Sosharu - Farringdon

64 Turnmill St, London EC1M 5RR

I haven’t written a review for a long while. Partly, it’s because I’ve been busy; partly, it's because I’ve suffered from mild writer's block; but mainly, it’s because I’ve fallen somewhat out of love with the food scene.

I was never really a food scene kind of person anyway. I was invited to the odd opening, sent the odd press release; but, I never had the time or energy to keep my nose firmly pressed to the scent of all that’s happening in London. Kudos to the people who do and who fill my Instagram feed with endlessly delicious looking dishes. Without you, I wouldn’t keep remembering all those many many places I’ve forgotten I wanted to visit.

It’s exactly here - on Instagram - that I’ve fallen out of love with food. Everything on Instagram is so pretty, everything on Instagram is so perfect, everything on Instagram is only ever described as being AMAZING. In the past few years, Instagram has killed the honest review - turning the food scene into one massive backslapping, navel gazing, race for followers and pictures of ‘that’ dish.

I love the pictures, don’t get me wrong; but, I hanker for the truth. Not everything is AMAZING - far from it - and plenty of dishes, places, and plates that I’ve eaten and would describe as mediocre, I see slapped with a thousand thumbs-up and smiling faces.

Or, perhaps, I’ve misread this situation entirely. Maybe everyone is happy with everything they post on Instagram, maybe to them everything is amazing, maybe I’m just a miserly, picky git, who looks for fault in everything, rather than just sitting back and enjoying the fruits of someone else’s labour.

Nope, it definitely can’t be that.

Anyway, on to Sosharu - Jason Atherton’s newest venture; a Japanese inspired restaurant, metres from Farringdon Station.

To set the scene, Sosharu isn’t the finest of fine dining, nor is it the sort of place you drop in for dinner on the way home. It’s clean, crisp, angular, filled with tables and chairs that cost more than the average salary, with a slightly snooty vibe, and staff who greet you with eyes that suggest they’d rather you were somebody famous. This is the sort of restaurant that attracts couples on dates - one of whom is looking to impress - and tables of tie-less, overweight businessmen, who pay on expenses and talk loudly about the people they know, wines they’ve drunk, and money they claim to have earned.

To start, head downstairs to the dark, sleek, brooding basement of a cocktail lounge that can’t decide if it’s a karaoke bar, a brothel, or both. The drinks here are phenomenal; the service, the same. My drink - the unappetisingly titled Gastown - smoked with layers of whisky and cynar, offset by a sweet hint of maple syrup, and glided across the tongue far too easily. I could have stayed for another.

Outside the cocktail bar there’s a row of Japanese toilets (in cubicles, I’ll add). They raise, they lower, they spin, blow, wash, and probably put on a light show if you press the right button. It’s all very impressive; a spectacle of busyness that doesn’t achieve very much. An almost perfect analogy for what was to come.

The dining room at Sosharu is cool, super-cool. Thin dark wooden beams - like a sea of bamboo in the night-time - divide the space, hiding some tables, leaving others exposed, while an army of brown-booted waiters hurry, scurry, and flit backwards, forwards, and sideways beneath the seriously scowling eyes of suited maître d’s. Behind the long length of bar, glittering with the glass of every bottle under the sun, more waiters polish glasses, pop corks, and pour an endless flow of wine into ever more intricate looking decanters. The atmosphere is frenetic, yet calm, precise, yet chaotic, busy, yet not, and all the while, exceedingly slow. Our drinks order disappeared, the first course did laps around the tables. The service charge, justified by the boot rubber worn to the floor and the repeated squiggles on the paper.

So far, so much style over so little substance - and that theme continued.

Sosharu is a Jason Atherton restaurant. Jason Atherton is a top chef at the top of his game. Previously, at Pollen Street Social we were served exquisite dishes packed with clever flavours, exciting textures, and a massive dollop of sparkle. Everything was AMAZING; apart from *that* pudding that looked as if the chef had kicked it onto the plate. Sosharu wasn’t any of this. The menu was short, yet complex, with an explanation from the waiter only making the latter worse. The dishes, however, were simple. The first; fried chicken. Large chunks of white meat, in a salty batter, lifted straight from the fryer of a local Chicken Cottage. Two piece chicken and chips is about £2.99; this was closer to a tenner, minus the chips.

Following the bland pop-corn chicken, were a series of mildly diverting dishes that I wished and willed to be better. I didn’t take notes - I never take notes - and the memory of these dishes passed me by before the fork left my mouth. The octopus, was just octopus. The tonkatsu, was just tonkatsu. The bowl of steaming rice covered in egg, was just a bowl of steaming rice covered in egg - such a sticky glob of glutinous gloop, that having eaten only three forkfuls, I’m probably still digesting it now.

The disappointment here wasn’t the taste, it was the expectation shattered by a lack of invention. Maybe I didn’t read the script, but with Jason Atherton’s name and Jason Atherton’s prices, I expected something really interesting, really mind blowing, genuinely creative, with each dish being a talking point to endlessly deconstruct and discuss. As it was, we were left talking about the obnoxiousness of the table sitting next to us, pondering on where our wine was, and wondering if the stern looking maître d' would be decapitating a member of staff for forgetting our order. I really hope not, but someone really needs to do something to up the productivity around here.

Paesan - Exmouth Market

2 Exmouth Market, London, EC1R 4PX

I don't like the term food blogger. It's meaning seems to be changing - evolving into a phrase that implies knowledge, understanding, and qualification to talk on the subject of food. I know and follow some food bloggers to whom that description fits, but the standard of their writing is so high they really should be known as food writers.

'Writer' is a step up, in my hierarchy, although perhaps you have to be paid to achieve that status. I don't know, it's all too confusing.

Needless to say, I'm not a expert on food. Far from it. I don't know what half the words on the menu mean, while the other half I struggle to spell. When it comes to reviewing restaurants, I have no direction, no editorial calendar. I go where I'm invited, I go where I'm taken, I go to places that take my fancy. I don't chase the latest craze. I don't chase the latest fad. My Instagram isn't curated. My reviews are generally just a collection of anecdotes and ramblings, with an opinion of the food left until the very end.

(So far, this piece is fitting the bill perfectly)

That's the point though. I'm not setting out to win Best Read Food Blog of 2014 or cover every single burger vendor in London. I'm not looking to sweep my cape up and down the street, destroying restaurants with a single utterance, while the maître d' lies in a puddle to stop my feet getting wet. If I achieve the latter, that's just a 'nice to have' really, not something I'm actually aiming for.

I write this, sat with a fictional glass of whisky at midnight on a Friday, as I enjoy doing it. That's it. And, if anyone enjoys reading it - that's good. Thanks, and I hope it's helpful the next time you eat out.

This is the best way to write. No pressure, no deadlines, no cares. So, on to another glass of fictional whisky and a quick mention of Paesan, on London's Exmouth Market (which is confusingly a street, not a market). Go there, it's very good!

Although, perhaps more than a three word review is needed this time...

They must put something in the water in Exmouth Market - the street has more top eateries than you could shake a fat bloated belly at. If I lived within a five minutes walk of the place, I'd be close to death. And what an incredibly well-fed, big-smile-on-my-face death that would be.

The problem is, with so much fantastic choice, expectations are high before you've even read the menu. Anyone dining at Paesan for the first time needn't worry though. As I said, it's very good!

A starter of burrata - a cheese filled with cream, that can cause an artery to harden from sight alone - with a sweet, spicy caponata, and cracker like flat bread, is a dish that has you questioning your attraction to your date. Do you really like them enough to share this fairly? What is fair anyway? The government say a man needs 2,500 calories vs. 1,500 for a woman. Technically, fair is a 62.5% share of this burrata in my favour. Gimme gimme gimme!

Best to go to Paesan with someone you don't really like, who doesn't eat a lot. Or just eat alone. I wouldn't judge you. Again, it's very good.

Next, pappardelle with beef shin ragu. Long strands of slurpingly good fresh egg pasta, covered in a sweet tomato sauce and beef cooked for so long, tender doesn't begin to describe it. Seriously, this meat had been boiled down to a plate of DNA, or whatever it becomes when meat has broken into strands thinner than, well, strands. Do I really need to say it? 

It's very good.

Then we hit the pudding and, perhaps, that three word review doesn't quite hold true.

I'm just never sure about Italian restaurants and pudding. It might be heresy to say, but there must be more to Italian desserts than panna cotta and tiramisu. Both dishes are usually a pile of cream, shoved in a glass with as much care, attention, and love as a parent gives a dead hamster. It's then left at the back of the fridge until someone hears the scratching and realises there's still life left in the damn thing.

Not that Paesan's pudding had any trace of rodent, you understand. It's just a bit dull. I blame myself for ordering the panna cotta. Perhaps it's a 'must have' for the English on an Italian menu, but it's their choice to put it on the menu and having followed the preceding two courses, it should light up my mouth like a marshmallow on a sparkler, not have all the excitement of a pot of Elmlea...or that dead hamster.

I'll throw down the gauntlet then, to all Italians (or Italian restaurateurs) who may never read this review - please point me in the direction of a good Italian pudding!

In summary, issues with Italian puddings aside...Paesan - it's very good.

Tower - Cooking Under Pressure

London Borough of Lambeth

Marge: Goodbye, Homie.

Homer: Goodbye? Where's my clean underwear?

Marge: Check the dryer!

Homer: How often should I change Maggie?

Marge: Whenever she needs it!

Homer: Marge, Marge! How do I use the pressure cooker?!

Marge: Don't!

- The Simpsons, 8F14 - Homer Alone

The pressure cooker sat on the hob, silent. The only noise, a faint hiss of gas. The yellow flame tickled the base of the pan, warming the stainless steel and the water within. Slowly, at first, steam crept from the pan's lid, increasing in volume and increasing in sound - a momentum that began as a trickle, but soon erupted into the deafening rush of escaping vapour. 

I stood at the kitchen door, one hand clutching the broken handle, one hand clutching a limp tea-towel, feet twitching, ready to turn and sprint. For ten minutes, this stand-off continued. My watch buzzed. It was time. Approaching the evil spirit inside the boiler, I switched off the heat and cautiously turned the regulator, leaping back as the remaining steam rushed from the pan in a great mushroom cloud.

As the mist cleared and the lid eased from the body, eyes stared eagerly inside. A miracle. Not ten minutes had elapsed, yet there lay golden-skinned chicken, with flesh - white as an angel - falling from the bone.

A pressure cooker, it seems, is not the thirsty, vengeful, and dangerous kitchen appliance that hastily Googled cultural references would have you believe. Negative connotations must come from the name and the fact that they're no longer a common sight in the kitchen. The words 'pressure' and 'cooker', suggests something stressful and large, while a more accurate and less alarming name would be 'fast cooking saucepan' - catchy, I know.

Keen for me to learn the truth about pressure cookers, Tower Housewares equipped me with a 6 litre model to try out at home. Here was a chance to free an evening from restaurant reservations, roll my sleeves up, and invite some friends to chance their health with my cooking.

With rum on the menu and Brixton only a ten minute walk away, jerk chicken seemed the most appropriate option. Free range chicken thighs and legs, rubbed with a mixture of oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and jerk chicken mix, then placed in the fridge for 8 hours. 

Then came the pressure cooker. I was nervous. This isn't something I've done before and those old stereotypes came flooding back. It really is very simple though. Three inches of water placed in the base of the pan, brought to a boil, then the chicken added (on top of a steaming tray), and the lid locked-shut. The intensity of the cooker is regulated by a small dial on the handle. The tighter it's turned, the less steam comes out and the quicker the food cooks - or such is my understanding.

When cooking with a pressure cooker, you have to have faith in the clock. It said ten minutes for the chicken, it was ten minutes for the chicken; but, you can't check during cooking, as you can't see inside, and once under pressure the lid can't be removed until all the steam has vented. It's like cooking a cake though. Just trust the appliance and sit there tweeting for as long as the thing takes to cook. Simple.

Served with spiced cabbage and rice and peas, the meal was on the better side of edible. I should have cooked more chicken and I should have browned the skin in a pan first. Neither points the fault of the cooker, clearly.

As the night wore on and rum drained down, the conversation turned to pressure cookers and the revelation of the range of dishes that could be cooked. A whole chicken in under twenty minutes? Pasta in sauce in under six? This is a new faster culinary world for me, albeit one that's been around for a couple of hundred years. It's time to curtail the meals out, protect the bank balance, and eat in a little more often.