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.

The reliability of dim sum

Joy King Lau, 3 Leicester Street, WC2H 7BL

Lunch for two: £20

There are many reasons to return to a restaurant: it may serve excellent food, be one of those undiscovered gems you feel smug about when the rest of the world starts to appreciate or it may be particularly convenient or reliable for you. The Joy King Lau falls into the latter category of places for me. It is reliable. Located as it is on the edge of Leicester Square, it is even convenient. Describing a restaurant I like as reliable or convenient feels like damnation by faint praise; and yet that is precisely how I would describe several oft-visited places that account for many of my happy food memories. Does that make me a bad person? Or even, and far worse, some sort of anti-foodie?

Our last visit was for a Saturday lunch of dim sum.  Mr F had to work so I offered to take him for lunch to offset the pain of working at the weekend. Starving and desperate after a morning of serious work: a quick, voluminous and low-risk lunch was required.

Lots of other people had conceived a similar plan so, even though Leicester Street was closed, enough people had climbed past the roadworks to make the queue for tables stretched down the stairs and out of the door. This didn't put us off; as seasoned pros, we knew that the man with the walkie talkie would usher us up to the top of the building when he heard there was only two of us.  In your face, polite people who joined the back of the queue!  

The menu is typical of an ordinary Cantonese restaurant. All the dishes you would expect are represented but nothing more. The main event is the dim sum; our one evening visit found the place empty and the food disappointing. However, the dim sum is reliably tasty.

We had roast pork cheung fun which were a bit low on pork but otherwise fine, slightly oversteamed and unremarkable Shanghai-style dumplings and a dish of rice, chicken and sausage that was perfectly pleasant aside from the disappointingly low sausage count (two small pieces - sigh).  The squid cakes were good though: golden and not quite crisp on the outside and chewy in a good way on the inside. Scallop dumplings were a highlight (of sorts) with a pleasantly crunchy texture to the filling. We washed it all down, as everyone does at the joy King Lau, with the simple Chinese tea that is presented unbidden on arrival.

It's not just about the food here though. I think people come back for its happy combination of reliably good dim sum, low prices, central location and lively atmosphere.  The Joy King Lau is typical of many Chinese restaurants in the area: it is located over several floors of an old house, perpetually noisy and fantastically cheap. However, unlike many other restaurants in the area, the service is pleasant at the same time as being brisk and the food is always good value. 

I am not alone in my fondness for the Joy King Lau. According to a civil servant friend who works on our relationship with China, it is the lunchtime restaurant of choice amongst staff at the Chinese Embassy in London.  That probably says enough. Vindication over.

Three breakfasts out East

Dalston Lane Cafe, 107C Dalston Lane, E8 1NG

The Counter Cafe, 4a Roach Road, E3 2PA

Tina, We Salute You, 47 King Henry's Walk, N1 4NH

Ever since the Forks relocated from south of the river to Hackney, we have been engaged in a long (and thus far fruitless) search for a truly great place for breakfast in our new 'hood. As previously mentioned, we both love the posh full English at Medcalf but we can't escape the feeling that there must be something just as good closer to home.  Armed only with our bikes and the authoritative work on breakfasting in London, here are the results of our most recent morning outings.

From the outside, the Dalston Lane Cafe looked like the real thing. The uninspiring shop front and checked table cloths hinted at a proper, old fashioned cafe. The food was a pleasant surprise - good quality eggs and sausages served with crusty, seedy granary bread. Not a turdy sausage or slice of plastic bread in sight. However, something about the Dalston Lane Cafe did not feel right. It is perhaps too hip for its own good. From the lacklustre service by a young man who clearly would rather have been at home working on his latest project to the prevalence of ironic hair, it has none of the charm of a proper cafe. The juxtaposition of old and new East London at the Dalston Lane Cafe served as an unwelcome reminder of what has been lost. Even though the breakfast was decent, the atmosphere was too stilted and self-consciously cool for us to contemplate adding it to our list of breakfast favourites.  

We decided to venture further east (Hackney Wick) to sample the breakfast at the Counter Cafe. Judging by the number of fixie bikes in the car park, most of its customers had chosen to cycle there. We were glad that we had too, for the cafe is well and truly off the beaten track in an industrial complex near to the south east corner of Victoria Park. It was easier to forgive the Counter Cafe its hipness because, somehow, it manages to capture the buzzing, creative atmosphere of the East rather than its uglier self-loathing arch-hipness. Table football and good music play their part in achieving this. 

The menu is reminiscent of the relaxed, sunny places scattered across the English-speaking southern hemisphere: lots of avocado and banana. The coffee was expertly made but, even with a varied range of delicious-sounding food on offer, the place somehow managed to fail to live up to its full potential. The full Counter breakfast was, to Mr Fork's mind, a bit pretentious and fiddly.  Good quality ingredients didn't quite gel into a coherent plate of food. For example, the sausage: thin chipolata-style links described by Mr F as a bit like merguez but drier and less interesting. Smoked salmon, poached eggs and potato cakes were better: perfectly cooked eggs and pleasantly-textured fish but the potato cakes would have benefited from being left a little longer in the pan. I would return if I was in the area but I am not sure I would cross Hackney again for the specific purpose of visiting.

An honourable commendation goes to Tina, We Salute You. Although it was the trendiest and least cafe-like of the three, their excellent coffee, quirky decor and fabulous jam selection wooed us.  We will definitely go back to sample their banana bread and (again) avocado-based snacks. 

Three very different breakfasts and, whilst we now know our local cafes a little better , we have yet to find breakfast perfection. But we still have the whole of Bethnal Green, Mess on Amhurst Road and the wilds around London Fields to explore. Who knows what they will bring?

The Counter Cafe on Urbanspoon

Tina, We Salute You on Urbanspoon