Monday 19 December 2011

Multicultural food in London

Last year I said goodbye to London as my home for the foreseeable future. After 20 years of living in the UK, I was quite ready for a change of scenery. I then spent around 7 months in Hong Kong, before moving with my girlfriend to spend the summer in Berlin, Germany. It will be a while before I return to the UK. There will be fond memories of London that I will leave behind, not to mention close friends who will draw us back regularly to visit.
London is where my tastebuds blossomed and I joined the taste revolution sweeping through the UK. When I came to the UK in 1991, the range and quality of food available to the average family was very different from today. The British were incredibly receptive to the wave of foreign food sweeping the shore and embraced it. What was defined as British food was squeezed out. Look at the demise of the fish and chip shops, the “English” restaurants and the greasy spoons. Like a failing fashion brand, they failed to innovate and keep up with the wave. The ones that remain are kept alive by cult status, while a new wave of British cooks are redefining British gastronomy, injecting life into local ingredients and traditional recipes. London perhaps has seen the most changes; nowhere else can you have such an eclectic range of restaurants and wide selection of food in supermarkets. The average city worker can have Parisian croissants from Paul’s for breakfast, fatty salmon sashimi & wakame salad for lunch from Wasabi, finishing off the day with spicy Sichuan at Ba Shan for two, without wincing too much at the wallet.
I can draw many parallels between London’s cosmopolitan population, rich range of cuisine and food culture with New York. I found Hong Kong citizens very food orientated, but a main part of the focus is on local Chinese cuisine (and I can’t blame them). Immigration policies at the end of the day, influences heavily the diversity of a country’s cuisine. We have the Labour Government to thank for opening up Britain’s doors, making Britain an attractive place for others to come and bringing their food culture in the process. Let’s hope this stays.
So what are the non-British restaurants in London that I’ll miss the most? Here’s my top five pick of tasty and unpretentious ethnic places you might enjoy going to regularly:

Chinese: My Old Place / Lao Di Fang (88 Middlesex St, Liverpool St.). Fiery Sichuan food served by unhappy squawking waiters with broken English. No air conditioning, cash only and smelly bins outside its entrance. Ok not the best picture painted. However, step inside though to see an almost all Chinese clientele: they know good Chinese food. Now you know it. Go for the Water boiled fish (Poached fish pieces swimming in a bowl of fried chilli peppers and oil, a Sichuan classic) and Grilled lamb skewers. The original branch is found in Bethnal Green, and is basically a converted terrace house. Don’t worry if the waiters seem peed off or rude. They’re just disappointed at the scoffing of such good food. It’s like the Carling beer advert slogan from the late nineties: So good that the Danes hate to see it leave.

Lebanese: Yalla Yalla (1 Greens Ct, Soho). Super tasty and cheap Beirut street food served in the heart of Soho. The place only has a few tables and doesn’t take bookings. Be prepared to queue at busy times, but take a bite to see why: quality Meze plates as well as tasty Shawarmas will have you hooked. Wash it down with some fresh mint tea and homemade baklava.

Vietnamese: Cay Tre (301 Old Street). Cay Tre offers beautiful Vietnamese food to grab before stepping over to Hoxton for the evening. But beware: Lotus stem salad, slow cooked Mekong catfish in clay pot and stewed Saigon torch roast pork belly might put you in such a bliss that you might just want to go back home and pat your tummy for the rest of the evening.
Japanese: Bincho Yakitori (16 Old Compton Street). Bincho Yakitori serves delicious Japanese bbq skewers. Prices per skewer start from around £2. A great place to stock up on food pre-going out. Do try the Quail egg & Pancetta, Pork Belly, Shitake skewers and Deep fried chicken with Ponzu. The sake menu here is also great – when ordering a bottle of sake, the sake will be served in a sawn off sake box. The sake is deliberately overpoured so that it overflows from the glass into the sake box. You are supposed to drink this at the end as the run-off takes on the flavour of the box.
Chinese: Silk Road (49 Camberwell Church Street). The second chinese restaurant on here is Silk Road, a Xinjiang restaurant in Camberwell. It's not a fancy place - you sit on benches, and some of the dishes you will eat by hand. However, the big plate chicken, dumplings and kebabs make this place more than worthwhile to visit. Portions when this place first opened were enormous, the owners now have cut back on the sizes to more sensible amounts.

The following didn't make my top five, but it is worth mentioning:

Colombian: Assenheims 56 (24 Copthall Avenue).This is located in the city near Moorgate. You wouldn’t read about this place in a restaurant guide. You would only hear about it by word of mouth from other city workers. The chef here is fondly referred to by city workers as the Chicken Nazi, and the cafe name rarely referred to. This place only serves lunch Monday to Friday, and has quite a cult following.
There are only 3 seats so most people grab and go. Aside from the house special, you can also buy sandwiches and some other Italian food like pasta and lasagne. That's not why people go to Assenheims though. Assenheims is essentially a one-trick pony, from about noon every day, people queue up patiently for the house famous Colombian grilled chicken and rice combo dish. Catch the Chicken Nazi on a good day and he will shout for which sauce you want while pointing at you with a meat cleaver. He then proceeds to effortlessly chop your freshly grilled chicken into pieces. Dither too long or ask too many questions and he will easily boil over and explode into a rage. Don’t pull questionable faces at the food, don’t ask to pay by card and don’t stare him in the eye. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a rainmaking Managing Director for an investment bank: to the CN, you’re just a turd who wants feeding. Legend has it that the chipped tile above the door frame is due to a flying cleaver directed at an analyst who wanted the chicken skinless.
Ok enough scaring you now. Let’s talk about the food. Grilled and chopped boneless chicken (marinated in a special recipe with lime and coriander) is served on a bed of rice and salad. It is best to go for all the sauces (coriander, spicy Tabasco and a yoghurt sauce). The chicken meat is tender and the crispy skin carries a great tangy flavour which is released into the rice. For a city lunch packed to go, it is relatively high priced (£8), but worth it in flavour and in quantity (if you finish the whole tray, a food coma will likely onset in the afternoon).
Oh I forgot to say, the rest of the staff in the cafe are actually pretty fun and dance along to background Latin music while working.
Other good ethnic eats: Tayaab (Curry), Maroush (Lebanese), Minqala (Iraqi), Ba Shan and Ba Shu (Sichuan),