Southern Joes

Where did you come from, where did you go?

Kentish Town - April 2015

Hot on the heels of Foxlow's awesome test drive, we found ourselves on another culinary march, this time to Kentish Town to run the rule over Southern Joe’s new northern outpost.

Having not visited the Covent Garden branch, which generated serious social media & food blog heat for the quality of its fried chicken, we were excited to give this a go.

It’s a mixed bag. There are some good things happening here, some disappointing.

The starters are a prime example of this. Jalapeno poppers come covered in the lightest crispy batter, with peppers soft and juicy inside. If I had my way, there’d be heavier with cream cheese, but that’s nit-picking. They’re up there with the best I've tried.  But then the popcorn shrimp... Anemic. Soggy. Bland.  It's rescued slightly by a dipping salsa that appears to be solely made up of blended jalapenos, that at least provides some fiery fun.

The mains: the shortrib is cooked to tender perfection, the meat falling apart like a cheap watch; clean off the bone without resistance. But it’s a little dull and a little bland, their rub seemingly rubbed off. No smokiness, no bbq-ness, no char, just a hunk of slow-cooked meat on a wooden board. Which isn't a bad thing, but isn't all that interesting either. Especially when coupled with the blandest slaw ever tasted. Not a hint of any flavour beyond thick mayo.

But smother the shit out of it all in their sticky, smokey, homemade BBQ sauce and suddenly you have an interesting plate (board) of food. We welcomed the addition at both starters and mains. A shame then, that eager staff kept clearing the jars away, only to bring it back at our insistence.

The much vaunted fried chicken is decent. We opt for two pieces with waffles. Chicken has a crispy coating, well cooked and not at all greasy. The 24 hour tea-brining preparation does not deliver any additional flavour, but has kept the bird perfectly moist (that’s what she said). I like the strength of the bourbon in the maple syrup. Covering savoury in sweet is something I have mixed feelings about; but mix in a ton of booze and it's all gravy. Well, syrup. Let’s just try and forget anyone ever put pieces of watermelon near this main course. A wholly unnecessary slice of Americana they can keep.

Other areas for improvement would be more crunchy topping on the mac & cheese. It says a biscuit crumb on the menu, which turns out to be the meanest crumb of a crumb. 

And the chocolate peanut pie is slightly dry, baked just that touch too long so that the topping edges into bitter. The salted caramel drizzle is delicious though.

It can be unfair to judge soft launch service so I won’t, other than to say if the waiters match skill with their enthusiasm and friendliness, then they’ll do very well. Nothing was bad, it all just needs some polish and no doubt that will come with practice.

All in all; a bit above average, Joes.

300 Kentish Town Road
Kentish Town
London
NW5 2TG
http://joessouthernkitchen.co.uk/

Foxlow N16

In French she would be called 'la renarde', and be hunted with only her cunning to protect her

Stoke Newington - April 2015

Unless you've been living under a rock (and therefore also under constant threat of eviction for the redevelopment of said rock into some super-expensive pebbles to be sold to rich foreign types - POLITICS!), you should be vaguely au fait with the concept of Hawksmoor and their really rather excellent restaurants. Well, perhaps less restaurants, more temples devoted to the worship of the meat gods.

About 18 months ago, the team behind Hawksmoor branched out with Foxlow in Farringdon, a ‘neighbourhood restaurant’, featuring the stuff that makes Hawksmoor great; high quality meat, top notch cooking, & Shakey Pete's ginger brew – in a laid-back bistro setting.

Clearly the concept has been a success, as this week Foxlow Mk2 opened in uber-trendy Stoke Newington. And as fearless food bloggers, we felt it necessary to go check it out and report back. It's a tough job, but someone has to do it…

And in a hardly-ground-breaking development, the place is excellent. A cosy, if noisy (wooden floors & no soft furnishings) dining room with the faded-glory retro décor that permeates all the restaurants. There’s definitely nothing faded about the glory of the food, which is especially on point with the meatiest options.

For starters that means belly ribs. Oh the ribs. Hawksmoor's tamworth belly ribs are probably still top two in my long romance with the rib. A twist here on their classic sauce, now heavier with spice; a healthy dose of cumin giving it a slightly Indian hint whilst a chilli warmth builds on the taste-buds. The meat is moist, not overly fatty, and so tender. Not particularly charred and light on the smoke (although there is a small red smoke ring in evidence), but it’s the sauce that makes it a triumph.

Our other starter of squid is enjoyable; coated in crispy, golden, peppery batter. It looks beautiful on the plate. It’s just not ribs, so we can’t love it as much.

If we had a Foxlow locally and was a more frequent visitor, we might find it a lot easier to see past the utterly delicious Ginger Pig steaks on offer. But we don't (*cough* open one in South London *cough*), so we can't, and it’s deckle steak for mains. Cooked pink, well-seasoned and with a great char on the outside, it's a fine example of their work. Even the connective tissue running straight down the middle of it cannot dampen things.


But the best thing about the dish is the huge paper-weight of a bone on the side packed through with meltingly-soft marrow.

Less excellent was the Foxlow fried chicken. The meat was tasty, and juicy. However, it was also on the greasy side. Not Dr Nick’s Window-to-Weight-Gain greasy, but enough to be noticeable. Also, the batter did not adhere to the chicken and fell off as soon as the chicken was picked up, which was a tad annoying.

Seemingly stuffed, we still had our just desserts. A knock-out one-two punch of a chocolate salted caramel tart, and a passion fruit & soft-serve ’Eton mess’.

The tart was heavy with quality bitter dark chocolate. The caramel is strongly salted, but holds the balance well.  Added flakes of sea salt on top of the chocolate, and there are a couple of occasions when the flavour goes nuclear. And the Eton mess was a great end to our feast; fresh and tangy, it's an excellent palate cleanser that rounded things off so nicely, we even forgave the hard and possibly shop-bought nature of the meringue…

Great place, great food; they've done it again. Those aging hipsters in Stokey have never had it so good.

71-73 Church Street,
Stoke Newington
London 
N16 0AS
http://www.foxlow.co.uk/

#FryHard

Yippee-Fry-Aye.

Shoreditch - April 2015

Lent. Traditional time of penitence and abstinence, before we all hail the chocolate rabbit god laying eggs from whence the baby Jesus hatched  (I think I have that right). Basically, no badness is the general rule for many. Clearly Messhead (aka Chef Jim Tomlinson and Miss Cakehead) didn’t get the memo.

Last seen trying to recreate the taste of human flesh in a burger, this Easter holiday weekend they’ve been down at Boxpark in Shoreditch armed with a couple of deep-fat fryers and “a load of things you can just buy down the shops” (to quote the chef). The premise is simple: deep fry the shit out of stuff.

Abstemious this is not. Take that, Lent.

It’s hardly haute cuisine, but it takes a certain type of mad genius to think ‘what’s missing from a crème egg? Batter.’ And given they’d all sold out of those when we rocked down late on the first day, clearly the masses agree.

In fact, after a three & a half hour lunchtime rush, about half of the 100 options on the coronary-inducing menu were gone. No pancakes, no sausage rolls, no donuts (I totally love the idea of deep frying a deep-fried snack). 

But from the selection of what’s left, the best proved to be foodstuffs with a low melting point; cheese-strings and babybels become gooey treats and a rocky road is pure filth - now a squidgy warm cake filled with oozing melted mallow.

I don’t think frying improves a shop-bought scotch egg (but a fresh made one, with a warm runny yolk could be amazing). And in the case of jaffa cakes, the orange jelly melts away too much – leaving a mere disappointment of sticky orange essence.

It’s Willy Wonka meets Chip Shop. A fondue party in the age of austerity. And props to them for trying to answer a classic pub debate – what else would you, and what else could you deep-fry? Now, roll me to the cardiac ward.