Displaying items by tag: London

Critically acclaimed Moro has little sisters and now we have one of them - Morito - living at the end of our road. With Brawn at the other end of the road I have hit the foodie jackpot for restaurants moving to this area of London, although at suffolkfoodie we rarely have deep enough pockets to go there more than once. Give me the pie and mash shops for dedication to service (about a hundred years of it) and value (still £3.50 for a home made lunch) But award-winning Moorish cuisine, rooted in Spanish and North African influences is hard to ignore, and the owners of Moro - Sam and Sam Clark - were locals once, they lived in the area too. So we booked our table, starting with three glasses of sherry (not each - there were three of us) advised by a waitress from Jerez, and quickly into a starter of dakos - a salad of tomatoes and soaked rye bread with fresh cheese, olives and anchovies. We then went through the tapas: octopus with fava puree, a succulent turbot steak with sherry vinegar and paprika, salt cod with purple potatoes, rabbit deep fried to a dry crunch with rosemary and moscatel vinegar, labneh with chillies and broad beans, and beetroot sweet herb borani with walnuts. It's all about the fresh quality ingredients and the interesting flavours here. The dessert we shared was filo pastry with gum mastic labneh and rhubarb. All of this and a glass of wine each amounted to £40 a head including service. I think we can afford to go back.

• beetroot, sweet herb borani and walnuts £6
• labneh, chillies and broad beans £7
• chicarrones - crispy pork belly £7.5
• dessert - filo, gum mastic labneh and rhubarb £7
• starter - dakos, fresh cheese, olives and anchovies £6.5
• salt cod, purple potato, quail egg and alioli £12
• the salt and spices on the table when we arrived
• turbot, sherry vinegar and paprika
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We were introduced to this gorgeous Venezualan Diplomatico rum at Victualler in Wapping. Well worth a visit if you like organic, biodynamic, raw and natural wines. A lovely enthusiastic owner who is happy to share his knowledge too!

The perfect pre-drink drink. Drink on a hot summers day, after cutting the grass.  Mix the French bitters with pilsner or a wheat beer for a perfect apertif. Or nip to Duck Soup in Soho and enjoy with a plate of green beans, anchovy, soft boiled egg and sour dough crumbs.

• Picon biere
• green beans, salted anchovy, soft boiled egg, sour dough crumbs
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On Brick Lane, of course it's complete madness, but only because you didn't think of it first - and they have jobs!

The Mr Cutlets competition was Meatopia's chance for anyone to cook alongside some of the finest chefs from the UK and around the world to showcase a dish this year. The competition ran from 2nd July 2015 to 2nd August 2015 when the team selected a shortlist of six finalists to be invited to London to cook their dish. Two winners were selected from the finalists to cook at Meatopia 2015. Entry to the competition was open to everyone, from members of the public to aspiring young chefs and contestants who needed to supply details of their dish in advance. Inspector X entered and cooked a dish she created for the occassion - we often cook over a camp fire - Red Poll Shin and Tail, and made dumplings on the day. She wasn't selected - but she was the only girl!

Founded in the USA and brought to the UK by Richard Turner of London butchers Turner and George, Meatopia is a festival of high quality, ethically sourced meat cooked over wood and charcoal in a weekend-long event of meat, drink, fire and music that we covered for SuffolkFoodie last year when we first went to Tobacco Dock for a day out and accidentally found ourselves surrounded by huge hunks of men, throwing huge hunks of meat on huge and hot blazing fires. But this year it was very different! A woman entered the competition to win a chance to cook at the event. And she made a stew. And it was our very own lovely, brave and intrepid Inspector X!! See Mr (or Mrs) Cutlets for the result!

We met Henry at the Urban food Fest where his business partner Rob made delicious ice cream and froyo rolls right in front of us. This fast and furious ice cream involves a process which originated in Thailand; cream or yoghurt with various favourings and additional ingredients (meringue...fruit...) is put on a -30 degree plate and everything is mixed together very fast. After approximately two minutes the initial milk or yogurt freezes and is ready to be scraped off the cold plate into rolls. Quick Bite food magazine have already interviewed Henry and Rob and this is what they said. 'When we were back-packing around Thailand at the tender age of 20, we discovered a new way of making ice cream. ‘Stir fried Ice cream’ is the official terminology for it, and because we hadn’t ever seen it in the UK before, we decided to create Pan-n-Ice and bring it back.' Thanks guys!

 Great name for a fruit and veg delivery business, don't you think?

This year's SuffolkFoodie annual leave was taken on a 48 hour trip to see the best (and probably the most hyped) of the latest London eat-and-drinkeries. Starting at Taberno do Mercardo (via a really nice tea merchants on the way, and only minutes from Liverpool Street station) we had small pretty plates that featured tinned cold monkfish, runner bean 'fritters' on clam broth, cuttlefish with pigs trotters, drippingly soft cheese with toasted bread, prawn rissoles and the runniest custard tart. The waitress was as excited about the food as we were so even with just one glass each of house sparkling rose - shining like a citrine jewel - it was easy to spend half of our budget on the first meal.

A day of talks and food related events for a tenner with food stalls inside and Kerb outside? I had to go. I chose How to make a career out of food to see what I might have missed. Cake Boy and Plenish had stalls in the foyer and the hour long session with the panel of chefs and foodies was useful and encouraging. John Vincent - founder of Leon - gave the best advice to someone who wanted to know how to make the transition from being employed by someone else to running their own food business.

'Get out your phone', he said, so she did.

'Now call your boss and hand in your notice...'