The best fish and chips in the world?

The aroma hit me as soon as the car door was open. 

Modest, unassuming...

Like a siren's musk, it attracted my senses instantly, wholeheartedly and unreservedly.

Chips. Frying - as our Lord, in His infinite wisdom, undoubtedly intended - in beef dripping. 

I say 'attracted my senses' because it's really more than just an aroma. It gets into your system on another level, possibly even engaging with ones sixth sense. Deep, rich, barely describable umami.

Before anything got to interact with my actual tastebuds, I knew it was going to be totally fucking awesome. The best chippy ever? In the entire world? It might well be.

Waiter, there's chips in my kebab!

I first tried a genuine 'Gyros' kebab when I was 13, on the first of many family holidays to Greece. Like the pornographic playing cards on sale in every souvenir shop, it blew my young and impressionable mind.

Of course, I was already very familiar with the sort of doner kebabs we had in London, lurking at the seedy and disreputable end of the food chain. Dodgy meat of unknown origin, with the same 'elephant leg' sometimes going around and around for days; tired salads; bland and slightly stale pitta breads; often run by Turkish Cypriots or their descendents, reliant on an undiscerning late-night customer base.

I should say that I actually didn't mind them as an occasional dubious treat, even as a non-inebriated 13 year old. But this was a whole world apart from the kebabs I knew. It looked similar - the meat came from a vertical spit, there was bread and salad - and yet it was so very different. And I can still remember that day.

Chips with everything

Hellenic goodness in every bite

The bread was round and puffy, delicate and soft, yet crispy from the press and it tasted oh so fresh. The meat was way tastier than any doner I'd ever had and mixed up with finely chopped salad and yoghurt and garlic. Oh, and there were chips in it! A few random fries poking out of my meat wrap. It was truly a handheld delight.

If recollection serves, there was a little hut on the beach in Aegina that served them. We discovered it a couple of days in to the holiday - the perfect lunchtime snack.

And it turned out not to be a one-off. On a day trip to Athens we found a really dingy place in a side street behind a metro station selling them - the shop front didn't look much, but the gyros was probably even better than the ones on the beach.

That was 33 years ago. But for one reason or another, Gyros has never really become a widespread thing over here. We get the standard UK kebab takeaways where the elephant legs haven't improved much since 1990. More recently we've had more opportunities to eat Lebanese shawarma, which is generally much better, and a treat in its own right. Then Boxpark Croydon gave us a 'Greek on the Street' outlet that actually served gyros. Happy days.

And now, just a few miles down the road from me, is Santorini Gyro, in Purley. I've been going there for post-pub gyros quite a bit. It's very good.

As it happens

Santorini is one of the Greek islands I haven't actually visited (well, there are so many of them!) but if it's anything like the ones I have been to, you won't struggle to find good food. I've no idea if it's specifically known for its gyros, but even if it isn't, I'm willing to buy into the fantasy when I'm in Purley!

It's located right opposite the 'town centre' entrance to Purley rail station, making it easy to find and convenient. It's independent and family run, open every evening except Monday. Everything is prepared fresh to order, and you can see it before your eyes. What's not to like?

There are a couple of tables outside, which I suppose you could use for on-site dining, but it's essentially takeaway only. And that's fine. That's exactly how gyros places in Greece worked and it feeds into the nostalgia for me. (Though Purley isn't exactly a secluded bay on Lefkas, I'm sure it's picturesque in its own way...)

You spin me right round

The menu is pretty straightforward, and I'd really recommend choosing the chicken or lamb gyros, and have it the way Greeks do with the toppings that come as standard.

Don't expect fiery heat. Chilli sauce is not the norm on a gyros. Instead prepare yourself for the garlicky yoghurt tang of homemade tzatiki, which melds beautifully into the meat, the bread, the salad and even the crunchy fries.  It's a combination that just works so well.

It's good value too. At 6 quid a pop for a decent-sized lamb or chicken gyros, loaded with everything (including fries) you really can't argue with it. If you require extra, a box of fries (with oregano, Greek style) is only £2. 

We've also tried one of their mixed grill boxes, with different kinds of souvlaki, and the salad, sauces and bread all separate. It's tasty enough, but just lacks the wow factor of the gyros where the flavours all merge together, and it's not as good value.

They also do a cheesy thing, with two flatbreads sandwiched together, full of cheese and gyros meat. This didn't quite hit the mark for me, but would be great if you like melty cheese, I suppose.

Talking of cheese, if you're of the meat-free persuasion they do Haloumi and Falafel wraps, which, presumably, come with all the rest of the gubbins that makes the gyros so special. And if you're thirsty you can get a little bottle of a strange sour cherry drink that's really quite pleasant.

Overall it's a great addition to the area and really quite different from most of the takeaway kebab options you'll be used to. For about 20 English pounds (or whatever the equivalent is in Drachma) a couple can have a gyros each, extra chips and some pop. 

I wouldn't argue with that.

 

Where to find it...

Santorini Gyro
3 Whytecliffe Road South,
Purley
CR8 2AA (map)

 

Uber EatShitAndDie

Today I'm going to tell you about Uber Eats, why they totally suck donkey dick, how their offering is a colossal fuck-off swindle, and why I'd rather starve than use their shitting hagfish of a delivery service ever again.

London's best shawarma is BACK!!!

Late night takeaways are a fact of life.

We've all eaten our share of dodgy fried chicken and toilet-grade kebabs when stricken with ferocious hunger pangs shortly after leaving the pub. Beer can do that to you.

Got a much better takeaway than the man on the bus

Perhaps the only real downside of the longer opening hours we've enjoyed for some years now is that most of the food options available at chucking-out time are invariably dire.

Well, almost invariably dire. There are, believe it or not, a few very special places where you can actually get something decent to eat at 12:37 AM. 

Cheeseburger pizza crust - greater than the sum of shit parts?

Sometimes you can whack two indifferent things together and produce something that's pretty good - better, indeed, than its constituent parts.

And sometimes when you fuse desirable components, from the collision emerges a whole that is truly fucking awesome - as happened at the Titanic brewery on the day they decided to combine dark stout, chocolate and vanilla to create the amazing 'Velvet Curtain', one of the silkiest, smoothest, lusciousest dark beers of all time.

But a lot of the time, when the inspiration is less than divine, putting one and one together simply results in a mangled hybrid, like when you go to the toilet and do both at the same time, or, as I call it, a number three.

And so I expected it to be with Pizza Hut's latest base-fad: the cheeseburger crust.

That's right. Cheeseburgers in a pizza crust. According to the promotional wank it's 'a fun sharing pizza with 10 succulent 100% British Beef burgers baked in the crust, smothered with melted mozzarella. Hurry! Limited time.'

Hmm. Sounds really fun. And succulent. And Limited time...

You know I love great burgers and I love great pizzas, but this is an experiment that was never going to end well. Still, the proof of the pizza is in the eating, so I felt I ought to give it a go...

Doing stuff in the wrong order

When I was a child, my primary hobby was probably collecting Star Wars figures. Han, Luke, Leia; Ree Yees, Bib Fortuna, The Gamorrean Guard. I had them all. Well, most of them.

The hunt to find them all excited me to such an extent that until relatively recently I still purchased vintage figures on Ebay in an attempt to complete my collection, and even now I occasionally have dreams that I’ve found a shop with a rare, new figure I haven’t seen before.

Yeah, I know. Victim of commercialism. At such a tender age. Tragic.

All my childhood hopes and dreams!

What is surprising though is that I was a bit of a late arrival on the scene, only having been born in 1977.

That was the year that the first of the three Star Wars films was released (there are only three Star Wars films and if you think otherwise you are a Stormtrooper's cock) and the first that I saw was actually the final part of the trilogy: Return of the Jedi.

This was 1983. In the Streatham Odeon back when it had three proper, big auditoria instead of 138 micro screens. Good times.

It opens with the resolution of a cliffhanger from Empire Strikes Back, but, being six, this didn’t bother me in the slightest. I got to see Ree Yees, Bib Fortuna and the Gamorrean Guard brought to life and so, to me, ROTJ was Star Wars, at least until we rented the first and second instalments from the video shop and I got to see the earlier portion of the trilogy.

I was also fascinated by the first series of Monty Python’s Flying Circus by virtue of not having seen it. When I was about eight they showed series 2 and 3 on TV and I was addicted. Utterly.

But in those days there was a very strange policy that the BBC could or would not repeat programmes more than three times, which is why the first series wasn’t shown in my lifetime until the rules were relaxed in the late 1980s, by which time I was 12 and Python was 20!

It’s hard to imagine this kind of reality these days, when channels like UK Gold and Dave show the same episodes of the same programmes ad infinitium, and you can watch them on Youtube whenever you feel like it.

I swear, every time I notice that an episode of Fawlty Towers is on, it’s always The Anniversary – Series 2, Episode 5 – which includes memorable appearances from the late Ken Campbell, and strident comic actress Pat Keen who used to live in the flat above me in Ipswich!

Why am I banging on about this shit?

Anyway, one thing I concluded from all this is that there isn’t necessarily any harm in ‘doing stuff in the wrong order’. Except when there is, obviously.

This lunchtime - following a pint or three in the consistently excellent Craft Beer Company - I finally made it to Daddy Donkey in Leather Lane. And given my enthusiasm for the Craft, I must have walked past the self-styled 'Kick Ass Mexican Grill' more times than I've seen Polly pretending to be Sybil Fawlty. Which, UK Gold and Dave, is a lot of times!

There are perhaps two reasons why the order of events could be said to be 'wrong' in this instance:

a) I’d already been a couple of times to their spin-off Burger van, ‘Boom’, which appeared on the scene far more recently and;

b) Daddy Donkey actually pre-empted all the other conveyer-belt Mexican food chains, like Tortilla, which I’ve previously favourably reviewed.

The twin towers of takeaway street

Boom Burger was never going to win any prizes in my search for the best burger in London.

It's fast and cheap (£4.95 for a burger with a couple of toppings and £6.50 for the deluxe version with fries and 'slaw - toppings extra) but the quality of beef just isn't up to the mark, and the char-grilled meat has a strange, burnt, shish-kebab-like flavour.

Whack that in a bog-standard toasted sesame bun and you've got a burger that tastes like it's come from a kebab shop late at night, and if you were in a kebab shop late at night you would, surely, have a kebab, no?

Also, food that might be acceptable late at night, when everywhere else is closed and you're staggering pissed, seldom hits the spot in the cold light of lunchtime, which is the only time that Boom is open.

Burr(it)o!

But I can probably forgive Daddy Donkey his lacklustre beef offspring for the simple reason that the 'Kick Ass Mexican Grill' does indeed kick ass and I really wish I'd sampled it earlier.

The formula is the same as that which has been copied by Tortilla. You choose your meat and rice and veg and salsa and they wrap it up in a big, err, wrap, and you're tucking in within seconds. Simple.

Fresh, fresh, fresh

It's classic street food and fairly good value at £5.95 - certainly given the choice between a substandard burger and a good buritto at a similar price, I know which one I'd plump for, and that might explain why Daddy Donkey typically sports a lengthy queue, while Boom Burger can serve you straight away.

 
Sometimes when things are assembled 'fresh', the components taste anything but, having been lying around all day, but this isn't the case here. The charcoally flavour in the burgers is nowhere to be found, and the grilled beef here is lean, tender and nicely seasoned. 

It would be tasty enough on it's own, but it's even better with the accoutrements of sour cream and salsa - which comes at a temperature of your choosing, though even the 'medium' version is actually fairly hot. 


While the beef is probably best, you can also choose from pork or chicken, and the number of possible combinations available, depending on what exactly you want on it, is almost beyond calculation.

Beany Breakfast burritos are available from 7 to 11 AM, when the lunch service takes over. They pack up at 4 PM, sometimes earlier.

That'll do, Donkey, that'll do

For my money the quality of the food is superior to the Tortilla chain and the portion is a tad more generous. Then again, Boom burger is a one off, run by the same people, and yet it's notably inferior to chains like Byron and Haché, so there are no hard and fast rules.

I could admit now that 'Jedi' is actually my favourite Star Wars film, but then I'd probably get beaten up by somebody, or force-fed Boom Burgers or something...

Where to find it

Daddy Donkey
Leather Lane

Clerkenwell,
EC1N 7TE
*********
Boom Burger

Leather Lane

Clerkenwell,
EC1N 7TE
********* 

Adios, Diccionario Mexicana!

It might be a widely-propagated myth that the Eskimos have 83 different words for snow, but Mexicans definitely have at least a dozen different words for Mexican food.

Tacos, burritos, taquitos, fajitas, tortillas, enchiladas, tamales, chimichangas, hongos, rellenos – who knows what it really all means when you see it on a menu in a Mexican restaurant?

We've all spent time handing plates around the table, trying to figure out which one of the near-identical dishes is which, before saying 'fuck it, it's all good'.

You know that no matter what you order, you’ll always get either a soft thing or a crispy thing, it will be filled with some combination of meat, rice, cheese, beans, salad, salsa, sour cream and guacamole, and it will normally be pretty damn delicious.

Yes, ‘tostada’ implies that it will be one of the crispy ones, and ‘quesadillas’ and ‘carnitas’ will contain cheese and meat respectively, but then so could any of the other items on the menu. I like it. I like going to Mexican restaurants and I liked the food in Mexico itself when I briefly found myself there a few years ago - but let's not kid ourselves that it's not all the same kind of stuff.

I’ve no idea why Mexican restaurants have such a bewildering array of menu items – just list the components and let folks choose exactly what configuration they chose for fucks sake.

Utter Crepe! (Well, actually quite good....)

The glut of visitors descending upon The Wharf this week for the Motor Expo has driven an already crowded area to the point of combustion. Possibly literally.

Motor Expo

It’s not just all the extra people, but the vehicles parked incongruously on every thoroughfare taking up space where people would normally be free to roam. Just not right, it isn't.

And I'm probably being as thick as a 4x4, or, worse, somebody who drives one, but I still haven’t figured out the fuck did they get all those Morgans and Lotuses and whathaveyou into the reception area of the tower. Do they remove all the people-doors and drive them in from the street one by one? Do they assemble the cars inside the building?

I’m not against motor shows – I actually find them quite interesting – but as with football and beer festivals, I find being in a large crowd a bloody nuisance rather than some kind of life-affirming sense of solidarity and togetherness. (And, yes, I still experience crowds at football, despite supporting a very unsuccessful and unpopular team).

Anyway, with thousands of Fiesta drivers excitedly taking lots of pictures of supercars they’ll never be able to afford (as well as the resident BMW 3-Series suitcunts who could buy something more interesting but won’t), the places where I usually pick up my lunch have all been doing very good business. 

The A-Z of BLTs

The annoying thing about 'little-known facts' is that they tend to do the rounds until everybody knows them, which seems to defeat the object really.

A surprising number of people know that Mike Nesmith’s mum invented Tipp-Ex, but fewer know that my father invented the BLT.

That might be because he didn’t actually invent it, obviously, but as a hungry child I believed he had invented the BLT, and in many ways that’s more important.

Back in the 1980s and early 90s, we often drove out into the countryside – or at least as far as Mitcham Common which almost felt like the countryside in them days - to catch pond life, walk disused railway trackbeds and extinguish forest fires.

Spartan by name...

We’d sing folk songs as we jauntily sped along in his Spartan Roadster or whatever eccentric vehicle he happened to be driving that month, armed with a picnic hamper full of apples, fruitcake, beer nuts, those little stubby bottles of Ruddles County they used to do back when it was still good, and, of course, BLT sandwiches.

(Another little-known fact, and one that's actually true this time: Dad sold his Spartan to one of the puppeteers from Spitting Image!)

It's commonplace these days, of course - the BLT, not the Spartan Roadster - and quite possibly the most popular sandwich filling in the world, but to a growing and excitable lad back then, they were a revelation.

Bacon had hitherto been something eaten hot for breakfast or cooked with liver in a thick sauce. Sandwiches contained ham, jam or peanut butter and that was that. But cold bacon? In a sandwich with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise?!? This bold new invention blew my mind and instantly became my favourite sandwich.

The Father Christmas moment

It was at least a couple of years before I realised that Dad hadn’t invented it at all – not that he’d ever actually claimed as much, mind – and that people all over the world were enjoying BLTs and had been doing so long before I existed.

Maybe it was watching Trading Places a lot that did it – eventually I’d have realised that the scene where the old boys explain pork belly trading to Billy-Ray refers to a bacon, lettuce and to-may-to sandwich, and as such, it probably wasn’t confined to my father’s picnic hamper.

Randolph and Mortimer didn’t quell my enjoyment of the BLT too much though and I’ve continued to eat them regularly for the last 20-odd years, which has been singularly unchallenging because availability is, to put it mildly, widespread verging on ubiquitous.

And whoever actually invented it, the little-known fact I want to establish is where to get the best BLT within five minutes of 1 Canada Square. With plenty of options to choose from the only thing for it was to try and eat my way through every BLT available on The Wharf – not in one sitting, mind – and see if any of them can hold a candle to those I consumed eagerly as a boy.

The ambrosia of nostalgia means that they invariably won’t, but there’s no such thing as a really bad BLT, though some are quite a bit better than others - and I should know as I've eaten BLT for lunch every day for the last week…

  

B to the L to the T

Pret Beech Smoked BLT, £2.89 (or £3.45 eat in!)

First up, we have the most widely-available BLT on the Wharf, due to the sheer number of Pret outlets. Their reputation ain’t what it was a decade ago, and the BLT demonstrates just why this is the case!

The Pret BLT looks the part but fails to deliver on taste. The granary bread is sliced too thin, making the sandwich dry on the outside but fall-aparty in the middle due to a surplus of tomato juice.

There is lots of smoky bacon, but it’s a bit greasy, and the Romaine lettuce isn’t a good choice to cut through this.

It could also have done with a good, sharp mayo, but instead the whole thing lacks flavour, and it’s very poor value compared to most of the competition.

Rating: Disappointing

Tesco BLT. £1.80 (or cheaper as part of meal deal)

The mainstream supermarket option boasts a decent amount of filling and ticks all the boxes for a classic BLT.

The bacon is sweet rather than smoky, the ratios are right, and while it’s not exceptional, it’s good value and does the job.

Rating: Acceptable

Tesco ‘Light Choices’ BLT, £1.50

At only 290 calories and with over 30% less fat than Tesco’s standard BLT, this is an appealing option that could do well in the Satiety Index.

The ‘formed’ bacon has a processed feel to it, is unsmoked, and there’s not much of it. Suprisingly for a low-fat offering there’s not much salad either, but the malted granary bread doesn’t taste like a cut-down option.

The low-fat dressing in lieu of mayonnaise tastes of very little, and to add a little something, the sandwich contains a lot of black pepper.

The whole thing is a bit weedy, but then it’s meant to be a healthy option.

Rating: Disappointing (but OK in a low-calorie context)

EAT Handmade BLT, £2.89 (£3.45 eat in)

EAT are the new, smaller, Pret and appear to have copied their business model almost to the letter, not to mention their prices.

The difference is that EAT’s BLT is far better.

The sandwich is well-filled with a good balance between the perfectly char-grilled and very meaty back bacon and the salad components. A mix of lollo rosso and frisee (I think!) lettuce adds interest to the texture, and the tomato comes through nicely.

The bread is again malted grain, which seems to be the standard BLT holder, and my only criticism is that there could have been a smidgen more mayo.

Rating: Tasty

Waitrose/Boots British BLT. £2.45 (or cheaper as part of meal deal)

Branded as ‘Waitrose’ but on sale in Boots next door, this is a visually appealing sandwich, with a lighter bread, crisp iceberg lettuce and plenty of tomato and mayonnaise giving it a fresh and colourful appearance.

The bacon is smoked and fairly salty, and I like a little more gravity to my bread, but this is a very strong contender and would be particularly enjoyable outdoors in the height of Summer.

Rating: Pleasant

Kruger ‘Really Fresh’ American crispy bacon with tomatoes, lettuce & mayo, £2.40

Kruger’s speciality is fresh juices and smoothies, but their entry into the BLT fray is an interesting one.

There’s plenty of filling and the bread is a decent, fresh granary with lots of bits.

The salad is fine but the bacon is strange - unsmoked, dry and brown and broken up into little bits, almost like the soya-based ‘bacon flavour’ topping you put on salads. They have a tendency to fall out and make the sandwich less satisfying to eat.

It might be ‘Really Fresh’ but it’s also ‘Really Salty’ – way too much sodium and not enough mayo. It’s a shame because if they kept the bacon in whole slices and added more mayo to cut through the salt, they’d have a good sandwich. 

Or maybe I've just overdosed?

Rating: Frustrating

Birley hand-made BLT, £3.85

The plan was to save the best until last, and this is the only place on The Wharf (of which I’m aware) where there’ll assemble the sandwich in front of you. Fresh is good, and the freshness is evident immediately, particularly in the crunchy lettuce and juicy tomato.

They offer a choice of white or brown bread and various options, but to ensure a fair comparison with the other sandwiches in the test, all of which are served on granary, I went for brown and mayo only. It’s very nice brown bread too, full of nutty grains.

It’s the most expensive BLT by some distance, but it’s a big doorstep fucker, with loads of filling and therefore the most substantial. The bacon is of the streaky variety, and I usually prefer back, but it’s tasty and there’s lots of it, while the mayo has the right balance between creaminess and sharpness.

Even after several days of lunching on BLTs, this went down a treat and it’s the only one that really took me back to the golden age. Next time I want a BLT at lunchtime (which probably won't be for another couple of weeks) I'm coming back to Birley.

Rating: BriLlianT

How to damn organic chickpeas with faint praise

‘You should review’, said a colleague of mine some weeks ago, ‘that new hummus and falafel place that just opened up on the plaza.’

I’m not sure if this was a deliberate challenge designed to cunningly wrongfoot me and my blogpipe, but if it was, I failed at the first couple of attempts. You see, to get to ‘that new hummus and falafel place’ I have to walk out the tower and right past Birley Salt Beef.

Not an easy thing to do of a lunchtime, that. I’m only human.

I mean, what sane person could possibly eschew a sandwich full of hot roast beef or crackling pork belly and walk on by, merely in order to munch on some tasteless chickpea nonsense?!?