September 8, 2010

ELIZABETH ROSE, SAM SHARPE, and SKYE BLUE

I don’t know if we’ve ever hinted at this, but the metanotherfrog.com crew loves to eat really good food. Truth be told, eating is our second favourite pastime (if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, I’m sure you know what our first one is). We love good food so much that we don’t care if it’s some upper crust eatery where the wait staff dons white gloves and hover over our table throughout the meal anticipating our needs before our minds even registers them or some back alley diner with lawn chairs and picnic tables.  As long as the joint is clean and the food is tasty we’re happy.

Needless to say we ate ‘nuff and often’ during our vacation. The three of us were on a mission to take conquer Europe one restaurant at a time, and today we’re going to run through our list of the best and worst restaurants we broke bread at.

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Edinburgh:

Thai Orchid – We stumbled upon this gem of a restaurant by accident on our first night in the city. It was actually our last resort, our first choice being a place called Mariachi’s (which we’ll get to in a minute). The decor of the restaurant was charming, as were the three ladies tending to the many patrons dining there that night. Within minutes of being seated, our lovely server (she’s the one in the middle of the picture) took our orders and soon after our food arrived. As we dug into the heaping plates of food – which included papaya salad, chicken jungle curry, spicy prawns, stir fried vegetables and steamed rice – we soon realized we were eating the BEST Thai meal we had EVER had. FACT (and trust me we eat a lot of Thai food). Our meal was so delicious that Elizabeth Rose declared, in between the mouthfuls of food she artfully maneuvered towards her lips with her chopsticks: “Seriously. This is actually better than the food I had in Thailand.” So people, believe me when I say The Thai Orchid may just be Edinburgh’s best kept secret. 5/5

Empires – The next night we  were lucky enough to get an early dinner reservation at Empires,  a delightfully quaint Turkish café, with the most attentive staff. Our good luck continued when we were seated at a small table in the cozy dining area on the second floor, where we dined on a vegetarian meze platter (filled with humus, acili, muska borek, patlican, and mussaka), and we sipped on apple tea – which I for one believe is the nectar of the gods (or at least a close facsimile). 4/5

The Cellar Door – We stopped in at a patisserie  as soon as the food babies we had acquired from our meal at Empires disappeared. It was there I had the best cheesecake (my absolute favourite dessert) I ate for the entire trip. I’m still thanking God for Petra, the amazing pastry chef Morven, the owner of the shop (pictured on the left), had the good sense to recruit from Germany. Her cheesecake was positively sublime. So much so that I actually inhaled (you can’t really call it eating if you don’t chew or breathe right?) two slices of it – all on my own. Honest. 4.5/5

Mariahchi’s – Okay, so we were really excited to eat lunch at Mariachi’s the day after we dined at Thai Orchid. Why you ask? Well, as we searched around for some place to eat on our first night in Edinburgh this Mexican restaurant was jumping.  It was cramped full of happy patrons from six straight through to 10pm, and when we stopped one of the busy waiters to ask if there was a chance we could get a table without having a reservation, he looked at us as with pity in his eyes and said “Unlikely ladies”, before hustling back to the kitchen. So, after eating our fill at Thai Orchid, we stopped by Mariachi’s to make a lunch reservation – we wanted to get in on what we believed had to be good food action. So, needless to say, we had high expectations when we sat down to eat at noon the next day.  Poor us. We just weren’t ready for the level of disappointment to come.

At best the food at Mariachi’s can be described as cafeteria style Mexican. My camarones picante, were anything but picante. It was just one bland bite after another. While I managed to get through my meal by pouring a ton of Encona hot sauce (the best part of the meal – hands down) all over my food, Elizabeth just picked at her arroz con pollo. The chicken on her plate looked like it had been chopped into small cubes, boiled to a pulp and then seasoned with a sprinkle or two of black pepper; and based on her facial expression when she forked it into her mouth, it tasted about as appetizing as it looked. Finally, to add insult to injury as we left the restaurant we discovered that we’d been given a rather unappealing parting gift. Little bits of the seat of our chairs (which were made with some kind of woven cordlike material) were all over our backsides. And it was virtually impossible to get out of the yoga pants Elizabeth and I were both wearing. After dining at Mariachi’s we were left dusty-butted and decidedly underwhelmed. All in all our lunch at Mariachi’s was an EPIC FAIL. 1/5

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London:

Lahore One (218 Commercial Road, London E1 2JT. Phone: 020 7791 0112  ) – OMG. Holy good food batman. This hole in the wall of a restaurant offered up super cheap and super good eats.  Although the décor of the restaurant leaves much to be desired (to say the joint was a bit run down would be a bit of an understatement) and the service was sometimes a little slow, the food was marvelous – like stuff yourself until you have to be rolled away from the table marvelous. And the best part is that after you’ve indulged in some of the best naan, chilli paneer (probably the best thing we ate in London), sheek kebab, saag aloo, chicken tikka and lamb briyani you’ll be blown away by how low your bill is. The eight of us ordered more than a dozen plates of food, ate non-stop, left the crowded restaurant with food comas, and our bill was under £70. For those of you who aren’t good at math that’s less than £9.00/person (about $13.95 each). 4/5

Wan Chai Corner (3 Gerrard Street, London, W1D 5pD. Phone: 020 7434 1188) – I will forever remember this busy Chinese eatery in Soho as the place where I discovered crispy duck – my new fave food. Now you would think growing up in the T-dot, where we have not one but five different Chinatowns, and also being a lover of good Asian food, I would’ve tried crispy duck years ago. Sadly, it took a trip across the pond for me to discover the joys of this delectable dish. In addition to having some killer duck, Wan Chai serves up a truly fabulous dim sum. Check it out if you’re ever in London’s Chinatown. 4/5

The Old Harbour Bay Restaurant (620 Roman Road, Mile End, London, E3 2RW. Phone: 020 8981 3090 ) –  We hit this joint one day as we traipsed through the Roman Road Market and liked it so much we took great pains to go back on more than one occasion. If you’re ever lucky enough to visit, be sure say hi to Dwayne, the owner and main chef – he’s always game for a good chat. His specialties include: ackee and salt fish, fried fish, jerk chicken, oxtail and wicked fried dumplings – and you can take it way or sit in. Sam and I were ecstatic to find such a good Jamaican food joint away from home.4/5

The Empress of India – Okay, as you should all know by now, Sam and I are of Jamaican stock: which means, among other things, that we ain’t trying to do any rare or medium rare meat. Generally Jamaicans like their dead animal truly dead – as in almost charred. We’re so not trying to see any red in our meat. That was the case for both Sam and I before we had duck at The Empress of India. But there medium rare duck was so good that we both happily agreed when Elizabeth Rose suggested we hit the restaurant just one more time on the last full day of our tour. (My willingness to go back to the restaurant had nothing to do with the cute waiter I was eyeballin’ – really it didn’t).  So, if you’re ever in London, near Victoria Park in the Tower Hamlets and you’re looking for good food and excellent service in a family friendly restaurant, the Empress of India oughta do the trick. 4.5/5

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Dublin

Wagamama – This Japanese canteen style eatery was so good Sam and I are praying they’ll open one up in Toronto real soon. In addition to the great food we had an adorable Brazilian waiter by the name of Alex, who was kind enough to stop running between the tables of the customers he was serving when we asked him if we could take a picture of him holding up our cards.  Unfortunately we weren’t in Dublin long enough to hit it twice, but we made sure we ate there again when we got back to London. The Wagamama chain of restaurants are modeled after ramen bars and specialize in delivering really good, steaming hot food to your table fast – as soon as its ready in fact. Best eats on the menu (at least as far as we’re concerned anyway) – the chicken katsu curry, ebi raisukaree, duck gyoza, and chili chicken wings.  4/5

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Spain

What to say about the food in southern Spain but…meh. It was uninspired to say the least. So I’m not even going to get into what or where we ate, because honestly, only the ice cream was good– and its pretty hard to mess that up. That said, thanks to our own culinary talents, we ate like kings while we were there. But since it would be just a bit self-indulgent to grade our own cooking, perhaps we’ll tell you the story of our extraordinary exploits in our Spanish kitchen another day.

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Here’s to good eats wherever you may be,

Skye

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