Month: June 2012

Based on our research, Fish Club is known as “the best fish n’ chips in London.” And, as almost everyone knows, London is the BEST place for fish n’ chips. We decided that this place must then be the best of the best. In England, “chips” means french fries. It is located on 189 St. John’s Hill near the Clapham Junction tube station. Here is the sign that says”Fish N’ chips don’t come better than this”.

Fish Club is also known for meat pies, but we tried the best meat pies in town (Fortnum and Masons – where the Queen shops), and we decided…well.. we are not big fans of meat pies (we prefer yi-po’s curry turnovers or mommy’s chicken potpie)!!

This menu was WAY more interesting than the Brown’s Hotel menu (Brown’s menu was full of tea choices and neither of us like tea). IT MULTITASKS! In other words, it doubles as a placemat (Karsen says that’s boring and a lot of restaurants do that). Well, I guess he’s right but what else was I supposed to say? Here are some pictures of the menu:

Our server’s name was Theo who is very good at explaining the merits of each dish. Here is a picture of Theo (p.s. we told Theo that this picture was going to make him famous and help his social life!  Remember – you can find him at the Fish Club!!):

Before ordering THE FAMOUS FISH-N-CHIPS, we ordered appetizers – including prawns and chorizo on a stick and cuttlefish and squid in chili sauce. The prawns and chorizo were delish.  The chorizo comes from Brindisa – a famous Spanish Tapas place in London.  The spicy oil the spills from the chorizo tastes like the kind of chili sauce found in Asian restaurants.  All in all, the combination of the grilled prawns with the oil from the chorizo was super tasty. We liked the dish so much, we ordered another one!  Here is a picture of the prawns and chorizo – taken off their skewers:

The next non-veg non-British delicacy we had was the cuttlefish and squid. This dish was Karsen’s favorite because it had that stupendous sweet sticky spicy sauce (that’s alliteration).  The sauce was so good that Bhuya decided to save it for dipping chips in. Here is a picture of the cuttlefish and squid:

We ordered two kinds of fish n’ chips: haddock and coley (a type of cod). We liked both the haddock and the coley.  In both cases, the flavor of the fish is enhanced with a little bit of malt vinegar, but MOMMY probably uses 1/4 of the malt vinegar bottle on her fish (She also puts it on her chips while  everyone else uses ketchup or tartar sauce). Here are some pictures of both kinds of fish and the chips:(We had 2 orders of chips but it was so good we ended up having four!  And we added another order of the fish!!):

The fish also came with a green salsa that nobody touched because a certain Bhuya saved the chili sauce from the cuttlefish and squid appetizer that was really, much better. In what seemed two seconds, the sauce was gone! And so it came, and went, and EVERYONE wanted another sauce(That is how author’s write-example-Velveteen Rabbit). Here is a picture of the sauce that nobody touched:

We also had roasted vegetables that were devoured eagerly especially by us. And everyone says children hate vegetables? Posh. Potatoes, sweet and not, carrots, and vegetables -we love. . Here is a picture of the roasted vegetables:

Since Bhuya is a so called VEGETARIAN (She eats bacon, pancetta, chorizo, sausages aka bangers, shrimp etc.), we ordered asparagus. The asparagus was generously buttered and was sprinkled with cheese. Because of course, who doesn’t like butter?? Everyone was in love with the asparagus but we let Bhuya have it because she is a “vegetarian”. Here is a picture of the asparagus:

Since Bhuya has been clamoring to be famous, we decided to include another picture of her in our blog!

Bhuya is the only one to eat the cheese, leek and mushroom pie (pictured) because with the fish she was “vegetarian” (but had plenty of chips!).  This is unfortunate because the pie looked delicious. In fact, we are betting that it was so good, she didn’t want to share and we can’t blame her. So, even more unfortunately, we will not be taking this dish into account for our rating.

For dessert, we ordered sticky toffee pudding. You must understand, that Mommy started hunting for sticky toffee pudding (preferably Cartmel the best sticky toffee ever)- the moment we arrived in London. We searched through several pubs and stores in nearly all the boroughs of central London, including Fortnum and Masons, Harvey Nichols, Andrew Bynum’s (a restaurant known for its sticky toffee pudding – but they were out) etc.   We finally found some semi-prepared Cartmel’s sticky toffee pudding in Selfridges’ food section. And, of course, as luck would have it, as soon as we were done searching for sticky toffee pudding – THERE IT WAS!  At the Fish Club!!  And now we are finding sticky toffee everywhere   Anyway, Mommy claims that the Fish Club meal was wonderfully culminated with the best sticky toffee pudding (she thinks that it is even better than Cartmel sticky toffee pudding). Even though we were full, everyone ate it and there wasn’t a crumb left. Here is a picture of the Fish Club’s famous sticky toffee pudding.

P.S Doesn’t it look like the vanilla ice cream has a sad face on it?

Overall,  the Fish Club was a wonderful experience – and absolutely worth the trek all the way out to Clapham Junction (we had to the underground, the overground, and walk nearly a mile).  The food was so good, the servers quickly became used to our “added on” orders.  For example, we originally ordered only one shrimp and chorizo kebabs but quickly ordered another one.  We also added on 2 more orders of chips and 1 more order of fish.  I think we wound up eating for HOURS because of all our additional orders.  During that time, we met nearly the entire staff and had our picture of the chef!  Here’s a picture of us with the chef:

We can definitely see why the Fish Club is known for Fish-N-Chips but we would also recommend their other dishes – including the shrimp/chorizo kebabs, their vegetables, and most especially – their sticky toffee pudding!  It’s a complete meal and we are hoping to return before we leave London!  We rate the Fish Club

(Drum roll please)

5 smiley faces!!!!!!

😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

Cheers!

Afternoon Tea is wonderful British tradition.  It is an early evening meal usually eaten between 2 and 5pm. We had our afternoon tea at 2 pm at Brown’s Hotel on Albemarle St. You have to make a reservation at Brown’s because it is one of the more popular places to have tea (P.S that is an infinitive phrase).  Brown’s hotel is mommy’s favorite place to have tea.  The server said that some actor named Pierce Brosnan and a King of some country have both eaten at Brown’s.  It is a very OLD (Karsen prefers the word historic) hotel and feels very lah-di-dah; you will feel like you have been transported into a luxurious world.  Now, even though we are not famous, we can add the sophisti-kids to that list!

Let us give you a sneak-peak into the luxury of afternoon tea at Brown’s. Two sofas on either side of a longish table with live piano music playing in the background. The smell of chocolate and tea-oh so many kinds of tea-silver needle, red hibiscus, earl grey-to the simplest and the most complex! An assortment of sandwiches arrayed in perfect patterns on each cart, scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam! And to top that off, chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, cakes, tarts, and battenburg cake!

Here is a picture of Anya and Bhuya at afternoon tea (this is Bhuya’s debut on our blog – she has been waiting to become famous!).

Three-Quarters of the menu consisted of a variety of teas. Food was described on only two pages. Because we are not really interested in teas – we would consider this menu ALMOST the most boring menu EVER (the most boring menu is no menu at all. Can you imagine?!!?!! No menu at all???!!?! OUTRAGEOUS!!!! THIS COULD CREATE AN OUTCRY!!!!!! A REBELLION!! Sorry, I think we had too many desserts at Brown’s. Excuse us).  To spare you the boredom, we are presenting only the REMOTELY interesting parts of the menu.

Unfortunately, we (the sophisti-kids) have not developed a taste for tea yet.  In fact, we’ve tried tea and think it tastes like dirty water.  Luckily for us, there is an alternative. We ordered two hot chocolates which could possibly be the best hot chocolate we have ever had!! (Karsen says “duh”[“Hush up Karsen”]). First, they poured fresh hot chocolate in a teacup, then hot milk. They gave us chocolate and milk on the side for topping our cup off. Here is a video of “How to Make Perfect Hot Chocolate: A Demonstration (A little note:  the hot chocolate takes much longer to prepare than tea because Brown’s hotel makes it from scratch.  They actually use a block of chocolate and melt it on the stove.  Please feel free to try at home):

HIGH TEA-HOT CHOCOLATE

Just for Mr. Don (who tells us that we should always drink from teacups with our pinkies up) – here are some pictures of us with their pinky up enjoying the smooth, “much-better-than-tea-alternative”  hot chocolate.

As we mentioned earlier, Brown’s Hotel is the epitome of luxury.  To give you an idea of how luxurious, Here are a pictures of the fancy silver tea pots and fancy china teacups:

High tea usually comes with these lovely trays of all-you-can-eat sandwiches, scones, and sweets.  The bottom tray was full of sandwiches.  The middle tray was full of scones (two kinds – with raisins and without) and it remains covered with a white cloth to stay nice and warm.  The top tray had delicious sweets.  Brown’s Hotel designed special sweets for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.  From a kids perspective, the sweets are the most tempting but Mommy said that we needed to start with the bottom tray and work up – it’s the proper way to have tea.

So we tried the variety of sandwiches (which were all absolutely delicious by the way), including GUESS WHAT?? A CORONATION CHICKEN SANDWICH!!!! (For those of you who don’t know – and we didn’t until this trip – coronation chicken was a dish developed for the Queen many years ago.  It is usually served cold and has a sweet curry taste, mixed with sultanas.  In the form of a sandwich, it is at least 3 times better than chicken coronation ice cream!!).   Even though all of the sandwiches were tasty, all of us were attracted to different flavors.  Sujata Bhuya’s favorite was the egg sandwich that was everyone else’s LEAST favorite. Our favorite was the smoked salmon sandwich. Kaushik Pufaji liked the roast beef sandwich – it came with just a hint of mild horseradish. Mommy liked the coronation chicken, and Papa was neutral (HOW CAN THIS BE?????)

Soon afterwards, we polished of the scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam. BUT.. the best combination is clotted cream and jam.(GASP!) Here is a picture of the scones.

Then, we had DESSERT! I’m not sure what the usual desserts are but these were specially made for the Queen’s Jubilee.  The battenburg cake was by far superior to all the other cakes. Battenburg cake is sponge cake with a two by two criss cross pattern alternating from pink to yellow.  This colorful cake is then surrounded by marzipan!  We love marzipan!!!  Tied for second was a raspberry tart and a chocolate tart. Here is a picture of the entire cart of food and a video of our server explaining the food on the cart-(P.S if you run out they always give you refills right away of whatever you need or want). In addition, if you are a vegetarian, you can order vegetarian sandwiches which Sujata Bhuya was very pleased about.

HIGH TEA-SANDWICHES MOVIE

And after we finished eating, the servers offered two additional kinds of cake!  One was a fruit cake and the other was a sponge cake with jam and cream.  Sorry – we were so eager to eat cake that we forgot to take pictures!!

Overall, we enjoyed all of the food and the hot chocolate!  Because we were allowed unlimited refills, we stuffed ourselves silly and didn’t have dinner!!  In fact, we ate for more than 2 hours – it was so relaxing on the sofa!!!  If you are ever in London, we highly recommend experiencing afternoon tea.  And of all of the places we’ve been for tea, we adore Brown’s Hotel.  It is less crowded than Harrod’s, the Ritz, or Fortnum and Mason’s and we like the food here best!  We would rate Brown’s afternoon tea

4 1/2 smiley faces (out of 4 1/2 smiley faces)

😀 😀 😀 😀  1/2

Cheers!

-the sophisti-kids

p.s.  we downgraded Brown’s from 5 smiley faces to 4 1/2 smiley faces only after our Lanesborough Tea Posting.

Moti Mahal has several branches and the most famous one is in New Delhi. We (the sophisti-kids) went to the one in Covent Garden. The menu had a picture of The Grand Trunk Road which is the route that goes through Kabul, Islamabad, Illahabad, etc. – basically the whole Indus valley (Mr. Deshler, you’d be proud that I know that!). Food gets traded through the route so everyone has an abundant supply. It was built by emperor Sher Shah Suri (we have fun trying to say his name ten times fast – it is quite a tongue twister!) in the 16th century AD. Here is a picture of the Grand Trunk Road route:

The map serves as the themes for the menu, highlighting specialties from the various regions along the route.  We ordered the Kebab tasting menu, as well as a few special dishes including  grilled paneer, chicken makhani, and katli.  We’ll discuss all of these dishes later on.  Without further ado, here are the pictures of the menu:

Before we get to the food, first things first – DRINKS!  We ordered four typically Indian drinks – Lassi, Melon Water, Thandai, and Nimbu Pani. Karsen had the Lassi which was sweet and creamy and topped with raspberries. Lassi is a traditional yogurt-based drink popular on the Indian subcontinent. There are two types of lassi- sweet and sour. We ALWAYS prefer the sweet. Because the dairy products in London tend to be very fresh, the Lassi was much better than that in the U.S.   But our favorite was the melon water.  Anya “won” the Melon Water through the time-honored tradition of  rock, paper, scissors.  Since Karsen was upset about not getting the melon water, Anya gave him the watermelon that garnished the drink.   Papa had the thandai, which is a lovely North Indian almond and/or pistachio drink.  Moti Mahal’s thandai has both kinds of nuts and is topped with spices. This particular thandai also has dried fruit. The nimbu pani (lemonade) was sweet and sour (just the way we like it) and topped with mint.  Mommy said it was delish and reminded her of a mojito.  Here are the drinks:

Here is a picture of Karsen savoring the lassi.

The first thing we had was the salad – this was provided gratis. It was very simple and according to Papa, a traditional homemade Punjabi salad. It comes with fresh vegetables, lemon, black salt, and a masala mix.  First, Papa cut the vegetables, squeezed lemon juice, and sprinkled black salt and masala on the salad.  The vegetables were so fresh that even Chef Giovanni (from Andreoli) would like them.  Here is a picture of the salad:

The second thing to arrive was the paneer. Paneer is fresh cheese common in South Asian cuisine. This paneer was grilled and spiced with fennel. It reminds us of the outside of cooked tofu but the inside is quite different.  It was grilled perfectly and made Papa quite nostalgic (this was one of Karsen’s spelling words).

The next dish we had was the chicken makhani, also known as butter chicken.  As expected, the sauce was excellent and buttery (as the name suggests).  It was perfectly spiced and was Anya’s favorite. Here is a picture of the chicken makhani:

(P.S Karsen insists on informing everyone that the sauce is actually ORANGE not YELLOW.  The picture turned out this way because Papa took a picture using the flash).

Next, Katli, an eggplant dish arrived.  This was quite different from any other eggplant dish that we have ever had. Two eggplant steaks arrived stuffed with a pine nut filling.   It was garnished with two tasty chutneys – one was a tomato chutney and the other was sweet and tangy.   This dish was mommy’s favorite.  Here is a picture of it:

Another delicacy was the kebabs.  This plate shows the chicken tikka and the seekh kebab.  Both of these dishes are cooked in a tandoor – a  clay oven.  The chicken tikka is marinated in spices and grilled.  The seekh kebab is made of minced lamb and spices.  Both were ‘surprisingly well done.’  They were so soft that even Karsen liked it (Karsen does not like to chew a lot and therefore dislikes most chewy steaks). Here is a picture of the kebab:

We were invited to the kitchen and were offered a tour either before or after dessert. Our mouths were watering at the sight of our desserts so we chose after. We ordered malai kulfi and thandai falooda.  The malai kulfi can be described as an Indian ice cream on a stick.  Kulfis often come in a pistachio or mango flavor.  This one was MILK flavored.  The thandai falouda had a similar flavor to Papa’s thandai drink but came frozen and with falouda.  Falouda is a vermicelli noodle – this was our first dessert with noodles!

Here is a picture of the desserts:

The first is a picture of kulfi and the second thandai falouda.

Both of us preferred the Malai Kulfi and decided that if we returned to Moti Mahal, we would order TWO orders of Malai Kulfi instead of the Thandai Falouda.

Afterwards, we were escorted into the kitchen.  We met Chef Anirudh Arora who is a very talented classical Indian chef. He showed us what a typical Indian kitchen looks like and explained the different sections of his kitchen. There was a curry section, salad section, bread section, etc.  Here is a picture of the kebabs and the tandoor in his kitchen:

And another picture of the chef with us:

Overall, this was a terrific first meal to have in London!  We really enjoyed the food and would like to extend a special thank you to Chef Anirudh Arora!

Out of five happy faces, we rate this place:

😀 😀 😀 😀 1/2

Due to popular demand (Pei Pei Ah-yi, Eric Jojo, and Papa), we are posting Papa’s Famous Duck Confit (Drum Role Please. . . .). Papa’s duck confit is served with salad that consists of cranberries, arugula, marcona almonds, cucumber, grapes, manchego cheese, carrots, basil, microgreens, and LAST BUT NOT LEAST DUCK (obviously). Here is a picture of the duck confit salad:

We must say that this is a truly delicious salad.  The combination of fresh vegetables, the saltiness of the confit, the crunch of the marcona almonds, the sweetness of the cranberries, and the cheese are just stupendous!  So. . .. .

We rate Papa’s FAMOUS duck confit 5 smiley faces!!!!

😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

And if he made it into an ice-cream (like coronation chicken ice cream), we’d give him an extra 1/2  :D!

We, the sophisti-kids, are fortunate enough to escape the Arizona heat by spending a month in London.  London is full of a multitude of different cuisines.  We will be reporting on many of these restaurants – so please stay tuned!

Those of you who read the newspaper will know that the Queen of England is celebrating her Diamond Jubilee (this means she has been the Queen for a long time – sixty years!).  Many chefs have developed special dishes for the occasion.  We learnt about a very interesting dish that was developed by famous Chef Jacob Kennedy of Gelupo (widely known as one of the best gelato places in town).  And both of us LOVE ice-cream!!  Anyway, Chef developed a special flavor ice-cream – Coronation Chicken Ice Cream (CCIC)!!!

When we first read about the dish, we were completely “grossed out” (Anya’s words) by the concept of chicken flavored ice-cream.  Then we read a review about it.  And the reviewer said “In the hands of a lesser chef than Jacob Kennedy. . . .Coronation chicken ice cream would be a terrible, terrible idea.  However – who knows how he’s pulled it off, blending chicken jus, mild curry, and marsala-soaked sultanas into something really quite lovely” (p.  76, Deluxe).

The positive review gave us the courage to try the ice cream.  We all shared one small sized cup of CCIC. Here is a picture of the coronation chicken ice cream.  (We must admit – it looked pretty tasty!):

Here is  a picture of Karsen eating the ice cream:

Here is a picture of Anya looking absolutely appalled at being forced to eat the ice cream:

Here is a picture of Anya after eating the ice cream:

And despite our high hopes, we thought it was positively DISGUSTING.  Mommy made us take at least TWO bites to be sure.  I’m not sure if you can see the second picture of Anya well – but with her second bite, Anya’s nose turned red and she nearly vomited!

Honestly, we are pretty open-minded eaters – but the incongruity of chicken and ice-cream was just too much!!!  Ice-cream should be sweet, dessert flavors!!

Gelupo’s other ice creams are supposed to be really good, and we are certain that if a different chef tried it, it would be even worse.

We would rate the coronation chicken ice cream (out of five):

1 smiley face

😀

Well, you have to give them SOME credit.

p.s.  We will re-visit Gelupo and try their other flavors later this month – and report back!

Since our original Andreoli’s post, we have tried several new pizzas.  They include the:  1)  buffalino mozzarella cheese, tomatoes, and basil, 2) the prosciutto, caramelized onions, and artichoke, and 3) the lobster pizza.

Below is the buffalino pizza.  This one comes with fresh bufalino mozzarella and is much better than the traditional Margherita pizza.  The combination of the fresh cheese and the sweet tomatoes is really delicious.  We order it whenever it is offered!

This next pizza is very different from Anya’s favorite prosciutto pizza.  Anya typically orders the prosciutto and arugula pizza.  She still prefers that pizza because it is a white pizza.  This new prosciutto pizza comes with a red sauce and has two new toppings:  artichoke and caramelized onions.  Even though Anya likes the other prosciutto pizza beter, this pizza is also delicious and it’s always good to change it up!

Finally, THE LOBSTER PIZZA!  Everybody loves the lobster pizza, especially Mommy. In fact it has become our new favorite, but it is only there when Chef Giovanni has fresh lobster.  It is his most expensive pizza but is well worth it!

Andreoli continues to be our favorite restaurant in Scottsdale.  Remember pizza nights are Wednesdays and Saturdays!  Maybe we’ll see you there soon!!