The Best Dishes Eater Writers Ate This Week

Welcome back to the column which highlights the best dishes Eater London’s editor and contributors ate during the week. Look back on previous best dishes of the week here.

Grilled onions at Hala

Birthdays go to Hala. Forget the scrawl of chocolate on to a square white plate, Hala plays a cutesy remix of happy birthday through its entire speaker system for the whole restaurant to enjoy/bemoan, communing in the sense of occasion over groaning platters of judiciously spiced adana and manti capped with yoghurt and chilli butter like a spicy mountain range. Start, though, with the bread anointed with the grill’s juices that arrives unbidden, and a platter of grilled onions. Too often grilled things have not been grilled, they have been put on hot metal and been removed before anything caramelises, cooking as timid as drawing with tracing paper, lacking the confidence to emboss, to mark. The brilliance of Hala’s grilled onions — aside from the magenta pool of pomegranate molasses and more caramelised meat renderings in which they swim — is that both deep, dark outer petals and gently steamed centres co-exist, to be picked out while happy birthday plays for the twentieth time overhead. —James Hansen
29 Grand Parade, Harringay N4 1LG

Jonathan Nunn

Cheung fun at Orient

The idea that a Chinese restaurant is authentic if only Chinese people go there has always struck me as ridiculous, as ridiculous as asserting that Greggs must represent authentic British food culture because it is full of Brits. That this is inadvertently true is besides the point.

The bulk of Orient’s clientele is almost certainly day trippers from Europe on a diversion from watching yet another busker murder ‘Hallelujah’ outside attracted by Orient’s sleek, expansive interior in contrast to the relative shabbiness of its neighbours. And yet, some of Chinatown’s best dim sum is found here. My mum and I were among those diners last weekend; we have an unsaid deal on Chinese New Year that I take her out for dim sum and she buys me 1 (one) gelato from Gelupo which she then eats most of. It’s a deal that somehow works for both of us. The standout from the meal, along with taro dumplings that had fried quiffs of Trumpian proportions, were exemplary prawn cheung fun; as plump and slippery as an Etonian prime minister, the wrapper tightly adhering to the outlines of the prawns like an Atsuko Kudo latex suit. They slide down the throat. Don’t take my word for it: fellow fans include Ottolenghi development head-honcho Ixta Belfrage, chef, restaurateur, and Belstaff model Jackson Boxer, and — as of last weekend — my mum. —Jonathan Nunn
15 Wardour Street, Chinatown W1D 6PH

Apoorva Sripathi

Fried aubergine at Amar Gaon

The question of “where do we as a group go to eat” is a time-tested one. Especially when the group has highly specific dietary needs — decent vegan; vegetarian minus eggs, meat protein to bulk; pescatarian; or just dessert. Where do you even begin your search? Solution: Amar Gaon in Brick Lane. Food is ordered on the counter and then brought to you in your small, rickety table. A huge bowl of rice. Dal with garlic. Shutki aloo, potatoes in curry with dried fish. Chickpea curry, boal fish curry with greens. Samosas are best left for chaat places at East End, Southall or Tooting. While you can never go wrong with rice and fish curry at a Bengali joint, aubergines fragrantly cooked with mustard and coriander will are even better. Think about aubergines fried gently till they disintegrate in your mouth, marinated previously in mustard, coriander, cumin, and garlic, and topped with a generous smatter of coriander leaves. Everything’s priced between £4 and £6, which is just another reason to visit Amar Gaon, dietary requirements or not. —Apoorva Sripathi
50 Brick Lane, Spitalfields E1 6RF

James Hansen

Curry pan at Tetote Factory

Pre-ordering the good stuff is sometimes the only way to avoid disappointment. In Tetote Factory’s case, this means pre-ordering one of everything. Other places might slowly pack your wares into fancy clasped boxes but here the hurried packing of many old favourites and a few new bakes are meticulously organised by size/enjoyment/texture/filling and then separated into sweet and savoury.

The newest additions to the pantheon include a seasonal mocha and chestnut brioche cup, which had a subtle coffee cream with a multitude of chestnut textures; a green tea plaited crown; and an undeniably delicious chocolate and hazelnut-filled bun topped with perfectly roasted nibbed hazelnuts. All of the bakes use the supremely soft signature dough and have hidden touches to make you smile, from the candied citrus peel in the cheesecake brioche to the hidden whole raspberry baked under the crust of the raspberry brioche and most recently in the returning classic curry pan. Some might say the new barbecue chicken bun is the best savoury bread at Tetote Factory, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the pleasure of bread encasing a subtle Japanese curry of beef and chickpeas topped with flecks of panko and a centre swipe of grain mustard. Straight from the oven on a icy January morning, clouds of steam puffing out with every bite, it’s sheer bliss. —Feroz Gajia
166 Lower Road, Surrey Quays SE16 2UN

George Reynolds

Snack muffin at Snackbar

It is easy and correct to dunk on fast food giants for all kinds of reasons. Amongst this justified criticism of exploitative work and supply chains — and by occasional unsavoury extension, the people who frequent them — it’s easy to overlook one salient fact: You don’t get to a market cap of a hundred and sixty billion dollars without investing some serious research and development money into making things taste delicious. There really should be a word for the specific dopamine hit a McDonald’s-esque flavour profile generates: the sort of delight provided by the barbecue chicken bun at Tetote Factory, or the cheeseburger spring rolls at Tea Garden, to namecheck just two very recent examples heralded in these very pages. Food would be boring if it always occupied the Lawful Good quadrant; there is pleasure in indulging in fatty, gloopy, sweet, squishy things, and none of us should feel we have to shun it. All of which is preamble to recommending in the most strident terms possible that you make your way to Dalston’s Snackbar at your earliest convenience and order a snack muffin. In consciously aping a very popular fast food breakfast sandwich it joins the elite company of the excellent Sons and Daughters breakfast muffin, surpassing it in three key areas: the yielding softness of the bun; the glorious ooze of a fried egg, griddled over-easy; and the intense savouriness of the sausage patty, which brings to mind the astonishing Pig Mac served at Cochon Butcher in New Orleans. At £5 it’s a lot more expensive than the version on most high streets, but that’s the price of taking something already very good and making it perfect. —George Reynolds
20 Dalston Lane, Dalston E8 3AZ

James Hansen

Wolf’s fang potatoes at Noodle & Beer

Noodle and Beer, newly opened in Spitalfields, specialises in noodles and beers. The noodles are chongqing, either dry or in soup — a style fast gaining traction across the city — and they are very fine indeed, wan zan mian, 干馏碗杂面, promising the acidic rasp of preserved mustard greens but majoring on throat-coating pork fat, a vehicle for the hum of chilli oil and edible static electricity that is Sichuan peppercorn. The beers — unknown. But the best dish was neither noodle nor beer, unless 2020’s new personality-defining food taxonomy question — unseating “is a hot dog a sandwich?” — is ... “Is a crinkle cut chip a noodle?” Lang-ya tu dou, 狼牙土豆, wolf’s fang potatoes — a frankly ludicrous pile of crinkle cut chips, fried, it appears, in cooler oil so as to adhere more stubbornly to their cargo — stacked like nachos with coriander, spring onion, more of that Sichuan peppered chilli oil, and fermented chilli black bean paste. If the noodles arrive lawful good with toppings neatly arranged and turn to chaotic good when mixed, wolf’s fang potatoes are pure chaotic evil, unimprovable riotousness. But wait: what if cheesy wolf’s fang potatoes? Hold my noodles and my beer. —James Hansen
31 Bell Lane, Spitalfields E1 7LA

Barbecue chicken bun at Tetote Factory

One of the main perks of my job, my actual job, is that people like to bring me treats. Baked treats. Pastries, buns and viennoiserie flow in as I sit there like some kind of baron of patisserie, taking my slice while putting in none of the work. Don Homer has nothing on me. This week, a friend arrived bearing a fabled new bun from South Ealing’s Tetote Factory: the barbecue chicken. It’s a minor miracle that Tetote Factory exists in London at all: a bakery that would genuinely be in the upper echelons if it existed in Tokyo. If it were in Paris it would be consistently rammed, queues out the door. Ducasse and Pierre Hermé would list it as one of their favourite places. More Londoners would go there than they do right now. And yet it’s just there, in South Ealing, quietly doing its own thing.

Back to the bun. A new bun from one of London’s absolute best bakeries should be an auspicious event, but I did not have high hopes for it, not being a fan of the sickly sweetness of barbecue sauce. My friends:

It may be the most singularly evil creation in the whole of London. Soft nuggets of chicken, fried until golden, intersperse a pillowy bun sticky with smoky barbecue sauce and ... What is this? ... Mayonnaise??? On the first bite I actually gasped at how good it was and started laughing. If the other Tetote buns are as carefully crafted as tea bowls then this is the Takeshi Miike of the pack, the Japanese psyche writ large overflowing with brown and white sauce. If McDonalds’ put this on as a special there would be petitions to keep it on the permanent menu. I knew, in an instant, that I would eat nothing better this week. —Jonathan Nunn
12 South Ealing Road, Ealing W5 4QA

Carrot salad at Davies and Brook

Another week, another salad that turned out to be underselling itself on paper. This one read almost Cranksishly: carrots, sunflower seeds, horseradish. Homespun 1970s health food, surely? Not in the hands of Daniel Humm, currently dividing opinion at Claridge’s. This dish started life in his US kitchen, and the tweaks he’s made over time have resulted in a properly inspired balance of sweetness, heat, crunch and pop, with even the slivers of puntarelle and chicory pulling their weight. Bonus: the concentric circles effect created by the golden quail’s egg yolk on top put this recovering Star Wars fanatic in mind of Tatooine’s two suns. Gorgeous. —Emma Hughes
Claridge’s, Brook Street, Mayfair W1K 4HR

Cheeseburger spring rolls at Tea Garden

Any other week I’d have blathered on about the amazing risotto with osso buco and gremolata or the memory triggering onion and comté tart at Quality Wines, but a visit to a neighbourhood dim sum restaurant in Surrey Quays gave us the most joyful dining experience all week and a spring roll not often seen. A very proud dim sum chef explained how the golden arches had inspired him to create a cheeseburger spring roll, somehow cheesier and beefier than anything on the McDonald’s menu but still adhering to the same fat, salt and sugar touchstones. A riff on the big mac/secret/special sauce for dipping fires the last few synapses left untouched and is dutifully kept to enjoy with lemongrass wings. The quality of the other dim sum available in this inviting room excites a few more times throughout the night, prompting a few glazed over looks of joy: truly a menu of small eats that touch the heart. —Feroz Gajia
166 Lower Road, Surrey Quays SE16 2UN

Potato and comté tart at Quality Wines

Davies and Brook will, I think, go straight into this year’s Michelin guide with two stars. It’s very good food, folks! But I would be lying if I said the best thing I ate last week was anything other than Nick Bramham’s caramelised onion and comté tart at Quality Wines, which somehow managed to reach a part of me that nothing on Daniel Humm’s menu could. It’s not a question of Bibendum-baiting machine-like precision versus homely cooking from the heart — that’s the plot of Ratatouille, a movie for children — just a question of a weird in-the-moment alchemy that happened in a specific room, at a specific time, to a specific person. You could argue that Quality Wines is more likely to produce that sort of magic than a lavishly appointed hotel dining room but I don’t think that’s quite right, either: it’s easy to imagine D&B hosting an incredibly memorable celebration for a special occasion, just as it’s easy to imagine a certain kind of gastro-tourist making the pilgrimage to Farringdon and not quite getting it. I guess what I’m articulating is the ground-breaking thought that food is personal, and sometimes you’re lucky enough to find a kitchen that zeroes in on exactly what you need from a meal, and discards everything that you don’t. That Quality Wines seems to be that restaurant for so many of us at the moment probably says something fundamental about the more questionable excesses of the London scene in the past few years — I’m more interested in how one meal cost me £10, and one £198, and yet both of them can have felt like money well spent. —George Reynolds
88 Farringdon Road, Farringdon EC1R 3EA

Feroz Gajia

Galette des Rois at 40 Maltby Street

Baking nerds love winter. We have the frenetic search for the best mince pies, then the stockpiling of the best panettone & pandoro during the holiday season, and then a brief respite filled with Christmas food, before January brings on the onslaught of epiphany cakes/galettes des rois.

Last year my favourite was at Casse-Croûte, a wonderfully baked number heady with a non-traditional mix of 50:50 almond:hazelnut: this instantly became my platonic ideal. This year, I’ve been fortunate enough to have 40 Maltby Street’s cake on two occasions. The first was enjoyable, but I did not understand the beauty of the second — a beautifully lacquered pastry encasing the thinnest slices of well-bronzed apples, topped with a beautiful mix of walnut-studded almond frangipane — until I got to try other Galettes this week and none compared. This week’s meal at the Bermondsey arch may have contained a superb pickled mussel and little gem salad; it may have contained the mythical parsnip fritters; but the epiphany cake realised the truest moment of contentment. Now, the semla hunt can begin ... A nerd’s work is never done.—Feroz Gajia
40 Maltby Street, SE1 3PA

Rice cakes at C&R Cafe

I was reminded this week, walking past the window of C&R Cafe in Chinatown, of the art of knowing what to order at a restaurant. With a few rare exceptions, it is eminently easy to eat poorly at even the best places if you don’t know what the kitchen is good at. For example: on the window of C&R are some baffling recommendations from A Certain Critic for a few of the Malay dishes, which may have been creditable pre-Roti King, pre-Normah’s Place, but are certainly no longer. Instead the Cantonese-style wok dishes are the kitchen’s strength, and none more so than the rice cakes. I vividly remember my first taste of rice cakes at Momofuku Ssam in New York City around 8 years ago, cleverly presented as gnocchi in a ragù humming with Sichuan peppercorns, and I vividly remember rueing that London didn’t do them more often. At C&R it is all about getting that smoky char on each of the six cube faces, so the outside provides a taut resistance in opposition to the soft interior, like a piece of fried tofu or cheese croquette. They come with a heap of beansprouts and almost microscopic pieces of preserved radish that have a neutron star-like density of umami. A whole plate will leave you gasping for water, so share it with someone you love as a side and order something else as a main. Just not the roti canai. —Jonathan Nunn
4 — 5 Rupert Court, W1D 6DY

Deep-fried Brussels sprouts at M Threadneedle Street

Sprouts, not just for Christmas. Love your sprouts, treasure them when they are in season — they are a Good Thing. This is an unusual restaurant for me to be in, but London is a big place and there is space for lots of types of restaurants, especially ones in the financial Square Mile. This dish is a reason to venture out on a rainy day to a restaurant out of your comfort zone — deep-fried Brussel sprouts, with parmesan custard and a ton of aged parmesan shaved on top. To be honest, it is pretty uncomplicated, but with something so simple it’s all about the balance and the texture — and it gets this bang on. Salty parmesan and earthy sprouts, with crunch on the outer leaves, but all soft in the centre. And, it’s a huge serving! —Anna Sulan Masing
Unit 2 — 3, 60 Threadneedle Street, EC2R 8HP

Emma Hughes

Bitter leaf salad at The French House

Going to The French House for lunch while doing Dry January felt borderline masochistic. But even while being denied the joys of its wine list, there were plenty of treats to liven up a dull, drizzly month. The best of these was an ascetic-sounding bitter leaf salad, which actually turned out to be a Jenga tower of snappably crisp radicchio and friends dressed with lemon, anchovy and flecks of chilli. A snowdrift of parmesan brought the whole thing together. Having managed to hold firm in the face of the pinot noir’s siren song, it seemed only fair to order four buttery madeleines — huge, baked to order and just £3 — and wolf the lot. —Emma Hughes
49 Dean Street, London W1D 5BG

George Reynolds

Tofu skewers at Chuan Chuan Xiang

Since learning about Chuan Chuan Xiang in a certain guide to Chinatown, it has become something of an obsession for me. There are countless other places serving spicy, numbing soup in the capital, of course, but most of them are sit-down hot-pot restaurants requiring things that are in short supply for me: patience, time, friends. And so I have found my way, time and again, to the tiny stall abutting BaoziInn, crumpled banknote in hand — it’s cash only — now aware that the captivating aroma perfuming the surrounding area is the very same malatang I am about to enjoy. The only problem has been which skewers to submerge: the aforementioned guide recommends spam and prawn balls for texture, with Chinese leaves, broccoli, and tofu to sop up the soup. Until this week, I had always stuck with this formula, reasoning that if I were in a hot-pot restaurant this is exactly the sort of balance I would crave. But then I realised something: this wasn’t any old hot pot restaurant. It was my personal hot-pot restaurant, and what I really liked was the feeling of biting into tofu and feeling a flood of definitely-too-hot soup cascade into my unprepared oral cavity, so that it what I would order, five times over. The correct order may be all about balance. But the best one is two frozen tofu, three fried. —George Reynolds
24A Newport Court, London WC2H 7JP

Souvla at Retsina and Mousaka

Every meal at this Greek-Cypriot taverna should start with a great bowlful of taramasalata like a marine face pack and a dish of olives, honking with garlic and strewn with whole pickled chillis. It’s what comes after that’s up for debate. The grill at Retsina lacks the scale and fervour of London’s busiest, biggest charcoal production lines, but has a serene rhythm all of its own, kebabs tended to lovingly with tongs while the souvla, blushing from its red wine and oregano marinade, rotates hypnotically over flames that jump like excited cats. Cut down from its spit, it slumps on to the plate in tendrils of rosy flesh, the exterior cragged and blackened like a meteorite. Then a fresh piece is loaded, and the grill starts its dance anew. —James Hansen
7 - 8 Culmington Parade, Ealing W13 9BD

Patties at Survivor

Working in Camden this week rather than gilded, Greggs-less Mayfair gave me an opportunity to finally do a horizontal patty tasting, which sounds like a euphemism for something but simply involves the purchasing and eating of different pies. Like the sucker for hype that I am I got the vegan steak bake and was grudgingly impressed. Yes, it’s really a mince bake. Yes, some seasoning would be good. But the pastry was nice and burnished, not anaemic like it’s sausage roll counterpart, and injected scalding hot savoury Quorn juice straight into the roof of my mouth. It delivers everything you want from a pie. Then to Survivor round the corner for some Jamaican patties. Lots of people talk about vegan substitutes as not being real, but I’m not sure a patty is any more healthy or natural. The meat has that lovely glossy sheen on it that makes me wonder what gelatinous part that the cow didn’t know it had it contains, and with its liquid Kardashian orange cheese, it puts me more in mind of the miracle that is the McDonald’s double cheeseburger. Like the steak bake it is hot, savoury and this time completely, unreservedly delicious, burning my now tender, always impatient mouth yet again with cheese and melting beef ooze. Put some Encona on it and that’s a god tier lunch. Perhaps in ten years time Quorn will be able to replicate this wonder, but for everyone else there’s callaloo. —Jonathan Nunn
98 Arlington Road, NW1 7HT

Dumplings at Mr Bao

I have one month left in London before my visa expires; this month to be exact. And when you have a month left in a city that you’ve come to fancy quite a bit, you’d want to try out everything you can without going crazy and heavily broke. Which is another way to say that I would very much like to eat my way through London. Anyway, this write up is about pork dumplings — so wonderfully fatty, so very delicate, tender, juicy and satisfying. Proper jiaozi that I would happily give up my life for. I’ve had some good ones so far: one at Jen Cafe (which were slippery and glistening as Jonathan Nunn writes) in Chinatown, one at Welling in south east London, and the other at Mr Bao in Peckham. I ordered a lot of other food too — fried chicken with incredibly smoky miso mayo, sweet potato chips, a fluffy pork belly bao, and a creamy tofu bao — but pork dumplings and chilli oil was the comfort I was searching for on a cold winter night, after too many pints. Makes me almost think if I should give up my dream of eating all over London, and just look for excellent pork dumplings (chilli oil compulsory) instead. —Apoorva Sripathi
293 Rye Lane, Peckham SE15 4UA

Catfish krob at Singburi

I ate a lot of meals at Singburi in 2019.. It was there for celebratory meals, meals filled with wonderous new creations and to commiserate me with good food after a particularly trying day, week or month. So it was a fitting end to the work year for me to have a celebratory meal filled with wondrous creations to commiserate the end of the decade. Chef did all the ordering for the table of four I’d assembled, picking a menu that was balanced but full of gluttony. Starting at a leisurely pace with pomelo salad and double helpings of crispy quail, before accelerating to a trot as a delicious chicken and crab glass noodle landed in a steamer pot — huge crab claw poking out — flanked by multiple soups and salads all bringing things to a swift canter. The soups are never to be missed, always comforting and restorative, but in the case of the chicken jungle soup packing enough flavour and heat to enliven the most docile of demeanours. The pace is all of a sudden broken by the arrival of a dish never seen by the veterans at the table: Catfish krob.

Catfish krob: Pieces of catfish, fried multiple times to a shattering crispness that pervaded all the way down to the bone. The heat emanating did not stop anyone from crunching down on the fish or the copious holy basil that clung on. The brief pause was broken by a sudden gallop of dishes, whole crab with ginger and curry powder; morning glory with garlic and a surprise ace — a bowl of soup stuffed with various cuts of beef, an immense hit of aniseed from Chinese celery and the lightest slick of chilli oil to keep things interesting in the depths of the enormous bowl. I didn’t eat much during the week that followed but after a meal like that why would I want to? It’ll be a long few months while Singburi closes for a well deserved break. —Feroz Gajia
593 High Road, Leytonstone E11 4PA

Mutton curry at Babur

The closest I came to a New Year’s resolution for 2020: Get the hell away from familiar stomping grounds and sample more of what London has to offer. At about 12p.m. last Sunday, standing in the cold outside the Horniman Museum waiting for a fire alarm to subside, this undeniably felt like A Bad Call. Fast-forward 90 minutes later, though, to a groaning Sunday buffet spread at Honor Oak’s legendary southern Indian restaurant Babur, and all seemed a little better with the world. Fennel-seed-flecked fish fritters, some exemplary chutneys, and a fish curry thrumming with curry leaves and kokum were all superb, but were relegated to supporting cast status by a bone-in mutton curry that banished even our most pervasive of chills. And with that, the great Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone project was up, up, and away. The Horniman’s great, by the way. —George Reynolds
119 Brockley Rise, Forest Hill SE23 1JP