With 24 hours to eat and drink in Manchester, what would you do? Obviously I asked Twitter. The responses were many but amongst the crowd two contenders stood out as the most popular: the tradition of ‘rice and three’ curry cafes and the Almost Famous burger bar.

The curry cafe idea I was very much into and the most popular place seemed to be a joint called ‘This and That’ which is mentioned, well, pretty much everywhere as The Place to Go. The locals seemed to think differently however, which is how we ended up stumbling, extremely (really terribly) hungover, into Kabana. The idea of rice and three is that one is served rice and – guess how many curries? Yeah it’s three. Food is ordered from a very patient man who is clearly adept at dealing with hungover people. He stands over great big silver chafing dishes, waiting patiently while we dither about choosing what we want. Lamb, chicken and chickpea curries were duly heaped onto a mound of fluffy basmati and sprinkled with chopped green chillies, diced ginger and lemon juice, provided on the counter top for self service garnish.

‘Rice and three’: chickpeas, chicken and lamb

An extra bowl of a lamb nahari; really tasty and totally necessary…oof

We totter over to a formica topped, screwed-to-the-ground table and tuck in to what turns out to be some fantastic food; simple, yes, but with skilful, distinct spicing and a punch from those garnishes. A garlic chapatti was stupendously good; a real thwack of garlic and a slick of ghee. Hangovers are sniffled away as we shovel it down unceremoniously, surrounded by a mixture of couples with young children, plus people like us, clearly also soothing hangovers, and Indian families scooping up curries with their hands; great food with no fuss and oooh, I haven’t mentioned one of the best bits – it cost…a fiver. A fiver!

And from substance over style to…well I expect you can work out where I’m going. Almost Famous. I’m going to bypass all the trend ticking, the queuing, the forced cliches, because none of that bothers me hugely to be honest. What matters to me is what they’re serving from the kitchen and of course, the bar. Oh and the way they’ve chosen to name the things that are produced in both of them.

Their signature drink for example is something called ‘bitch juice’. We ordered a round. It was possibly the sweetest drink I’ve ever tasted, and that’s from someone who grew up on raspberry Slush Puppies, you know, the scary blue ones. ‘Bitch juice’ consists of a heavy grenadine base, then some booze, presumably, and a topping of fruit and…icing sugar. Mixing grenadine and icing sugar is just…I’d say confident, bold perhaps. Brave, maybe? My teeth are aching at the memory. The fact that it wasn’t nice is not my real problem however. What I really take issue with, is the name, as I did when I ordered my burger with ‘slut sauce’. Sorry but, since when did misogyny = cool? I wondered at the logic behind this. Hey! We’re really edgy! We’re so fucking edgy we named everything after derogatory terms for women! Will the salad come with whore dressing perhaps? How about a slag soup? I think it could really take off. There are a lot of breasts on the wall, too. I like breasts, I have some. They’re very nice to look at but really, when muddled with the lame sexism on the menu it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. As does the food.

My burger, as you can see, was overcooked and also under seasoned. The house sauce appeared to be a mixture of mayonnaise and mustard but somehow, tasted of nothing much at all. It was reminiscent of a ropey Whopper. The wings I need not describe. Take a look at that picture. You know exactly what that BBQ sauce tastes like without my even needing tell you.

As I’m queuing up to order food I notice they’ve copied out Charlie Sheen’s breakdown rant on the wall. Er, cool. All the pictures are at jaunty angles. I want to buy them a spirit level. They sport a manifesto that says ‘no bloggers’, ‘no photos’. I wonder how they police that? There is a free jukebox at least, but they’ve allowed a situation where it is actually possible to put ColdPlay on, and lo and behold, someone has. And they’re singing along.

I’ve seen people draw comparison with London’s Meat Liquor, but let me tell you, Almost Famous has absolutely nothing on it. Meat Liquor has a history, which began with Meateasy and grew organically. The food is also a million times better, which is, let us not forget, what a restaurant is actually all about! Radical!

If you have to try very hard to be edgy and cool then I’m sorry to break it to you, but you aren’t. Kabana illustrate my point for me rather nicely. A slightly scruffy little cafe, no airs or graces, quietly doing their thing. Having just said the food is of utmost importance I’ll now admit that there is a place for restaurants which make their name on atmosphere alone and there’s nothing really wrong with that, I suppose. Just don’t be so goddamn desperate.

Kabana, 52 Back Turner Street, Manchester M4 1FP.

Almost Famous, 100 High St, Manchester, M4 1HP.

We also visited a couple of good pubs worth mentioning, if you’re interested. Very different places. Port Street Beer House is a craft beer pub of the well, craft beer pub ilk and The Castle is the kind of pub that I like. It’s sort of dingy and smells a bit and everyone talks to each other. Take yer pick.

I was invited to visit Manchester and was kindly put up in the Premier Inn, which I can vouch for. It’s dead close to Picadilly Station, and the reception was manned by quite honestly the friendliest woman I have ever met. Well, the friendliest woman I’ve ever met working on a reception desk in a hotel, anyway.

Me ‘learning’ (drunkenly grappling) how to ‘play’ (make a noise like a cat with bronchitis) the accordion. 

I’ve moved house. I’m going to go on about this. You’ll see. I used to live within spitting distance of Frog on The Green which is one of my favourite places to eat in Peckham, if not in SE London. I’ve raved about the sandwiches already. Goats’ cheese fondue. I mean, get in. Now I have to sit on the bus for like, a whole 5 stops or something.

While I’ve been lurking/hanging about/eating everything/semi stalking around this place over the past couple of years the owner John has become my friend. This is because, aside from being a talented chef, he is quite possibly the nicest man in the world. He’ll really cringe when he reads that, which is kind of why I wrote it. Ha. The time I saw him before the supper club I popped in for a ‘coffee and a chat’ and left three hours later, several courses of food and a few bottles of wine down. He also has a cat.

I had been a guinea pig for some of the dishes he was to serve at his new ‘Balkan dinners’. I remember being served the most exquisite round courgette, soft and striped and stuffed and surrounded by my one of my favourite things in the whole wide world – yoghurt. I am obsessed with the white stuff. It was such a perfect little plate of food, so simple and cooked with such obvious care; I remember looking up at my companion, eyes wide. The bowl was wiped clean, feverishly, with too much fluffy bread.

So when I heard the first dinner was to be themed around yoghurt, I did a gleeful cackle which could be heard all the way to The Old Kent Road. Yoghurt, aside from tasting dreamy, is a bit like cultural glue. As Florian of co-organiser ‘Food Trips’ put it, ‘yoghurt is a food that binds a fragmented region together, split in multiple ethnicities, religions and a plethora of states: The Balkans.’

We started with a ‘tarator’, a traditional balkan dish and the kind of light, silken bowlful that makes me clap my hands together and squeal like a Californian college girl on spring break.

‘Chicken, yoghurt, hazelnut butter and mint’ was, simply, one of the most enjoyable dishes I’ve eaten in a very long time. So perfectly balanced, expertly seasoned and a powerful reminder of John’s calibre as a chef; he’s worked at The Square don’t forget.

There’s stuffed baby gem and veal schnitzel next; it’s like someone phoned me up a week earlier and asked me exactly what I wanted to eat and I replied, ‘SHITLOADS of yoghurt! Cooked lettuce! Fried things!’ They just keep on coming. Then it’s that globe courgette, filled with minced pork and pine nuts and as perfect as I remembered it, surrounded by soured yoghurt and olive oil.

By this point I was getting full, and I had trouble finishing the spring lamb and yoghurt gratin, but the idea of a yoghurt gratin is genius, quite frankly, and I shall be stealing it as soon as possible. Lighter than a dauphinoise, with characteristic tang.

The fried ball on top of the gratin contains brains, which I think must have been put there to spare John’s blushes over my raving on and on about how much I loved the food because brains, I just can’t get along with. I’ve tried and tried, it ain’t happening. I’ve moved on.

Dessert was ‘yoghurt, corab, sesame and pistachio’ which I can’t remember in the finest detail as I was inebriated on Greek and Macedonian wines. The cosy atmosphere and soothing notes of the accordion floating around the room between courses meant the evening passed by in a blink. The next thing I knew I’d made two new best friends and invited them to my birthday party. Then it was 3am and I was ordering a taxi.

John is as much a lover of Peckham as I and we often talk about how the area is changing, and what is happening in terms of food. I’m excited to see how these Balkan dinners pan out. I mean, who else is cooking this kind of food? Certainly no-one else in the area. I’m excited. I recommend you go very soon.

I may have moved down the road, but my heart remains in Peckham.

The Balkan dinner was frankly a stupendous bargain at £27.80 for 6 courses and more food than I could eat, which is saying something. Wine isn’t included but was available to buy on the night at very small mark ups. The dinners are in association with Food Trips (the organisation I did the South London food tour with), so watch the website for details. 

Last year I went to Georgia; a country I would never have considered visiting had I not been invited. As is often the way when one doesn’t expect these things, I completely fell in love with the place; the people, the culture, the wine and most of all, the food. Since then it’s been a mission to try and perfect recipes and also to seek out Georgian food in London. On the cooking front, khachapuri has been something of an obsession; it’s basically a cheese-stuffed bread, made with an incredibly salty Georgian cheese – we’re talking more salty than halloumi; being a complete and utter salt whore, I adored it. I lugged 6 khachapuri back on the plane with me and ate them, cold, for several days after my return, mourning their diminishing number with every bite.

Khachapuri in Georgia 

Also on the Georgia trip with me was Kerstin Rodgers, who took a similar liking to this supremely comforting  bread. We tried cooking a recipe from The Georgian Feast, an award winning cook book, but it just wasn’t right at all. We didn’t have the correct cheese but it wasn’t just that. Not the kind of people to give up, we got together recently to give khachapuri another try, using Ottolenghi’s recipe from Jerusalem. It worked a treat. I even managed to find sulguni in a Russian deli in Queensway (Kalinka), which I believe is one of the only if not the only place in London that sells it. They also sell Armenian cognac in bottles shaped like AK47s. One of those got bought, obviously; the last in the shop. When we requested to buy it the lady behind the counter got her walkie talkie out and started speaking frantically in Russian.

Oh how we feasted. Ottolenghi also includes a substitute cheese filling, and that also tastes really quite authentic. Read Kerstin’s post about our khachapuri making evening here; we tried just about every type of random cheese London had to offer (you’ll also get a story about my love life while you’re over there).

Sulguni cheese

Magnificent ‘Ajarian’ (boat shaped) khachapuri cooked in Kerstin’s Aga (and served on a very beautiful tray…)

‘Megruli’ (circular, stuffed) khachapuri, again cooked in the Aga

I also had great success cooking a recipe for BBQ pork and plum sauce in the summer; these spice rubbed skewers was everywhere in Georgia, grilled over hot coals in a pit in the ground and served with sliced raw shallots and a sour/sweet, dill heavy plum sauce. I was amazed at how authentic my plum sauce tasted; although our plums are completely different, the unripe ones we get in the supermarkets are perfect as they’re just as sour. A use for unripe supermarket fruit. Who knew?

Pork grilling in Georgia

The finished pork in Georgia

My Georgian BBQ pork

My Georgian plum sauce

Seeking out authentic tasting Georgian food in London has been much more hit and miss. First I visited Colchis, which is a kind of poshed up Georgian restaurant in Notting Hill;  each to their own, but having visited the country, that’s just the most bizarre concept and it didn’t sit well or indeed taste particularly good. My next experience was completely unexpected, coming as it did from the Pasha Hotel in Camberwell, where I spotted khachapuri on the menu in their Kazakh Kyrgyz restaurant. It was nothing at all like the examples I tasted in Georgia, made from a flaky pastry rather than a bread. It did taste rather nice however and I liked the idea of serving it with raw onion.

And so to my best restaurant experience yet: The Georgian in Clapham South. During the day it’s a somewhat run of the mill cafe serving the usual sandwiches and hot drinks but during the evening they serve Georgian food. I’ll be honest, they seemed surprised to see me when I walked in at 6.30 and a woman initially tried to speak to me in Georgian.

All the classics were there on the menu and I was properly excited. The khachapuri was rather good; nowhere near as oily as the real  thing (I really liked the supreme unhealthiness of the oil) but very tasty nonetheless. The best I’ve had in a restaurant by miles.

Pkhali are pureed vegetables mixed with walnuts, which are abundant in Georgia; we chose spinach and beetroot. They’re like a rich vegetable spread, intense with garlic and dotted with pomegranate seeds. In Georgia each ball is always studded with just one pomegranate seed, like a little jewel nestling in the top.

We stuffed ourselves full of traditional Georgian dumplings, called khinkali, which have very thick and rustic casings, filled with minced meats and their juices and heavily flavoured with black pepper. They take some careful eating; the way to do it is to hold them by the nipple at the top and carefully bite in. We ate them with a green chilli sauce, which was really fierce.

Dumplings with green chilli sauce at The Georgian

The Georgian is the best Georgian place I’ve been to in London so far and I want more people to visit because we were the only evening diners. At the moment they’re clearly frequented more for coffee and cakes which is sad, they ought to be serving many more of their excellent Georgian dishes.

I’ll continue working my way around London’s Georgian restaurants however; I’ve heard that Little Georgia is good. Does anyone have any favourite places?

The Pasha Hotel has always fascinated me. When I first moved to London I would rattle past on the bus marvelling at this dodgy looking hotel thinking it would be about the last place on Earth I’d ever want to stay. Six years later and not only have I er, woken up there after an er, particularly messy evening, I’ve eaten in their restaurant.

The decor in the place is hilarious, a labyrinthine network of neon lit corridors and rooms including a Turkish baths. I give you a particularly fine example of their approach to decor in the photo below. I love the red rope protecting the mannequins from the punters; at first I thought it ridiculous, then I realised I’d totally be trying on their outfits, so fair enough.

And so to the restaurant. There’s no sign on the door to say that it actually is the restaurant, so we tentatively open it filled with fear we might walk in on someone’s bedroom. The decor here does not disappoint either. It’s a vast room with the option of low tables or ‘proper tables with chairs’, in the words of the waitress. We of course sit cross legged on a low table. Halfway through the meal I am reminded of AA Gill’s comment that every country which eats their food at such tables has a national dress without a waistband. As it turns out this doesn’t pose much of a problem, because sadly (and it does make me genuinely sad), the food was disappointing.

I wanted to love Kazakh Kyrgyz so much, not least because the restaurant is divided in two by a small pond with a bridge twinkling with blue fairy lights. So ridiculous it’s brilliant. All evening we watched the Russian waitress bob up and down over the curve  to music of the kind that is played to accompany Russian dancing, interspersed with Euro pop.

The food looked promising, if spectacularly random. I recognised Turkish, Georgian, Russian and total curve ball dishes. It becomes clear where the restaurant got it’s name; Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan were both on the Silk Road, which in turn explains such varied influences in the food. The most exciting for me was the khachapuri, a Georgian bread stuffed with cheese, something I couldn’t get enough of when I visited Georgia earlier this year. Georgian cheese is incredibly salty, we don’t have anything like it here. Even halloumi isn’t as salty as Georgian cheese. I’ve since had a bash at making khachapuri with Kerstin Rodgers, when we cooked a Georgian meal together for her supper club. It wasn’t bad, in fact it was very tasty, but it wasn’t quite right (I note Ottolenghi has a recipe for it in Jerusalem, which I must try). I’ve tried it at Colchis restaurant in Notting Hill, but it wasn’t right there either. At Kazakh Kyrgyz, it was different again; the bread was replaced with a sort of flaky pastry, filled with cheddar, sprinkled with sesame seeds and served with raw onion. Despite its differences to the real thing it was really pleasant and the best of everything we ordered.

From then on it was a bit sad really; an imam bayaldi was half hot, half cold and rather slimy. I struggle to remember what was inside some sort of kibbeh shaped things. Lamb shashlik was a major workout for the jaw. Stuffed vine leaves had clearly been waiting a long time to be eaten but worst of all was a dish of kisir (bulgur wheat with parsley and tomatoes) which immediately fizzed on the tongue. We ummed and ahhed about whether or not that was normal, decided it clearly wasn’t supposed to be fermenting and sent it back. They apologised and admitted the mistake.

And this is the problem faced by a place like Kazakh Kyrgyz; it’s not busy enough to serve such a large menu and some of our food had clearly been prepped for a while. The wine was okay, some Georgian wines on the list, just not very exciting examples. One was VERY sweet and weird (my wine writing is coming on in leaps and bounds I think you’ll agree). All that said, it’s such a hilarious space I’d actually go there just to drink and eat their version of khachapuri. Oh and on Fridays there’s belly dancing and live music. Of course there is.

I must, very briefly, tell you about the wondrous fried chicken at Mama Lan’s in Brixton Village; the best I’ve had anywhere in a while. The skin has the kind of crunch one always wants fried chicken to have, but it so rarely does; I’d kill for the recipe. I do manage to find out a few of the ingredients from the waitress; star anise, coriander seeds, garlic, sesame seeds and to serve, loads of chilli oil, which they make themselves. This is borderline perfect fried chicken; it’s sweet, it’s spicy and it doesn’t so much hit the spot as take a massive run up and face plant it. Five pieces for £4.50.

The dumplings are worth a quick mention; they’re not anything amazing but I am rather fond of the  wood ear mushroom and Chinese leaf pot stickers. The king prawn and water chestnut steamed version are also tasty. A couple of rounds of these, dunked in Chinkiang vinegar and soy bust right through a hangover. Not before I’ve had my chicken fix, though.

Mama Lan’s
Unit 18 Brixton Village Market
SW9 8PR
[map]

As I was planning the South London Food Trip with @siepert (do check it out, it’s going to be an amazing weekend), it occurred to me that some of the restaurants I visit the most are the ones I’ve never written about. Having worked in Camberwell on and off for the past 8 years I can confidently say that lunch options are, to put it mildly, limited. F M Mangal has therefore been the staff lunch outing destination of choice as long as I can remember. It will always be the case that some colleagues are more adventurous eaters than others, and while the idea of subjecting some of them to the chilli and/or offal content of the dishes at Silk Road makes me guffaw, F M Mangal Turkish charcoal grill has always been a safe option.

I know not of anyone who has ever less than loved the pomegranate dippy onion garlic appetiser, coming as it does with fluffy spice smeared flat bread and charred, sumac crusted veg (top photo).

The dippy bits and bobs, although nothing to write home about, are soothing in their familiarity; thick garlicky yoghurt and plastic pink Barbie taramasalata. The tobacco in the background doesn’t come with, I’m afraid. The lunch deal however, is my favourite thing about F M Mangal.

It includes a grilled meat skewer of your choice (well you know, one they have on the menu; no Ortolan), a little dome of buttery rice and a few salads (always very fresh; my favourite is the kohlrabi with again, lots of sumac) and, one of my favourite bits, a blistered mild chilli. A dollop of their lovely garlic and chilli sauces on the side plus a drink and you’ve spent £6, including the bread and pom dip. Such good value.

The disadvantage of lunchtime visiting is that one does smell of a charcoal grill for the rest of the day. That could be seen as a disadvantage I suppose but personally, I rather enjoy it…

F M Mangal
54 Camberwell Church Street
London
SE5 8QZ
Tel: 0207 701 6677

Two visits to Islington within a week; another part of my South London street cred ebbing away every time my tentative steps took me aboard the sweaty Northern line, during rush hour. Teeth were gritted, knuckles turned white and the urge to punch other people was just about suppressed. Thankfully Yipin was worth the trauma. The number of Chinese restaurants serving decent, varied, regional food is ever growing. The menu at Yipin is divided into Hunan, Sichuan and Cantonese sections and it’s huge; I mean in terms of physical measurements, not number of dishes. Everything has an accompanying photograph of the kind that fall in the right place between splattered laminated takeaway menu and glossy PR shot; the kind that are genuinely helpful and importantly, make you want to actually eat the food.

First was ‘spiced fungus’, which was jelly fungus, slipping about in a mixture of sesame oil, red and green chilli and plenty of Chinkiang (black) vinegar, something I’ve not noticed so much when I’ve eaten the dish at other restaurants (Snazz Sichuan for example). It’s a cold dish, and the fungus has a seaweed-like texture, borderline crunchy, ‘like something that should be worn’ said my mate, ‘pieces of macintosh’ said another. Those were compliments, believe it or not. Easily my favourite dish of the evening.

Sichuan mixed pickles were not particularly pickled, but pleasantly soothing every so often when the sweats started kicking in. Hand torn cabbage was markedly different to the version at Silk Road, one of my favourite restaurant dishes of all time; notable variations included slivers of pork belly (never a bad thing), lots of fresh chilli rather than dried and considerably less sugar. A very successful dish but one with a lot to live up to.

Best of the meaty dishes was pork belly with preserved vegetable; neatly arranged slices of soft belly with cm thick stripes of fat. I love the way the Chinese celebrate the softness of a piece of simmered pork like this; bubbly crackling is obviously great, but it’s not the only way to celebrate the fatty underbelly. The sauce was funky with preserved vegetable, very much like the Tianjin preserved vegetable I became hopelessly addicted to at one stage; a unique, intense, cabbagey flavour. A second meaty main, deep fried beef with cumin didn’t seem at all deep fried but was incredibly tender. Despite a heady whack of cumin, it still managed to underwhelm. Again, I’ve been spoilt by the similarly flavoured lamb skewers with cumin at Silk Road and I wish I’d tried the Yipin version.

Dan dan noodles were a little underpowered compared to the Fuschia Dunlop recipe, which I regularly make at home (mine is the second photo). The meat is always presented on top and then the whole lot stirred together at the table. More preserved vegetable and a little numbing Sichuan pepper would have improved things. Still, nice enough, if more appropriate as a lunch dish.

Rice with salted chillies was disappointing, tasting pretty much just like standard egg fried rice, and tofu with salted duck egg had the odds stacked against it, coming as it did at the end of the meal. The slippery texture of the very soft tofu so beloved by the Chinese would have been welcome 20 minutes earlier but was challenging at that stage of the game, particularly in an eggy, gelatinous sauce.

Despite minor grumbles I very much enjoyed Yipin. The room is typically utilitarian, initially lacking in atmosphere but improving as it filled up with customers, the windows getting progressively steamier. We paid £21 each with a few beers, which is cheap by most restaurant standards of course, but more expensive than other similar restaurants, where I’ve struggled to spend more than £15. This is Islington however, not Camberwell (Silk Road) or King’s Cross (Chilli Cool). I’d like to have tried Yipin’s fish fragrant aubergine as a benchmark and also anything with preserved egg, plus the pickled green beans with minced pork which I adored at Shu Castle on the Old Kent Road.

Overall a little more flavour intensity would be appreciated but I think they’ve done a lovely job of making the food more accessible in general, the photos on the menu for example and the sensitive translations which see dishes like the well known ‘saliva chicken’ translated as the more appetising ‘mouth watering chicken’. I’ve been spoiled by my proximity to places in the South East, but if I ever find myself in the area? I’d definitely go back.

Yipin China
70-72 Liverpool Road
London
N1 0QD
Tel: 020 7354 3388

Thanks to Donald for the photos.