Wednesday 23 July 2014

Pizza East Shoreditch

Pizza East is a small chain of three restaurants located in Portobello, Kentish Town and Shoreditch. It describes itself as a place where you can get "honest food with rustic simplicity" but how does it really fare?

Walking into the Shoreditch branch, I found a relatively large and bustling restaurant - so clearly a popular place.

Bethnal Pale Ale action.

Naturally I ordered a pizza and found it had a good crispy base and crust - just how I like it. The toppings were a bit sparse though - see below.  Nonetheless overall it was a good decent-sized pizza that filled me up.

Anchovies, tomato, mozarella, capers, olives.

As a restaurant with the word 'pizza' in its title, you'd expect there to be a good choice of different pizzas and you're not wrong; there are 11 different pizzas overall ranging from £8 to £14:

Pizza menu at Pizza East, source


But despite the name, there are also non-pizza dishes on the menu.  My colleague ordered the mac 'n' cheese.  I can't say I tasted any of it, so I'll have to reserve judgement on its taste, but it certainly looked tasty.

Mac 'n' cheese.

Overall I had a good time at Pizza East and I wouldn't mind giving a few of the other dishes a go.  Maybe that man 'n' cheese...

Pizza East on Urbanspoon Square Meal

Saturday 5 July 2014

Dozo Soho - Japanese restaurant

Dozo Sushi is a Japanese restaurant in Soho, London.  While its name strongly suggests that it specialises in sushi, its main menu actually features many other items including grilled dishes, bento boxes and noodle soups.  So there's definitely something for most people, should you not fancy sushi.

The girlfriend opted for a donburi dish - specifically a sushi don.  Essentially a sushi don is a large bowl of sushi rice with salmon sashimi on top, served alongside a miso soup.  If you like salmon sashimi but want something a bit more filling, this is a good choice; it is a simple yet great tasting and filling dish.  

Sushi don.
I do like a good noodle soup, so I opted for the Spicy Ramen.  This consisted of ramen noodles (obviously), stir fry beef, fish cake, nitamago egg and vegetables.  There were lots of different ingredients and flavours here - I quite enjoyed it and was glad I ordered it.

Spicy ramen.
As we paid the bill, the waiter gave us 10 per cent discount for paying by cash - worth knowing if you're planning a visit and fancy a bit of a discount.

Closest Tube: Leicester Square

Dozo Soho on Urbanspoon

Friday 4 July 2014

Wild mushroom, chicken and bacon risotto

The girlfriend and I decided to save some money and make dinner at home tonight.

We followed a variation of this +BBC Good Food recipe for a wild mushroom, chicken and bacon risotto.

Source: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/7744/wild-mushroom-chicken-and-bacon-risotto.
We did however made a few changes, due to personal preference:

  • Added some courgettes.
  • Used jarred mushrooms instead of dried mushroom.
  • Used less butter.
...but it was otherwise more or less the same as the recipe above.

Here's the end result...




I'm not one for presentation but importantly I thought it actually tasted pretty good and it was quite easy to make.

P.S. I got all the ingredients from German supermarket Lidl.  Anyone who knows me knows my favourite supermarket is normally Aldi - it's cheap yet quality.  Today I decided to give Lidl a go and I have to say I thought the Lidl ingredients were at least as good on this occasion.