Fifteen Pickles

Street Feast London is one of the latest street food initiatives – a culinary night market which is taking place every Friday night until 20 July at the Sclater Street Car Park just off Brick Lane. Featuring a number of street food superstars including the likes of Big Apple Hot Dogs, The Rib Man and Homeslice, it was definitely something that I wanted to check out since they kicked off a few weeks ago. So last Friday a group of my friends and I headed on down.

In typical London fashion it rained. The main dining tent was packed out so we improvised and huddled together under our own makeshift tent of umbrellas to shelter from the drizzle, nice and cosy, only leaving our nest to run out and gather tasty morsels from the deliciously scented stalls surrounding us. (more…)

The White House

Just a taking a little break from my usual meatridden spiels to reflect on a moment of finer dining a couple of months ago. It was our last night at home in Wellington and we were looking for a convenient excuse to convince my parents to allow us to take them out for a bit of a blow out at a nice restaurant. As it turned out it was their wedding anniversary so off we went to The White House.

The White House is one of Wellington’s swishier restaurants, situated in the prime location of Oriental Bay, looking out onto beautiful views of Wellington Harbour.

As we very rarely go out for such meals, we decided to go the whole hog and ordered the Menu Degustation all round. The meal was wonderful. Each dish a delight. Beautiful to look at and beautiful to eat. Little nods to molecular gastronomy here and there. Explosions of exciting and complimentary flavours and textures left, right and centre. Ten courses of heaven. (more…)

When one has a hankering for lobster in London where does one go? Ah that age old question. For the longest time the only establishments that served these delicious crustaceans as far as I was aware would be the odd Chinese restaurant in the form of lobster noodles, Belgo’s during their lobster festival or somewhere so ostentatious and out of my budget it wasn’t worth considering.

Now when one thinks of lobster in London, there’s just one place comes to mind… Burger & Lobster.

Grilled lobster

Brought to you from the folks behind Goodman, there is no menu, only one simple question “burger or lobster?” With both dishes priced at £20, it’s not difficult to guess who wins. In fact a quick glance at the plethora of bright red shells adorning the tables around the restaurant is all it takes to clearly see who the star of the show is. (more…)

Following on from the success of the MEATwagon and MEATliquor, the same team have opened up a new burger joint in town. Located in Jubilee Market, Covent Garden the place has been given the very appropriate name MEATmarket. I popped down on their opening day on Thursday to check it out.

MEATmarket

If MEATliquor is a dark burger dungeon, then MEATmarket is it’s polar opposite – it’s brighter twin brother, bathed in fluorescent lighting and decorative signage and situated in the heavens that is the balcony overlooking the tat and crafts of Jubilee Market. Seemingly modelled on fast food chains, MEATmarket comes across much more accessible and family friendly version of it’s evil twin.  (more…)

Did I ever mention I am really into ribs? The greasy, sticky, sweet, finger licking BBQ kind I mean. Well I am, big time. So great is my weakness that it’s rare that I can scan past the words “ribs” on a menu without immediately putting the menu down and looking no further.

Ribs being prepared by Red Dog Saloon

I once seriously considered dining at every rib serving restaurant in London in order to find the ultimate ones. Of course these were the days before my cravings for tasty meats could be sated by the likes of The Rib Man, Pitt Cue Co, Hawksmoor and other such fine meat-drenched establishments – when they appeared on the scene I felt the need to search no longer.

But the moment I first heard of Ribstock (a Rib competition devised by The Rib Man and organised by Tweat Up) I knew it was for me. (more…)