TAP COFFEE

193 Wardour St, Soho, W1F 8ZF / Tube: Tottenham Court Road, Oxford Circus

Website: www.tapcoffee.co.uk

Price: £10-15

Food:

• Chicken & Bacon Sandwich
• Chicken, Lemon & Garlic Ciabatta
• Lemon & Blueberry Cake

Drink:

• 2x Flat White

What we thought

We are regular customers to TAP on Wardour St, and is our favourite place to get a coffee in soho. TAP have three shops within central London, Rathbone Place, Tottenham Court Road and Wardour St, and each one is as beautiful as the next. The decor is easy on the eyes, nice big wooden counters, and those lovely big hanging lights that every one is lapping up. It is the attention to detail that we really love about TAP, the drinks are displayed in a big white Belfast sinks , and the sugar is served in Lyle’s Golden Syrup tin’s, with little trinket spoons from tourist destinations around the country.

The choice of sandwiches and baguettes at TAP is great, lots of fresh ingredients whilst also offering a range of salads, patisserie and homemade cakes. We decide to have one chicken & bacon sandwich, a chicken lemon & garlic ciabatta, a slice of lemon and blueberry cake and two flat whites. The sandwich’s are perfect, the bread is soft and most important of all at room temperature, there is nothing worse than a freezing cold sandwich, garage food comes to mind. The chicken is still moist and the bacon still has great texture, couldn’t have been better. The ciabatta is fresh and has a slight crunch with a lovely soft centre. The lemon and the garlic is a classic combination with chicken and it does not disappoint, with just the right amount of sauce. The cake is sweet and gooey, and falls apart in your fingers, the perfect way to finish lunch. As great as the food at TAP is, it’s the coffee that keeps us coming back, they roast they’re own, which you can also buy at the counter. There seems to be two guys that have been making the coffee whilst we have been visiting, we have found the quality of the flat white varies depending on who is making it, which can sometimes lead to disappointment.

This coffee shop has everything we look for, great coffee, great food, great service, and it also plays great music, can’t go wrong with that.

Rating

Food: 7.5/10

Coffee: 7.5/10

Atmosphere: 8/10

Service: 7.5/10

Value: 7/10

Roast Beetroot with Goats’ Cheese (Raymond Blanc)

We love to try and cook something different every night, as it is very easy to fall into routine of just cooking pasta, which becomes boring rather quickly. We both enjoy cooking and eating really good food at home as much as we do eating out, and love to try something a little different. We don’t usually cook from recipes, but beetroot, goats’ cheese, walnuts, chicory and shallots..who could resist that? This would be a beautiful brunch lunch or dinner, and one of Raymond’s portions can definitely feed two, so it’s fairly inexpensive. Full of great textures, rich and sweet flavours this is a read favourite of ours now and it a pleasure to cook. Thank you Raymond Blanc!

Ingredients

For the beetroot:

• 2 beetroot, washed and trimmed
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  
• 1 sprig fresh thyme
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the beetroot dressing:

• Reserved beetroot juices
• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1/2 shallot, finely chopped
• 2 pinches sea salt
• 1 pinch freshly ground black pepper

For the goats cheese:

• Plain flour
• 2 free-range eggs, beaten
• Course breadcrumbs
• Extra virgin rapeseed oil
• 2 whole goats cheese

To finish the salad:

• 1 chicory cut into 12 through the root, and placed in ice water
• Finely chopped chives
• Halved walnuts

Method

1. For the beetroot, preheat your oven to 160C/325F/Gas 3.
2. Lay a double layer of foil (45 x 45cm/17½ x 17½in) onto a baking tray and top with the beetroot, oil, thyme, garlic and salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.
3. Wrap the beetroot in the foil to make a sealed package and roast in the oven for two hours.
4. Once cooked, remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly before peeling. Reserve the juice that has collected in the foil for the dressing.
5. Cut the beetroot into even pieces and reserve. (You may wish to use gloves to do this, to protect your hands from staining red.)
6. For the beetroot dressing, whisk all the ingredients together with a splash of water to loosen. Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary.
7. To finish the salad, mix the dressing with the prepared beetroot and chicory leaves. Reserve.
8. For the goats’ cheese, increase the oven temperature to 230C/450F/Gas 8.
9. Place the plain flour onto a plate, the eggs into a shallow bowl, and mix the breadcrumbs with the oil in a separate bowl. Roll each cheese in the flour, then dip in the beaten egg and then in the oiled breadcrumbs to cover.
10. Place the coated cheese rounds on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and bake in the oven for six minutes.
11. To serve, arrange the beetroot salad in the centre of each of four plates, top with the hot goats’ cheese. Garnish with a few chopped chives and walnuts.

Enjoy!

CHICKEN SHOP

79 Highgate Road, NW5 1TL / Kentish Town, Gospel Oak

Website: www.chickenshop.com

Price:£28.34

Food:

• Whole Chicken
• Coleslaw
• Crinkle Cut Chips

Drink:

• Coca Cola

What we thought

After visiting Dirty Burger there was only one natural progression, and that was to visit their sister restaurant Chicken Shop. Hidden away behind two blue doors,  no name on the from, only a small hessian bag with Chicken shop printed on the front, hanging from the door handle. We walk down the stairs and it opens out into the restaurant, there is no kitchen hidden away there are no other rooms. There is a long table at the back where the chefs prepare the food with succulent chickens spit roasting against the back wall. We’re welcomed in and asked where we would like to sit, we decide to sit at the counter, giving us a great view of the chefs as they prepare our meal. The interior is beautiful, as ever the attention to detail is unquestionable, the fridges are hidden away in beautiful mahogany cabinets and every condiment set comes with personalised Chicken Shop hand wipes.

We are pointed in the direction of the menu which is on a blackboard on the back wall. We think that they would benefit by having another menu on the opposite wall to save customers squeezing through the tables and chairs to read the menu. Just like Dirty Burger there isn’t a lot to take in, Chicken in three sizes, whole, half or a quarter, four choices of sides, and three choices of puddings. We ambitiously decide to go ahead and order a whole chicken, with two sides of crinkle cut chips and coleslaw. To the table they bring two plates and two small bowls for bones, along with ramekins of ketchup and aioli sauce. Along side this they have they’re own homemade hot sauce and smokey sauce, which are available to buy at £3 each. Just as quick as we sit down and order we can see our chicken being pulled out of the spit and chopped up in front of us, this may not be for the faint hearted, the butchery of the chicken is fairly graphic, so much so that a small peice of chicken skin came flying towards us,  but we really enjoyed the theatre of it.

The chicken is served up in large chunks and put in the middle of us, along with our two sides. The smells coming from the kitchen, if you can call it that, were already more than enough to excite the tastebuds, but when its’s sitting right in front of you, and you squeeze the lemon over the top, it’s perfect. The meat is succulent and full of flavour, with a beautifully crisp skin. If you don’t want to get your hands a little bit sticky and don’t like dealing with bones, maybe this isn’t the place for you, but we got stuck right in. The coleslaw is great and seasoned perfectly, with just the right amount of mayo, a mistake that can usually ruins a coleslaw. Unfortunately we immediately regretted ordering the crinkle cut chips, not because they were bad, but we played it a little too safe, next time we will try the corn on the cob.

The service there is really great, after finally finishing our meal we still have a substantial amount of chicken left, they take this away and bag it up for us to take home, which was perfect for the next days lunch. They come back to offer us dessert, which we regretfully couldn’t manage after eating the best part of an entire chicken and two sides. The choices were chocolate brownie, lemon cheesecake and classic American deep filled apple pie, which are all served with either cream or vanilla ice-cream, we will back for this!

There is a real relaxed and un pretentious atmosphere at Chicken Shop which we both really enjoyed, it was an effortless eating experience, in and out within an hour, whilst still feeling satisfied. We weren’t dissapointed at all and this may because we understood what we were getting, no fancy presentation or extensive menus, just simple food and for a reasonable price (equivalent at a high street equivalent would be around £25).  However at the end of the day we were just eating chicken, as lovely as it was and this is why we didn’t score it higher. For a boutique equivalent of guilty pleasure this is definitely the right place to head.

Rating

Food: 7.5/10

Atmosphere: 8/10

Service: 8/10

Value: 7.5/10