Lindsay House

As of the time of this writing, my mom and I have decided this is the tastiest restaurant we've been to in London. The flavors were great - better than Foliage, which we had gone to the night before, and altogether delicious. The bread was also better. yum. Lindsay House was in this little house in Soho, and we had to walk three flights up into this little room with four tables. Very charming, though we felt bad for the wait staff walking up and down the stairs, since I tripped walking up them without a giant tray of food. I unfortunately didn't take a picture of the menu this time, so we're doing this by memory and notes:

Amuse Bouche: Chestnut VelouteStarted with a Grilled Mackerel with artichoke lasagna and horseradish milk. Very good, and definitely not as fishy-mackerely as Foliage's yesterday.

My mom had a ham hock croquette with picalilli and mustard aioli. This was incredible.
Entree I had a Braised rib of beef, snail and garlic, and parmesan gnocchi. I must say the beef was not quite tender enough for my tastes - It wasn't really tough, but it wasn't like mouth-wateringly tender. Not like my lamb at Foliage. It did have a very nice flavor though.
My mom had a very tasty Pollock with lemongrass puree and sauteed shrimp.


Dessert was delicious as well - a rice pudding with spiced figs and mascarpone

or a Yoghurt panna cotta

Lindsay House is our London favorite thus far...

Rhodes W1

Ahh, Restaurant Week. 3 courses for 25 pounds. It's very reminiscent of being back in the States, but instead of cross-listing the restaurant week restaurants with the Zagat guide, I did it with the Michelin guide. So we pulled down 4 Michelin starred restaurants at great prices. Our first was Rhodes W1, who I went with some Wharton friends. I was pretty impressed to begin with, as one of them is vegan and asked them to make a vegan restaurant week menu for her... and they did!

Quite a posh French restaurant with a pehaps overly ornate chandelier at every table, Rhodes W1 is tucked in the Great Cumberland Hotel by Marble Arch.

Here's what I had:

Amuse Bouche: Pumpkin Soup with Almond and Lemon Veloute. I thought this was delightful.


Cured Salmon, crisp quail's egg, shaved fennel. The quail's egg was particularly neat and tasty, I thought.

Braised pork cheeks, butternut squash, and hazelnut. Tender pork cheeks and quite tasty. They even put the sauce on the side. Big fan of the squash.

Biscuit glace, mango sorbet and milk emulsion. This was way tastier than I thought it was going to be. It sounded a little boring, but I ended up not at all regretting not ordering the chocolate brownie.

Kiwi Kitchen

So my friend Marika was in town and we decided to do a little Sunday brunch. It's nice that the Kiwi Kitchen in Fulham is actually open at brunch hours (11, as opposed to noon). I haven't actually been to a New Zealand restaurant, so this was going to be exciting. And it was!

To start we had some NZ green-lipped mussels. Half-dozen lightly pickled with ti-toki, lindauer and kawakawa, and the other half with coconut, chilli, coriander, and lime leaf. Really delicious.

My brunch was very tasty: roast lamb hash with kumara, onions, fried egg & watercress on flat bread. The only issue was that the maori flat bread on which it was served was a tad rock-hard in places and thus very hard to cut.

And of course, we couldn't skip some kiwi dessert.
Marika had the kiwi kitchen passionfruit pavlova with feijoa, kiwi and berries,
while I went with sautéed manuka honey vodka spiced bananas, thick ‘n’ fluffy pancake with hokey pokey ice cream.

Goring

There are only a few fancy places you can make reservations for afternoon tea three weeks before the date, which is a little ridiculous imo. The Goring was one of them, so we went. It's menu looked more exciting than most others anyhow, with a special Goring trifle after you've stuffed yourself silly.

The Amuse Bouche was a lobster crawfish cream soup type stuff. Yum!



The sandwich, scone and pastry tray was also quite tasty. There were two sandwiches I thought were particularly tasty, the coronation chicken and I think like pheasant and watercress or something. We didn't refill the egg salad or the smoked salmon sandwiches. The pastries included a lemon macaroon, an apple pie, an ice cream roll, apple jelly, chocolate cake, and a little berry cupcake. Tasty.

And then the "Not Quite a Trifle" trifle:
All in all a very nice afternoon tea. Better than Fortnum & Mason like what.

Arbutus

I heard about the extraordinarily affordable three course pre-theatre (<- look, that's me being British again) menu at Arbutus and Wild Honey for less than a twenty. A word of warning though. Pre-theatre implies a pre-dinner theatre. After rushing through our 6pm dinner at Arbutus and then jogging to Carousel for a 7:30 curtain, we decided our pre-theatre meals should take place a day before the actual show, which is what we did for Wild Honey. They were super nice about being speedy for us, but it just wasn't as relaxing and food-enjoyable as it should have been. I don't even remember what the food was, since I believe I said, "Just give us one of each... fast."

To start, some thinly sliced lamb with some vinaigrette. Warm, and really nice. This was probably the highlight of my meal.
I can't remember what the entree was, though I remember eating it...The dessert was crushed apples and vanilla ice cream or St. Nectaire cheese.
Three Michelin-starred courses for 17.50 - you can't really beat it.

St. John

So we went to St. John a while ago, excited since Restaurant Magazine had it ranked as the 17th best restaurant in the world in 2008. They do nose-to-tail eating, so you eat like all sorts of animal parts. It was very good, and also very affordable which is a plus.

My appetizer was little rolls of pig spleen, which were very different and quite tasty:

I had the special, which was a hare saddle and swede. I don't think I'd order hare again; it has an interesting taste to it. I guess you can call it really gamey, but I think a more accurate and more sophisticated term would be "poopy." But when it comes to eating, I'm all about trying everything at least twice, so maybe the next time will be a better experience. The swede however, was SPECtacular.


I did like the little bullets inside of the hare, althougha little warning would have been nice before I confusingly chomped on bits of metal...

Dessert was a very tasty and very British Eccles cake with a giant slab of Lancashire cheese. Giant, but not unmanageable. Quite good, really.


My mom got a half-dozen madeleines, which were very good warm, as well as the next morning for breakfast.


So St. John. Very tasty, yes. 17th in the world? I think we're going to attribute that to it's uniqueness and nose-to-tail eatingness of it all.

Yauatcha

So we've been to Yauatcha twice now, and it's quite tasty. The first time I went with my dad, and thus we ordered the cheapest things on the menu. My dim sum favorite, taro croquettes, were very good - perhaps slightly better than your standard dim sum taro croquette - but maybe not 2 pounds better. The same can be said of the chicken feet.

But they had some nice dumplings:

I think these were bamboo and something

and these were scallop and kumquat:Some other dim sum -

Sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaf:

baked venison puffs:
Some thai vegetable of sorts that was REALLY tasty:


And some great desserts, including a chestnut montblanc, a rose guy that was a bit liquerish for my tastes, a kiwi apple tiramisu, and a raspberry cheesecake of sorts. Quite tasty.
Quite good and not unaffordable. I'd go back (which I clearly did already). These posts will get better when I do them less than two months after I eat at the restaurant.