Smashed #43: A review of the week's restaurant reviews

The week's restaurant reviews in review

A massive sandwich in London, earlier today

The reviews

David Ellis, Evening Standard
Mondo Sando, London (5 stars)

This week, David Ellis has gone to a bubble tea shop in Balham. Of course he hasn’t, he’s reviewed a noodle shack in Neasdon. No, don’t be silly, it’s a hot chicken joint in Hornsey. He’s gone for steak in Stepney, waffles in Willesden, dumplings in Deptford, pasta in Plaistow and tacos in Totteridge. Actually, it’s none of those things, and in a way, all of them. He’s at a sandwich shop in Peckham which doesn’t even have the decency to be alliterative.

When a man is tired of sandwich shops in Peckham, he is tired of life; for there is in sandwich shops in Peckham all that life can afford. And so to fend off death by one’s own hand, we must read about a sandwich shop in Peckham and not simply endure it but take delight in it.

‘Most exciting new opening in SE5 since the refurb of Camberwell Superstores.’ Have you ever read a more London sentence than that? It’s not even David Ellis, but @tommy_hamer (quoted in the print version of the review) who, if he did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. Mondo Sandwiches rate five stars according to Ellis. If a sandwich shop in Peckham rated less than five stars, would the London illusion come crashing to the ground? Of course it’s worth paying £2,332 for a one-bedroom flat in Hackney, don’t you know that THERE ARE FIVE STAR SANDWICHES IN PECKHAM?!.

Do you remember the good old days when London restaurants were really stupid? Back in 2015 at the Cereal Killer Cafe you could pay £4 for a bowl of Lucky Charms with almond milk and eat it in a recreation of Josef Fritzl’s cellar. People queued up for it. Maybe the Cereal Killer twins invented queuing for worthless food experiences. I’d ask them but Alan and Gary Keery seem to have completely disappeared since closing their restaurants during Covid and abandoning their online business and own brand cereals that included Cluster Fox and Buster Nut (oh, hardy fucking haha). They are both still directors of Cereal Killer International Ltd so maybe they are doing something somewhere or will do something somewhere again at some point, but going out for a bowl of cereal now seems ridiculously rococo pops.

So now we go for sandos that are mondo instead. You are by now, no doubt, wondering what makes a sando so bloody mondo anyway? They are big, ‘about the size of arms crossed in worry’. No swastika sarnies here then.

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These big south-east London sandwiches might be filled with chicken tikka masala or fish fingers and peas and are eaten at either a red-topped counter or a tiny yellow table. They serve other things than sandos at night. Crostini with anchovy and onions for example, or a patty melt. More bread then. There’s also a plate of finocchiona with giardiniera which sounds like it was entirely bought in. A chicken thigh with salsa verde and latke with homemade brown sauce was ‘astonishingly delicious’ according to Ellis. It sounds like the sort of thing I might knock up for a Tuesday night tea and yet for a Londoner, it’s worth five stars. But then, it has to be, because there, in shadows, a hooded figure, scythe glinting in the candlelight points a skeletal finger and in a ghastly, rattling whisper intones, ‘Enjoy every sandwich’.

Best line: ‘Art includes a poster of Bibendum, the Michelin man, which is the sort of thing cooks usually do in hopes of flattering the inspectors into giving them the nod. It’s a leg-pull. To my knowledge, no Michelin appraiser has ever made it to Peckham, at least not willingly.’
Worst line: N/A
Did the review make me want to book a table: Mondo apologies, but I had an egg sandwich for lunch at home.

Giles Coren, The Times
Osip, Somerset (8/10)

Did you know that Giles Coren auditioned to be John Torode’s sidekick on Masterchef back when the show was first re-booted in 2004? ‘It was like trying to get to know a traffic cone,’ wrote Coren in a recent column. ‘I would deliver a pristine culinary witticism like something out of Oscar Wilde and John would stare blankly back at me like a fish in a trigonometry class.’ As much as I despise Gregg ‘cock-in-a- sock’ Wallace and his moronic gawp’n’grunt act, it’s probably best Coren didn’t get the gig.

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