Unmarked Door Food

This is my page for Nom related ish. I write food reviews for Le Cool (London) under the incredibly cunning alias - Foo D, whenever I remember that's what I'm s'posed to be doing. I'm gonna be posting up links and/or the reviews right here, but mostly just expect to see every god damn thing I eat. So, um. Yeah. I'm going to lunch. Later

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Bloody Mary level: Expert

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Passed this place at least a couple of hundred times and said to myself “I should go there. That looks worth investigating.” And never did.

Until I did.

Hence me writing this.

On the most bustling bit of Seven Sisters road, surrounded by imitation pound shops, dutty fried chicken and phone accessory kiosks, Ocean Wave has sat for years innocuously doing its thing.  There’s a Morrisons around the corner and a Waitrose a little bit further on down towards Holloway, but the little open-fronted fishmonger was doing brisk business when I finally got my act together to check it out.

I came away with two gimungous coley steaks for five quid and some insider information on the best halal butcher on the strip.

I’ll be going back.

Ocean Wave fisheries ltd, 60 Seven Sisters Road, N7 6AA.

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The grazing has been good this week.

It all started at 9am on Wednesday morning when, as per usual, I was semi-conscious at my weekly office meeting.  All those involved understand that it’s a lot less painful when it comes with breakfast. Our venue this time around was Demsal on Holloway road who have actually just come under new management and aren’t called Demsal anymore.  I don’t actually know what they are called as they were painting the front, but it’s right here.  Everything seems to be exactly the same, which is to say good.

In my morning stupor, I didn’t notice any change at all (I always get the same thing so I didn’t clock the new menu) until I ordered a turkish breakfast from who I assumed was the new girl and she had to check whether they did them. They still do and I’m glad because I’m a creature of habit easily distressed by change and this is the highlight of my working week.

Thursday was a great day.  It was the fifth birthday of the Red Lion and Sun, which is my favourite pub. One of the reasons it’s so close to my heart (apart from the extensive whiskey collection and the lack of ambient bastards)  is because their annual celebrations always involve roasting a whole something. Usually it’s pig, but this being the big V not only was there a 70k hog, there was an added 22k lamb bonus. Despite being a loyal customer for a number of years I was repeatedly stopped from eating this plate of crackling. They probably saved my life but I still resent them.

As a result of being lazy and surrounded by good places to eat, on Friday I got take-away from Dotori, my local Korean and Japanese restaurant.  Which I also love. I probably would have eaten in but if you don’t book in advance — and I hadn’t — it’s unlikely you’ll get a seat, so reciting the menu from memory I called them up and collected bowl of jap chae (beef and veg glass noodles that @Chloe_lecool schooled me on) and a big styrofoam box of delicious teriyaki eel.  I’m starting a campaign to make all eels teriyaki.  I like jelly as much as the next man, probably more,  but it just doesn’t compare. I mean, c’mon.

On Saturday I bitched and moaned about how unfeasibly hard it is to get decent pancakes (American, not crêpes – crêpes aren’t pancakes, they’re crepes) in London until Mrs Foo D said she would make me some on the condition that I shut up and go find bacon and sausages.  I did shut up.  I also went to Tony’s Butchers and got some superior pork products that were then grilled and coated in maple syrup. If you don’t know, don’t judge until you’ve tried.  When you’ve tried, you’re welcome.

Sunday was spent at my parents’ house eating sushi from Fuji Foods on inappropriate crockery.  Since moving from north London I haven’t been back as I’ve learned from bitter experience, sushi doesn’t travel well over extended period via public transport.  I had to try though, right? Mr Fuji and his pocket-sized Japanese food market-stroke-delicatessen set the benchmark for what I want from raw fish and rice.

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To most of us, a sandwich and a salad may not sound like the most inspired of lunches, but that’s only because you’re not thinking in terms of bánh mì.

The meat-, or fish-filled Vietnamese baguette has definitely raised London’s sandwich game.  Tuna sweetcorn cannot stand against the might of the marinated mackerel and even the aging bap-champ Mr BLT feels embarrassingly inadequate compared to the meatopia of Sliced pork belly, ham terrine and liver pâté.  That’s right, the revolution will come with coriander, daikon and Kewpie mayo.

Generally bánh mì also gives you decent value for your hard-earned lunch money.  In Kêu on Old street, the Lemongrass-infused mackerel bad-boy in the picture cost me £4.50 and is ‘nicely proportioned’ (nudge, wink – raises suggestive eyebrow).  Not that it stopped me eying up somebody else’s shrimp salad and deciding I want one of those as well.  I couldn’t help it, it was too pretty.

The only problem with all this new-fangled sandwichery is that nearly everybody knows about it already, so odds are, if your ethnic provider of filled bread joy is really serving up the good stuff, you’ll probably have to wait in line for it.

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I thought I was the only person in London to still have never had a Franco Manca  Pizza, but talking to the rest of the faces around the table at the chain’s Brixton outpost, it turns out I’m not alone.  It also becomes apparent fairly quickly that we’ve all been missing out.

Franco Manca has been making London’s less dedicated pervayors of pizza look terrible on all fronts.  These are artisan pizzas. The mushrooms are wild, the meats are special breeds and until you’ve actually bitten into the sourdough crust, your achievement badge in oven-baked, tomato and cheese embellished street food will remain innaccessable.

As if that wasn’t enough, it is cheap as ****. The expletive is justified: the most expensive dish on the menu is a fiver and some shrapnel, which should fit happily in to most peoples’ increasingly stretched dining budgets.

Now you’re all caught up – here’s the new bit. As of pretty much right now, Franco Manca is offering your everyday Londoner classes on how to make easily the best pizza you’ll ever have a hand in.  I did it at last month’s trial run and I am still glowing with oven-baked pride, because mine was magnificent.  Or at least that’s what Giuseppe Mascoli said and Giuseppe should know because it’s his place. Well, his and partner Bridget (bread czar) Hugo, who was also on hand to guide me in the fine art of in-oven pizza manipulation when my creation needed a quarter rotation half-way through.

Between the two of them they have adapted the sacred sourdough they use for their customers’ pizza (which has to meditate for at least 20 hours and is only in the heat for 50 seconds) so that it can work in something slightly more conventional than a hand-built multi-ton oven.  It was using this dough and their spare oven that us students were able to put together our delicious class projects.

If you’re interested and you should be, each session takes place on the first Thursday of the month at one of the three Franco Mancae  venues.  This month it’s in Brixton, but the one after is in Chiswick.  It costs £20 and that includes all the materials and yes, obviously, you get to eat it afterwards, which apart from knowing you will be judged by the makers of some of London’s best pizzas, is a great reason not to mess it up.

Franco Manca Ltd, 4 Market Row, SW9 8LD; tel: [phone]

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Calentado literally means heated, but in Colombia and Holloway Road it means breakfast. It also means that I’m an idiot for working around the corner from El Rincon Quiteno when I could have been eating this for years instead of just finding out this week.

As breakfasts go, it’s beyond hefty. Rice and beans, a corn fritter, plantain, scrambled eggs with tomatoes and spring onion served on the side of either thin steaks or a hunk of deep fried pork. All for six pounds, which includes the hot drink of your choice and an unbelievably sleepy afternoon.

I’ve written about El Rincon regarding their empanadas and how you should eat all of them, but I noticed on my way out that they also have tamales for the eating, which are another South American (usually meat) snack of note. I thought I’d leave them for another time though, as the Calentado was making it kind of hard to breathe.

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The fuck!!?

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Here's some more pics that didn't make it into my @LeCool_London blog post about the food at @Boxpark.

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See's Candy is the best chocolate in North America and I will happily fight anyone who says different. This haul is intended for my parents, or more accurately, my mum. Who, upon receiving it, will hide it and refuse to share until I threaten her with not having any grandkids.

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“Do you want extra bacon with that?”

This is the magic question to which the answer is always YES. Always.

I’m sorry there aren’t any more pictures of the wings I got from here, but when they arrived they were covered in tiny shards of crispy bacon, so even if I tried they would have only been a delicious chickeny blur.

I got a half litre of coleslaw too and about half way through I realised that although very good, it was also missing the divine touch of crunchy pork. So I went back and upgraded from merely very good to fan-fucking-tastic.

I'm sure you would have done the same.

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It'd be pretty difficult to stumble upon the House of Shaw by accident.  It's a tiny little lunch spot that's been quietly doing business off the inappropriately named Miracle Mile in one of the northern suburbs of Stockton CA for many more years than I've been around.

It's one of those spots whose entire clientèle  was built and is still maintained by word of mouth and nothing else.  You'd drive by it and not give it a second look, but that would be your loss.

I have a thing about 'honest food' and although I still haven't been able to articulate exactly what I mean by it - I can at least offer up The House of Shaw as an example. 

They do salads and sandwiches and a kick-ass lentil soup and excluding a handful of desert type items, teas and coffees, that's all.  But they do them all well and with a minimum fuss and fanfare. Also (not that I condone this kind of behaviour) they cater nicely to those unfortunate and wayward souls who call themselves vegetarian.

I find myself in Stockton about once a year and no-one will dispute that there is fuck all to do here apart from get in trouble and eat.

I prefer the latter and this is definitely one of the places I hit whenever I'm in town and I want something else apart from the ever present (but generally very good) Mexican food.

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Cha Cha Cha doesn't really need anybody to write about it, but I'm gonna do it anyway.

Not that I've looked, but I'm assuming that as it's situated right at the top of Haight and it's good, it's in all the guide books.  If it isn't, then all the guide books are shit.

I think it's kind of Cuban Tapas, but whatever it is I like it.

Traditionally, I always get the same thing - fried plantains, ceviche and Spanish rice with black beans.  The peripheries may change, but if I ever go there and don't have the plantains, it'll be because I've suffered massive cranial damage, or because I been replaced by a robotic impostor with terrible taste.

It's been a while since I ate there, but it seems like the portions have got slightly smaller.  I could be wrong, but when it comes to serving sizes my brain is uncharacteristically lucid. 

Having said that, I've never left there still hungry, or pissed off at the bill, so I'm still happy to recommend it.

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The fish soup from Nena's in Stockton is easily one of my favourite things to eat in the whole world.   It's the kind of thing you just can't get in London and even if it did exist, some enterprising bastard would probably charge you a kidney and at least one family member for a dish as stacked with sea food as this. In the one pictured there were six crab legs and a knuckle, pieces of some kind of white fish I forgot to ask about, squid rings, clams, about 8, or 9 poker chip sized shrimp and sooo much stewed octopus. Seriously, never ending octopi. It was like eating chunky pieces of delicious diced Cthulu that went on forever. Nearly. The most un-London bit about it is it costs $15.

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Oranges grow on trees here and you can eat them. Weird, huh?

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I spent this past New Years and the run up to it in the Potrero Hill neighbourhood of San Francisco.

It seems like the area's on the up and up as from what I understand, the area has been attracting an increasing number of small eateries to cater for the locals.  That's one of the nice things about SF, they really support the local businesses.

Plow however, has graduated from just providing to those lucky enough/rich enough to live close by, to enticing people from across the city to brave the intimidating gradients for a breakfast worth the altitude sickness.  Which it definitely is.

Breakfast places get busy in SF, especially if they're any good.  The three of us that went had to wait about 45 minutes, which I'm told is about average unless you're a 'morning person' *hack - spit* and can get there when they open.

From my seat at the bar looking into the kitchen, everything looked good, but blinded by hunger, I decided to ask for the recommendations from people that go regular.  It's not often that someone raves at me about a fried egg sandwich, especially when there are three types of pancake on offer, plus the Chinese breakfast had already sold out, so in order to stopped getting stabbed with a fork by my hungry co-breakfasteers, that's what I went for.  With extra bacon obvs.

I'm yet to have a morning meal in the UK that compares to my average brekkie in the States and I'm not sure why.  The general standard of Pork in Britain is way, way, way above what is usually available in the US, but we don't do it justice.  Shame on us.

Anyway - as you can see by the menu, Plow is not cheap, but it is worth it.  It tasted better that it looked and it looked fucking awesome.

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Some random mushroom stall at the Ferry Building SF.

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Obviously the only logical first stop when getting off a plane in California is to find the nearest In 'n' Out.

I know everybody always goes on about In 'n' Out, but there's a reason besides the fact that most of the world doesn't have access to it.

In a nutshell, they just don't fuck around.  There's nothing fancy about 'em, they're just burgers, but therein lies the genius.  Burgers shouldn't be fancy, or 'Gourmet', or any of that other bollocks.  It defies the whole point. It's meat in a bun with cheese.  Anything beyond that is just wank.

On a cold winter morning do you want a Gourmet bacon roll?  Actually, ignore that- bad example.  What I'm getting at is, burgers are a basic, basic food and for me (and it seems like a hell of a lot of others), basic is all I want.

I double-double want.

With animal style fries.