Injera and lentils at Amen Ethiopian Cuisine, Maltby St Market, London SE1
Michel Roux, chef-patron, Le Gavroche, London
Maltby Street Market is a wonderful row of street-food stalls in Bermondsey. I stopped by there recently and had some Ethiopian food for the first time, and was blown away. The stall, called Amen, is family run – even the kids were helping out. My favourite dish was lentils and chickpeas with a fermented bread called injera, which looks like a pancake and is quite sharp, but when you have it with the rest of the food, which is quite spicy and sweet, it works beautifully. I had a whacking great big bowl of goodness, with lots of messy slurping, and I felt like a million dollars afterwards. And they were cooking from scratch, which was great to see.
Carrot dishes at Aulis, London W1
Adejoké Bakare, chef-owner, Chishuru, London
I closed my Brixton restaurant last year and during the interminable wait to get our new site signed and opened I had lots of free time. One of the joys of relocating to Fitzrovia is being in the West End, and I’m a bit impulsive about finding a stool in Soho for a solo meal (I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been to Kiln). Earlier this year I went to Simon Rogan’s Aulis. My business partner Matt is obsessed with their chawanmushi, but the highlights for me were a savoury carrot dish that had somehow been transformed into something resembling gnocchi, and the carrot cake. They prepare the cake as normal then compress it and perform some other kind of culinary magic so it’s like a biscuit – it’s like no other carrot cake you’ve ever tasted. It was finely executed yet comforting at the same time, and it was just the shot of culinary inspiration I needed.
Onion bhajis at Lahore Kebab House, Whitechapel, London E1
Sertaç Dirik, chef-owner, Mangal 2, London
Every couple of months or so, our team goes to Lahore Kebab House after service – it’s open till 1am. Normally, we’re all about the chops and the seekh kebabs. Their curries are incredible, too. But the other day, with my girlfriend and a couple of mates, I tried their onion bhajis for the first time. They were the most delicious thing I’ve had this year, no question, and unlike any bhajis I’ve had before. I don’t know how they do it. It’s just a big plate of shredded onions, spiced and battered, but they’re crazily good. I don’t know why I hadn’t tried them before. We went back for a staff dinner a couple weeks after and I forced a few on the table. They went down a treat.
Croutons with stracciatella and red shrimp at Alba Chiara, Savelletri, Puglia
Tomos Parry, chef and co-owner, Brat, Brat x Climpson’s Arch and Mountain, all London
In Puglia this Easter, just before the craziness of opening Mountain, I went with my family to eat at a shack by the seaside in Savelletri. It was a really cool spot with plastic chairs and lots of Italian children running around. We were eating loads of sea urchins at €1 a pop – even my kids were trying them, which was quite special.
But the thing that really stood out was fresh stracciatella-style cheese on toast with raw red prawns on top, drizzled with Puglian olive oil. Sitting there with my wife and kids eating these amazing snacks and drinking beers was a really magical moment.
Toon tree shoots (Xiang chun-ya) cooked in an omelette
Fuchsia Dunlop, food writer, author of Invitation to a Banquet
There’s a very unusual Chinese vegetable called toon tree shoots, or chun-ya, that I found in London for the first time. You don’t find them all over China but they are quite popular in Sichuan in springtime. They’re green with a purple tinge and they have an assertive aroma that stops you in your tracks. I found them in a wonderful Chinese grocery off Chapel Market in Islington called Anji Orient, which has a carefully selected stock of fresh Chinese vegetables. You can use the shoots in salads, and they’re nice with cold cuts of pork tossed in a chilli oil sauce, but I chopped them up and mixed them with beaten eggs to make an omelette. It was extraordinary. We’re spoiled these days because we can get ingredients from all over the place, but it’s nice that there are some ingredients that, on the whole, you have to be somewhere specific to taste. This is one of them, which is why it was so surprising to find it in London.
Fire-roasted vegetables at the Woodsman, Stratford-upon-Avon
Andi Oliver, author of The Pepperpot Diaries, broadcaster, host of Stirring It Up podcast
Every year I go up to Stratford to film Great British Menu for two and a half months, and each time I think: “Wonderful, I can go to the Woodsman.” It’s a restaurant on the high street and the chef cooks all this beautiful food over fire – lots of game and slow-cooked shoulder of lamb. But what’s really clever is the way they cook vegetables. When you go for a Sunday roast, even the beetroot is wood-roasted, so it’s smoky and earthy and tastes of the very essence of itself. They do the best Sunday lunch I’ve had anywhere.
Ixta Belfrage’s tomato and lime galette with crunchy spelt chipotle pastry
Bee Wilson, author of The Secret of Cooking and other books
All summer I was making Ixta Belfrage’s tomato galette from her cookbook Mezcla, and it was an example of how accommodating a great recipe can be. My son was the first to make it, and because he’s quite picky he missed out half the ingredients – chipotle flakes, cumin, jalapenos. He used mascarpone instead of ricotta, and instead of the julienned spring onions at the end, he took some regular brown onions, hacked them into pieces and put these huge chunks of raw onion on top. But it was the most delicious thing. It was so good that he made it again three days later, and then said: “I’m going to set up a restaurant where I’ll serve nothing but this tart.” There are certain recipes that you don’t know are going to weave their way into your kitchen and into your life, and this has become one of those.
Samosas at Manchester Sweet Centre, Blackburn
Stosie Madi. chef and co-owner, the Parkers Arms, Newton-In-Bowland, Lancashire
Manchester Sweet Centre sells Pakistani sweets and savouries to the Asian community around Blackburn, and it’s supremely good value. Its samosas cost 80p each. Whenever we go to Blackburn we always bring some back with us. The pastry is lovely and flaky and crispy. You only get two choices, a traditional vegetarian one with potato, or minced lamb. They are really quite big, each about the size of your hand, so one is ample for lunch. They’re served with some kind of oniony broth to wet the samosa, and that’s delicious too. I absolutely love them.
Various dishes at the Eight on Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1
Max Rocha, chef-owner, Café Cecilia, London
My mum had a hip operation during the summer, and me and my dad were killing time while visiting her. He found this Hong Kong-style cafe on Shaftesbury Avenue and we’ve been going ever since – Dad and I have always bonded over Chinese food. It has casual service and great food, and it reminds him of being a kid in Hong Kong. I go there pretty much once a week now – for birthdays, when friends come into town, when I’m off work on a Monday. It’s casual but it also feels special and different. There are so many great dishes: the fluffy white bun with pineapple glaze and a big stick of cold butter; the Hanoi chicken with ginger, chilli and soy dips; the best prawn toast you’ll ever have; a volcano egg drop rice with beef curry. For dessert I always get the egg yolk french toast. It’s such good value and the service is really attentive. Make sure you sit upstairs with a view of the kitchen.
Mozzarella quesadilla cooked by friends in New York and then repeatedly at home
Claire Ptak, owner of Violet bakery, author of Love is a Pink Cake and other books
It was a quesadilla at the house of my friends Ignacio Mattos and Laila Gohar in New York. A flour tortilla with mozzarella melted inside and Maldon salt on the outside, it has now become my go-to snack – I have it probably four times a week. When I came back to London, I looked around for the right tortillas and found the most amazing lard-based ones from Sonora Taquería in Stoke Newington, but they don’t make them any more. This is a plea to Sonora to start making them again. You want a drier cheese so don’t use fancy mozzarella that’s really ripe and juicy, use a basic one. And don’t put the salt in till after it’s cooked, otherwise the mozzarella will get too watery. As you flip the tortilla in the hot pan, the mozzarella leaks out of the edges and caramelises. It’s the simplest thing in the world but really delicious.
Kelle paça lamb soup at Haringey Corbacisi, London
Melek Erdal, food writer and cook
Haringey Corbacisi is a really good late-night soup place on Green Lanes. When I first went, I peeked into the back of the kitchen and there were stacks of lambs’ heads, with dissected meat on one side and all the skulls on the other, and I was like, “Yes! This is brilliant.” One of my favourite soups there is kelle paça, a lamb soup that uses meat from head to shin (we don’t use feet because it’s not halal). The broth is made with all the bones and it’s cooked for hours and then made to order – they’ll put in different parts (offal, lean meat, etc) according to what you want. Then they ask you if you want garlic and chilli butter, and of course you do, and they pour that on top and it’s the most comforting thing. They’ve done so well in the past year that they’ve glammed up the place, so it no longer looks like a canteen, but it still does great soup.
A meal at the Midland Grand Dining Room, London NW1
James Cochran, chef-owner, 1251, London
The best meal I had this year was at chef Patrick Powell’s new restaurant at the Midland Grand in King’s Cross. The duck liver parfait with brioche was unbelievable, and so were the snails bourguignon with nduja and guanciale. If you’re going to be messing around with classic French cuisine, you’ve got to do it well, and Powell does it really well. Plus, you can bring your dog. In this grand, beautiful restaurant, it was very special that I was able to bring my little boxer along with me.
Blueberry pastries at Cała w Mące, Warsaw
Diana Henry, author of Roast Figs, Sugar Snow and other books
I booked a holiday to Poland because I wanted to meet a baker I found on Instagram called Monica Walecka. She’s self-taught and now has four bakeries in Warsaw, including Cała w Mące. Unbeknown to me it was the best time of year to go: wild blueberry season. It’s difficult to convey how important that is in Poland. The blueberries are glorious, perfectly positioned between sweet and tart. Monika does different kinds of blueberry buns: one was a sort of danish pastry with custard in the middle and blueberries on top, another was a turnover with blueberries inside. My favourite was probably the brioche dough stuffed with blueberries. It was absolutely glorious.
I’ve stayed in touch with Monika ever since. We’re planning to join up on a tour of European bakeries. So it wasn’t just a wonderful eating experience, it felt like the beginning of a friendship.
