Mancfoodian

The Hideaway

2013-03-18T17:48:00.002+00:00

114 Junction Road,
London N19 5LB

All pizzas: £8-9.50

As disparaging as I am about Archway, I've had some truly delicious food there these past few weeks. First was the roujiamo from Mama Wang's, and a few days ago I experienced the media-vaunted pizzas at The Hideaway.

Sandwiched between an off-license and a bin-lined alleyway are some of the finest pizzas that London can offer, even in these days of Franco Manca's cross-capital expansion and every louchely lit hipster market offering up gourmet slices. The restaurant is cosy and undemanding with sofas, comfy chairs and the lights turned down low in comparison to the stark lines and lighting of the nation's favourite pizza chains.

The menu keeps it simple: fourteen pizzas, two calzones, six salads, two desserts. All are simply done with good quality ingredients at reasonable prices. I had the Caprino pizza, a tomato-based pizza with mozzarella, goats cheese, juicy sun-dried tomatoes and a heavy scattering of teeny-tiny capers. The mozzarella provided a creamy background for the salty pops of the other ingredients, none of which were skimped on. R had the Originale calzone, a meaty punch of chorizo, salami milano, roasted peppers and mozzarella that was let down by a bowl of watery tomato sauce that tasted of little more than de-canned passata.

The Hideaway is worth a visit, especially if you're hungry and in Archway. Although the calzone's side sauce was a disappointment, every other aspect of the meal was top-notch. For an area that otherwise seems more a staging-post than a destination, Archway is swiftly proving me wrong.

Chennai Dosa, Wembley

2013-03-16T09:58:00.002+00:00

529 High Road,
Wembley,
HA0 2DH

Special Masala Dosa: £2.99
Sambar Idli: £1.99
Masala Butter Paneer: £3.50
Chapattis: 85p apiece

Being such a fan of East Ham's plethora of South Indian restaurants and shops, I had wanted to check out for some time what Wembley, a similar area but in north-west London, had to offer. It was a flying visit, but I will return in the future for more sampling.

Chennai Dosa is a small chain (11 outlets) of South Indian restaurants scattered mostly across the South East. R and I went there because it was right by the bus stop, we were starving, and I had eaten an excellent meal at the one in East Ham before. The menu is comprehensive and has a good selection of South Indian standards (dosas, oothapams, idlis etc) with a few options for each dish.

R and I chose sambar idli (steamed rice cakes in a thin vegetable curry), masala butter paneer (paneer cheese in a sauce), chapattis, and the special masala dosa. We ordered the special masala dosa mainly because it was only 14p more than the normal masala dosa, and we wanted to see what special ingredient cost 14p.

The sambar idli was superb: the two dense rice cakes soaked up the sambar but retained their shape, and the large chunks of vegetables in the sambar made it seem healthier than it probably was. The masala butter paneer was rich and flavoursome, pungent with a tomato acidity complemented by the creamy paneer. We ate it with nothing-special chapattis rather than rice. The special masala dosa came as a large semi-circle with the usual complement of sauces - sambar, a cooling but spiced coconut, a red one that tasted of caramelised onions and a green one that tasted clean, peppery and hot. The magic 14p ingredient was a heavily cinnamon-ed mashed medley of vegetables plonked on top of the curried potatoes and onions. It did not add anything to the dosa and the heavy flavour of cinnamon compromised the other spicing in the dish.

Overall, the meal was good, although some aspects could be improved. Eating South Indian is almost always a cheap but tasty option, and we were stuffed for the princely sum of a tenner. Wembley has a lot more to offer, including outdoor dosa stands that were deserted in this March's biting winds and snow flurries. There will be more food forays into the northwest of the capital once the weather improves.

Dosa Deli

2013-03-06T13:31:00.001+00:00

Various locations (info on Twitter - @dosadeli)
Prices around £5.

Thinking about it, dosas (large and crispy South Indian pancakes made from rice and lentils) make the perfect street food. If made correctly, they hold their substantial fillings well while retaining their own texture. They are usually stuffed with a variety of spicy vegetable fillings, whether lightly curried or fiercely hot, and can be eaten with one hand while you hold a much-needed drink in the other. No faffing around with spoons or forks, dosas are the more challenging version of those bland stodge-fests that call themselves burritos.

So imagine my pleasure when I came Dosa Deli's light, crisp and aerated dosas. They are on a par with what you'll find out in East Ham or Wembley, just more accessible because Dosa Deli is a food truck that plies its wares in Kings Cross, the City and other central locations. Their fillings are more unusual than the "masala" or "Mysore" mixes on every menu, with multiple layers constructed with chutneys, sauces and pickles on top of a toothsome, flavour-packed chana masala (chickpea curry) that sings of long-cooking and care. They give you the option of adding paneer, but the chickpeas are a delight all by themselves.

Their new option is based on Singapore laksa, which I will be checking out shortly. These guys are worth watching, and tasting, and will surely have notched up a full-time restaurant soon enough. Top-quality dosas without having to schlep out to zone 3/4? Yes, please.

Lucky Fried Chicken at The Grafton

2013-03-03T11:14:00.000+00:00

The Grafton Pub,
20 Prince of Wales Rd,
Kentish Town,
London NW5 3LG

Jumbo Box - £12.50
Potato salad - £3

The newly gastro Grafton pub in Kentish Town has decided to host pop-up and food-truck stalwarts Lucky Chip in their kitchen in the coming months. Their first venture is Lucky Fried Chicken, which serves the dishes of an upscale chicken shop for prices that are still cheap for a filling dinner.

R and I went for the jumbo box - £12.50 for five large pieces of fried chicken, creamed potatoes and gravy, coleslaw and two rolls - and added a tub of potato salad for £3. This box represents very good value as, even without a side, it would make a satisfying meal for two people.

Having spent almost all of my summers in South Carolina, I am familiar with the upper echelons of fried chicken: herbed and spiced flour that makes the crispy skin pop and plump chicken meat brined into tenderness. Lucky Chip succeeded on all fronts; R was particularly happy that the batter was light rather than the main feature, as it allowed the chicken to be a flavour in itself.

The coleslaw was so more-ish I considered ordering it as a salad all by itself. A light covering of mayonnaise lets the vegetables be the focus along with the slightly peppery dusting of herbs. The potato salad, on the other hand, was almost all sauce, which, to me, does not a good potato salad make (obviously, this is a subjective judgement). It might have been tangy but it overwhelmed the chunks of hard potato and slices of cornichons. The potatoes and gravy were far too salty, which spoiled the contrast between the creamy potatoes and meaty gravy.

Despite the heavy-handed salting and saucing, the meal was one of the best I have eaten recently and should be chalked up as a success. Apparently the Grafton's next culinary adventure (from 13th March) is into gourmet burgers. Considering the standard of Lucky Fried Chicken, it should be well worth checking out.

Takoyaki

2013-02-23T23:06:00.000+00:00

Takoyaki: £2.50

Takoyaki stall,
Newport Place,
Chinatown, London

Takoyaki are octopus balls. Get your mind out of the gutter, you filthy thing. The takoyaki man pours batter, octopus pieces and shredded cabbage into a converted waffle iron and then fiddles with them in a casually flirty manner. After determining that everything is as it should be, he plops them into a bowl, artfully dashes Japanese mayonnaise and a sweet soy sauce around them, adds some shredded fishy bits, and hands over the food with a come-hither eyebrow.

They are piping hot and hard to eat and contain cross-sections of octopus tentacle. The fishy, salty, punchy flavours are strong yet complementary. And even though three-quarters of the octopus is rubberier than it should be, the fourth piece is a meltingly soft delight.

As more and more street food stalls open in and around Chinatown, selling the pancakes, dumplings and waffles of various nationalities, it is worth keeping an eye out for the more unusual offerings. There might be an abundance of low-quality high-priced food in the area, but the street stalls rarely disappoint in their cheap and cheerful offerings.

Mama Wang's

2013-02-23T22:53:00.000+00:00

Roujiamo: £4 (small), £5 (large)

Mama Wang's Kitchen stall,
Opposite the Archway Budgens on Holloway Rd.

My friend Z reminded me that I hadn't written anything since October. Truth be told, it's because I've been on poverty rations while trying to find paying work. No luck yet, but hopefully I'll be able to wangle my budget so I can make the occasional foray into street food.

Today's visit was to Archway market. Jammed between high-class Highgate and hard-to-like Holloway, Archway is little more than a comfortably middle class junction. Raising it from its torpor is the Saturday market (opposite Budgens....such a middle-class direction). Here you can get hand-milled Irish breads, free-range duck eggs, salted caramels and roujiamo.

Hold up...I know you were following me until that last one, so let me explain.

Roujiamo are Chinese sandwiches. Specifically, northern Chinese sandwiches of long-braised pork or lamb, some lightly pickled vegetables, a slathering of piquant tomato chutney and a few crispy bits. An English muffin struggles valiantly to contain the ingredients, but fails: porky sauce covered my hands for the rest of the day while chunks of meat and veg slipped from my grasp and onto the pavement. I'd recommend a two-hand grab, plenty of napkins and a firm bite.

Enough on the logistics. The flavours are all there: well-spiced pork lost something in having little texture, but otherwise was a pleasure to eat; the vinegar from the vegetables lends a clean undertone to what would otherwise feel like a fatty meal; the tomato sauce needs more punch, but that's probably a subjective statement; and the English muffin holds up well in the face of so much sauce and stuffing.

Archway may not be the most thrilling of suburbs, but it is developing a top-notch market. Go there to buy the ingredients for the Guardian's latest Ottolenghi recipe, sure, but make sure you grab a cheeky roujiamo, too. It'll make even the Northern Line worth it.

Indonesia Mini Market

2012-10-03T12:57:00.002+01:00

57 Charing Cross Road
London

Mie Bakso: £4.50
Nasi Pedang: £5
Canned drinks: 50p

It's not often you find a cheap, filling, fantastically flavoured, expertly cooked lunch slap-bang in central London. However, for lunch or dinner for a fiver or less, head up a gaudy Chinese shop's escalators, turn past the tattooist and the massage parlour, until you find shelves filled with Indonesian products. Propped up against the counter is a list of dishes and the man behind it will explain their particulars for you. Indonesian food doesn't yet have the same cultural cognisance as Indian or Chinese, but this shop could single-handedly reverse its fortunes.

When I first went, the only dish available was Mie Bakso - a meatball soup with two kinds of noodles, various crunchy bits and a sprinkling of green leaves. The broth is clear, flavoured to the hilt, and absorbs the complimentary spicy sambals nicely. The meatballs are spongy - apparently this is traditional, as tapioca flour is added to stretch the meat further - and this is slightly disconcerting to a Westerner unaccustomed to Indonesian food. Overall, this is a dish that packs many surprises - from the flavours to the textures to the quantity crammed into what looks like a small bowl.

The second time was for a late Sunday lunch. The cafe was packed with laughing Indonesian students who, according to the owner, had eaten almost everything. The only dish left was Nasi Pedang - a large-portioned taster of curries, rice, sambal and poppadoms. The curries - a hump of curried potato, an earthy and intense beef redang and a searingly spicy chicken curry - showcased different flavours and textures and schooled us in the basics of Indonesian cuisine. The green and tangy sambal added another layer and worked well with both meat dishes.

With such cheap, delicious and plentiful food in the heart of London, this place is a gem of a find. As usual, thanks to Chowhound for the tip. Most people would ignore a small sign reading "Indonesia Mini Market" or, even if they did follow it up the stairs, would be diverted by the depressing "Brazil by the kilo" restaurant next-door. Finding and eating new cuisines at low prices is part of the joy of living in London. Let's all get out of our Indian-Chinese-Italian bubbles and open our eyes.

London - Kaosarn

2012-06-19T13:25:00.001+01:00

Brixton Village Market

Granville Arcade

Brixton

London SW9 8PR

Starters: £4-7, Mains £7-13.

Did I choose badly? The menu was a list of garden-variety Thai dishes (green curry, Massaman, tom yum) that were not as good as the rave reviews by most national newspapers and an army of London bloggers.

The soups (tom yum and tom kha) - both powerfully lemongrassy with succulent pieces of boiled chicken in the tom kha - were excellent, full of big flavours (and also big button mushrooms - not my favourite). Unfortunately, they were bigger than my friend's teensy tiny salad that was a small hump of beansprouts and little else. The first time I went to Kaosarn, the portions were unexpectedly small, too, which possibly reflects either the tendency for Thais to eat less or the hipster clientele who eat birdlike portions lest they get too fat for their vintage skinny jeans. At least the ingredients all tasted very fresh, few as they were. Luckily for me, my Massaman curry was substantial and the lamb was succulently falling apart, but the sauce-to-rice ratio was skewed heavily towards rice. The sauce itself was very oily, with a slick on top that I chose to mix into the sauce, although I probably should have drained it off.

For the privilege of one of us not being full and the other facing the effects of arteriosclerosis once all that oil seeps into my veins, we were charged around £24. If Kaosarn has a secret Thai menu, then I would love to hear about it and revisit, because it must have its fanbase for a reason. If it doesn't, and my two visits (about nine months apart) are representative, then it is clear that there are much better Thai restaurants available in London. Next stop, The Heron!

London - Hala

2012-05-21T09:43:00.001+01:00

29 Green Lanes

London N4 1LG

Pide: £6.50

Kebabs: £8-11

One of my favourite things about the Green Lanes' Turkish restaurants is the amount of extra food that you get without asking for it. No matter that the portions are already big enough to put giants into food comas, the numerous plates piled with bread, sauces, salad and dessert will keep coming. The bread - pillowy and basted in meaty flavours - is most likely unsuitable for vegetarians. The sauces - sour yoghurt and cucumber and a fruity and fiery chilli - pep or or cool down dishes as required. The salad, a barely surmountable hill of chopped, shredded, chiffonaded and sliced vegetables interspersed with olives and chunks of creamy feta, makes the meal feel healthier, which is important when the plates arrive heavy with grilled meats or pide.

My friend Claire's lamb kebab was a hefty portion of chargrilled lamb that retained its sweetness when it fell apart. It came slathered in a stewey and well-herbed tomato sauce topped with Hala's homemade yoghurt (their churn is by the counter and accounts for how fresh and thick their yoghurt tastes). My pide (Turkish pizza) was a thin base covered in tomato sauce and strips of grilled lamb and then half-folded over. Unfortunately, Hala's pide selection is more limited than many neighbouring restaurants', and many of them come with cheddar cheese rather than anything Turkish, which is disappointing. The free dessert, semolina gulab jamuns, provided a welcomed break from all that savoury meat.

Hala is homey and well-priced, popular with Turks and non, locals and non-Haringeyites. Their hospitality is above and beyond even the usual friendliness of Green Lanes' eateries. For under a tenner each on food, we got what amounted to three courses thanks to the extensive freebies. Chinese restaurants give you prawn crackers, at Indian restaurants it's poppadoms and dips, but the Turkish restaurants on Green Lanes ply you with as many extras as can be fit on the table.

Sen Viet, London

2012-05-07T23:31:00.001+01:00

Dishes between £4 and £10

119 King's Cross Road,
London WC1X 9NH

Yes, I know, all the Vietnamese chatter is about Dalston and Deptford, but for easily accessible food that is moreish enough to make dining with others awkward ("you can have some of my beansprouts in return for just one more slice of your char-grilled beef"), Sen Viet near Kings Cross is the place to go. Its menu is fairly comprehensive, they offer a 10% student discount, and a good meal can be had for £6. What's more, it isn't Dalston-officious, where waiters swoop in with the bill the second you take a breather.

The mains are the key at Sen Viet. The summer rolls are fairly disappointing - mostly coriander, and poky-small. But the pho, the bun, the non-soupy noodle dishes, the banh mi, all of these are delicious. Anything that says it's char-grilled is particularly worth having. I'm not sure how they do it (possibly a hefty chunk of MSG), but just one taste will cause you to lick your chopsticks, your fingers, the bowl, maybe another person, in the hope of some residual sweet-and-smoky goodness. The pho stock is meaty, with the beef sliced not too thinly, but rare enough for the blood to flavour the broth. The bun contains other flavours than just heat, but will sort your sinuses out. The banh mi (Vietnamese sandwiches) come on French bread and are a good 6" long, with hefty portions of lightly pickled carrots, mandolined mooli, and your meat of choice. The bun thit nuong (rice vermicelli with pickled carrots and mooli, chilli sauce and meat) comes slathered in peanuts and crunchy bits - the gentle nudge of the chillies ties together all the components.

Sen Viet is in exactly the right place at the right time. It it popular with office workers, Vietnamese couples, students and German backpackers. Despite the MSG-provoked thirst that arrives after every meal, I keep returning because the food is worth it every time.

Bao down

2011-12-03T15:41:00.001+00:00

Meat bao: £1.50, other fillings are less.

Newport Court,
Chinatown,
London

Baozi look unappetisingly like a member of the frontbench caught with a rentboy - pale, puffy, doughy, sweaty, clammy to the touch. Of course, the resemblance is purely aesthetic, we all know that Tories taste of the babies they had for dinner last night (single mums, if they're on a diet), while baozi leak porky soup all over your hands on a cold winter's afternoon.

At the top of Newport Court in Chinatown, there are two places selling baozi. One is a shop with two impatient women behind the counter, the other is a stall (affiliated with Yang Guang Supermarket, according to their bags) with one impatient woman behind the counter. Impatience is their only similarity. The stall's pork baozi are hefty, meaty things. A bite through the inch-thick dough reveals a large meatball, flavoured with ginger, garlic and chives. Hours of steaming in the stall's glass cases produce a thick, slightly fatty juice that collects at the bottom of the bun, imbuing the sticky dough with meat. When (not if) this juice gets on your fingers and around your mouth, the flavours seem to linger even after washing. The vegetable bun is the same, only minus the meat, and with a hefty dose of ginger that will perk you up no end. The red bean paste bun sinks sweetly into your stomach, obviating the need for a meal any time soon.

The baozi shop's pork buns are a different beast from those at the stall's. Rather than a meatball, their smaller buns contain chunks of pork sitting in a thick sauce of what tastes like soy, sugar, ginger and garlic. The sweetness seems extraneous, the meat too salty and in too-small chunks. The shop also sells skewers of various kinds that they will cook and then dip in a variety of sauces. The meat ones, especially, look like they are worth trying. Weirdly, the shop doesn't take coppers. Not the policeman, but the coins, which is why I tend to go to the stall - they'll gladly take my shrapnel.

Two baozi shops on one street (albeit in Chinatown) is, I hope, the first step towards pork buns becoming ubiquitous in London.

Phad Thai

2011-11-09T13:31:00.002+00:00

41 Broadstone Road,
Reddish,
Stockport SK5 7AR

Main dishes between £4-6

Reddish - one of Stockport's many down-and-out suburbs - is an unexpected place to find a Thai restaurant, let alone a good one. Having been burned by my last visit to a Thai restaurant in an unlikely locale, I was not expecting much despite my parents' rapturous expressions when they talked about their previous visits. Not only does Phad Thai serve up classic dishes, it also branches out into those from north-eastern Thailand on its E-Sarn menu. Sadly, my hunger got the better of me and I ordered before I knew this.

The soup - a hot and coconutty Tom Kha - was packed full of buttery button mushrooms and chicken that had been cooked in the broth. The beef Massaman curry packed a meaty punch with its thickly tingling sauce, toothsome meat, uncompromisingly large chunks of vegetables, and balanced use of heat and more subtle spices. The inclusion of potatoes that had absorbed a lot of the sauce added an extra dimension to an already excellent dish. The Penang curry was hotter but did not obscure the underlying flavours that tasted like more than just a shake of the Five Spice bottle. My mum's pineapple curry not only contained chunks of fresh-tasting pineapple but the sauce also had a pineapple sweetness that avoided being cloying. We ordered egg fried rice to accompany all of these dishes, which contains a tasty mix of spices and finely chopped vegetables.

After such a successful meal, I have cast asunder my preconceptions about what a Thai restaurant in Reddish might be like. While Reddishers might look as though they are auditioning for Trainspotting 2, I hope that such an unprepossessing area can continue to support this a gem of a restaurant that would be able to charge double the price if located in snooty south Manchester.

London - Yum Cha

2011-10-29T13:04:00.001+01:00

As a student, it doesn't get better than the promise of half-price dim sum. Yum Cha in Camden offers just that until 7pm, meaning that semi-adventurous lunches and early dinners can be had for little money. Their dim sum menu is fairly extensive, covering the usual dumpling fare to more intriguing cold dishes such as Jellyfish and Sliced Smoked Pig's Knuckle. They have a few nods to other parts of East and South East Asia, but the main focus is on mainland China and Hongkong.

When I went with my friend Sarah, we were both hankering after as many dumplings as we could fit in our hungry mouths (and neither of us like jellyfish). The dim sum dinner menu is packed with different types of dumplings, and we tasted almost all of them, from the gelatinous Crystal Scallop and Prawn Dumpling to the hot and soupy Minced Pork Shanghai Siew Long Bao (normally known as xiao long bao or "xlb") to the steamed and meaty Pork and Prawn Shumai, as well as a good number of others. With four dumplings per serving with each dish priced around the £3.80 mark, the 50% discount really makes a difference, giving penniless students the ability to eat their way around China's favourite snack foods.

Properly meaty, full of ginger and garlic flavours, their skins just the right thickness and texture to firmly hold their ingredients, the dumplings were a joy to keep popping into my mouth. My favourite were the Siew Long Bao as there's something deliciously raffish about sucking the hot and juicy soup out of the skins. The Panfried Shanghai Pork Dumpling were also excellent, the bottoms slightly thicker and a little charred from being fried, giving them a sticky texture that contrasted nicely with the filling.

There were two let-downs. The Honey Roast Pork Buns could have been so much better had their fillings not been so cloyingly sweet and if the puffy white shells had been freshly prepared - biting into these buns should be akin to biting into a pillow made of savoury marshmallow not like fluffy sawdust. Similarly, the ingredients of the Chinese Prawn and Chive Dumpling tasted stale.

For cheap Chinese that tastes like Chinese food in an area trying so hard to be pretentious that having a sleeve tattoo is mandatory, Yum Cha is the place to visit. To maximise your potential for eating your way around China, it is best to go when their very generous deal is on.

London - Yasar Halim

2011-10-28T11:50:00.001+01:00

Green Lanes is becoming my go-to destination when I don't have anything in the fridge for lunch. Partly because of its proximity to my front door and partly because of its plethora of good restaurants, cafes and grocers mean that I always have a choice.

Yasar Halim - a double-fronted, Turkish Cypriot grocers and bakery - is my current stop-off when I'm jonesing for something either stickily sweet or salty-savoury. The bakery offers eight tulumba (crispy, oval gulab jamuns) for a quid, a price that I can't imagine being bettered. The warm and gooey baklava leak sugar all over your fingers and face. Similarly good value are the boreks (rectangles of puff pastry filled with feta, spinach or lamb), either the small for 55p or the large for £1.20. The boreks' fillings, and I have tried all of them, are consistently good - the feta is partially melted and contains strands of herbs, the spinach seems almost healthy with hints of citrus, and the lamb is nicely spiced. My favourite baked good, however, is a bun that contains layers of cooked black olives and slices of spring onions. The bread is dense and yeasty, the olives salty, and the onions caramalised, making this one very reasonably priced bun a perfect meal.

Next door in the grocery side of the shop is every conceivable type of fruit and vegetable, along with a wide range of Turkish and Greek products, a thousand or so types of yoghurt, and a very cheap meat selection. I regularly pop in to grab whatever's seasonal in Cyprus - figs (five for £1!) and giant pomegranates last month, juicy oranges at the moment.

Even without the rest of Green Lanes, including the Antepliler mini-empire, the local Turkish community would be well-served with just Yasar Halim. I know that I need to break my habit and go elsewhere, but it's just so convenient and always delicious.

London - Petek

2011-10-27T12:25:00.001+01:00

Mains: £10-16

94-96 Stroud Green Road,
Finsbury Park
London N4 3EN

The Finsbury Park/Green Lanes area is stuffed to the gills with Turkish and Kurdish restaurants, cafes and groceries. I am making it my personal mission to experience all of them. I have been to Petek's, a two-room, be-lanterned, mid-scale Turkish joint on Stroud Green Rd twice now, and both times the food has been top-class.

Petek's owners clearly love meat in all its forms, as long as it's grilled. You can choose one of their fish or vegetarian options if you want, and the vegetarian moussaka is delicious, but the succulence and flavour of their lamb and chicken dishes should be ordered by everyone apart from the most vegetarian of vegetarians. Most dishes are served with a mound of spiced and fluffy rice, green salad, and a thick and sour yoghurt that is perfect for slathering onto the juicy meat. Due to a mix-up with their wine delivery, their house red is currently much better than you would expect for the price, which I can attest to after drinking a lot of it.

Before you order, citrus-y olives, a fresh salsa of pureed tomatoes and chillies, and generous slabs of pillowy bread are brought to the table gratis. The trick is to avoid filling yourself with the moreish bread, as hard as that is. Scoffing down various combinations of bread, olives and salsa really slows down the ordering process - just as you settle on what you want to eat, you feel the urge to tear off yet another hunk and you forget everything but the salsa's sparky tang.

Although more expensive than the school-table kebabis lining Green Lanes or Blackstock Road, Petek's portions are plentiful and they compose high-standard ingredients into dishes that will satisfy both your tastebuds and your stomach.

Moving down to London town

2011-10-10T11:07:00.000+01:00

...well, actually, I've already moved down. I'm here doing an MA for a year, so am on a serious budget (under £50 a week). Luckily, I'm game for trying to eat my way around the world without leaving the capital's confines or busting my budget. I'll happily walk everywhere I can in order to put less money on my Oyster and thus have enough for another bowl of pho, or a gozleme (Turkish pancake), or a Trinidadian roti wrap, or a pork baozi (puffy dumpling), or an artisanal ice cream, or some baklava from a specialist baklava bakery, or....well, the list is endless. So while I might be irregular in my updates, know that I'm still out there finding you (and me) the cheapest, tastiest food I possibly can.

London - The Lido Cafe

2011-09-12T22:40:00.001+01:00

Lunch dishes: £4-9

Brockwell Lido
Dulwich Rd
Herne Hill
London SE24 0PA

There is little better than open-air swimming on one of the few sunny days of the summer (well, September, but we have to take what we get). In fact, I love Brockwell Lido in south-east London so much that I went twice in a weekend, and both times ate at the Lido Cafe, which serves up decent-sized portions of interesting food to hungry swimmers and locals.

Sitting on the canopied terrace, the service is frustratingly slow, but it is a very pleasant way to pass an afternoon. Or a morning. Or an evening. The cafe serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, although the kitchen tends to get overwhelmed towards the end of each service and shut down early.

The best value for money is probably in the salads - decent-sized plates piled almost-high with various combinations of veg and starch that you can mix and match should you so want. The burgers - hefty, meaty blocks, are served with chips that practically crackle at you, so crispy are they. The ratatouille tart has all the right vegetables in all the right places, although my friends and I couldn't place the filling - egg, cream, cheese, or some combination thereof? Its drink selection is comprehensive and fun, they have got you sorted from milkshakes to small-production beers.

Overall, the Lido Cafe should be a destination if you are near Brockwell Park and are too hungry to take the bus to Brixton.

Aumbry

2011-08-03T17:50:00.001+01:00

Lunch: 2 courses for £17.50, 3 courses for £21.50

This blog usually concerns itself with the cheapest of cheap (and usually ethnic) food. Aumbry, a pocket-sized restaurant in Prestwich, is neither cheap nor ethnic, but I had such an incredible lunch there that I want to review it just so I can relive the experience.

The restaurant is a little like someone's dining room - dresser in the corner, plain wooden chairs, unfussy table settings. You can watch what's going on in the tiny and busy kitchen. The staff take turns in serving you and will come over for a chat about the food if they aren't busy.

Like the restaurant, the menu is small. Two choices for the starter, two for the mains, one for dessert. They are, however, very accommodating - my coeliac mum was offered the choice to switch out a dish for one of the dinner options, and my ever-hungry brother was given extra potatoes at no extra cost. And the bread - homemade, springy, and either a sourdough-like brown bread or a rye-ish white, with Jersey salted butter or browned butter to spread. My mum, the coeliac, was offered homemade gluten-free bread that tasted of actual bread and wasn't toasted (if you're a coeliac, you'll know how unusual both of these things are).

Before the starters, amuse bouches are served. Both are topped with a thin slice of vinegary pickled cucumber, with goats cheese for the vegetarians/coeliacs and chunky liver pate for everyone else. Whether veggie or no, both are served with a bubble of honey and jasmine that bursts as you eat it, flooding your mouth with a fragrant-tasting palate cleanser.

Once your palate is cleansed, the starters appear - mushroom soup with chives and extra virgin rapeseed oil, or fancy scotch eggs (two soft-boiled quail eggs wrapped in Bury black pudding and deep fried served with tomato ketchup, mushroom relish, on red pepper and mushroom). The soup tastes of mushrooms, and I'm not sure there are any other ingredients aside from stock. The scotch eggs are phenomenal, the outside crisp yet yielding, the yolk dribbling out and soaking into the black pudding, the ketchup tangy, the relish earthy. It was a rhapsody in northern childhood.

The mains - either mackerel served with pickled potatoes or duck served with potatoes and baby leeks - are done to perfection. The mackerel was nice and oily, its texture contrasting with that of the pickled potatoes (a hint of bite and vinegar), although there is no sauce. The duck, pinky-red and with the fat left on, tastes like steak and has a tomatoey confit sauce pooled around it. The portions are sizeable and the vegetables that accompany each dish are well-thought through and aesthetically arranged.

And finally, if you haven't burst like an amuse bouche, on to dessert. The sole sweet option (we didn't try the cheese plate) is a grapefruit posset with celery granita. The posset - the juice of grapefruit combined with cream and sugar - was just tart enough and had the texture of the creme part of creme brulee. The granita brought out the sweetness in the celery and was an exciting green colour, contrasting with the honeyish posset. Both flavours were matched with a grapefruit sherbet that puckered your cheeks as it went down.

For £17.50 for two courses (£21.50 for three) before tip and drinks (although tap water is available), Aumbry offers high-end dining for a reasonable price. With food that uses local ingredients in interesting ways, and appears to be influenced but not dictated by the molecular gastronomy trend, the Michelin people are surely already on their way up Bury New Road.

Lana Thai

2011-08-01T12:03:00.002+01:00

219 Burnage Lane,
Burnage,
Manchester M19 1FN

Mains from £7-9

A Thai restaurant in Burnage is not the most promising of propositions. I was hoping it might subvert expectations, perhaps cater to Burnage's previously unknown Thai population, cook up authentic and exciting food in a grim south Manchester suburb. My hopes were wildly off the mark (of course), but Lana Thai isn't too bad, although it does tend towards the unimaginative and is pettily priced, charging £2 per meagre serving of plain white rice and (and this is the most egregious error) serving up instant noodles.

What?! I hear you scoff. Instant noodles!? In a restaurant!? A restaurant that charges you £2 for the privilege of eating some re-hydrated ramen!? A Thai restaurant!? Thai food being famous for its use of rice noodles!?

The answer to all of those exclamatory questions is unfortunately an emphatic YES. After this revelation, the meal could have been the best example of Thai food this side of Chiang Mai and I would still be seething over Lana Thai's temerity.

The rest of the meal, while not the best example of Thai food this side of Chiang Mai, was better than the use of insta-noodles would suggest. All of the dishes were punched-up with stalks of lemongrass, plenty of spices, and layers of flavours. I ordered a beef red curry with coconut milk and peanut sauce, and I could taste each of these components. However, my dish lacked any ingredients outside of its purview, with no extra vegetables slipped in. My mum's green curry was lemongrassy and contained a lot of Five-Spice, while my dad's dish trod a different path having a clearer and more liquid-y sauce that, although sweetly spicy, was not as interesting as the curry dishes. The amount of sauce that came with each dish necessitated at least one order of rice per person, automatically bumping any pretence at reasonable pricing (almost all dishes are between £6.75 and £8) onto the pricier side.

Other irritants included charging £1.80 per small bottle of water with no option of tap water (I know this makes me seem stingy, but when you're eating spicy food it's nice to have a steady supply of free water on hand), the menus being irregularly priced (some menus had lower prices than others) the waitress being unable to speak English (making it tricky to ask about dishes), and slow service. On the tap water issue, it seems to me that East Asian and South-East Asian restaurants almost always charge for water while South Asian restaurants do not. I don't know why this is, but considering the amounts of MSG put in Chinese food (and in Lana Thai's dishes if my unquenchable thirst later that evening was anything to go by), a large portion of the bill can end up being spent on bottled water.

Eating at Lana Thai feels like booking an Easyjet flight for a tenner, only to be forced to add another couple of quid with every subsequent click, resulting in a flight for forty quid by the end.

Pokusevski's

2011-07-31T15:41:00.000+01:00

13 Shaw Rd,
Heaton Moor,
Stockport SK4 4AG

Chorizo sandwich: £6.55 (all prices are for eating-in)
Soup and buttered bread: £4.25
Slice of chicken pie: £6.95

I try so hard to love Heaton Moor's lunch scene. On the one hand, it's burgeoning, it's occasionally imaginative, and it's found in a number of terribly nice delis. On the other, it's expensive.

Pokusevski's epitomises this dilemma. After a recent refit, its Scandinavian-esque interior and white-walled back yard provide a soothingly cool place to eat your over-priced sandwiches. The menu board above the deli counter is misleading - its (incredibly reasonable) prices are for take-away only, it is only once you're seated that the lunch menu is brought to you, and you realise that this is yet another "seven quid for a panini and bits of green" place. Once you read beyond the multiple takes on the [insert name of fancy organic European meat product] + [insert name of slightly unusual cheese or vegetable] hot/cold/panini sandwiches, the menu is creative and more unusual than that of Kro or the Orangery. Slices of homemade pies and quiches, both containing plenty of honest ingredients but priced around the £6-7 mark, along with good breads and interesting soup combinations, mean that it would take a while to get bored of what they have to offer.

I had the butternut squash soup with buttered bread, and the soup was delicious. Sweet, slightly nutty, and creamy, each mouthful was a delicious, sunset-coloured slurp. The bread tasted like rye but appeared to be wholewheat, and was cut into thick slices. My brother's grilled chorizo sandwich came on ciabatta but with only a smear of chilli mayonnaise, although with an unadvertised helping of tangy and crisp coleslaw. You can't really go wrong with chorizo, but the sandwich could have done with an added ingredient to justify its £6.55 price tag. My dad's slice of chicken pie contained large chunks of chicken and plenty of softened leeks, as well as coleslaw on the side. The pie was bland as neither the chicken nor the leeks had much flavour, and could do with a couple of other ingredients to give it some oomph.

Although Heaton Moor might be middle-class paradise, it would be nice to be able to eat lunch for under £8, after the tip and a drink have been taken into account. As the credit crunch begins to hit even the solicitors, consultants and yummy mummies, Heaton Moor's cafes and bars are going to have to readjust their prices in order to survive. Maybe they could start now.

Food Trend Wishlist

2011-07-06T15:06:00.000+01:00

Food trends that I’d like to see in Manchester.

1) Pork buns

2) Dumpling shops

3) Chipotle peppers

4) Food trucks

Manchester tends to cotton on pretty quickly to national and global food trends: we have cupcakes and handmade noodles, and Vietnamese and South Indian are starting to figure on people’s Friday-night-dinner maps. But some things are still missing.

New York’s continuing and growing obsession with pork buns (pillowy white buns filled with succulent roasted char siu pork) does not yet seem to have crossed the Atlantic. Seeing as they are portable, delicious and cheap, they should be well on their way to becoming a national obsession here. Manchester’s Chinatown is the second largest in the

, and has been undergoing a bit of a culinary renaissance recently, moving away from the kungpao/black bean/General Tso’s chicken menus that previously predominated. Now, with Hunanese, Szechuan and Korean cuisines becoming commonplace, the next step will hopefully be East Asian snack foods, including pork buns. Both Chinese bakeries – Ho’s and Wong Wong - sell pork buns, but these are poor imitations of those available in New York (and

China

), with stodgier buns, fattier pork and unappetising fillings (only in Wong Wong, where pork buns come with either pineapple or scorching-hot honey). Either the current providers need to reinvigorate their products, or new pork bun stockists need to come on the scene.

Similar to my obsession with pork buns is my one with dumplings. Thin-skinned, soupy, pork or seafood, I love them almost equally. It should be possible to get a take-away serving of six or so freshly made dumplings for a reasonable price. Unfortunately, this is not currently the case. Perhaps the East Asian snack food bar dreamed of above could provide these along with tasty pork buns.

Chipotle peppers are smoky and spicy, imbuing whatever they’re cooked with a unique Mexican aroma and flavour. They tend to come either dried or in sauce in a can, and can be used with everything from eggs, to sauces, to vegetable dishes to meats. Their smokiness adds an extra dimension to whatever they’re used in, and becomes slightly addictive after a while. Chipotle hummous and mayonnaise may sound like unorthodox combinations, but hit all the right tangy-spicy-smoky notes. As a nation that prizes spicy things and sandwiches, we really can’t afford to miss out on the chipotle fever that has swept the

United States

over the past couple of years.

Last, but possibly most important, is the issue of food trucks. Currently taking London by storm, they’re an excellent idea. Manchester has a relatively compact city centre with a lunch scene that manages to be both pricey and moribund. Vans selling fresh-cooked falafel, curries, wraps, noodles and sandwiches would provide good quality and cheap lunch and snack foods to a working and shopping population that tends to have little time to spend on lunch but requires enough top-notch fuel to get them through hectic afternoons and evenings. Being able to spend under a fiver on lunch would be beneficial to the legions of low-paid office workers inhabiting Manchester’s glass and concrete blocks, and the take-away aspect would satisfy the most time-conscious of bosses and workers alike. For people looking to test their culinary skills in the open market before starting a restaurant, café or catering company, food trucks provide venues that can be based in the city centre but don’t have the sky-high rents attached. Everybody wins, as long as the health-and-safety brigade ensure the trucks remain proper standards of hygiene.

Merhaba

2011-06-29T10:22:00.000+01:00

Claremont Rd, at Claremont Primary School
Moss Side,
Manchester

Keye Watt: £4

Firstly, my thanks to TomG, who commented on my Dubay Caffe post with a recommendation for an Ethiopian place near Claremont Primary School. I was in Rushholme buying cheap spices, so I schlepped up Claremont Road to find it.

The place that I presume he was talking about is a small Ethiopian and Somali restaurant. The owner is lovely and kept coming over to chat and give me extra injera (a sour pancake-like bread). On the walls are various posters and leaflets pertaining to Manchester's Somali and Ethiopian communities - a poster of Manchester City's Somalia-born Abdisalam Ibrahim figures prominently.

The food itself is cheap and plentiful. I chose the keye watt - a dish of diced beef and onions in a spicy sauce with shredded lettuce and a dish of sauteed carrots and cabbage as accoutrements. All dishes are served on a big disc of injera, which both soaks up the sauces and is used to transfer the food from the plate to your mouth. No cutlery here (well, there might be, but I couldn't see any).

All of the elements of the meal were spot-on. The keye watt's beef and onion pieces were tender and tasted like they had stewed in the sauce for just the right amount of time. The spicing lent heat but did not overwhelm, and the double-whammy of sauce (first on the beef, then soaked into the injera) suited me fine due to how delicious it was. The vegetables were sauteed in a light, yellow and mildly sweet sauce and retained their crunch and flavours. The dressing on the lettuce was citrus-y and provided a nice contrast to the bolder flavours of the keye watt. The injera appeared fresh - hot with crispy edges, but soft and spongy throughout.

I have no idea what Ethiopian cuisine was like prior to Italian colonisation, but I definitely detected Italian influences in my food. Apart from there being small jars of olive oil on every table, the lettuce came with a dressing of olive oil and herbs, and the keye watt sauce tasted of a tomato base, not unlike a much spicier and thinner pasta sauce.

For £4, I was able to eat enough to last me for two meals (I didn't need dinner). The quality of the food and the attentive attitude of the owner means that this place deserves more custom than it currently gets.

Dosa Xpress

2011-06-24T10:23:00.001+01:00

19 Copson St.
Withington
Manchester M20 3HE

Dosa Meal Deal (masala dosa, idli, medhu vada): £4.99
Salt lassi: £1.49
10% student discount available.

Dosa Xpress is, by my count, Manchester's fourth specifically South Indian restaurant (the other three being Sindhoor in Burnage, Lily's Vegetarian in Ashton-under-Lyne and Lotus in Northenden). I'm crossing my fingers that is the the beginning of a food trend.

Dosa Xpress has a sister restaurant in Derby, which, if its Withington location is anything to go by, is well worth the visit. My friend Al and I both went for the very reasonably priced Dosa Meal Deal, which included a masala dosa (thin pancake containing spicy mashed potatoes), idli (a steamed thick rice cake), medhu vada (a ring of fried lentil dough and spices with a doughnut-like consistency) and five chutneys. Both of us have student cards, and so all of that cost a very reasonable £4.50, and gave us the energy to power our four-mile walk into Manchester.

The chutneys were a real highlight. Dosas usually come with three - sweetish coconut, green (probably coriander) and red (probably tomato-based), with varying degrees of spiciness. A curry-like sambar (thin lentil stew) is also included . Dosa Xpress' stand-out chutney was moreish red and vinegary with a good kick of heat. Using the idli, the medhu vada and the huge expanse of dosa pancake, Al and I made short work of the chutneys and sambar, leaving nary a hint that they had ever existed.

The dosa pancake was good - thin, light and crispy on the outside but soft on the inside where it counts (you need the spongy side to soak up the sambar). The filling needed a hint more flavour, but the potatoes were a good consistency (unlike at Chennai Dosa in London) and tasted of the spices that had been used.

Throughout, we'd been supping on salt lassis (nice and tart), and were tempted by the wide range of items available on the menu. The Dosa Xpress menu is heavy on the dosas (no surprise there), and doesn't really veer off into North Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi food, which is a good thing. Before our food arrived, we could hear it being cooked (very noisily) in the kitchen, attesting to its freshness. Well-situated for lunch and dinner crowds, and priced to appeal even during the recession, it's a good restaurant offering solid, freshly made and flavoursome food in an area that is a bit of a culinary deadzone (until you hit Burton Rd).

Yakisoba

2011-06-13T19:08:00.000+01:00

360 Barlow Moor Road,
Chorlton,
Manchester M21 8AZ

Bento Box Meals: £8.95-9.95

Yakisoba is emblematic of Chorlton. A fusion of good ideas, some of which work and some of which don't, priced slightly higher than it should be.

At Yakisoba, bento boxes (fancy compartmentalised lunch boxes) rule. The idea is that you get a bento box of salad, some sweetly salty cashews, miso soup (if you aren't having a soup-based main dish) or a vegetable croquette (if you are), slices of melon and orange, and deluxe prawn crackers. Along with the bento, you order a main dish - the menu is extensive and covers noodle soups, dry noodle dishes, stir-fries, rice dishes, vegetarian; you name it, they've probably got it. The bento not only provides you with something to nibble while you wait (not long at all) for your food, but also provides respite in the midst of the over-large main dish portions. The vegetable croquette is crunchy and faintly oriental, the nuts are moreish, the prawn crackers really prawn-y.

I ordered the Cha Sui and Roasted Duck Noodle Soup and my friend Claire ordered the Vermicelli Singapore Style. A massive bowl (I could have used it as a helmet) overfilled with thin ramen noodles, vegetables, and two long stacks of duck pieces covered in an almost-spicy sauce and sweet and smoky char sui pork slices. The broth tasted of stock and there was a slight film of oily grease on it, possibly from the meat. The meats were good, although after eating my way through the stacks I had little room left for the noodles, broth and greens. The veggies, which included crisp slices of taro, crunchy green beans and pak choi were clearly fresh and tasted as though they had been cooked in the soup broth; definitely a good thing. By the time I had gotten down to the noodles, they were soft and disintegrated readily, which was unfortunate considering the super-sized stack of them sitting in the soup.

The Vermicelli Singapore Style was also enormous, and Claire took home half of it. The bowl of noodles was stir-fried, yellow, and chock-full of coriander, vegetables and prawns with well-aimed spicing that provided a good tingle but allowed room for the other flavours.

Yakisoba should give the option of cutting the portions and prices in half and offer its customers a "small" option. I hate wasting food, and yet, barely halfway through my meal, I couldn't eat any more noodle soup. In the recession with prices rising across the board, people don't want to pay for food they can't eat, and few tables were occupied on a Saturday lunchtime.

The Orangery

2011-06-09T12:24:00.000+01:00

Sandwiches: £6-9

It's been a bit London-centric, recently, probably because I've been spending a lot of time down south. Well, I'm back now, and forging onwards and outwards (in terms of my waistline) with the food available in Manchester.

First stop, The Orangery in Heaton Moor.

As previously mentioned, Heaton Moor's lunch scene is booming. The Orangery is one of the stalwarts, having been feeding Heaton Moorians for almost a decade. With the sun (in theory) streaming in through the stained glass roof, it is a pleasant place to sip coffee or cocktails.

The sandwiches, while bordering on the expensive (especially when considering the prices a few shops along at Back's), are large and served on fresh ciabatta rolls or slices of bread. My sandwich, the harissa chicken with coriander mayo, had a nice kick of chilli in the harissa although the coriander was barely detectable. My cousin's spinach and goats cheese sandwich came with two sizable roulettes of goats cheese, while my aunt's club sandwich was three towering layers that she found difficult to tackle even with a knife and fork. All of the ingredients taste fresh and, while the selection is not unusual, the combinations are well-thought-out. Similarly large portions of apple pie and a very chocolatey chocolate cake followed, both of which are served with an espresso cup filled with cream.

The Orangery sits in the middle of the area's price scale, not as expensive as Damson or Town but more expensive than Back's or Kro.