The World in 202 Meals

Like many an Englishman, my first encounters with Turkish food had me wolfing down a pita full of chicken shish on the way home from the pub. Like the curry and the Chinese takeaway, the kebab—served by Turks more often than not—has become quite a fixture in our fast food landscape, almost as English as Chicken Tikka Masala.

Like all foreign fast food though, it leads one to certain inevitable questions: Is this how it’s really eaten in Turkey? What might a more authentic sit-down meal consist of? How can they stand the influx of drunks at closing time?

It wasn’t until I first moved to London (Dalston, fortuitously) that I found answers to some of these. Dalston is home to London’s most recent wave of Turkish immigrants, and as such the best place for a really authentic Turkish meal. A cheap one, too—I remember being astounded at the generosity of the diner across the road, which would feed me lots of lamb stew with plates of rice, fresh bread, salad and pickles for just £3. Some years later I was hankering after a return to one of these establishments, and found the options have multiplied even further since my last visit.

Turkish grills, or ocakbasi, dominate the upper stretches of Kingsland road, with the Mangal chain particularly renowned. These represent the more authentic origins of England’s fast-food kebab shops, with their charcoal grills and cabinets full of freshly-skewered meat. We wanted to try some Turkish mezze as well though, so after some deliberation headed to 19 Numara Bos Cirrik 1, one of the best-reputed local restaurants with a grill and an extensive restaurant menu too.

Turkey, of course, is a big country with many borders, and its cuisine reflects this, bringing together flavours from Greece and the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Our plate of mixed mezze served as a great example of this. Cacık (cucumber with yoghurt, dried mint and olive oil) is the Turkish version of Greek favourite Tzatziki, and Patlican soslu (grilled aubergine and pepper in an olive oil-rich sauce) definitely brought to mind the Mediterranean. Tahini-rich hummus and taze fasulye (a mezze made from green beans) might feel at home in the middle-east, while the Russian salad and our favourite starter, mücver, recalled Eastern Europe. (Mücver are soft fritters made from potatoes, cheese, egg, minced courgette and dill).

The kebab and the charcoal grill still feel like the heart of Turkish cooking, and of the menu at Bos Cirrik. Having led 202 Meals there myself, I feel almost obliged to try their £12 mixed grill, a selection of kebabs which you can watch sizzle over the coals.

(We are sorely tempted by an aubergine and minced meat kebab, grilled wrapped in foil, but are warned, as I have been elsewhere, that these involve a quite a time commitment. Someday I must wait for one of these beasts.)

Juicy chicken şiş and çöp şiş (small lamb chunks) are familiar from more everyday kebab joints, but what a change to taste them succulent, well-marinated and fresh off the smoky charcoal grill. Pieces of lamb shank (a giant skewer of which Andrea almost conquers) add variety, and an Adana (minced lamb) skewer tastes homemade, juicy and rich with fresh herbs. Alex’s beyti is similar, but comes encased in thin Turkish bread before slicing, something of a novelty to us and very tasty. His was served İskender style (sliced over garlicy yoghurt and tomato sauce), while our grills came with butter-infused Turkish rice.

We all shared free sides – lots of fresh pide (the Turkish version of pita bread, softer and thicker, without the pocket) and three different salads including, to my delight, what I now know to be Izgara soğan. I have saved this until last, because it is actually my favourite part of the meal. It is slices of grilled onion, served with a dramatic purple sauce made from pomegranate syrup, turnip juice, and sumac (a sour, purple-coloured powdered spice common in Turkish cooking). It’s wonderfully intense, providing sour bursts of flavour and some crunch to help the meat along its way.

By now, as you can imagine, we were stuffed. The size of their portions is incredible, and in retrospect ordering mains after mezze was a little rash. Sometimes I do find Turkish main courses a little too much of the same thing, consisting as they often do of big, straightforward combinations of grilled meat, bread, rice, salad and yoghurt. When well-executed with fresh ingredients, as they are at Bos Cirrik, they are delicious—but the ingredients are key, and one should be careful to avoid ordering too much.

In summary

19 Numara Bos Cirrik 1
34 Stoke Newington Road, Dalston, N16 7XJ
020 7249 0400
Open noon to midnight daily

More Turkish

Dalston abounds with cheap and authentic Turkish eateries, with lots more in surrounding areas of North and North-east London
including Stoke Newington, Green lanes and Finsbury park. We can recommend Petek on Stroud Green road, which offers some great Turkish food in a slightly cosier restaurant setting.

There are also many Turkish bakeries in North London; a local favourite for me is the Yildiz bakery in Archway, serving delicious lamacun (Turkish flatbread with minced meat and spices), börek (pastries stuffed with cheese, spinach, meat and other fillings), baklava and other Turkish deserts.

There’s one thing that embarrasses me a bit about being Canadian, aside from our prime minister and our pathetic film and television industries. Canadian food—or the lack of it. Toronto is a carnival of exotic cuisines, but for a taste of the uniquely Canadian, what can you get besides Timbits, butter tarts and the masses of maple candy in the duty-free shops at Pearson? When British foodie friends ask you about Canadian delicacies, what can you describe besides beaver tails, peameal bacon, Tourtière and poutine?

The above (all delicious, by the way) are possibly the only Canadian foods that exist, or at least that I can think of. So having any sort of Canadian meal in London, let alone finding a restaurant for one, was always going to be a challenge.

Luckily for 202 Meals, there’s the Maple Leaf. I was floored when I heard about it from a Canadian seatmate on my first ever flight over here. Canadians aren’t used to having our identity celebrated in any way—we’re not even sure we have one. So the existence of a Canadian-themed pub in a foreign country is both an honour and a curiosity.

The pub, which sits on a little lane off Covent Garden, is a celebration of Canadian-ness in the most clichéd sense: all framed hockey jerseys and mountie paraphernalia, a portrait of John Molson and a gigantic (dead) stuffed bear. Squeeze through the middle-aged male crowd clogging the entrance, navigating past slightly grimy tables to the back wall by the fireplace, and you’ll be rewarded with the only London pub television that’s ever shown a National Hockey League game.

The typical low-end pub menu gives only a few token nods to the Canadian theme, like the “Full Mountie” burger (made with British beef) and some maple-drenched desserts. And most of what we tried didn’t really impress—MSG-laden nachos topped with cheese and salsa, meat loaf more like a meat mash, and “Buffalo wings” drenched in gloopy sweet barbecue sauce rather than the trademark vinegary spice they’re famous for in North America. But none of that mattered, as we were really here for two things: poutine and Canadian beer.

Our tasting panel had quite a lot of poutine expertise for a bunch of Londoners—fellow Canadians Sarah and Brian, and sceptical Matt, who once bravely downed the mixture of chips, cheese and gravy on a trip to Montreal. Only Karol had never tried it, but he had high expectations. I’d built it up over the past year in a series of drooling descriptions: back home, even Burger King has poutine, but the most authentic Quebec versions are dotted with delicious, mild cheese curds rather than slathered in melted cheddar.

Needless to say, it was the latter here—large, formerly frozen chips lying limply in thick gravy and sprinkled with shreds of cheese so faint as to be almost undetectable. Luckily, chips and gravy are always a comforting food no matter how little thought goes into them. And, as Brian noted, the presentation—on gleaming white plates, with actual cutlery—was an interesting departure from the greasy boxes that normally hold the concoction.

Two Canadian beers were more of a success. Sleemans Honey Brown, available on tap, is a darker than average lager and infused with a honey sweetness bordering on Belgian; and there’s always something comforting about bottles of Moosehead, although the beer itself isn’t that special. (The Sleemans Cream Ale, alas, was not as creamy as I remembered, and we skipped the famous but bland Molson Canadian.)

Soon we were ready for what was meant to be the highlight of the night—dipping into a box of London’s take on Tim Hortons doughnuts, which I’d brought over from the Spar on Haymarket that’s now selling them. Strangely, Tim Hortons has licensed its doughnuts (and coffee and muffins) to just this one London Spar location, which has become a bit legendary for Canadian ex-pats, even though the word is they taste nothing like the real thing. Now that I’ve tried them, I can agree that they don’t, nor do they look it, save for the comforting Canadian doughnut chain logo-covered packaging, which is the same as back home. Really, they’re just the usual flat, misshapen, lying-all-day-in-a-corner shop kind of doughnut. Only two varieties bore any resemblance to true Tim Hortons flavours: the maple glazed and old-fashioned glazed. But instead of the cakey freshness I’ve grown up with, they were dry, and the maple glaze hard and gritty rather than the soft, fudgy topping I’m used to.

Still, it was really fun to sit, armed with Tim Hortons paraphernalia, in a kitschy Canadian pub for the night, attracting a bewildered Montrealer to our table to ask where we’d gotten the doughnuts. And it’s comforting to know that there’s a place to go for yummy, if overpriced, Sleeman’s. Spar’s doughnuts and the Maple Leaf may not be the best Canadian ambassadors, but it’s nice to have them around, especially for an identity-starved Canadian.

In summary

The Maple Leaf
41 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, London, WC2E 7LJ
020 7240 2843

More Canadian

The Canada/Australia/New Zealand/South Africa shop down the street from the Maple Leaf on Maiden Lane stocks goodies common to Canadian supermarkets, like Kraft Dinner, Kool-Aid and Shake ‘n Bake, Canadian beer, and yes, plenty of maple syrup products.

Brixton, my neighbourhood, is the centre of London’s Caribbean community (the Notting Hill Carnival notwithstanding). So where better to sample Caribbean cuisine for a 202 Meals outing?

Bamboula is a small, basic and busy restaurant right in the centre of town. The décor and music are perhaps a little predictable, but that does not detract from the overall atmosphere. One motive for choosing Bamboula is that it looks the most inviting of the local eateries; another is that it’s good enough for heads of state (the Jamaican prime minister, Bruce Golding, was there when he visited Brixton in May 2008). Although billing itself as Caribbean, all signs suggest that it is Jamaican—perhaps unsurprisingly, seeing as there are more Jamaicans in the UK than people from anywhere else in the Caribbean.

One look at the menu confirmed that this was going to be a three-course meal. Choosing starters was the easy part, as there are only two. The codfish fritters with love apple sauce were cod like we’d never tasted before (the sauce lending a sour fruitiness), and the plantain ring with ackee (a kind of savoury fruit) and saltfish was a good balance of salty fish and slightly sweet plantain.

The main courses—vegetarian options excepted—are all based on meat on the bone, which is stewed, curried or grilled. Andrea and Alex, both curried goat first-timers, liked theirs so much that there was some enthusiastic scraping of the bones after the meat had gone. Matt and I both had jerk meat (lamb and chicken, respectively), which is probably the most famous Jamaican dish. The taste is a pleasing combination of sweetness and a unique peppery spiciness. Matt’s lamb was flavoured with Guava, adding an extra fruity kick to the traditional jerk sauce.

Whereas the meat choices were straightforward enough, the side dishes, which all looked extremely tempting, threw the table into a fit of indecision. Matt’s “Caribbean salad” included mango and avocado as well as the usual veg, and Andrea’s rice included callaloo, a spinach-like plant. Alex opted for starch in the form of fried sweet potato; I was unable to commit to one thing, so I ordered “ground provision”—a general term for starchy sides in Caribbean cuisine, which here means green banana, yam and dumpling. To my surprise, the dumpling was a little sweeter than the banana, whereas the yam was a little too similar to potato to be exciting. We also ordered two festivals (corn fritters) to share, which were akin to doughnuts in both taste and texture, and very useful for mopping up curried goat and jerk sauce.

As always seems to happen in good restaurants, we were full (as our knowledgeable waiter predicted we would be) but not so full that we couldn’t manage dessert. Andrea and Matt’s pineapple mojito made the whole table smell of rum; Alex’s mango, pineapple and papaya crumble was a fusion of traditional England and its tropical colonies; my rum bread pudding had me craving more of the same the next day. The final pleasant surprise of the evening was the bill: the meal was altogether very good value for money. (Matt described the festivals, at 60p each, as “the best price-to-calorie ratio I’ve ever seen in a restaurant”.)

In summary

Bamboula
12 Acre Lane, Brixton, London, SW2 5SG
020 7737 6633
Open 8am to 11pm Monday to Saturday, and 1pm to 9pm Sunday

We’re back from our sleepy extended Christmas holiday, and will be posting accounts of our Jamaican and Canadian meals in the coming days. (Matt’s Christmas present haul included The London Cookbook by Jenny Linford, a book we’ll definitely be consulting a lot this year. It’s a collection of recipes and stories gathered from a hodgepodge of London restaurateurs, shop keepers, market traders and immigrants, painting a picture of London’s food history and cultural diversity–we wish we’d written it!)

Also in the works is a new page on which we’ll be mapping out the rest of our mission, compiling a list of as many London restaurant options as we can manage for as many countries as possible. So keep those obscure suggestions coming. (Kyrgyzstan, Tuvalu or Gabon help, anyone?)

While Polish food inevitably reminds me of my childhood, I’ve only relatively recently begun to experience it in a restaurant setting. The idea of a Polish restaurant was rather a novelty when I first encountered one; six years later I’ve been to a few, and I thought the opening of a new one would merit a 202 Meals visit.

Polish restaurants open in London less frequently than one might think. There has long been a Polish community in the city; Polish shops and restaurants have been around since shortly after the second world war. (Daquise, in South Kensington, claims to be London’s oldest.) But while the number of shops (and shop aisles) dedicated to Polish food has undoubtedly mushroomed in recent years, the restaurants have been slower to spread.

I heard about London’s newest, Tatra, from my father, who heard about it through the Polish version of Friends Reunited. It opened very recently—you can still smell the sawdust in places—and falls into the upmarket bracket of Polish restaurants abroad, like Patio Restaurant down the road, and very unlike the traditional Polanka in Hammersmith. The décor is modern rather than cosy, and one gets the feeling the restaurant is trying to appeal not just to Poles. If the other diners were anything to go by, it is succeeding.

The limited menu left me a little apprehensive, especially as some staples were conspicuous by their absence: for example, placki (potato pancakes), kopytka (potato dumplings), and kisiel (a unique dessert somewhere between jelly and custard in consistency). Pierogi, the most famous Polish dumplings, are only available as a starter. But the quality of the food more than made up for this; that it was attractively served did not go unnoticed either.

From what I’ve read in the British media, it seems impossible to write about Polish cuisine without using the words “stodgy” and “hearty”. With those out of the way, I can go on to say something less hackneyed about what we ate.

Before ordering, we received a plate of rye bread and smalec (a spread made of pig’s fat and pork) on the house, which would have disappeared much more quickly had we not kept some aside for the latecomer. I was glad that health was not a concern at the front of any of our minds.

We each picked a different starter. My rosół (chicken soup) was good but nothing special, while Matthew’s marinated herring with apple and beetroot salad was a little better received; Andrea and Alex shared pierogi z kapustą (dumplings filled with sauerkraut and mushrooms), and kluski leniwe (cheese and potato dumplings). The pierogi—large, and fried, rather than boiled—and leniwe, were so good that Andrea declared she could eat another portion as a main course. Little did she know what her actual main course had in store for her.

The roast duck, to Matthew’s and my disappointment, was off, so we ordered leczo and trout, respectively. Leczo (described on the menu as “goulash”) is a spicy beef stew, served with yet another kind of dumpling. The Polish-style trout—fried with almonds—was served on a bed of delicious and very Polish-tasting salad (dill is the flavour I most identify with eastern European cuisine). Andrea and Alex warmed themselves up with bigos, a “hunters’ stew” of sauerkraut, mushrooms and plenty of smoked meat with potatoes. Andrea and Matt are very keen sharers, but I dare say the liking they had for their respective dishes made them regret the decision to share even a little bit. I think it’s fair to say that all four of us were happy with our choices, and in some cases, with each other’s.

Full though we all were, the desserts looked far too good to pass up—with the unusual result that everyone ordered one. Alex enjoyed some fusion cuisine in the form of crème brûlée with vodka-soaked cherries; I was torn between this and the pancakes filled with cream cheese and raisins. in the end both Andrea and I went for the latter. Matthew’s disappointment that his poached pear with chocolate sauce did not contain vodka goes to show how much we were expecting after all we’d eaten thus far.

I hope Tatra stays around and does not go the same way as Zamoyska, an upmarket Polish restaurant in Hampstead that closed a few years ago. An encouraging sign was how busy Tatra got towards the end of our meal. It is not necessarily the most traditional, and certainly does not have the widest selection, but it is well worth trying, especially for newcomers to the cuisine.

Our meal complete, the waitress recommended home-flavoured vodkas, but we decided to let the food go down before drinking. After hopping on the tube (a gross exaggeration, in the circumstances) to Holborn, we spent a few hours in Bar Polski, a specialist vodka bar. As well as some 40 varieties of vodka, the bar offers a selection of Polish beers and food. However, a write-up of our Saturday night at a West End bar may be better suited to another kind of blog.

In summary

Tatra
24 Goldhawk Rd, Shepherd’s Bush, London, W12 8DH
020 8749 8193
Open 11am to 4pm, 6pm to 11pm Monday to Friday, 11am to 11pm Saturday, and 11am to 10pm Sunday.

As a sushi lover, I was surprised to discover a few years ago that sushi was not, until recently, a food for everyday consumption in Japan. Traditionally it would be saved for special occasions; while more popular today, it is still rarely prepared at home. This little nugget of information raised an immediate question for me: where do I go to experience real, home-style Japanese cooking in London? One quickly becomes familiar with the repertoire of the typical high-street Japanese restaurant, with its focus on sushi, sashimi, tempura and the like. It was Iron Chef that finally steeled my resolve to seek out something a little more adventurous.

Iron Chef, for the uninitiated, is a Japanese-imported cult classic of the 90s. Each episode sees a challenger face off against one of the imposing resident Iron Chefs in a tense battle. A theme ingredient is unveiled, a live commentator adds to the drama, and a curious array of celebrities, including actors, politicians and fortune tellers, judge the resulting dishes. In the overdubbed English version, a cast of voice actors gently caricature the excited tones of each participant, adding significantly to the show’s charm.

During one “octopus battle”, commentators thought they spotted one of the competing chefs attempting a dish called takoyaki. One panel member relished the chance to taste a dish that brought back childhood memories; another, a slightly stuck-up actress, sounded surprised that an Iron Chef would attempt something so, well, common. So when I saw takoyaki on the menu at Asakusa, I knew we’d have to give the place a try.

And we were in for a treat. Takoyaki (to the amusement of a number of our party) are octopus balls. A piece of octopus tentacle is shrouded in a delicately flavoured batter, fried, and topped with a sweet sauce and seaweed shavings. Greasy, but soft and very satisfying, they’re something you’ll rarely see in the more refined Japanese establishments over here. Asakusa, though, is a real gem. It’s a cosy, slightly ramshackle place with menu items handwritten in Japanese pinned up on all the walls. Always busy, it’s near impossible to get a table without reserving in advance, and service was tried somewhat when I led a birthday party there last Saturday. But it’s well worth the wait.

An intimidatingly large menu offers a great variety of home-style Japanese cooking. (I’ve not been to Japan, so I’m going primarily on the number of Japanese Londoners spotted tucking into comforting-looking food.) Sushi is available, and proves some of the best I’ve had in London, although it is kept relatively straightforward. Fancy dragon rolls you will not find, and you’re best advised not to over-burden the one sushi chef with your order.

Instead we tried some of the specials. Baby squid grilled with ginger was simple, succulent and well-seasoned; the generous house salad, with its strips of assorted sashimi, white miso dressing and peanut crunch, comes highly recommended. Squid kimchi, actually a variation on the popular Korean dish, was brought in error, but devoured regardless.

Other members of our party stuck to more familiar options. Beef teriyaki was served juicy and pink in the middle, while katsu (fried cutlets of meat) and yummy tempura reinforced the somewhat greasy but satisfying feel of many of the dishes. Sashimi was well-prepared—Karol admired his mackerel particularly—while Gemma seemed most impressed by the hearty combination of a tofu steak served on a fried egg.

The cute little takoyaki balls were what made it for me, though. Washed down with Asahi Black, and polished off with delicious chestnut and black sesame ice-creams, it made for a very happy birthday. I’ll be back soon to delve further into the menu—which includes jellyfish amongst other exotic options!

In summary

Asakusa
265 Eversholt Street, Camden, London, NW1 1BA
020 7388 8533/8399
Open 6pm to 11:30pm Monday to Friday, and 6pm to 11pm Saturday

Sorry for the lack of new posts—Andrea and I have been away in Toronto, stuffing ourselves at Phở hung and suburban all-you-can-eat sushi restaurants, and delaying the next group meal until tonight (we’re doing Japanese!). In the meantime, I thought I would compare London’s fare with that of Toronto, a major competitor for the world food crown. Living there certainly helped inspire Andrea (Canadian) and I (Brit) to suggest the London mission. In fact, with the incredible diversity of its immigrants, Toronto is surely worthy of a 202 Meals operation itself.

Firstly, some Toronto foods we miss in London:

Vietnamese subs (Bánh mì) and ubiquitous Phở restaurants

Bánh mì are sold from dedicated delis in Toronto’s downtown Chinatown-cum-Vietnamtown. Reflecting the French colonial influence on Vietnam, they fill a baguette with pâté, preserved meats, and a seasoned Vietnamese salad mix of pickled daikon and carrot.

The ubiquity of Phở (the classic Vietnamese beef noodle soup) and Bún chả (grilled pork on vermicelli and salad) in Toronto were also responsible for turning me on to the delights of London’s east-end Vietnamese cluster. Phở hung on Spadina was my regular haunt in T.O, and Cây Tre on Old Street is the best I’ve tried so far in London (it’s always busy, although may be resting a little on its laurels recently).

Chinese dumpling houses

While London has many dim-sum restaurants, from mediocre chains to classy Hong-Kong-style eateries, the dumpling house is a simpler, cheaper and ultimately more satisfying proposition. The menu is typically simple—batches of freshly made dumplings come boiled, steamed or pan-fried. They’re dipped to taste in a hand-crafted mix of the soy sauce, vinegar and chilli available at the table. Some menus add a few sides, and some diversify to pancakes and buns, but the focus is clear: you’re there to scoff warm dough-clad parcels of meat. Wash them down with some tea on the house, and you’re ready to head out into a cold afternoon.

Mother’s dumplings, at Dundas and Huron, offered the best in Toronto, made and served by a genuine Chinese mum in a basement dining room. Where is London’s answer?

Pierogi and Kiełbasa

Pierogi are Polish dumplings, filled variously with cheese, potato and meat; kiełbasa is just Polish sausage in its numerous forms. Despite London’s sizeable Polish population, these delicacies prove surprisingly elusive here. Sometimes they’ll appear in an innocuous Polish-owned corner shop, but in Toronto they’re readily available in all supermarkets.

Perhaps it’s the cold weather, and the number of early Ukrainian settlers in Canada, which account for the wider popularity of Eastern European food in Toronto. Future Bakery on Bloor is as good a place as any to try a Canadian take on the region’s cuisine, while in London, try Polanka in Hammersmith for an authentic Polish deli and restaurant.

Farmer’s sausage

This one is perhaps a genuine original Canadian foodstuff, albeit heavily influenced by the German wurst. Andrea has searched high and low for these in London to no avail—Winnipeggers here allege that they’re little known beyond the Mennonite communities of Manitoba, although they evidently make their way to Toronto.

Frequent complaints are also directed at the scarcity of German sausage in London. These were something I was fed regularly as a child, but seem less common these days in supermarkets. Luckily Kurz and Lang have sprung up in Clerkenwell offering a very authentic German sausage experience—great fast food with potatoes and sauerkraut on the side.

Now, here’s what I missed from London whilst in Canada:

Mince pies

And in fact anything made from mincemeat. Homemade mincemeat, made from chopped apples, dried fruit and nuts, sugar, spice, cider and booze and matured for months in sealed jars, has been a yearly fixture throughout most of my life. The warm little shortcrust pies which result, sprinkled with icing sugar, seem so essential to getting through the winter that I craved them desperately during my first Canadian winter. (I will say this though—the mince pie’s reputation suffers needlessly from the poor flavour and consistency of their shop-bought imitations. What is it that lends even a high-end Marks and Spencer pie that cloying aftertaste of preservatives?)

Christmas pudding, and puddings in general

To me Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without one of these (and one of my Nana’s ice-cream Christmas puddings on Boxing Day, a dish as tasty as it is sacrilegious). The plum pudding, as it’s otherwise known, is another rich, long-maturing English dish made from similar ingredients to mincemeat. It contains a lot of booze, which keeps it well-preserved during the maturation process, and is traditionally served with a sprig of holly and a flame of burning brandy.

While richer and fruitier than the typical variety, it also serves as a great example of a traditional English Pudding—a foodstuff not so common in North America. The true pudding is boiled or steamed in a cloth, and is typically quite heavy, carb-filled and high on suet, a form of animal fat. Golden Syrup, another very British ingredient, also tends to feature heavily. Traditionally these would be tied up over the fireplace and cooked over the same big pot as your dinner (whoever said British food is simple?), but these days you’re as likely to try a baked version, with gourmet flourishes, in one of London’s more traditionally leaning gastropubs.

English-style pork sausages and bacon

We agree to disagree on this one, but to my mind, nothing beats a good quality, well-constructed English pork sausage—especially when bramley apple or leek are added to the mix. I also sorely craved back bacon in Canada. The kind generally available there is what we refer to as “streaky bacon”—the cheap, fatty kind cut from the pork belly—and it’s typically fried to a crisp. A really rich, juicy, thick, sizzled slice of good quality back bacon is one of the best things in the world, and probably one of the biggest enemies of vegetarianism known to man. The “bacon butty”, too, is a simple wonder not commonly eaten over the pond.

Lardy cake

This dubiously named desert is a speciality of various southern counties, including Oxfordshire, where they can be (and were, frequently, by me) purchased in Oxford’s covered market. Yeasty dough is rolled in thin layers with sugar, lard and numerous raisins, then baked until the top crisps up to a syrupy crust, the middle remaining soft and horribly tasty. It will probably give you a heart attack.

Good curry restaurants

Not that there aren’t any in Toronto—in fact, Toronto has a Little India in on Gerrard Street in the east end. But the curry is not the cultural institution that it is here, and most of the restaurants I visited proved decidedly mediocre. Some all-you-can-pig Indian buffet joints on Queen West made up for this in their sheer generosity, but I saw neither the variety of regional Indian cooking, nor the range of Bangladeshi and Pakistani specialities which London boasts.

Good quality sliced-bread sandwiches

While great subs and panini are in abundance in Toronto, a decent sandwich on sliced bread seems hard to find. When you do find one, the fillings and general quality and freshness are no match for the yuppie lunch pickings we’ve come to expect over here from the likes of Pret a Manger and Marks and Spencer.

Overall, I would call this world food competition a draw.

Relative to others, I feel that neither British nor Canadian food is desperately distinctive—both are known as much for an amalgamation of foreign cuisines as for their own. I think the advantage of Toronto is that, because of the large number of first- and second-generation immigrant communities living near to downtown, it’s easier to find really authentic, affordable, international home-style cooking when dining out. Easier, too, to find a wide variety of great, affordable ethnic supermarkets and ingredients within easy reach. St. Lawrence and Kensington markets also offer a great range of foodie shops.

London does have some advantages too. Biased as I am, I would give us Brits the edge in terms of the depth of our culinary history, despite our tendencies to over-boil vegetables and disgust the French. London also benefits from its sheer size, and the number of top-class restaurants it hosts. We have a great number of specialised (if expensive) foodie shops and long-standing food markets, including the wonderful Borough Market, but also Billingsgate, Smithfield and others. London is also the home of the gastropub, which while something of a recent and occasionally-sneered-at construction, does boast a distinctively British food experience.

One thing I regret is that restaurant eating in England does still seem to carry more of a pricey, “special night out” connotation than in North America. Toronto restaurants are happier to hand out sides and top up drinks on the house, “all-you-can-eat” menus are more common (something of a mixed blessing), and in general, eating out seems a little more casual, affordable and generous as a social activity. We are coming closer to this, especially in metropolitan centres like London, but there’s still some work to do.

Luckily, the Ghanaian menu at the Gold Coast Bar and Restaurant was completely worth an epic, rain-drenched Saturday night journey to zone six. Otherwise, I would have been in trouble. The restaurant was my suggestion. I’d found it almost at random—it was the first Google hit for “London Ghanaian restaurant”—and immediately decided we had to go. A self-described Ghanaian gastropub with fried yam balls that get great reviews! Surely that would be worth riding three different trains to some godforsaken south London suburb for?

When we got off the train at Norwood Junction, it seemed like we were in the right neighbourhood for Ghanaian food–we passed Ghanaian flags in cafe, shop and salon windows on our walk to the restaurant. (Ghana, or the Gold Coast as it was called then, was a British colony until 1957, so London actually has a large Ghanaian community, mostly concentrated in Dalston, Lewisham and Brixton.)

And by the time we poured out of the restaurant after a three-hour feast that saw us sample most of the criminally underpriced menu, we were happily stuffed with new and interesting types of meat and stodge. Meats and carbs of all kinds are central to Ghanaian cuisine. Fufu, the most interesting of the carbs, is like a gooier polenta, but made from water and boiled mashed root vegetables like cassava and plaintain. It’s so common in Ghana (and other east and west African countries) that there’s an instant version, but the restaurant manager advising us on our orders worried it would be too adventurous for first timers. It wasn’t, and it was delicious with the soup it accompanied—aponkyi nkakra, tender steamed mutton steeped in a light broth made with ginger, chilli, tomato and onion.

Other interesting starchy staple foods: banku, maize balls that were more like lumps of soft dough; kenkey, fermented maize balls, sour and challenging; waakye, a dark, slightly fermented-tasting mixture of black-eyed beans and wild rice; jollof rice, a less pungent combination of basmati and tomato; kelewele, sweet, ripe, deep-fried plantain bits served with a bowl of roasted peanuts; and yele, deep fried yam. (Alas, they were out of the famous yam balls, described as deep fried, spicy mashed yam mixed with vegetable. We also missed out on omo tuo, rice balls served only on Sundays along with Sunday special soups that are traditional favourites—abenkwan, a palm nut soup, and nkatsenkwan, a peanut soup.)

Ghanaian portions are huge, and all the starch was excellent for mopping up the intimidating mounds of meat placed before us. The nyama choma/ntaba, wood-smoked, chargrilled lamb, came recommended as the manager’s favourite, and was my favourite too. Served with a tomato salsa, it was cubed, dry, salty and smoky, almost a jerky. Turkey tail meat (chofi), also smoked and seasoned with chilli and ginger, was difficult to pry off the oddly-shaped tail bones, but worth it. Domedo, chargrilled cubed pork belly, was crispy and fatty, while oxtail was served in a tomatoey stew. All were spicy, not at first, but in a way that crept up on you until your tongue and eyes watered. An accompanying sauce, shito, made with tomato, onion, dried fish and cayenne pepper, was even more fiery—just a speck was enough to do tongue damage too serious for our Kenyan lager to wash away. (Ghanaian-brewed Guinness, described by a waiter as “Guinness without the headache”, was also on offer.)

We’d started the evening as the only ones in the dining room, a modern space on the first floor adorned with red walls, white linen tablecloths and African-themed art. But soon, the place was crammed with what seemed like the neighbourhood’s entire African community. Back downstairs in the bar, it was just as crowded, with a DJ spinning an inviting hip hop and Ghanaian pop soundtrack. We sat over drinks, wishing we had neighbourhood pubs like this one.

In summary

The Gold Coast Restaurant and Bar
224 Portland Road, South Norwood, London, SE25 4QB
020 8676 1919

More Ghanaian

Karol, hankering after kelewele following our Gold Coast visit, was delighted to discover a Ghanaian food stall in Exmouth Market. (Jollof Pot also has a stall there, as well as at Portobello Market and Broadway Market.) He reports: “The kelewele is not as good as in the Gold Coast, but the beef and pepper curry was very nice indeed. They have a menu that seems to change daily.” Karol has also spotted fufu flour at Tesco! And learned his dad once had a Ghanaian roommate who ate fufu all the time with everything, not just soup.

Oh no! One of our favourite foods has been hit by the economic downturn, according the the BBC. Despite kimchi’s status as a South Korean cuisine staple worthy of its own museum in Seoul, a kimchi trade deficit has reached $77.3 million over the last three years thanks to demand for cheaper Chinese-made product. There’s some good news for the kimchi-mad, however–South Korea has launched a $40 million campaign to increase the number of Korean restaurants around the world to 40,000 by 2017.

At university, I was fortunate enough to have a lecturer who spent nine months a year doing fieldwork in Ethiopia. In one memorable lecture, she described sharing a meal with a whole Ethiopian village—speaking not only of a rich and aromatic cuisine, but also of the fun she had dining with the whole community. Ever since then I have been eager to experience Ethiopian dining for myself, so for my birthday I arranged a large gathering at Lalibela in Tufnell Park.

Lalibela, named after the northern Ethiopian city and UNESCO World Heritage site, is a traditionally decorated restaurant with tables spread over two floors. The menu offers over 20 vegetarian dishes, in addition to a large meat selection.

At the heart of every Ethiopian dish is injera, a sour and tangy-tasting pancake unique to Ethiopia. On its own, injera is slightly bitter and unpleasant—but eaten in combination with other dishes, it provides the perfect balance to the often-spicy cuisine. The injera acts as a plate on which all dishes are served. Diners can scoop up their food with some accompanying injera rolls, and when the dishes are done, enjoy eating their ‘plate’ soaked in the juices of the meal. (As you eat with your hands, Ethiopian dining is a rather messy experience. Be sure not to wear your best clothes when eating this food!)

On our injera, three friends and I shared two we’ts (a type of Ethiopian stew), some side vegetables and salad. Lalibela’s generous portions were more than enough for the four of us. Served in a hot tomato sauce, the spicy chickpea and aubergine we’t certainly lived up to its name—my mouth was truly on fire by the end of the meal. Thankfully our side salad was served with Irgo, a raita-style Ethiopian yoghurt, which helped to neutralise the spices. Spinach and potato We’t and Lalibela mixed vegetables, our other two dishes, both had rich and intense flavours. The non-vegetarians among the group enjoyed a number of meaty stews, the favourite being lamb and pumpkin we’t, with the sweet pumpkin perfectly complementing the juicy pieces of lamb.

After the meal, we enjoyed an atmospheric “coffee ceremony”. Ethiopia claims to be the birthplace of coffee, so we were excited to be drinking one of oldest coffee varieties in the world. Our waiter brought some roasting coffee beans to the table, whetting our appetite as their aroma diffused around the room. Then he disappeared and returned with the same beans, now ground and served as coffee in a clay pot. Aromas from an accompanying bowl of burning frankincense mingled with the rich coffee scent.

I really loved Lalibela. The food was delicious, and the atmosphere relaxed. I was initially nervous at making so many friends try something so messy and so completely new, but everyone enjoyed the food and the communal experience. I would especially recommend trying Ethiopian food in a large group, as this allows everyone to taste as many dishes as possible. Since each we’t costs around £8, this is by far the most cost effective (and fun) way for a large group to dine.

In summary

Lalibela
137 Fortess Road, Tufnell Park, London, NW5 2HR
020 7284 0600
Open daily, 6pm to midnight

More Ethiopian

Lalibela’s neighbour, the Queen of Sheba, is slightly cheaper and serves a traditional raw beef dish (kitfo), but we give Lalibela the edge. We like to think the two restaurants get their ingredients from Engocha Grocery, the Ethiopian shop a few doors from Lalibela. As observed from the window, the shop looks sparse apart from a butcher’s counter and some earthenware pots—a little intimidating, like it’s the sort of place where you have to know what to ask for—but 202 Meals plans to visit soon anyway, to look for ingredients to make our own injera.