Smashed #34

The UKs restaurant scene digested

Hell, earlier this week.

I’ve missed loads of reviews while I was busy doing other things, I hope you can forgive me. They included Goat on the Roof, Newbury, Hooyos Somali Cuisine, Luton, Julies, London, The Orangery (2 stars), ABC Kitchens (3 stars) OshPaz, London
Tollington’s, London, Kinkally, London (3 stars), The Hero, London (4 stars) The Park, London, Koyn Thai, London and another for Julies, London. A fair few have already been covered in other editions of Smashed so I’m not feeling too guilty.

As well as publishing last week’s double edition about The Bear (I hope you loved it), I’ve also been preparing three other special features which will see the light of day over the coming weeks. I think they are really good and I’ve enjoyed researching them. Any feedback you’d like to give on the content of Smashed would be very welcome. Do you enjoy the variety of features or would you rather just have the review round up? Do let me know.

Whatever.

We’ve got a rum old bunch of reviews this week, so without further ado, let’s get into it.

The Reviews

Charlotte Ivers, The Sunday Times
Boisdale, London (4 stars)

A while ago (maybe it was last week, maybe it was five years ago) restaurant critics went through a phase of staring sentences with the word ‘hell’. It’s one of those hack tricks that’s designed to bring a bit of brio and energy to the writing. You know the sort of thing - referring to a restaurant as a ‘joint’ and or using ‘think’ in a sentence e.g. ‘It was a classic seafood restaurant; think scallops, salmon and turbot’. I would never start a sentence with ‘hell’. The idea of it makes me squirm, it’s so affected, so obvious. ‘Hell, we ordered the whole menu’. Fuck. Off.

Charlotte Ivers has resurrected the practice for her review of Boisdale, a 35 year old restaurant that no one cares about. ‘Hell, people barely eat lunch’ she opines. But it’s one of the least objectionable things about the review.

The hook is that ‘Nigel Farage had his 60th birthday party at the Canary Wharf offshoot earlier this year’. That’s the only mention he gets, there’s no further context. It’s as if he’s just a normal everyday ‘celebrity’ and not the leader of an organisation that’s a front for former BNP members.

Her dining companion is journalist Mike ‘you can grow concrete’ Graham, ‘a titan of old Fleet Street’ according to Ivers. He presents Mike Graham’s Morning Glory on TalkTV’s YouTube channel. Subjects on the day I’m writing this included the ‘migrant invasion’, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, ‘Nottingham killer’, stabbings, the riots, workers in the UK from outside the EU, sober Gen Z and, er, Channel crossings.

Writing anything more about Ivers’ review would further normalise the idea of giving exposure to far right organisations so that’s your lot. After this, I wonder why I would include Ivers in future editions. I’ll sleep on it.

I paid my own money to read that shit. Fuck my life.

Best line: ‘the peat-smoked salmon, which tastes like a waft of cigarette smoke across a pub garden on a sunny day’
Worst line: ‘Good honest food for good honest Brits’
Did the review make me want to book a table: It made me want to scream.

Grace Dent, The Guardian
Galleria, Leeds

I’m a bit confused by this review of a restaurant in an event space in Leeds. There’s no ‘stale, mass-produced scones and dry ciabatta’ of the kind that Dent usually encounters in arts centre cafe-bars. Instead there’s ‘an incredible zesty key lime pie and a big chunk of pecan pie topped with whole nuts, both of which featured a thick, buttery pastry base’. Unless you are the leader of the ReformUK, the last thing you want is to be supported by a thick base. A great pie or tart maintains a certain ratio between filling and pastry and the aim should always be for as thin a crust as practicable.

Dent mostly consumed flour on her trip to Galleria as the main event were some ‘truly intoxicating’ flatbreads. She had one with whole barbecued purple carrots, hummus and bombay mix. That’s how they roll in Leeds. She claimed it couldn’t be improved by the addition of a pork chop. Further confusion ensued. Literally everything can be improved with a pork chop, incuding but not limited to a game of badminton, space exploration, plumbing, arguing in public, cliff diving, brain surgery, condensed matter physics, spitting bars, an encounter with armed police, the films of Béla Tarr and a bowl of crunchy nut cornflakes with fridge-cold milk.

Best line: ‘Go for the “equilibrium retreat”, the rave bingo, the all-day desi festival and the “bring your own brood” mass yoga sessions, and stay for a whole wood-fired chicken with confit garlic’
Worst line: ‘Leeds may still be as eccentric as ever, but it now has an arts venue cafe that’s way more appetising than 90% of the places in our so-called capital city’. ‘So-called’. It is. Chippy bloody Northerner.
Did the review make me want to book a table: Too busy getting my chop on.

Jimi Famurewa, Evening Standard
Mamapen, London (4 stars)

Famurewa has reviewed what he says is the only Cambodian restaurant in London, which seems incredible but I’ll take his word for it. The only problem, from my point of view is that it’s a residency at The Sun and 13 Cantons pub in Soho. I tried to get served there early evening recently. The pub was virtually empty, there was one member of staff behind the bar and he was preoccupied with some cocktail or other. I lost patience and went across the road to the Old Coffee House where I was greeted with smiles and a pint was in my hand before I’d hardly had time to finish giving them my order. Bliss.

I went to a pop up at The Sun and 13 Cantons years ago. As far as I remember, the grub was fine but as with many of these sort of affairs, there was a disconnect between the food, the service and the surroundings. It can’t be helped really, one has nothing to do with the other, they are co-existing in a marriage of convienince and both partners know there’s a divorce on the horizon. But the chef gets an outlet for their food and a chance to build an audience and the pub sells booze off the back of it so everyone’s happy-ish. Famurewa says it’s worked for the likes of Darjeeling Express and Sambal Shiok so why not Mamapen, which, even as we were debating the pros and cons of resident kitchens ‘thrums with its own sour punch and indulgent originality’.

If you like your poultry ‘gushingly juicy’, there’s an internet site for you, probably. You can also go to Mamapen and order the BBQ Khmer half-chicken. If you’re partial to an ‘enveloping, steamy nexus’, there is also an internet site for you, probably. Or you can go to Mamapen and order the tattie mince noodles and find yourself somewhere between ‘spag bol and dan dan noodles’. If you can’t resist ‘wrinkled coins of Chinese sausage’ there’s an internet site for you, probably. Or you can go to Mamapen and order the ‘pea-strewn egg-fried rice’. Happy Endings ice cream sandwiches are just too obvious, I’m not doing that one.

Best line: ‘Mamapen bends a rowdy, low-brow environment to the will of its specific cultural mission’
Worst line: ‘A chilli-laced, technicolor pickle plate has both breathy char and wincing acidity’.
Did the review make me want to book a table: I’ll be in the Old Coffee House if you need me.

Giles Coren, The Times
YiQi, London (8.33)

I didn’t know there were new restaurants in London’s famous Chinatown. I thought they had always been there throughout time, without beginning, without end. But no, YiQi opened in January this year, Coren got around to reviewing it in July and I got around to writing about his review in August, so apologies for the slow service. The owners are ‘seasoned Chinatown restaurateurs’ (I’m quoting from the press release here, not Coren’s review) Kevin Cheong and his business partner Keng Yew Leong. Exec chef Stanley Lum Wah Cheok was formerly Chef de Cuisine at Hakkasan Group which is a thing for sure.

Coren ordered ‘pork trotters (boneless) ancient taste’ because every restaurant critic must order pork trotters (I would have too to be fair) and guessed that the old flavour would have been ‘dark and light soy sauce, shaoxing wine, sugar, star anise, dried chilli, that sort of caper. Always is’. He is probably right. He also ordered ‘Street food style oyster omelette’ which he says he is familiar with from Bangkok. I am also familiar with them from Bangkok and wrote about them in the Metro a lifetime ago when chef David Thompson gave me a tour around the city. You can read the article here. In addition to the food (which sounds very good - Guinness crispy chicken is particularly intriguing) there are also ‘endless japes and banter’ and ‘fantastic vibes’ which I can certainly live without.

Best line: ‘each morsel trembled like a shy child’s lower lip, in a rich, sticky braising sauce’
Worst line: ‘a whole trotter, hot with sauce, torn apart and masticated, the toes and ankle rolled around the mouth like rubbish in the chew of a bin van, and then expectorated onto the table when the goodness is gone like an armless man rolling dice with his tongue’. Where on earth does Coren go gambling?

Did the review make me want to book a table: Japes. Banter. Vibes. That’s not me.

Jay Rayner, The Observer
Bokman, Bristol

The 24 June edition of Just Meg, Bristolian Meg Houghton-Gilmour’s excellent restaurant-themed Substack, was entitled ‘Bristol's best restaurants: 11 places to eat in 2024 - part two’. In it, she wrote a 100-word review of Bokman, saying ‘Bokman is a love story told through Korean cooking that will leave you utterly star-struck. Don’t miss the Tongdak - one of the best roast chickens you’ll ever have.’ In the 11 August edition of the Observer, Jay Rayner wrote a 1,000-word review of Bokman and said pretty much the same thing. That is why Substack is the future.

So what else does Rayner deliver in his 900 additional words? Well, he left out that Bokman’s owners are about to open a second restaurant on Chandos Road in Bristol which I discovered from reading Just Meg. It should be noted that Rayner had already mentioned the second restaurant in his News Bites column of 23 June and posted on X that he therefore didn’t see the need to repeat himself (the post has since been deleted).

That’s reasonable I suppose, as long as Observer readers were paying proper attention and could recall a snippet from eight weeks previously. The news will certainly be of interest to them as the original Bokman is in Stokes Croft, an area of Bristol that’s grungy as fuck (apologies to the locals) and Chandos Road is in the far more chi-chi Redlands neighbourhood. Bokman also sounds pretty cramped, with ‘a few canteen-style tables crammed into the tiny downstairs space’. Imagine that with added Jay Rayner. No fun for anyone. Looking at Chandos Road on Google Earth, the restaurants look a little more spacious so it’s possible the new place might have room for a plus-sized restaurant commentator such as myself.

The food, however, cooked by two Joel Robuchon alumni (you weren’t expecting that were you?) sounds just about worth the pain. Rayner goes to great lengths to point out that the signature ‘tongdak or wood-fired roast chicken stuffed with sticky rice and served with dipping sauces and cubes of pickled mooli’ has to be pre-ordered. Just Meg failed to mention that but has since clarified to me that pre-ordering the dish not essential and she has never had to.

Whether you pre-order it or not, the tongdak is served with house-made gochujang that ‘requires months of effort to produce’ which is highly impressive, especially given the size of the operation. Something of a discovery then. Well done Meg.

Best line: ‘a sight to inspire happiness: the backlit chicken rotisserie, slowly turning like the very best of Ferris wheels’
Worst line: N/A
Did the review make me want to book a table: I’m going to wait for Chandos Road because I’m just too old and boring for Stokes Croft.

Tom Parker Bowles, Mail on Sunday
Noahs, Bristol (4 stars)

Noah’s is a seafood restaurant located in a shed built directly under an overpass. The roof touches the underside of the overpass. The overpass is the roof, sort of. I wonder what the sound proofing is like? Can you feel it when an 18-wheeler goes overhead. Are 18-wheelers allowed to go overhead? None of this is mentioned in TPBs review. To be fair, no one mentions it on TripAdvisor either, so maybe it’s not a problem.

The restaurant has ‘views of the Clifton Suspension Bridge’. Looking at the map, I don’t quite understand how that’s physically possible. You’d get a fantastic view of the car park for sure, but TPB knows better than me, he’s actually been there.

The food sounds fine - cod croquettes, sardines on toast, fish and chips, you know the drill but, there can’t be many restaurants that you could literally drive over on your way home after dinner though can there.

Best line: ‘Scallops, fresh in from the deep, cool waters off the Orkney islands, are astonishingly good, three muscular pucks – beautifully cooked and drenched in garlic butter – that could take on any comer in a seafood bar brawl.’
Worst line: ‘Lyme bay mussels are small but sublime, each one a tiny explosion of mollusc magnificence’
Did the review make me want to book a table: I’ll be right there, just trying to see if I can spot the restaurant from the Clifton Suspension Bridge first.

William Sitwell, The Telegraph
Twenty Eight, Chester (4 stars)

William Sitwell went to Chester and dropped acid. He must of done because he provides no other explanation for his visions of a town cryer, Latin-chanting children dressed as gladiators and a museum of plagues and autopsies. They are just there, clogging up the first three paragrpahs of his review of restaurant twenty eight (lower-case). He never refers to them again, apart from a clumsy call back in the review’s final line: ‘Oyez, oyez, twenty eight is a great-value leap around the world, full of flavour, fun and charm’. WTAF. I think Sitwell can have his editor in a fight. That’s the only explanation for it.

Between the visions and the callback, there is Tunworth cheese rarebit with ‘sticky chutney’ as a starter (something I would never order. Where do you go from there - that’s lunch isn’t it?), ‘a huge pile of fried chickpeas’, a Korean fried chicken bao bun and ox heart ‘cut thinly, with pink flesh and blackened edges from the BBQ’ with slices of what Sitwell thought were re-heated roasted potatoes, charred hispi cabbage and black garlic ketchup, which no one actually likes. Four stars? Sounds more like a bad trip.

Best line: ‘As good as chocolate cake mix licked from the spoon, or eating someone else’s chips’
Worst line: ‘as I chomped, I imagined myself in a field of grungy kids and adults who should know better, music pumping from stages and tents, and me pretending I was having a blast but longing for a bed, a bath and the telly’.
Did the review make me want to book a table: Sorry, too busy putting my Grateful Dead bootleg cassette collection in date order.