Eyre Brothers

Sometimes, restaurants survive in the strangest places. A few months ago, on my way to a meeting in Shoreditch (of all places...) I stumbled across Eyre Brothers on Leonard Street, near Old Street tube station.

Hmm, I thought to myself. This place looks interesting - but why isn't it crowded? After walking back and forth across the front door at several different times of the day, including lunch and early dinner (I had a lot of meetings), and discovering that it was never really very crowded, I decided to give it a try. And I'm really glad that I did.

Eyre Brothers
70 Leonard Street
London EC2A 4QX
+44 (0) 20 7613 5346

The restaurant is split into a dining area and a drinking area. A long bar stretches the length of the room. You can eat a full three course meal in the dining area, or sit in the drinking area, drink a lot and nibble a choice of tapas from the menu scrawled in chalk on the boards above the bar. I've done both, and both times I had a lot of fun.

First, full-scale dining. The food is Iberian in conception, and yes, that includes Portuguese. No surprise, as the eponymous chef and front of house, David and Robert Eyre, grew up in Mozambique. The co-head chef is João Cleto.

On my visit with the Pretty Lady, I had sliced octopus drizzled with paprika and olive oil to start, grilled lomo de pata negra (loin of a very tasty breed of pig) with roast potatoes as a mains, and a saffron creme brulee. All were extremely tasty, although I felt very guilty eating the octopus (they're amazingly cute and intelligent when alive, and you can actually play with them underwater if you don't frighten them away). There was a great deal of paprika in both the octopus and the lomo, but the sweet heat of Spanish pimenton is something I can't get enough of anyway. Perfectly boiled and thinly sliced octopus and soft, slightly rare, flavourful iberico - what could be better?

I can't remember what the Pretty Lady had to eat, as she actually enjoyed my choices a lot more, especially the saffron creme brulee. It was another one of those "aha!" ideas - simple, yet utterly delicious. Saffron and vanilla together are extremely tasty.

On another visit, we started by swigging sherry at the drinking area (they have several bottles, ranging from dry Inocente and Tio Pepe to sweet Pedro Ximenez, with every shade of dryness in between). Then we moved on to tapas - chorizos de picantes, prawns sizzled with garlic and chilli, fried peppers (pimentos de padron) and a salt cod tortilla. The tortilla was the best I've ever tasted, much better than the stuff available even at Barrafina, or even in Spain. Light, just holding together, the egg just set and flavourful from the salt cod. Perfection.

Eyre Brothers isn't usually very crowded, even on Friday nights at 7 pm. The staff tell me that it's due to the slightly out of the way location, but people in the know do turn up here and enjoy the food, the wine and the friendly staff. As I will in the future.

Scores:

14 July 2008: TFQ = 26, CS = 27, S = 16, AD = 8, VfM = 6. Total = 83 points.

What does this mean?

Domaine des Cassagnoles 5 yo

I had this little tipple at Eyre Brothers, and having read quite a bit about armagnac in recent weeks, decided that it was worth writing a full tasting note about. Now I'll have to go back to the East Room and taste my birth year armagnac again - properly.

This is one of the cheaper armagnacs. It retails for about £29 a bottle at the Whisky Exchange (yes, buy your spirits from them please - they really care about the quality of alcohol). Like whisky though, quite often the cheap ones are still good ones. I enjoyed a snifter of this quite a bit, partly because it suited the food (simple but good tapas) I was eating quite well. It was listed on the menu as 6 year old (VSOP), but I'm fairly sure this vineyard doesn't do a 6 year old expression.

Domaine des Cassagnoles 5 yo
Single producer armagnac - Ténarèze (Gondrin)
41% ABV
Red brown

Nose: Chocolate cake, white grape, salt caramel.
Mouthfeel: Medium bodied, clingy like a good port.
Tasting: Sweet. Limes, green tea, prunes, apricots.
Finish: Medium length. Lime peel, orange blossom.

My trusty reference book (Armagnac, by Charles Neal) rates Domaine des Cassagnoles as a "average producer", and their 5 year old expression as "commercially correct". Talk about damning with faint praise. I suppose that this could well be true when rating it in comparison to great armagnacs, but on its own merits it's quite enjoyable.

The producer, Domaine des Cassagnoles, is in a small town called Gondrin in the Ténarèze producing region. It's run by Janine and Gilles Baumann, who've been making armagnac since 1974. The sole grape used is Ugni Blanc, the same grape they use to make Cotes des Gascogne white wine, their vineyard's main produce. On their website, they list 4 armagnacs available - 5 years, 10 years, Hors d'Age (20 years) and a "blanche" eau de vie, for cocktails.

Vineyard size: 65 hectares
Chai: Organised, cement and dirt floor, humid.
Soil: argilo-calcaires (clay with a high proportion of limestone).
Barrels: Gascon, Vosges, Limousin.
Grapes: Ugni Blanc (100%)

- from Armagnac, by Charles Neal.

Pacha Papa

On our recent trip to Peru, the Pretty Lady and I were often at a slight loss in Cusco when it came to meal times. We were on a relaxed holiday, electing to play it by ear, so we couldn't eat at restaurants where we needed to make a reservation at (we missed eating at Cusco's best restaurant, Cafe MAP, because of this). No matter - Cusco is full of eateries, ranging from tourist traps that haul in unsuspecting gringos (or chinos like us) to homestyle joints that serve local food for cheap prices to locals and the odd tourist venturing off the beaten path.

Pacha Papa veers more towards the tourist trap end of the spectrum, but one that is good value for money and serves local specialities with more than a hint of authenticity. We went there twice over 5 days. Adjacent image from foodite at flickr, because we didn't happen to take any holiday snaps. More at his flickr photostream.

Pacha Papa
Plazoleta San Blas 120
Cusco, Peru
+51 (84) 241 318

The restaurant is located in San Blas, the artist's quarter, slightly bohemian, and a 5-10 minute climb up the hill behind the Plaza des Armas. It's a slightly uncomfortable walk for us sea-level dwellers. However, once there, it's a little square with a church in the middle, with the restaurant located in the courtyard of a Spanish colonial house.

The tables are wooden, the chairs are just a step above benches, but the service is good and the food tasty. There is a large earthen oven (almost tandoori-like) where the meats are grilled and the pizzas baked. Also available is "pachamanca", a meal where the food is placed in a pit and grilled under hot stones (we didn't get this of course).

The menu has the usual gringo fare of pizzas and pasta, but in the section entitled "menu tipical" in the menu, there's a selection of Andean grilled meats (including alpaca and guinea pig), well-known Peruvian dishes such as pork adobo and lomo saltado, as well as three or four Peruvian stews. There's also the Peruvian corn beer, chicha de jora, and corn lemonade, chicha morada.

On our first trip there, I had a mug of chicha de jora - it came with a massive head on top, with cinnamon sprinkled over. The beer itself is malty, sweet and tangy, more like a soft drink than a beer. It's not very strong - about 4% I think - and it's very thirst quenching. Unfortunately I was suffering from a cough that restricted me to a single mug.

I also had olluquito con charqui - olluco tubers, potatoes, onions, dried alpaca meat stewed with aji pepper. The alpaca didn't really taste of much, because of the sweet-sour heat from the aji. It's spicy, even to my cast-iron tongue and stomach, and quite insidious because there's a delayed timelag. The first few spoonfuls were mild and flavourful, then the heat smacked me in the back of the throat. Whew! The Pretty Lady had a variation thereof, with grilled beef and no aji pepper. I thought that tasted better, as there was more flavour to the meat.

On our second visit, I had a sort of mixed grill - roast beef and roast alpaca with quinoa, plantain and vegetables, grilled in the earthen oven. The alpaca was the standout part of the dish - roasted perfectly medium, sweet and rich, and a horsey gaminess that put it just this side of exotic. No wonder people like eating it. The Pretty Lady decided to go for whole mountain trout (yes, fish at 3,000m!) which was roasted with fennel. Fish and fennel is always a great combination, and this did not disappoint - the trout was oily and rich, offset by the fennel's aniseedy flavour.

We also had rocutos rellenos (chile pepper stuffed with minced beef and cheese) and papas rellenos (mashed potato molded around a filling of minced beef, onions and what tasted suspiciously like olives, then fried). Both were pretty tasty, and came in reasonably sized portions too. The latter was often a problem in Peru, because neither myself or the Pretty Lady are used to the American-sized mega-helpings that the restaurants served to gringos.

Total cost for each visit was around 80-90 soles, or about £18 for two people. It's expensive in Peru, but cheap in comparison to a London night out. In any case Pacha Papa is a great place to experience traditional Andean cuisine made with local ingredients, and a decent drinking den, especially if like me, you like corn beer.

Scores:

11 July 2008: TFQ = 24, CS = 23, S = 14, AD = 6, VfM = 8. Total = 75 points.

What does this mean?

Sea serpent week!

It's sea serpent week at the ever-entertaining, quirky and knowledge-enhancing Tetrapod Zoology!

Hook Island tadpole
Moore's Beach monster
Something no one seems to know anything about
Tecolutla monster
Where are all the dead sea monsters?

It would be fantastic if there were still plesiosaurs and pliosaurs swimming around in the oceans today. Given that mankind has fished out just about every tasty aquatic creature though, it's extremely unlikely, and getting more unlikely by the day...

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?