Pachamama - Peruvian Inspired Cuisine, Made in England

Name: Pachamama

Where: 18 Thayer  Street, Lonson, W1U 3JY, http://pachamamalondon.com/

Cost: The menu is small but well thought-out, themed around small eats, and grouped into snacks, land, sea and soil. 'Land' dishes (meat and poultry) cost from £7 to £29, 'Sea' (fish and seafood) from £5 to £10. The 'soil' small eats are vegetable-based, with squash, plaintain, asparagus and quinoa featuring prominently, and priced from £7 to £8. All the fish and seafood is sourced from the British coast, and the meat is all from Yorkshire. Piscos and cocktails are priced at £8.50. Entry-level wines start at £23 for a Spanish Macabeo or an Australian Shiraz.

About: Pachamama, meaning 'Mother Earth' in Quechua language, is one of a cluster of Peruvian restaurants to open in London in the last couple of years, situated in Marylebone, just a stone's throw from The Wallace Collection. With a discrete ground floor door that is very easy to miss, the restaurant opens up in the basement to a surprisingly cavernous space, with a 10 -seater bar for cocktails and small eats, and around 70 covers.

Fairly packed on the midweek evening we attended, the restaurant is all distressed wood-panelling, tiled floors, and plain wooden tables. The menu is Peruvian themed, with some Japanese-influenced Nikkei dishes, a small wine menu, and cocktails on a Peruvian Pisco theme.

The young head-chef Adam Rawson, formerly of White Rabbits in Dalston, has ambitious plans for the restaurant, having hired a Peruvian sous-chef in February 2015. 

What We Ate: From the snack options, we had salt and aji squid (£4.50) and chicharones (deep fried pork belly) with sweet onions (£4.50).  The squid was tender and well flavoured, served with a powerful aji mayonaise.

The chicharones were superb, with tender, flavoursome pork in a crisp shell.

From the 'Sea' menu, we had the Cornish seabass with pumpkin, samphire, red onion, radish, coriander and leche de tigre (tiger's milk) (£9).  The tiger's milk was golden from aji amarillo, with a nice amount of chilli heat and not too much acidity or sweetness, which are often problematic features of leche de tigre outside of Peru.

The yellowfin tuna with soy and pickled potato ceviche (£9), was also excellent. Flavoured with hot rocoto chilli in the soy, wasabe and olive oil dressing, this had some good Peruvian Nikkei flavour combinations.

Next came the Cornish crab served with purple potato and green herbs (£10) in a richly infused saffron-dashi which was creamy and delicious, akin to a crab-bisque.

Scallops conchita (£5), was served in the shell, with beautifully seasoned quinoa and a zingy tomato and red onion salsa, this was a very refreshing dish.

From the 'Land' menu, we had the crispy lamb belly with green miso (£9). Lamb belly can be very fatty, and is great for braising then deep frying. The meat was succulent but crispy with the spicy green miso made from white miso, green jalapeno chillies, garlic and lime helping to cut through the fattiness.

We also had the beef cheek Lomo Saltado (£14). Lomo saltado is a Chinese-Peruvian dish, cooked by the 'Chifa' Chinese migrant labourers when they came to Peru in the early 20th century, and today is one of Peru’s national dishes. Pachamama's version featured some unusual ingredients like beef cheeks and parsnips not commonly seen in this dish. It had little resemblance to the dish we tried in Peru, and lacked the vibrancy of the other dishes we had on our visit.

From the 'Soil' menu, we tried the Peruvian asparagus with saffron yolk and peanut (£8). Although I could not taste much saffron, there was quite a kick of chilli heat, and the asparagus was well cooked with a delicious smoky flavour.

Better still was the fried aubergine with smoked yoghurt and pecan (£8) – with unctuously tender flesh within a crispy deep-fried exterior, the aubergine was delicious accompanied by the smoky, nutty yoghurt.

We shared a couple of desserts -  the suspiro de Limena (£6.50), served in a Champagne goblet, had a sweet lemony meringue, and a creamy base flavoured with tart passion fruit – great contrasting flavours and textures.

The torta de chocolate with toasted quinoa ice cream was also good, with a malted, nutty flavour to the ice cream, although the torta had the texture and flavour more akin to a mousse than a cake (£6.50).

What We Drank: We kicked off with a couple of cocktails - the Shining Path was a refreshing Champagne based drink, spiked with cinnamon and Abbott’s bitters. 

The Rosa del Inca was one of Pachamama’s many Pisco cocktails - infused with pink peppercorns and Volcano coffee beans, vermouth, Campari, orange bitters, this was delicious, with a bracing combination of bitter flavours and subtle coffee notes.

With our fish dishes, we had the house white, Matos Blanco from Spain (£7.50 for 250ml), which was non-descript, and completely outclassed by the food. Similarly, with the meat course, we had the house red, Matos Tinto Tempranillo from Spain (also £7.50 for 250ml) - again fruity but undistinguished, and a very poor partner for the food offered. 

Pachamama has a reputation for its cocktails, so as a digestif, we had a couple more (£8.50 each).  The Dulce de Chasca featured dulce de leche, rum, Pisco, vanilla syrup and chocolate bitters, and was an appropriately fruity yet potent end to the meal.

The Pichu Pichu had Volcano Peruvian coffee, Pisco, Kahlua, chocolate and vanilla bitters - a generous hit of potent coffee and chocolate flavours to complete an excellent dinner.

Likes: Particularly outstanding were the chicharones, the Nikkei yellowtail tuna, the scallops conchita, the fried aubergine and lamb belly. The cocktails were strong and well made.

Dislikes: The music is loud to the point of being almost night-club level, and if you lean against the walls, they shake. Although we really liked almost all the dishes, they were uniformly quite spicy, and this does not reflect our experience of food in Peru, where there was a variety of spicy, citrus and savoury dishes. The lomo saltado was the weakest link of our evening, tasting like an English beef stew - nothing wrong with that but not what we were looking for in a Peruvian restaurant serving one of its great national dishes. 

Verdict: There is some seriously good cooking at Pachamama. With a good Marylebone location and a well-priced menu, this is definitely a place to check out. Highly recommended.

Taste of Portugal 2015 – Discovering Bisaro Pork at Portal Restaurant

Words & Photography by Matthew Brown and Luiz Hara

Name: Taste of Portugal 2015 at Portal Restaurant
http://www.tasteportugal-london.com/about.php
http://www.portalrestaurant.com/

Where: 88 St. John Street, London, EC1M 4EH (Portal Restaurant has closed down on the 6th February 2015)

Cost: The Taste of Portugal event ‘Bisaro Pork Tasting Menu’, priced at £65 or £95 with wine-pairing, was specially created by Chef Ricardo Costa and Sommelier Antonio Lopes to highlight this uniquely Portuguese breed of pig for the Taste of Portugal campaign.

But if you missed the event, Portal’s a la carte menu offers plenty of opportunities to try Portuguese pork Bisaro or otherwise - sliced 40-month Pata Negra ham can be ordered by weight (£19/50g), starter of pork belly, black pudding and cabbage (£8), whilst Bisaro pork served with broad beans, chouriço, carrots and turnip (£25) is a popular fixture on the menu can be ordered as a main course. With three days’ notice, determined diners can even order a traditional Bisaro suckling pig, to feed 8-10 people, for £385. The restaurant takes its exclusively Portuguese wine cellar seriously, and though there are few bottles below £20, a large number are priced between £20-30 or available by the glass. 

About: Portal is one of London’s finest Portuguese restaurants, opened nine years ago by Antonio Correia, this is a favourite haunt of mine and the place I head to whenever I crave fine Iberian cuisine, please see reviews here and here.

The evening we visited was organised by Taste of Portugal, a campaign by Turismo de Portugal. Taste of Portugal 2015 is a season of culinary and cultural events - it is a great campaign I support strongly, directed at British foodies, as it highlights the relatively undiscovered cuisine and wines of this amazing country. If you haven’t visited Portugal yet, read on and be tempted. There are still several Taste of Portugal events still to come (check their website here).

On this latest visit to Portal, the menu was created by Ricardo Costa, a young chef who started his professional career in Portal’s kitchen years ago, before returning to Portugal where he is now Executive Chef for the restaurant in Porto’s exclusive Yeatman Hotel, which has the city’s only Michelin star.

Sommelier Antonio Lopes and Chef Ricardo Costa

Bisaro pork, which was at the heart of the menu we sampled, is one of Portugal’s proudest specialities. These pigs are from the Vinhais region in the north of the country, and are actually part-boar, growing to be more than a metre in length. Having been fêted for more than a century, they are fed on a traditional diet including chestnuts and acorns, giving the meat its rich and nutty flavour.

What We Ate: The first course was a game and chicken sausage, made by Costa’s team in the kitchen of the Yeatman Hotel. This is known as alheira sausage, and was invented by Portuguese Jews in order to fool the Inquisition that had forced them to convert to Christianity.

This was followed by a spectacularly rich belly of Bisaro suckling pig, served with taut slices of cardinal prawn (another ingredient native to Portugal) and a mixed sprout salad. The suckling Bisaro is one of Portal’s specialities, and the gamey, crispy meat lived up to its reputation. I love the Portuguese flair in combining seafood and pork so well (as in pork Alentejano style with clams), and I wonder whether this is something they picked up during the colonial period in China (Macau), or vice versa.

The Bisaro pork returned again in a stew, made with a caramelised pistachio and Madeira wine sauce. Costa placed a succulent loin of pork in the centre of the bowl, with its cooking jus spiked with Madeira poured over it at the table. The loin of Bisaro pork, despite being less fatty than the belly, was still very succulent, and it was interesting to note that this leaner cut was just as flavoursome.

The most surprising dish, however, was dessert: an Abbey of Priscos pudding served with citrus sorbet and cured Bisaro pork. The bacon transformed this traditional pudding of egg, lemon and sugar, with its salt unlocking the creaminess of the rest of the dish. Inventively designed to resemble a fried egg, the pudding was served on a base of pine nuts and with a garnish of red berry jelly. This level of detail is unusual in a dessert, and made it the unexpected star of the meal.

What We Drank: The evening began with a Portonic - a simple but refreshing cocktail of white port and tonic that easily gives the G&T a run for its money. White ports may be sweet or dry, but in this cocktail, a bone-dry version was used, making it a great accompaniment to a bowl of salted almonds, or, as we had it here, with Bisaro pork crackling. The white port we tried is available for purchase at Waitrose.

The wines for the evening were chosen by the recently appointed Official Taste of Portugal Sommelier, Antonio Lopes. Our first, a glass of Principal Rosé "Tête de Cuvée" 2010, was a good choice for the alheira sausage, with gentle berry and floral notes.

It was followed by another rosé, a sparkling Campolargo Pinot Noir Brut 2012 also from the Bairrada region. Much bolder, with strong bubbles and berry notes, this went excellently with the sweet Bisaro crackling.

The Bisaro stew was accompanied by a Meandro 2012, a darkly intense, fruit-driven wine with gentle tannins. With dessert, we had a 10-year old Madeira wine: Barbeito Verdelho Old Reserve. Golden in colour, and with plenty of acidity to balance its sweetness, this was a blissful end to the meal.

Likes: The Bisaro pork was magnificent, and in the capable hands of Ricardo Costa, it was elevated to the sublime. Portal has one of the UK’s finest Portuguese wine cellars, and this meal’s wine pairings showed that some relatively undiscovered national wines can stand shoulder to shoulder with the best of France or Italy. 

Dislikes: None.

Verdict: This Taste of Portugal 2015 event featured Porto’s Michelin-starred chef, together with Portugal’s top sommelier, to highlight the wonderful produce and wines of the country available right here in London’s finest Portuguese restaurant, Portal. This is just one of a number of events by Taste of Portugal 2015, and if you get the chance to attend any of them, I would highly recommend it.

Kouzu - The New Japanese Restaurant Destination in Belgravia

Name: Kouzu

Where: 21 Grosvenor Gardens, Belgravia, London, SW1 0JW, http://kouzu.co.uk/

Cost: Starters range from £4.50 to £13, sashimi from £11 to £17.50, and sushi is offered individually, and ‘omakaze’ or chef selection platters ranging from £23 to £60. Cocktails are priced from £8.50 to £12. Entry level wines start from £25 for a Picpoul de Pinet or £22 for a Chilean Merlot. There is a good selection of fine wines with even finer prices.    

About: Just a stone's throw from both Buckingham Palace and Victoria station, this restaurant opened in November 2014, with Chef Kyoichi Kai (formerly of Zuma and the Arts Club) heading the kitchen.

The restaurant claims to have all-Japanese kitchen staff, but walking past the basement kitchen I could not help but notice a lot of westerners working alongside the Japanese. Not that I mind, but it seems an odd claim to make if it isn't correct.

Housed in a grand historical grade-II listed building dating from the 1850s, the restaurant has an impressive entrance with a massive chandelier, and a glamorous cocktail bar.

It has a Japanese-style simplicity to the design, with dark slate floors, top quality but unstained and unvarnished tables, and restrained cream and grey fabrics for the blinds, benches and chairs, with a few prominent displays of orchids.
  

What We Ate: From the ‘New Stream Sashimi’ section, we ordered the lime-cured seabass with a green pepper salsa (£13.00) - this was a stunningly presented dish decorated with micro herbs, chervil and pink peppercorns and served with semi-dried cherry tomatoes which worked surprisingly well with the fish. Although I could not taste much lime-curing in the seabass, the dish was very well balanced and one I would definitely order again.

Also from the 'New Stream Sashimi' section, we had the beef fillet tataki (£17.50) - this was a seared fillet cut into fine slices and served with a sauce of soy sauce, mirin and sake, and a generous serving of julienne salad. In fact the serving of salad was so generous that visually it rather obscured the beef. I enjoyed this dish though - the flavours were fresh and the meat was tender and of good quality.

For mains, we had two items from the charcoal grill selection – the lamb chops with spicy miso and the beef fillet. 

The lamb chops with spicy miso (£12.00), was probably the best dish of the evening and at that price, incredibly good value too. There were two perfectly cooked lamb chops, pink and succulent, served alongside a gorgeous selection of char-grilled vegetables including courgettes, tomatoes, peppers and onion. The spicy miso was a great accompanying sauce with a lot of umami flavour and just the right amount of heat, complimenting the meat and the vegetables without overpowering them.

We also had a 200g beef fillet (£31) that came with a choice two of sauces – an European red wine sauce or a citrus Japanese ponzu dressing served with yuzu kosho (a condiment made from yuzu peel, chillies and salt) - we opted for the latter. Like the tataki starter, the beef was of excellent quality, well cooked, and delicious. My only criticism with it was that rather than being served with yuzu kosho as an accompaniment, I was given a spicy oroshi (a mixture of grated daikon radish and chillies).

To accompany our mains, from the small dish and salad menu, we chose the assorted mushroom salad (£11). This was truly impressive and included a selection of four different mushrooms - eringi, shimeji, shiitake and oyster mushrooms - as well as pine nuts, walnuts, radicchio and green salad leaves dressed with ponzu sauce.

We also ordered a selection of tempura, including prawn (£7.50 for 2), along with aubergine, eringi mushroom and asparagus, but sadly it never arrived. 

As is customary in Japanese restaurants, a ‘shime’ (normally rice and miso soup) is served to end a meal. To that effect, we were served a chef’s platter of sushi including a maki roll and some nigiri.

The spicy California roll (£8), made from crab, avocado, cucumber, flying fish roe, and spicy mayonnaise was superbly made with a very fine layer of sushi rice rolled in shichimi pepper for the spicy heat.

The nigiri sushi were unagi eel (£4 each), and chu-toro (tuna belly), priced at £6.50 each. These were exquisite, but sadly quite steeply priced.

With our selection of sushi, we had three slices of yellowtail sashimi, served in a covered glass bowl (£11). Delicious though it was, again we felt this was not great value for money.

For dessert, we opted for the Tart au Mont Blanc with rum and raisin ice cream (£9.50).  It may come as a surprise to those who have not visited Japan, but Tart au Mont Blanc is a very popular dessert there. The version on offer at Kouzu reminded me very much of examples I ate in Tokyo, and was superb.

We also had the dark chocolate mousse and apricot brandy sauce with hazelnut ice cream (£10.50), which again showed real patisserie artistry at Kouzu.

What We Drank: We started with couple of cocktails - the Yuzutini (£9), was a delicious variation on a familiar theme with intense citrus notes from Yuzu-shu (yuzu-infused shochu), Russian vodka and lemon. The Smoky Negroni (£11.50) was strong and well made from 12-year old Bowmore whisky, along with Campari, ume-shu (plum liqueur) and orange peel. I liked this Negroni although I felt that the whisky was too overpowering a spirit and I would have preferred it with gin.

To accompany our dishes, we opted for a bottle of Masi Valpolicella Classico Ripasso (£30). This was a straightforward wine, with vibrant red cherry notes on the nose and palate. A light, fruit-driven wine, it had very little tannin or complexity, but was very drinkable.

Likes: A perfect meal at Kouzu would start with one of the ‘New Stream’ sashimi dishes like the sea bass, followed by the wonderful lamb chops in spicy miso, ending with the delicious Mont Blanc dessert.

Dislikes: There is a night-club style background music, which seems a little out of place in a restaurant of this quality. The food is very good, but while the waiting staff are polite and attentive, they seem to understand rather little about the food they serve, but these were early days for the restaurant. They also, annoyingly, forgot to bring our tempura. Not all the dishes were served as described on the menu (grated radish instead of yuzu-kosho condiment).

Verdict: Great Japanese-European cooking with some inventive ‘New Stream’ sushi and sashimi on offer and fine patisserie. Well-conceived, Kouzu is a new Japanese restaurant in Central London to be reckoned with. Recommended.

Steak Heaven at May Fair Kitchen - a Return Visit

Name: May Fair Kitchen

Where: The May Fair Hotel, Stratton Street, Mayfair, London, W1J 8LT,  http://www.mayfairkitchen.co.uk/

Cost: Starters range from £7 to £16, main dishes from the grill range from £19 to £55, sides from £3 to £11.  There is a small but well considered selection of wines by the glass mostly priced at £11, and by the bottle white wines start at £34 for an Albariño from Rias Baixas, Spain, and reds at £34 for Napa Valley Merlot. 

About: The May Fair Kitchen is based on the ground floor of the swanky May Fair Hotel, on Stratton Street, between Piccadilly and Berkeley Square. The restaurant is simply but stylishly furnished with dark wood floors and panelling, grey fabrics and white linen tablecloths. 

The concept of the May Fair Kitchen is to serve the best quality meat and fish, simply grilled and served with a choice of sauces made to order. All the meat comes from Aldens Butchers, a family butcher with over 200 years of experience in sourcing the best quality produce from across the UK and Europe.  The fish and shellfish comes from James Knight of Mayfair. The vegetables all come from Watts farm, a family-run business with farms across Kent, Essex and Bedfordshire. A few months ago, I spent a couple of days behind the scenes at the May Fair Kitchen, as well as visiting Aldens and Watts farm to see the quality of the produce first hand - more about that here.

Having just heard of a change of menus at May Fair Kitchen, I decided to pay them a return visit to find out more.

What We Ate: We kicked off with half a dozen oysters (£18), served expertly shucked and cleaned (with none of the irritating fragments of shell that are so often left after opening - a minor pet hate of mine!), and with a classic red wine vinegar and shallot dressing. The oysters were terribly fresh, a very good start to our meal.

For starters, we had the steak tartare (£11) - hand chopped and served with a generous grating of Parmesan and a lovely beaten raw quail egg yolk served in the shell. It was very well seasoned, with a great texture from the hand chopping, and knowing it was from Aldens gave me confidence in its quality and safety.

Dr G had a serving of hand-dived scallops with smoked British ham and bean emulsion with fine herbs (£13).  This was well made and tasted great, but at that price tag, we had hoped for more than one and a half scallops.

My main course was grass-fed, 28-day aged, single rib steak, 20oz (£35), with a Bernaise sauce (£3), real chips (£3) and a Niçoise salad (£4.50).

These were magnificent, with superbly tender and well-flavoured beef from Aldens, this was as good as it gets!

The Bernaise was also well made and with just the right acidity. The triple fried chips were also excellent - chunky and crisp.

Dr G opted for the turbot (£38) with a sauce vierge (£3), samphire and ginger (£4.50). The fish was wonderfully textured, and the sauce vierge beautifully flavoured with chervil, but the side serving of watercress was completely undressed, un-seasoned and slightly on the yellow side of green.

For dessert we had a selection of cheeses from the cheese trolley (£12). The choices of cheeses were somewhat limited and a tad uninspiring.

This is such a pity as some restaurants' cheese trolleys in London have legendary status - think Chez Bruce. The cheese course, if offered, should be one of the most exciting courses of the entire meal.

Lovely grapes, but where is the cheese?

We also had the warm flourless clementine and chocolate cake (£8), served with Cornish clotted cream and winter brittle. We wanted to love this, but again, the dish did not quite deliver as a whole.

What We Drank: While we were deciding on our  menu, we enjoyed a glass of very well balanced Moet et Chandon 2006 (£15). We opted for a glass of Albarino (£11), with the fish dishes, with some lovely elderflower notes. For the meat dishes, we shared a bottle of La Serra Negre 2012, a carignan - garnacha blend from Herencia Altes, Spain (£50). A concentrated, purple-tinged wine with plenty of blackberry fruit and cedar notes, this lovely wine was balanced by plenty of tannin, and had great length and complexity.

Likes: The meats were superb - well sourced, richly flavoured and expertly cooked.

Dislikes: Service was friendly and attentive, but on the busy evening we were there, was a little forgetful at times - for example not offering bread or butter when we wanted it, then taking it away prematurely.

Verdict: May Fair Kitchen offers some of the best grilled steaks, fish and seafood in London. A perfect meal here starts with a platter of freshly shucked oysters, followed by the Iberian spiced chorizo and garlic tiger prawn skewers, finishing with their 20oz, grass-fed, 28-day aged, all singing, all dancing, single rib steak, heaven! Recommended.