HKK London’s Year of the Rooster Menu Reviewed

Where: 88 Worship Street, London EC2A 2BE, http://hkklondon.com/

Cost: The Year of the Rooster menu is priced at £93.88 (a vegetarian menu is also available at the same price), with beverage pairing (cocktails and wine) at £58 and the Orchard Flight (non-alcoholic drinks including tea and fruit juices) at £28.  

About: The 28th January 2017 marks the Year of the Rooster, and to celebrate HKK is offering a Chinese New Year (CNY) 8-course tasting menu until 12 February 2017, and then lightly modified until the end of March.

Records suggest that the Chinese Imperial feasts in classical times often lasted for several days, and consisted of hundreds of dishes incorporating exotic and luxurious ingredients. HKK’s Chinese New Year banquet, created by Hakkasan and HKK’s Executive Head Chef Tong Chee Hwee, takes inspiration from this tradition, with modern interpretations of ancient dishes eaten by the royals. 

The menu features authentic Chinese ingredients such as sea cucumber, abalone and yu fungus as well as other fine ingredients like caviar, foie gras, lobster, fresh truffle and edible gold. The feast ends with a Century egg, a reinvention of the Chinese thousand year old egg; the HKK Century egg is a dessert flavoured with hazelnut, sesame and coffee, but more on that below.

One-Michelin starred HKK is one of London’s finest Chinese restaurants, and a personal favourite. Its ‘Duck & Champagne’ tasting menu (£49 per person) available on Saturday lunch times only featuring its glorious signature cherry-wood smoked duck in a 4-course tasting menu with a bottle of Louis Roederer Champagne thrown in per couple, is still one of the best deals in town. You can see my earlier review here.

What We Ate and Drank: HKK’s Year of the Rooster menu starts with a dish called ‘The Emperor's Bite of Spring’ - this was a golden rice pancake with king crab, white truffle, winter bamboo shoot, carrot and daikon, providing a range of textures and different flavours.

To accompany our first dish, we were served a glass of Amabuki – this was an elegant and light rose sake with subtle wild berry notes, made from blending white sake with red rice. The sake is made at the 300-year old Amabuki Brewery in Saga, in the southern island of Kyushu in Japan.

‘Monk Jump Over The Wall’ is a traditional Chinese soup, and HKK's creamy version had green abalone, scallop, ham and sea cucumber. The soup was delicate but highly flavoursome (give me seafood and pork in a dish any day!) with the Japanese yam, ginseng and goji berry adding contrasting textures in a many-layered dish.  

With it, our first wine was an Arbois Pupillin from Jura, a Chardonnay, from Domain De La Renardiere which showed great structure, minerality and steely green fruit flavours. 

Next was the ‘Touch of the Heart’  - a trio of dumplings: lobster and pickled Chinese leaves, king crab with XO sauce, and jade green dumpling of seabass and shrimp. Accompanying the dim sum trilogy, we had juice of honeydew melon, celery and ginger, served with a dinky glass jug of Peruvian Pisco. Creative as it was, to my mind it cried out for some ice despite the refreshing tartness.

The Imperial Cherry Wood Peking Duck is the signature dish of HKK, and a must-eat dish in my opinion. The process of preparing this dish takes 2 days - first the duck is salted with lemon grass, before being showered in hot water, lemon juice and vinegar. It is then dried for 24 hours to separate the skin from its fat before being roasted in cherry wood, carved and served at the table. 

This elaborate process gives a skin that is as crisp as caramel, and full of aromatic flavour. We were served two morsels of HKK Peking Duck as part of the CNY menu - the first morsel had a generous slab of foie gras, topped with just the crispy skin of the duck and a slice of kumquat. The second had a pancake with breast of duck, leek and cucumber, topped with spoonful of Imperial caviar. This was an utterly delicious, sophisticated dish, worth a visit to HKK in its own right!

To accompany our duck, we had a glass of Reisling 2010 Auslese, by Joh Jos Prum, Wehlener Sonnenhur, from Mosel, Germany. A deliciously rich, off-dry wine with green apple and petroleum notes, this was a classic example of its kind.

Moving on to the first main ‘Scallop Noodle’ had black yu fungus, lemongrass and royal chicken stock, Chinese broccoli and Japanese pumpkin. The scallops were admirably meaty and with a delectably charred flavour. 

With it, we were served a glass of Clos Mireille, a Provencal Rose blended from Syrah, Carignan and Grenache from Domaines Ott. This was a well made wine with delicate strawberry flavours, but a bone-dry nose. Following the semi-dry Reisling seemed a bit too much of a contrast for my palate.

The final savoury dish was ‘Eight Treasure Chicken’, featuring guinea fowl, ginko nut, mangalica ham, shiitake mushroom and a salted duck egg yolk, all wrapped up in a crispy tofu skin. Dinkily presented in a cellophane parcel, at the table a little jug of osmanthus wine was poured over dry ice to give a suitably dramatic appearance to the dish. 

The flavours in the dish were rich and concentrated, the result seeming greater than the sum of its parts, and with its partnering wine, this was for me the climax of the evening.

With the chicken, we had a glass of Morey Saint Denis, Aurelien Verdet, a 2009 Pinot Noir from Burgundy. It had a complex nose of red berry fruit, leather and cedar, rich fruit on the palate and with a long, savoury finish. 

The pre-dessert was a light and airy Kumquat and Carrot Cake served with vanilla cream, orange foam and poached kumquat.

With the pre-dessert, we had a glass of Moscato d'Asti 2015, from G D Vaira, Piemonte, Italy. A slightly spritzy wine, this was light, refreshing, and medium sweet, with muscat grape flavours.

The "Century Egg" was in fact a delectable sweet white sesame mousse, served with vanilla ice cream, caramelized hazelnut, sesame seeds and a coffee lady's finger, edible gold and a kataifi nest to resemble feathers. This was a great end to the meal - witty, creative, and a delight to the eye and the palate. 

With the final dessert, we had a glass of fine old Scotch whisky - a Glenmorangie Signet, made with chocolate burnt malt. The whisky is matured in white American oak, and then cask-aged for 20-70 years. It is 46% alcohol, so is served with a pipette of water to release the aromas.

Likes: Highlights for me were the Imperial cherry wood Peking duck, the Eight Treasure Chicken and the dessert of 'Century Egg". 

Dislikes: Some of the beverage pairings were not to my palate, although at best they were sensational. I would have preferred a wine flight to the mix of spirits, cocktails, wines and sake. 

Verdict: HKK London Chinese New Year Menu, the Year of the Rooster, is another triumph of flavours, colours and textures, and it is not to be missed. The menu is only available until 12th February 2017, so hurry! Highly recommended.

Sushisamba - Fabulous Cocktails & Nikkei Sushi in the London Skies

Name: Sushisamba

Where: 110 Bishopsgate, London, EC2N 4AY, http://www.sushisamba.com 

Cost: Average dinner cost per person is around £45 (not including drinks). Small plates for starters range from £6.50 to £16, ceviches and tiraditos from £12 to £25, while an assortment of 10 sashimi costs £81. Dishes from the robata charcoal grill cost from £8 to £144, while Kobe beef dishes cost up to £1,000 for 1kg ishiyaki on hot stone.

About: Sushisamba has probably the most stunning alfresco terrace in London, 38 floors up in the Heron Tower, opposite Liverpool Street Station. No less arresting is the arrival - guests reach it after a rapid ascent in a glass-sided lift with increasingly spectacular views as it nears the top.   

With branches in New York, Miami, Las Vegas and London, Sushisamba offers Executive Chef Claudio Cardoso’s unique interpretation of Nikkei cuisine, a blend of Japanese, Peruvian and Brazilian cooking, reflecting the migration of Japanese to South America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

As a Nikkei chef myself, and having written a book on the subject (Nikkei Cuisine: Japanese Food the South American Way, click here for more details), I was curious to try Chef Cardoso’s take on Nikkei cooking. Add to that, a brand new cocktail menu which is now available at Sushisamba, we decided to pay a long overdue visit.

What we ate: Diners are recommended to order a few ceviche or sushi plates, then 2 to 3 hot dishes from the robata grill menu. We started with green bean tempura (£7) – crunchy and lovely, the humble veg was transformed by the rich and delicious black truffle aioli it was served with.

Better still were the crispy taquitos of lobster (£17 for 2) – these were delectable filled with fresh lobster, and a refreshing hit of chilli and aromatic lime. 

Salt and pepper squid (£13) came with dry miso, Japanese shichimi chilli pepper, sea salt, crispy garlic, smoked soy and bonito tail sauce. 

We could not resist a couple of Kobe beef sliders (£6.50 each), with horseradish mayo, tomato and lettuce. Served in a striking, jet-black bun possibly made with activated carbon flour, the beef was exquisitely flavoured and tender. 

Better still was the Nikkei ceviche (£14) which included raw salmon served with a zingy dressing made with sesame, tamarind, ponzu and aji chilli and garnishing of seaweed and macadamia nuts. Served with crispy pumpkin, the ceviche had a great combination of sweet, creamy, citrus and chilli heat flavours.

A classic Nikkei dish invented by the Japanese in Peru is the tiradito - a bit like ceviche but with the fish sliced sashimi-style and marinated for only a few minutes. We had the kampachi (amberjack) tiradito (£14), with yuzu, black truffle oil, sea salt, garlic and chive. Served on a gorgeous block of Himalayan salt, this was good although the amberjack had a rather watery texture.

Anticuchos are a traditional Peruvian street food, made from meat marinated in vinegar, garlic and chilli, and grilled on a wooden skewer. We had the anticucho de corazon de pollo (chicken hearts) with Peruvian corn and aji panca which is a Peruvian smoked and dried red chilli (£12).

As a Paulistano, I could not help but order the Moqueca Mista (£30), a typical Brazilian dish, here consisting of jumbo shrimp, squid, seabass, mussels, clams, dende oil, coconut milk and chimichurri rice. This had richly flavoured mussels, although the rice was a little stodgy like rice pudding and the sauce was over salty but oddly under-flavoured. I really wanted to love this dish but overall I found it disappointing given the price point. 

The tiger maki (£16) were well presented, and the selection of nigiri (priced at £6 to £24 each) was delicious with the freshest fish and seafood. 

For dessert, we chose the Zen Garden (£13). With yuzu curd, bergamot tea biscuits, chocolate, lychee and peach stones, this was a creative dish, beautifully presented and with light, well balanced flavours.

Our second dessert was he Alfajores (£12.50) – this had various elements including dulce de leche ice cream, alfajores biscuit, caramel, coconut mousse, dark chocolate and marshmallow.

What We Drank: Cocktails cost £13 or £14. There is a wide range of sakes on offer, while the entry level white wine is a New Zealand Gewurztraminer, Millton, at £56. The entry level red is a Marselan from Casa Valduga, Brazil at £46. If you fancy bringing along your own wine, you can but bear in mind that there is a £45 corkage fee for wines and a £75 per bottle for Champagne. 

We started in the bar with a couple of cocktails from the new cocktail menu (all £13). The Sesame Old Fashioned combined sesame-washed Scotch whisky with salted caramel and maple. Served over an improbably massive cube of crystal-clear ice, this was rich and creamy, with a lovely nutty finish.

The Yuzu Gin Fizz had Bombay Sapphire gin, yuzu juice and shiso infusion, with fresh shiso and mint leaves. Served in a jazzy orange tin can, this was ultra-refreshing, with a thrilling intensity of fresh yuzu fruit flavour.  

With the meal, we shared a bottle of deliciously aromatic Gruner Veltliner, Weingut Willi Brundlmayer, Terrassen, Kamptal, Austria (£67).

With dessert, we had a couple of the sweeter cocktails - the Miso Mule (£13) combined Grey Goose Vodka, lime, ginger and a miso and coconut reduction, served long and lightly carbonated. This had a refreshing citrus hit, as well as an unexpected but not unwelcome hint of pineapple.

The Plantain Punch was made from Bacardi Carta Negra rum, plantain puree and aromatized wine shaken with egg white, banana, cacao and a coffee infusion. Served on the rocks, it had a rich banana and coffee sweetness. 

Likes: The extensive selection of cocktails is well thought-out, perfectly-made and reasonably priced, while the London skyline views are just second to none. The sushi were also very fine.

Dislikes: The wine list is expensive and the moqueca was disappointing.

Verdict: For glamorous cocktails, fine sushi and a spectacular London City views, it is hard to beat Sushisamba. Recommended.

A Taste of the Basque Country in the Heart of Hipster Shoreditch

Name: Sagardi

Where: 95 Curtain Road, London, EC2A 3BS, http://www.sagardi.co.uk/

Cost: Pintxos (Basque-style tapas) at the bar are priced at £2.50 each. Starters cost £8 to £16, with main courses at £15 to £25. Desserts are priced at £7. There is an extensive range of Spanish wines available by the glass, bottles are priced from £20.

About: I am a huge fan of the food from the Basque Country, and have been lucky to visit the region on a number of occasions, featured here, here and here. San Sebastian is one of my favourite foodie destinations, so I was eagerly awaiting the opening of Sagardi in London.

Sagardi in Shoreditch is the first UK branch of the Spanish Basque restaurant group founded in Barcelona in 2000 with restaurants in Madrid, Valencia and Seville, as well as in Porto, Portugal.

Today, in addition to the UK, the Sagardi Group has an increasing international reach with branches also in Argentina and Mexico. 

This latest Shoreditch branch opened in August 2016, and boasts an impressive butchers-style display of dry-ageing beef in the entrance, and extensive use of industrial steel, huge wooden tables and bare concrete floors. 

There is a huge wood-fired grill on which beef, whole fish and suckling pig are cooked. Suspended from the ceiling is a massive painted wooden boat and most of the restaurant's back walls are massive, floor to ceiling wine fridges. The overall look is clean whilst retaining plenty of warmth and elegance.

What We Ate: The bar features Basque-style pintxos – small bites (many of which are served on single slices of crusty bread) with myriad Spanish seasonal ingredients, to be enjoyed with a glass of wine or the Basque spritzy, youthful Txakolis.

Sagardi's menu, delivered by Spanish head chef Josep Roca, is short and well-thought out featuring some favourite Basque home-cooking dishes like Donostia seafood soup, stuffed baby squid in black sauce, suckling lamb trotters in Biscay sauce, and oxtail braised in a Rioja sauce. 

We started with a few pintxos (£2.50 each) at the bar.  As is common practice in Spain, diners can help themselves to pintxos from the counter, and the bill is calculated by counting the number of skewers left on the plate. 

The Gilda is a classic pintxo and one of my favourites (I find it impossible to eat only one of these), with pickled guindilla peppers, green olives and white anchovy fillet – it is salty, sour and brimming with flavour and Sagardi’s was as good as it gets!

We also tried a couple of other pintxos on slices of crusty bread – the first was topped with tuna mayo, onion and shredded hard egg white, cherry tomato, pickled guindilla peppers and anchovy fillet; and the other with a delectable salted-cod tortilla.

Moving to our table in the main restaurant, we started a few pieces of pan-fried Txistorra (£8), a fast-cured pork sausage from the Basque country, it was fatty and lightly spicy, and went down perfectly with the crisp Txakoli wine. 

The tartare of Azorean tuna came with chopped confit tomatoes (£16) seasoned with chives, basil and green Ibarra chilli peppers. With tart freshness coming from a dressing of capers, shallot, oregano, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and a touch of sugar, all served on sourdough toast, this was a winner dish.

From the seasonal menu, as an autumnal treat, we opted for the king mushroom confit in olive oil (£21), served with beef jus, a raw egg yolk and a scattering of chopped chives. The mushrooms were meaty and delicious with the addition of the raw yolk bringing a touch of lusciousness. 

Wild Cornish turbot was on the menu the day we dined, and so we opted for it served ‘Donostia style’ (£9 per 100g). Donostia is the Basque name for San Sebastian, and Donostia-style means cooked on the bone over a hot grill, then filleted and served, cheeks and all, with a sauce of butter, olive oil, garlic and parsley. With a final deboning at the table, this was a spectacular piece of fish - of great quality, and simply cooked. 

The main course was suckling pig, deboned, filleted and stuffed, cooked in the oven and then finished off on the grill (£24 per couple). 

Served with mashed potato and piquillo peppers, the pork was delicate, well seasoned and extremely tender. As is traditional in many parts of Spain, Sagardi serves this dish every Sunday – this is my kind of Sunday Roast!

To finish, we had Txuleton rib-eye steak.  Txuleton beef is a specialty of Northern Spain, and comes from old bullocks (in Galicia) aged at least four years, or diary cows who have reached the end of their milking life (in the Basque Country). With yellow fat marbling throughout, the meat has a rich flavour and succulence and Sagardi’s was no exception. It was simply served with a Basque salad of lettuce with spring onions and a zingy vinaigrette dressing of Basque apple vinegar. 

For dessert, we had Torrijas – this one of the best Spanish desserts in my opinion, a delectable warm pudding of fried bread, milk, sugar and cinnamon, served with a tangy, refreshingly yoghurty sheep's milk ice cream (£7).

What We Drank: Sagardi has its own-label bitter and lager brewed in Liverpool, exclusively available in the restaurant. 

Unusually for London, there is an extensive range of Txakoli wines, made from the Hondarrabi Zuri grape that is native to the Basque Country. These very dry and slightly spritzy wines are the norm in San Sebastian, with high acidity and low alcohol.  The crisp and refreshing example we tried from Talai Berri 2015 (£7 per glass, £32 per bottle) was crisp and refreshing, with a slight petillance.

To accompany the fish courses, we had the Terra de Godos Albariño 2015, from Rias Baixas, Caldas de Reis (£30 or £7 per glass).  This was a well balanced and fruity white from Galicia which still remains one of my favourite grapes.

With the suckling pig, we had a glass of El de Debajo de la Escalera 2014, a natural Rioja made from Tempranillo and Graciano grapes (£9 per glass, £38 per bottle). With complex flavours of black berry fruit, high natural acidity and tannins, this was an excellent match for the unctuous suckling pig.  

To accompany the Txuleton steak, we had a glass of Uco Acero 2012, a natural wine from Do Valle del Uco, Mendoza, Argentina (£7 per glass, £33 per bottle). This wine is made from 100% Malbec grapes, but being grown above 1,100 metres, it had none of the jammy qualities so often found with this varietal. Instead it was a complex, well structured and muscular wine, rich in tannins and minerality, and a good counter-weight to the aged beef.  

With dessert, we had a glass of Chateau Dereszla Tokaji 3 Puttonyos (£9 per glass). With aromas of apricot, honey, orange peel, and lots of refreshing acidity on the palate, this was a very well made Hungarian wine.

Likes: The turbot was for me a great example of how to serve this finest of fish, the Iberian way - with minimal fuss but maximal flavour from grilling it on the bone and serving with a simple butter, garlic and parsley sauce. The Sunday roast suckling pig is one of the few places in London serving this delicacy that is so popular in Spain. The aged txuleton rib-eye steak was outstandingly good. I love having the option of helping myself to pintxos with Txakoli, which takes me back to my many pilgrimages to San Sebastian’s Old Town.  

Dislikes: None.

Verdict: A perfect meal for me at Sagardi starts with a selection of Pintxos and Txakoli at the bar, followed by their sumptuous Donostia-style turbot, the Txuleton rib-eye steak, and a big platter of Iberico suckling pig roast with all the trimmings, finishing off with Torrijas for pudding! For an authentic Basque culinary experience in London, Sagardi ticks all the boxes and I cannot wait to return. Highly recommended.