The Annual Junk Food Festival

Food is one of the things that Mr Fork and I often disagree about. An example of this divide: Mr Fork's favourite food is breakfast from a tin. Cold reconstituted bacon straight from the tin? That is just weird. Mr Fork attributes this to being from Telford but I am not so sure. Nottingham in the early nineties was not the culinary playground it is today. Instead of Sat Baines, in those days we had the Maid Marion cafe which still haunts me with memories of an appalling breakfast eaten more than twenty years ago.

Beyond bacon

Bistrotheque 

23-27 Wadeson Street, E2 9DR

Hawksmoor

157 Commercial Street, E1 6BJ

The English excel at breakfast. Granted, a freshly-baked croissant is a fine thing and huevos rancheros can be phenomenal, but a full English on a cold morning is heaven. Despite our (now largely defunct) reputation for poor cooking, our breakfasts are generally lauded for their commitment to heart-stopping awesomeness. 

Geometric Hatt clams

S J Hatt, 88-90 Essex Road, N1 8LU

The Geometry of Pasta, Jacob Kenedy and Caz Hildebrand, Boxtree

Craving mussels and having established that October definitely has an "r" in it, I went to Steve Hatt's fishmongers in search of seafood. Unfortunately, I left it too late and the mussels had all been sold by the time we arrived. They had clams though: beautiful, speckled palourde clams.

Jerk off!

Peppers and Spice, 40 Balls Pond Rd, N1 4AU

J.M. Victuals, Strutton Ground, Victoria

I have an inordinate amount of respect for the good people at Time Out. They provide an invaluable source of information on the affairs of our city. However, sometimes they seem to feel the need to be unnecessarily provocative. Articles such as the list of best burgers that included Gourmet Burger Kitchen and the review of Caribbean takeaways that seemed to have been written by someone with an absurd phobia of South and East London read like they were designed to provoke readers into hurling the nearest heavy object at the screen of their computer in frustration. I am not alone in this weird, inexplicable food rage; such was the reaction to the last piece that Time Out felt the need to clarify their motivation for writing the article, excusing their imposition of a Caribbean takeaway exclusion zone over most of London by arguing that the article was intended as a Carnival piece. 

Even though I have now found peace with this particular article, I decided to visit the Caribbean takeaways in my corners of East and South London to ferret out any the places that would have featured in a more balanced piece. Here are my first findings.

Peppers and Spice on the Balls Pond Road is a perennially popular choice amongst Dalstonites. Having waited in the queue snaking out of the door into the night, classics such as jerk chicken, rice and peas and patties are always available plus a daily menu including oxtail, cowfoot and curry goat. The jerk chicken was sticky and spicy with a thicker, glossier sauce than the standard offering. Rice and peas are perfectly stodgy with a hint of coconut and the patties are marvellous, combining crisp, flaky yellow pastry with an unusually spicy filling. As with most of its competitors, Peppers and Spice is amazing value with a meal for two incredibly greedy people involving jerk, curry and patties costing roughly ten pounds.

On the other side of the city, JM Victuals is a small stall selling Caribbean favourites to the lunchtime crowd in Westminster and Victoria. In what was once a culinary wasteland, it is one of a number of stalls recently opened on Strutton Ground selling decent food to crowds of Channel 4 media types and downtrodden public servants. The menu is small but covers more than you might expect from a market stall. As well as the obligatory jerk chicken, there is usually ackee and saltfish, oxtail and some sort of curry. The jerk chicken was closer to the traditional dish but the rice and peas lack some of the flavour of their Hackney counterpart. The absolute highlight, however, is the homemade hot sauce. Bright yellow, slightly vinegary and fiercely spicy; it lifts everything it is poured on into the sublime. The bad news is that the man who makes it has recently left this company to start up on his own. I sincerely hope his new business model includes this sauce. 

Naturally, I am conscious that there are still whole swathes of London left to explore; that there is good Caribbean food to be found in Tottenham and Brixton if only I make the trip. I had better get cycling.

Peppers and Spice on Urbanspoon

Too much Boho, not enough Mexico

Boho Mexica, 
153 Commercial Street, E1 6BJ

Meal for four with cocktails: £140

When the best thing about a restaurant is the waitress's eyebrows, what does that say about its food?

Proper Mexican food carries so much promise. All that lime juice and avocado; the plentiful use of corn, beans and cheese. So many good things, brought together with clear spicy flavours and a hint of sunshine. And still I have yet to find a Mexican restaurant that lives up to this promise. Even my Mexican experience in New York was less the transcendental experience I had hoped for and more just nice. I have become sufficiently desperate that I am seriously contemplating a California to Mexico road trip to see if the problem lies with all Mexican restaurants or with me.

This was, unfortunately, no exception to my Mexican experience to date. It was perfectly pleasant and some of the cooking was relatively adept.  And yet, I could not escape the feeling that it could be improved, that all of the small pieces of brilliance could somehow add up to something better.

Boho Mexica describes itself, as places in Shoreditch are wont to do, as bohemian. They have even used the phrase "bite of Mexican deliciousness" to describe themselves on their website. In spite of this, they have created a chic but relaxed dining environment that combines cocktail bar and restaurant. Our margaritas were ably-executed but unexceptional. The cocktails at Mercado in Stoke Newington are as good if not better, though my Mercado preference is based on their use of interesting Mexican glassware as much as the drink inside. We should have known better than trying the house shooter - a bizarre combination of tequila, prawns and Bloody Mary mix; it didn't sound like a winning combination and it wasn't.

The evening menu is comprised of small dishes intended for sharing. Two variations on pork tacos were highly successful, particularly the cochinita tacos with three types of pork and pink pickled onion. They were an excellent example of that classic principle that fatty meat plus astringent pickle equals food heaven. Likewise, the combination of meat, banana and beans worked well in the Mexican style steak.  However, many of the dishes were pleasant but flawed: ceviche captured light, citrusy flavours but then hid them under a mountain of lettuce; the salsa was fierce and smoky but minuscule; guacamole was decent but only came with 2.7 tortilla chips. The larger dishes were particularly variable in their execution.  Enchiladas with mole had the right smoky, sweet sauce but were otherwise unimpressive and the barbequed lamb was nearly unpleasant with a slightly sour, almost rancid flavour.

When the bill came, our first reaction was disappointment. We justified it later on the basis that we'd had cocktails and that we had ordered expensive dishes like steak and prawns.  However, our first instinct was that we were paying too much for what we had eaten and, on reflection, I think we were right. There are flashes of excellence at Boho Mexica but the end result is somehow a less pleasing sum of often good parts.

The eyebrows were amazing though. The waitress had dressed as Frida Kahlo complete with tousled hair and pencilled in mono-brow. I would say go for the eyebrows but I suspect they were a one-off for Halloween. I do hope not.