Breakfast reviews are my favourites to do – especially when the meal takes place on a Sunday. Call me old fashion or perhaps I’m just prepping for family life; Italian eggs, iced New York coffee and my favourite copy of the Sunday Times. Come on son, let’s grab some grub.

The buzzword

There are a few Raoul’s Cafes around town: one in Notting Hill Gate, but I was at the Maida Vale one. Quite separately, they also have deli grocery shops, and there is one just across the road from their café at Maide Vale. I’ve wanted to eat breakfast here for a while now, it is almost always full up by 11am. It always smells so good, and the café always looks so lively inside – with so many smiles and so much chatter, the food must be at least half good, that or herd mentality. We sat at the very end of the restaurant, under a translucent skylight shining cloudy rays onto our table. It was pleasant, although, it felt a little like Sleepless in Seattle (I was there with a girl), with Bennett/Sinatra tunes squeaking from the stereo, for some reason, I kept hearing the words Staten Island.. Staten Island; its 1985 all over again.

Golden Yolks.

Breakfast is served till 6pm (kind of ironic really) in the restaurant which advertises Mediterranean food, although I didn’t pay much attention to the culinary school of thought they have elected to adhere to. The menu feature the usual suspects, benedicts, croque monsieurs, full English and a selection of familiar sounding sandwiches. Oh but they do serve Fritatas, how very quaint, and iced New York Coffee.

Yeah sounds like I’m going for the ice new york coffee. My waitress kept replying ‘milkshake’ when I said ‘iced coffee’ to her, after a couple of repetitions, I realised that the iced coffee was in fact espresso with dollops of ice and ice cream. It had the right amount of ice cream to make my brain freeze.

A good thing, I assure myself.

Eggs Benedicts with Ham (£8)

I love benedicts by the way, and if you track back to my previous posts, you’ll notice I write about my breakfast quite abit. For me, a good Benedict starts with the chef’s skill in balancing the natural sourness of the hollandaise sauce. I prefer a thick sauce, and Raoul’s version was just a little on the thin and runny side for me. Taste wise, the sauce was a sourcream and a slight custard flavour. Unique, it went well with the cooked ham and the softly crusty toasted muffins. Here’s where things get very interesting: The paprika coloured egg yolks.

And there’s a picture of it, Paprika coloured, right (Bleh, feel free to comment on this) ? The colour was so striking and i was intrigued with it. My first impression was that they were duck eggs, and then I thought that maybe they’ve been in the fridge for abit too long. I decided to tap into the wisdom of the waitress.

I couldn’t work out if the waiting staff here were an arrogantly dismissive lot or if they were just laid back. They seem perturbed when I raised my hand to ask them a question (why I raised my hand, I don’t know). One of them gave me the sort of glaring look from the corner of their eyes, you know what I mean right, that ‘What do you want little man?’ (think opening prison fight scene from Batman Begins) look. Contrary to popular belief, I do experience surly service from time to time. But I must emphasise that I can indeed speaka da English, sometimes. Hi Five. Anyway, eventually, she did tell me that they were eggs from Italy. I was adamant. “Eggs from chickens?”. Hi five.

The eggs were interesting. I must admit, the mere difference in colour alone made me pay attention to its flavour, and I am convinced that it tasted different to British eggs. There was a chalkiness to the texture of the yolk, a distinctive tea biscuit sweetness, I was also getting abit of soya flavour and a hint of sourness (probably from the hollandaise). In its entirety, the Benedict encompassed flavours from both ends of the spectrum, and the middlepoint where the sourness and the saltiness met, produced a subtle richness, the eggs were the difference for me, I am still convinced that they brought a certain quality to the dish.

Golden Yolks, in frittatas.

Don’t you just love a buzzing café.? Ahh… So I have this grand idea about frittatas and have this (very wrong) impression of the dish being served in golf clubs with fat membership fees, that cater to successful self-styled businessmen, relaxing in far fetched exotic places, like Brunei for example, where luxury and even more luxury await.

Oh, I do digress. Fritatas, spring onion and chorizo. (£8?)

We opted for the chorizo and spring onion filled fried eggs and they were very good indeed. The eggy pancake also uses Italian eggs, and as you cut into it, the rich yolk gently oozed out from the centre, what luxury indeed. The frittata had intense flavour, perhaps due in most part to the chorizo. A rather simple dish that was effortless to huff down, I love it when simple dishes work.

Join the breakfast club today 

I also ordered a third dish in the traditional club sandwich. Perhaps just abit too traditional, that it looked like something I could throw together. Measly pieces of turkey and bacon, I’ll give them the freshly whipped mayonnaise but that’s where the admiration ends. A totally forgettable sandwich, in my opinion.

Before I go showering Raoul’s with praise, I have to say that they serve horrendous mochas. Watered down, powdery and so devoid of coffee, it was utterly bland. But if you can overlook the mochatrocities, then those Italian eggs are a real winner, it is distinctive, and I’ll admit that it’s the first time I’ve ever had Italian eggs and psychological or otherwise, it added to the experience. Good benedicts, could do with better coffee and 80s style easy music. Fly me to Raouls anytime, Tony.

PS: We paid £33 for this meal.

The Gist of It

Raoul’s Cafe official site
13 Clifton Road W9 1SZ
+44 (0) 207 289 7313
About £12pp for breakfast

Its a bit of a dilemma. On one hand, a blog- in it’s very nature – is a tool to broadcast your thoughts, on the other hand, LE ain’t a personal venting machine for my emotional musings …and it’s rather like shouting to the wind if I ever did so (don’t think I have that many interesting thoughts to begin with).

But the attraction to do so is seductive. Once the thoughts start forming, and then the words start flowing, the process becomes a little unstoppable and it just feeds itself. I feel proud looking back at the past few months on the bulk of stuff I’ve managed to achieve. Granted, this site is still in it’s infancy, and I have many hopes and dreams for it going forward into the new year. I want it to be more than just a personal guide to london, I want to show you the colour and beauty through which I experience and above all, I wish to bring a smile to you.

If you’ll let me, for the 93rd time, I’d like to invite you once again to go on yet another literary odyssey, filled with wonder, excitement, the odd burst of humor to experience the sights through pictures and this time, let me take you through some of my own, personal, fondest memories of London Eater, 2008.

the accidental portrait

This one was taken on my visit to borough market. It’s completely accidental. I was snappy-happy with my camera and and swimming in the middle of the crowd hoping to get a shot of the atmosphere in the middle of the busy food market… and somehow I caught her – totally in focus – and smiling for the camera. When I wrote this post, I offered to give her this photograph if she ever came across this blog and I still am. Who are you oh lovely lady walking about in borough market? I think this is a great picture of you.

welsh monkfish tales

I spent alot of time at this restaurant when I was away in Wales earlier this year. When I say alot, it’s like five dinners in a week for two months. I’ve practically eaten everything on the menu. I was still learning my way around the camera and this was still shot in jpeg and I was still rather clueless about levels. It was a really bright and sunny day ( rare, really it is) , I sat by the window and the lighting was just really perfect. So was the fish too. Just, Perfect. Quite possibly, the best monkfish I’ve ever had… for now.

Eating in the dark at dans le noir… not dan le noir

There is a superb typo on my blog. Superb because my eating in the dark write-up should have been about dans le noir and not dan le noir and its amazing how this little typo has propagated throughout the blog…. the funniest thing is that’s what people point out to me when they first read my blog.

“Kang I caught you” says reader.

“Caught muah, the infallible Genghis Kang?!” sez me.

“Yes you have a typo, it’s ‘dans’ not ‘dan’ ” quips the now winning reader.

“Crapola” says the no longer such infallible Genghis wannabe.

Yes you read it here on LE and if you hadnt yet – maybe you should do so here. It really was quite fun , but the photograph of the candle is real. Real in a sense that it’s not a stock photo. I actually took it at london’s oldest wine bar: Gordons. It’s pretty much like drinking in an underground wine cellar, atmospheric ( claustrophobic to some) and fun. I don’t know what it is, I just like this photograph alot – the saturation of the blackness against the solitary candle light. The blackness is so dark that there is no luminosity emanating from the flame… blackness, darkness, there’s just much more to this picture that you don’t see and I think its in the darkness that you don’t see which kind of sums up my experience at dans. There’s so much you don’t see – but it doesnt mean it’s not there.

Ah , I just like it.

talking about soul

I talk about restaurants and soul alot. If a kitchen is the heart that beats, then the setting and atmosphere is, naturally, the life and character which makes a restaurant come alive. Food at da aldo’s in soho will never be good enough for the michelin man but boy does this restaurant have soul. Heaps of it, bags of it. The vintage portraits seemingly untouched and dusty since the 1970s , the low hanging incandescents, the all too brash table cloths, the maturing wood and the burgundian walls. Da Aldo’s is alive, the food is so heartily bad, it’s good. We live for memories and I remember Da Aldo much like I remember nobu cod.

heroic sushi

Some say that sushi hiro is the best kept secret in london. After my first visit – I’m afraid I have to agree. It’s run by no more than three people and the sushi is ultra fresh. But I want to talk about this shot. It was the first time I used my 50mm primer for a shoot and I loved the images it produced. The wide aperture meant that I could create these fantastically striking poses with good bokeh and extremely shallow depth of field. The white edge of plate jutting out at you and the dramatic in your face nature of the shot somehow made the sushi seem so alive. This one was accidental, but quite possibly , the photo I’m most proud of so far.

breaking the fast

Hands up who hasn’t had, or heard of an english breakfast. I was in search of an ‘alternative’ to the old fry up and stumbled upon the tapa room in the marylebone area run by a couple of kiwis. Ive had my heart set on the nikon 16-85mm for awhile now. Its got great features in it’s excellent antishake capabilities, the ED glass and the wideangle. Lately, Ive been experimenting with closer shots of food. Instead of doing a full wide angle shot of the dish, I decided to focus more on the details. Leave some of the other bits to imagination and just zoom in close to really give you a flavour of the dish. The room was dark resulting in a shaky picture. I really should have taken a few more shots of this, but I got hungry. But still, the tomato is totally in focus and the poached egg toward the right hand side is just cool. This picture represents the style and direction to which my 2009 pictures are headed… for now, who knows what I will feel like changing to abit down the road.

finally, old vino

This was taken at berry bros & rudd, only my favorite wine shop in londres. The shop is more like a museum to be honest. The reception area had this shelf which housed these old wine bottles, all dusty and musky and detailed and vintage and super cool. Stare at the photo abit and you can see all the details in the wine labels. 

And on that note..

I hope you enjoyed this little trip down archive-land. I do hope your 2008 has been a great one, reflections are nice – taking a deep breathe and going ‘wooo, I ate all that?’ Hope your holidays continue to be merry and do come back here in a few days for my 2008 best eats list.

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You remember that song don’t you? You know, that one with Adam Levine and Maroon 5 all those years ago. The opening piano riff, the acoustic guitar coming on. I have to admit, waking up on to do a food write-up on a cold sunday morning ain’t the easiest. Especially with the holiday season knocking ’round the corner, it gets harder trying to churn out some constructive ramblings.

I was mulling over when to release this review since it was last sunday when I woke up and decided that I should do a review about breaking the fast. It would be injustice if I didn’t do one of these especially noting it’s importance in a healthy diet – as my dad used to say:

“Son, breakfast is like a gold medal. And so you should treat your three standard meals in a day like winning gold, silver and bronze. Whatever you do in life – as long as you never miss breakfast, you’ll be a winner.”

selecting you to eat

Are you like me when you choose a place to eat? You sit there, thinking you know your city, but in actuality, there’s so much you still don’t know about. In your mind, you make this assumption that you kind of know things exists, either that, or someone told you about this place or that place and you think to yourself  “I know the best place to have breakfast” .

Yeah right.

If you don’t already know, urbanspoon has this cool iPhone application where you can put in a few criteria of what you want to eat and literally shake the phone for it to return a few results. Did it tell me to eat at the providores and tapa room? Nope. I used trusty ol’ timeout for this one.

Queue before you rock

We showed up closer to lunch than breakfast time in the marylebone village – which is fast becoming the foodie equivalent of the square mile – and were greeted with a long queue just outside the restaurant. You might have noticed the rather long double barreled name in the providores and tapa room; well the doubly nature manisfests itself as two separate eateries. Upstairs is the posh dining space ‘the providores’ featuring innovative cooking and…. that sort of thing (it’s sunday, what can I say?) , while downstairs is  ‘the tapa room’ which is a breakfast-cum-wine-cafe-bar chill out zone for those looking for a lazy spot to settle down.

While Im still in the queue ( I called beforehand and the tapa room does not take bookings) , I’ll take the chance to talk abit about the menu. This much heralded double whammy of an eatery is run by Peter Gordon and Michale McGrath, the team from down under has brought abit of classy fusion to london marylebone, and their menu features teriyaki infused sweetcorn which sits comfortably next to the rabbit & foie gras terrine. Although, on this occasion, I came here specifically for their breakfast & brunch menu, which in itself is a pretty interesting read. With grilled sardines and paprika roast potatoes, greek yogurt and grilled chorizo on courgettes – the rainbow of diverse ingredients somehow evoked a sense of inspiration and wonder which one feels when walking down a food market gawking at the fresh produce and the endless ways in which they can be combined together – in harmony- to create some truly tasty dishes.

Not that I don’t appreciate a full english ( I really do ) , but with such rule bending cooking at hand – I had to try it for myself to see how it hangs together.

Is a poached egg a fry up?

The wait was a short fifteen minutes before we were ushered into a rather tiny eating space with low hanging fluorescents, the day was cloudy but the dim lights made it downright gloomy. Aside from a pretty small bar table, with a smattering of fresh pastry and cakes, the middle of the room was dominated by a long table and high stools, while we were sat in the corner on ‘normally low’ tables. Very cosy, but I’m stll abit troubled by the darkness of the room.

The lack of light aside, I was really enjoying the cool and relaxing atmosphere the space evoked and I thought it was the perfect place to settle for a sunday breakfast. The buzz was infectious and it really did wake me up. Oh what’s for breakfast?

Everything looked so good on the menu, but my eyes just couldn’t tear themselves away from the classics. I looked the menu up and down but the results were the same – french toast, fry-up, eggs, eggs, eggs, bacon …  I knew that on the first visit, no matter how much I wanted to try the more imaginative stuff ( Pineapple, grape, pear, pink grapefruit and satsuma fruit salad with vanilla poached figs ) , they would have to wait until my next.

I usually have two modes of operation when I go out to eat these days and I refrain from putting my blogging hat on when I’m eating with friends. But on this occasion, I dragged the meister out to breakfast with me. She had already been on a couple of other trips with me so she was comfortable with the picture before diving in moment. As with any self-respected, amateur photoboy, one struggles and takes the time to get ‘the shot’. With the restaurant being rather dark – it became even harder to avoid the camera shake with long exposures. The result is one very hungry and pissed off looking (albeit, good looking) lady waiting longing to eat her breakfast.

Perhaps like her, I’ve made you wait about 900 words before I would deliver the taster notes on her fry-up. Consisting of her choice of two poached eggs, grilled smoked back bacon, sauteed field mushrooms, slow roasted tomatoes on sourdough. While the combo is relatively straightforward, it’s taste was anything but. The bacon had a smoky intensity which reverberated with the fragrantly buttered mushrooms and the nicely grilled flavours were wonderfully balanced against the tangy tomatoes before breaking the eggs to reveal the yolk running down to the bread. As one would expect, very classic and predictable flavours, this was just a solidly cooked breakfast which would make any englishmen grunt with pleasure.

Grunt.

Let’s talk about parmesan and toast

Before I go on too long, I’ll just bring you back to the lead picture of this write-up which is my order of sauteed creamed wild mushrooms with parmesan and jamon on toasted sourdough. The first thing I noticed when the waitress brought the dish over was the fragrance. Hang on, here’s the picture again to remind you:

The melted cheese gave way to this full buttery smell which was accompanied by the lovely aromas of the steam rising from the cooked mushrooms. It opened up my appetite entirely and I just had to dive in.

By the way, I don’t take notes anymore. I used to whip out my moleskine on restaurant trips because it made me feel like some sort of bona fide critic and I would hastily and scrutinisingly jot down pages and pages of thoughts with each bite… yeah, that was so daggy! ( It’s australian for uncool – you learn something new everyday eh? )

These days, I prefer to keep as low a profile as I can – so I use my mobile phone. I still hold on to my trusty Nokia 6300- and this is for all budding foodbloggers and wannabe critics out there- use the sms function to make notes and turn on the t9 – it really is a godsend.

Intense, the parmesan melt provided the foundations for the flavour profile which was creamy and made for a distinctly able balance of stinkiness against saltiness. The mushrooms had a hard cheese like chewiness which gave it much needed texture and form. If the cheese brought seasoning, then the ham brought much needed flavour to bring the dish to life and together provided for an umami rich topping which went so well with the sourdough. To sum things up, this was a hearty breakfast.

Eggs on Yogurt

It had all the makings of a beauty queen. I genuinely thought she was the one. I caught the first glimpse of her on the menu and was gasping. She was exotic in that her name was turkish and she came from the restaurant known as changa in Istanbul, which legend has it, was a maverick of a place which carried no rules in it’s recipes and violently fused cooking styles from across the globe as they saw fit. It angered food snobs left, right and centre but that idea only served to intrigue me.

And this was perhaps the most eye-catching dish on the menu which I had to have. Two poached eggs with whipped yogurt swirling in a hot chilli butter. It looked so stunning it could not fail right?

i fell for the gimmick in the caveat of the changa recipe but it was god-awful. First of all, the whole thing is cold. Even the butter – which tasted rather more like chilli oil- was cold, the greek yogurt was cold and the eggs were stone cold too. Spooning some of this stuff was abit disturbing in that it was just dollops of heavy oil with cold, tangy yogurt and some COLD runny eggs. The sharpness of the yogurt was further elucidated by the coldness of the dish. As it went down my throat, I could literally feel the yogurt and saturated oil going down my stomach. I’m sorry, this was just too weird for me ( that must be some kind of record for the frequency of the word cold in a paragraph) and dare I say it – was just absolutely disgusting.

Yogurt and eggs do not go together, especially if it’s swimming in a sea of cold oil. So much for ‘the one’.

Mochaccino or Cappuccino?

l got into this debate with the meister when I said “oh, I love mocha, that’s what I usually order when I go out” . She looked at me in disbelief, as if I was only pandering in our coincidental choice of brew. Ok fine, my brew of choice is the cappuccino (as my tea lady at work can attest to) but on occasion, I do plonk for the mocha. The only thing that stops me from doing more mochas when I’m out is the unusual price discrepancy between a few spoonfuls of chocolate powder – does it really warrant it being 50p more expensive? I should think not, is the coffee at the tapa room awesome? Yeah actually, it really was rather good, the foam was thick and creamy. Yum.

Anyway, in summary – The Tapa Room is a great breakfast spot and a lovely place to laze around on a sunday. Breakfast is served till 3pm, otherwise the innovation continues in their all day menu.  If you’re comfortable with trying something out of the ordinary, then you will be glad with the food here – whatever you do, stay away from the cold turkish eggs and you’ll be just fine.

The Basics

Providores and Tapa room ( delete the one which you did not visit )
109 Marylebone High Street W1U 4RX 020 7935 6175
How to get there: Baker Street
How much: Standard, £15 to £20 per person easy.
http://www.theprovidores.co.uk/

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I‘ve lived in london for six years and eaten some great stuff. But when it came time to start writing my first review, I didn’t know where to begin. And so, I do what I usually do when I’m in full contemplation – I have breakfast at Balans.

A good chunk of those six years were spent in Earls Court. Yes, the exhibition centre in Chelsea’s backyard, sporting an abundance of Australians and vehicular pollution. It straddles between zones one and two, being the confused castaway from the Kensington Boroughs and at the same time, the unofficial gateway to Fulham. I do digress.  

I lived about two minutes away from Balans and it was the perfect excuse for me to escape my final year exam revisions (Twas a time I was young). At 8am (closer to 11 actually) in the morning, there are few places I want to go in order to grab a decent breakfast.   

Decor. Dark wood, burgundy colours and cushioned seats. In the mornings, the music is usually turned down, the staff welcomingly warm and make you feel right at home. My only complaint – it can be abit noisy with the traffic – but it does kind of add to the atmosphere of city breakfasting… if you like noise that is. The place is cosy enough to be safely swimming in your own thoughts, conjouring delusions of granduer, and in my case, attempting a review.

Breakfast Pudding. Freshly squeezed orange and apple juice on offer, a fresh start indeed. A few minutes after ordering – and just barely finishing my scan through the front page of the Times – the waiter brings my order of double ham benedicts. I’m told to be aware of the hot plate. Nice and warm. Hollandaise sauce is tricky, it’s one of those recipes where a little too much can spoil everything. When it goes wrong, it’s taste like sour milk. Thankfully, the chef gets its just right. I can taste the silkiness of the butter melding nicely with the lightly toasted muffin. Coupled with some perfectly poached eggs and quality cooked ham – it produced an elegantly effective way to kick start the day. I finished with a large cappuccino, sunk into my seat and leisurely took in some words with every sip.    

There is little doubt that the chef is a master at balanced flavours. They do daily specials and asian influenced dishes such a thai green curry tuna with cocunut infused rice are a common feature. I’ll save that for another time, however, here’s a sneak preview: dinner is great, the corned beef hash, doesn’t sound like much, however it does do what it says on the menu – ‘appetise’. 

Credits: Image by adactio