Mishkins: new deli?

Good food, better place

The tagline for Mishkins is "A kind of Jewish deli". To me, this was confusing. As I looked at the pictures I wondered: where are the glass counters? Where are the glass jars with red gingham lids? WHERE IS THE OVERPRICED CHEESE?!

After a bit of research I came to the conclusion that a deli can pretty much be what it wants to be, whether it's selling sandwiches, artisan cheese or bhan mi. Wikipedia even tried to claim delis could sell deep fried chicken. For it's part, Mishkin's wants to be a restaurant, but does everything in its power to prove it isn't one – like Nick Clegg claiming he's not a toff.

But you haven't fooled me E Mishkin. I've been to restaurants before, and they mostly look a lot like this. Not all as good as this, but a whole lot like it. Mishkins is beautiful on the inside, with stainless steel bar straight out of a Brent Lynch painting,shiny black and white lino floor and tiny tables lit by T-lights. It even has a wooden tardis-like confession box at the back with a private table, as if the rest of the restaurant wasn't cosy and unique enough.

I say private, but that's a slight exaggeration because, even in the closet at the back, the tables are so close together you sometimes find yourself listening to other people's conversations rather than your own. That's fine though; most strangers I meet are more interesting than me. The waiters were also an interesting bunch: truly lovely people who genuinely seemed to care if you were having a good night and, despite there being a queue for tables, allowed us an extra beer after we had finished eating.

And so to the food. Being about as decisive as the wind, I read the menu at lunchtime so I was prepared for dinner. The prices were astonishing. For such a talked about, trendy place in central London, £11 for a main is a revelation. Probably even cheaper than the very average Cote nearby. Never has the sight of a number made me hungry before. I'd been hankering for my half Reuben with coleslaw and "East End" chips for about six hours by the time I got to eat it. Thankfully (and rightly, because it's a sandwich) it had only taken 10 minutes to arrive. Reubens are a brilliant mix of salt beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut and seemingly whatever dressing takes the chef's fancy, but traditionally thousand island. This one must have been good, because to my horror I'd polished it off before I even thought to take a picture (hence this picture, which won't exactly have David Loftus quivering in his boots). Despite the fact that the beef was a little too chewy (a real sin in salt beef) and the sauerkraut no more sauer than the coleslaw, it was a damned fine sandwich. However, it dawned on me as I chewed that I had just paid £8 for half a sandwich. To be fair it was toasted, but it wasn't like it was slow-toasted overnight. Almost a tenner for a slice of bread? This is no deli.

My friend's mac&cheese with salt beef felt a little more like a restaurant dish, but sadly the sauce was rather thin and the pasta overcooked, which meant it bore too much resemblance in texture to the milkshake he'd had at the bar while waiting for me (why am I always late?!). Still, we polished it all of, plus chips, in about 10 minutes.

It occurs to me that you're not really paying for the food at Mishkins, but the concept; the exciting thought that you went out for dinner and ended up, not in a restaurant, but a deli. So people who know little about food can go "Darrrling, forget Pizza Express, I know this charming little place opposite the theatre where they're showing Shrek". How unusual, how experiential! I can't tell whether I'm being sarcastic, because I really enjoyed my meal at Mishkins, and the Maple Old Fashioned I drank was really, really excellent.

In the end, I think it was partly the fact that it was so obviously a London restaurant that endeared it to me. Built off buzz on the blogosphere, founded in an unusual place, funded by one entrepreneur and, even with the words "Jewish deli" in the tagline, still serving burgers and pulled pork sandwiches.

It's no deli, or even new deli, but I love it all the same. I'll be back darrrling.

   

Made in Camden: Made in Heaven

Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant.

Playing at the Roundhouse at the moment is the brilliant "Oh Fuck Moment".

I had my own moment downstairs in the venue's café, Made in Camden. It may sound like a desperate channel 5 ploy to cash in on the pretense and stupidity of Made in Chelsea, but there are no cameras and certainly no egos. The food, presented as a global take on tapas, is often experimental, but never in a smoke-and-mirrors Heston way.

You can tell the chefs were once students of Yotam Ottelenghi. The list of ingredients is dizzying, the fusion of cuisines baffling and the range on offer intimidating. But it's all layered expertly. The complex-sounding and delicate-looking dishes are so punchy, so satisfying, so perfect, that they left me speechless. I was a baby eating solids for the first time; I was kid eating chocolate money; I was reliving the first Double Decker I ever ate. Some dishes were so moorish that I might as well have been eating Walkers Thai Sweet Chilli Sensations.  If you ever have ambitions to be obese, this is surely the way to do it. Made in Camden's food is simply addictive.

My friends and I couldn't communicate. Like cavemen and women we moaned and grunted at each other, reached out to grab fistfuls of food, unable to articulate thanks or graces. I floundered and stuttered, pointlessly trying to explain to my all-to-aware guests just how good the food was. And so the random swearing started. I think it was the endive and sweet potato crumble with slow-roasted tomato salsa that did it. It started with satisfying crunch, then a wash of creamy sweet potato, then a slap of salty endive and was finished by the mouthwatering zing of the salsa. 

Or maybe it was the calamari, deep fried in what looked like diamonds, dunked in chilli aioli then smothered with pumpkin jam. It was alternately sweet, then spicy, then salty; soft, then springy, then crunchy. I mopped up the aioli with the squid like it was just bread and soup. 

Of course, it could also have been the crispy, oily hake tempura, served with a sweet and sour Kaffir lime sauce and grilled broccoli. I know it's tapas and the portions are meant to be small, but goddamnit I wanted more Hake.

That's not to say the portions are stingy - the only dishes on the menu not meant to be shared (apart from the soup surely, because that's just silly) are the desserts. And those portions are by no means mean. My chocolate mousse was like a decadent sweet brick on the plate, and came with a coffee and mascarpone tart. I felt somewhat cheated by the term tart, as really it was a scoop of coffee flavoured cheese in slightly stale pastry, but oh my days the mousse was effing fantastic.

In fact, my dinner at Made in Camden was a litany of expletives. I was like an excitable (slightly bearded) child with tourettes. Sadly it wasn't all for the right reasons. Given how empty the restaurant was, the service was pathetic. Unless they were hiding a rowdy and demanding party in the back room, three cocktails should not take 20 minutes to make – and if they are missing an ingredient for one, they should tell the diner immediately, not after delivering the first two. Given how few orders must have been put through the till, they shouldn't have added a glass of wine and half a wheat beer to our tab. More importantly, when we questioned this, they should have been a little more trusting of a party that has just spent £120 on dinner.

But nothing could spoil the work of the chefs. To turn three educated people into dribbling wrecks, without plying them with alcohol, is no mean feat, and I for one was speechless at how wonderful the food was. When you have tasted good food, you realise it is more addictive than the additives that are meant to hook us. It's proof that psychological addiction is stronger than chemical.

www.madeincamden.com

   

Joe's cafe: not for builders

Joe’s Cafe rather under sells itself. It sounds like a builders’ cafe where the dress code is high vis jackets and paint stained trackies.

I can assure you that you would not make it through the door dressed like that – despite it being 12 foot wide. Joe’s is actually a subtle and beautiful restaurant. A book case runs through the centre, punctuated with the occasional 50-year-old bottle of wine or Vogue collection from the 80s.

The tables are spread out and the service relaxed. Money here is made slowly, in stark contrast to its Kensington clientele. We ummed and erred over the wine list, starters and mains. Even deciding between sparkling and still water took five minutes, during which our tireless waiter looked busy at the table behind us.

I started with fois gras on a mushroom wafer topped with sour cherries. This was rather hard to eat, being unstab-able and too wide to balance on the fork. So by the time it reached my mouth it was more like sour cherries, topped with fois gras and mushroom pastry shards. Still, the dish was appreciated for its sweet and sourness, even if the texture was all together too watery.

For the main I had water trout (what other kind is there?) with a French tartare sauce and a cold salmon, almost sushi-esque roll with an horseradish base. To be honest it was felt foreign on the plate, distracting me from the wonderful trout and if I hadn’t been famished would have been left well alone. However, the course was served with the first truly tolerable form of fried cauliflower I have ever tasted, and all it took was the addition of lemongrass.

As is the case in all good restaurants, my memory of the pudding is a little hazy. We had finished a bottle of wine before even choosing our food. Nonetheless my pudding choice was inspired. My raspberry baseless cheese cake was sweet and decadent, and looked a lot like a maoam, a hallucination helped by the fact that it was surrounded by cubes of raspberry jelly. The rubber texture juxtaposed the maoam nicely, and bizarrely added a drier flavour to the very sweet dish.

And so we enjoyed a final bottle of wine after the meal, staring through the missing wall that Joe’s calls a door, at the torrential rain we had to head into. The food is nothing special here, but there is an honesty to it; a kind of aspiring decadence that it never quite lives up to. But in the quiet and welcoming room and with a hearty wine from the Alsace inside you, you’ll never want to leave.




126 Draycott Avenue, South Kensington, London, SW3 3AH
020 7225 2217

   

Bistro Rosa: a great night out ... catering included

I have never experienced bad service until now. We waited 20 minutes to give our drinks order, another 30 to give our food order and 30 minutes for our starters to be cleared away. All this meant that, an hour and twenty minutes into our booking we were asked if we would like coffees. I was so bemused by this point I wasn't sure whether the waiter was joking or genuinely thought we had had all three courses.

Gun to my head though, (and being in St Helier that could happen) I'd do it all again. Bistro Rosa may lack some of the rough-but-ready English service, but it makes up for it in fresh, glorious produce with a modern twist you wouldn't expect in the Channel Islands. Sat in the heart of the fish market you feel like you have discovered some hidden treasure, but from the fact we had to book well in advance, it seems the whole island thinks so too.

My moules were outrageously salty and creamy (and large enough in quantity to be a main), my monkfish with coconut and lime dressing and sweet and sour as I had hoped, and my chocolate cake decadent enough to redefine the term. The ambience in interesting, in essence you set up camp in the middle of a shop floor. The muzak pumped through the tinny speakers didn't help this awkward sensation, but added to the restaurants eccentric personality.

Our night was all rounded off with a superb drunken fellow diner, who was convinced my companion was "Off the American telly" and was insistant she admit it. He ended his night by vomiting in the one restaurant loo and stealing the waitress's coat. She left as cold as her service was.

A thoroughly recommended night out, and the catering was good too.

• Beresford Street, St Helier JE2 4WX
• 01534 729559