Dinner for 4 (no alcohol served): £60

I have a friend Jenelle who, like me,  is utterly and completely obsessed with Malaysian food and she and I have developed a bad (good) habit of going out and ordering an absolutely stupid amount of food together.  She mentioned that she had walked passed a Malaysian restaurant near Paddington but couldn’t remember the name or exact location.  After a 30 minute wander around the neighborhood and just before we were about to give up and go to some horrible chain we did actually manage to find Bonda Cafe.

Its not an obvious choice for the passerby.  It has a sign outside which hints that there might be a restaurant in the basement of the building, but when you look down into the windows the harsh florescent lights make it look rather uninviting.  The interior itself also lacks any charm.  Luckily this is usually a good sign in a Malaysian restaurant.  For some strange reason a Malaysian place with really nice decor often indicates dummed down, westernized food.

We invited Jenelle’s boyfriend and another friend along so that we could pretend to justify ordering enough food for 16 people and started out with what they called popiah but which were really just blah fried spring rolls – not even worth showing the photograph – just imagine the last spring rolls you had anywhere and that will suffice.

Satay Ayam

Next we ordered satay ayam.  The chicken satay was served with nasi imput (rice cubes) which the boys thought were weird but Jenelle and I loved.  Very good satay indeed.

In addition to the satay we ordered a roti canai which was interesting for me as the dipping sauce was dalcha – which is lentil based and tastes much more of its Indian roots then the Singaporean version I am used to which is a coconut milk based curry.  It was yummy.

Kari Ikan

So after the 3 starters we ordered 4 mains and 2 sides.  I had the kari ikan which was brave of me because though I like a good fishy fish I really really do not like mackerel.  And unfortunately even though the kari ikan did its best to help me learn to love the fish – it simply did not work.  If mackerel is your thing though I bet you would just love it.

We also had kari ayam – a homey, comforting chicken curry and beef rendang – a slow cooked curry beef.  But my absolute favorite of the evening was the sambal ikan billis.

Sambal Ikan Billis

Its made from tiny crispy chewy fried anchovies swimming in a spicy sambal sauce.  If this sounds gross to you – then Malaysian food might not be your thing.  The dish is the essence of my one of my favorite Malaysian flavors – a mix of hot, sour and fishy.  Even though this dish belonged to someone else I am pretty sure I ate most of it right out from under him.

Because we are insane we also had a side order of okra which was nice and a fairly bland telur dadar – omelette with chilis.

I know you’re thinking what pigs how could they possibly have split 8 dishes?  But I haven’t gotten to desert yet.

Pandan Pudding and Mango Cheesecake

Bonda does several steamed milk puddings which change daily.  Both the pandan and cheesecake were very nice.

As we were enjoying our puddings and were slowly slipping into unconsciousness a girls choir from Denmark came in with their choir master for dinner.  We’re talking 30 teenage girls from a singing group who were visiting London.  How this group ended up in this tiny out of the way restaurant is beyond me and in my food coma I completely forgot to ask why the choir master chose this particular place for a big group dinner or for them to sing us a song.

Bonda is a great place to go for truly authentic Malaysian food.  Jenelle and I are planning a trip back on a weekend which is the only time they serve their Laksa.

Bonda Cafe
190 Sussex Garden
London, W2 1TU

Dinner for 1 with wine:  £19.00

I have never had a bad meal with my friends Inge and Jackie so I always look forward to eating with them.  On this evening Inge has just flown in from a business trip so instead of cooking one of her fabulous meals they’re taking me out to one of their favorite neighborhood restaurants.

Cirrik is on a strip filled with other Turkish joints on Stoke Newington High st.  It is a fairly nondescript place that gets most of its atmosphere from the open grill at the back.  Its not the kind of place that would jump out at you over any of the other similar restaurants on the block but Inge and Jackie have tried quite a few of them and this is their current favorite.

Tamara

We start of with tamara and lahmajoun.  The tamara is not the best I’ve ever had, just ok,  but it is creamy and comforting and the warm pita it is served with is quite fresh.  The lahmajoun on the other hand is great.

Lahmajoun

It is a good blend of herbs, spices, garlic and lamby goodness.  I am pretty sure I end up eating more than my fair share of it.

For my main I have Beyti – spicey minced lamb grilled and served over rice with a selection of grilled and pickled onions.  Jackie had the same dish wrapped in lavash and served with a yogurt sauce.  They were both fantastic.  The grilled onions with pomegranite served on the side were the perfect accompaniment to the heaviness of the grilled lamb.  Inge had lamb ribs which were also delicious, tender and falling off the bone.  Such a good comforting meal.

Beyti Kebab

We drank a decent Turkish red wine the name of which I forgot to write because I was to busy stuffing myself with food.

I definitely have plans to go back.

19 Numara Bos Cirrik
194 Stoke Newington High St
London, N16 7

Dinner for 1 with beer: £20.00

Since I spend so much time in the UK I figured it was about time for me to get over a big fear – driving on the wrong side of the road.  I had a long weekend to Devon planned which required me to break free of public transportation and to make sure I would be a complete menace to the motoring public I scheduled a 2 hour driving lesson in London.

Turns out driving in the UK is really just not a big deal.  I managed just fine driving around central London in a stick shift – no stalls, no wrong turns.  And strangely I can parallel park like a pro here – which is something I am a total failure at back home in New York.  So to celebrate my not having damaged the car or any pedestrians I wanted to treat myself to something really spicy and fantastic.  I couldn’t get string hoppers out of my mind so I looked for a Sri Lankan restaurant reasonably close to my flat.

Sekara is located near Victoria station on fairly deserted section of Lower Grosvenor pl.  This was probably not the best neighborhood to look for quality Asian food but I just did not have the energy to travel farther South or East so I figured I would give it a go.

The interior is pretty ho hum with the exception of the spectacularly cheesy mall art on the walls – apparently all for sale.  I considered a few velvet paintings while mulling over the menu.

Vadai

I started with the vadai which are lentil patties were described on the menu as succulent.  I’ve had them before and they can be excellent.  These awful little nuggets were so dry that I really did nearly choke on them.  Not something I would order again here.

For my main I ordered white potato curry with sting hopper and pol sambola.  For those who have no idea what it was that I just wrote string hoppers are made from rice noodles and pol sambol is a mixture of fresh coconut and chillis that is pretty commonly served with Sri Lankan food.  I also had an order of okra.

White Potato Curry with String Hopper with Pol Sambol

The potato curry was so unbelievably bland that I dumped the entire dish of sambol into it.  Unfortunately the sambol was also utterly without flavor.  The okra was the highlight but its not a good meal when your side dish is the main event.

In a town with many excellent options for Sri Lankan food I will be looking elsewhere the next time I have a craving for string hoppers.

Book I was reading:  A History of Japan

Sekara
3 Lower Grosvenor Place
London, SW1W 0EJ

Dinner for 1: £10.80

Met friends of a friend for drinks at a very pubby pub – The Owl and The Pussycat – in Shoreditch one night after work and had a lovely time.  However around 9pm when it became clear to me that drinks would not be evolving into food of any kind I decided to strike out on my own to forage for a meal.  I had a specific Vietnamese restaurant in mind Au Lac – recommended by Londonelicious which was walkable from the pub.

On my way up Kingsland road I recognized the atrocious green tables in a different Vietnamese restaurant that belonged to a place I had gone to with a group of then acquaintances – now friends – when I first started spending half of my life in London.  I remembered that I had enjoyed that meal – but I was determined to try Au Lac because it had been well reviewed by Londonelicious.

I couldn’t find it.  There is a Vietnamese restaurant of a different name at the address I had jotted down and since the only thing I knew about it was that it was where Au Lac should have been – I decided to pop back down the street to the place with the terrible green tables since I remembered that I had enjoyed my previous meal there.

It was going on 9:30 when I arrived so I had almost the entire place to myself save for a group of friends – I am guessing old college friends who have now aged some, getting together to tell hilarious stories about themselves when they were younger.  I sat facing away from them so as not to be too obvious about eavesdropping.

Aside from the ungodly green of the tables there is nothing else concerning about the interior.  Simple standard Vietnamese restaurant decor with some interesting photographs of Vietnam on the walls.

Not really in the mood to have to do any work with my food I ruled out anything that required me to roll my own meal in rice paper or anything.  I decided to keep it simple.

Banh Tom

I started with Banh Tom  – sweet potato and prawn cake.  I’d never seen sweet potato on a Vietnamese menu before, which really should have set off an alarm in my head I now realize.  I imagined something akin to Ban Xeo  – a crepe like item.  What arrived was terribly disappointing.  A.) can you see a prawn in there?  I found 1 prawn in there and that was after some serious excavation.  B.) what makes that a cake? What it is is a flavorless mess of soggy sweet potato fries.

My main also let me down.  I ordered Bun Bo Ha Noi – Beef with rice noodles.  I am a big fan of Bun.  I order different variations of it often and though the dish itself does not immediately seem like it would be complicated to pull off – a little meat, some rice noodles, fresh herbs and vegetables, nuoc mam – its pretty easy to mess up.

Bun Bo Ha Noi

The first way to mess this up is to have poorly seasoned, sloppily prepared beef – which was in abundance here.  The second way is to have wilted veggies and scant amounts of herbs.  If you look closely in the photo you can see a few orphan sprigs of cilantro (coriander).  No mint or basil to be found anywhere.  I had to drown the entire dish in Siracha chili sauce to provide anything approaching flavor and this is after I had tipped an entire dish of nuoc mam into it.  My overall perception of the meal was that it was cooked without any care.  I could not detect any effort in it and I just hate paying for that kind of experience.

While eating I remembered that when I’d arrived here the first time I was exceptionally drunk.  So drunk that when we left after the meal I walked out into the pouring rain having left my umbrella sitting on the table.  I clearly had my beer goggles on that night.

Book I was reading: The O. Henry Prize Short Stories 2008

Hanoi Cafe
98 Kingsland Rd
London, E2 8DP

Pie for one: £3.50

I approached Mrs. King’s pie stand having no idea what either a melton or a mowbray were and ask the nice man behind the counter for a small pie.  I leave with my pie knowing only that it is filled with pork.

Mrs. King's Melton Mowbray Pies

When I got home I looked up Melton Mowbray to find out that it is actually a place in Leicestershire which is apparently somewhere in England and that the pie that is its namesake is in fact one of those protected types of products that you can only call a Melton Mowbray if it is made in the area.  Kind of like DOC wines in France.

Melton Mowbray

The pie itself was kind of adorable with a little gilt crown on the top alerting me to the fact that this little pie was in fact the winner of the all England first prize in 1961 a full 13 years before I was born. Which inversely meant that it had not won any better prizes since 1961.

When I cut into the pie I was at first a little freaked out because the inside was grey – not normally a color I like meat to be.  But with a little research I found out that the Melton Mowbray pie has uncured pork in it which means grey is actually the desired color. And it was quite good. By far and away the most unhealthy pie I’ve ever had as it has lots of pork jelly in it. I would not make this an everyday snack as it would surely send me to an early grave but it is a nice treat to have every once in a while.

Mrs. King’s Pies
Borough Market
8 Southark St
London, SE1 1TL