Typing Room - A Symphony of Flavours & Textures and Possibly One of the Best Tasting Menus in Town by Lee Westcott

Name: Typing Room

Where: Town Hall Hotel, Patriot Square, Bethnal Green, London E2 9NF, http://www.typingroom.com

Cost: The a la carte menu consists of four snacks (£5), four starters (£5 - £15) and six mains (£19 - £26), all made with local and seasonal British produce, with a seven-course tasting menu also available at £70 per person, with a wine-pairing supplement of £50.

About: After Nuno Mendes left the Town Hall Hotel in Bethnal Green, home to his Michelin-starred Viajante restaurant to open the hugely popular Chiltern Firehouse, the premises were taken over in May 2014 by Jason Atherton's protégé Lee Westcott.

Still in his twenties, Westcott has some very big shoes to fill, but he is proving to be just the man for the job. He has worked alongside some of the world’s most innovative chefs including the Galvin brothers, Michelin-starred chef Tom Aikens (whose eponymous restaurant he headed for two years), stages at Per Se and Noma as well as helming two of Jason Atherton’s restaurants in Hong Kong.

Typing Room is located in East London’s fabulous Town Hall Hotel, built in 1910, the restaurant is named after the building’s original typing room in which all communications from the mayoral, council and judicial system were put to ink. It is an elegant restaurant, with a clean design and light, soothing colours – I like the Scandinavian style furniture, the white marbled tables, the parquet flooring and most importantly the open plan kitchen!

What We Ate: We opted for the tasting menu. I never write much about bread baskets, but Typing Room’s surely deserves a mention – this included a wonderfully fresh and aromatic brioche and a superb hot sourdough roll, with a delicately marmite-flavoured butter with crispy chicken skin. These were excellent.

From the choice of snacks, I opted for the courgette & basil profiteroles with black olive while Dr G went for the cumin lavoche (flatbread), with crab, sweetcorn & curried egg. These were also very good, and rather clever in my opinion – the idea of savoury of profiteroles and the intricate presentation and flavours put together over that flatbread were great appetisers for the meal to follow.

From the non-optional part of the tasting menu, we had what I thought was one of the best dishes of the evening - mackerel with passion fruit, burnt cucumber and radish. This dish had a wonderful combination of tantalizing flavours and textures from the crispy toasted mackerel skin, the sweetly but sharp passion fruit cream, the raw crunchy radish and fresh mackerel.

Readers of this site know that I can't resist a good steak tartare, and so I asked the restaurant to squeeze in an extra dish from the a la carte menu – again a very beautifully presented dish with myriad flavours of fresh raw beef, crunchy turnip, sorrel and smoked beetroot.

Another favourite was the yeasted cauliflower with raisins, capers and mint. I was pleased that this was one of the non-optional items on the menu, as I would have probably not ordered it. This would have been a pity as it turned out to be one of the highlights of our dinner – this was a dish of cauliflower served several ways - raw and wafer thin, deep fried until crunchy, chargrilled florets and a yeasted cauliflower puree. I never thought that the humble British cauliflower could taste so good!

This was followed by a fish course of turbot with heritage fresh red, green and sundried tomatoes, served with coiled courgette wafers and grilled squid, and a heavenly courgette and basil puree. With a scattering of samphire, an octopus carpaccio, and an intense, water-white tomato consommé this was an exquisite dish - light yet satisfying, palate stimulating and thought-provoking. It is to eat dishes like this that I go to restaurants, and it is a rare joy indeed to taste cooking of this calibre.

Our meat course was lamb with smoked aubergine, wild garlic, yoghurt and onions. The smoked aubergine was represented in a mahogany swirl around the lamb rump and belly, which were unctuous and perfectly cooked, with little green dots of a highly concentrate sauce and with the colour of parsley chlorophyll.

The pre-dessert was a palate-cleansing combination of pineapple, basil and ginger sorbets. Lastly, we were served a delicious dessert of amaretto ice cream, rich chocolate mousse, and almond crumble, which continued the menu's consistent theme of contrasting flavours and textures, being also a fitting end to our splendid meal.

What We Drank: We kicked off with a couple of cocktails (£9).  The Vesgroni is a colourless Negroni made from clarified Campari, Peg & Patriot London Dry Gin and Vermouth.  Served in an elegant 1920s-style glass with a strip of lemon, this was deeply fragrant with citrus notes with just the right amount of bitterness from the campari. The Rice Rice Baby is a blend of roasted rice ice cream liqueur, which sounded weird but tasted delicious - off dry, it really did taste of toasted rice.

There is a wide selection of wines and sparkling wines by the glass, from £5 to £15. In bottles, white wines start at £27 for a Picpoul de Pinet, and reds at £23 (for a merlot from Domain Montrose, Cotes de Thonghe). The selection is mostly from France, Italy and Spain, with some options from the New World, including unusually a Tannat from Uruguay and a white Chateau Musar from Lebanon. 

For the wine choice, we put ourselves in the capable hands of the head sommelier Miguel Gomez who personally paired all our dishes. Barcelona-born, Gomez has a long history working in some of London’s most prestigious restaurants, including Zuma, The Square and Clos Maggiore.

With the mackerel, we had a glass of English Bacchus. With a New World nose of nettles and gooseberry, this had fresh acidity and yet was just off-dry, and picked up nicely the notes in the mackerel dish. 

With the cauliflower, we had a Petit Clos 2013 Pinot Noir from the Sancerre vigneron Henri Bourgeois' estate in Marlborough, New Zealand. This was very good, with medium body and lovely redcurrant notes, with balancing savoury qualities on the finish. 

With the lamb, we had a carignan, syrah and grenache blend from Camins del Priorat, from Alvaro Palacios in northeastern Spain, 2012. This was a massive wine, intense, crimson in colour, with a chalky nose, and long minty finish.

With dessert, we had a glass of Pedro Ximenez El Maestro de la Sierra NV, from Jerez (15%). Aged in American oak casks for oxidation, this can age for 12 years. With flavours of almond, caramel and raisins.

Likes: Excellent value 7-course tasting menu with matching wines at £120 per person. Impeccable service, well informed, enthusiastic. Fantastic choice of wines, very well judged to match the food. Superb cooking skills and understanding of contrasts of flavour and texture.

Dislikes: None.

Verdict: One of the most interesting meals I have eaten in a long time, and at £70 per person for the 7-course tasting menu represents excellent value for the exceptionally high level of cooking skill. I cannot recommend Typing Room highly enough - go now before it gets the Michelin stars that will surely follow and becomes booked up and unaffordable!

Tripping as light as air after 18 heavenly creations

Words and Photography by Su-Lin Ong

Extraordinary eating begins when convention and caution are thrown to the wind.  Tonight’s one night stand is to enter mind-stretching realms, with the lofty promise to ‘engage all the senses, to restore, challenge and enrich’.   

Too tame!   It’s a burst of adventurous fun: stones that aren’t stones, the zingiest kaleidoscopic colours, altered states of texture, and flavours that have a piercingly natural clarity. 

So this is it; when two Michelin starred chefs partner up as in the vision of Nuno Mendes at Viajante.  One of his six selected co-hosts in his Craft season which ran in April is Rasmus Kofoed of Geranium in Copenhagen.  Rasmus is the only chef in the world to hold a gold, silver and bronze medal from Bocuse d'Or. 

Geranium in the centre of Copenhagen is set high up.  Urban meets rural as you connect with the tops of trees and windmills in view.

Viajante in Bethnal Green, East London, is in the restored art deco Town Hall Hotel (see earlier review here).  I pass pubs frequented by notorious criminals the Kray brothers and streets of faceless shops to get there.

Photo: Viajante

Choosing a late sitting tonight challenges this Viajante-Geranium dinner to prove itself all the more.   Skip forward some 18 incredible creations over three hours, and it is 1.30am when we finish eating.  I feel as if I’ve taken a trip through a dream cloud and emerged supremely energized.  Buzzing.

Each dish is presented at table in modest detail by the chefs, including Mendes and Kofoed.  It’s a seamless sequence without any ceremony.  Just as well; it’s been a stupendous week – both teams must have been up all night before celebrating their leap up the league of the World’s Best Restaurants.

As for us guests, it’s tempting to play the game of guessing whose dish is whose creation.  The real joy is experiencing how the signature style of each chef weaves round each other, emerging, re-emerging, creating a harmony with some characterful clout along the way.

The menu is a mystery, and when I finally see it at the end of dinner, the descriptions are short and stripped back – incredibly liberating.  You really want to understand the ingredients and composition, but not long into the dinner, you just want to sit back, admire and say wow at every bite.  

The dinner:

Crispy twigs with sea salt aged cheese and burnt leek.  

Razor clams with edible shells.

Crabmeat, peas, nasturtium and crab shell sauce.

Milk skin lactose and squid ink.  Space-age food.

Dill stones and separate dish of lactic acid fermented vegetables with salmon roe.

Langoustine with braised chicken skin, pine and chopped radish.

Smoked bacon & walnut sourdough and potato baguettes with beurre noisette and hay smoked whipped butter.

A fluid jelly made from ham from northern Denmark, fragrant thyme and tomato water, cooked at a constant 62 degrees C.

Charred leek heart with lobster and bitter ground elder flower.

White cabbage with shoots and stems, pickled leek flower and parsley with champagne butter sauce (our preferred substitute for oysters).

Smoked bone marrow with carrot and dehydrated carrot skin.

Brill wrapped in milk skin with vanilla and samphire.

A royally red tartare made from leg and heart of lamb and smoked pork fat, red beetroot sauce, truffle & blueberry, gel of beetroot & cherry vinegar.

Meltingly delicate Iberico pork and fermented cabbage and peppers.

Reduced milk sorbet, lemon granita, smoked cucumber, salty cucumber jelly and linen seeds.

Naked trees of crispy puréed prunes and frozen dark beer and biodynamic cream infused with beechwood.

Beetroot & caraway ice cream.

Eggs of dried pine & caramel & chocolate.

Finally, petits fours of frozen oil of vanilla and cèpes mushroom truffles.

We drank Filipa Pato Bical & Arinto 2011 Beiras and Gerhard Pittnauer Alte Reben St Laurent 2009 Burgenland Austria. 

Viajante, Town Hall Hotel, Patriot Square, London E2 9NF, Tel. 020 7871 0461.
www.viajante.co.uk  

Geranium, Per Henrik Lings Allé 4, 8., DK-2100 Copenhagen, Tel. +45 69 96 00 20
http://geranium.dk/

Su-Lin Ong (@sloLondon) dined on behalf of The London Foodie as a guest of Nuno Mendes, Rasmus Kofoed, Viajante, EightyFour.

London Restaurant Festival 2011 - My Round-Up of this Year's Highlights

The London Restaurant Festival ran from 3rd to 17th October this year. The third year it has run, in my opinion, it was also the best Festival we had to date. It has grown from previous years and is now a real celebration of what British restaurants have to offer.

Along with the 'main menu' events involving well-known and established restaurants, the 'side dishes'  were an opportunity for new and less well-known restaurants to introduce themselves to a wider audience.  In the latter category, there were some great finds and bargains to be had.  In addition to this, it was an excellent opportunity to experience the cooking of top Michelin-starred chefs from different parts of the UK in London at affordable prices, including Sat Bains and Nathan Outlaw to name just a couple who cooked at Fortnum & Mason's.

If you missed the Festival this year, I urge you to keep your eyes peeled for the 2012 event.  Below is a round-up of some of my favourite events this year. 

Eat Film at The Covent Garden Hotel

Sponsored by San Pellegrino, this was an intimate screening of the film 'Waitress' at the Covent Garden Hotel (part of the The FirmdaleGroup of Hotels also including Soho Hotel and Charlotte Street Hotel). The film was chosen by special guest and industry insider Laura Santtini, who introduced the film.  The evening, priced at £55 per person, started with a Laurent Perrier Champagne reception, the film viewing itself, followed by a delicious three-course meal in the hotel’s restaurant, Brasserie Max.

The film was entertaining, cute, mainly centred around food, and the trials and tribulations of three waitresses working in a pie cafe in the USA. The food that followed in Brasserie Max, was delicious, and the full menu which was inspired by the film, is shown below.

Shaved fennel, endive, pink grapefruit and apple salad, mint

Cinnamon, allspice and brown sugar rubbed “chauvinistic” pig slow roasted with sweet potato gratin and watercress

Wishing on a chocolate moon pie

I thoroughly enjoyed this night out, and discovered then that Covent Garden Hotel hosts a regular weekly Saturday night film club, to which I will return. This includes either afternoon tea or a two course dinner with a glass of premium wine and the movie for £35 per person, with films starting at 8pm.  Movies vary from classics to latest releases.  Forthcoming films include Woody Allen's 'Midnight in Paris' on 26th November, 'It's a Wonderful Life' on 3rd, 10th, 17th and 24th December, 'The Help' on 14th January, to name just a few.  For a full listing and booking details, click here.

Andaz Catch - Seafood Workshop

Led by Martin Scholz, Head Chef of Andaz Hotel's renowned seafood restaurant Catch (which I have previously reviewed here), this was a daytime event starting at 7am in the hotel's lobby.  From there, we were taken by coach to Billingsgate Fish Market for a guided tour, where Martin introduced us to seafood suppliers and taught us how to select seafood.  

After the tour, we were taken back to the hotel, where together with Martin and his sous-chef, we cooked a three-course lunch.  This was a hands-on cookery class, in a state of the art cookery demonstration and events suite which the hotel has recently built, and which looks stunning.

The menu was delicious, and recipes were also provided.  Below, you can see what we cooked on the day.

Bouillabaisse

Risotto with Chorizo, pan-fried Cod and baby squid filled with tapenade with Moroccan black olives

Crème Brulée

Andaz Hotel's Sommelier served a magnificent array of wines to match our meal, starting with Champagne, and moving on to a selection of white wines such as a '10 Chilean Sauvignon Blanc from Rapel Valley, an '09 Riesling from Mosel, and an '80 Bual Madeira Wine.  We also had an '08 St Aubin, an '05 Chateau Haura Graves with the fish.  To accompany dessert, we enjoyed an '83 Chateau Climens 1er Cru Sauternes-Barsac and a Chateau Yquem '98 Sauternes (legendary wine, reputedly the most expensive in the world).  We finished a magnificent lunch with coffee and Cognac.

The workshop ran from 7.45am to 2.00pm and cost in my opinion a bargain price of £70 per person. Judging by my experience, should Andaz Hotel run this workshop again, I could not recommend it highly enough.  

For more information about Andaz Hotel's latest events, visit their website here.

Brit-Dish at The Corner Room

In association with American Express, the official sponsors of London Restaurant Festival, Brit-Dish was one of the festival's main events, at which renowned chefs reinterpreted some of the most-loved British national dishes.

I am a great supporter of Nuno Mendes' cooking, which I have reviewed at The Loft Project in 2009 (here) and at Viajante in 2010 (here).  I was fortunate to have the opportunity to take part in the Brit-Dish event with my friend Carly of Greedy Diva, at Nuno's new venture, The Corner Room.

Nuno's cooking divides opinions - you may love or hate it, but you will never be indifferent to it.  Luckily in my case, I can't get enough of it.  His food is inspiring in its creativity, and thought-provoking.  His use of ingredients and flavour combinations is highly sophisticated, as his re-interpretation of humble British dishes in the menu below demonstrated.

Prawn Cocktail

Roast Beef & Yorkshire Pudding

Apple Crumble

A man who can make prawn cocktail, roast beef and apple crumble taste and look as exquisite as this clearly deserves to be taken notice of.  His new restaurant, The Corner Room, is housed in a luxury hotel occupying the former Bethnal Green Town Hall, where Viajante is also situated. It is a single room furnished simply but stylishly with high white-tiled walls, stripped wood flooring and panelling, vintage lighting and plain wooden tables.  The menu changes daily, and prices are very reasonable.  No bookings are taken. Very highly recommended.

Modern Market Menu at One Aldwych

Tony Fleming put together a special menu for London Restaurant Festival, called the Modern Market Menu. This involved dining around the hotel, each course served in a different location within One Aldwych Hotel, the independent, award-winning luxury 5-star hotel in the heart of London's Covent Garden.

Starting at the Lobby Bar, the evening kicked off with a glass of Ridgeview's Bloomsbury Cuvée Merret and a tasting of oysters prepared in four different ways - natural with shallot vinegar and tabasco, jellied with watercress, deep fried with tartar sauce and chips, and angels on horseback. I enjoyed the buzzing atmosphere at the bar, with guests and non-guests mingling over cocktails and delectable bar-snacks.

We then moved down to the hotel's main Axis Restaurant for roast haunch of venison and caramelised root vegetable purée with chestnut jus. This was impeccable, and moreover was served with a magnificent individual shepherd's pie. The restaurant was very elegant, and the food and service excellent.  I would definitely like to return.

For dessert, we headed up to the mezzanine Indigo Restaurant for a blackberry, elderberry and sloe gin jelly, clotted cream ice cream and blackberry mousse. This was outstandingly good - not only were the flavours of the mousse, jelly and ice cream delicious, but there was an excellent contrast of textures imparted by a crisp caramel coating for the blackberries, and a peanut brittle between the jelly and mousse.

The Festival was a great eye-opener for me, showing me that not only are there some great restaurants at One Aldwych, but also that the hotel offers a range of interesting foodie experiences.  The Tasting Club includes a variety of activities, such as cookery classes, Axis Seasonal Dishes - a 12-month calendar of seasonal dishes by head chef Tony Fleming's 'Food Hero' suppliers, and "Moet Movies"  each weekend, with a glass of champagne, a movie, popcorn and a three course dinner all for £42.50 per head. There is also a regular 'Ten after Ten' option of a late night or post-theatre sweet fix at Indigo, after 10pm, for a choice of dessert with a glass of dessert wine for £10 per person.

I thoroughly enjoyed the food in all the restaurants in One Aldwych, and thought the lobby bar was a great place for a cocktail or glass of wine before or after dinner.  The Moet Movies beckon.  I cannot wait to return.

For more information on Tony Fleming's seasonal dishes, click here .

For a full listing of Moet Movies, click here.

Nathan Outlaw at Fortnum and Mason

As part of the festival celebrations, Fortnum & Mason hosted a Culinary Carnival where guests had the opportunity to sample dishes by some of the UK’s best loved chefs, some Michelin-starred, in The Gallery Restaurant. Menus were created by the guest chefs reflecting their signature style, featuring the pick of the season’s crop and regional produce from the British Isles.

On the evening of my visit, Nathan Outlaw was the guest chef.  Head-chef of The St Enodoc Hotel, Rock, Cornwall, Outlaw was awarded 2 Michelin Stars in 2011, and his eponymous restaurant has also been named this year as the Best Seafood Restaurant in the UK by The Good Food Guide.

At this event at Fortnum & Mason, the two-course lunch was priced at £27.00, or £33.00 for 3 courses, with a three course dinner at £53.00.  The tasting menu at his restaurant, in contrast, is priced at £75 per person, so this represented, on the face of it, good value without a many hours' slog down to Cornwall.

The dishes we sampled on our visit are shown below.

Crispy Porthilly Oyster, Oyster Mayonnaise, Pickled Cucumber Salad

Beetroot Cured Salmon, Horseradish Cream and Treacle Bread

Roast Scallop, Herb Emulsion, Bacon and Onion Bread

Brill, English Mustard Dressing, Char grilled Leeks and Brown Shrimps

Gurnard, Squid, Fennel Salami and Orange Salad

Lemon Meringue Trifle

Espresso Custard Tart, Pistachio Ice Cream

Selection of Cornish Cheeses with Pickled Celery, Fig and Apple Chutney, Sesame and Poppy Seed Crackers

The food was exceptionally good, particularly the scallops, gurnard and lemon meringue.  I believe this represented exceptionally good value, considering the quality of fish and seafood, in a four-course dinner cooked by a multi award-winning chef.