London is a city of two tales, on one side you have the tens of thousands of fast food chains and cheap take-aways which caters the masses, the poor, the too busy to cook, and the British kind of fussy eaters who don’t really care about what they eat, where they eat, or when they eat, as long as they are fed chicken tikka masala, egg fried rice or peperoni pizza (with lots of cheese of course).
On the other side of the city, there are more than enough Michelin-stared restaurants for anyone’s liking that caters for the riches and famous, the smart dressing business men/woman, the self-claimed foodies, and the ones who just want to have a taste of luxury to post on Instagram, in fact no less than the European gastro capital—Paris. Consider the brits reputation on, or rather the lack of reputation on gourmet food, this can be truly surprising for some.
In between of the two cities there used to be a real void, you may have the likes of La tasca and Pizza express that can bleed your wallet dry for what they are, but there were not many independent small restaurants like those parisan bistro that produces decent food with decent ingredient that don’t cost an arm and a leg. In the past few years a number of these has filled this space up, Antidote is one of them, and maybe one being most over-looked.
Hidden at the back of the famous Canarby street is this two story building full of characters. The lower level is the wine bar where a huge selection of wine and an equally rich list of snacks can be enjoyed. And the upper level is the restaurant where our table was booked for the night. The waitress was very warm and welcoming and we were told to choose anything from the a la carte menu or the four course tasting menu for £40, wine pairing is available which will set you back another 3 tenners.
The chef here only cooks with seasonal ingredients so do expect the menu to change every fortnight. We opted for the tasting menu that consisted a starter of scallop, apple and fennel, a fish course of turbot cabbage and almond, a main course of lamb, aubergine and pepper and crème brulee with quotation marks.
A pre-starter was offered an apple sorbet with cucumber slices in a kind of yogurt soup if I’m not mistaken. It was rather nice and refreshing, however as it has been at least 6 hours since we had lunch, we didn’t really need anything to bring out the appetite, this was probably better placed as a pre-dessert. My stomach made some embarrassing noises on the back of this but luckily nobody was around.
Out comes the bread and butter. Sourdough has been as trendy as it can be now, even those posh supermarkets offer them in quantities. This however is something else, the crust was a little bit crunchy but still chewy, the inside was so airy there wasn’t much of it left. Mix it with the homemade butter, I just kept on munching on these bastards till our first course.
Our starter was hand-dived scallop. To be honest I have had many scallops in my days, many of them of great quality for example the ones at Heddone where it’s cooked in its own shell and its own juice, so I wasn’t really expecting this to be an exciting dish. At the end of the day it was only scallop, and scallop isn’t really a versatile ingredient.
So this dish really came as a pleasant surprise. The scallop was fully cooked it gave just enough bite so it wasn’t lost in the crunchy granny smith. There were fennels in textures–the raw, the juice, the oil, the ash and the powder, each more intense in flavor, each pushed the dish to a different level. The sweetness of the shellfish and the sourness of the apple was simply a match made in heaven.
The second course was turbot. My love of turbot came from a trip to Portugal, one day as always we got to this random town on the coast of the Atlantic, we somehow drove to this restaurant that only served grilled fish by weight on the sea. We had turbot there, grilled turbot, a whole grilled turbot, I can still remember the feeling of my lips glued together by the collagen in the skin. It was so good it became my most fond memory of Portugal.
This turbot however was cooked in a warm water bath, served with blanched cabbage, samphire, almond and a fish jus. The fish was tender and juicy, which was complemented by the sweet and crunchy cabbage and samphire and the bitterness of the almond. There wasn’t much cooking involved in this dish, but this was turbot at its best.
We Chinese, especially people from HongKong, love to steam turbot. However it is often overcooked, the meat becomes flacky and the flavor gone. I would recommend a water bath for every Chinese restaurant that serves steamed fish, failure to do so would be a sin punishable by public humiliation.
To be honest after the two brilliant dishes the main course was a bit of a let down. It was nice but nothing delightful. The lamb chop was roasted to medium, it was still tender but maybe just ever so slightly over-cooked for me. The sweetbread wrapped in potato spaghetti was barely noticeable, I thought it was just deep fried lamb meatball. The dish lacked a kick that this flavorsome lamb desperately needed.
crème brulee
When I saw crème brulee on the menu I tried very hard to search in my memory of a good one. There were none before this. They were often in a small clay pot, cold and sickly sweet with a caramel burnt that even tasted bitter.
This deconstructed version of it was as beautiful to the eye as it was tasty. Instead of the sickly sweet layer of caramel, there was this caramel twill that was as good as anything caramelly. There was the ripen summer fruits–strawberry and plums, juicy and packed full of flavor. There was the brulee itself so creamy and there was the homemade vanilla ice-cream that washed everything away so you are ready for the next mouthful. Even after three dishes, this plate was cleaned by the two of us in a couple of minutes and we were sitting there wanting for more.
I could see myself become a regular.
The END.
F&E's Food 