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.

Nicks grill

I don't often eat pizza or pasta but this place is just round the corner from where my friend lives and she said it is always busy, so that usually being a good sign, we decided to go for lunch. It is owned by the same people who own Antipasti, and certainly one of Antipasti's staples, gnocchi with pesto featured on the menu. This was a generous size portion and would be a meal in itself. I prefer my gnocchi slightly more crispy, but the sauce was rich and tasty. The pizzas were thin base, could have been more crispy but the toppings were fresh. I had the parma ruccola, which measured up favorably to the one at the Big Blue.

If I ate pasta I would go there, for pizza I prefer Little Italy but for a sit down meal this is not bad. The denizens of Hyndland certainly seem to like it. Guess the walk to Byres road is just a bit too much.

Rumours Kopitiam

This is apparently the sister restaurant to Asia Style which is closed for refurb at the mo. Not knowing how long it is going to be shut we went into town, to Rumours, hoping to find some of our favourites. It's a very small place and was pretty busy for a Tuesday night.
The roti canai was great, very fresh with spicy curry sauce. The garlic chili prawns were more heavily battered than at asia style where they come with a light rice flour pepper coating, the portions were smaller but, it was a stater portion. The Malaysian style kung po had the taste of that pre-fried chicken coated in batter that you get in many small Scottish town Chinese restaurants. I didn't like it on the Tuesday evening but bizarrely on Wednesday the left overs were quite addictive?! The sliced beef in pepper sauce was very good, tender strips of beef in hot peppery sauce that tasted of cognac. We asked for morning glory done just in garlic and ginger and this was superb, very fresh.

I can't decide if I would go back. I kept comparing it to Asia Style which is unfair. I did enjoy it it and I certainly enjoyed the leftovers!

Crabshakk

No photos for this one, but I ate pretty much what I had the last time, so you could look at those photos If you really wanted to.

Much the same as before-friendly chatty service. Excellent squid, perfectly cooked not a chew in sight. Very generous tasty fish and chips. Chips perfectly cooked again. All very tasty and congenial. Go.

velvet elvis

I like Pinxto next door although, I wish they would serve padron and some decent pan am tomate. The owner bought the premises next door to stave off competition and it seems to have worked.




The styling is retro cool and the service was very good. The little one was with us and they were very accommodating to us.

The lunch menu has a very good value offer two courses for ten quid.


I had the mussels off this menu, good size, not too many closed ones, no grit, creamy rich garlicky sauce-all very good for dunking bread in.


HI loves chowder but was disappointed by the selection of fish in his, it was altogether too lumpy and creamy for our liking.


The steak pie was huge and had decent bits of meat in it.


My burger was too finely ground for my liking and had other stuff (tomato lettuce relish) in it that I don't like. Stravaigin still wins.
So, yes if I was down this end I would definitely make a bee line for it, the lunch deal can't be beat.