Bánhmì 11

Last weekend I took an extended lunch break from work. The journey time to and from Broadway Market was two hours ten minutes (I work in W1) and the queuing for lunch was an additional ten minutes but the actual scoffing of a whole sandwich took less than five minutes. I would like to think that food-lovers like myself are a committed lot and equally nutty.

I wrote briefly once before about Bánhmì 11 here so this second post is more of proper acknowledgement in praise of the outfit.

Bánhmì11’s stall can be found at Broadway Market on Saturdays or Chatsworth Road Market on Sundays. But as for the former, expect to queue patiently for the grub as it’s easily the most popular food stall there. And for those who’ve been away up in the mountains for yonks, Bánhmì11 specialises in the iconic Vietnamese sandwich that’s bánh mì.

Most of the meats are essentially barbecued and cooked on site to maintain the quality and enhancement of the fillings.

All the sandwiches on offer are technically bánh mì đặc biệt or bánh mì combos. And as of October 2011, the menu is as follows-

''Quad Meat Special: Pate, BBQ Pork, Roast Pork, Pork Ham in Banana Leaf, Chicken Ham

Fish Q: Grilled Turmeric Catfish, tossed with Dill and Spring Onion

BBQ Squared: Imperial BBQ Pork and Pork Meatballs with Roasted Rice Flavour

Cha Cha Chicken: Grilled Chicken Breast in Coconut and Lemongrass Marinade

Op La Di Beef: Sirloin Steak in Home-Made BBQ Sauce

Tofu Mushroom: Crumbled Tofu with a Trio of Mushroom, Carrot, and Rice Vermicelli''

Each and every sandwich is hand-constructed to order. On a more personal note, it was nice to see an alumna of St Anne’s making mine.

The bánh mì.
The bread was gorgeous. The thinness of its crust (quite unlike regular baguettes) is unlikely to encourage any kind of trauma to the mouth. The bread proper was delightfully airy and soft. If the Aussies and Kiwis can displace the Italians with their superior flatties then I can’t see why the Vietnamese shouldn’t do the same with the humble baguette!

NB I know of a lot people who despise coriander but that’s too bad so curb all the‘soapy dissents’ as the venerable herb is part and parcel of any bánh mì!

The Fish Q
Despite the menu suggesting the fish was grilled it was in fact pan-fried, and done so to order. When munched, any decent bánh mì should explode with extraordinary flavours and tingle the taste buds like no other sandwiches! The Fish Q ticked all the right boxes. The fish itself was excellent, flaky, beautifully marinated and perfectly seasoned (but it was also best to ignore the fact about the fish being previously frozen and imported from more than 6K miles away). It was the priciest sandwich on offer but well worth it.

I couldn’t resist myself and succumbed to a second sandwich- The Quad Meat Special.

This was what lurked inside the Quad. I had mine extra spicy with squirts and squirts of Sriracha. As a whole, this combo was stunning but let down slightly by the rather tough and chewy char siu BBQ pork. But heck, it was still bloody amazing and I fully understood why the Quad is Bánhmì11's most popular offering!

The baguette sarnies at Bánhmì11 are so well conceived and executed they simply leave this lot lagging behind. Burgers aside and regardless of ethnicity, Bánhmì11 is responsible for some of the best sandwiches in London! In their words- ‘Bánhmì11....I am coming to eat you!’

Highly recommended.


I paid £5 for the Fish Q and £4.50 for the Quad Meat Special. I shall not respond to any comments concerning the championing of egg and cress sandwiches.

Broadway Market
London E8 4HP
www.banhmi11.com

Mama Lan

If Mama Lan was still an active supper club and I had a disappointing meal there; I would simply walk away and keep shtum about it. Publishing negative reviews about supper clubs are a no-no in my book as it provokes an inordinate amount of sentimental reactions. During the past two and a half years I’ve been to twenty-five supper clubs within the M25 and yet I’ve only penned about a handful of them (rather gushingly I might add). I’m simply not ballsy enough to publicly criticise the cooking of the various hosts, as it would be akin to unceremoniously stalling the ambitions of a three-year-old wanting to be a fire fighter. The amateur status of supper clubs means that they’re fully entitled to get away with murder should they fail to deliver. And by all accounts both the flaws and high-points of paying for your supper in somebody else’s dining room are easily forgiven and embraced without further ado. But I blog about restaurants and as far as I’m concerned the latter either have it or don’t.

To call it by its full name, mama lan @ Brixton is in effect a full-fledged restaurant in Brixton Village Market. Needless to say BVM is an increasingly important destination for food lovers in London. As suggested earlier Mama Lan started off as a supper club with Mummy Lan cooking traditional Beijing nosh and obviously through more than a degree of success they decided to go legit. Setting up a business like this comes with the usual challenges like- rent, overheads, business rates, VAT men, customers, reviews and of course the irritating presences of bloggers. Sincerely, I wish them well.

The menu is compact and no nonsense. To save you bothering with the magnifying glass I’ve copied and pasted the menu from their website-

''Beijing dumplings (5pieces)
All our dumplings are handmade on site and are served with pickled vegetables
Beef and carrot £4.00
Pork and Chinese leaf £4.00
Dill and spiced tofu (v) £4.00

Street Snacks
Chilli oil chicken £4.50
Slow cooked beef with Chinese herbs and spices £5.00
Fried vegetable balls (v) £3.50

Salads
Seaweed salad with toasted sesame (v) £3.50
Five spice boiled peanuts, wood ear mushroom and celery (v) £3.50

Drinks
Mocktail of the day £2.50
Tea blend of the day £2.50
Coke, / Diet Coke / Lemonade £1.50

(v) Suitable for vegetarians
All our meat is supplied by the Ginger Pig Farm''*

*(Correct as of 09/10/11)

I came here with two dining companions, one an established restaurateur and the other one, soon-to-be. We ordered everything on the menu except for the soft drinks.

My tea of day was a refreshing but caffeine-less chrysanthemum and wolfberry blend.

Wet peanut salad et al. Boiled peanuts are generally treated as appetisers before a main meal and provided gratis at most restaurants in China. Now because that we’re in Blighty you’re expected to fork out £3.50 for it but then again Brits do love a novelty or two. Alas, the nuts would’ve tasted a lot better if they were cooked with the addition of more soy sauce and star anise.

Seaweed salad. Highly processed brown alga is technically tasteless and the dish above managed to highlight the fact. Destpite the crunchy texture, the marinade and seasoning was disappointingly short of sesame oil, soy sauce, and generally, taste. Toasted black sesame seeds would’ve lifted the seaweed better than the pointless white ones. I think this dish is best left to the Japanese or Koreans. Poor.

Veggie balls-
The slightest hint of curry spices within evoked a ‘fusion confusion’ moment...ChIndian perchance? The initial joy of the crispy crust was immediately wiped out by the unexpectedly glutinous texture of the tasteless insides. Any aspirations of tackling bhajis or pakoras are immediately thwarted when you and I know that the Indians or Mr Bashir do it immeasurably better. And while we’re at it, Mama Lan, why don’t give this a go instead…it’s less ostentatious!

Chilli oil chicken-
We all know Westerners love flavourless breast meat but an addition of the brown variety would’ve enhanced the dish infinitely. The chilli heat belonged to the Korma School of Spiciness i.e. zeroish Scoville heat units and to make matters worse, the meat was dryish. The ‘lil piece of flat bread was frankly taking the piss, hardly enough for one let alone two or more…imagine a smug Robert Atkins approving. This £4.50 dish possibly confirmed a badly researched and developed inclusion on Mama Lan’s behalf. And as I’m known for rubbing salt in the wound, for the same amount of dosh one could’ve something more rewarding with three pieces of this.

Spiced Beef- it was admittedly the only standout, so a sharp tongue was unnecessary.

Dumplings (jiaozi) are the mainstay of Mama Lan. For some reason or another, outside China jiaozi is perceived as Beijing Dumpling. They’re usually served as shuijiao (boiled) or guotie (pan fried). Mama Lan serves the latter (dare I say to comply with the needs and preferences of the predominantly non-Chinese diners who throng the place).

The 'neither here nor there' beef and carrot dumpling

Some purists would argue that even the most basic of jiaozi dumplings is intrinsically unexciting in taste and you’ll need to enhance the flavours with the addition of rice vinegar and chilli oil (incidentally the latter was woefully cloudy and poorly executed). If that’s the case then Mama Lan have been amazingly consistent with all three versions of the dumplings we had, they were spectacularly bland. And when it came to the various fillings, yet again, was there a chronic shortage of salt, white pepper, spring onion, Chinese chives, sesame oil, and huangjiu when we were there?

The overall meal was insubstantial, expensive and we remained hungry thereafter. Better tasting dumplings can be found relatively nearby (£3 for 10!) or IMO, the best Beijing dumplings in London bar none (£5 for 8).

The following is a summation from one my fellow diners-

‘If this is the true taste of Beijing then our taste buds have obviously been corrupted and we have moved on. And no thanks to you for dragging me out of my Sunday lie-in, it was a massive disappointment you bloody wind-up merchant!’

If you’re after Chinese food that’s unquestionably mediocre then Mama Lan comes highly recommended.


Unit 18

Brixton Village Market

Coldharbour Lane

Brixton

London SW9 8PR
mamalan.co.uk

Bright Courtyard

Lai Tong in Cantonese could mean house soup, staff soup or also soup that can be served all day. In larger Chinese restaurants the kitchen has to cook a meal for the staff before service kicks in at midday, this would inevitably include separate dishes consisting of meat, fish, green vegetables and of course soup. Cauldrons of the latter would’ve been made hours in advance to intensify the flavours and ending up what’s essentially pork stock. This bulk product is also the base for other forms of soups, noodles soups and countless dishes found on the menu of your regular Chinese restaurant. But what’s left of the extra broth is not gone to waste, most of the cheaper eateries in Guangdong would pass it on as a freebie as an incentive to accompany your paid one-dish meal. And there’s one restaurant in London’s Chinatown that continues to uphold this practice by serving you a bowl of gratis Lai Tong during lunchtimes. So a big applause to Young Cheng on Shaftesbury Avenue for its charitable deed.

But some folks have the gall to charge you £6.50 for a bowl (or tumbler) of soup that tastes basically the same as the one served at the above soup Lai Tong kitchen.

Bright Courtyard or to give its full name Bright Courtyard Club (as well as having a sister branch in Shanghai) is a fine dining Chinese restaurant serving primarily Cantonese cuisine with a token bit of regional Chinese thrown in. And in order to appease the newfound eating habits of the rich Mainland Chinese; sashimi is apparently a showcasing speciality of the house (but no sushi). The addition of the misnomer ‘Club’ is probably due to the Chinese obsession with keeping up with the Jones; Royal China Club is conveniently located directly opposite. The Bright Courtyard premises was once briefly occupied by the misguided but thankfully ill fated West Fifty Five.

The dining room belongs to sort of restaurant that’s attached to a hotel or half-decent airport terminal. Warmth was simply done away with from the original interior design brief. But then again PR folks would beg to differ and call it plush modern but I think contemporary banality befits better. The service although good was leaning on overbearing and clingy. On my first visit I asked the lady supervisor about her recommendations, her response was ‘oh I dunno, food too expensive here for me to eat!’ My heart slumped but ‘nuff said and onward we proceeded-

BC’s soup of the day or literally ‘old fire’ soup of the day. For the sake of comparison here’s Young Cheng’s version.

In order to emphasise the perceived value of the overpriced soup, the usually discarded stuff from the bottom of the soup pot is scooped up and dished separately. Pathetic.

The dining companion’s pricier and equally unexciting Cantonese double boiled soup. Essentially the same as the above but with added ingredients to provide a little bit more of yin-enriching and yang-fortifying properties. By ordering this kind of soup one would expect it to enhance one's well-being but unfortunately it was more like enhancing BC’s pockets. A right ‘piddle fart’ of a dish! Pathetic.

The BC cold platter

Supposedly consisting of five spiced beef, drunken chicken, sea blubber, marinated pork shank, and smoked fish. Yes, a couple of prawns somewhat intruded onto the plate.

Pork shank should have been translated as pork knuckle and WTF is sea blubber...fragrant slippery tissue of an elephant seal? The chicken was as tough as my Doc Martens, the beef was too cold and under-spiced, pork was ok and the fish overwhelmed by a sickeningly sweet sauce. We remonstrated about the missing blubber and weren’t prepared to accept the average tasting sweet and sour prawns were a valid substitute.

Ah there you have it, the missing sea blubber suddenly appeared from nowhere as if I was a trading standards inspector about to leap out. Why the hell hadn’t BC call it jellyfish in the first place was beyond me! The cold platter was mean, half-hearted and simply disgraceful. For the best examples of Chinese cold starters the chefs and managers have obviously failed to engage in a bit of industrial espionage at either Phoenix Palace or Princess Garden before they set up shop! Pathetic.

It wasn’t difficult to overhear what one of the cooks in the open kitchen was muttering about in Cantonese, ‘I’m going to take some of that delicious roast duck home tonight since there are loads left over!’ I fell for it and ordered half a bird-

Boneless! A Chinese restaurant immediately commits a cardinal sin when it serves roast duck sans bone (let alone any bird for that matter!) to Chinese diners.

It was ok but it did cost twenty quid and one could have a better whole roast duck for around the same price at any of the Four Seasons restaurants. Pathetic.

Enoki mushroom tofu hotpot. A braised dish of fried pieces of silken tofu and very little of the said shrooms, plus the bleeding obvious additions of soy sauce, oyster sauce, MSG, etc. Considering the base ingredients came to around 2.5 quid in total, you and I could’ve cooked it better. £12.50 was an awful lot dosh to pay for such a simplistic dish! Pathetic.

The small plate of fruit salad came with the bill, a distraction some would say. I paid over seventy pounds* for mediocre meal and for the same amount I could’ve taken away 15 orders of Singapore Fried Noodles from Wong Kei to be distributed among the Big Issue sellers in London or a more rewarding dinner consisting of half a Nanjing Duck, Fried black Cod and Minced Pork, and Crispy Beancurd with Broccoli at the Phoenix Palace and of course not forgetting the ten portions of the delicious laksa plus the free soup at Young Cheng! I left the place bruised and dumbfounded.

*That also included a 10% reduction on all food ordered during their soft opening honeymoon.

Came back as I did but only for the Dim Sum. What with high rents and crippling business rates in Westminster it was inevitable of BC to dabble with the above during lunch hours.

Freebie pickles of cucumbers and mustard greens to whet your appetite.

Courtyard Seafood Rolls or literally ‘thousand threads sea king roll’.

Beautifully crispy but the prawns were scarce as hen's teeth. Sighish ho hum…

Shredded Turnip Cakes or ‘thousand threads turnip short pastries’

Like the above, immensely crispy and the filling was melting beyond words. I actually liked it.

Beef Cheung Fun- steamed rice noodle rolls with ground beef. Disappointingly bland.

Chicken Feet or phoenix claws. It wasn’t braised enough and seasoned likewise, it tasted too much of birds with poor barnyard hygiene.

Har Gau. Excellent lardy tasting fat prawn dumplings and no corners cut. Lush plump prawns within. Ended up mildly shocked but suitably impressed.

Siu Mai- the likes of Dim T and Ping Pong have managed to cock up and misrepresent this hallowed Dim Sum dish big time but BC’s Siu Mais are the best I’ve had in London. Succulent and divine to boot. The addition of the flying fish roe was radther inspirational!

Although The Dim Sum lunch fared better than the doomed dinner, frankly I can’t see BC lasting the distance, the concept is clueless and badly applied. Your only reason for dining here is one of the following-

If either of the two Royal China joints turns you away
A trip to Chinatown might be entirely oblivious
A resident of the Portman Village where the term ‘state pension’ is considered a profanity
Or if you were a ‘made-it’ Chinese person you certainly wouldn’t want to be seen gobbling dumplings amongst the plebs!

Not recommended.




43-45 Baker Street
London W1U 8EW

lifefashiongroup.com

How was your Sunday?

Prepped myself with a tipple of Navarra and a rather large spicy lamb roll from the Ginger Pig in Marylebone. (As for the latter, avoid, ‘twas a case of doing away with excess meat before due disposal’, stick to their excellent pork sausage rolls instead).

Headed eastwards towards the City.

Not the kind of the dish that broadcasts live matches of my beloved Arsenal but Anish Kapoor’s Sky Mirror.

The reflection of the Lloyd's building…

…but done better by the architects of the Willis Building. Eat your heart out Mr Kapoor!

Pompidou Centre effects courtesy of Baron Rogers of Riverside.

Leadenhall Market
(Pizza Express WTF?)

Quaint vents.

The imminent and second home of the fabulously wealthy Qataris that’s Shard London Bridge.

Peloton re Tour of Britain.

The Monument.

The imposing aquarium that dominates the reception area of the Heron Tower.

And also attached within, The Drift- a place to booze and pile on the lbs.

‘Tis a place that offers fish and chips, pasta, and Thai green curry on its menu or every cuisine of the world except this. Perhaps a little too cringeworthy for discerning food lovers.

A glass of Susie Amy to kill off the remaining afternoon.

Did I mention that the place was littered with seashells.

Tap water nazi.

The HM Revenue & Customs’ biggest nightmare!
But welcome to Café East anyway.

Bánh cuốn

A massive portion with lovely steamed slices of chả lụa. Good bánh cuốn should always be thin and delicate but here they were made too thick and ended up as a poor version of the Cantonese cheung fun.

Chả chiên- fried Vietnamese sausage.
A dish that’s nearly impossible to fluff up. Excellent.

Phở

Garnishes for the above.
Once again Café East don’t cut corners when it comes to dishing out generous portion.

Phở tai-
with rare slices of beef.

Although the soup was not as intense as I would've liked but it was still pretty good. Dinner came to 15 quid per person. Long may Café East thrive!