Restaurant Review: The Real Greek, Spitalfields

 

 

 

My two closest friends from work have recently left – one is on maternity leave and the other has transferred to a different team in another building. He’s only a few minutes up the street but I’d been missing our daily chats so right after he started his new job we had lunch together so he could tell me all about it. There are loads of restaurants around Spitalfields which is near our offices, so I thought this was a good opportunity to try out one I hadn’t been to before.

 

I actually went to a branch of the Real Greek about ten years ago – it launched in 1999 – and the company has changed hands since then. It is now run by a Real Greek (as the website explains) and operates in what is called the ‘fast casual’ space – in between fast food and a more casual restaurant. They have a special lunch menu for instance where you can easily be in and out within less than an hour, which gives simple choices of the ‘Greek Trio’ or the ‘Skewer plate’, for £8.95 (not including drinks or tip). There’s also a pretty extensive menu which looked very appealing, but for the sake of convenience we both decided to go for the lunch special, and both chose the chicken skewer. It came with saffron rice, a small bowl of tzatziki, some warm pitta bread and some salad. I would have liked more dip to go with the pitta bread but it was quite enjoyable. Probably due to the company more than anything but I enjoyed the meal, and would eat here again.

Butterscotch Blondies

 

 

I set out to make strawberry blondies to use up some leftover strawberries, and found this recipe on the Food Network website. As I started making it, I realised that it used strawberry jam rather than fresh strawberries, and butterscotch chips, which I thought sounded really nice but not necessarily combined with strawberries… so  I set my punnet of strawberries to one side while I found a different recipe to use those, and made what I am calling Butterscotch Blondies instead!

 

You need

4 tbsp butter

1 cup light brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla flavouring

1 egg

¾ cup plain flour

¼ tsp baking powder

½ cup butterscotch chips

 

Preheat oven to 180C. Line a square baking tin with parchment, or if you have a brownie pan like I do, spray each section with Cake Release.

 

Melt the butter and the sugar in a bowl in the microwave for 1 minute on high. Stir in the vanilla and the egg.

  

 

 

 

 

In a larger bowl if necessary, fold the butter and sugar mixture into the flour and baking powder. Stir in the butterscotch chips and spoon into the pan.

 

 

Bake for 20 minutes – they should still be a little soft as they come out of the oven. Leave to cool in the pan then if you have baked it in a square tin, remove from the pan and cut into squares. If you have a brownie pan, job done!

 

 

Restaurant Review: King's Stores

 

Kings Stores (no apostrophe, which bothers the grammar nerd in me) is a ‘proper pub’ in London’s Spitalfields. It features dark wood; serves craft beers and has a pub-grub style menu. At the same time it has a dining room on the first floor though I’ve always sat downstairs when we’ve been for drinks after work.

 

This time we had lunch in honour of two colleagues visiting from other locations. Incidentally, my Scottish colleague has just discovered Honest Burger, which is only in London, and says it’s the best burger he’s ever tasted. He had one in Kings Stores and said it was very good – but not quite the same.

 

I’d gone along thinking I would have a starter of grilled sardines with a side order of fries, but by the time we got there it was later than I usually have lunch and I was ravenous – it was lucky I had a big meal in the end as I ended up working late and not having dinner until 9pm.

 

My eye was caught by the burger: Angus beef, topped with Cajun pulled pork, barbecue sauce and cheddar cheese (£14). It was a tower of dripping deliciousness- literally dripping, as the burger was so juicy it dripped every time I lifted a bite to my mouth. It had some kind of tomato salsa on top (unless it was the barbecue sauce, but I wouldn’t have expected to see pieces of tomato in it) which was a shame as I would have ordered it without if I’d known. It was also quite expensive for burger and chips, all things considered.

 

 

The chips were good – not too thin, as I’m not really a fan of ‘fries’ – and came in a cute little tub with the burger itself on a wooden board. That seems to be how burgers and chips are served these days – can anyone remember the last time they had one in a pub or restaurant that came on a plate?

 

The food was very filling and tasty; the barbecue sauce wasn’t as zingy as some but I remember having a pulled pork burger at Blacks where I ended up having to take the pulled pork out as the slightly tart flavour was too much! Service was also fast – we were a large group but still managed to order, eat and be back in the office within an hour. So I recommend the pub if you are near Liverpool Street Station and want a filling lunch.

Restaurant Review - Comptoir Libanais, Broadgate Circle, London

Colourful and communal are the two words that spring to mind when I think of Comptoir Libanais, the “Lebanese Canteen”. I’d actually only ever seen them in airports before, but there several outposts of this restaurant around London, including one in the newly-redeveloped Broadgate Circle near Liverpool Street station.

 

We seem to have had quite a few team lunches recently as we have colleagues visiting from other offices and go out for lunch together (we all pay for our own food). We actually intended to go to a pizza place this time but hadn’t booked and the wait time was too long, so we went to Comptoir Libanais instead.

 

The main menu is divided into mezze (hot and cold); wraps; salads; from the grill; tagines, mana’esh (flatbread) and fattets (fried flatbread pieces); chef’s specials; extras and desserts.

 

Two of my colleagues had a mezze sharing platter which they really enjoyed; I didn’t want anything as substantial as the koftas from the grill (though the grilled pomegranate salmon sounded very nice) so decided to try a flatbread. I wasn’t clear exactly what the difference between mana’esh and fattets would be so chose the topping I thought sounded nice, and ordered the sojok man’ousha – oven-baked flatbread with spicy Armenian lamb sausage, halloumi cheese and tomato with a side salad (£8.95). It was very tasty and filling – as I hadn’t known how big it would be I also ordered a side of batata harra (£3.25) – Lebanese spiced fries with red pepper, fresh coriander, garlic and chilli. These were cubes or chunks of potato rather than chips and not too spicy – I recommend them.

 

Another thing I liked about this restaurant was the soft drinks menu. It was much more imaginative than just the usual fizzy drinks and juices – I had an apple mint and ginger lemonade called toufaha (£2.45) which was unusual – in a good way – but the ginger flavour was a little too strong. Other people had pomegranate and orange blossom lemonade, or lemon and lime with rose syrup, which looked lovely.

 

Around the restaurant were items for sale ranging from bags and bowls in Lebanese-inspired patterns to spice mixes and the Comptoir Libanais cookery book which I hadn’t come across before. The company seems to have put a lot of effort into its website which is full of interesting things to read, and they have an online shop – their souk – coming soon.

Blueberry Cheesecake Brownies

Doesn’t the name alone sound indulgent?

 

I realised that despite launching The Brownie Blog a few months ago I haven’t made brownies – or posted anything on that blog – in ages. I had some blueberries left over from another recipe (these chocolate blueberry cakes) and I also had some of the blueberry flavour icing that I’d made up from a packet from Sugar & Crumbs as I’d made a little too much. I wondered if I could incorporate the two into brownies and remembered seeing some nice brownie recipes in my Hummingbird Bakery book. They had a recipe for raspberry cheesecake brownies so I decided to borrow that idea, using blueberries instead, but rather than blending the blueberries into cream to go on top, I used the leftover blueberry icing.
 

These are pretty easy to make – I knocked them up in about an hour around 10pm one evening!

 

You can find the recipe in the Hummingbird Bakery book or online on GoodtoKnow (the website for various women’s magazines including Essentials), so I won’t repeat it all here. I will instead describe what I did.

 

To start, make the brownie base. The Hummingbird recipe uses icing sugar instead of caster sugar which gave the brownies a different texture; they were nice (especially when they were a day or so old) but if I made this again I would probably use a more traditional brownie recipe for the base.

 

 

Preheat oven to 170C. Melt 200g chocolate (the recipe calls for plain, but I used milk chocolate) – I did it in the microwave. Cream 200g butter or margarine with 250g icing sugar then add 3 eggs and 110g plain flour. Stir in the melted chocolate.

 

Pour into a square baking tray lined with greaseproof paper.

 

Next make the cheesecake layer – mix 400g cream cheese (not the low fat kind), 150g icing sugar, dash of vanilla flavouring and two eggs until you have a smooth mixture. Pour over the top of the brownie layer and then bake in the oven. I found mine took a lot longer than the recipe called for so I’d advise baking for about 40 minutes then checking it to see if the cheesecake is still wobbly or the brownie still raw. You don’t want it to go brown on top but it does need to be cooked through – I think mine took about an hour.

 

Leave to cool; if you want the fruit and cream topping see the recipe instructions (link as above); I spread the remainder of my Sugar & Crumbs blueberry icing on the top of the cheesecake layer and topped with my leftover blueberries.

 

This sliced easily into squares – I cut it into fairly small pieces since each piece was quite deep. I took them into work and they were very popular!

 

Restaurant Review: Desperado's, Islington

 

Having just been to Mexico I seem to be noticing Mexican restaurants around London a lot more. A little while ago I was spending the day working out of a supplier’s office in Angel with a colleague and we wanted to go somewhere for lunch that was a bit different. We were spoiled for choice of restaurants on Upper Street and while there are plenty that I think would have been better I spotted the bold sign for Desperados and suggested we eat there.

 

They had a two-course set lunchtime menu (as well as a la carte) which was good value though the portions weren’t particularly large; I guess it was fine for lunch but I was expecting a bigger meal. They advertise themselves as offering authentic Mexican street food and I’m not sure whether that applies to the loaded potato skin filled with melted cheese that I had as my starter – I didn’t see any of those on menus while I was in Mexico. The main course was an enchilada, with a portion of rice, refried beans and salad. It was a bit dry – it would have been nice to have something to go on the rice, and as I don’t like refried beans they stayed in their separate bowl!

 

 

The restaurant is very colourful with décor in keeping with the Mexican theme (though I’m not sure what the VW camper van was doing there); I imagine this place would be pretty busy in the evenings as Mexican restaurants are usually pretty good for tequila and cocktails!

Cocktail Masterclass: Perfect Storm

On holiday in Mexico I was lucky enough to stay at the Zoetry Paraiso de la Bonita. It was actually a matter of luck, as we really didn't like the hotel that our tour operator put us in and asked to be moved. We didn’t know where to move to, as we didn’t have internet access in our hotel, so named one that another couple on our tour were staying at. We had seen the outside of the hotel as they were dropped off from the minibus and I remembered spotting a discreet sign saying “Leading hotels of the World” – which is an organisation rather than just their own claim.

 

So after two nights in a very poor hotel (it took them that long to sort out the move, even though we complained minutes after arriving) we found ourselves in one of the most amazing hotels I’ve ever stayed in. For a full review see my recent blog post.

 

The hotel offered a programme of activities but far more upmarket than the sort of thing I’ve seen elsewhere, like archery, aqua-aerobics and so on. The Zoetry offered yoga, a shopping trip by boat, a sunset cruise, cigar rolling and cocktail making, to name but a few. I went along to the cigar rolling but it was a bit disappointing – it was one man with a stall full of cigars, and when it became clear I wasn’t interested in buying one, he wasn’t interested in me. I hung around in the hope that I would get to do or at least see some cigar rolling but all he seemed concerned with was selling the cigars he had already made.

 

So when it came to the cocktail making the next evening, I wasn’t expecting much. I went into the Library bar (there is of course more than one bar at the Zoetry) where I had been chatting to the barman Tico the night before. We were joined by half a dozen others and lined up along the bar as Tico got out a selection of cocktail glasses. Ooh, a demonstration, I thought – and because it’s an all-inclusive resort, no doubt we would get to drink a cocktail or two as well. What I didn’t expect was for Tico to start by inviting me behind the bar! He said we would all get a turn to make a cocktail for the whole group and that first I would make a Perfect Storm.

 

 

Under Tico’s watchful eye I began by pulsing some ice in a blender with blue curacao to crush it. Pouring it from the jug into each glass was harder than it looked – the ice came out very fast and some glasses ended up with a lot more than others! Next was a shot of raspberry vodka and the glass was topped up with cranberry juice. Finally I poured a sort of mango puree onto a spoon to let it fall gently into the glass, creating a top layer. Again this was harder than it looked leaving some drinks with more uneven layers than others!

  

As bartender I then served the cocktails to my customers – and I have to say it tasted delicious! I bought some raspberry Absolut vodka in the airport on the way home with a view to recreating this cocktail at home.

 

Other people took turns to make cocktails for the whole group; a couple of people drifted off after one of their friends had a go meaning that we each had five cocktails. One of them tasted foul – it was similar to a caipirinha apparently (which I’ve never had before) made of cachaca and lime – it was very sour and I only had one sip. Which was probably a good thing as I drank four other cocktails on an empty stomach in the middle of the afternoon! One was a shot – a B52 – and one was a very sweet fruity cocktail. When we had finished, Tico invited us to join him in a shot of tequila – he had been a professional tequila taster before coming to work at the Zoetry hotel. I had a great time chatting with the other people at the session (my boyfriend had stayed in our room as he is teetotal and wasn’t really interested) and it was a great way for the hotel to bring people together. It was the sort of masterclass you would probably pay quite a lot for in London so it was fantastic that it was free – it was one of the highlights of the three days we spent in this hotel, along with the resident friendly parrots!