Author Archives: Jack Shamash

Smirnoff: the newest – and fruitiest – cider on the block

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smirnoff cider barbecue drink

Smirnoff Cider – ideal drink for barbecues

 

If you’re looking for something to drink when you next have a barbecue, this might be just the thing!

Smirnoff (the famous vodka company) is now producing a great range of ciders. The latest is flavoured with mandarin and pink grapefruit, with a dash of vodka. Smirnoff also has Passionfruit and lime flavoured cider and a rather unusual Raspberry and Pomegranate.

They’re not exactly subtle, but they’re cool and sweet and my kids – straight back from university – loved them. My favourite was the Mandarin and Pink Grapefruit, which had a lovely sharpness and a really fresh fruit flavour. My son went for the passionfruit and lime, which absolutely burst with scents of tropical fruit.

Perhaps not the sort of thing to have with steak or even chops, but they’d go down well with burgers and ketchup or with those oriental chicken wings in sweet chilli sauce that everyone seems to serve, or with pizzas for that matter. And they’re not expensive – the big supermarkets sell them for around £2.19 for a 500ml bottle.

Stagolee’s – superb fried chicken in Fulham

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Stagolee's - chicken and liquor restaurant in North End Road Fulham

Stagolee’s – the chicken and liquor restaurant in Fulham

The Southern USA is famous for certain things: swamps, alligators, country music and – of course – the best friend chicken in the world.

Stagolee’s – a new restaurant in the trendy part of Fulham – describes itself as a ‘chicken and liquor joint’. It’s relatively cheap, the food is great and if you’re hoping to go out with friends for a meal and some drinks, you could do an awful lot worse.

Fulham is one of those areas of London that most people don’t normally visit. It is in a bend of the river, so you’re not likely to happen upon it while travelling somewhere else. But it has some great nightlife, some lovely pubs and a real sense of community.

The restaurant itself is boisterous and lively, and it is decorated with a sort of industrial chic – the walls are covered with photos of the American south and the food is served on aluminium trays. It’s very friendly and the staff are American, so when you ask about the ‘Moonshine liquor’ or the ‘buttermilk biscuits’, they actually know what they are talking about.

The menu is small – but it’s all very fresh and beautifully cooked. There are some great starters – such as devilled eggs and spinach dips – but the most interesting stuff is the chicken. The Hot Chicken is brined – soaked in salt water – and then dipped in buttermilk and fried. It is succulent and really tasty with a crisp outer coating. If you’re feeling adventurous, you could go for the ‘Tom Devil’ very hot chicken, but we chickened out (sorry about the pun).

At some point in the meal, even the most refined eater will be tempted to pick up the joints of chicken and eat them off the bone. This is not a place for finicky eaters!

Normally you’d expect some kind of coleslaw with chicken. Stagolee’s have got a really fresh carrot salad, with raisins and plenty of sweetness – just to cool things down. The crinkle cut chips are good and crisp and – if you want a real taste of the south – there is also cornbread to wipe up the juices. This has a slight sweetness and slightly crunchy outer layer.  For pudding, we had a key lime pie, which is like a cheesecake – but nicer!

Succulent chicken chips stagolee Fullham

Succulent chicken with really crispy chips

The drinks are wonderful. I had a selection of four single barrel bourbons, which were all light and beautifully balanced, with buttery flavours of oak and caramel. My wife had a Mountain Rita Cocktail, with moonshine liquor, lime and sugar – which was delicious but very potent. So don’t expect to drive home after a cocktail here! Our bill, incidentally, came to about £85, but most of this was on the drinks. If you’re teetotal, you can eat cheaply here.

Oh, and the place is named after the song about Stagolee – a gangster who killed one of his friends during a game of dice. I’ve put a link, so you can listen to the song while you’re deciding which friends to invite for a meal at this lively restaurant.

Great musical meals at Leon

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Leon at Shaftesbury Avenue

Leon at Shaftesbury Avenue

What do actors do when they’re not working? Well, a fair number of them are serving behind the counter at Leon in Shaftesbury Avenue. And between dishing out the chips, they are belting out show tunes for the diners.

Leon, as most people know, is a fast food restaurant specialising in light and wholesome wraps and salads. But in addition to the great food, they are now dishing out entertainment.

The Shaftesbury Avenue branch, a few yards from Piccadilly Circus and just around the corner to the big West End theatres, is staffed by an assortment of young and glamorous singers and actors. And to draw in the crowds, they take turns to belt out numbers from shows. All of which makes it cut above your average sandwich bar. The singing is free: you only pay for the food.

I had a chargrilled chicken aioli lunchbox – a fine chicken and salad lunch – and a sultry woman sang ‘Can you feel the love tonight’ from the Lion King. Thirty minutes of escapism, some great music and a good meal for £6.95 – it must be one of the best bargains in London’s Theatreland.

Light food - simple and tasty at Leon

Light food – simple and tasty at Leon

Singing Waitress at Leon in Shaftesbury Avenue

Singing Waitress at Leon in Shaftesbury Avenue

Japanese wines – the new taste on the block

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Koshu - the grape variety from Japan that's not in the UK

Koshu – the grape variety from Japan that’s now in the UK

These days just about every Asian country seems to having a stab at producing wines. You can buy Indian wines, Chinese wines and now Japanese wines are firmly on the menu.

This week the trade organisation Koshu of Japan held a special tasting – and there are some great wines on offer. Koshu is a particular grape, which has been bred to meet the Japanese needs. The wines are very light, pale coloured and have very gentle flavour with hints of citrus and peach and just a touch of jasmine scent. Because many of them are grown in volcanic soil, they have a slightly mineral flavour. It’s a sort of Japanese equivalent to Chablis.

They go down very nicely with Japanese food – which has a lot of fish and relatively little meat. Of course, they are not easy to find. Selfridges sells a couple of varieties and Marks and Spencers has the Sol Lucet Koshu by Kurambon, which at around £14 is reasonably priced. There are a large number of other Koshu producers, but most of them distribute to the specialist trade or to Japanese and oriental restaurants. The restaurant prices, incidentally, would be about £40 a bottle.  And if you’re looking for something slightly unusual, they’ll go well with your sashimi.

The best place for us to eat in Oxford – the Old Parsonage

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old parsonage oxford restaurant hotel

A good place for posh grub

We wanted to go to Oxford to see my daughter, who has just started a course there. And my mother wanted to come with us and buy us a nice lunch. So I started to look for somewhere nice to eat.

I did look online, but the internet was pretty useless: it provided us with a huge number of recommendations among which were a branch of Subway the sandwich bar and some suburban Indian restaurants with names like ‘Star of India’.

So I emailed my friend Andrew. Andrew is a professor who has worked at the university and still lives in the town. He emailed me back. ‘I’d suggest the Old Parsonage – I haven’t been for years but it’s always been good, traditional, on the pricey side and the sort of restaurant you’d imagine from all those films they set in early 20th century Oxford’. So I booked.

Anyway, we went along for a meal. The restaurant itself is about two minutes walk from my daughter’s college, which is very handy.

Old Parsonage Oxford restaurant

My children after a good meal

It is a lovely building, and is part of a hotel. It is made of old stone, and looks very rustic and historic. The dining room is hung with oil paintings – most of which appear to be from the first half of the twentieth century.

Now the menu isn’t cheap. Most of the starters are seven or eight pounds, while the mains range from £15 to £50. For starters my son and I had a wonderful French fish soup with aioli (garlic mayonnaise) and croutons. This was done really well done, very authentic – lots of great flavours of fish. My wife and daughter each had beautifully fresh smoked salmon.

The main courses were similarly good. My wife had some very good fish cakes, which were a relative bargain at £15. My mum and son had fillet steak – £32. I went absolutely mad and had a veal chop and kidney cooked in garlic and rosemary for £49.50. My chop was extremely expensive, but immensely tasty. It was cooked beautifully – and it was a big chunk of meat. OK, it wasn’t cheap, but it was a real treat. Oh, and because it was lunchtime, we didn’t drink very much. My daughter and I each had a very acceptable glass of Languedoc rose.

The portions were big, so we weren’t really in the mood for pudding. My son had a very nice pear and apple crumble. Anyone can knock out a reasonable crumble, but what was particularly nice was the delicious custard, which was made of real eggs and was flavoured with fresh vanilla. Add a couple of coffee and the bill for the five of us came to £250.

It was a lovely meal. Not just because of the food – which was very good. It was just a nice place to sit, the staff was helpful and it was pleasantly busy – but not packed.

And in the front there is a sort of bar, which had a stone floor. As we were leaving we got talking to a very nice academic, who had brought his dog and was having a drink with a friend. We were just remarking what a lovely dog he had, when the animal produced a great spray of yellow diarrhoea. My daughter and I fell about laughing. I’m not sure that this is a regular part of the entertainment offered at the Old Parsonage, but it meant that we left with a smile.

 

see also Silk – a posh Indian food in a remarkable venue

Whisky – blended for Christmas

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Johnny walker Blue and Famous Grouse mellow gold

Johnny Walker Blue Label and Famous Grouse Mellow Gold – two great drinks for Christmas

When my children were small they used to have a Greek childminder. When we went to pick up our kids, her entire family – aunts, uncles, in-laws from Cyprus – would often be present. They treated me and my wife as if we were part of the extended family and often we’d end up staying for dinner.

On festive occasions – Christmas, Easter, birthdays – I would usually bring a bottle of whisky. And the one that the Greek men most enjoyed was Johnny Walker – particularly the more expensive black label. They didn’t want fancy single malts, with all those peaty smells. They wanted a very smooth, high quality blended whisky.

I mention this because they would have loved Johnny Walker’s new Blue Label. It’s not cheap and it’s not something for the more serious lover of single malts, but it’s probably the smoothest and best blended whisky on the market. With lovely tastes of pepper and honey and a slight smokiness, it’s something to savour. Please don’t pollute it with ginger ale or ice. Just sip it gently, enjoying the roundness on your tongue. Perhaps wash it down with a glass of cold water, just to cleanse the palate. It’s a superb drink and worth taking time to appreciate. Incidentally it’s only available at a few selected dealers, and it costs £135 a bottle, but for that price you do get your name engraved on the bottle.

Around Christmas many of the distillers are producing slightly more distinctive types of whisky. Famous Grouse is offering something called Mellow Gold (£20 per 75cl at Tesco). It’s similar to the normal Famous Grouse – another fine blended whisky – but this one has been left in sherry and bourbon casks. As a result, it has a fuller oaky flavour and the sweetness of raisins and a touch of dried fruit. It’s a good one for Christmas, not because it’s better or worse than the regular whisky, but because Christmas is remarkable time of year and should be marked with something which is just a bit out of the ordinary.

Ice cream for the festive season

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Judes ice cream toddy pecan

Two new flavours from Judes

Christmas is just a few weeks away and you need something to go with all those mince pies and Christmas puddings. If you like ice-cream then Judes have a couple of new offerings that are ideal for the festivities.

Brown Butter Pecan (£3.00 for 500g) is full of swirls of caramel, lovely buttery flavours and chunks of real caramelised nuts. It is absolutely delicious and is made with stacks of fresh milk and natural ingredients.

If you like the flavour of whisky, the firm also has a Hot Toddy ice cream (£4.79 for 500g), made with cinnamon and Laphroaig single malt whisky. Again, it is just the sort of thing to serve in depths of winter, preferably in front of a blazing fire or – if you can’t manage that – a warm radiator.

Great Turkish food in North London – and it’s cheap!

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turkish food Palmers Green

Aksular in Green Lanes

For many years Palmers Green and Southgate in North London have been the centre of the Turkish community. Turks, who started off in areas such as Dalston in Hackney, got richer and moved northwards. Many of the more affluent ones ended up in the area around Southgate and Palmers Green. All of which means that this is now a great place for cheap Turkish meals.

Anyone who has travelled through Turkey will know that the country is huge and that the roads are punctuated by gigantic service stations with huge restaurants, where you can buy excellent food at rock bottom prices.

The new restaurants around Southgate are very similar. They have lots of tables, fast service and they are very cheap. It’s not the place for a romantic first date, but if you have a hungry family, you’ll get a very good meal.

Aksular is on the Green Lanes. It’s so popular that the restaurant has recently doubled in size and they’ve opened another branch in Enfield Town. The restaurant is a bit like the road houses that you find in Turkey. It is cheap, clean and functional and is full of families. It has lines and lines of tables and the service is friendly and brisk. As soon as you’re seated, you are given salads, hummus and aubergine dish imam biyaldi. These are free! If you want, you can order other starters but you have to pay for them– I chose a chicken soup which had lots of shredded chicken;. My son had some prawns, nicely grilled with garlic..

eating Turkish food in Palmers green

My daughter tucking into the starters

The main courses are basic but very good. I had grilled chops, my brother had a mixed shish kebab (with cubes of lamb, chops and meatballs) and my mother had chicken kebab. My son had some sort of donner kebab which was served in bread with a sauce on it. And my wife had fillets of sea bass. The dishes came with rice or potatoes. There’s very little to say about the food. It is good, plentiful and very tasty. And it’s all cooked in the traditional method over a long tray of charcoal.

The staff are delightful. After the meal, a couple of us ordered Turkish coffee. The waitress insisted on giving everyone else a glass of Turkish tea – free of charge. We also got pieces of baklava – the traditional pastry with syrup and nuts. Again, this was free.

We didn’t have any alcoholic drinks -although the place sells a reasonable range of beers and wines. But we’d effectively had a three course meal and for six of us the price was £72. I’d describe it as a bloody bargain!

On similar lines, a restaurant called Kervan Sofrasi has opened about half a mile away in Southgate. It occupies a building which used to be a large pub called ‘The Waggon and Horses’ in the main road, Chase Side. Again lots of tables, big crowds, simple food and lots of it. It’s very popular with the local Turkish community and with anyone else who enjoys good food with lots of flavour and not too much

Kervan Sofasi in Palmers Green

Kervan Sofasi in Palmers Green

embellishment. Again, there are other branches of the same restaurant – including one in nearby Edmonton. Kervan Sofrasi is slightly different to the Aksular because it tends to cater to parties of slightly younger people – including office workers and birthday parties. But there are still plenty of families enjoying a meal together. And again it’s cheap. I went out with four friends and we had a huge pile of charcoal grilled lamb, chicken, meatballs and even a quail. There were salads and dips to start and we all had beers and coffee. The price including service was £100 – again extremely good value.