East Street, Rathbone Place

The very idea of 'Pan Asian' makes me sigh wearily and roll my eyes and I know full well that this is the snob in me. The countries are so different in their flavours and techniques I can't understand how a chef can be skilled enough to do all of them fantastically; yet I don't even raise an eyebrow when I see a 'Modern European' restaurant. I suppose perhaps having grown up in the Far East makes me fiercely protective, and no amounts of people telling me they like to have the option of sushi with their Thai green curries will fix that. Not to mention the sheer bloody wrongness of mixing those cuisines with such fervour - it's just not for me. I was almost apoplectic with indignation upon catching sight of Dim Sum Diner's menu.

So you might wonder why I accepted an invite to go to East Street, newly opened on the site of the former Eagle Bar & Diner. I'll be honest. I was seduced by the website. It's all pretty and colourful! And not a California roll of sushi in sight. I had high hopes.

I took a friend I knew would know his Asian and between us we picked dishes that spanned across the continent. Edamame was served freshly steamed and warm while we waited for our first dishes to appear. Bulgogi was thinly sliced grilled beef served with lettuce leaves and kimchi. The beef was grilled nicely to pink and it went well with the spicy kimchi. Wrapped up in a leafy parcel it was pleasant enough.

Tempura prawns were nicely battered crisp, served with the standard tempura dip. Though well priced at £5.75 for the dish, I think you should either pad it out (surely some tempura vegetables can't break the bank?) or use a smaller plate. It seemed sparse.

When our waitress explained the menu to us - and when I say explained, I mean read out the titles - the salads were described as suitable as a main course. Uhm. No. But when shared alongside, it was very nice. The chicken was nicely grilled and the vegetables crunchy, but we both agreed it needed more sourness, a bit more pep. The advertised coriander was barely there.

Special dish of the day was Mee Goreng, from Malaysia. This is a dish of fried yellow noodles with meat, sometimes pickles and egg, often cooked in lard for extra deliciousness. The dish presented to us was nothing of the sort. It was gloopy and lacked any of what we call in Cantonese 'wok hei', breath of the wok. That's the smoky, charcoal smell you get from frying things in a wok at a high heat - that's the kind of smell you encounter all over South East Asia.

My own dish, Khao Soi noodles was billed as chicken and yellow noodles in red curry sauce. A whole two chillis sit next to this menu listing so I was expecting something nose clearing, or at least sweat inducing. Disappointingly, it didn't even induce a sniffle. Again, it was gloopy and rich without enough lime or fresh red onion to cut through that heavy coconut. Deceptively deep, the bowl turned out to be quite small for the £8.95 they were charging though given that I lost interest half way through all the better for the small serving. Why bother with this? What is even the point in saying it's hot on the menu when you won't make it so? This sort of thing really pisses me off; if you're too lame to serve dishes authentically spiced, then don't serve it at all. Open a pie and mash shop or something.

That famous mango with sticky rice dessert seen all over Bangkok was a total disaster. The claggy clump of sticky rice was barely sweet and physically taxing to get through, the coconut cream served either side of it rendered completely useless. The mango was only just ripe, perhaps a touch under given it had still a powdery texture. Miles away from the real thing.

The Malaysian bubor pulot hittam was a black glutinous rice dessert with coconut cream and palm sugar. This was luxurious and tasty, the rice nicely cooked.

All in all, it was as expected. Jack of all trades and master of none. I know people will love this; the bright colours, Cath Kidston-esque decorated stools and the manga cartoons projected onto a huge back wall will be an instant hit, but then again people love that hell hole that is Cha Cha Moon, and for God's sake people still flock to Wagamamas. But me and Pan Asian, we are over. It was a brief flirtation and it just didn't work out.

East Street

3 - 5 Rathbone Place
London W1T 1HJ

Tel: 020 7323 0860



I didn't pay as I was invited to review but this would have been £20 / head.

Aubergine & Tamarind Curry

Have I ever mentioned how much I love aubergines? It's borderline obsessive really. They're big meaty things with fantastic texture and they absorb flavours like a sponge, what's not to love? This curry is fairly similar to the aubergine, coconut and lime dhal in that they both contain aubergines, coconut - this time though, with a Thai twist and a sour tang that comes from tamarind.

A vivid orange curry was packed full of iron-rich cavolo nero and a head of pak choi that I had spare in the fridge; you can really use any green vegetable you like. Lots of dried red chillis were minced together with galangal, lemon grass and garlic to make a curry paste but it's the lime leaves thrown in while cooking that really gives it that fragrance the Thais do so well.

Aubergine & Tamarind Curry

Serves 2

For the spice paste:

A large handful of dried red chillis, rehydrated in boiling water
2 inches of galangal
6 cloves of garlic
1 stalk of lemongrass, inner soft part only
Half an onion
1 tbsp ground coriander
1 tsp shrimp paste
2 tbsp vegetable oil

Deseed the chillis and blitz all of the above with a little of the water from soaking the chillis.

1 medium aubergine
3 stalks of cavolo nero, or other dark leafy greens
4 lime leaves, torn roughly
1 can of coconut milk
A few seeds of tamarind - put these in a little boiling water and work the tamarind paste away from the seeds. Drain, reserving the tamarind paste. Alternatively, use 1.5 tbsp ready made tamarind paste
1 tbsp sugar, to taste
2 tbsp fish sauce (or to taste)
1 tbsp each of chopped basil and coriander

Slic the aubergines into fingers and fry in a little oil until coloured on both sides. Set aside. Heat some oil in a wok and add 2 tbsp of the curry paste. Stir fry until fragrant, then add the aubergines back in. Add the leafy greens and stir to coat. Add the coconut milk with the lime leaves and cook gently for 15 - 20 minutes.

Add the tamarind, the fish sauce tbsp by tbsp and the sugar; taste as you go. Add more of whatever you think it needs but keep tasting; it should be perfectly balanced.

Scatter with the chopped basil and coriander and serve with rice.

The Heron - Fire in the Depths of London

One of my most distinct memories as a child was sitting in a beach hut on the island of Bohol, in the Philippines, slurping on a sour, broth-like soup. I came across what I thought was a green bean and carried on merrily munching away. There it was. That initial tingle that tells you its a chilli, the panic rising in your throat, and then the full force, lighting your very saliva into flames, rendering you speechless and spluttering. Or, like me, running around the restaurant screaming, much to the amusement of the restaurant staff. My dad, quite the chilli nut himself, scoffed and had a taste of the spat-out offender. He went a deep shade of crimson.

It was tonight in the brightly lit, garishly furnished basement of The Heron, an old man's pub near Paddington, that a dish consisting of minced duck (laab ped, opening photo) that almost did took me back to being 6 again. I managed to hold it together though and instead became light-headed and giddy, gently panicking within and sucking the air through gritted teeth like a woman in labour.

The Heron is like no other Thai restaurant I've experienced in London. It's situated opposite a ropey-looking estate, and upstairs serves an English menu of Thai food, while the basement has an entirely different menu only in Thai. Large plasma screens adorn the walls for their customers to do some karaoke pre, mid or after their meal. While eating if I'd shut my eyes it would've taken me right back to Bangkok street stalls; none of this dumbed-down guff that other London restaurants peddle.

Luckily for us, The Skinny Bib has been kind enough to translate the menu in full, though when we were there our lovely waitress was more than happy to take us through the menu. I went for things you don't often see in other Thai restaurants so with that caveat this is what we had.

Cashew nut salad, while we waited for our tardy friend. Tossed together and eaten with a spoon, I made sure to avoid the red birds eye chillis. They are mothers. It was still spicy, and tiny little pieces of lime were chopped with it to flavour every mouthful.

This was a special of the day, from the board in the restaurant. Pork hock tom yum soup; served bubbling in a pot, this was intensely flavoured with lemongrass and was pleasingly tangy. Wibbly wobbly bits of pork lent great depth to it.

Yum pla duk fuu - dry catfish salad. The catfish was almost dehydrated to a floss and once doused with the sweet-spicy-sour sauce it made a great mouthful to have a long chew on with celery leaves adding freshness.

Kaeng som goong cha om tod kai - orange curry with prawns and cha om omelette. This came out with squares of omelette made with cha om, a medicinal, slightly astringent-tasting herb inside. I've never had orange curry and it was thin and soup like, no coconut milk and was surprisingly mild and sweet.

Kai yiew mar kra pow krob - minced pork and century egg. This was one of my favourites; the black, gooey egg quarters were fried so that they had a crispy coating. Minced pork on top with stir-fried basil leaves were doused in a sweet sauce. One of only three mild dishes of the evening, this went really well with rice.

Som tam Thai + poo (stop sniggering at the back) - Papaya salad with peanuts and salted crab. The shredded green papaya is pounded with lime juice, chillis and peanuts. Salted crab is pounded with it for seasoning and a mild fishy flavour. This was fiery, as I'm accustomed to.

Tam taeng poo + pla rah - cucumber salad with fermented fish essence. I ordered a dish at Nahm in Bangkok which contained fermented fish and it was so funky I could barely even look at it. I'm pleased to report this was not in the same league and was actually cooling to our fiery tongues.

Yum nhaam - Northern sour sausage salad. The sausage was slightly lost in amongst the big flavours of the lime, chilli and red onion. I was beginning to wonder if perhaps we had ordered one too many salads.

Another special of the day, clams stir-fried in a soy-like sauce. These sweet little grit-free clams were a welcome respite to our heat-blasted faces and were extremely moreish, the sweet caramel flavours melding and not masking the seafood well. Finally, stir-fried broccoli with salted fish (kar nar pla kem). Cooked till tender but crunchy, another soothing, cooling dish.

The 5 of us have pretty strong constitutions and one by one, we were all hit slowly but surely with the chilli blindness. We went down like dominoes at the table; firstly, a hush would descend over that person, beads of sweat popping out. Breathing more laboured, hands would then flap to motion more beers toward them. But strangely you don't stop eating. Like an addiction, you just keep shovelling it in, perhaps more wary of rogue chillis hidden in your pile. It recedes eventually. But its not just about the spiciness; the flavours of each dish were pronounced and well balanced. Herbs used shone though the fire, complementing the meat or fish perfectly.

More than one of us wondered how many other of our friends would have been able to cope (the answer is none, I suspect) but they do ask you how hot you would like your meal and we enthusiastically replied "pretend we're proper Thais!" so you have some control over it.

4 boys and 1 girl stuffed themselves silly on the above with steamed rice, sticky rice and fire-extinguishing beers for £36 a head, with tip. We all wished each other luck and headed off home.

The Heron

Norfolk Crescent
London W2 2DN

020 7724 8463 (We didn't bother booking but by 8pm on a Wednesday it was packed, mainly full of young Thais.)

Thai Sour Fish Curry

I call it a curry but really it's more like a soup. I've been craving sour things recently, that bite of lime or tamarind and blazing heat on the tongue. I also have a habit of picking up new and unknown vegetables, and it just so happened that the 'bai yor' I bought on impulse is perfect for Thai fish curries. Thus a plan fell into place.

Firstly, a spicy curry paste is made. Various vegetables are simmered with stock and said curry paste, and the final touch is to blitz just-cooked white fish into flakes, then add it to the soup for essential fish flavour, texture and to thicken it up a bit. I used the cheapest white fish I could find for this, coley; alternatively, you could just drop chunks of white fish in to poach. The bai yor leaves go in last for a final simmer; they act like spinach and wilt down, adding a slightly bitter flavour to the dish. It's fine to leave out if you can't find it.

Sour Fish Curry

Serves 2

For the paste

5 red birds eye chillis
5 dried chillis
2 stalks of lemongrass, soft innards only
1 inch piece of galangal
2 tbsp tamarind paste
1 small onion
6 cloves of garlic
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt

Soften dried chillis in hot water. Deseed the chillis and blitz with the rest of the ingredients into a fine paste. You may need to add a little oil.

10 prawns
200gr white fish
A handful of green beans
A few leaves of Chinese cabbage
A few bai yor leaves (optional)
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 lime
300mls fish or chicken stock
A handful of coriander, chopped

In a pan, add the curry paste and fry gently for a few minutes. Add the stock and the Chinese cabbage, then then green beans cut into inch long pieces. Simmer for a few minutes. Either add the fish in chunks or cook the fish separately and blitz into flakes, then add to the soup. Add the bai yor, fish sauce, then the prawns and cook until the prawns turn pink and take off the heat immediately. Serve with a wedge of lime and rice, if desired.

Moo Ping

After I munched on moo ping (grilled pork skewers) at Kaosarn, a Thai restaurant in Brixton, I knew I had to make them. Charcoal-scented pork, juicy with fat and the perfect balance of sweet and spicy? Yes please. A friend was having a barbecue so it seemed the perfect opportunity to try my hand at making them. If I'm not careful I'll get myself a reputation for being a 'things on sticks' kind of girl. Though I suppose that wouldn't be too bad.

I think the traditional cut of meat for this is pork neck, but I couldn't find any so I went for shoulder steaks. With ample amounts of fat, this makes sure the pork doesn't dry out on the ferocious heat of the barbecue. Sliced thinly and cooked quickly makes sure that they don't go tough. Don't be alarmed by the amount of sugar; you need it for essential caramelisation. Dipping sauce is mandatory.

Moo Ping

600gr pork shoulder steaks
5 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp coconut milk

Slice the shoulder into think strips, about 1cm wide. Mince the garlic and mix with the other ingredients, then marinade overnight, or at least for a couple of hours. Thread onto bamboo skewers soaked in water for half an hour. Barbecue, turning often as the sugar in the marinade tends to catch. They don't take long - 5 - 10 minutes.

Dipping Sauce:

1 tbsp chilli flakes
1 green chilli
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp water
1 tsp sugar
Juice of 1 lime
3 tbsp oil

Place the chilli flakes in a heatproof bowl with the green chilli, sliced. Heat the oil till almost smoking, then carefully pour over the chilli mix. Wait to cool for a few minutes, then add the fish sauce, water, sugar and lime. Mix thoroughly. Serve with the skewers.

Barbequed Prawns

I think I'm on barbeque number 7 of the year already. We definitely like to grill our food; not many weekends have gone by recently that I haven't gone home reeking of smoke.

It can be a little tricky after a while to think of something imaginative to take. I don't really go in for the whole burger and sausage affair, preferring more exotic concoctions, like grilled pineapple salsa or stuffed squid. I stood staring blankly in the aisles of the supermarket before it dawned on me; some skewered prawns would be perfect. I abandoned the place and scored myself a kilo of prawns for a tenner down the local Chinese supermarket.

I made two different marinades, both very different. The first consisted mainly of chipotle en adobo (recipe here) but with an added onion, more garlic and a couple handfuls of dill. The dill seemed an odd choice but it gave the prawns a nice grassy and citrus flavour. You must eat them messily with your hands and a roll of kitchen paper, as it's the shell with the majority of the flavours that you lick off your fingers.

Chipotle Prawns

500gr prawns, shell and head on
4 tbsp chipotle en adobo
1 white onion
3 cloves of garlic
1 tsp salt
A large handful of dill

Set the prawns aside in a large bowl and whizz up all the ingredients for the sauce. Mix together with the prawns and leave overnight or for as long as you can - I did 3 hours and it was fine. Skewer onto wooden kebab sticks that have been soaked in water for an hour or so, and barbeque - they only need as long as they turn pink.

The second load were far more Thai-inspired. A combination of lime, fish sauce, fiery chillis and coriander ensured they packed a punch.

Thai-style Prawns

500gr prawns
5 cloves of garlic
3" of ginger
4 tbsp fish sauce
1 onion
2 handfuls of coriander
2 limes
1 tbsp sugar
4 red birds eye chillis

Whizz up the fish sauce with the ginger, onion, garlic, chillis and sugar. Squeeze in the lime juice and then whizz again with the coriander. Coat the prawns in the marinade for a good 3 hours, then skewer and barbeque.

Street Food in Bangkok

We found it fairly difficult to find street food that weren't noodle soups in Bangkok. This was no bad thing; we often started our day with a bowl of thick, hor-fun noodles and a choice of duck or goose. Chillis steeped in fish sauce and a little deep fried garlic ensured we'd be carried through till lunchtime. But where were all these som tams, the laab salads, and curries galore? Perhaps we didn't look hard enough; after our binge in Penang our palates were a touch jaded.

But what a way to liven up the tastebuds with a searingly hot seafood salad (above). Raw prawns, squid and little clams were selected from a big tray of ice and dumped briefly in boiling water, before being fished out and then added to a plate. Tomatoes, strips of raw onion, lime, fish sauce and garlic are pounded in a pestle and mortar, then added to the seafood. It was a slow-building heat, leading to proper fire in the mouth.

Our first night saw us meeting up with @NicolaChilton for some street-side eats. It's always great to be taken around a new place by a local, even though you've never met before and Nicola took us for some cracking pork noodles. We then headed off to Soi 38 off Sukumvit, to sample Pad Thai cooked ferociously in a wok, packed full of vegetables and allegedly made with condensed milk. The vegetables had a great crunch and a lovely, smoky flavour to it, without the sticky sweetness you get in London Thai restaurants.

We finished off with sticky rice and mango. The mango was soft and deliciously sweet, while the intensely coconut flavoured rice was light, not like the dense, rich examples I was used to. Outstanding eats.

Another food highlight of our trip was stumbling upon a street food vendor near the Khao San Road. Not a word of English was spoken, and in the end we resorted to pointing at another table's food with a thumbs up. A pork laab, heavy on the shallots and topped with toasted crunchy rice was accompanied with a little plastic bag of sticky rice. Tom yum soup, also with pork, came as a big vat. Sour, spicy and savoury all at once, it was as good as I've ever had it.

Staggering around Chatuchak Market with a raging hangover was pretty painful. The biggest open air market in Asia, it was heaving and hot. I took refuge at a bright cafe, and all they served were Isaan-style salads and Thai sausages. Deep fried chicken tossed with shredded papaya, chilli and limes took the edge off the Sangsom head I was sporting.

It wasn't all good. Intrigued by the 'broccoli and mozzerella pie' and the dessert 'corn pie' in McDonald's, we ordered both to try out. Both were fucking disgusting. We weren't hugely surprised.

Nahm, Bangkok

When I was asked whether I wanted to review Nahm, David Thompson's new restaurant housed in The Metropolitan Hotel in Bangkok, I did hesitate. I only had four days in Bangkok; did I want to spend a precious meal in a hotel restaurant? And then I remembered we'd be just coming off a 22 hour sleeper train, from Malaysia to Bangkok. We'd probably be world-weary, tempers frayed and a bit grubby so a nice posh meal might do us good. That's my justification.

In reality, the train was bloody brilliant. For a mere £20 in second class, our seat changed into beds and a train attendant took our dinner and breakfast orders. They were such delicious meals that we were agog. But nevertheless, Nahm would prove an interesting contrast between high-end and street food that we'd been eating. As we shuffled into the hotel with crumpled clothes fresh from our backpacks, we were greeted warmly. A Tom Yum-tini was spicy and full of lime. No fish sauce, thank god.

We were recommended the set menu, which allowed us to have all 3 canapes, a choice of a salad, a curry, a stir-fried dish to share and a soup each. At a whopping 1500 baht each, compared to the 40 baht bowls of noodles we'd been eating, this really felt like pushing the boat out. Candied pork on pineapple chunks were sweet, yet deeply savoury and juicy.

Quails eggs topped with pickled green chillis, balanced on a puff of pork crackling was the perfect balance of soft egg and crisp crackling that was light as a feather. Blue swimmer crab on top of a rice cracker had similar textural contrasts. The crab was sweet and fresh.

Watermelon with fish floss and betel leaves were... odd. The watermelon was sweet and juicy, the fish floss intensely dry. Wrapped in a crunchy betel leaf, the contrasts were extreme. I rather enjoyed it, though my friend found it slightly unpleasant.

We picked the braised salted beef rib green curry and it packed some serious punch. We were told that curries in Thailand were a much of a muchness, many of them being too similar to pick the best but this was well flavoured with an absolute shitload of chilli, some galangal and kaffir lime leaves. The beef was fall-off-the-melt-in-the-mouth deliciousness. I need to salt some beef ribs.

To bat the chilli heat away, the lobster and young coconut salad was bland and soothing. That sounds like a criticism, but it wasn't really. The juicy coconut with the sweet lobster was a tongue-soother.

Of the soups, my friend and I couldn't have picked more polar opposites. I love big gutsy flavours, so this smoked fish soup with sour leaves whalloped you right in the taste buds. Conversely, my friend's crab and snake gourd soup was reminiscent of the Chinese egg drop soups I grew up with, with hints of coriander.

We asked our waiter to recommend us a dish and he enthusiastically recommended this fermented fish dish. The idea was to eat it with a wodge of rice, topped with a citrus-flavoured leaf. I'm fairly used to fermented things, what with stinking my kitchen out with fermented tofu on many occasion, but I found it hard to get over the kiff.

Jackfruit simmered in coconut cream was quite the heavy ending to what was a deceptively big feast. Full of weird textures and fruity flavours, it defeated us.

Maprang simmered in perfumed syrup was baffling. I still to this day can't tell you what maprang is, but the syrup tasted of jasmine and the sour prunes complemented it well.

While Nahm was pretty expensive in comparison to the rest of Bangkok, it was an absolute bargain for London prices, and the food was great. I have no point of comparison having not eaten in any fancy hotel restaurants in Bangkok, but it was far more refined and a damn sight better than any Thai restaurant I've visited in London. Aside from a fairly bland squid cooked in ink with sugarsnap peas (which, arguably, was the right kind of blandness given the massive flavours we were contending with), the food was all delicately but perfectly balanced. I particularly liked that they didn't scrimp on the heat for where would obviously be a place frequented by Westerners - we had brows of sweat.

(Oh, and the cocktails were great.)

Concierge looked amused when we asked for a taxi to the Khao San Road.

Nahm

Metropolitan Bangkok

27 South Sathorn Road
Tungmahamek
Sathorn
Bangkok 10120
Thailand

Thailand, New Cross

I've walked past it many times, but a couple of Fridays ago I finally made it to Thailand, a restaurant on an ugly strip in New Cross. Decent Thai food is hard to come by in London; I've had thick, sickly sweet 'green curry' at such places like the chain, Thai Square. At other places, the dishes felt dumbed down for the Western palate with none of that hot, sour and sweet balance, and bereft of the chilli zip I would like. Patara came close, but it's fancy and has prices to match.

When we arrived at Thailand, we were the only diners at 7pm on a Friday night, and it was to remain that way. An extensive menu featured a page of Laotian specials as well as a £10 set menu to include a starter, main and a glass of wine. To supplement our set menus, we ordered a dish of Thai sausages (above). Sweet, intensely porky and eaten with a little coriander and red onion, the skins burst juicily with a prod of the fork.

Chicken tom yum soup was deliciously deceptive. Slowly but surely, a nose-running, eye-streaming heat built up as I carried on slurping at it. Just the right balance of sour and spicy, tender pieces of chicken bobbed in the broth.

The laab style main I ordered came with raw cabbage which I thought rather odd; I'd have rather lettuce leaves to scoop the minced pork up with. Studded throughout with Thai basil, the crunch of the ground toasted rice was pleasing.

'Angry Lamb' looked suitably menacing and the tender, slightly pink chunks of lamb languished in a fire-packed sauce. Red peppers and onions bulked it out, and I was grateful of the steamed rice to cool the flames.

Thailand has its faults but I felt the food there to be a cut above the London chains and perfect when you're in need of a spice hit. I'm looking forward to going back for the curries; absurdly, they operate a 'happy hour' during which they offer a starter and main with rice to eat in for £3.95. It would cost me more than that if I attempted to make it at home.

Thailand

15 Lewisham Way
London SE14 6PP

Tel: 020 8691 4040