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What a great day it was yesterday to go down to Richmond and have breakfast at Canyon. Canyon is a restaurant that He Who Knows suggested, and even though technically not part of the Challenge, thought I would check it out. With bright sun and blue skies heralding in a great London Sunday, Richmond by the river is a great place to go out and have breakfast.

You can find Canyon by the riverside at Richmond and is a very popular place with the locals. It appears to be quite kid friendly from the number of little bodies that were seated yesterday. I suggest going fairly early unless you have a booking as most of the good tables go quite quickly and the staff are likely to turn you away. The restaurant itself does not have a great vantage point like a number of the other places have of the river, but its clean cut white tablecloths and modern décor put on a very calming atmosphere to dine in.

The service was quite good and I never found it in your face like many other places are. It seems that the staff monitored the tables quite well from afar and prompted at the right points during the meal to ask if we wanted another coffee, without interrupting the flow of conversation. They serve a delicious soft sweet bread with butter when you sit down, but this place comes highly recommended for its eggs Benedict, which Ben said “were the best ones he’s ever had.” I was left quite full from the vegetarian breakfast that I found nice and not greasy in the slightest. The hash brown (it’s thought of differently here in the UK) was flavourful and filling, the mushrooms well cooked, the eggs were nice and creamy and there was not an excess of beans overflowing the entire plate.

Canyon has a lot going for it, with lots of style and a great location. I can understand why some people consider it overly pricey, and I found the staff who served us were friendly and polite unlike the pretentious mob I had been warned about after reading a number of reviews (but we could have been lucky). It is a bit of a classier dining place than a number of the outdoor cafes, but what it does, it does well.

Details: Canyon
Found On: The Towpath, Riverside, Richmond, TW10 6UJ
Contactable On: 020 8948 2944
Highlights: Excellent quality food, great service, nice location
Room for improvement: Not the best value for money
The Kua Rating: 7.5 out of 10

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Persian cuisine is easy to find here in London with lots of restaurants serving it all over town. I’ve been to quite a few now but I read that Mohsen at Earl’s Court was quite a good so that’s where I went for lunch yesterday. I find Persian cuisine difficult to describe as they serve quite a number of different things such as shish-kebab style meats, lots of dips and bread, salads with lentils, and various stew type dishes, and its definitely too cliché to deem it middle-eastern.

Having been to several restaurants specialising in Persian cuisine, I can at least confidently say that there are some consistencies between them. One guarantee is that I always tend to leave feeling extremely stuffed (especially if I have rice because the serves can be massive). If the restaurant serves rice you they will always offer butter (intended for melting into the rice), and there is usually some paprika floating around in addition to the normal salt and pepper. If you order bread (Taftoon), the restaurant will generally cook it freshly in a stone oven called a Tanoor, which usually sits next to the entrance. Though very close to the same process of making Naan bread, the Taftoon is slightly different in texture being a little bit thinner and probably more intended for scooping up dips and assorted items than absorbing curry sauce.

Mohsen is located up Warwick Road away with the closest tube station being Earl’s Court. It is exactly opposite the Homebase store that can be quite odd if you get the window seats, and the restaurant is quite big all round with outdoor tables out the back that would be ideal in warmer weather. The restaurant has nice tables and intricately decorated plates all surrounded several paintings and numerous articles from various magazines and newspapers surrounding it. The food on offer is quite standard affair, and though not necessarily as cheap as several others, the quality of the food was quite good. I went for a chicken and lamb kebab that comes served with rice with both being deliciously moist and with that char-grilled flavour that comes only with real care. The lamb was probably one of the better ones I have had, and was juicy definitely from the meat and not the fat that several other restaurants I’ve been to seem to serve. The saffron rice was nice and fluffy and there was enough to finish the meat off easily. The orange juice they serve, though slightly expensive at £3, seemed like they had actually squeezed it themselves fresh and was both tasty and had just the right amount of pulp. I literally had to roll myself out of that place after eating there but was pleased that I had been to. Overall it’s good quality and although for value for food, I would still prefer Madhi, is nice if you’re in the area.

Details: Mohsen
Found On: 152 Warwick Road, W14 8PT
Contactable On: 020 7602 9888
Highlights: Good quality food and nice decor
Room for improvement: Slightly strange location
The Kua Rating: 7 out of 10

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Yesterday I finally managed to get entry into the Natural History Museum, located closest to the South Kensington tube. Last time, the massive crowds lining up thwarted my attempt, but thankfully yesterday most of the people were already inside. The museum is impressive from both its size and shape having been built in the mid to late 1800s. Inside it keeps a collection of breathtaking displays with the current exhibits including impressive replicas of animals such a blue whale, elephant and hippopotamus, a large display of dinosaur skeletons and other prehistoric animals and an earth sciences wing containing all different aspects that make up our planet.

The dinosaur exhibition is definitely worth seeing because seeing skeletons is so different from reading stories or books or watching movies such as Jurassic Park. There are a lot of them, but the museum does an excellent job of putting stories together for each animal.

The other wing worth looking at is the one containing the mammals display which contain life-sized replicas of animals as you don’t realise just how big some of them can be. The blue whale is most impressive, but any the detail that has been put into many of these animals make it almost creepy about how life like some of them can be. One of the other highlights that I’m keen to check out is the Giant Squid that is on display as part of the Darwin exhibition but is so popular that it tickets go very quickly

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This Chinese restaurant is my favourite so far along Queensway. Though it’s small and hidden just behind the work that’s going on with the Queensway Tube station, its tiny front room hides the great food on offer for even better prices.

Ignore the strange two door entry that you almost need to fight your way through, and once you manage to adjust to the super attentive waiters and waitresses, you can sit back and enjoy the food that they serve. I’ve eaten here a few times and although I can’t say that it is a super busy as the Four Seasons, or Kam Tong, you see a higher proportion of Chinese people in this restaurant.

The Chilli Salt Tofu is superbly crisp and the duck and rice combinations they put out are better than the ones that they serve down the road and much better than what many offer in Chinatown. There is a set menu on offer, but if you find yourself reaching for it, you should really stop yourself because you miss out on many of different dishes that they offer, of which most of them will be good. New Fortune Cookie is also quite rare as it’s the first Chinese restaurant I’ve seen in London that has Deep Fried Ice Cream on the menu, though it’s not like any of the ones from back home (this one is wrapped has ice cream wrapped in rice paper and fried with a coconut mixture).

Service is super attentive and getting refills for tea is no problem. Food arrives very promptly and although you may feel like they are trying to rush you through your meal, it is just the sort of service that they give – very prompt and efficient. When the end of the meal comes, you enjoy not only a plate of orange slices, but you also get the hot napkin, and like the name, a fortune cookie to laugh over with your fellow diners. Do be wary about staff though asking if you would like to put additional tip if put things onto a card as it is included in the total of your bill.

Details: New Fortune Cookie
Found On: 1 Queensway, London, W2 4QJ
Contactable On: 020 7727 7260
Highlights: Efficient service, great food at decent prices, lots of trimmings including a fortune cookie
Room for improvement: Attendants could be a little less in your face but there is not much physical room
The Kua Rating: 8 out of 10

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A conversation I had with someone today:

Me: So how is your project going?
Manager: We’re doing 12 iterations, we’re up to the eighth and we’re just getting a QA environment to run tests in.
Me: Do you have any form of continuous integration?
Manager: Well, we are only interested in the files that change, so we don’t need to run it against the entire system
Me: (Warning bells starting to ring…) Do you have any tests?
Manager: Our developers have too much trouble writing unit tests because the system is made of all web pages
Me: (Okay, keep calm, just run with it for now) Have they tried looking at HttpUnit or JWebUnit?
Manager: No, not yet.
Me: (Ask it anyway - maybe they’ll surprise you) So what sort of tests do your developers have?
Manager: Oh well, since they don’t have a remote environment, they just run tests on their machines.
Me: Do you mean they run them manually?
Manager: Yes
Me: (Sigh and so forth…)

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Bayswater is a plethora of restaurants because it gets a lot of tourists being right close to Notting Hill and it is also being quite central to the whole of London. I have eaten out at a number of my “locals” but I realised the other day that I hadn’t reviewed many of them. This entry is an attempt at fixing this.

I don’t actually understand why there are so many Asian restaurants along Queensway but there are. It’s not because there is a huge Asian population here, because at least I don’t think there is. Amongst the many Chinese restaurants that are just downstairs from me, Kam Tong is not exactly one of my favourite haunts, but it appears it is for many others. Perhaps its popularity stems because there always seems to be huge crowds there, sometimes even spilling onto the sidewalk, but there is also its fantastic location being almost adjacent to the Queensway tube exit.

The food is decently priced (a huge plate of Char Sui and Rice only £4) and its buzzing atmosphere (surprisingly an equal mix of Western and Asiant people), cloth tablecloths and napkins actually makes this feel like a quality restaurant. I found that there are little things that make this restaurant quite appealing, such as the dish that appears out of nowhere with your food containing three smaller dishes of chilli oil, sweet sour sauce and sliced chillis in vinegar. I have always been automatically given tea when I go there, and from what I remember on the bill, the tea is surprisingly free, unlike many of the others in Chinatown. I also like the fact that the staff automatically server orange segments at the end of the meal, a nice way of cleansing the palate.

Though most dishes are cheap, some of the more exotic ones, like the Hokkien Freid Rice, are a lot more expensive than what others offer in Chinatown, and I can’t say it’s the best food for the price in this area, but at least service is quite consistent and the atmosphere generally much better than most. If you do decide to make a visit to Kam Tong, do come prepared as they have a cash only policy.

Details: Kam Tong
Found on: 59-63 Queensway, London, W2 4QH
Contactable on: 020 7229 6065
Highlights: Fairly cheap Chinese food, lots of different trimmings and so close to the tube, you could crawl your way back.
Room for improvement: Should get a Credit Card machine
The Kua Rating: 6 out of 10

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Nowhere in the world has as many New York Delis as, you guessed it, New York, but it certainly doesn’t means other places do not try. London has a few New York-style delis and today I visited one of the newest of them, Zvika located between Tottenham Court Road and Soho. Zvika is less deli and probably more Kosher as their menu offerings are quite wide, many of the items on offer including different types of curries and Middle Eastern foods though there is plenty of pastrami, salami and salt beef to keep people happy.

Zvika, just like any NY deli seems to focus on really big portions and it was quite a mistake for me to order a soup and a sandwich as you can tell from the pictures. I found the prices though a little bit excessive for London and found myself paying quite a lot more than I thought I would for an extremely filling lunch. They have quite a lot of varying things on their menu although you can tell that the sandwich combinations must be quite popular, with many of them named after famous people like the Victoria Beckham (Turkey, Lettuce & Tomato), the David Beckham (Salami & Pastrami), Madonna (Turkey & Pastrami) and the Wayne Rooney (Big Salt Beef). They serve goulash, hot dogs, spaghetti and meatballs, a variety of salads, sandwiches and soups and by the time you’re finished with your meal you’d be unlikely to reach for dessert though they have them too.

The Matzah Ball Soup is a clear, chicken soup broth served with three large bread dumplings. The soup was well seasoned and full of flavour without tasting extremely salty. It was the first time that I had ever had Matzah Balls and though I found them to be quite meaty, I found their texture slightly off putting because I had no idea what in them and though they because they didn’t taste like any meat I could think of, found it overly strange. Since then, I found out people typically make them out of a combination of matzah meal, eggs, fat and seasonings.

I had no idea what to really expect when I ordered the NY sandwich other than the fact that there was going to be a lot of meat, and even that was a gross understatement. What arrived between two thin bits of rustic bread was a massive portion of meat, including pastrami, salt beef and a hot dog. Thankfully a large gherkin and coleslaw came with and the waiter was kind enough to give me a bottle of mustard to help keep the meat from overwhelming my palette. When it arrived it looked quite impressive and was obviously freshly heated as you could see steam rising from the meat barely contained by the white slices of bread. The hot dog was solidly deliciously and unlike the very fatty English sausages simply tasted meaty. The pastrami and salt beef was somewhat overly chewy but then it could have been just because I had never eaten so much meat in one sitting before and my jaw was probably tiring out. As you can see I had a great attempt at actually finishing the sandwich but alas, failed and gave up before my body did so that I could walk around only slightly uncomfortably instead of the alternative I dare not face.

Overall it was quite a nice experience and I can’t really compare it to anything authentic since it’s been a while since I had a proper New York Deli sandwich I thought it was a decent effort if nothing else. I do recommend that if do you decide to eat there and price is an issue, its best if you go for take away and eat it in the nearby Soho Square park as there is a significant difference in price between dining in and takeaway and it doesn’t even include the typical service charge.

Details: Zvika
Found On: 8 Great Chapel Street, London, W1F 8FG
Contactable On: 020 7434 2733 or info@znydeli.co.uk
Highlights: Huge filling kosher portions of food. Good for those atkin-dieters out there. Has additional space upstairs and the dining room is quite nice for a deli
Room for improvement: Seemed to be a little bit overpriced for what it is.
The Kua Rating: 7 out of 10

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On Friday night, the closest thing that I could really do to go out was just dinner (still overcoming the whole sickness thing) so I suggested we head out to Brick Lane for something different. Though there are many good curry places littered around London, and some could easily argue, even better places located outside of London, Brick Lane is one of those streets that you have to visit at least once if you eat curry. Much akin to Lygon Street in Melbourne, once you make your way there, the hardest thing to do is pick a place to eat. The number of places is overwhelming and the most distracting part of choosing is the number of hawkers hired by the restaurants to reel in the diners. Promises of free bottles of wine, or a round of beer and tempting discounts from 20-30% or perhaps free starters distracts you from you might otherwise think a good place to eat. I lucky that I did a little bit of reading up before hand and we came across one that I remember being positively reviewed, and after a little bit of menu gazing and some talking later, we were sitting on the second floor with a window view of a curry house called Monsoon.

Service was actually okay for the night and I was surprised to find that even though we were not ordering all the crazy amount of drinks that other tables might have been, we were treated just like any other customers. Monsoon have a free bottle of (house) wine which lasted us the entire meal, and a 30% discount meaning after a few poppadoms, three curries, a couple of rice and naan later, we were only up for £8 each – a very cheap night indeed. The curries themselves were nice, saucy, and quite tasty (except for the Bangladeshi fish that was just weird tasting) but were lacking in substantial amounts of meat. Having said that though, we still didn’t finish all the food and we were quite full (I have no idea how any of the other tables could eat starters or side dishes as well!)

Throughout the night I was equally surprised that there was no real pressure from the waiters to speed up our meal, despite a queue forming downstairs and people continually being “assisted” by waiters upstairs. The evening’s meal was probably only spoilt by an excessively loud table of ten women on the opposite side of the room. There was one in particular that had a really painful laugh, and another who announced to the world that she was from New Zealand and had been in London in six years (you would have thought she might have learned some manners by now!). Other than that though, the curry house was quite good and I could definitely go back there though I would be most keen to try some of the others. It is a bit hard to justify crossing town though to eat curries there when there are a few places nearby that serve just as good, if not better nosh.

Details: Monsoon
Found On: 78 Brick Lane, London, E1 6RL
Highlights: Nice decor, reasonably priced curries (only after discount), okay service and great company for the evening
Room for improvement:The lamb could made more tender and there could be more meat in the curries.
The Kua Rating: 6.5 out of 10

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