly new; I can think of a dozen similar places within walking distance, many of them very good. But there is something about The 10 Cases - passion? Spirit? Perhaps just good old fashioned attention to detail and a healthy desire to offer a good product - that sets it above the crowd. If you want this kind of thing, and unless you're a vegetarian I can't think of a single good reason why you wouldn't, there really isn't anywhere that does it much better. Well done 10 Cases. Very well done indeed.
One of the few criticisms of José Pizarro's tapas bar in Bermondsey - in fact really the only criticism - is that it's always far too busy. In Madrid, a place like José would be one of a number of options to pop in and enjoy a glass of sherry and some carved ham in any given area of town, and whilst some would be better than others, the idea is that you spend a happy evening going from bar to bar, never lingering too long in one spot and with the sheer number of alternatives helping to thin out the crowds. No such luck in SE1 - the nearest decent tapas bar once you've done with José is a cab ride to Soho away, and so the only option is to queue, cheek to jowl with other hungry patrons, hoping at some point you'll be lucky and find a seat. It's worth it, because the food and drink is always so brilliant, but you can see why it's not for everyone. What José needs, and what the people of London need, is competition - and unless you manage to get a walk-in at Zucca (good luck with that), there ain't none.
I am worried a very similar fate will befall Soif, the new restaurant from the guys behind the Terroirs and Brawn. There are lots and lots of restaurants in Battersea but with the odd exception they are all absolutely crap, so anywhere that is any good (Mien Tay, the Draft House) is permanently hugely oversubscribed. And Soif is just so much better than anywhere else in this part of town that I can very soon see it turning into the Zucca of SW11 - booked up six months in advance and with a waiting list like a kidney transplant. For now, though, let's enjoy it before the word gets around and you still stand a snowball's chance in hell of eating there.
Lardo di Colonnata, buttery and rich and presented on a marble tray in thin ribbons, was very tasty although when I've had lardo before it's been simply dressed with olive oil and seasoning and I think that helps lighten it slightly. Having said that though, it still all disappeared very quickly and if you don't enjoy the experience of melting bright write strips of pig fat in your mouth and washing them down with the house red there's something seriously wrong with you.
All the food from here on was, without exception, superb. A bowl of clams in butter and garlic was superficially simple but one of those things that's far too easy to get wrong. Bursting with freshness and seasoned perfectly, the only thing better than sucking back the sweet, juicy bivalves themselves was dipping the house sourdough in the garlicky butter sauce left behind - just brilliant.
This cute little pile of surf and turf is a paprika (I think) studded squid balanced on a disc of thick black pudding. The squid had a great flavour and a nice soft texture but the real star here was the black pudding, so thick and powerfully flavoured it was like a solid slow-cooked stew studded with chunks of pork fat.
And the third of the starters, chanterelles and pancetta, very like something I'd had once at Brawn, was a posh - and perfect - mushrooms on toast, with all kinds of strange shapes combining into an addictive mix of crunchy and soft, sweet and salty.
Based on the number of times I've had a dry partridge with flabby skin, it can't be easy to cook these birds properly. But this example was great - roasted golden brown with a fantastic aroma, the flesh beneath the crust was soft and juicy and full of gamey flavour. The sauerkraut (sorry, "choucroute"), despite my initial reservations, actually made a good sharp counterpoint to the meat, and the combination was all the more impressive once the juices from the bird had begun to mix together. But I still remain to be convinced whether it really did need that huge piece of Montbéliard sausage - it tasted perfectly nice but after stripping the partridge to the bone and knocking back a couple of mouthfuls of sauerkraut I barely had space to really appreciate it. Perhaps those with a bigger appetite would disagree.
There was one other main I forgot to take a picture of - a bowl of pig cheeks in cider and winter veg, but it was of a similar standard to the rest of the food - as soft as Christmas cake, rich as foie gras, comforting as a thick porky blanket. And given how much of my main course I had to leave, I'm not sure how I found room for any chestnut cake, but one slice between three people was just enough to send us wobbling on our way - it was lovely though, soft and buttery and lifted by the accompanying crème fraiche.
The bill, with a 500ml carafe of Cuvee Briand (much of the inspiration for the wine list and the food at Soif apparently comes from the Ardeche in SE France) came to £40 a head, which I suppose isn't super cheap but thanks to the generous attitude to portion sizes we were absolutely stuffed and you can hardly claim for food of this standard that it wasn't good value. Anywhere in London, Soif would be a great restaurant but given the standards of the area it's little short of miraculous. And it's for this reason that my hearty recommendation on 2nd December 2011 comes with a potentially ruinous caveat - this is a great value restaurant serving top food and wines in pleasant surroundings, but it's in Battersea, so be warned: I can guarantee that whenever you decide to try your luck, you won't be the only Nando's or Pizza Express exile on the hunt for a some decent grub.
When you book a table at Terroirs, they ask you if you want to sit upstairs or downstairs. Having never been, it seemed sensible to reply "whichever is nicer", although it seems this question flummoxed whoever was manning the phones somewhat.
"Well, downstairs is bigger...?"
"Downstairs, then."
"We'll need the table back by 9pm. Will that be OK?"
I suppose it would have to be. After descending an impossible amount of stairs to a basement room so subterranean it had the atmosphere of a reclaimed mineshaft, I can confirm that downstairs at Terroirs is indeed bigger, and yet due to the remarkable popularity of this restaurant & 'natural' wine bar almost every seat was already taken. I was led up yet more stairs to a mezzanine level towards the back, and to a table that appeared to have been designed specifically for André the Giant. After a few moments gazing across a surface that only just cleared my chin from a sitting position, I called my waiter back and asked to be moved. Later in the evening, a second couple would be seated at the same table, make similar observations on the relative height of the chairs and dining surface, and also ask to be moved. Maybe Terroirs is abnormally popular with acromegalics, or perhaps it's just an elaborate practical joke. Who knows.
Sadly that table wasn't the only disproportioned or baffling thing about my meal that evening. First of all, I found the menu quite difficult to decipher. It was split into 'Charcuterie', which had five different cold options ranging from £5-9 each and a selection of three (you couldn't choose which) for £12; an area which looked like main courses labelled "Plats du jour" containing things like steak and potatoes and their famous cassoulet; and "Plates of taste" which as far as I could make out were just slightly smaller main courses, salads and soups.
The charcuterie selection was perfectly good - a very nice saucisson from the Pyrenees, a decent duck rillette and a generous block of pork & pistachio terrine with pickles. The terrine in fact was particularly good, with lovely moist pork and big chunks of crunchy nuts for texture. But just take a look at what arrived next:
What we have here is a huge mound of preserved anchovies (very nice they were too, to be fair), a few slices of shallots, half a pound (or so it seemed) of unsalted butter and just two half-slices of bread to spread it on. If I had divided equally all the provided ingredients onto those tiny bits of bread I would have ended up with a towering mass of traumatic salty, buttery mixture, both impractical to eat and probably fairly disgusting too. I don't know if I could have asked for more house bread without being charged another £1.50, but I wasn't going to risk it, and so we just shovelled in as much butter and anchovy as we could without gagging and left it at that. I estimate we left about half the anchovies and 3/4 of the butter.
Clams, ham, garlic and chilli were interesting enough and had nice fresh clams, but there was probably about a tablespoon of edible ingredient here for your £7. I realise that most, if not all, of my issues so far can be explained away by bad ordering, but we were not offered any suggestions from the staff and I do think that the menu was confusing. Well, that's my excuse.
Given that after the "mains" we were desperate for something to wash away the salt and butter, and to fill up our stomachs (respectively), we ordered desserts. Panacotta was pretty good, with a nice bitter Campari and orange accompaniment which did its job well.
Rum Baba, sliced in half and doused with rum at the table, was a bit more of a chore. The first couple of mouthfuls were delicious, moist and sweet and with a pleasant burn of alcohol. But after a while the dense cake became hard-going, and the pot of cream wasn't light or sharp enough to cut through the stodge and make things any easier. I left about half of it.
The bill came to about £60, which is a fair price I suppose but the whole experience had left me extremely uncomfortable, and I'm not just talking about that table. The dishes, though well-cooked and using good ingredients, were clumsily constructed and often unforgivably imbalanced, making the eating of them more of a challenge than a pleasure. I really wanted to like Terroirs, and clearly plenty of people do, but perhaps in the future I'll pay more attention to their excellent wine list (Terroirs at least have the distinction of selling me the first and only glass of "natural" wine I've ever enjoyed - a Vouvray - and their rosé was equally impressive) than the food menu. In fact, if you approach Terroirs as a wine bar that can serve you the odd bit of food to stop you falling asleep on the train home, then perhaps you'll enjoy it more than I did. Order carefully and make sure you're clear on the portion sizes, and you'll probably get along fine. Oh, and watch out for that table.
