Guatemala - Quinta

 

Restaurant:  Quinta

Address:  18 Bute St, South Kensington, London, SW7 3EX

Date of visit:  29 October 2023

Time of visit:  6pm

Before we head to Guatemala, we need to revisit El Salvador briefly. When we embarked on El Salvador back in 2018 there didn't appear to be any restaurants in London serving Salvadorian food. But, thanks to Facebook, I did connect with a Salvadorian lady who was making pupusas - filled corn tortillas - for fellow countryfolk. And for those curious, like us.

Fast forward to 2023 and there is finally a restaurant in London serving pupusas and some other Savadorian dishes. That restaurant is Quinta, in South Kensington.

"Why is this relevant to Guatemala?" I hear you cry. Well it turns out this same restaurant actually specialises in Mayan food, including dishes from Southern Mexico, Northern Honduras, Belize and... Guatemala! And it seems to be the only place in the city to serve a specifically Guatemalan dish. The national dish, no less.

We arrived at 6pm on a cold Sunday evening and walked into a venue that seemed more like a cafe than a restaurant, complete with open kitchen. With no one around to ask on arrival we walked up to the kitchen to confirm our booking. A gentleman in the kitchen led us back towards the exit, offering us a table by the window. That exit door wouldn't close properly, meaning it remained quite draughty and cold for the duration of our visit, although it did eventually start to warm up a little.

Unfortunately there were no Guatemalan lagers on offer, but the menu did offer a Mexican lager I'd never had, Pacifico, which we ordered. The waiter returned shortly afterwards to tell us he had none, so we went for two bottles of Modelo which duly arrived. We were a little surprised that no glasses came with the bottles, but this wasn't an issue as we would've consumed directly from the bottle regardless.

It became quite clear quite quickly that this one gentleman was running the restaurant floor on his own. He remained very friendly throughout but was clearly quite stretched. Attentive when called upon, but just as eager to get away.

The menu was quite a familiar one to anyone acquainted with Mexican food. Tacos, burritos, rice bowls. No starters per se, but plenty of sharers: nachos, padron peppers, chicken wings to name a few.

And pupusas. This is the first time we've encountered a previously completed country on the A-to-Z with no restaurant visit, and then later found a new restaurant offering that country's food. So we had to start with some pupusas. And the following paragraph will be added to the end of 2018's El Salvador review.

The restaurant clearly specialised in pupusas, referring to itself as a "pupuseria" on its website, and a hard-to-miss neon sign in the window demanding "EAT MY PUPUSA". There are eight different pupusas offered, with a mix of a few key ingredients - black beans, cheese, pork and jalapenos. We went for two of the pupusas stuffed with all four ingredients. They were excellent. Very fresh, hot and filling. The cheese was very firm and stringy, with minced pork and jalapenos on top of the cheese. The pupusas were topped with pumpkin seeds and fresh chopped coriander and served with curtido - a pickled fermented salad - and spicy tomato salsa which were fantastic accompaniments. 

For the main dish, we were only ever going to go for one thing. The only Guatemalan item on the menu, and apparently the whole of London. Fried chicken pepian. A thick curry pretending not to be a stew. Slightly annoyingly, despite asking for the pupusas to come as a starter, the mains arrived almost straight after the pupusas. This meant by the time we got round to eating the mains they had cooled down quite considerably, not helped by the door opening and closing with more frequency as the restaurant got busier. But that wasn't the sole reason. I don't think the dishes were served particuarly hot in the first place. 

Which was a real shame because it was a lovely dish that wasn't allowed to shine properly. The meal was served in a large, shallow bowl with the sauce taking up one half, and the rice and pickled salad on the other half, and the fried chicken placed on top of the rice. 

The chicken itself was very well fried, to the point it was quite dry on its own. But there was ample curry sauce to help with that, sauce that was quite flavoursome but not particularly spicy. It had quite a rustic, deep earthy flavour to it. The pickled salad, which involved pickled cauliflower, was an interesting addition, and actually quite a nice touch.

Despite first impressions of the dish being overwhelmed by curry sauce the proportion of rice, chicken and salad was pretty much spot on. It wasn't a particularly generous portion, but the earlier pupusas helped with that overall.

The whole visit was accompanied by a selection of pretty generic, recent pop music in the background. The rush had been and gone as we dined, and the waiter did eventually take the opportunity to come and check all was ok with the food. However it was still quite an effort later to get his attention to ask for the bill. When that did finally happen he reassured us that they would have Pacifico lager back in tomorrow.

It wasn't a bad experience by any means. The food was excellent, but the main course coming out lukewarm-to-cold, and the rushed frantic nature of the service as a result of bare minimum staffing took the shine off what could have been a very enjoyable evening. Still, I felt satisfied that we left that evening having ticked two Central American boxes in one visit.

Grenada - home cooking

 

I was particularly enthused by our renewed committment to the "A to Z of London Restaurants" project, and was keen to tick the next country off the list as soon after the prior Greek restaurant visit as we could. A two and a half month gap is a definite improvement on two and a half years!

However that enthusiasm was fairly quickly dampened when the preparatory research began. For some reason I didn't expect to find a problem locating traditional Grenadian food in London. But I was wrong. After identifying a handful of traditional, fairly exclusively Grenadian dishes it was then a case of finding a restaurant or food stall serving such dishes. I could only come across one "defintiely" Grenadian restaurant, which unfortunately seemed to serve only pan-Caribbean dishes (patties, bakes, jerk chicken and curries). And of the other pan-Caribbean establishments in London, of which there are many, nowhere seemed to sell anything particularly Grenadian.

The bar I had set myself was oil down. The national dish of Grenada. If I couldn't find it served, I'd cook it myself. Easy? Not quite. The next hurdle was sourcing the key ingredients. One of which was new on me. Breadfruit. Given the fact it was the first time I'd even seen the word, I was fairly sure this wasn't something I could easily get my hands on.

In the end, it wasn't as tricky as first thought. I was assured I would "probably" find it at Caribbean market stalls in Brixton or Shepherd's Bush (areas with a sizeable Caribbean community). I also realised I could buy it tinned. Normally I would always go fresh. However, there was a great degree of "maybe" about sourcing a real breadfruit. Also, not an excuse, but I really didn't have the time to wander around markets looking for something I still wasn't really sure wasn't a myth in this country. 

Oh look! Six tins for £16 on Amazon. Buy now.

It was pretty clear when trying to find a good authentic recipe that, like many national dishes, there are many varations of oil down, which no doubt would differ from family to family, and neighbourhood to neighbourhood. I deliberately chose a recipe that brought together the mean average of ingredients of all the other recipes I came across.

There was however one key ingredient that I already decided I was going to miss. Pig tails. I had absolutely no intention of sourcing, cooking or eating anything close. If that immediately disqualifies this as anywhere near an authentic replication of the national dish then I'm absolutely fine with that.

So, to the kitchen. Green seasoning is another new one on me, but apparently very common and widespread in much of the cooking across the Caribbean. Rather than buy ready made, I decided to make my own. This was a mistake.

It was actually reasonably easy to put together. I combined in a bowl the following: 6 stalks of spring onion, 4 twigs of fresh thyme, 7 fat garlic cloves, 5 pimento peppers, a small handful of coriander leaves, 1 large onion, a handful of fresh parsley leaves, an inch cube of ginger, teaspoon of dried chilli flakes, and a tablespoon of vinegar. I then used a hand blender to blend everything together until it became a nice paste. Which it did quite nicely, leaving me a really nice bright red green seasoning. Very ungreen.

Even just looking at that again makes my heart sink. I bought red pimento peppers. Which completely dominated the colour of my "green" seasoning. I had no doubt it was still going to taste pretty epic. But I feared for the overall look of the final dish.

Anyway, onward. Rather than chicken on the bone, I used six boneless chicken thighs and covered the thighs in the red green seasoning, placing this in the fridge for now while I prepped all the rest of the ingredients.

After that I added one and a quarter tins of coconut milk to a bowl, added 2 teaspoons of ground turmeric, and blended this until the milk was an even colour throughout. Then coated chicken (plus all the remaining red green seasoning) was added to the bottom of a heavy cooking pot, along with 250g of the tinned breadfruit (cut into chunks), 1 unripe banana (sliced), 2 carrots (sliced), 250g pumpkin (chopped), 100g okra (sliced, from frozen), and some salt.

I then poured the turmeric coconut milk into the pot, and covered the contents of the pot with 70g of spinach. Lid on and cook over a medium heat for 25 minutes. The pot shouldn't be stirred while cooking.

When there's about 10 minutes left of the 25, its about time to make some dumplings. Really basic ingredients. 120g of flour. 240g water. A dash of salt. This is my nightmare. I cannot do anything which involves flour, baking, consistency... Even when I follow the instructions to the letter, it all goes terribly wrong. The very same happened here. So Elle had to step in to turn my mix of slop into about a dozen pinkie-finger-sized long dumplings. When the timer was up, I added these dumplings to the top of the pot contents.

The pot was then re-covered, and cooking resumed for another 45 minutes or so. Again, stirring should be avoided.

Forty five minutes later, the dish is ready to serve. I originally panicked about the amount of liquid still in the pot... I was expecting just a little left at the bottom. I tried to boil some off originally, but started to worry about overcooking the dish. So I served up the dish as it was, onto two plates, and provided a copious amount of bread to help with the sauce!

It turns out the bread was barely needed. The sauce thickened up really nicely on serving, and had a really rich, luxurious consistency to it which came as a surprise. Also, on presentation, I was quite relieved to see that the initial utter redness of the dish before cooking wasn't quite so prevalent now. In fact, comparing my final dish to other photos of oil down online, it didn't look too far off at all.

As for the food itself: This was a really wholesome, flavoursome dish. A kind of stew, which to me seemed more suited to a cold, winter night in the north of England than a hot, steamy Caribbean nation. But it was a lovely mix of meat and veg. The chicken was perfectly cooked and had taken in much of the flavour of the sauce. The breadfruit added a really nice consistency and "stodge" to the dish, as did the dumplings which ended up much firmer and more dense than I had expected. But this was no bad thing.

There was a really pleasant underpinning spiciness to the entire dish. Not too much at all, but definitely making itself known.

The spinach seemed a little lonely to me. The spinach did what spinach does. It largely disappeared. So its presence during eating was quite sparse, to the point I questioned whether I should have increased the amount I used. Maybe even doubled.

Overall despite the failure to find a restaurant, the stress over acuqiring breadfuit, the ballsing up of the green seasoning, and the horror show that was the dumpling slop, this didn't turn out to be the unmitigated disaster I thought it would be. It was a really tasty meal. One I want to try again, but either properly in a restaurant or food stall somewhere in this country. Or maybe we'll just have to visit Grenada and try it for real on home turf.

Greece - Andy's Greek Taverna

 

Restaurant:  Andy's Greek Taverna

Address:  23 Pratt St., London, NW1 0BE

Date of visit:  23 July 2023

Time of visit:  7pm

I was anticipating the Greek restaurant visit for a while, knowing that London would have a wealth of excellent options. To the point the prospect of researching and choosing just one restaurant was originally a little daunting. However, by chance, I happened to walk past Andy's Greek Taverna on one of my regular trips to Camden. I was immediately impressed by the cuteness of the corner cafe, and by the masses of people inside and out. A quick look at reviews online as I passed made up my mind. We had to make this our Greek stop.

So we returned on what was a lovely, sunny Sunday summer evening. I booked a table for 7pm several days in advance using The Fork (https://www.thefork.co.uk/restaurant/andy-s-greek-taverna-r719957) and arrived right on time. 

I had only ever seen the restaurant from the Bayham Street side, and assumed that the "corner cafe" made up pretty much all of Andy's. So to the corner we went, which was surprisingly very quiet, with no music playing. Almost abandoned, including lack of staff. It took some time before someone emerged from the enclosed kitchen area. We told him we had booked in advance, and he took us out of the corner cafe, and to next door to the adjacent unit on Pratt Street. Which was clearly the main restaurant. Who knew?!

We found ourselves in a lovely, inviting environment, full of diners with not-very-discreet traditional Greek music playing. Much more of a restaurant feel than the corner, with a choice of tables. We didn't have to wait long for the menus to come. We ordered a bottle of the house white wine, which was Italian, rather than Greek, in origin. We had mulled over the menu in advance and had pretty much already made up our minds. But we still spent some time to check it over again in the restaurant environs.

The menu is really impressive. Plenty of cold and hot starters for not much more than a fiver, which is incredibly decent. The vast majority of the mains are between £10 and £15. All the traditional Greek dishes you'd expect to see, with descriptions. A plentiful selection of seafood and vegetarian dishes too, although we tend to overlook those due to personal tastes! There are also some excellent value Set Menu options, which were very tempting.

Someone else came to take our food order. We were served by almost all of the waiting staff at some point in the evening. The service was very friendly, light-hearted and actually quite banterful. These guys clearly enjoy what they do!  Elle and I ordered the "Chef's Mixed Grill" starter to share. I opted for the stifado for main, and Elle went for the moussaka.

Time to take in the atmosphere. The music was quite loud. It wasn't offputting for us, we quite enjoyed it. But I could definitely imagine someone else potentially taking issue with it. The simple solution would have been to move away from the speaker, but there was no need for that with us. The interior was very blue. Almost nautical. Probably helped by the massive photo of a gorgeous Greek island landscape looking over our table. 

The restauant was by no means fancy, but also more than just a cafe. The tables were basic, with comfortable soft blue chairs and plastic benches. It was a very pleasant place to be, with absolutely no pretences. It really stuck me as the kind of place where the most attention goes into the most important things - the food and the service.

When the starter arrived, it initially didn't look to be particularly large (keeping in mind the prices are very decent). But in the end it was absolutely perfect, leaving you very eager for the main dish. The mixed grill was made up of halloumi, loukanika (Greek pork or lamb sausage), lountza (salted, smoked grilled pork tenderloin) and pastourma (beef sausage with wine and black pepper). The starter also came with a basket of bread.

The sausages were very flavoursome indeed, aided by the taste of the grilling process. The lountza almost had the appearance of a thick slice of straight forward bacon, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing! It was still excellent, as was the halloumi. The bread was very fresh and fluffy. We originally regretted not getting some kind of dip for the bread, but there ended up being enough goodness on the plate to use with the bread. The vegetable accompaniment - tomato and cucumber - was also very fresh and complemented the dish well.

Our attention once again was on the service. In a good way. This was a very well run place. The team of waiting staff were absolutely on it. Very polite and in no way invasive, but very swift to take away empty plates and attend to any needs. It was quite impressive, and no doubt one of the reasons this restaurant is so widely loved.

Then the mains arrived. This was a sight to behold.

I was already excited about this. We have been on several Greek holidays in the past, and stifado quickly became my favourite Greek dish, and I was therefore very hopeful about this. When my eyes met the content on the plate I'm sure my heart started racing. I could see the most incredibly substantial chunks of beef, luscious rich thick gravy, and amazing looking roast potatoes, all garnished with herbs. And I have to say, this dish was abslolutely exceptional. Defintiely the best stifado, and best Greek meal generally, that I've ever had. And one of the best main dishes on this project so far. The beef was melt in the mouth soft, but so beautifully flavoursome, the gravy matching it perfectly with a wonderfully balanced presence of cloves throughout. Those potatoes were something else... perfectly roasted and well looked after. A truly perfect meal.

It's hard not to be utterly impressed by this substantial wedge of layered goodness that is the moussaka. I actually really wanted to see the "mothership moussaka" from which this came. That must have been some sight! Again, generous is the word that comes to mind. It was packed full of layers of really succulent minced beef, and thick creamy bechemel sauce, which was perfectly baked at the top. A superbly tasty dish, and quite easy to see why this has won awards.

It also arrived with a very fresh, delicious side salad of tomato, cucumber, red onion and feta, drizzled with olive oil.

We need to go back to the potatoes.

I don't know how they get potatoes to taste like this. But they were some of the best I've ever had. We ordered more.

Surprisingly, despite a very decent dessert menu offered, there was no heavy sell. In fact, the question was never asked. Plates were cleared (typically swiftly) and we were left to enjoy the rest of our wine without interruption. In fact, it was a little bit of an effort to find someone to let us pay the bill. We geninuely could've spent all night in there. And we would have been happy to do so.

If all the above wasn't good enough, we received a free amaretto shot each on paying the bill.

I'm not sure if I've said this often through the years of this project, but we'll definitely be back here again. A very memorable visit.

Ghana - Connie's Authentic Ghanian Restaurant

Restaurant:  Connie's Authentic Ghanian Restaurant

Address:  85-87 Woodgrange Rd, London E7 0EP

Date of visit:  8 August 2021

Time of visit:  8pm

The previous restaurant visit on this project was made on February 2020. One month later, like the rest of the world, the World of London Restaurants project stopped.

I made a determination that we weren't going to resume it until life was as back to normal as possible. I needed the restaurant experience to be exactly the same as it was pre-Covid. In August 2021, we were finally there.

Next up we headed to East London to a Ghanian restaurant sandwiched between and behind two shops on Woodgrange Road. As such we were greeted by a long passage, marked by a big "Connies" sign above, and walked into a fairly sparse cafe/restaurant space. As we fully expected this definitely appeared to be a community eating spot and not somewhere that often received first time vistors who have travelled across London to be there!

Nonetheless, the waitress was quite attentive to our arrival, inviting us to sit at a table, to which she very promptly brought menus. Already we felt welcome and could tell the service was friendly.

The menu looks pretty decent, but it was clearly not aimed at the uninitiated due to the lack of descriptions of the dishes. Nothing a crafty Google search can't help with. There was no table service at this restaurant, adding to the "cafe" vibe, but it was made clear in a friendly way that we had to order at the till. Elle paid the full amount when she ordered, reinforcing a cafe versus restaurant vibe. As such, there was no service charge added to the full total.

Elle opted for the kebab to start (it was simply listed as such on the menu). For me, it had to be the deep-fried turkey tail. Definitely not being stereotypically Scottish. More intrigued by the revelation that turkeys had tails, which I don't think had ever dawned on me! 

For the main meal we both went for the chicken jollof, which definitely seemed to be the signature dish. A popular West African dish of baked chicken with rice cooked with tomatoes, garlic, ginger and spices.

And to drink, we each had a 625ml bottle of Star beer, from Ghana.

The service at the till was very friendly, with the waitress trying to upsell and offer us some palm juice for the table.

I love the waiting. This is when we simply take in the sights, sounds, smells, conversation and everything else that hits our senses. There was a mix of local Ghanian music playing in the restaurant, and the sound Sky Sports Cricket being shown on a TV at one end of the restaurant. A few families were dining during our stay, which meant some kids running around, but it wasn't really an issue. And one point the kids waved at me emphatically, ensuring that they were seen! The slight blip of annoyance was when one of the boys cranked the tunes up on the massive boom box in the corner to the max! 

The starters arrived, with the turkey tail arriving with a bowl for the discarded bones, and no cutlery. So this was clearly one to eat with the fingers! The chopped tail pieces were topped with raw onion, with an incredible hot salsa to the side. The turkey was fatty, but there was a surprisingly good amount of turkey meat to find. The meat was very dry but very tasty, going perfectly with the hot sauce.

Elle's kebab probably wasn't quite as interesting to look at. A single skewer which wasn't particularly large. But it wasn't particularly expensive. It was served with some kind of ground spice on the side. It wasn't particularly clear what the spice was. Perhaps just chilli powder. But the real mystery was trying to guess what meat was on the skewer. We never did reach a conensus on that.

As for the main course. RICE. So so much rice. I hope the photo above does it justice. That was one extremely generous, densely packed, ball of rice. It was very clear that this meal was probably more about the rice than the chicken. The chicken was chopped and on the bone, which made it a little cumbersome to eat. Still very tasty and in a rich spicy tomato sauce. 

That rice though. It was dense and had a chewy consistency to it. Purposefully. It was cooked to perfection and had an amazing real deep spice which added so much to the flavour and the experience. It was incredibly moreish and a real pleasure to eat. The chicken felt like a side show.

We were only a few minutes into eating the main before we realised that we really shouldn't have ordered starters! But the main was so enjoyable that we pushed ourselves to finish it.

Getting up out of the chair was going to be problematic. Thankfully, the chilled vibe in the place ensured that we knew there was no rush to free up our table. Somehow we did eventually manage to get up, and get out. Very full and very satisfied.

Sadly, it's taken me so long to write this review (absolutely no excuses for a nearly two year delay...!) that Connie's is no longer trading, and in its place a "new ladies saloon" called Club Diamondz. A sad loss.