This post isn’t really a restaurant review, more an anecdote about eating with my parents - an interesting experience on every occasion. Follow this link for the proper review of Memsaab, unadulterated by descriptions of my family’s quirks. That review largely excludes my Dad’s opinions of the food, whereas I’ll cover them here. If you’re wondering why I’d choose to ignore my Dad’s opinions when writing a restaurant review, click here and here and you will understand.

This trip to Memsaab was a birthday present from Dad. I think he had a secret wish to go there anyway, since he often moans that he rarely gets to eat out. Despite the booking being for 9:30, I turned up at 9pm, since my mother, who is teetotal, dissaproves of me drinking and I wanted to sample one of the tasty cocktails before they turned up.

Typically though, my parents were already there. Dad has a chronic fear of being late for anything and the result is he’s always at least 15 minutes early. Although this doesn’t bother me normally it did when I was a small child, when I’d be deposited at friends’ parties unfashionably early.

At the beginning of the evening we were served by a waiter who was new and a seemed a little uncertain of what he was doing. Poor guy. I think my family is the one you’d be most worried about encountering on your first day. My dad has the habit of proclaiming very loudly, “I’M VEGETARIAN” after every sentence he says to the serving staff.

WAITER: Would you like a drink, sir?
DAD: Yes. Do you have lassi?  I’M VEGETARIAN.

No wonder he looked scared

Dad encouraged me to go for Memsaab’s version of a Singapore Sling. Mum looked at us both disapprovingly before ordering an orange juice. I get the feeling that the waiter had been scared off because he didn’t return to the table much after that. Instead, our food orders were taken by the gentleman in charge that evening.

DAD:These samosas are vegetarian?
MAITRE D': Yes, sir, the vegetable samosas are vegetarian.
DAD: Good. I'M VEGETARIAN. 

This guy was good. He only looked confused for a split second. 

MAITRE D': And for your main course, sir?
DAD: Paneer Masala. Will it go with a paratha?
MAITRE D’: Yes, sir, of course.
DAD:I will have that with paratha then. I'M VEGETARIAN.

My parents then spent five minutes arguing, in a mixture of English and Sinhalese, over which vegetable side dishes to have. The discussion was so long and confusing that, by the end, the now worried Maitre D’. looked at me for confirmaton of the order. I couldn’t do anything but shrug and say,”I have no idea what went on then. But we’ll have turka dahl and the aubergine.”.

The amuse bouche, a potato pakora with yoghurt and chutney, arrived soon after and both parents were very confused by this. I convinced Dad that it was ok and they hadn’t misheard our starter order and assured him that it was meat-free. He then ate it, after reminding the serving staff yet again that he was, in fact, a vegetarian. I finished my cocktail and ordered a glass of rosé. Mum huffed.

The starters came and were eaten without much trouble apart from Dad moaning that his samosa’s “weren’t Indian.” Apparently they were made for the English palate. I did remind him that we were in CHELSEA not Bombay but apparently, “people from Tooting wouldn’t like them.” More fool them.  

The exciting point of the evening was the arrival of my main course. After approval from my father, I ordered the lobster. Unfortunately for him, there had been no description on the menu of  how it would be presented. 

Dad made a noise that went something like “WUUUURGH!” and then  “OH NO! THE POOR THING!!! IT’S CRUEL!!!!!”

A few puzzled looks came from the other diners. I told Dad to stop being silly but he obviously found the presentation quite distressing. It’s funny. He had no problem with me eating battery chicken when I was younger, but eating a lobster is cruel. Obviously. That makes sense .

I tucked into my new crustacean friend with gusto. It was really delicious.

It turns out that my parents are incredibly small eaters. Mum managed half her spinach kofta curry and Dad was the same with his paneer curry. I ended up eating everything, including their leftovers and enjoying it, but my favourite was the lobster. There were a couple of moans about the food being too oily, even though it wasn’t very oily at all. Well, I suppose if you use a low-calorie spray every time you cook, anything will seem oily in comparison.

Of course, my parents don’t do dessert so, after some more confusion instigated by Dad, we managed to get our hands on the bill. I’d say it was pretty reasonable at £115 including service. For some reason, Mum thought it was a good idea to hide the mint chocolates that came with the bill in her handbag. I still haven’t figured out why. Apparently it’s so she could “give them to the little kid who just moved in across the road”  I’m still confused by this.

So, possibly to the relief of the staff, we left, with Dad and I having a heated argument about maths. Dad is the only person in the world daft enough to argue with a PhD mathematician about their subject area and I’m the only person daft enough to not ignore him.

I love this restaurant - it’s a real shame that it’s out of the way so not meny people go there. I’m almost worried it won’t survive because of this. I’ll certainly be returning here next month, most probably with Dale (warning:don’t click on the link if you’re offended by strong language), so the whole experience should be a bit more sane!

Firstly, I apologise for the lack of pictures. I regret it now, but I wasn’t sure how formal the restaurant would be and so I didn’t take my camera with me. To be honest, it’s so old and rubbish that it couldn’t have really done the beautiful food justice anyway. The pictures on the restaurant website look very similar to what we were served and give an accurate impression of what the presentation is like.

Claridges hotel really is spectacular. We got in through the small side entrance on Dawes street and I was blown away by the grandeur. I found myself at the top of a long, stylishly decorated, corridor leading into a large reception area with a huge roaring fire. I was so busy gawping at the magnificence of it all that I didn’t notice the small set of steps in front of me and so , very elegantly, went tumbling face first onto the black and white  art-deco flooring.

Fortunately no-one apart from Goon saw me do this and, once he had picked me up off the floor, we spent a good ten minutes trying to locate the restaurant.

Eventually we found it and were seated. At first I found the situation a little intimidating. The restaurant  seemed to be filled with immaculately dressed, beautiful, rich people and, while I had tried to make some effort, I felt a bit outdone. But, with the very attentive staffThis feeling soon evaporated and the sounds of relaxed chatter and jazz piano from the lounge next door helped us to relax. 

The decor in there was interesting. I liked the art-deco styling although I wasn’t convinced by the orange-brown colour scheme at first. Oddly enough, it did grow on me after a while. There is something very ’20s’ about everything here, including the staff uniforms.

Before I start raving about the food, I should mention how good the restaurant staff are. I have never experienced service quite like this before. It was perfectly efficient without being at all intimidating. They obviously go to a lot of effort to make the experience of eating at Claridges so special.

To start the evening and to help us relax a bit, we ordered two bellinis. These were perfect, if a bit pricey at £12.50 each. A selection of canapés were presented to us including some smoked chicken pastry cigars, parmesan flatbreads and tiny pastry discs topped with crab.

Whilst nibbling one the crab, I tried to  decide between the A La Carte and the Prestige menu. They both looked utterly amazing and it took me a very long time to choose. In the end we both went a la carte. After a bit of debate, Goon and I decided on a bunch of things we both wanted to try. I spent ages changing my mind from wanting monkfish and chervil parpadelle to the canon of lamb with roasted sweetbreads, and back again. I eventually settled on the latter preceded by the smoked haddock vichysoisse topped with a poached duck egg. Goon went for the assiette of blue fin tuna two ways followed by pork cheeks cooked in honey and cloves with dauphinoise potatoes.

Once we had chosen food we turned to the wine list. We didn’t get very far. It was an enormous book including around 1000 wines. Fortunately, the two sommeliers that evening were superb. The first we spoke to made an absolutely brilliant choice of a French white, ‘Trelan Chebanon,’ that suited our meals perfectly.

With food and wine ordered, along came the amuse-bouche. This was a beautiful, delicate pumpkin soup with parmesan and, I think, white truffle oil. There was nothing to find fault with here -  the soup was light and creamy and very subtley flavoured by the parmesan and truffle. But, with the amuse bouche came my first small gripe. I was asked twice if I had finished, when I hadn’t. I didn’t really feel hurried but I did get a bit embarrased and stopped talking to finish up my soup.

Not long afterwards, the starters arrived. My vichysoisse was done in a very classic Ramsay style. Chunks of smoked haddock were piled in a small bowl and the poached egg sat on top. The soup was poured into the bowl at the table so the green liquid covered the fish but the duck egg was left visible on top. The soup was gorgeous… creamy and fishy with a really good flavour from the leeks. The poached egg, however, turned out to be the only major gripe I had with the meal.   

Surely there is NO NEED for a restaurant this good to be using a poaching tool for poached eggs? Proper poached eggs are so much better. Poaching tools are rubbish! :-(

Goon’s assiette of tuna was amazing. The dish was made of a tuna carpaccio with pickled white horseradish and topped with slices of marinated seared tuna. There was nothing to complain about at all. The seared tuna was done perfectly and the carpaccio was gorgeous. You can tell they use the best ingredients here.

Then along came the mains. When I was told that the lamb was going to be served medium rare a little voice in the back of my head shouted “NO! DO IT BLUE!”  It was good that I managed toshut up the little voice because the lamb arrived exactly how I wanted it. Again, you could tell that they had used the best quality produce. The lamb really was unlike any I’d had before, with a much richer, almost gamey, flavour. Everything else on my plate was lovely too but the lamb stood out miles, even compared to the gorgeous herby sweetbreads.

Goon’s pork cheeks were excellent. I’d been apprehensive about trying them after reading about how many people hate them, but I needn’t have worried. While they still wouldn’t be my first menu choice, they were very, very tasty. The flavour of cloves had really permeated the pork and it had been cooked to perfection. The meat literally melted in the mouth.

By this stage I was in fits of giggles due to my sheer disbelief of how good everything was. This got even worse as our ‘pre-dessert,’ which I really wasn’t expecting, arrived.

It was a rhubarb soup topped a ‘milk foam.’  This, again, was delicious and a sensible colour, unlike anything I do with rhubarb. Somehow they’s manage to eliminate all sourness and we were just left with a subtle, sweet flavour of rhubarb.

After perusing the dessert menu we went for the recommended options: a cinnamon creme brulée and a Valrhona chocolate fondant tart. Time to enlist the help of sommelier number 2, who chose a totally luscious dessert wine (off menu unfortunately, so I didn’t see what it was,) to go with my creme brulée. Goon decided to have a glass of port with his chocolate fondant.

The chocolate fondant tart was probably the sexiest thing I have ever tasted. Shame it was Goon’s and not mine so I only got a spoonful. As the spoon broke it, it oozed gooey valrhona chocolate all over the plate. 

The creme brulee didn’t disappoint at all, even if it seemed more like a creme caramel than the brulées I’ve had before. The little apple doughnuts it came with were delicious!

So finally, we finished with petit fours. I have had better chocolates but these were still very good and I was very impressed how two of them had been filled with ice-cream. 

So we wandered back to Hammersmith discussing the merits of our bellinis, very, very happy indeed. This was the most expensive meal I’ve had, but it is undoubtably the best by a LONG way. If you can, save up for a trip here. It is astoundingly good!  

I feel the need to apologise for the quality of the photographs in todays posts. I have the problem that, whenever I am out at a restaurant with Goon, I am not allowed to take pictures myself. This is because Goon gets embarassed and insists on taking photos with his little camera phone.

I used to be the same way myself, but I’ve found in recent months that photographing food in restaurants can be quite fun. Big, famous resaurants are well used to foodies taking snaps for their blogs anyway. 

The staff in smaller places are sometimes confused by my behaviour. But then i mention the website and, judging by the swift improvement in service and the looks of horror on some faces, they almost always without fail assume that my little blog is some big important review site. Of course, I do nothing to encourage this misconception. I do nothing to discourage it either, but never mind. This way we get better service.  

But unfortunately this time we have Goon’s dodgy camera phone pictures.   The one upside to this is that goon sent me ALL the photos on his camera … including this hilarious one he accidentally took of his double chin.

HAHAHAHA! Honestly, how do you accidentally photo yourself like that!?

So below are reviews of two rather nice restaurants in Shepherds Bush. Enjoy!

In spite of living in this area for many years, I’d never got round to sampling any of the restaurants down Shepherds Bush road (unless you count the ‘Kebab Machine’, which I definitely don’t). I decided it was about time I remedied this oversight and so we headed to Le Cinnamon India Room.

The reason I chose this restaurant first is because of its stunning reviews. Go to London Eating and you will see people raving about how it is the best curry they ever had. It sounded way too good to be true to me but I was curious.

On the outside, the restaurant doesn’t look any different from your standard curry house. In fact, the only reason I noticed it before was the slightly daft name. The decor inside isn’t totally stunning but it felt a lot more classy than a standard high street Indian. This was reflected in the music they played and in also the attitude of the staff, who were phenomenal throughout the meal. Usually you have to be paying £50 per head to get staff with perfect timing like this, but the prices at Le Cinnamon go nowhere near that.

Seriously, this place is CHEAP! In a good way. The starters are around £3 each. In a way I think this may have worked against the restaurant as I found myself thinking ‘Hang on-  crab for £3.50?. There must be something wrong with it!’ It actually put me off ordering the crab and the duck starters because I just couldn’t believe you could do them properly for that price.

In the end I had the deep fried paneer with chutneys and Goon had the duck. In my opinion the duck was a bit dry. The paneer was pleasant but nothing very special.

 However, when it comes to main courses this place really stands out.

I ordered a goan fish curry which came with rice and cost only £6.50. This was absolutely superb. The fish was perfectly done - just cooked through without losing any of its moisture. The curry was hot but not overpoweringly so and the lovely spice flavours came through beautifully. Goon’s lamb korma was equally good. Mild, creamy with lovely flavours of cardamom and cinnamon.

Even the wine was near perfect. We had a gewurzaminer with had a lovely floral flavour. However, although it didn’t taste acidic, I got the feeling towards the end of the meal that it was giving me a bit of heartburn.

One downside to Le Cinnamon is that the menu is fairly small. However it is clear that they have chosen to do a small selection of things very well and I do not think this is really a bad thing.

I thoroughly recommend this restaurant. While the starters are nothing special, the mains are superb. It is one of the few places I would go to in preference to making my own curries.

I first discovered Demera restaurant after moving into a flat practically next door to it. Even after moving away, I kept on going back again and again.

If you decide to visit the Demera, you should be aware that the style of this restaurant is a little different  to normal. I got the feeling that there must be a reasonably large Eritraen community near the Goldhawk road as a lot of customers seemed to be from that part of the world and also seemed to know each other and the staff. There was a lot of friendly banter going on and a relaxed homely atmosphere. Not much formality but plenty of hospitality.

If you are not yet familiar with  Ethiopian and Eritraen food, I urge you to try it.  Their staple food is injera, a flat bread with a pancake like texture. Demera makes my favourite injera -its more “lemony” than others I have tasted.

The meat and vegetables are cooked as in a way that one might compare to South Indian or Sri Lankan curries but with different spices. A large piece of injera is rolled out like a plate with the meat and vegetables served on top of it. You eat with your hands, using other bits of injera to scoop up the stews.

Ok, that isn’t the greatest photo - it actually looked better than that. 

At the end you eat the injera the food was served on, which by then is soaked with a delicious mixture of gravies. Eating like this is a lot of fun and quite nice for couples as you share from the same plate of food.

On this visit we had a green lentil dish, fish awaze tibs and a lamb dish, the name of which I have unfortunately forgotten. Goon was a pain and wouldn’t let me order the tripe and liver dish.

The lamb dish was hot and the fish even more so. This was great from my point of view but it meant that Goon was eating very slowly, to the great amusement  of the manageress, who even came over to try to show him how to eat at one point! I thought the two dishes were delicious! .  

At the end of the meal you will be served a complementary pot of traditional tea. This is heavily infused with cloves and some other spice I couldn’t identify. I enjoyed it a lot, although by this point I was so full of food there was barely any room for it!

The meal came to just £27, including a £12 bottle of wine. For the amount of food you get, this is fantastic value.

So, in summary, if you’re expecting formal service and intricately presented food, this is not the place to go. But if you want a tasty, fun meal with friendly service for a good price,  Demera is  a great place to go.

Living near the Goldhawk Road is something of a mixed blessing. On the one hand there are bullet holes in some of the windows, a large number of unsavoury characters that hang around late at night and a very obvious brothel.

On the other hand the road has a suprising number of very well priced good quality restaurants. Last week i returned to the Polish restaurant Patio which has impressed me each time I have visited it.

The decor here is homely, much like you’d expect a Polish Grandma’s living room to be. The service is very efficient, occasionally a touch brusque but never rude.

I have to recommend the £16 three course menu. There are a variety of Eastern European Specialities including white borsht, herrings with soured cream and Bigos (Hunter’s Stew). I think you’d be hard pressed to find food of equal quality at this price. My main course of Duck Polonaise was to die for. They certainly have perfected the technique of producing wonderful juicy slow roasted meat that melts in the mouth.

The roasted lamb was equally good. The starters and desserts paled in comparison to the main courses but were still of a very good standard. The meal comes with a choice of flavoured vodka and each one I have had so far has been very nice. This comes from someone who usually hates vodka!  

The wine list is also reasonable (£10-£20 ). The Beaujolais I had with my meal certainly was worth the price.

So if you live in this area you should try Patio. It’s reasonably priced with good service and excellent food.

On Saturday night I was lucky enough to return to Imperial Wharf and visit Saran Rom. This place is very special indeed. From the amazing food to the perfect service, you are guaranteed to have a great experience here.

The restaurant itself is stunning. A great deal of thought has gone into the layout and each table looks beautiful with its perfectly matched cutlery and glasses. The menu has a very wide range of delicious sounding dishes. I am lucky in that I got to sample quite a lot of them. The starters in particular are very exciting.

This was a plate of prawns wrapped in rice noodles. It was a little dark in the restaurant for my camera, but rest assured all the other dishes were just as beautiful.  The duck spring rolls were probably my favourite in terms of flavour but the beef with green curry sauce came a close second. The green curry was as good, if not better, than the green curries I had in Thailand.

The highlights in the main courses were the smoked duck curry and the crispy red snapper with mango sauce. I had a herby spicy venison dish which was also very tasty.

The team serving us were faultless in every way. Our waiter, Greg, was fabulous through the entire meal. He has obviously come to know the menu very well and is always ready to give good advice on the dishes. The style of service is fairly formal but not intimidating.

The highlight of the meal has got to be the amazing Irish cofee. They make this in front of you at the table and it really is spectacular!

So if you are in London and like Thai food, give this place a try. You won’t be disappointed.

Here is Saran Rom’s website (needs Flash 8  ).

Last night I tried out a restaurant just near my flat. It’s a Chinese called Yi-Ban. The highlight of the meal was this amazing thing.

It’s a thinly sliced beef fillet with a pomegranate dressing made into the shape of a perfect rose! How cool is that?! I’ve written a full review for Yi-Ban here but, for this post, I’ll just say is was very good indeed and probably the best Chinese restaurant I’ve been to.

It seems that even when I have half a week off cooking there is lots to write about!

After the experiment I felt the need for a little time off. Since then I’ve visited three Chelsea restaurants. I’ve put up reviews for all of them now. On Thursday night I visited Kishmish, an Indian restaurant on Fulham Road. This was very disappointing but things got much better afterwards when I visited Deep Seafood Restaurant. That was an expensive but very satisfying treat. The next lunchtime I had tapas at La Rueda on the King’s Road. There weren’t many Spanish places in Shepherds Bush so I was delighted to find somewhere so near my flat that does good tapas at reasonable prices.

My empty fridge on Friday morning necessitated another Borough Market trip. This time I returned with a rabbit, some wild boar, more ostrich (I can’t get enough ostrich!) duck eggs and some cooking lavender.

In need of cooking inspiration I made a trip to the Borders in Fulham. Borders bookstores always have a range of discounted cookery books. They tend not to be from the big famous chefs, but quite often you’ll find thick £4 paperbacks with lots of interesting recipes from one particular cuisine. This weekend I picked up a book of Thai recipes and something called “On The Grill” which has lots of interesting variations on Mediterranean dishes.

 I also got a little black book so that I can make notes in restaurants for reviews and make the staff nervous. Hehe.