Top 10 food experiences

My top 10 food experiences isn't meant as a mere add-on to the top 10 dishes and restaurants, but as distinct recognition of other things which I've really liked this year:

10. Pearl: My one posh, haute meal of the year, when I took Rabs out for her 60th birthday and it was a really super meal, in a lovely room, with great service and all-round happiness.
9. Raisin bread from Marylebone farmers's market: good, fruity brown bread with blue cheese, nice combo.
8. Laduree macaroons - esp passion fruit and chocolate: loveliest food present out there I reckon.
7. Manstree fruit picking: great fun (with secret fruit scoffing out of sight of the owners) with a wonderful selection of berries and plums.
6. Suzy's cooking: home-made Japanese food, lucky old me.
5. Having a doughnut party/sushi-making: Food-making and eating with friends, makes you glad to be alive.
4. Park lunches: taking turns to make sandwiches and eat it in the park with two old friends, makes me look back with fondness on 07.
3. Neal's Yard: great British cheeses and a wonderfuls service ethos.
2. Borough: it really is still good.
1. Chapel Street: my local fruit and veg market, with more nugget deals than anywhere else and lots of good banter with the stallholders (sample, me: "How you doing mate?", veg man: "I'm tired, I'm cold and I'm unloved!"). Fantastic quality of produce at great prices all year round.

Top 10 dishes

Coming up with the top 10 dishes of the year ain't easy by any means, and there are some great things which have missed out on the list, but writing this makes me excited about food, about continuing blogging and enjoying good things with people in 08. Here we go:

10. Ricotta, pea, olive oil and rock salt salad: Ok, I made it for myself, but damn! if this isn't one of the finest summery combinations you can imagine. Ricotta from Olga's, olive oil and salt from Sainsies, peas from the market, and a happy walk home to make this.
9. Marine Ices: I just love Marine Ices, most especially the chocolate ice cream, especially when eaten on a bench on Hampstead Heath.
8. Pecorino Tartufo di Toscana from Gazzano's: truffled pecorino... feels weak at knees.
7. Tart of onion and thyme with hollandaise, Roxburghe House: classic cooking in the best wedding meal I've ever had I think.
6. Cafe Corfu spinach filo pie: Number7 recognised how amazingly good this was as we ate it, predicting that we would be back for more, and she's right that the memory of it is really sweet.
5. Dhal: The doctor's recipe is amazing - mustard seeds, I'm a believer.
4. Mr Falafel: great people, great philosophy, great felafel sandwiches.
3. St Moritz: the service may be a bit shabby but we know for sure that they make London's best version of the most regal of all cheese dishes.
2. Mish: a dish so good that you can forget about it and when you come back to it, it's like "Oh my God, this is amaaaazing!" Best thing on toast ever.
1. Doughnut Plant donut with coconut cream: the best doughnuts on the planet; almost mystically good, made by the man they call "the Don Quixote of doughnuts" who is pushing the envelope of deep-fried bakery products to new dimensions. I reckon I think about them more or less every week.

Top 10s

It's getting near the end of the year and while I want to believe that the best meals are still to come, I thought it'd be kinda fun to look back through the blog and come up with some top 10s for the year. I'll begin with my top ten restos (includes service, ambiance etc), before moving on to dishes and then my top 10 food experiences of the year. I've tried to share the love around a bit in having three top 10s and will aim not to repeat too many places across them.

So, thinking about my top 10 restaurants, one of the things which quickly became clear to me was that my fave places are almost all ones which I've been to many times. This may reflect a certain conservatism on my part, but I like to think that it reveals these to be restaurants which are super reliable, where there is in all cases good service and a nice place to eat, as well as truly delicious food. London gets 9 of the 10 and all of them are at the budget-midrange end of things, which reflects very well on the capital as a city where you can eat exceptionally well without going crazy. Here they are then, in reverse order...:

10. Smiths of Smithfield: I don't think the food is that amazing, but what a building and what a buzz. Actually, the veggie breakfast is delicious and there's nowhere I'd rather have brunch.
9. Abu Zaad: still the best cheese sambousek, and much else that is great besides (including the fantastic lemon and mint juices).
8. The Eagle: not been lately, but the food does tend to be great and their beer and wine selection is fantastic.
7. Tbilisi: one visit was enough to convert me to the deep yumminess of Georgian food. We must go back.
6. Ganapati: Peckham south Indian - again just visited once, but a super vibe and the most amazingly delicious beetroot.
5. Ciao Bella: big pizzas you can eat outside in Bloomsbury at sizx or seven quid, with amazing olives, breadsticks and hunks of parmigiano as a free starter: I'm there.
4. King's Sandwich Bar: Somewhere I can walk in, grab a Diet Coke from the fridge, shoot the breeze with my main man behind the counter, and not have to order, because he knows I always have a giant bap with cheese, salad and colelslaw. Quite simply one of the places that makes me love food and being alive.
3. Plaza: the best sag paneer I had all year was in Birmingham's balti triangle. Hot damn it was delicious.
2. El Vergel: love the place, the people, the cherry cheesecake and the amazing tacos.
1. Pho: hope to go there tonight with Number7: hot, healthy Vitnamese food, which you get to wear bibs to eat, with the best crunchy tofu ever and a really nice atmosphere too. Pho, you are a worthy winner of lacroixduroi's restaurant of the year award. The owner's very friendly so we may tell him this later.

A good left-over idea

I had some average rice and beans left over, and was pleasantly surprised that with addition of some salad, some yoghurt, Tabasco and fajita wraps, they made a really tasty dinner the next day.

Leon

It may not be quite as good as it thinks it is, but Leon's claim to be the acceptable face of fast food is pretty much true in my book. McFlurries aside, I cannot remember the last time I had a burger from the Golden Arches or BK, but I was genuinely pleased to have Leon's superfood salad again today: a winning mix of sprouts, broccoli, quinoa, sheep's cheese and a yummy dressing. Along with a bowl of houmous and a Diet Coke, this was a v. satisfying meal, and I like the styling at their outfit in Spitalfields.

Some days

Some days the end of a working week is just well-finished with a pizza, a Sprite and some onion rings. Shame that the bases of Penton Pizzas taste like old cardboard, but the toppings were just fine.

TGI Friday's

What to do when London's trendy Wahaca and its nuevo market-style Mexican cuisine demands a 90-minute wait? Well, walk across the road to TGI Friday's for old style Tex-Mex as it happens. It may go without saying that the place was cheesy (and I'm not just talking about b's quesadillas, which were one of the highlights) but it was definitely fun, and the dishes which were good (the quesadillas and some 'Mac and cheese bites') were really tasty. My burger and chips was rubbish, but it was partly my error for not takin' it to the border, Tex-Mex style. Kudos to any eaterie that offers a deep fried ball of cheese and macaroni as a starter.

Birthday food

Day 2 of Jake's birthday celebrations and I made some rice and beans, since that's one of his faves. To be honest, they weren't great, but Tabasco livened them up (especially when rolled into fajitas as leftovers by Edo and I today), and the vegetables cooked with Fajita seasoning and topped with cheddar were kinda yummy. Pudding consisted of some truly amazing (as in, kinda weird but good) candied satsumas from Granada, brought back by R+J, which were whole fruits that had been sugarised so that they became sort of marmaladey, but in a good way.

Ganapati

Ganapati in Peckham wins both my 'Indian of the week' award and may well also be heading for some gongs in my end of year awards. I went there for Jake's birthday and we ate 'family style' on tables of six, where we shared the main dishes, though we each had a thali plate with rice, poppadom, a delicious chilli salad, and a nifty personalised name badge courtesy of Rebs.

One of the things I liked most about the place was that it was cool, but not in a flash London way, but more like a treasured backstreets restaurant in somewhere like Montpellier in Bristol. It has that nice chilled-out-verging-on-stoner feel to it, with Indian etchings on the wall, relaxed staff and a low-key good-time feel. Of course all this would be for naught if the food was not good and it is just excellent: good daal (if not quite as fine as Wednesday's), a yummy coconut dish, and an absolutely stunning beetroot dish, which was one of the finest things I've eaten all your. I will admit that I was totally seduced by the deep purple of this dish - and quite pissed on some cocktails and amazing beers from London's Meantime brewing company - but there was something subtly moreish about the beetroot and I intend to return to work my way properly through the menu. Any takers?

Nice food, shame about the asshole waiters

To Ravishankar on Drummond St with b for 'Thursday night is saag paneer night' and what a treat the food is: you get a tray, as seen in the photo, with a salad, a mint dressing, three chapatis, a good portion of God's own Indian dish, and some rice pudding (I conformed to type and didn't like the latter). The saag is just bloody delicious, with excellent spinach, lush paneer and a really decent heat to the dish; what's more it combines very well with the chapatis, and by the end you feel you've had a really interesting and filling meal for £6.95.

Yet if the food merits an 'A' the service is grade 'D', pushing towards 'N' or 'U'. B had eaten there before with the Red Devil and they had had problems with the staff, so this was by no means a one off (and external reports have reached our food network of other disgruntled customers). The staff are, at best, offhand, and frankly rather rude in their surliness and the general impression they give off of not giving two hoots about their customers, seeing them only as a bottom line (by which I mean a line of bottoms that come in, sit down, and then file out).

I guess that in the end I may come to view this place simply as somewhere that has famously bad service, and learn to roll with it, but in a town where service is generally pretty good, I don't think I'll be back on any day other than a Thursday.

Delish daal

I was stumped as to what to cook for dinner and followed the doctor's suggestion of rice and daal. I didn't really need to add a salad of red peppers, avocado and feta, because the daal (cooked with cumin, coriander, turmeric and mustard seeds) was one of the yummiest things I've cooked in ages, so much so that Edo and I overate to the point where we needed to lie down. High praise indeed for food. The trick, and a source of much fun, is appara all in the popping of the mustard seeds in a heated pan as you begin.

Masala Zone

Last week saw me eat at three Indian restaurants, so it is perhaps a little harsh on Masala Zone on Upper Street to say that the food was probably slightly weaker than the other two, but I did very much appreciate the distinctiveness of its menu, which includes some interesting dishes featuring fruits and a karahi vegetable selection. B and I had thalis, which come with a variety of vegetables of the day as well as your curry of choice, and before that we shared a street food/puri plate, which was pretty tasty. All the food felt rather healthy and, if anything, I think I would have liked a touch more unhealthiness, but these are small quibbles for it was a very tasty meal and I'd have no hesitation in going back. The fact that it is not your average Indian restaurant is in no way a criticism, and the more I write about the healthy flavours, the more I think I will want to return.

Best dish description of the year

And the award goes to a cafe on Exmouth Market whose name I've forgotten (Ayla's maybe) for one of their many breakfast options which is called 'Fill me up son'. That really amuses me no end, as it did the Merovingian (who liked it so much that he had it) and Edo, who, like me, had a big baked potato. A real no-nonsense, cheap joint with tasty food and chirpy service: what is not to like, apart from my failure to remember its name and to take my camera?