Harwood Arms

I wish this place was my local. I hope the the folk of Fulham know how good they have it. We had some of the best food we have eaten in ages there. I would make the effort to come here again.

Can't say more than that..

Well I can, and I shall.

It's down a residential street and if you didn't know it was there, I don't know how you would stumble upon it. From the outside it looks like many other English pubs, inside it is the illegitimate love child of a tin of Farrow and Ball paint and a Wedgewood table setting.

They had recently divided the menus into lunch and dinner and two of the things I wanted the most were only available in the evenings. So, as I am want to do I emailed ahead, explained the situation and asked if we could have the snails and the vension platter please, pretty please. Gratifyingly the answer was, of course, and I am so glad they said yes as they were exceptional. I would go back for the snails alone. Or the vension rissoles, or the lamb cutlets or the rice pudding or the bread and butter ice cream.I think you see where this is going.



The venison platter. As you know HI loves all thing deer and this was a very good showcase for what can be done with venison. Particularly good were the rissoles again I could have eaten five of them.




The snails. I had requested these as they had been moved to the evening menu, and I was so glad I had. Soft and garlicky with a sliver of bone marrow on the top. Yum yum.



This was very good, the sort of dish you would want on a wet blustery day, beef cheeks with a very luscious mash and onion rings.



My lamb dish, which was the weakest of the lot. The lamb cutlets were amazing, tender and the quality of the meat was evident. I could have eaten five of these. The accompanying salsa verde, haggis and kale seemed misplaced.



This was a freebie a mininature pudding that they were thinking of putting on the menu, it was beautiful. It is not the sort of pudding I usually go for but I now would, rice pudding with rosewater jelly and passionfruit sorbet. Light, refreshing, intense.

Sticky toffee and date ice cream with caramelized brown bread and lemon curd. The only complaint I would have about this was that the ice cream was a bit too hard, and the flavour was best when it had melted slighlty.

Hawksmoor burger

Finally, after much anticipation, I had the Hawksmoor burger. Annoyingly it is only served during the week, and you may recall my attempt to get them to serve it to me whilst pregnant and dining on a Saturday. I think it is the only time my sweet talking has failed, and contrasts starkly to the accommodating FOH team at the Harwood Arms.

Anyway, I digress.
The burger is that good.

I think it's a tad overpriced at £15, if it were £12.50 you would think you were onto a good thing. I had it with the Ogelshield. What can I say: the bun was maybe the weakest part of it, I don't like sweet buns, my personal preference is sesame seed. The cheese was salty and strong, the burger cooked perfectly, charred on the outside, adequately rare on the inside. The juices flowed. The meat was ground coarse enough and it was possible to taste the different meats used as well as the bone marrow nuggets.

It is therefore, now my favorite burger displacing the Stravaigin burger from top spot. Of course, that is until I can get back to New York and do my own top five burgers of NY throwdown: shake shack vs diner vs veslka vs five napkins vs burger joint. One can dream..

St John Bread and Wine

Finally, here are some of the posts from our trip to London back in March!!

For our first adventure without his highness we popped into STJBAW to have a couple of starters before heading to the Hawksmoor. Again more took HI's fancy than mine, his choices are below.



fresh bread



blood cake with duck egg= posh black pudding



baked bone marrow- this was a bit fancier than their normal much feted roasted bone marrow, which bizarrely is not on the regular menu at STJBAW. This was a special and the bone marrow had been seasoned with some blood cake and was quite rich.