Cay Tre, Soho

Mekong Catfish

Yes. Cay Tre, THE Cay Tre, has come to Soho.

You need to understand. Cay Tre is my favourite Vietnamese restaurant in London (the original is near Kingsland Road in Shoreditch). I live in Soho. Now Cay Tre is in Soho. I can officially start using my oven for storage.

Ok, so I was there on opening night, at the 50% soft opening. Service is still being polished (although they're sweet). But the food, oh the food. The food is superb.

Chicken Royale

A starter of Chef's Vinh Beef (skewered five spice rib beef, moist and succulent, charcoaled and served with soy dipping sauce) was perfection. PERFECTION,  I tell you. And it's opening night! Silky grilled octopus with lemongrass, coriander and chilli oil is slightly chewy (I'd give it a miss next time), but the Cha La Lot is gorgeous - spicy ground pork wrapped in wild betel leaves, served with roast peanuts and nuoc cham.

Cured beef and papaya salad

Thinly sliced sesame cured beef and papaya salad with Thai basil and mint is one of the favourites, and the asparagus in the asparagus and black mushroom salad is packed with seasonal flavour and maintaining just that right amount of firm bite.

Grilled octopus

Slow cooked mekong catfish is caramelised in fish sauce and almost as good as at the original Shoreditch branch, lacking only in the theatre of having it cooked at the table like it is at the original.

Roast baby chicken royale is crunchy and spicy on the outside and moist within - although it's a lean chicken, the honey, five spice and herby marinade give the meat some punch. Cognac Luc Luc Shaking beef is another hit - sliced rib eye beef is wok seared with whole garlic cloves (mmm...) and black pepper. It's lusciously rich but light at the same time.

Cognac Luc Luc Shaking Beef

The Dong Du Lamb Chop Curry served with vermicilli dumplings certainly has the anticipated flavour but is too fatty (yes, even for me). The okra and aubergine curry is a satisfyingly gooey mix of coconut and cardamom.

Okra and auberine curry

There's also rice, noodle and pho dishes which I will be back for, oh, probably 3 times a week. The menu has some surprises and is different to that at the original Shoreditch branch.

With 3 bottles of wine and a huge array of dishes between 5, our bill came to £40 per head (or £20 per head during the 50% off soft opening period). Starters cost between £4 - £9.50 and mains between £7 - £10, so obviously you could feast for a lot less without so much alcohol (ahem).

My only complaint? There's no dessert menu! (But Princi is around the corner).

Great value, fresh flavours, easy going service and all in Zone 1 - don't even try to wipe the smile from my face.

Cay Tre, 44 Dean Street, Soho, London W1D 4 QD (Tel: 020 7317 9118)

The 50% off soft opening continues for Wednesday 11 and Thursday 12 May 2011.

Fernandez & LeLuu, London Supper Club - Vietnamese feasting at its best & "Fight Hunger Eat In" with Action Against Hunger & Unearthed

The beef pho

I have 2 good reasons for writing about London supper club, Fernandez & Leluu.

1. They cook some of the best Vietnamese food I've tasted in London.
2. They recently hosted a charity dinner with Unearthed in support of Action Against Hunger. And I love the idea behind this new campaign.

Simon and Uyen have been hosting their supper club from their East London apartment since late 2009. Uyen's mum, who is Vietnamese, along with the gorgeous Gail from One Million Gold Stars, were helping in the kitchen on the first night I rolled up for my Vietnamese feast.

A Vietnamese chicken salad is both juicy and packed with fresh, zingy flavours. Bountiful platters of spring rolls follow, crammed to bursting point with prawn, crab, tender octopus and pork. They're a terrific mix of contrasting textures and the flavours bounce off each other well.

A bowl of beef pho with flat rice noodles is wonderfully aromatic and, although mild, there's some interesting layers of delicate spice at work.

The tuna sashimi that stole my heart at the Fernandez & LeLuu summer picnic at the Henley Royal Regatta features again at the supper club. We finish with pork cutlets and rice, before moving on to a coconut and Cointreau sorbet as a refreshing end to an excellent, fun marathon meal. No one leaves hungry.

This supper club is dancing on the tables, barrels of laughs, type fun. There's a huge energy in the tiny room and it tends to work to a slow crescendo as supper clubbers share their wine freely around the table. The crowd is mostly fun loving folk in their 20s and 30s and generally everyone brings 1-2 bottles of wine.

Yes, Fernandez and Leluu is BYO with no corkage fee. The suggested minimum donation is around £35 plus tips.

"Fight Hunger, Eat In" - Action Against Hunger & Unearthed

I returned again more recently for a charity dinner hosted by Fernandez & LeLuu with Unearthed, to raise awareness and funds for Action Against Hunger. Action Against Hunger is an international humanitarian organisation committed to ending child hunger. Their new Fight Hunger Eat In campaign follows its recent "Fight Hunger Eat Out" campaign spearheaded by some top chefs and restaurants.

The idea is to encourage food lovers to host a dinner party and invite their friends to make a donation in return for a great meal. Hosts pick a menu, invite their guests and cook away. Action Against Hunger has prepared lots of tips and materials, invitations and recipes which are available for hosts to download to make it all as easy as possible.

Simon Day, founder of Unearthed, hosted the evening I attended at Fernandez & LeLuu. Apart from being a lovely guy, Simon has what just might be the best job in the world - he travels around Europe & elsewhere in search of excellent products from great producers which might not otherwise see the light of day in the UK market. Unearthed products include things like rillettes, olives, cooked and cured meats, white bean tapas with Manchego and panettones. The products are sold at Waitrose and were the foundations of the meal cooked by Fernandez & LeLuu at this charity dinner.

We start with a tasty selection of Unearthed's potato omelette with pork rillettes, duck mousse, oyster mushrooms and garlic bread. I particularly love the rillettes from Le Mans and find myself happily placed between 2 large platters of the stuff. These are clearly quality products, and from the snippets I caught on the subject, they seem to come at very reasonable prices (eg. the rillettes are £2.49 at Waitrose).

A velvety sweet corn veloute with chorizo film had me at "sweet corn".

Next are some flamenquines -  meaty fried parcels of pork, pepperoni and ham with mustard and herb dip. Completely addictive.

Then, pork meatballs (again from Unearthed) with Fernandez & LeLuu's Russian salad. Fernandez & Leluu do a cracking Russian salad (again, it's one I sampled before at their Henley Regatta picnic), and the meatballs are a sweet, juicy counterpart.

Finally, we feast on Unearthed's Serrano ham with F&L's own champagne poached pears and a watercress salad. A gorgeous combination.

I missed the churros and chocolate - and I'm still kicking myself.

I love the spirit of this supper club, and the Action Against Hunger campaign, combined with the joint efforts of Unearthed and Fernandez & LeLuu, was inspiring. If you are interested in hosting a dinner party in support of Action Against Hunger, you can see their website here. You can book for other supper club events at Fernandez & LeLuu on their website.


Fernandez & LeLuu, a mystery location in East London.

Viet, Soho

Amid the chaotic clatter and chatter, waiters bump into tables and diners feast elbow to elbow on big bowls of steaming beef pho, fragrant noodles and colourful prawn salads. Best of all, it's BYO (including beer). Viet is not somewhere to go for a quiet meal.

It's been our favourite local Vietnamese for years. Admittedly, there's not much competition in Soho - or indeed, many places outside of East London. The small Pho chain has recently opened an outlet on Wardour St. But Viet is no polished operation. It's quick and dirty, cheap and cheerful, and feels like a little pocket of Kingsland Rd in Soho.

 

Soft summer rolls (goi cuon) come with prawns, herbs and salad almost bursting through the thin, translucent rice paper wrapping. Fried spring rolls are crisp, fresh and meaty. But best of all are the thin little parcels of juicy beef wrapped in betel leaf - a taste sensation.

 

Bun sa, cold vermicelli noodles with chicken cooked in lemongrass, with crispy lettuce, pickled vegetables, cucumber and mint were, on our last visit, somewhat lacking in flavour, and a little stingier on the chicken than usual. I have my suspicions that portion sizes are being sacrificed a little here to keep the costs so low. The noodles come with a side bowl of nuoc cham (fish sauce, zingy lime juice, garlic, chilli, sugar), essential for pouring over the mix.

Most people come for the pho, the comforting, spicy, noodley broth, which is slurped up hungrily, even as plates of starters and drinks arrive at their tables, apparently out of sinc. No one seems to mind. Extra fresh chilli and other bits are provided on request.

A personal favourite is the beef salad - slithers of beef with chilli, onion, lime, Vietnamese basil and smashed nuts. It's full of flavour, although the portion on my visit last week is (again) smaller than I remembered it.

Corkage is apparently charged on wine (about £3) but the bottle opener for our beers was unceremoniously plonked on our table last week and we drank without charge. This is one cheap night out. Starters are often around £2-4, and the average price for larger dishes is around £6-8.

Service is sometimes erratic, but never bad on my visits (I'm not expecting Michelin star service here), and the young guy who coordinates it all is smiling and helpful. He doesn't miss much when it comes to pointing out who needs what and when.

Viet's popularity means there are often queues on Friday and Saturday nights (some resort to cracking open their beers in the line), and you can't reserve ahead. So get there early, and tuck in.

Viet, 35 Greek Street, Soho, London W1D 5DJ (Tel: 020 7494 9888). No website.

Pho, fow and feu - Fitzrovia

The last time I visited South East Asia, I left with a salty mane of plaited hair, a battered back pack and a tan which blended beautifully into my dirt brown bathers (quite a feat considering my natural moon tan). I did not leave with the entrepreneurial inclination to set up my own mini chain of London restaurants replicating my favourite highlights of the local cuisine. Most likely, I was too busy trying to untangle my hair before the cameras came out - complete nightmare.

However, that is exactly what husband and wife team, Stephen and Juliette Wall have done. Having travelled around South East Asia and fallen in love the pho soups (pronounced "feu"), they ditched their office jobs 5 years ago and set up Pho (pronounced "fow", in a kind of oh-for-Goddsakes-I-give-up concession to the locals).

The first Pho restaurant opened on St John Street in Clerkenwell in 2005 and since then they have multiplied like cheeky gizmos into branches in Great Titchfield Street and Westfield Shopping Centre. In May, the new Brighton branch is due to open, and a new site in Soho has just been purchased.

Coming from Australia, a country abound in fresh, flavourful, colourful Vietnamese fare, TPG and I have found it quite an ordeal to find decent Vietnamese food in London outside of Kingsland Road. Fresh and zesty, Vietnamese food should be packed with the full range of spicy, sour, bitter, salty and sweet flavours. To date, Cay Tre is a favourite.

However, it was on our maiden voyage to Westfield last year that we first discovered Pho, and were pleasantly surprised to find such a gorgeous bowl of noodle soup in a shopping centre food court. Since then, our experiences at the Great Titchfield Street restaurant have been more mixed as we found the flavours sometimes lacked the punch of our first experience depending on our order. Therefore, I happily accepted an invitation to visit Pho with some other bloggers last week, to learn more about the business first hand.

It's too easy to accuse a chain restaurant, and particularly a Vietnamese chain being run by non-Vietnamese people, of being bland and inauthentic. The husband and wife team at Pho have employed a full team of Vietnamese cooks, have done their utmost to remain true to the fresh Vietnamese flavours of their travels and have kept to simple menu focussed mainly on what they do best - the pho.

A pho is a serious business, afteall, and is not to be treated lightly. Taking on the status of a revered national dish in Vietnam, it's basically a noodle soup containing chicken, beef, pork, tofu or prawns, eaten at all times of day in its natural habitat - often on a plastic chair at the side of a street cart. The pho stocks at Pho are prepared from scratch on site, and take up to 12 hours to prepare, simmering away alluringly in large vats in the kitchen.

We started with a lesson demonstrating how to make our own goi cuon tom (fresh rice paper rolls filled with prawns, salad  and herbs). Some call them "summer rolls" but, to the Aussie girl in me, a Summer Roll will always involve chocolate, peanuts, coconut and nougat (highly recommended, by the way).

Platters of fried spring rolls followed, filled with pork (a favourite) or veggies, as well as nem nuong (pork and lemongrass meatballs - I somehow missed these) and ginormous bursting platters of goi du du (papaya salads alternatively containing chicken or prawns). Papaya salad or a Vietnamese chicken salad is always an essential when I visit any Vietnamese restaurant, and Pho's versions were lovely, refreshing and tasty, although I prefer slightly more of a chilli hit (I'm sure you could ask for it).

Having spied the sensational looking beef stock brewing away in the kitchen, my bowl of the pho bo dac biet did not disappoint (noodle soup with steak, brisket and meatballs - the beefy trifecta - why limit yourself to 1 style of beef?). As always, it was served with a side of herbs, lime and chilli to be added to taste. The flavours were subtle but lovely, and as always, I find pho to leave me feeling healthy and replenished. Serving sizes are satisfyingly generous - particularly given they fall within a £6.95 - £7.95 price range.

Hot and spicy soups and noodle dishes are also on offer, but save room for the banana fritter with honey and ginger ice-cream - oh my. I'm sure there was a bit of "I'll have what she's having" going on as I enthusiastically enjoyed mine.

I rate Pho as a terrific option for a healthy, tasty and fulfilling meal, particularly if you love Vietnamese food as much as I do, and particularly if you find yourself on the other side of town to the strip of Vietnamese places on Kingsland Road. It's definitely the best option I've found around the West End for Vietnamese food. And having met the passionate duo behind the business, Pho now has a face - and I like it even more than I did before.

* I was a guest of Pho, attending a blogger event, and so my meal and drinks were free of charge on my last visit - although this review is also based on my experiences at several previous visits where I attended incognito as a paying customer.