The Haiku Review

Unearthed Foods Charcuterie Pigfest [GUEST HAIKU)

meemalee — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 10:45:31 +0000

How have they Unearthed

So fine a porcine array?

It delights my tongue.

Unearthed sent along some of their cured and cooked meats as the perfect quick and easy party food. We tried them out at a birthday celebration for talented London blogger, The London Foodie.

Buying a selection of charcuterie as a shared starter or part of a buffet is something I’ve done quite a few times.

The products from Unearthed were lovely and I’ve since bought a number of them again, from my local Waitrose.

Aki, Holborn [GUEST HAIKU]

aaroscape — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 09:37:09 +0000

By The Grubworm

A pricey bento
Yes, but uber fresh fish was
A rare, and raw, treat

The £12 bento,
my food in compartments,
what could be better?

Sparklingly fresh,
fatty firm fish. I shed
wasabi tears

Izakaya Aki
182 Gray’s Inn Road
London WC1X 8EW

Tel: 020 7837 9281
www.akidemae.com

El Parador, Camden [GUEST HAIKU]

beccarothwell — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 11:27:12 +0000

By How to Make a Mess

Hot pepper roulette
Equal division; but the
Morcilla is mine.

Padron peppers pan fried with virgin olive oil and sea salt £5.90
Perfectly seasoned and delicious. Added joy on suddenly finding one of the few hot peppers hidden amongst the rest. I managed to pick out three spicy ones.

Spanish Tortilla £4.50
Very nice, potato slices soft and egg just barely on the point of being set, but I probably still prefer those I’ve had home cooked by my Spanish aunt.
I didn’t notice the weird grey bit at the front of the wedge until going through the photos. The tortilla was shared so I must have avoided that section, although my friend didn’t mention it either. How odd.

Morcilla pan fried with apple, caramelised red onions,
watercress and flat parsley £6.50
My absolute favourite dish of the meal, savoury, meaty, porky, delicious morcilla together with soft sweet onions and a slight sharpness from the pan-fried apple. As my friend was vegetarian I got it all to myself which made me very happy because I really didn’t want to share.

Sweet potatoes roasted with rosemary, coriander seeds and garlic, pan fried with smoked paprika oil, roasted cherry tomatoes and ruby chard £5.80
My vegetarian friend’s alternative to the morcilla. I tried some and found it nice but unremarkable which is a shame given how delicious the description sounds. She really enjoyed it though so everyone was happy in the end.

We used the three for two lunch time tapas offer and so only paid for three of our dishes.

El Parador
245 Eversholt Street
London
NW1 1BA
020 7387 2789
www.elparadorlondon.com

Fish Market, Reykjavik

meemalee — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 13:39:06 +0000

Gargantuan grub,
Confusion cuisine. We just
Wanted it to stop.

We chose the tasting menu for 8,900 isk each (about £50 a head).

I rather liked their branding at the start.
By the end, it was ominous.

Unwary punters

Pappy “French baguette” with mayo

Steamed mussels from Hrisey
with langoustine broth and bonito
Delicious, but the kind of thing you’d toss together at home on a work-night

Grilled Pork Ribs with peanuts, spring onion and bbq sauce
The meat was tender enough, but you could taste nothing but sugar.

Beef Salad with avocado, beansprouts and chilli-lime sauce
Perhaps the most disappointing thing I have ever eaten. Like a packet of stir-fry veg served raw with some kind of unnervingly sharp and watery dressing.

Mix of Sushi and Sashimi
Good enough

Grilled wild salmon from þjórsá River with yuzu miso and onion pakora
Just thinking about this makes me heave. Why would you serve fish with caramelised oranges and yoghurt? Why?

Atlantic Salted Cod with fennel, sweet potato salad and orange sauce
More yoghurty fish. I say no.

Grilled fillet of mountain lamb from Kópasker
with butternut puree, beetroot salsa and thyme glace
The lamb was nicely sweet and smoky, though the alfafa sprouts added nothing. Peas were good.

“Premium Blend” Dessert Selection
This was just odd. Though the ice cream with Smarties crumbled over it was okay.

Is it … over?

The scene of our interminable trial

Fish Market
Fiskmarkaðurinn
Aðalstræti 12
101 Reykjavík
Iceland
www.fiskmarkadurinn.is

The Ginger Dog, Brighton [GUEST HAIKU]

meemalee — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 09:00:50 +0000

By Feed & Gastro

Ginger Dog, sorry
But the reviews were right. One
word: disappointing.

Salt and pepper squid (approx £7.00)
The squid was delicious but the cashew nuts and grapefruit had absolutely no place on that plate. They did not go at all, in my opinion. I mean, grapefruit and cashew nuts – pah!

Poached chicken salad with chilli (approx £6.00)
A perfectly pleasant salad of shredded poached chicken. Nothing to write home about, but good flavours, nice textures and a good bit of heat.

Wild sea trout with runner beans and crispy potato cake (approx £16.00)
My friend ate this and when I asked her again for her opinion she had completely forgotten everything about the dish. She couldn’t even remember what fish it was. So, although I remember she ate it and had no complaints about it, it was pretty forgettable.

Belly pork served with crackling, baby carrots, bacon potato rosti, and bramley apple sauce (approx £13.50)
Woeful. The pork was under-seasoned and the gravy paltry. The potato rosti was good but the inclusion of bacon made the dish a fatty pork overload. The carrots were the best thing on the plate (and to be fair, they were really very good), and with this much pork on the plate that is a sorry state of affairs in my book. As for the crackling…

…the crackling was just total crap.
Flavourless, disappointing crap, completely not worth the calories (and I am NOT a calorie counter). It was left, along with half the belly pork, and most of the rosti. As I said, woeful.

The Ginger Dog
12 College Place
Brighton
East Sussex BN2 1HN
www.gingermanrestaurants.com/ginger_dog

(The reviews referred to in the haiku are those by Essex Eating and The Graphic Foodie)

Thank you to Feed & Gastro

Esarn Kheaw, Shepherd’s Bush

meemalee — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:09:14 +0000

Excessive order
Left even the staff reeling.
Worth it? Yes and no.

Tom Yum Goong £7.95
King prawn soup with lemon juice, lime leaf, lemongrass, galangal, chilli and fish sauce.
Beautiful – packed a happy punch. Wish they’d used straw mushrooms instead of bog-standard though – had to fish them out.

Spiced Pork Salad Thai Style £6.95
Minced pork, thinly sliced pork skins with lemon juice, lime leaf, coriander, spring onion, chilli and fish sauce.
Didn’t quite live up to the promise, too sour and not enough savoury. Generous with the old pigskin though. Nice one.

Esarn Kheaw Sausage £4.95
Home-made Thai sausage. Served with fresh ginger and chilli.
Not impressed. Again, too sour and lacking flavour. Good texture though.

Spiced Papaya Salad Northeast Style £4.95
Papaya and carrots, combined with fresh chilli, garlic, lemon juice, crushed peanuts and fish sauce.
Fine, but couldn’t help thinking some protein in the form of shrimp or crab was missing.

Gaeng Keaw Wan Kai £7.95
Green chicken curry in coconut cream with aubergine, peas, eggplant, sweet basil and fish sauce.
This was proper bo. By which I mean good. Nearly killed my husband with its insidious chilli heat, but I loved it.

Nice frontage

Esarn Kheaw Thai Restaurant
314 Uxbridge Road
London W12 7LJ
020 8743 8930
www.esarnkheaw.com

Bonus marks – it’s next to the wonderful Bush Hall which is why we were in the hood – to see this guy.

By the way, the point of the haiku is that I tried to order a few more dishes and the waiter actually wouldn’t let me.

The Complete History of Food by Bompas and Parr

meemalee — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:23:15 +0000

Crystal Maze redux
With jelly. Concept better
Than execution.

Bompas & Parr themselves. I like their hats.

A man with awesome hair and a man with a cool hat

Flat Champagne Cocktails and Fizzy Grapes by Paul Tvaroh, super mixologist. Want more grapes.

Foie-rerro Rocher by Alexis Gauthier (geddit, Foie-rerro Rocher? I kill me sometimes). Want more foie gras.

The TV showing Fifties commercials was borked. Sad.

Me and my TV Dinner from the 50s. Sad.

Mushroom Alley and Inflatable Stomach. Bouncy.

Fab duck confit from Bistrotheque in a dinosaur.
Except we weren’t in the dinosaur. Fail.

Wheeee Ambergris!

The Complete History of Cushions.
Pass the Courvoisier.

A sugar sculpture *cough* plaster of Paris *cough* cake

The Complete History of Food
with Bompas and Parr
and Courvoisier
14-18 July 2010
www.jellymongers.co.uk

The Narrow, Limehouse

meemalee — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:49:40 +0000

Transcendental whelks
Fish and chip parsimony
Positive outlook

Pickled Whelks £2.00
I should have got more of these bargainous little buckets

Beer-battered fish, hand-cut chips, mushy peas £13.00
Flabbily stingy. Stingily flabby.

Scotch Egg with HP Sauce £3.00
The yolk was hard – what a cock-up

Devilled Whitebait £4.00
So salty my face shrivelled to the size of a tuppence. I left most of it.
I never leave food.

Nice view though

The Narrow
44 Narrow Street
London E14 8DP
020 7592 7950
www.gordonramsay.com/thenarrow

Giant Robot, Clerkenwell

meemalee — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:10:52 +0000

Prawns are giant. Meat
Balls are not. Tasty but dear.
There is no robot.

Giant Robot, Clerkenwell – Space Age Diner

Giant Prawns (garlic, chilli, oregano) £23.60
You get five

Giant Robot – Spaghetti and Meatballs (beef, spicy tomato sauce, pecorino) £9.65
The “large” portion

Giant Robot
45-47 Clerkenwell Road
London EC1M 5RS
020 7065 6810
www.gntrbt.com

What I expected