After years of avoiding this place (my cultural heritage insists on authentic dim sum establishments), I finally relinquished and decided to take Ping Pong up on their Super 8 lunchtime offering.

It was a hot summer’s day and knowing how we British love to eat out when it’s oh so slightly warmer, we arrived at Ping Pong early to ensure that we got a table. We were given a choice of sitting at some normal tables or to be seated at what seemed to me like a pair of foot stools and a coffee table. I know I’m not the tallest of people around, but I am neither a hobbit or a person keen to relive their childhood tea parties. We made the correct choice of the adult seating section.

Although it was good value for money (8 food offerings for £8), my fear of western palette tainted dim sum was unfortunately realized. The starter of vegetable broth was a little watery and lacking in punch or flavour, it felt like it was missing more than a couple of ingredients. The second course of honeyed chilli chicken rice pot was actually the highlight of the Super 8 menu, I really enjoyed it. It was shame that there was so little of it, but I suppose as part of an 8 dish menu, the sizing of it was probably right. And then we got to the hallowed grounds of Chinese dim sum cuisine… steamed dumplings.

In my experience a really good dim sum restaurant usually has a specialized dim sum chef heading the kitchen. All the steamed dumplings and dishes are freshly prepared each day and cooked to order and each dumpling is perfectly sized and seasoned for consumption. I’m not sure what the process is at Ping Pong, but the dumplings felt amateurish to be honest. And this is where I feel that the dishes have been designed to cater for the western palette. Where traditional sui mai are made from prawn and pork, this was replaced with crumbly chicken. Spinach and mushroom dumplings? Where in China did they come from?? It just didn’t feel right to me.

And all this was accompanied by some Chinese tea served in what looked like my brother’s science experiment on creating crystal structures, 22 years ago. I believe that Chinese tea should come in a badly spouted teapot filled with Chinese leaves and poured in to small Chinese cups, not a tiny vase with a teabag suspended like a bad trapeze act.

Overall Ping Pong was as I expected. There’s a market for dim sum restaurants in busy cities, but it needs to maintain that essence in the quality of the food rather than quality of the presentation. Style over substance is never a winning formula in Chinese cuisine, but Ping Pong seems to be making a success out of it. Though I doubt it’ll have a huge impact on the traditional Chinese dim sum industry.

You’ll have to bear with me on this one as it has been almost a year since I visited this barbecue/grill steakhouse, a short walk away from St Paul’s Cathedral. It’s always busy at Barbecoa and it seems like one of those restaurants that has based its reputation on its name and affiliations rather than the quality of its food.

Although there wasn’t anything I particularly disliked about it. The issue was that, for the prices we were paying, it just didn’t seem to wow me in the way that I was expecting. Sure the crispy pig cheeks were lovely and the steak was cooked to how I requested it, but at the end of the day that’s all it was. Nicely prepared and cooked food but nothing there to make me shout from the rooftops (which in this particular case provides a beautiful view of St Paul’s Cathedral from Madison Bar at the top of One New Change).

After a year the lingering memories of Barbecoa were ‘meh’ and ‘it was a bit crowded wasn’t it?’

I’ve recently started a small diner’s club with a couple of my friends from work, where we would go to a nice restaurant once a month or so, eat good food and try anything that we’ve never tried before. This month’s choice was Baltic, a Polish bar/restaurant, on Blackfriars Road, Southwark.

We’d made an early reservation for 6:30pm, thinking that we’d arrive early, have a few drinks and then enjoy our meal at a leisurely pace. In hindsight it was a brilliant idea, but not because of that reason. By the time we left at 9:30pm, the restaurant was absolutely packed and lots of people were still waiting for their tables, a great indication of how popular this place has become.

We began the night with a lovely round of Polish vodka-based cocktails. There was a lot of choices and having no idea what anything was like, I plumped for a Ginger and Raspberry Mule. If you like ginger and ginger beer, you’ll like this cocktail, it was a nice blend of the two with a hint of citrus. If we were on a cocktail themed evening, we’d have definitely stayed for more. But we were here for the food and at 6:30pm our Polish adventure began.

Our group of three had decided to share a selection of starters and we thought that we’d try sampling at least one dish that we had never eaten. On this occasion our choice dish was… Ox Tongue. Now, when most people think about a tongue dish, they see a single 6 inch long organ that’s been boiled and dumped on to plate like beached whale. This was not the ox tongue that arrived at our table. Fine slices of tongue, fried and simply presented on a place with garnish and a dip. And it tasted great! Just like beef with none of that rough offally texture, instead a slight crispiness that gave it that extra edge. The other starters? Potato, cheese and spring onion Pierogis, deep fried dumplings with said filling, yummy simple comfort food. A Blinis selection of smoked salmon, mushroom caviar and marinated herring. As someone who’s not that great a fan of seafood, I was actually pleasantly surprised, although I wouldn’t be able to finish it.

So, to the mains. Calves Liver, Bigos and Golonka were our choices. The last time I ate liver was as a child when my dad would force feed us the 1980’s style overcooked slices of liver, stir fried with green beans and in a sauce. He would say it was beef in an effort to trick us in to thinking it was the same meat in Cantonese style beef, Oh the lies!! I’m happy to report that the calves liver was nothing like that. Cooked a little on the rare side it had none of that overdone organ texture and had a lovely flavour.

Bigos is a Polish style stew with venison, pork, beef, sauerkraut and potato dumplings, it tasted great and was perfect comfort eating for a cold January evening.

My dish was the Golonka, roast pork shank with braised sauerkraut and potato. Big enough to serve 2, it was like having a gammon/ham joint where the meat just fell off the bone and nicely balanced with the vinegary sauerkraut. Very tasty, very juicy, very filling.

Filled to the brim, could we even contemplate a desert course?.. Yeah we could!! Rhum Baba and a slice of Makowiec. The Rhum Baba was a moist light sponge that almost melted in your mouth, it has an almost custardy flavour and reminded me very much of the chinese chiffon cakes you buy from chinatown. The Makowiec, a poppy seed cake, a little less sweet and maybe slightly dry. Next to the Rhum Baba it had no chance, but maybe on its own you’d give it a good chance. Both different, but both tasty nonetheless.

So overall, great drink, fantastic food and there was definitely nothing wrong with the service. It’s not cheap, but it’s not too expensive either, the quality of the food definitely goes a long way to justify the prices. Baltic, I like.

Scotch Egg success! Philips Airfryer worked a treat! Even with no oil at all, they browned up fantastically.

It’s all good in the world of healthy fried foods! (Although I’ll still buy my fish ‘n’ chips from the local takeaway!)

Until the next time…

Success! Chicken drumsticks and fries straight from my Philips Airfryer! Great job!

Next up, Scotch Eggs!

This Christmas my lovely sister and brother-in-law got me a Philips Airfryer, which was fantastic as I’ve been wanting one for months. And last night I was able to test it out “frying” some home made chips (fries for our friends outside of the UK). The result? Success! I’m a little surprised to be honest. Even though they lacked the greasy-ness of fish ‘n’ chip/takeaway chips, the texture and crunch was pretty much the same. It did lack that distinct chip shop saturated fat flavour… Oh well, I’ll have to do with an extra year in my life saved then!

I also fried some sausages in them… You can’t really go wrong with sausages so they were fine. But I like the whole set the temperature, stick your food in, set the timer and then leave it technique. MAKE WAY FOR THE LAZY CHEF!

Anywho, I’ve marinated some chicken drumsticks with a cumin/tumeric/paprika/salt/garlic/soy sauce dry rub and left it in the fridge overnight. Tonight I’ll be testing those and if they’re successful, I’ll be moving on to the ultimate test… SCOTCH EGGS!!! (the main reason I wanted an airfryer in the first place).

Fingers crossed… TO BE CONCLUDED…

The Grill on the Market or Smithfield Bar and Grill or is it The Blackhouse Grill?

But that’s besides the point (or is it?). The Grill on the Market is bar/restaurant specializing in the grill section. Our group of 10 had initially pre-booked our table, so we arrived early to sample the 2 for 1 cocktail offer. And what lovely cocktails they were!

This place does some seriously good tasting cocktails. I’d decided to play it safe with my first and opted for the classic Long Island Iced Tea and it was like no other iced tea I’d ever had! Your average Long Island Iced Tea usually consists of a very strong alcoholic tasting cola drink. This one however, had flavour! It was soooo easy to drink. It was literally gone in 60 seconds.

So what next?.. An After Eight Martini of course! It really did taste like an After Eight mint! By this point our group were tasting each others cocktails and loving them all!.. Maybe not the Dirty Harry. An Absinthe lined glass was probably not right for this particular evening.

So, our reservation at 7pm soon arrived and on notifying the friendly ‘front desk’ ladies, we were all politely escorted to the restaurant area. This place has got good service. Our waiter was a lovely man who described all the specials on offer and gave recommendations on anything we asked. We liked him.

Starters, is anyone having any starters? Of course we will! Artisan bread and beef dripping? Yes please! So simple, yet so delicious! Pork crackling? Don’t mind if I do! A crunchy piece of heaven! We definitely enjoyed our starters, but the mains were still to come…

You can’t go to a grillhouse without having a steak… So I did! I went for the sirlion, medium rare, with chips and a bearnaise sauce. And I could not fault it. Cooked as requested, full of flavour and perfectly complimented with a tasty bearnaise and some beautifully seasoned chips.

Any room for a desert? You betcha! Sticky toffee pudding with a selection of homemade ice creams! Hazelnut flavour, delicious! Strawberry flavour, tasted like strawberries! And one other flavour which I can’t remember now! It tasted like the hazelnut one…. Anyway! The sticky toffee pudding was recommended by our waiter who insisted that it was the best ever sticky toffee pudding he’d ever had. He may be have been right! Or very close at least. It’s hard to get sticky toffee pudding wrong, but it’s very hard to get it really right and this one certainly did. A light airy sponge with a clean toffee syrup that didn’t stick to the top or your mouth. Combine that heat with the ice coolness of the ice cream and it became one incredible dessert. Lovely!

So, great drinks, wonderful food and fantastic service. The Grill on the Market? Thumbs up!