Breakfasting at Caravan

It was a fairly rainy day that I met up with a colleague to talk breakfast about the new client I was going to join. We decided to meet somewhere close to my work, and decided on Caravan. It’s a great place that roasts its own coffee, has a great brunch offering on weekends and just a nice atmosphere all around.

CaravanCafe

Although tempted by lots of the different offerings on their menu, I started with a flat white whilst I waited for my colleague to arrive.

CaravanMenu

Well made – a perfect “heart” and all the things I look for in a well made flat white – not too hot, creamy milk foam, and a good combination, I probably could have gone for a second coffee.

CaravanCoffee

Breakfast finally arrives – I went for the caramelised banana served atop a hearty bowl of porridge. The porridge was perfectly stodgy and there was plenty of banana caramel to go around without being too excessive – it was pretty sweet after all, but just enough for the entire bowl.

Porridge

Name: Caravan Restaurant
Found at: Exmouth Market, London, EC1R 4QD
Website: http://caravanonexmouth.co.uk/

Truffle Menu at Cantina Del Ponto

Truffle

Truffle season lasts only a very short time around London, and every year many restaurants host a truffle special menu for this short time. We headed down to a D&D London restaurant, Cantina Del Ponto down by Tower Bridge to celebrate with their affordable menu.

Cantina

This was actually attempt number two, after trying to book for the first day of their truffle menu only to receive a call in the afternoon telling us the truffle delivery had failed and that they weren’t able to offer us the menu that evening. I did appreciate the call to ensure we did waste a trip out there, but I found it strange they couldn’t get a delivery earlier than the day of the menu.

CantinaInside

We rebooked for another Monday later in the month, and the restaurant was quite empty. Monday’s tend to be quieter than normal, and this area in particular tends to be very quiet, so the result was a pretty empty restaurant at 6pm. A few tables filled up later in the evening, but it largely remained empty.

TruffleMenu

They offered us the a la carte menu, but seeing as we were here for the truffle menu, we decided to go for the menu. The only disappointment on the menu was that the truffle dessert wasn’t present and they substituted their well-known chocolate cake.

Foccacia

We started with the bread basket, containing some foccacia, some plain bread and served with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

TruffleBeef

The first course on the menu, was a beef carpaccio, served with shavings of parmesan and truffle. I wasn’t quite sure about this dish, but as soon as I put one of the delicate slices of beef into my mouth, it exploded with a mouthful of flavour. Salt, umami, yumminess.

TrufflePasta

The next dish was a truffle tagliatelle. The pasta was thick, perfectly al dente and covered with a butter truffle sauce. I didn’t find the flavour as strong as the previous dish but it was still very fulfilling.

TrufflePastaWithCheese

A little bit of parmesan helped too. We finished up with the chocolate pudding served with a scoop of ice cream. It wasn’t quite the chocolate fondant that many other restaurant serve, but it was good nevertheless.

ChocolateDessert

Name: Cantina Del Ponto
Found at: 36c Shad Thames, London SE1 2YE
Website: http://www.cantinadelponte.co.uk/

Protected post on Ultraviolet

I got a comment on my last post from the Communications Director of Ultraviolet thanking me for writing up my experience, but also asking me to consider rewriting something shorter to allow others to remain surprised. I’ve eaten at lots of great places, and before going, even read a lot on the places that I’ve been going. My personal experience is that reading something is never quite the same as experiencing something, but I do want to respect their wishes.

I’m not going to rewrite the previous post because it took so much time, effort and I personally want to refer to all the details. The other point is that given the very limited seating arrangements, more people would benefit from knowing the details than not because it’s unlikely most people will get the opportunity to dine. Since you are the reader, I’ll let you decide.

I have put a simple password on the previous post, but if you’d like, leave a comment and I’ll email you the password so you can read it.

Yu’s Family Kitchen – Chengdu

My sister booked a family dinner at one of Chengdu’s most famous restaurants, Yu’s Family Kitchen. We saw this whilst watching BBC’s great series on Exploring China: A Culinary Adventure (Episode 2). It’s most famous for attempting to bring innovative and creative techniques and fusing them with traditional Chinese cooking methods and ingredients.

01_FamilyLounge

The restaurant itself is nondescript, with a simple doorway located on a busy market street leading to a small inner courtyard surrounded by the dining rooms. Although we didn’t get to see other rooms, it felt like Yu’s Family Kitchen was more appropriately named, Yu’s Family Home with each dining group sharing part of their living quarters. As you can see we had an entire lounge room to relax in.

02_FamilyPot

On entering our dining/living room, the golden-clothed dining table already came prepared with 16 assorted dishes all very well presented and proper. Each small dish providing some insight into the flavour roadmap ahead.

03_Plates

I can’t remember all of the dishes in so much detail, but we had green beans with seasame oil and garlic, “knots” of cucumber soaked with numbing sichuan peppers.

04_Vegetables

Other small plates held century quail’s egg, fresh peppers, tofu and an assortment of mushrooms, vegetables all with different ingredients.

05_Egg

They also served these small dishes with a fiery chilli chicken (cold) that would both numb your mouth and set it on fire at the same time in a fashion very typical for this region of China. We didn’t finish this dish as it was pretty spicy for me and the rest of the family doesn’t like spicy food as much as I do.

06_ColdChicken

We also had a smoke, shredded pigeon dish delicately piled up. It didn’t have a strong game-flavour that I expected but was still pretty tasty.

07_ShreddedChicken

A very playful dish then arrived, and one that we had seen on the BBC show before. A beautiful “paintbrush” set arrived with each “brush” basically being a pastry shell containing dried pork floss and a home made tomato sauce for the “paint”. A tasty combination made even more delightful by its presentation and playfulness.

08_Paintbrushes

The painting set with three small dishes. The first was a gold foil with (Chinese) black truffle.

09_Truffle

As well as fresh, young ginseng with icing sugar. I was expecting extremely wood strands for this dish but was surprisingly soft, fresh and very tasty.

10_GingSeng

The third accompaniment was a blackened garlic. Sweet, sticky and full of flavour.

11_Seed

A new dish arrived after we finished that set, this time being a local river fish in a very delicious creamy broth. The fish was perfectly cooked – flaky, moist and surprisingly meaty. It reminded me a piece of monkfish but even more delicate.

12_Fish

The seafood theme continued with an oyster served atop rice-flour cubes in a spicy chili sauce. Nice presentation again but I’m not a huge oyster fan.

13_Oyster

It arrived with a panko-crumbed deep fried prawn with some green chilli flakes. I love prawn so and fried prawns are always a winner. The chilli flakes provided a nice balance to the natural sweetness of the prawn flesh.

14_Prawn

Our next dish was alligator in a fish stock. I’d eaten crocodile back in Australia and it reminded me of the same sort of flesh, much like a very soft squid dish. The stock was especially wholesome and full of flavour.

15_Crocodile

A small saucer of pumpkin soup arrived neat. Super warm, super sweet and just the right small serving to refresh the palette for the next set of dishes.

16_Soup

Smoked fish came next on the menu. It sat atop a series of small pastry knots, slightly sweet and giving that contrast to the heavy smokiness of the fish.

17_Fish

Two dishes arrived in unison at the next time. Firstly, (on the bottom) was a savoury custard dish, very typical of Chinese cuisine. Imagine a savoury steamed egg custard but filled with pork instead of a sweet caramel. The top dish (black) was fresh bamboo flavoured with a fiery chilli kick. I liked moving between the two dishes – one for the spicy and then a soothing cooling sensation of creamy custard.

18_SavouryCustard

I don’t eat Sichuan food that often, but of the many dishes, I’m very familiar with this one of a whole pan full of oil peppered with plenty of spicy, herbs and flavour and used to slow-poach fish. It sounds a bit strange, far from healthy but it’s a strange combination that gives a wonderful aroma and depth of flavour.

19_SpicyFish

Here they provided us individual pots with the small bits of fish. Absolutely devine and I was pining for more of this dish.

20_SpicyFish

We were then presented with a couple of small hot pot duck dumplings covered with a thick, sticky and salty sauce. Both dumplings quite generous with their fillings and very flavoursome.

21_Dumplings

Beijing has its roasted duck. In this part of the country, they prefer tea-smoked duck served cold. Here we had it with tiny little pancakes, a hoisin sauce and cucumbers. A very beautiful presentation and really far too much duck for all of us (considering the number of dishes we were eating).

22_Duck

Finishing our round of main courses was this fiery hotpot noodle soup dish.

23_Noodles

Chinese don’t really do dessert very well. This is probably a good thing considering all of the food that we just consumed. I can’t actually remember what this dish was. Sorry but my note-taking wasn’t really happening that night.

24_Dessert

This was a fresh poached chestnut balls.

25_Chestnut

And to finish off, some fresh apples that you see in the markets all over the place. Strangely dry but quite sweet.

26_Apple

Yu’s Family Kitchen is by no-means cheap by Chinese standards. However for the quality of the food and the experience that lasted many hours, it was definitely worth doing on a special trip. Drinks are additional, and unlike many other Chinese restaurants a 10% service charge is added to the final bill.

Name: Yu’s Family Kitchen
Found at: No. 43 Zhai Xiang Zi, Xia Tong Ren Road, Chengdu
Website: None that I could find

Da Dong – Beijing

On our trip to China, my sister and I had a free day before the rest of our family arrived. I looked up a number of places, and being the city in China to have duck, I suggested we try a nice restaurant called Da Dong Roast Duck. It took us a long time to find, namely because I didn’t have internet roaming and our map didn’t seem to have the right landmarks. We got there in the end.

DaDongBox

Even at 2pm we had a short wait since the restaurant is so popular. It appeared to be large, cavernous but of course there are a lot of people in China and apparently this restaurant wins numerous awards. I definitely give them the award of the largest menu ever built with detailed pictures of the food assembled as one might expect on a coffee table book of some sort.

Menu

Of course, we wouldn’t want to come to the restaurant and not have the duck. Whilst waiting, we could see the large kitchen of many ducks hanging and being sliced as they prepared their way for the table-side serving service that is very traditional in this form of serving. On a good note, we were offered nice ice blocks of red bean to cool down as we waited – a nice touch that’s not typical in Chinese restaurants and shows what the service was like.

Duck

We had a huge table for just the two of us, and it wasn’t long before our tableside cutting service of duck arrived. Quick and efficient, it wasn’t very long until we were tucking into duck pancake including the many assortment of condiments provided at the table. href=”http://www.thekua.com/doesfood/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/CuttingBig.jpg” title=”Cutting”>Cutting

Unusually we had a bit of sugar to which we were instructed to dip a little bit of the fatty duck skin into. Although strange, it actually worked quite well against the savoury skin.

Condiments

One of my favourite dishes was this wonderful eggplant dish. Meaty, slightly sweet but mostly salty – I think I could have just eaten this with rice all day.

Eggplant

My sister ordered this strange steamed egg with a beautifully presented “bird” duo made out of baby bok choi and a carrot. I didn’t taste this since we had a lot food arriving.

Another beautifully presented dish was this sticky pork dish served on a nice slate and decorated with icing sugar to “mock” snow. The pork was soft, sticky although I found it cloyingly sweet – the icing sugar being nice for show but far too sweet for my own tastes.

Pork

The classic prawns in mayonaise was, however, very well executed. We did find it strange accompanied by large cherry tomatoes but enjoyed the meaty flesh. I remember thinking that this was a very good bargain as a foreigner.

Prawns

The restaurant finished off the meal with a complementary plate of fruit and a small sorbet palette cleanser – a very nice touch and one that you wouldn’t really expect in a restaurant.

Sorbet

Name: Da Dong Roast Duck 北京大董烤鸭店
Found at: 5/F, Jinbao Dasha, Jinbao Jie, Dongcheng District, Beijing
Website: Tripadvisor page