Burger & Lobster

Twitter and the blogs in general are all abuzz about this new Mayfair joint.

I went on Friday, I went on Saturday. The bar is great- very good cocktail list. The menu is short and very fucking sweet. £20 lobster?

Go.

Enough said.

The details? Oh, here you go:

29 Clarges street, Mayfair London W1J 7EF

Telephone: 0207 409 1699 Email:info@burgerandlobster.com Twitter:@Londonlobster
We are open Tuesday to Saturday, from 12 to 10:30pm (last orders).
Closed Sunday & Monday in January.
No reservations.

Oh Baby, We’re Back With A Bang

PoshFodder is back with a vengeance- we’re back on the scene and what a scene it is to return to! London is alight with new places and we’ve been to two of them in recent weeks- there’s more to come over the next few weeks. I’m truly excited about what’s going on. It’s a great time to be out and about in London sampling the delights in this, the world’s favourite city. Mediterranean, burgers, street or Jewish- whatever your pleasure it’s on offer here in London and now the PoshFodder boys are back and involved.

It’s time to get immersed and re-emerge.

I wanted to give a taste of what will be appearing here over the next few days:

So it all began again some weeks ago when friend of PoshFodder Alex Fanzola got in touch to say he is now running the remodelled ‘The Collection’ on Brompton Road. He said he had introduced a new menu and it was going to be ’sharing plates’ from the olive oil producing countries. Now knowing Alex as I do, thought it would be worth a visit. I went- it was great.

The other activity we’ve been involved with is the recent Dine with Dos Hermanos which was held at the yet to open Pizarro on Monday 28th November- Jose Pizarro’s new sit down tapas restaurant showcasing the best in Spanish cooking, food and wine. Now this was special- here are a few highlights: Nape of Hake, head, cheeks and all- “cook very simple- a little olive oil, some salt, pepper and some pimenton” (say this in a thick Spanish brogue the way Jose would…, Duck livers and red onion, ultra fino, carpaccio of cod with fennel and orange, cava-braised iberico pork cheeks…

Jose opened the restaurant specially to allow 50 of London’s most fortunate gastronauts to sample the first test run of his new establishment.

If you haven’t heard about what’s going on down in Bermondsey Street, then where have you been? Pizarro is going to be a sensation and it couldn’t happen to a nicer man or nicer people- PoshFodder will be spending a lot of time here in the future.

You can see some great photos of the Dine with dos Hermanos event here on @tomsdinner’s website.

Other people of note encountered on the evening included Epicurienne, the lovely Karen O’Donaghue who runs Jose and is one half of Oregano and Basil. There were many many more, but I will list them in a subsequent post.

It’s good to be back.

The bar at Jose

Mooli’s: One Year on

the Mooli boys are celebrating their first birthday on Frith Street tonight. beers & mojitos are £2- the perfect accompaniment to one of their fucking awesome rolled delights.
I’ll be here most of the night so if you’re in Soho pop by and say hi.

Local Food for Local People and a Local Delight. What Fun!

It’s been a local week for PoshFodder. First, the lovely people representing Local Food Direct got in touch to tell us about their Social Enterprise in Norfolk and Suffolk. It’s all about encouraging people to buy local to keep carbon down and to channel more money away from large multi-nationals and more towards the local producer. This all followed one of the best lunches I’d had in a while at the Sun at Northaw near Potters Bar- nearly all of their food comes from producers within the local area.

First though here’s the press release for Local Food Direct:

Are you up for a challenge this winter?

Why not try buying all of your groceries from local suppliers for just one week?

Local Food Direct is a social enterprise working to make it easier for people in Norfolk and Suffolk to buy from the excellent producers we have in this part of the UK.

Did you know that the UK produces 19 MILLION tons of CO2 every year from transporting food? Every time we buy a shoulder of lamb from New Zealand, potatoes from Israel or tomatoes from Saudi Arabia, we’re contributing to this mind-blowing figure.

According to the Food Policy journal, if everyone in the UK bought food that was produced within 20km of where they live, the country as a whole would save £2.1 billion in environmental and congestion costs. It is possible to make a difference by changing our individual buying habits!

Local Food Direct works with over fifty local companies to offer a comprehensive grocery delivery service, so that you can do your weekly shop as usual, but can avoid the mega-store supermarket chains that are doing so much damage to local economies and local producers.

Where they can’t find a local producer, they work with local suppliers – so that even if food or products have to travel (there aren’t many Norfolk bananas, unfortunately) the money you spend on them is going back into our communities, strengthening our local economy and ensuring jobs for local people.

If you have questions about how the Local Food Direct delivery scheme works, you can find the answers on www.welovelocalfood.co.uk – or you can get in touch with Paul at Local Food Direct, who is happy to answer any questions.

Join in, take the challenge. You’ll be amazed at how easy it is to have a fridge full of local produce, without having to trek around various farm stores.

Better food, fewer food miles – if you’ll forgive the over-used cliché: it’s a winning recipe!

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The press release above came just after I’d eaten at the Sun at Northaw- they revel in local, seasonal food and the two linked well. Here’s a brief overview of the meal I had there:

Northaw is a Hertfordshire village on the outskirts of Potters Bar. I’d never been to this restaurant before but I’m led to believe it’s got a good reputation amongst the cognoscenti of the green-belt.

Food is predominantly local with a map showing all of the producers on the back of the menu.

This is a restaurant with great produce . Their food is traditional and they pull out a great selection of real English dishes: dressed crab, potted shrimp, crispy pigs’ ears and skate knobs- who knew skate even had knobs? And this is before you even get to the main event: Barnsley chop, roast pork belly, halibut T-bone steak with surf clams the list goes on and it is all amazing. There’s a two course or three course option, both well-priced.

Service can be a little slow and a bit inattentive but it was a busy Sunday so we’ll forgive them that. I took the Barnsley chop which is shown above- this is my favourite cut of lamb, you get to enjoy all the good bits right there in one slice straight through the beast- fantastic. I saw the pork belly next to me and it had the best crackling I’d seen since the last time I cooked pork.

Desserts are as expected all made from honest to goodness English ingredients so I took the Norfolk treacle tart- served cold and with clotted cream this blew me away. Delicious. I’ll be back regularly.

The Sunday Times Food Guide

I received an email from a PR last week alerting me to the new Sunday Times Food Guide being launched last Sunday (31st October).

I got the Sunday Times- a break with tradition as I’m a Telegraph man, and I have to say the guide was excellent.

Here’s some more information:

The Sunday Times launches new top restaurant guide with extended online version

This Sunday, October 31, the first ever The Food List: Britain’s Top 100 Restaurants will be launched.  Launching online at 00.01 on Sunday 31^st October, it crowns Gidleigh Park restaurant in Devon as the best eatery in Britain with Heston Blumenthal’s famous Fat Duck restaurant coming a close second.    Covering the whole of the UK, the guide identifies the top restaurants across the regions as well as London, voted for by 8000 real customers in nearly 100,000 detailed, user-generated reviews.

In addition to this weekend’s paper supplement, an extended list of the Top 200 restaurants will be available exclusively at thesundaytimes.co.uk/foodlist, and will remain accessible to subscribers all year round.  New subscribers can sign up now to access the full top 200 restaurants in the Sunday Times Food List, only £1 for the first 30 days.

Designed specifically for the online environment, it allows users to search the top 200 restaurants by location, type of cuisine, cost or via an interactive map and also features the ability to directly book a table at participating restaurants.

This new addition to the paper’s roster of definitive lists has a refreshingly simple appraisal system.  Assessment for The Food List is based on food alone, the most important aspect of any dining experience, and the result is the ultimate league table for British restaurants.

Television chef Gordon Ramsay has no restaurants in the top half of The Food List: Britain’s Top 100 Restaurants.  Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in London was placed 52^nd and his prestigious Petrus eatery was rated 77^th.  Former Petrus chef and bitter rival of Ramsay, Marcus Wareing, fared much better.  His restaurant in The Berkeley Hotel (formerly managed by Ramsay) gained number three spot, followed by The Ledbury in fourth.  Finishing off the top five is The Waterside Inn in Bray, Berkshire.

A 32-page special supplement counting down the best 100 restaurants, with in-depth profiles of the top 25, The Food List: Britain’s Top 100 Restaurants will appear in The Sunday Times on Sunday October 31, 2010.

Sunday Times Editor, John Witherow, says:  “The Food List: Britain’s Top 100 Restaurants is set to become the definitive guide of where to dine in Britain today.  The approach of assessing each restaurant on the quality of the food alone is unique, and manages to take a lot of the stuffiness out of the whole process of eating out.”

The Food List: Britain’s Top 200 Restaurants is compiled in association with Harden’s, publisher of The UK Restaurant Guide.  The full list of The Food List: Britain’s Top 200 Restaurants will be published online from 00.01 on Sunday October 31st on thesundaytimes.co.uk/foodlist.

Wild Mushrooms at St Albans

This being the season of fungus, I received word of a gentleman who has a wild mushroom stall in St Albans market.  My mother-in-law, god bless her, makes regular trips up to the market and she’s a total mushroom fiend. I too am an adherent of the champignon sauvage so I emailed Ray and then went to see him a few Saturdays ago.

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Normal Service is Resumed

After a protracted absence, Keith Posh is delighted and ecstatic to announce the renaissance of the PoshFodder kitchen.

Stand by for more details, you wankers.

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That’s Why They Call Me Terrine Tibbs

It all started several weeks ago with Alan Murchison’s Cock a Leekie terrine on the Great British Menu. When he sliced through the perfectly moist cake to reveal a perfect cross-section of de- then reconstructed cock a leekie soup in a terrine, I was sold. I swore to make one- you know, one of those chunky, meaty coarse country pâtés that cry out for a cornichon. And so it was that I found myself in Waterstone’s browsing the food section when I came across Stéphane Reynaud’s book titled simply, ‘Terrine’.

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