London Food Detective

Bill's, Brighton and Covent Garden: Best of Brunch

Grace and I have visited Bill's five times over the summer and it's fair to say that it has become a bit of a favourite.

Originally opening in Lewes and then moving on to Brighton, the Covent Garden branch is the fourth outlet of the laid back, chilled out, grocery store/restaurant and the only hope it that it can keep the spirit and quality of the first two branches as it expands.

The first four occasions we went to Bill's was for brunch - the meal on which it has developed it's reputation.

Vegetarian Breakfast

Grace loves the vegetarian breakfast.  It's an eclectic mix of tomatoes, poached egg, mushrooms, sweet chilli sauce, guacamole and hummus.  It sounds disgusting, but everyone I know who has tried it, absolutely loves it and adores the combination of flavours.

The couple of times I've been, I've had the scrambled eggs and bacon.  In Brighton it was fab - fresh, buttery, perfectly cooked scrambled eggs and good quality crispy bacon.  However, on my visit to the Covent Garden branch, the scrambled eggs weren't nearly as good and were badly overcooked and omlette like. 

I suspect that they were cooked in a batch and left to sit on the hotplate, rather than being made fresh as in Brighton.  Hopefully this is the sort of slip Bill's can avoid as it grows, as it will soon damage it's reputation if it doesn't maintain the quality of the Lewes and Brighton branches.  Given everything I've had there has been enjoyable, then I'll hope it was a one off. 

 

Chorizo and roasted peppers

On our post noon visit, I really enjoyed the spicy chorizo in a brioche bun with soft, moreish peppers and a cooling yoghurt.  Chips were adequate, but the burger was something I'd definitely have again.

 

Strawberry meringue

Bill's also has a good line up of desserts and a wide selection of cakes.  My two favourites have been the summery meringue with strawberries, which had the right balance of crispness and chewiness and the rich, slightly decadent, gooey chocolate brownie with chocolate sauce, a flake and vanilla icecream.  Simple, but addictive and great for a chocoholic like me!

Chocolate Brownie

Overall, I'm a big fan of Bill's and it's good to have a reasonable, quick and affordable eating place close to Covent Garden.  I'll forgive them once for the dodgy scrambled eggs, given the friendly waiting staff (makes a difference from some of the surly service I've experienced nearby) and the overall vibe of the place.

 

Bea's of Bloomsbury: Praise Bea!

For the past 18 months I’ve been based in Holborn and lunch generally consists of a bog-standard sandwich from Pret or another run of the mill place.

However, about a year ago I discovered Bea’s and when I wanted more than a sandwich, but didn’t have time for a sit down meal then I’d pop down the road to Bea’s to see what delights they had on display.

I probably been about seven or eight times in that time and, as I’ve recently moved jobs, I wanted to let the world know how fab the place is and to encourage Bea to open a shop south of the river - preferably between Waterloo and Elephant & Castle!

Bea’s specialises in delicious, decadent, calorific cupcakes, brownies and desserts. I’ve indulged in a few when I’ve had a particularly bad morning and needed cheering up or if I’ve wanted to say a thank you to someone in the office. They are seriously good.

However, it’s the savoury dishes that I’ve devoured most.  The lunch concept is simple – a small selection of sandwiches and a range of delicious dishes that change daily. You get given a plate (or a salad box for takeaway) and choose which ones you want to sample. 

The dishes ranges from imaginative salads to tasty meat dishes (I remember a particularly good sweet & sour pork dish) and all the food is fresh and of high quality.

The prices are very reasonable and it offers a great alternative to a full restaurant lunch.

The staff are charming, chatty and friendly and overall it’s a lovely place to pop into to and spend some time.

As I eat there quite regularly, I haven’t taken any photos, but there are some great ones at Flickr.

Fingers crossed I can find an excuse to attend a meeting in the Holborn area again soon!

 

A Night with Paul A Young: Chocolate Artisan

My name is Craig. I’m 31 and I’m a chocoholic.

However, I’m not planning to go on any 10-steps programme to cure me any time soon and my recent lesson with Paul A Young has only my heightened my love of the sweet stuff.

To say I’ve been excited about Grace and I having a private class with Paul is a bit of an understatement.  We’ve been fans of his chocolate for a while, both bought each other a box of his delights for Christmas and even our recent engagement had a chocolate theme (that’s a story for another time though).

We won the lesson at the Blagger’s Banquet back in October and it’s taken a few months to get a date for the lesson and so we turned up on a cold, wet February night ready to throw ourselves into the experience.

Now I’m sure Paul does a lot of similar classes, tastings etc and you’d think that after a full day’s work the last thing he wanted was to spend four hours giving two amateurs a lesson, but you’d never know it.  From the moment we arrived he was fully engaged, enthusiastic and charming, which made the evening even more memorable.

To begin with we were led to the back of the shop and downstairs to his kitchen.  The sweet smell of melted chocolate was wafting in the air as we went down the stairs and we were confronted with a mountain of Easter Bunnies, six pans of melting chocolate (more of these later) a mound of moulds and the essential raw ingredients to create the goods.

We were given a welcome drink (glass of bubbly for me and a hot chocolate for G), an amazing slice of his new sea salted caramel chocolate brownies and were told to help ourselves to more.  We didn’t need to be asked twice…

The sea-salted caramel brownies were particularly great.

We found out that the evening was to be split in two.

The first bit was all about the process of making chocolate, learning about the business and the raw ingredients used.  

The second part was putting into practice what we’d just learnt and making Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies.

Chocolate Tasting Guide

There are three main varieties of cocoa bean:

Cirollo – the Rolls Royce of beans. Premium, expensive and widely sought after.

Trinitario – widely used, aromatic with robust flavour.

Forestero – the beans used by the big manufacturers.  Blended with premium cocoa beans by smaller producers.

Within each variety there are subtleties of flavour, depending on the origin of the bean (a Madagascan bean will taste very different from a South American one) and how it has been roasted.

The Valrohna couverture chocolate, the different varieties, the melted couverture and cocoa butter

The beans are made in to ‘couverture’, which is a combination of beans, cocoa butter and sugar.  Paul’s kitchen is full of bags of this (you can even buy this in the shop if you want), which he uses to make his chocolates.

He then took us on a journey starting at 34% caramel milk chocolate up to 100%.  The difference in taste between two similar percentage beans is remarkable. Apparently it’s the quality and origin of the bean and not the % that makes the difference.

Paul treated us to some new chocolate that he’d just imported from Mast Brothers in New York (check out their cool packaging), which was like no chocolate I’ve ever tasted.  It was smooth, fruity and utterly delectable.  Paul is about to become the UK’s first and only stockist and I’d urge any chocolate connoisseur to try some.

Nine Paul A Young Chocolate Facts

1. The majority of the couverture chocolate Paul uses is from Valrhona.
2. Paul is 100% artisan (the only one in London) and doesn’t use any machinery in producing his chocolates.
3. Paul is an honorary member of the Academy of Chocolate.
4. He only uses Billington’s sugar.
5. Cocoa butter is the most expensive ingredient.
6. He can sell over 20 litres of hot chocolate on a busy Saturday!
7. He only buys ingredients from ethically sound producers.
8. He enjoys the occasional non-premium chocolate, but made us promise not to tell anyone…
9. We’re both from the North East and even went to the same dodgy nightclub when we were younger!

On to the making

Now on to the fun part as we got to ‘temper’ our choice of chocolate and make and decorate an Easter Egg and chocolate bunnies.

Tempering is the process of cooling the melted chocolate to the right temperature for it to set properly in the mould.  If it is too hot or cold then it won’t set properly and will need re-doing.

Tempering the chocolate. Paul uses wallpaper scrapers!

Paul uses a big slab of marble to temper on.  The chocolate is poured on to the slab and then manoeuvred and manipulated around to cool it.  It is then added back into the pot and mixed around until it is almost body temperature and just starting to set.

Tools of job. Paul showed us how to do it with great speed and dexterity and then it was our turn.

Grace went first and did a surprisingly good job and kept it all on the table without too much trouble.  I was another story all together and Paul had to rescue me a couple of times to stop rivers of viscous chocolate splodging on the floor.  

Making a mess!

However it was good fun (though surprisingly hard work) and I managed to do it without too much chocolate going missing in action.

Once the tempered chocolate was poured into the moulds we had to scrape the table top down and were able to munch on the still warm chocolate. Delicious.

Decorating the eggs

Next up was decorating and sealing our eggs. We created piping bags and filled them with melted chocolate and I created a variety of unusual patterns on my egg.

The final part in the kitchen was looking at the flavours store, which Paul uses to create and develop his fabulously chocolate creations.

It was then getting close to leave and we made our way back upstairs into the main shop to wrap what we had made. 

Paul gave us a signed copy of his award winning chocolate book, took a photo of us with our bounty and gave us an extra box of chocolates (with a large helping of our favourite sea salted caramels) just in case we hadn’t quite had enough!

All in all, we had an amazing four hours experience, which will stay with us for a long time.  It was even better than we expected.  It was a real privilege to spend time with one of the best chocolate makers in the world and even better to know that it also helped to raise money for a great cause.

The Icecreamists at Selfridges, Mayfair

I may have mentioned before that I have a bit of a sweet tooth, so when I was at Selfridges recently for my Pierre Koffman visit I was intrigued to see the Icecreamists 'God Save the Cream' installation.

The Icecreamists claim to be 'Liberating the world one lick at a time' and 'Agents of Cool' and the pop up cafe certainly has a wow factor.  Dark walls with bright neon pink writing on the walls, over the top furniture and the Queen driving an ice cream van!

Such a cool (no pun intended) place needs a product to match and I took Grace the week after to see if the ice cream was as good as the place looks.

The menu, also in bright pink, has 16 flavours to choose from and a number of specials.  These range from an ice cream hot chocolate to a decadent selection of pink champagne ice lollies.  These come in at an eye watering £39.99!

On my first visit I stuck to the simple tub of up to three flavours for £4.99.

Narrowing my choice to three was tough, but with the servers allowing you a taste of them in advance I finally settled on chocolate, dulche de leche and a berry sorbet.  G went for liquorice, rose water and dulche de leche.

The quality of all them was superb: rich, creamy, full of flavour and with a velvety smooth texture.  We probably didn't choose the best combination as we both thought the dulche de leche was slightly over powered by the other two.

The portion didn't look the biggest, but due to the quality of the ice cream it was surprisingly filling - there were no ice crystals and very little air, which you tend to find in bad ice cream.

As soon as we finished we decided we must return before it closes on the 1st November. 

This I duly did with my parents, who've been down visiting from the North East. I persuaded my mum to share one of the ice cream cocktails and went for 'The Chocoholic'.  At £16.99 it was by far the most expensive ice cream i've ever had, but boy it was good.

The picture doesn't really do it justice, as the top hat it came in was about six inches deep and it was full of dark and white chocolate ice cream, fruit, whipped cream and hazelnuts.  On the side came a glass of warm dark chocolate sauce that just added to the indulgence.

I wish i'd taken a pic of my mum's face as she tucked into it, as I don't think i've ever seen her enjoy something so much. It took about 20 minutes to get through it, but every spoonful was an indulgent delight.

If you want to wow someone or have a taste for ice cream then clear your diary and get down there before it closes on the 1st November.

Paul A Young - Fine Chocolates

Had the good fortune to try some chocolate from this place at the recent Taste of London event.

All I can say is wow!

The chocolate was absolutely out of this world and I ended up buying a couple of bars.

My favourite was the white chocolate with seasame seeds and salt.  It may not sounds that appetising, but it was delectable: the creaminess and richness of the white chocolate combined brilliantly with the salt and crunch of the sesame seeds to give a true taste sensation.

You can check his website out here.

I'm definitely going to have to find an excuse to go to Islington soon and stock up!