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Coren on SGR
Word on the street: the subject of Giles Coren's restaurant review this Saturday is Stroud Green Road's very own Seasons restaurant...
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I'd guess he'll try to get "minging" in, or possibly the wig angle might be worked into something about figs.
The only reason to buy the Times these days (apart from Mr Coren) is so you have something to rest the crossword on.
"So if you’re anywhere in the marginal vicinity, and in the car, I suggest you head on over the bridge towards Crouch End, then veer off towards Finsbury Park and home in on Stroud Green Road, where you’ll find Season.
Season is small, independently owned, and as it endeavours to make its food as seasonal, local and sustainable as possible, they won’t serve you green beans in January. And because it’s Finsbury Park, they won’t charge you £20/head for one course and no drinks and then laugh behind your back.
We went with my cousin Stefanie and her husband Paul, who live round there and had been a couple of times since it opened late last year. It is intimate, sensitive to its community, well lit, rather noisy and packed with good-looking young people who haven’t got much money. It is everything Côte is not.
And the food is not bad. From a short (6-7-4) menu, we had sweet smoked salmon from Hansen & Lydersen round the corner in Stoke Newington, a pear and chicory salad with walnut and Stilton dressing, and two slices of beef (which they called “dry spiced” where I’d have said “cold roast”) with apricot and almond chutney and a pile of nice warm soda bread. There was also a soup, an escabeche and a pâté.
I had a really cracking haunch of venison with a red wine and chocolate gravy. I’m not a deer and chocolate man, but this was exquisite, the chocolate just giving a shine to the sauce and a bittersweet lift, but nothing more. There was good clam and bacon chowder, slow-cooked collar of bacon in a huge pile with excellent, meaty pease pudding and heaps of cavolo nero, which is what you do want in London in January, not bloody African beans.
Esther was a bit fierce in her assessment of the polenta with wild mushroom ragù and mozzarella, but she was nearly nine months pregnant and tending to be fierce in her assessment of most things.
We had pudding – Cambridge burnt cream and a nougat glacé – and two bottles of the best wine on the menu, and coffee, and it came to about £120. This sort of decent local grub could do wonders for house prices around here. If things take off, Stroud Green could one day become the new Highgate – a suburb miles from anywhere with no shops or restaurants but a hell of a line in estate agents."
@Miss Annie. Thanks for the tip about the price. It's 40 p cheaper than The Guardian's Saturday edition. The library sugestion is a good one too. However, with the onset of free online editions I often just read bits and pieces from them.
Having been open for, what, three months and to be well reviewed in The Times (& Timeout, and others) I think they have every right to be proud and I wish them all the best.
The venison truly is cracking.