Georgia - Iberia Restaurant

Restaurant: Iberia Restaurant

Location: 294-296 Caledonian Rd, Islington, London N1 1BA

Date of visit: 5 October 2019

Time of visit: 8pm

I was quite surprised to find that I had a choice to make when it came to deciding which Georgian restaurant to visit in London. I had clearly underestimated the appeal and market for Georgian cuisine in the capital. I was then fairly confused by the fact the most favoured restaurant that popped up during my research was called "Iberia". A quick bit of reading answered why - the important thing is that the Caucasian Iberians are not related to the "Iberians" of Spain and Portugal.

After reserving a table for two via the website earlier in the week, we turned up at Iberia just after 8pm on this Saturday evening.

We stepped into the intimate restaurant, to find two waitresses both very much engaged in serving other diners. We were greeted by one of them, and we advised them that we had a table for two booked. She gestured to the general space in the restaurant and asked us to choose a table, rather than be taken to one. To be fair, that's ok with us. She was busy. We're more than capable of doing that bit ourselves.

The menus came very quickly, and seemed very similar to the menu on the website. But a little pricier on the night than online.

It's a very impressive menu, offering a wide selection of hot and cold starters, breads, main courses, fish dishes, sauces and extras. Everything was presented with the name of the dish in transliterated Georgian, with the English description below.

When it came to ordering, there was nothing in the way of a Georgian beer option on the menu, so I opted for the closest thing they had which was the Russian lager Baltika. And was told they had none. So I had a bottle of Heineken instead. Elle would normally have contemplated the wine, but it started at £6.50 a glass. On the plus side, it was imported Georgian wine, but still too much for one glass. And a risk at that. So she too opted for a Heineken.

We seemed to hit a turning point here. From this point on, the level of service seemed to change. It became a bit more attentive and warmer. To the point Elle and I discussed, quietly, if we'd been "rumbled". Did they know we were there to review the experience? We always try and avoid giving that away. Anyway, we'll take it!

We were then asked for our food order. First we went for a shared hot starter option, imeruli khachapuri - flatbread stuffed with Georgian cheese. For my main course, I asked for tsitsila adjikashi - spatchcocked fried spring chicken in spicy hot sauce served with baby potatoes. Elle opted for the garlic version of the same dish, chqmeruli.

This was a fairly small restaurant with a lower section and an upper section, both hosting a handful of tables. We opted to sit in the upper section. The layout of the restaurant actually reminded me of our visit to the Donde Carlos restaurant in Shepherd's Bush when we reached "Colombia" in this project three and a half years ago.

It was a very comfortable environment, and cosily decorated. The walls were adorned with dozens of kantsi horns, tradition Georgian drinking horns, The music was really good too. Elle was particularly enjoying the chilled vibe of the music - a mix of Georgian pop and covers of English language tracks - all quite soulful, until it stopped. Then started again. Then skipped to something else. Then stopped again. And started again. And stopped. And repeated. For the entire duration of our visit. It seems to completely escape the attention of anyone else in the restaurant, especially the waitresses. But it was quite distracting.

The bread came fairly quickly, and was a little uninspiring at first glance. It was fairly small, and cut into quarters. Not very well fired, or particularly cooked looking at all. For me, a Scotsman, almost like a large uncooked potato scone. On eating though, it was very tasty. Well stuffed with at least two types of cheese - one was a cheddar-like cheese, and another quite like goats cheese. With it being cheese-stuffed bread, the two quarters were quite satisfying. Especially as a starter

The mains also came in good time, and these looked impressive! Albeit deadly... the ceramic pots were insanely hot, of which no warning was given. Again, the portion didn't look particularly big, but the contents looked exceptional. You could almost taste it with your eyes - as a spicy dish, and for a spice lover, the colours in this were perfect and very encouraging! And the flavours were fantastic. The spice kick was really intense, and went really well with the other flavours. The chicken was cooked to perfection, but with it being spring chicken, the bones were really something to contend with. And something I completely forgot about. It was a laborious task at times, and had I remembered this at time of ordering I might have actually opted for something else. But then I would've missed out on what must be one of the finest dishes on their menu. The potatoes were very useful for mopping up the remaining chilli and herb sauce, and soaking up the broth. Not a huge amount of potatoes in there, but still good to have.

As mentioned, Elle's dish was basically the garlic version of mine. And it was as fiercely garlicky as mine was intensely spicy. Comments on the chicken were the same as mine - tasty but troublesome. Elle seemed to be left with more broth in the bowl than I was, but mine did seem to have a thicker mixed sauce generally, compared to Elle's crushed garlic and herbs, with chicken broth below. Portion size was on par with mine... small but mighty.

With two meals containing hundreds of tiny bones, it was necessary to have somewhere to put these bones. There was nowhere else within these small dishes that they could be safely "discarded". So Elle asked one of the waitresses (the more nervous, less assured of the two) for a "side plate for the bones". The waitress returned with two pepper shakers. It's awful, but we both laughed. Quite a lot. Not at the waitress, of course! Just at the situation. I was amused that it was Elle being misunderstood for a change (it's usually me). We apologised for our reaction (no offence seemed to have been taken, which was a relief) and Elle tried to explain again. The waitress queried if we were asking for salt. The other waitress (the more confident, assured of the two) overheard this back and forth and explained in Georgian to the other that we wanted a plate, which came straight away. (At one point later, Elle accidentally dropped a knife on the floor, which was almost instantly picked up and replaced).

Our final impression of the restaurant was that it was fairly pricey for what it was. It was high in quality, but definitely could have done with a touch more quantity. The food itself couldn't be faulted though. It was fantastic. Unfortunately, it lacks some finer touches. The service was just odd at times. Inconsistent - either really good, or really lacking. And to have music that plays for no longer than 20 seconds before stopping and repeating, for hours, is entirely avoidable and really quite unforgivable. Clearly the back of house is in good order here. The front of house needs some work.

They're on Uber Eats. Just do it that way instead.

Gambia - home cooking

Not for the first time, this particular meal started with a fail. The research process to find a restaurant or food outlet that served Gambian food was fairly fruitless. At best all I could find were pop-ups, which at that moment in time none had popped up anywhere. But I did find a handful of listings and reviews for a food stall in East London called "The Gamby Shack". I even found Facebook and Instagram pages for the place, which was encouraging. You'd think I would've messaged ahead to make sure they were definitely open. Or at least checked recent activity on the aforementioned pages. Alas...

Of to Netil Market in Hackney we went, on a fairly hot midsummer's afternoon. Netil Market is actually easy to miss, tucked away between two long, not particularly interesting streets. It's also considerably smaller than I expected. And very quiet when we arrived. We took a walk around the dozen or so food, drink and retail stalls on the ground level, but no Gamby Shack. But there was a real feeling of plausibly missing the food stall on the first try, so we swept the stalls again. And again. No Gamby Shack. Then we noticed some wooden stairs, from where chill-out music was emanating upstairs. Up we went, to find a few seating areas, and a little wooden shack. Hosting a radio station, Netil Radio. Not West African food.

We went back downstairs to give the market one last sweep, but also to buy a couple of drinks at one of the stalls. We asked the guy serving the drinks if he knew where The Gamby Shack was. He confirmed there was no such place in the market, and didn't know if it was ever there as he only started working there last week.

We went back upstairs with our drinks, sat outside Netil Radio listening to their tunes and half-asleep DJ, and researched social media to the degree I should have done before the visit. And then discovered that the Gamby Shack disappeared a few months earlier. Fail.

We spent the rest of that afternoon and evening in East London, so it wasn't a completely wasted day. The following week, I did some research to find a traditional Gambian dish we'd enjoy. Then I headed to the kitchen...

One standout meal during the food research was Domoda. A Gambian peanut stew. This wasn't the first time a peanut-based meal came up in this project, as it's a common ingredient in some West African meals. But there was one ingredient that set this ahead of the rest. Scotch bonnet chillies. I was sold!

The process started by cutting 500g of chicken breast into half inch chunks, and browning this in 60ml of peanut oil. This is just browning - the chicken didn't cook through. It'll do this when it simmers with the rest of the ingredients.

Next up was bringing to the boil 1 litre of vegetable stock with two tablespoons of tomato puree, then adding 2 thickly sliced carrots, 130g of sweet potatoes, and two chopped Scotch bonnet chillies (wear gloves!).

While the above simmered slowly, I sauteed 2 large diced onions and 3 minced cloves of garlic and added this to the pot. Finally, in went a bay leaf, some salt, and the final, most important, touch - 130g of smooth peanut butter. 

This needed a good stir, mostly to ensure the peanut butter thins and the whole sauce becomes consistent with no blobs of peanut butter. The browned chicken was added at this point, the pot covered, and the whole thing simmered for 45-50 minutes, adding water when needed.

I served this with white rice. Although it was technically a stew, it definitely felt more like a curry. And it was absolutely exceptional! One of my favourite dishes out of all the home cooked meals in this project. There's absolutely no denying that a large part of that was the spice. This had a real kick to it. Nothing too intense, but it was a serious hit. (If that level of spice isn't your thing, I'd recommend omitting one of the two Scotch bonnet chillies). But the rest of the flavours where amazing too. The chicken, onion and garlic together with the spice hit, and a very flavoursome but still delicate, sweet and salty peanut flavour made this pretty unique and really quite gorgeous. The chicken was also cooked perfectly, showing why the browning process was so important, to keep in the moisture and flavour.

As much as I would have enjoyed a meal on a wooden bench outside The Gamby Shack on that Sunday afternoon, I would have missed out on this fantastic meal which, thanks to cooking for far more than two people, also became lunch and dinner the following day!

Gabon - home cooking

I was a little disappointed to not find a restaurant in London offering Gabonese dishes. Unofficial figures have the number of Gabonese in the UK overall at around 300 or so. As such, there isn't a sizeable ex-pat community to serve. I did check several pan-African restaurants to see if any of those served Gabonese cuisine, but I drew a blank. So it was back to the kitchen.

I had fairly quickly settled on a dish after just a small amount of research. Nyembwe chicken. Spicy chicken with no unpalatable ingredients. And ingredients I wouldn't struggle to find. Or so I thought...

As soon as the words "smoked chicken" actually sank in, I panicked. Smoked chicken isn't really something I've seen. Particularly in my local supermarket, which is where I source almost all of my ingredients (for various reasons, mostly time constraints). And I wasn't even going to entertain the idea of smoking my own chicken! I may have given it more thought if I hadn't also spotted another difficult ingredient - okra. I don't have a good relationship with okra, after a dish I cooked some years back. Back then, despite following all the instructions an okra curry came out as a gloopy, sticky-but-razor-sharp mess. 

So I dug around some more for an alternative.

Another chicken dish popped up several times, which was a good enough reason to go for it. Gabonese mustard chicken.

It was an interesting proposition. A large amount of Dijon mustard was a major part of this dish, which relates to Gabon's history as a former French colony. The addition of lemon juice also added a tropical element to the dish.

I started with searing around 400g of seasoned and cubed chicken thigh meat in vegetable oil until brown, then set this aside. In the same pot I then fried two chopped onions and 3 cloves of garlic (minced) for five minutes or so. 

I then returned the chicken to this pot, along with around 150g of Dijon mustard (which seems like too much, but don't worry), and the juice of one lemon. I brought this up to a simmer, covered the pot, and let this cook slowly for around one hour.

I served this meal in a balti dish with white rice. On eating, it was a really flavoursome meal. The lemon was very tangy and almost overpowering, but not unpleasant at all. It added a real twist to the dish. It was surprising how much of it came through. Not so much for the mustard. Despite almost a whole jar being dolloped into the pot, it was actually very delicate. You knew it was there, but only just. The onion complimented the whole dish nicely, especially as there was a good amount in the dish. With that amount, and how slowly the dish was cooked for one whole hour, the onion reduced nicely to add to the sauce. And the chicken had taken all these flavours mentioned above very nicely. Melt in the mouth, succulent chunks of chicken.

All in all, a very interesting and flavoursome dinner. 

For some reason though,  I knew at the research stage I wasn't going to be happy simply cooking this dish alone. Maybe it was too similar to the types of dishes I cook on a regular basis, with similar procedures to making a curry - something I'm known to do often.

Something I don't do often is dessert, but something had already taken my fancy. Baked bananas - a common dessert in Gabon and much of Africa.

This was a very easy dish to prepare. I bought four bananas, peeled them and cut them each into three pieces. Rolled the banana pieces in a mixture of 2 tablespoons of orange juice and 1 egg, and then rolled on a plate of plain breadcrumbs until covered. Then I fried the banana pieces in medium-hot oil until the breadcrumbs browned on all sides.

Then the bananas were transferred onto a baking tray lined with baking paper, and baked in the oven at 180ºc for five minutes. To serve, I placed the banana pieces on a plate, sprinkled with brown sugar, and topped with sour cream.

Unfortunately, I was so eager to eat this I completely forgot to photograph the end result! But I'm sure you can imagine. I was surprised at how the banana really stiffened up when cooked. For some reason I expected it to soften. It was an incredibly filling, almost stodgy, dessert. The sugar was crunchy, as was the breadcrumb coating. The texture contrasted well. The sour cream worked really well, and added a little extra sweetness to the whole thing. Thankfully, it wasn't particularly greasy or oily at all, which was an initial fear. It was a struggle to finish just because of the density of the bananas (and the fact I cooked/served a double portion each!).

All in all, this was a very good two-course Gabonese meal.

France - The Little French Restaurant

Restaurant: The Little French Restaurant

Location: 18 Hogarth Street, London, SW5 0QY

Date of visit: 10 February 2019

Time of visit: 6pm

From one extreme to another. After failing to find restaurants for the previous two countries in the project, how on earth do you chose a French restaurant in London?! Fairly quickly the criteria to help choose a restaurant was decided. Cost. It's far too easy to spend an absolute fortune when dining French in this city. It's not as easy to do it at a more standard price.

But it also had to be authentic, as always. We whittled it down to two options. Brasserie Zedel, near Piccadilly Circus. And The Little French Restaurant in Earl's Court. Both were decently priced, the former surprisingly so. I was leaning towards the latter, and Elle's thoughts decided the matter. Zedel was too "corporate" (Elle's word) and "obvious and touristy" (my words). The other restaurant was smaller, independent, and - to be honest - closer to home. And the menu looked as authentic as anywhere else.

We arrived just after 6pm. Actually, closer to 6.05pm. The restaurant opens at 6, and I didn't want to be walking through the door as they were literally unlocking it. Regardless, we were the first diners to be welcomed through the door that evening, but only by a few minutes. As such, we were greeted straight away. We pre-booked, and after giving my name, we were given the choice of any of the tables in the restaurant.

Shortly after we sat down we were handed menus, next came some sliced baguette and butter, and after a few minutes were asked for our drinks orders. Very prompt, very friendly service so far.

I tend to go for beer when dining out, wherever that may be. However, the menu has a very non-descriptive, generic entry of "Beer" for £3.50. No indication of what beer, and if it was a glass, pint, bottle or can. In any case, wine felt like the way to go. We were in a French restaurant, we might as well enjoy a bottle of French wine. The house wine, of course.

The house wine arrived, was opened, was tested, and poured. It was Italian. A good wine, for sure. But it was as French as Paolo Nutini. (I need to get one of these into every review now...)

A few more minutes passed, a few more diners had arrived. The waitress came to take our order. There was a very attractive three-course set menu offered within the main menu. A starter, a main and a dessert for £16.50, which was less than buying most two-course combinations. The selection was also very decent - offering the majority of the options from the main "a la carte" menu. Curiously, this was a cash only deal. I can't for the life of me work out why. But in any case this was well signposted.

I went for the French onion soup to start, and coq au vin d'Alsace for main.

Elle opted for smoked chicken and mushroom wrapped in pastry for starters, and chicken supreme farci duxelloise for main.

As suggested by the name, the restaurant is indeed quite small, although I did appear to have an upstairs section too. It's a very charming environment. Cosy, helped by the dim lighting and soft music. Not massively comfortable - the chairs and benches are hard wood with no padding - but certainly not uncomfortable.

The music policy was interesting. We went from a French chanson to Dire Straits, to a French standard, followed by Daft Punk (also French, granted). There was quite a funny moment when, of all French songs that could have come on, "Je t'aime... moi non plus" by Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg started to play. If you think you don't know it, you do. Think French audio porn. Banned by the BBC (probably). A few seconds later the waitress decided it wasn't right for groups of strangers to listen to together whilst eating, and skipped the playlist to the next track!

To the food...

My French onion soup definitely looked the part. There was no doubt as to what it could be, served in a generously sized bowl. Deep brown, with an island of crouton and grated cheese in the middle. The soup was thick with ample slices of soft onion. The crouton (singular) didn't seem to soften in the soup in the slightest, which was no bad thing - I enjoyed the contrast in consistency. Although it's the traditional serving suggestion, I was somehow surprised to find cheese in the soup, but it worked well. The only thing that let this course down was that it was nowhere near hot. It was between lukewarm and warm. I'm not one to complain, although I'd imagine most other people would have flagged this up and asked for it to be heated up. I always just deal with it. Just the way it is. But I have no doubt that if I had flagged it up, it would have been dealt with swiftly and with apology. In any case, the soup was very tasty, helped by a generous dose of cracked black pepper.

If you hadn't seen the menu, you could have been forgiven for thinking Elle had ordered a samosa with brown sauce as a starter. The chicken and mushroom mixed with aioli mayo came encased in a triangular pastry shell. It was a decent starter... not exceptional, but decent. Pretty much as you'd expect chicken and mushroom in pastry to be. It was served on a generous helping of bordelaise sauce - a red wine and shallot sauce - with a small side salad. The dish was served as hot as you'd like.

It's probably the most predictable choice I could have made, but before I'd even looked at a menu I had pretty much already decided that I'd go for coq au vin. It's one of the most traditional of French dishes, and a safe bet. (To be fair, if beef bourguignon was an option, I'd be writing about that now...). This was listed on the menu as the "d'Alsace" variety. I wasn't really sure what the difference was at the time, but a quick look online now suggests that it might mean it's cooked in white wine, as opposed to red. But, as the photo above suggests, that was almost certainly not the case.

Anyway, I certainly can't fault the portion here. This was a very good sized piece of chicken, which was cooked perfectly. But clearly some time ago. This dish was served even cooler than the soup, which was really disappointing. And again, very poorly, I decided against raising the issue. The deeper I got into the chicken, the warmer I found the meat. Unfortunately the sauce the chicken was served with was long since lukewarm. The sauce itself wasn't particularly flavoursome, but I think that may have been more the dish itself than the way it had been made. I'm much more of a spice man, and this - along with much of French cuisine - was at the very other end of the spectrum. The chicken was topped with a good helping of bacon, the saltiness of which complemented the chicken and the sauce very well. And there was a good few, very tasty mushrooms around the chicken.

It was chicken and mushroom twice for Elle! But this time in a different formation. And the presentation was on point here - this looked like a really attractive meal, if a little on the small side. Chicken breast, sliced into four pieces, with a duxelle stuffing - mushrooms, shallots and herbs - served on dijonnaise sauce. This was a very tasty course, the stuffing in particular. But with the portion size here, it was a good move to order a side dish of French fries to share, which made this up to a main meal.

We decided on our dessert options after the first two courses. I'm not really a dessert man, nor do I usually have space for anything more than ice cream after two courses. So I went for the ice cream. Elle opted for the apple pie with cream. She got apple pie with ice cream instead. Unlike me, she did (quite rightly) raise this with the waitress (I, quite wrongly, would have left it again...) and the waitress very quickly rectified the issue, and was very apologetic. The cream came in a small dish, and was of the "skooshy" variety, as opposed to single or double cream.

The bill came quickly after asking. There was a slightly confusing aspect - the bill claimed 10% service was included in the final total. But after doing some maths we found that wasn't the case at all. I hope this isn't a mistake they make often, as they could be doing themselves out of a substantial amount of money.

I'm aware that a fair amount of this review is quite negative. And I don't like that. This is a restaurant very worth visiting. It's also well reviewed and rated. Maybe the issues mentioned above, particularly with the temperature of the dishes, was just symptomatic of a bad night. And maybe I'll man up a bit and actually politely raise issues when things aren't as they should be. That's the only way the restaurant can avoid them in the future.

Maybe it was the half bottle of wine each, but leaving the restaurant and stepping back onto Hogarth Street was almost like walking into a Bordeaux boulevard! (I'd imagine. I've never been.) It's a very small, cute, narrow, cobble-stoned street with small restaurants and cafes. And a big pub directly across the road. That was our next stop.

Finland - home cooking

I thought I'd nailed it. After some time trawling the internet in search of a Finnish restaurant, and not just a pan-Scandinavian restaurant (which were usually mainly Swedish) or cafe (where the only Finnish thing on the menu was a pasty), I thought I cracked it.

The Finnish Church, in Rotherhithe! There was a cafe next door. One which boasted "home cooking" at weekends. This was perfect. To be absolutely sure, I emailed the cafe at the start of the week, hoping to visit that following weekend. But I received no response. The following week we decided we'd just go for it anyway. But before our visit, a response finally came. The cafe was open and they were serving home cooked food that weekend.

So early on Sunday we decided to trek from south west London to Rotherhithe, ready to have lunch at the church. It was a short walk from Canada Water tube station, and in a fairly quiet residential street. The church is actually based in a fairly nondescript, modern building, with the entrance tucked away at the side. The door was locked. But the lady inside at reception saw us standing there looking puzzled, and buzzed us in. After explaining we were here for lunch, and being met with slight bemusement for clearly not being Finnish, we walked though to the cafe.

The cafe was actually at the back of the main church hall, separated by large wooden doors. The service had clearly only recently ended. To the side was a small, self-service counter with a few small containers of hot food. Before I saw what it was, my eyes were drawn to a blackboard with the name of the meal, and the price - £7.50. Bingo! Time for a Finnish meal...

Or not. It became quite clear that the word on the blackboard was Finnish for "lasagne". The dishes on offer were lasagne, and vegan lasagne. Lunch was going to be as Finnish as The Proclaimers. This was a failed mission.

We still dished it out and had lunch there. But I had already started planning what I was going to cook...

-------------------------------

So to the kitchen! I wanted to avoid a fish dish. I definitely wanted something meaty and hearty. I found exactly that in lihapyöryköitä - Finnish meatballs. For many, our introduction to Scandinavian meatballs came from IKEA. What made these Finnish meatballs and not Swedish I didn't know. And to be perfectly honest, I didn't really care by this point - I just wanted to eat something described as Finnish!

I later came to discover that Finnish meatballs are lighter and less dense than their Swedish counterparts, and served in a creamy sauce rather than a brown, meaty gravy.

So, the first stage was to make the meatballs. I mixed 500g lean minced beef, 120g plain breadcrumbs, 1 finely chopped onion, 1 beaten egg, 120ml double cream, 2 teaspoons of salt and 1 teaspoon of allspice together very thoroughly until evenly mixed. Then came the laborious task of moulding this mix into golf ball-sized meatballs. I managed to get 22 meatballs out of this mix.

To brown the meatballs I melted 50g butter in a large frying pan, then browned 11 of the meatballs all over, set these aside and browned the remaining 11 meatballs. When done, I added 2 tablespoons of flour to the butter and juices in the pan and cooked this for a minute or two, before slowly pouring 450ml of milk into the pan, whisking all around while I did this.

After adding another 120ml of double cream to the pan and mixing thoroughly, I then added all of the meatballs into the sauce, brought this to simmer, and let the meatballs cook for around 20 minutes, turning the meatballs every five minutes.

While these cooked, I also peeled, chopped, and boiled two large potatoes to serve with the meatballs.

When all was ready, I served six meatballs per plate, topped with the creamy sauce, with the potatoes on the side, along with a heaped teaspoon of mixed berry preserve. The suggestion was for lingonberry jam, which I couldn't find. Cranberry sauce the next alternative, but I felt this would be a little too sweet. So I went for the slight sweetly-sourness of the preserve.

The verdict? Elle said it first - this was the best home cooked meal I've made in this project so far. And I have to wholeheartedly agree. This meal was exceptionally good. Beyond anything I've done so far. The meatballs were absolutely gorgeous - fell apart quite easily, when required. Light but sumptuous. Full of flavour. The sauce was luxuriously rich, and surprisingly tasty for the lack of ingredients. The consistency of the sauce was perfect, smooth and thick, and worked so well with the meatballs. And the berry preserve just topped it all off perfectly - added a beautiful sweetness and tartness to the meatballs and, especially, the creamy sauce.

There was so much to love about this meal. I wanted meaty and hearty, and this was those things and so much more. The only downside? The obscene calorie count. But let's not dwell on that.

The remaining meatballs and sauce became lunch the following afternoon, and they were just as good then.

The church visit may have failed to tick the right boxes, but I'll preach about this particular meal for years.