Taberna do Mercado, Spitalfields, Commercial Street

I recently turned thirty, which is the perfect excuse for a slap up meal. I've been cutting back recently due to an enormous building project at home. It's also the reason that I haven't been blogging much recently. I've been without proper facilities for three months now, and the extra effort required to do everyday tasks, on top of the constant decision-making, has just sapped so much of my energy for anything fun, like writing about food.

But I'm coming out of my slumber to write about Taberna do Mercado, Nuno Mendes' new restaurant. Yes, he of Chiltern Firehouse fame. Chiltern Firehouse may be what he's now best known for, but its prices and glitz seem out of character for Mendes, whose building block gigs at Viajante and the Loft Project were more low key and allowed the food to do the talking.

Ironically perhaps, Mendes' new joint Taberna do Mercado is his most down to earth yet. It's a Portuguese market canteen, on the edge of Spitalfields Market. Simple little restaurants in produce markets are the real deal in Portugal (where I'm half from) - it's where you'll see local nanas having a snack of seafood, or a friendly business meeting over a sandwich (prego), along with a crisp white wine or small glass of beer. The situation and menu of Taberna do Mercado are a big nod to that tradition.

The menu has cheese and cured meats, "tinned" fish, snacks, a couple of sandwiches, a reasonable selection of small plates, and a handful of eggy desserts. It's a whistlestop tour of Portuguese cuisine, which is warm and familiar to me, but not to many in London. Every dish has an extra twist of cheffy sophistication, an extra complexity or layer of flavour, than you'd expect from a classic Lisbon restaurant.

We ordered our food bit by bit, as it can come relatively quickly after you order. We started with lightly battered green beans (a dish my mum loves to make), which were perfectly crisp and came on top of a little bowl of a cool broth, which tasted of toasted onions. The rissois - crisp triangles stuffed with prawn and prawn flavoured roux - are another Portuguese classic, and the darker, crisper coating, the juicy prawns and richer seafoody roux inside made these the best I'd had.



The "tinned" fish menu has a number of delicious sounding options, but we went for cod cheeks with a sweet, paprika sauce. The fish is cooked, marinaded and served in a tin - in homage to the tinned seafood shacks of Portugal. Served with crunchy thins of cauliflower and toasted thick Portuguese bread, we devoured every last speck of this dish, spooning the sweet flavoured oil onto the bread when it would not soak up any more.



A fennel and asparagus migas had a great contrast between the crunchy textures and zingy, fresh flavours of the vegetables, and the rich, lardy, moist migas - breadcrumbs fried up with any number of ingredients and flavours with stock and oil, ending up tasting somewhere between dumplings and a hash.



A pig trotter and cuttlefish coentrada is a rich broth is creamy and full of porky flavour - almost like a ramen. The pig trotter meat is pungent, and the cuttle fish is perfectly cooked - just chewy enough, but till fresh tasting and not the least bit rubbery. Generous scatterings of micro coriander make this taste very Portuguese - that delicious mixture of pork, seafood and the fragrant aromas of fresh greens. The sauce is so perfect we order more bread to soak it up.



We finish our savoury voyage with a prego roll, with steak, watercress-like crunchy greens and a spicy, fragrant peppery sauce. The roll is incredibly authentic, slightly sour, crispy and lathered in butter. The steak is perfectly cooked, and the red peppery sauce mixes with the butter and echoes the taste of the classic bifana sandwich.



Portion are not too big, and the prices are just on the pricey side of keen. Ordering an extra bread was key to keeping my other half assured that he wasn't going to spend all that money and leave hungry.

On the plus side it means you certainly have time for dessert. Sweets are a big deal in Portugal, especially when they're made of egg yolk and dusted with cinnamon. As with everything else, the desserts at Taberna do Mercado manage to be both convincingly homely and next level. We shared a warm olive oil and egg cake, half cooked in parchment paper, so that it's crisp on top, gooey in the middle, wallowing with grade A olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt. The fruitiness and the acidity of the olive oil stand out, and are gently balanced by the sugar in the cake. It's impeccable.



However, we're still not full and our waitress informs us that there's a dish that's proving a hit on instagram. We order it and 'gram it, naturally. Egg yolk is mixed with pork fat to make a particularly rich congealed custard slabs. It holds solidly, cuts easily, and is complemented with a thin, lightly sweet Port sauce with drops of fruity olive oil and flecks of sea salt.




The winelist is entirely Portuguese, and it's well priced with bottles starting in the early twenties. There's a good spread of regions covered, and with much available by the glass, so it offers a great chance to sample lots of interesting wines from across this not yet fully appreciated country.

The waiting staff are well briefed on the dishes and wines and were incredibly friendly, if not fully attentive - there were a few too many times where we all but disappeared from their consciousness, and it took minutes of craning and embarrassing signally. On the plus side, their 'no reservations' policy works well in practice - we waltzed to an outside table at 6.30 on a Tuesday, and were brought inside when a table became available. For later arrivals, punters' numbers were taken and they were called back when it was free.

Taberna do Mercado works well. The dishes are homely and unpretentious, while being painstakingly conceived and refined. The feel is informal and welcoming, and yet this is a chef who's best known for a restaurant in a flash hotel that has paparazzi stationed outside every evening. The cost may ratchet up (we ate and drank well and it came to just shy of £50 a head including service), but this is all top provenance cooking where every detail counts. The five star reviews are rolling in, so make sure you're early if you want to snap up a table without a wait.

Tottenham's best restaurants N17 N15

I've spent the last month living in Tottenham, cat-sitting for friends while my flat is a building site. It's been a great opportunity to get in tune with a part of North East London that's often over-looked for its foodie offerings.

At the start of the year I predicted that the foodie scenes in places like Tottenham, Leyton and Forest Gate would hotten up as more people came looking for somewhere reasonably affordable to live. Already small producers are basing themselves in Tottenham - and there's a festival on 3 May showcasing some of their produce.

It turns out that Tottenham has a lot of interesting options already. That's not surprising, considering it's quite possibly the most diverse place in the country, home to people from all over the world who've come to London in search of work and found Tottenham a welcoming, well-connected place, with affordable accommodation.

It's also a pretty huge area, which has quite a few different 'centres' with different identities. In the south there are two separate light industrial area with warehouses and studios that have vibes not dissimilar to Hackney Wick a decade ago, the area around Seven Sisters has a Latin American market, a road of predominantly West African shops and take-aways; Bruce Grove to the north feels more like a high street with chains and small shops each specialising in food from a different country.

Gentrification seems likely. With more streets of Victorian housing than you can imagine, and it still being possible (just) to snap up a terraced house for less than £500,000, people priced out of Hackney and Harringay and even Walthamstow are deciding to settle here. There are also huge regeneration plans for White Hart Lane and Tottenham Hale, where large numbers of new flats will be built, along with lots of shops, restaurants and leisure facilities. Its future could well be a mix of more organic hipster-led change, and big shiny corporate top-down regeneration.

For now there is much to love and try.


Cafe Marina
A small Portuguese cafe-deli-offlicense at 159 Lordship Road N17, just near Bruce Castle Park. I'm half Portuguese and know how the staples are supposed to taste. Everything here is as you'd get in Portugal. Pick up savoury goodies like rissois (crumbed pastries with prawn or beef fillings) or a salt cod croquette. Order a delicious bifana sandwhich, where the thin cut beef is dripping in a moreish paprika butter in soft white bread.



The pasties de nata were good, and there's decent deli selection of cured meats, olive oils, pulses, grains and bacalhao. The selection of wines and spirits is also impressive and fairly priced. We picked up a really decent bottle of red wine from Alentejo for £10, but most options are £6 - £8.



Also worth trying Bom Pecado on West Green Road - a similar set up, but with lots more sweet treats baked in house. Bom Pecado also has a bakery in Leyton, where you'll get pasteis de nata for less than half their hipster price. And fresher too.

Craving Coffee
The first – and possibly only - sign of hipsterfication in Tottenham is Craving Coffee, located on a light industrial site between Tottenham Hale and Markouse Park. It's a bright open space, with a warehousey DIY  interior. The coffee is first rate – expertly brewed espresso based coffees using Climpson & Sons beans, tasty little cakes and loafs bakes locally (absolutely loved the salted caramel brownies).



Brunch is served all day over the weekend, and it's a cut above – with chorizo and potato hash, top quality bacon with rocket and avocado in a bap, and a decent muesli too.





It's open at least a couple of evenings a month for special events – including pop up restaurants and film
nights.


Diyabakir
Ok, so it's not really Tottenham, but it's just a few minutes from where the N15 postcode starts. The middle part of Green Lanes where it hits Harringay is The Place for The Best kebabs in London. I say this as an ex-Dalstonite. There are many options to navigate – from the glossy Antepliler (which has now expanded to Upper Street) to its big rival Gökyüzü, and many others inbetween. My favourite is Diyarbakir, a totally halal, no booze joint, which is heaving on the Sunday evening we visit. Families and groups of friends from more backgrounds than you can imagine are hear, tucking into big heaped plates of grilled meat, generous mezze portions and delicious pide.



We eat so much, take back tonnes, and share two massive rose-tinged rice puddings between four and the bill comes to less than £15 per person. Complimentary teas seal the deal: this is the best kebab I've had in London.


San Marco
San Marco is a proper neighbourhood Italian. It's been on its prominent corner site on Bruce Grove for almost 45 years, and is brimming with locals most nights. It's a classic Italian menu of pizzas, pastas and secondi dishes, a simple selection of starters, desserts and some specials. Prices are very reasonable, with most mains and pizzas below £8. We had grilled, dressed sardines to start, and shared two pizzas baked as a half metre of pizza (same surface area as two 12" wheels) - half topped with smoked cheese and bacon (ohhh yeah), and half as capricciosa, which had really nice ham and artichokes on it along with the olives and mushroom.



We had a little space for pudding, which was more than filled by a special of banoffee pie - retro classic, and perfectly made.




Restaurant Cornelius
Cornelius is a large Romanian restaurant on an island in the River Lea, just east of Tottenham Hale. Romanian cuisine has some similarities with Turkish, Greek and Hungarian cuisines. Expect judicious use of paprika, stuffed cabbage leaves, and lots of meat.





The food is not delicate or dainty, and the cured meat certainly ain't hand-reared, hand-cured and fed a diet of organic acorns. But the hearty food is homely and authentic and goes great with the Romanian beers and wines. Cornelius is best enjoyed as a window into a culture – enjoy the loud Romanian dancey pop music, the singer crooning over some of the tracks, and multi-generational family parties having a dance over a big celebration.

Others...
A month isn't long enough to get through Tottenham's eating options. I still intend to try some of the canteen-style Latin American caffs down in the Pueblito Paisa market. There's Kata - a pub serving Japanese food on West Green Road, a tapas restaurant on the High Road, and the Beehive pub just off the High Road - a CAMRA winning pub with a barbecue menu. and once you start talking Green Lanes and Wood Green, you have so many more kebab joints to try, Polish, Bulgarian, Greek restaurants. Wood Green even has a bistro now. Coming in September to Tottenham is a "healthy" fried chicken restaurant, which will cross-subsidise meals for school kids from the takings of their evening sales. Back the Kickstarter to make it happen. There's also Chestnuts Market in South Tottenham, which runs 11 - 3 every Sunday, and has a good range of street food and producer stalls.

Secret Stockwell Portuguese

Eating out in London can be pricey business – especially if you want quality food, plentiful quantities and nice wine. That's why Time Out's Cheap Eats section is so popular, people queue for hours, sometimes, for some bargainous and delicious lamb chops at Tayyabs. So if I told you about a basement Portuguese restaurant would do you the biggest meal you could imagine, meat, salad, sides, and lots of glorious red wine for £17, you'd think I was pulling your leg, right?

Well, I'm not, but it's so good I'm not going to broadcast here for the googles. I'll tell you about how excellent it is and get in touch if you want the details.

First up, like most cheap eats, don't bother if you want flashy décor, starched tabe cloths and subtle service. We're talking the basement of a shop on a main road in Stockwell. It's canteen like, paper table cloths, charmingly shabby and folksy, and, as is quite traditional for your workaday Portuguese joint, television mounted to the ceiling and on. But unlike many of London's cheap eats, you won't be rushed, table turned and the service is warm and generous.

I was running late so I didn't see whether there was a menu. I suspect there wasn't, and my friend Moira, who lives around the corner and whose Portuguese friends introduced her to the joint, just spoke to the waiter and he said what was available that day. Standard portuguese fare is quite simple – focused on meat, fish, potatoes and greens, all delicious for its freshness and the quality of the olive oil used.

The spread we ordered, between the seven of us, involved two plates of chips, a MASSIVE plate of salad, deep fried madeiran maize and herb cakes – bit like polenta, two sea bass and two hefty long skewers of flavoursome chunks of lamb which had been grilled.

The lamb hung on skewers from the ceiling and the waiter stuck a piece of bread at the bottom of the skewer to soak up all the meat's juice. The lamb was medium rare, but crispy and charred on the outside and so succulent, and just simply seasoned in salt and pepper and maybe a bit of paprika and garlic. It reminded me of distant memories of barbecues with family friends in Portugal, all that smoke and delicious meat.

The fish was, true to form, amazingly fresh. Just plainly presented with lemon, it was perfect with chips and salad. I've had so many meals in Portugal as simple as that, sat by the Atlantic and eating fish fresh out of it. This was up there with the best, although I'd have paid a bit more to be transported to having a seaview in Sesimbra.

There were no puddings, but when we asked about the other food they served, the waiter brought us a bowl of pearl barley soup to give us a taste of what else they did. And the wine was just astounding for the price. Even if I wasn't half Portuguese I'd still say Portuguese wine is some of the best in the world, once you've steered away from the Mateus Rose. Our red was bold and rich, and the quality surprised by not-yet-induced-into-the-world-of-Portuguese-wine-friends - we got through a good four bottles of it.

So yes, all that for £17 a head between the seven of us. I challenge you to find better value high quality food and wine in London. So if you're keen to go yourself, drop me a line on robbie(dot)desantos(at)gmail(dot)com

What is heaven?

Whether you're half Portuguese or not, I'm hoping heaven looks a little something like this:



After all, I have been good.

This is a favourite spot of mine. A table outside Pastelaria Lisboa on Golborne Road, just in the shadow of Trellick Tower, which is one of my favourite buildings, watching the bustle of Portuguese diaspora life in this slightly forgotten corner of West London. When I lived in the suburbs as a young'un, my mum used to take us up here during half-term to give us our fix of pasteis de nata, stock up on Portuguese olive oil (nice and fruity and very good value, I still swear by it) and get us to engage in that side of our cultural background. She would get us to do the ordering Portuguese and we'd be rewarded with those eggy, custardy bits of goodness.



You can get pasteis de nata all over now, or "Portuguese custard tarts" as people call them. They're never as good as the ones you get at Lisboa. And the good news is I can pop over to Camden to Lisboa's deli there, or Stockwell if I was a South Londoner. And they're much cheaper too. £1.50? Pah! Of course, one isn't enough, so if we're being restrained it's three between two; if we've just cycled a long way, two each is totally justifiable. One is over too quickly - when you've fought tooth and nail for that perfect spot outside, you don't want to give it up too quickly.

I love Christmas

I love Christmas, especially this one, as I now have a new camera thanks to my lovely boyfriend (and his parents), mum, dad and others. Woop. Early signs are that it takes a beautiful picture, so I'll be working on my photo skillz to up the standard of photography on this blog.

As is well documented, I love Christmas dinner. It's my favourite meal of the year, with so many happy memories evoked. It's evolved over the years: different faces at the table, different settings, new dishes (this year: parsnip and pear croquettes!), shelved dishes (where's the mashed potato and cauliflower and cheese? Rightly relegated!), new customs (the Christmas eve cut price turkey hunt). But I love it for its ritual, its bringing people together and it's slow, social celebration of culinary excess.

This year was a particularly excellent Christmas dinner. Our turkey was the best ever, so succulent and juicy. It was a Marks and Spencer's free range organic bronze feathered beauty that we picked up on Christmas Eve for a third of its original price. The turkey hunt is fast becoming a favourite tradition - my mum has us stationed at supermarkets across Edinburgh at about 3pm on Christmas Eve, waiting for the supermarkets to slash the prices of their top tier turkeys. It's a game of nerves: jump too soon and you pay over the odds, leave it too long and you could be left with nothing. We were very pleased with our turkey.

The trimmings are key, and I think we counted 12 different dishes on our Christmas lunch plate:





Turkey, red cabbage braised with apple, roast potatoes in goose fat, home-made cranberry sauce (with orange zest), carrots with orange, brussels sprouts, little sausages, chestnut stuffing, parsnip and pear croquettes, bacon, leek, bread sauce and gravy. My favourites are the bread sauce (milk slow-cooked overnight with bay leaf and a clove stuffed onion) and the chestnut stuffing (chestnut purée, bacon, onions lemon zest, abundant parsley, breadcrumbs, egg: baked), without which it just wouldn't Christmas at all.

On Boxing Day, my siblings and I walk to the other side of Edinburgh (via the Topshop sale, for our sins) to join my dad and his partner for a second Christmas lunch. My dad isn't mega keen on the whole roast dinner setup, so will often cook a Portuguese style dish. This year he made a very meaty cataplana (it typically has clams, prawns and white fish, but my brother really dislikes fish) with melt-in-your-mouth pork loin and top quality chorizo and black pudding in a rich tomato and wine sauce. It was delicious and went down nicely with the free flowing cava!



The food has been amazing and there's been much more too: home-made ice cream, chestnut cream whip, leftover combinations, brunch out with friends. I'm definitely feeling fooded out and ready for some nice fresh salads and fruit!

Moro

A few years ago a dear friend bought me the Moro cookbook. This was when I'd just moved back from the culinary wasteland of Germany (you would not believe how terrible supermarkets are there) and I was beginning to get into cooking big time with my flatmates. I was excited to be back in London - land of farmers' markets, normal markets, global food options. I delighted in skipping up Seven Sisters Road to get the generous bundles of fresh herbs, slightly exotic vegetables and fish to make Moro meals. I read about the restaurant time after time in the Observer Food Monthly and in Time Out, I walked past it countless times, I eyed up the menu online. For our birthdays (in June and July), my partner and I decided we would treat ourselves to a meal at Moro. And last weekend, at the end of November, we finally did!

It all started simply, with delicious sour dough bread olive oil. We munched on that while we contemplated the short, but perfectly mouthwatering menu.



It's worth saying that the service is impeccable at Moro. It was a busy Friday night, the restaurant was bustling with contented, enthused punters and they could easily have been hurrying us along, but were friendly, informal and attentive. We finally settled on a selection of sherries - not the kind of sherries that your grandma drinks too much of at Christmas, but exciting, delicate, interesting sherries served perfectly chilled. The website describes them like so:

"Try this selection to discover the sheer deliciousness of bone dry sherry, from the salty sea breeze tang of Manzanilla, through the more pungent, assertive Fino, finishing with the more complex Manzanilla Pasada whose rock pool aromas are overlaid with subtle nutty age."



For starter I had a pumpkin kibbeh stuffed with sweetly spiced onions, raisins and chick peas. It was served with a radish and pomegranate salad and musky seasoned yoghurt.



Pete had swiss chard stalks with raisins and anchovies. It was earthy, salty and sweet all in one.



My main course was strips of charcoal grilled lamb, served with a smoky, spicy aubergine and bulgur wheat pilav and a shredded cabbage and yoghurt salad. It really was just heaven on a plate - the combination of flavours were perfectly balanced, the meat was super quality and the charcoal imparted just the right amount of smokiness.



Pete had woodroasted pheasant breast, served with onions caremalised in Pedro Ximenez and braised cabbage. I should also say that the wine list was excellent, with a really broad, well-chosen selection of wines by the glass. We had a glass of Gotim Bru and a glass of Mestizaje (described as mid-weight modernist!).



For dessert it had to be the classic Moro yoghurt cake with pistachio and pomegranate seeds. It's something I've made from the Moro recipe book before, so I was keen to try it as it should be. I was pleased to find that my own version wasn't too far off the mark, but this was just stunning: sweet, sour, fruity, nutty, and perfectly paired with a glass of Vino Dulce de Moscatel!



I can honestly say that it was one of the best meals of my entire life. It was a faultless experience, the food and the wine were out of this world, the atmosphere was warm and happy, and punters and waiters alike were equally enthused about the food. Now - to try and replicate at home!

My Portuguese sweet tooth

My adventures in Portugal at the beginning of July seem like a million miles away with autumn in London getting into full sway. But I'm not too far from Lisboa Delicatessen in Camden where I can buy great pasteis de nata and bring it all back. Looking through my food pictures from Portugal, it struck me how many different Portuguese puddings there are and how integral they are to the cuisine.

Pastries or pasteis are a big part of everyday life in Portugal. Every neighbourhood or town, however grand or scruffy, will have at least one decent pastelaria, where locals will stand at the long bar to have a quick bica (espresso) and a pastry of some sort. When we were in Portugal, we noticed that 3-5pm was a very popular time to engage in this ritual.

The most famous pasteis is the pasteis de nata, or 'Portuguese custard tarts' as some call them. I don't like that description - it puts them on the same level as those insipid chemical custard tarts pensioners buy from supermarkets. Anyway. I had at least 10 in my 14 days in Portugal, and none were better than from the world famous pastelaria in Belem. We had three between the two of us and I could have eaten a couple more!



We visited the town of Sintra, which is full of elegant and dramatic palaces on top of mountains, and were sure to try their local delicacies. These are called queijadas de Sintra and are made with fresh portuguese cheese and sugar and egg and cinammon and have a slightly pungent savoury taste to them, in a good way.



Watching locals ordering and eating is an almost foolproof way of making sure you get a real local taste, so after eating our queijadas, we ordered one of these pastries which was filled with the same cheesy mix as the queijadas. Also delicious.



Pasteis de coco are another popular treat. It's another egg based pastry, this time with coconut and a cherry on top. Ah!



When we were in the Alentejan city of Evora we shared a hefty slice of chocolate cake made by the nuns in the convent. It was as rich and gooey and lovely as it looks.

Portuguese Man-of-Snacks

I spent the first two weeks of July travelling around Portugal. I am quarter Portuguese and quarter Brazilian (as well as being half Scottish and lived half of my life in Edinburgh and half in London and a year in Berlin) and have spent many holidays as a young'un in various bits of Portugal.

Many of my early memories revolve around Portuguese food - the first bowl of calde verde of the holiday, taking a break from the sun to chomp on some buttery torades in a smoky pastelaria, the smell of chargrilled sardines, the satisfaction of biting into a warm, freshly baked pastel de nata. My parents would sometimes cook a cataplana when I was a toddler and I would greedily eat their clams, prawns and chorizo, soaking up the fishy tomato sauce with bread.

Portuguese cooking is not well known outside Portugal - not nearly in the same way that many other Mediterranean cuisines are. The wondrous Pasteis de Nata are savoured across most European cities, Nandos is bringing a very small element of Portuguese cuisine to the masses, while the cookbook Piri Piri Starfish is raising the cuisine's profile among foodies.

My recent trip to Portugal was a veritable culinary voyage, eating all my favourite dishes, re-discovering some old tastes and trying out some new dishes. I'm going to detail these in bursts as I blog along. So today it is...Portuguese snack food!


A tasty lunch of beef croquette, pasteis de bacalhau, and a tasty chicken empanada.


Tosta mista - a classic snack lunch of cheese and ham toastie.


Torrados - thick white bread, toasted and drenched in butter. Bliss.


rissois de camarao - a prawn pastry in breadcrumbs.