Category: London

Yotam Ottolenghi has been my inspiration since the day I discovered him. I could safely say that he is one of my cooking gurus. Visiting one of his restaurants in London, as you can imagine, has been one of the highlights for me. Well, the other highlights were catching up with friends like Alec and Michael as well as JCC, seeing my favourite painting in real; The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck at The National Gallery.

Back to the subject… Ottolenghi Islington was the one we had the pleasure of trying. It caters for 50 people and some of the tables are communal. We booked a table one month in advance because we knew it would be difficult to get a table. This place is so popular with a capital P as you can imagine although they don’t take bookings for breakfast or lunch. So, booking for dinner is essential Peoples.

Food was exceptional but their wine list absolutely, totally blew us away. I have had the most interesting orange wine of my life. They are the big thing at the moment but getting a good orange wine is still a challenge. Well, in Australia anyway.

Here’s what we had:

Roasted aubergine with sorrel yoghurt, turmeric pickled radish, spring onion and almonds £9.00

Poached peaches, mixed bitter leaves, spicy pecan nuts, Roquefort and orange blossom dressing £9.50

Tempura sweet potato with peanut and coriander vadouvan and lime yoghurt £11.00

Pea and mint croquettes with yuzukosho mayonnaise £11.00

As for the wine… I started off with white from Loire, France. Touraine Le Tesniere is a bio-organically produced wine with flinty minerality (not my word, I stole it like an artist :)) combined with lemon, white fruits and a hint of dry honey as they say on the wine list. Then I moved on to an orange wine called A Demua from Italy. It was a stunningly unusual wine with dried apricot and almond. This one was quite complex as it is made with five local grape varieties (bio-organic, again). John on the other hand decided to stick to orange wine only and had Dinavolo and Vitovska. Both bio-organic, both from Italy.

When it was time to consider dessert we were both full yet didn’t want to miss the opportunity so we had desserts to go. John had a tart and I had one of those berry meringues I had my eyes on since I walked through that door (see photo below).

Before I forget, I also bought Yotam Ottolenghi’s latest cookbook Plenty More while I was there and like all my other Ottolenghi cookbooks, this one is signed too!

Ottolenghi Islington
287 Upper Street
London N1 2TZ
Tel: 020 7288 1454
Website: Ottolenghi

After Istanbul, our first stop was London. Just before we left Sydney, we asked Ajoy Joshi of Nilgiri’s and Tellicherry if he could recommend any Indian restaurants in London and he came back with three!
1. Quilon
2. Rasoi
3. Benaras

So, we started off with the first one on the list: Quilon. Quilon is actually a Michelin starred restaurant. It is located near Buckingham Palace and St. James’s Park and the whole place is decorated with artwork created for Quilon by an acclaimed artist; Paresh Maity.

Chef of Quilon, Sriram Aylur, is a good friend of Ajoy’s. So we mentioned that we were actually sent there by their chef’s good friend from Sydney to our waiter, Mr Aylur came out toward the end of our dinner to say hi which was very nice of him.

The menu at Quilon is based on South-west coastal region of India which sounds incredibly traditional however, everything is created with a contemporary flair while keeping the foundations intact. It may still sound like the whole focus would be on fish and seafood but If you let your waiter/waitress know, their chef is more than happy to put together a tasting menu which is designed to cater for your requirements. In our case, it was a vegetarian tasting menu.

Let’s begin with starters:

Mains:

Crispy okra thinly sliced okra, batter fried, tossed in onion, tomato and crushed pepper.

Asparagus and snow peas sauteed with mustard seeds, curry leaves, green chillies and grated coconut and potato and cauliflower with crushed cashew nuts potato and cauliflower florets cooked with onion, tomato, roasted spices and crushed cashew nuts.

Raw Jack Fruit Pulao (raw jack fruit, lentil dumplings with herbs and spices cooked with basmati rice served with fruit pachadi).

Bebinca. It is a traditional pudding from Goa. Not many Indian restaurants make it. In Sydney, there was only one place where they did bebinca which is shut down. This was a real treat for me because I LOVE my bebinca!

John’s dessert.

Masala chai

Quilon
41 Buckingham Gate
London, SW1E 6AF
Phone: +44 (0) 20 7821 1899
Website