Albannach

Good whisky bars are thin on the ground in London. I know of a couple, Albannach in Trafalgar Square and the Salt Bar near Edgware Road, while there's a new place called Whisky Mist that opened with great fanfare recently (although this seems to be the kind of place that serves Monkey Shoulder cocktails rather than good malts...). I'm going to be visiting all of them eventually, and if anyone knows of others, please drop me a line in the comments. Remember, more whisky = good thing.

Recently, the Yogababe and I got together with some friends, LS, SY and KY, for a little farewell meal (LS is leaving London for pastures new). The Pretty Lady couldn't join us. We decided on Albannach, since there was a Top Table offer, and I'd been itching to try the restaurant for some time. I've been to Albannach a couple of times previously, but mainly for the whisky.

Albannach spreads itself over 3 floors. There's a lounge / nightclub in the basement, called Doon (inside joke for Scotsmen), a bar with sofas and tables on the ground floor (as well as a chandelier made out of stag antlers), and a restaurant on a mezzanine level, where whisky tastings are also held. The bar is where I've generally tended to loiter, sipping and tasting whiskies while propping up a little round table.

Albannach

66 Trafalgar Square

London WC2N 5DS

020 7930 0066

First off, the whisky. The selection is extensive, although some of the bottles seen on the website have since been finished. Au revoir to the Port Ellen 24 yo and the Laphroaig 10 yo Cask Strength - they had run out when I asked for them. Nevertheless, I've tasted a number of beauties there - Aberlour a'bunadh Batch #22, Caol Ila Cask Strength, and a Talisker 20 yo 1982 among them. The great thing about Albannach versus the Salt Bar is that at Albannach you get your whisky in 50ml measures. The Salt Bar apparently (as it says on their website) serves its whisky in 35ml measures, which is neither here nor there of course.

The restaurant is small, seating perhaps 30 people. The menu is short and to the point - starters, main courses, and desserts, perhaps 5 or 6 of each. There's also a set menu that's pretty good value, £12 for 2 courses and £18 for 3 courses. I chose to order a'la carte, ordering a rabbit terrine with piccalilli and quail scotch egg to start, a ribeye of Buccleuch beef with dauphinois potatoes, cavalo nero and wild mushrooms for a mains, and a Scottish cranachan and shortbread for dessert. The Yogababe had a trio of cured fish, a wild mushroom risotto with Inverloch cheddar crisp. The others had various other items, with KY's and SY's a loin of venison, thyme potato cake and parsnip puree worth mentioning.

As always, good produce tends to end up in good food. After all, most chefs are at least reasonably skilled. I enjoyed my starter, although I thought the rabbit terrine was a little under-seasoned. No matter - the typical gaminess of the rabbit came to the surface, offset by the tart picalilli (shame about the fact that there was just a dab of it). The scotch quail egg was interesting - somehow the yolk was still liquid!

My rib eye steak was delicious, but it was Buccleuch beef after all. It was perfectly cooked, and the dauphinoise potato was very well done. The mushrooms didn't taste wild though, and I would have been a lot happier if they had included some morels. However, I was very happy with my cranachan - whipped double cream on top of a mixture of whisky, honey, and raspberries (with a little bit of shortbread on the side). There was supposed to be oatmeal on top, but there wasn't - not that I think it would have improved the dish much.

I also liked the Yogababe's trio of cured fish - whisky cured salmon (but of course!), smoked mackerel pate and sardine escabeche. Great little idea for a dish - tasty, simple and keeping in with the Scottish theme.

Unfortunately, the service left something to be desired. Despite the small number of diners, the two wait staff could not seem to keep up with requests. I asked for a tasting glass a few times, for example, because they kept serving me whisky in tumblers. Nevertheless, I thought the food was of a decent standard, although slightly expensive. I guess the diners do cross-subsidise the whisky drinkers, because the whisky is fairly priced and quite worthwhile.

Scores:

9 July 2008: TFQ = 24, CS = 25, S = 10, AD = 9, VfM = 6. Total = 74 points.

What does this mean?

Como te llamas, alpaca?

There are 4 species of South American camelids, the llama, the alpaca, the vicuña and the guanaco. On our trip to Peru, the Pretty Lady and I saw all 4 species (the guanaco took some finding). The llama and the alpaca are the two domesticated species, while the vicuña and the guanaco are wild. It's not clear whether or not the llama and the alpaca are domesticated versions of the vicuña and the guanaco. As can be told from their family name, they are closely related to camels, and form a clade, Camelidae.

First up, the llama. We saw many camelids in the company of locals, but not all of them were llamas - in fact a large number of them were alpacas. Llamas are beasts of burden in Peru, much like the donkey or the horse, and we saw several laden with packs. However, llamas can only carry approximately 30kg a day (according to our Inca Trail guide) and are thus less useful than a human porter.

The adjacent picture shows a herd of llamas at Machu Picchu. Their job is to crop the grass growing on the terraces, living lawnmowers if you will. There was a baby llama born just 4 days before we arrived at Machu Picchu, but there were so many tourists surrounding it that we couldn't snap a picture.

Next up, the alpaca. They are very similar to llamas, but are slightly smaller, and are prized for their wool and their meat more than llamas are. We couldn't tell llamas from alpacas, so we got some tips from one of our guides, Emilio in Puno. According to him, the key is to look at the ears. Llamas have straight ears, while alpacas have slightly curved ears. It's not very clear from the adjacent image what shape the alpaca's ears are, but Emilio assured me that they were definitely, incontrovertibly, alpacas. The hotel we stayed at in Puno had a herd of alpacas on the grounds, all used to tourists standing around cooing over them.

Alpaca meat is gamey and rich, like a cross between aged beef and venison. It takes on smokey flavours very well, and I loved the grilled alpaca steaks that so many restaurants served. I also had alpaca in a stew, with onions, rice and aji pepper, but the rich sweet gaminess that characterises the meat was lost in the stew. Shame.

On to the vicuña, a wild species of camelid very much prized for its soft wool. Vicuña wool is at least as good quality as cashmere, and very much rarer, as the animal is heavily hunted and poached to get at the valuable wool. They can be distinguished from the alpaca and llama by the spindly deer-like legs, a feature that also makes the baby vicuña look like Bambi. The adjacent image is of a baby vicuña that a Quechua woman near Sillustani. She was selling photo-ops to tourists.

Also near Sillustani is a large lake with an island in the middle. On that island live a herd of 2,000 vicuñas, protected and managed sustainably for their fur. There is only a single gamekeeper, and he's responsible for keeping away poachers.

Last, and hardest to find in Peru, is the guanaco. The guanaco occupies a slightly different habitat compared to the other 3 camelids - it lives further south, in Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. To see one, we had to go to Lima zoo. But we managed to take a picture, and that's the adjacent image. It's got the vicuña's spindly legs, but is much larger, comparable in size to the llama.

It's not easy to tell the 4 species apart. Clearly, the wild animals have spindlier legs, and resemble deer more. The llama is also slightly larger than the alpaca, as is the guanaco compared to the vicuña, but for the domesticated species at least, large alpacas overlap in size with small llamas. There's the ear test, as described above, but it's hard to tell. I also suspect that alpacas have a slightly shorter muzzle compared to llamas, but the guide wouldn't confirm this. I wonder if you could tell by taste?

Guinea pigs

Ah, guinea pigs. They're illegal to eat in the UK, since there's apparently a law that prohibits animals classified as pets from being consumed as food. So Peruvian restaurants in the UK aren't allowed to serve guinea pigs, even though it's their national dish (I know, I asked a few).

No matter - on our trip to Peru, I was determined to partake of their national dish. So I did - I had cuy al horno, or roasted guinea pig. It turned out that they weren't that easy to find. At Pacha Papa, a (slightly touristy) restaurant the Pretty Lady and I visited twice, the cuy needed to be ordered a day ahead. Not ideal for my random walk derived restaurant choosing strategy. All in all, I think I only visited 3 places where cuy was available instantly, and two of them were the simple roast in the oven.

Anyway, guinea pig has really sweet meat - a bit like Chinese char siu, except that the sweetness is in the flesh itself rather than derived from a barbecue marinade. I can see why the Peruvians like it. It tastes like I thought rabbit char siu would taste like. The adjacent image shows a guinea pig roast I had in Cusco. As you can see, the kitchen has removed the head, and divided the body into 3 segments. I've eaten one segment, so the guinea pig is actually slightly longer than the portions on the plate suggest.

The one problem about guinea pig roast is the skin. It's rubbery, hard and tasteless, and I suspect is not really edible. Maybe it was left on as a test - what Terry Pratchett calls the Sheep's Eye test. That is, what the most disgusting thing that you can leave on a tourist's plate and have him still eat it? Unfortunately I only caught on after I ate most of the skin...

Never mind. The other reason why Peruvians eat guinea pig is probably because they are quite abundant. In Puno, near Lake Titicaca, we stayed at a hotel that had their guinea pig farm (maybe) in the lakeside garden. The adjacent image is of a denizen of the garden. And it wasn't easy to get either - those guinea pigs were slippery buggers and difficult to sneak up on. Hardly surprising, as the guinea pigs that were friendly to humans in Peru were probably eaten long ago.

So, guinea pig has sweet and tasty meat (shame they don't allow them to be eaten in the UK). This probably applies to most members of the rodent family. In any case in South America they make a habit of eating rodents - the capybara, largest rodent in the world, is a popular delicacy. Not least because they are semi-aquatic and considered to be fish by the Catholic church, hence eligible for consumption on fasting Fridays.

Four o nine

The Pretty Lady's cousin, SY, lives in Clapham. She invited both of us, Yogababe (her classmate - yes, the world's a little small) and her brother JY for dinner in Clapham one evening at Four o nine. It was a interesting little place - leather sofas, leather-upholstered chairs, wooden floors, walls stencilled with images of Clapham High Street. The restaurant is reached by means of a private entrance in Landor Road. You reserve, pitch up, ring the bell and ask to be let in.

Four o nine
409 Clapham Road
London SW9 9BT
020 7737 0722

We sat by the window, which was a slight mistake because of the setting sun shining onto the table, but after the sun set it was cosy and comfortable, despite the full restaurant. It was an unexpected little gem. The chef used to work at Chez Bruce before branching out on his own, and while I discovered this after we ate at the restaurant, it definitely showed. The food was quite delicious.

It was pretty early, so we had the restaurant pretty much to ourselves. We began with cocktails - I had Tommy's margarita (not sure how this differs from a normal margarita, but it was less sweet than the usual ones, and therefore that much refreshing). The Pretty Lady had a pineapple caipirinha which seemed a magnificent idea when I saw it in the menu, and worked really well too. It's the kind of drink that makes you go "Now why didn't I think about that?"

Anyway, SY, JY and I started with a pork dish. It was a medallion of pork belly on a bed of salad dressed with sweet mustard and topped with a poached egg. The pork was slightly underdone, which normally would be a little unpleasant (given the taste of British pigs), but the slight raw taste went well with the mustard and the smooth egginess of the poachie. It was quite brilliant.

The Pretty Lady and the Yogababe had chilled mint pea soup with truffled mascarpone. It was almost the consistency of mushy peas, but was cool, refreshing, and sweet. I couldn't taste the truffles, but the mascarpone dotted in the soup gave it a light dairy tang that cut through the sweet peas. Very good indeed.

JY and SY had sliced roasted lamb shoulder on a bed of summer beans (looked like ratatouille, but done with beans) and pesto. It looked very good indeed, but I didn't manage to steal a forkful. The expressions on their faces seemed to say they enjoyed it though. I do regret not tasting it, but it's another excuse to go back.

The Pretty Lady and I had spatchcocked roast chicken with morels, spring onions and new potatoes. The chicken was good - moist, slightly crisped skin with give - and the morels were bursting with jus. The spring onions were done just al dente, and the new potatoes had been browned in what tasted like chicken fat. Great execution, although I'm minded of Tyler Cowen's advice to never order roast chicken in restaurants (why? because it's popular, and hence easily survives the competitive process to get on the menu without necessarily tasting great). It wasn't half bad though, and I couldn't cook this myself.

The Yogababe had a cheese plate for mains (she's now a social animal eater, and we're not really that social, we're just family). Decent selection of Neal's Yard cheeses - I particularly liked the Stilton. It was slightly overripe, more to my taste than the 'Babe's.

We moved on elsewhere for pudding though, so I didn't get to sample the fresh ginger ice cream that I was eyeing earlier. Oh well. Plenty of excuses to go back now. The Pretty Lady thought the food was slightly overpriced, and that may well be the case. But the decor is quirky, the location a little out of the way, the food is tasty, and the cocktails aren't too sweet. A little more expensive seemed okay to me.

Scores:

3 July 2008: TFQ = 25, CS = 25, S = 12, AD = 8, VfM = 6. Total = 76 points.

What does this mean?

Slyrs, the German whisky

During a recent trip to Munich, I was mooching around airport duty-free with the Pretty Lady when I spotted this:

Bavarian single malt whisky, distilled at Slyrs distillery in Schliersee, Bavaria. It was a 3 year whisky, distilled 2004. According to Celtic Malts, the barley is wood-smoked, not peat-smoked. I wonder what it tastes like.

Unfortunately I didn't buy it (I was toting a 1 litre bottle of Lagavulin Distillers' Edition at that time), due to space constraints on my little whisky shelf at home. Maybe I can find a little sample bottle somewhere. Or I could wait till they release their 12 year old expression in 2015...