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Casita Andina, London, UK

11/4/2017

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There comes a time on any night out in Central London when leaving the place you’re at becomes a gamble, an act of calculated risk.

Given the vagaries of clientele density and General Good-Time Probability Theory, do you stay at the place you’ve been enjoying for a third or fourth hour and risk getting jaded and stranded without options down the line, or do you strike out for the promise of novelty, a new bar where you could hit social gold, or equally be drowned in a four-deep line of deplorables at the bar? It’s the eternal London question, really.

In any case, it has to be the hallmark of a good restaurant when you try to leave twice and are still there at the end of the night, right?

I blame the Pisco Sours. Casita Andina is a lively little Peruvian joint in Soho and if there’s one thing I know from my very limited interactions with real life Peruvians, it’s that they’re madly proud of Pisco, essentially a type of brandy.

It’s one of the few things, outside of Paddington Bear, that I know comes from Peru (Chile also lay a claim) (to Pisco, not Paddington Bear) (as far as I know), and it’s the first thing we’re offered as myself and a couple of friends chum round a corner table in the cosy upstairs dining room. We agree to a round for research purposes, research that would enjoy an unfettered extended tenure as we hurtled into an increasingly blurry night.

The good news? There’s food as well, and it’s a welcome change for weary London palates. Coming into the restaurant, some braying oaf outside was describing it to his bored friends as “like Hispanic tapas, you guys”, which is really all tapas, but the reality of the menu is a small-plate adventure that doesn’t feel like it’s hooking onto this now omnipresent eating trend. 

We share food in restaurants now, generally, as a people. It’s just what we all do. It’s 7pm on a Friday night and so the opening salvo of crunchy corn nuts, pork and liver croquettes and Chilaso (a kind of tempura) didn’t stand a chance, inhaled as they were through the early evening buzz of Londoners off work on a sunny evening and a well-timed second wave of pisco sours.

The mains are split in twain, heat-wise, with Hot Kitchen offering the cooked meats, and Ceviche & Raw Bar covering the uncooked, fishy side of things. I’d say three menu items between two people would be a satisfactory amount of food (they’re £6-$14 each) but with a bottle of wine chasing our pisco disco, we felt emboldened to hit the menu more thoroughly.

The tamal (pork dumpling), pork shambar (pork belly) (are you sensing a pattern?) and maca lamb sirloin (pattern broken!) were herbed and seasoned and cooked to fork-pleasing levels of delicacy AND were hearty enough to steer us through our booze-enhanced appetites.

We were really here for the ceviche, though. Not such a common dish in London. The menu is a non-cliché ceviche niche, if you will, though you probably won’t. Herby, citrus-y seabass comes out with the ‘Classic’ and ‘Casita’ plates, while the tuna rested confidently in tiger’s milk and quail eggs. There are veggie options, which we sadly glossed over for dessert pisco sours and a shared Peruvian chocolate ball.

As contented as we were, trying to leave suffered a slight setback as the downstairs bar had cleared out and gave us the London holy grail of a table and seats, and so (astonishingly) pisco sours were ordered while friends arrived.

Such was the success of this enterprise that more friends were invited – us providing them with a gamble-free jaunt across the West End – and more pisco sours and so and so forth until we were practically one-quarter Peruvian by genetic make-up and Paddington Bear had been adopted as our official mascot.

​Casita Andina sure seems unassuming, but boy can it sneak up on you. Maybe I'll blame the crunchy corn nuts, but I doubt anyone would buy that. 

Website: 
www.andinalondon.com/casita
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Aperol Spritz Terrazza, London

9/8/2016

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Words and pictures by Anna Delaney

​“The secret to making a fine aperol spritz is to add as little soda as possible...” Advice from the vibrant and cheeky Loris who delighted us in the art of making the perfect aperol spritz, Venetian style.


I remember visiting Venice a few years ago and being introduced to the aperol spritz - something to be enjoyed when the sun starts to set, the air begins to cool and the working day comes to an end. The sharp and sophisticated head to their local to drink and eat cicchetti or Venetian tapas, an indisputably classy way to do after-work drinks.

​Then three years ago everybody was talking about THE drink of the summer. Aperol! Have you not heard? The less medicinal and sweeter version of Campari! However, unlike other fads that have been sent to the graveyard (who remembers foam? soon to be joined by smashed avocados for brunch) I am pleased to announce that the blood orange concoction was no fleeting dalliance.

​It now even has a summer London residency; the
Aperol Spritz Terrazza, located on the rooftop at the Bird of Smithfield. Cosy and intimate, with a charming view of the city, it’s the perfect place for a date or refined after work drinks. Plus, it’s still obscure enough not to be plagued by those city types, #safefornow.


Like any cocktail worth its salty rim, this bar comes with a twist and is hosting a series of Aperol Spritz Socials. Collaborations with the Dalston Print School, The School of Life and Soho Radio have put on a range of enlightening and interactive workshops.

I tried out one of the “spritz suppers”; a culinary masterclass in making small plates to accompany our aperitifs. The team of Forza Win showed us how to rustle up some simple but tasty dishes; vibrant ripe yellow and orange tomatoes with red onions served on rustic bread, cannellini beans over foccacia with a dash of dill on top (basically the Italian version of beans on toast) and some tender pieces of lamb and salsa verde. Lots of sampling, lots of laughter and certainly a more entertaining and informative way of getting less drunk than usual, which is the Italian style, after all.

If you’re still in mourning over leaving the EU, head to this terrazza. It’s the closest you’ll get to La Dolce Vita this side of the pond.

How to make the perfect Aperol Spritz:
  1. Fill the glasses generously with cubed ice.
  2. Pour 3 parts of Prosecco over the ice.
  3. Pour 2 parts Aperol into each glass in a circular movement.
  4. Finish with a dash of Soda.
  5. Garnish with a slice of orange.
  6. Don sunglasses.
  7. Drink.

The Aperol Spritz Terrazza will be open until 31st August from Monday – Saturday until 10pm. More information can be found at AperolSpritzSocials.com
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This menu's got legs

8/3/2016

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Our intrepid reporter Lydia Nicholas went forth into Cambodia to seek out the future of dining, and all she got was this not-that-lousy menu of spiders and insects. It's an impfressive culinary adventure, which you should read all about (friends' mixed reactions and all) HERE. 
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Review: Johnny Sanchez, New Orleans

24/11/2015

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“Wait, what?”

“No, I’m serious. It really is.”

“This is a Mexican restaurant…by…John Besh? How is that even possible and why would we want to go there?”

I’m trying to cut some slack given my friend’s cynicism here. I don’t think many people in the city realise that the first half of this year-old restaurant’s name comes from its most revered gastronomic son. Chef Besh has so marinated his own reputation in the local flavours of Louisiana that there’s an understandable leap of faith involved here.

“It’s not just him. The Sanchez part is Aaron Sanchez. He’s kind of an expert.”

“Oh.”

“He’s on TV.”

“OH. OK. Well, I’m intrigued.”

Headway made, not that I default to describing chefs by their televisual credits, but Sanchez’s appearances on Chopped and more don’t hurt. I guess we’re going to give these two hugely acclaimed, panoramically-skilled chefs a chance, then.

New Orleans isn’t a town built on great Mexican food. Sure, there are a couple of cheerful burrito-mongers for quick fixes but nobody has really donned a glittery mask and wrestled with some of the more technical regional intricacies before this Besh-Sanchez tag team hopped into the ring.

The dining room is cavernous and colourful, all Day of the Dead iconography and modernist chandeliers. It strikes an immediate balance between formal and fiesta, and is big enough to provide some much-needed breathing space between the post-convention business drones and the cocktail-slurping bachelorette parties.

Not that we’re averse to cocktails, the mezcals and tamarinds of the drinks menu luring us in from the get-go. I’ve always been fond of the assured friendliness of the servers and staff at Besh joints, and even though the formality here is a notch lower, their sincerity and knowledge are equally reassuring.

It goes without saying that guacamole and chips are ordered as we look at the menu. The weird silence as this happens turns out to be a serious allergy to avocado on the part of my dining companion so that turns into a side order of EpiPens and an instruction to keep the bowl well onto my side of the table.

Even a quick look at the menu sees the culinary sparring and trading of ideas that has taken place between Johnny and Sanchez. Blue crab and shrimp come out punching from Louisiana, landing perfectly on the tostadas and tomatillos respectively.

We take on a haul of tacos, also representing both sides well, with crispy P&J oysters as well as barbecued beef and a carne asada with some delightful pickled jalapenos.

There are some nice home touches – a signature Besh move but taken up by Sanchez in his Mama’s epazote rice and we order the street corn as it was a dish that my date’s father would make when she was young. No restaurant food ever occupies the same emotional space as family-made versions, but it passes muster for her and I’m totally sold.

A notably quirky quesadilla with wild mushrooms and chicken enchiladas that remain memorable for the right reasons due to the meat being slow-cooked round off our food choices, as much as we could eat losing out very slightly to as much as we wanted to eat. 
More news on a rematch in the near future, I’m hoping.

A couple of glasses of sparkling rose give us a fighting chance of sharing dessert, the only real contender for both of us being the dulce de leche and coconut flan, dispatched with aplomb as we made more server friends and talked about plans to visit another of Besh’s collaborators, Chef Alon Shaya (in his new restaurant, Shaya), as soon as was logistically possible.

We left a dining room that exuded acceptably raucous bonhomie, a feat for its size. This guy Johnny Sanchez knows his Mexican onions alright, and he definitely sounds more of an expert than Aaron Besh.
 
 Johnny Sanchez website 
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The things we do at 35,000ft

15/10/2014

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There are things I do. Things I do that I only do on planes. These include, but are not limited to:

- Read current issues of The Economist, GQ and Esquire Magazines.
- Consult novelty gift catalogues.
- Take melatonin.
- Watch episodes of network sitcoms.
- Congratulate myself enthusiastically on not having children (actually I do this pretty regularly on terra firma, too, but the intensity of the self-congratulation
                                                                            is multiplied exponentially in the air).

It appears that one of the most common things other people do in the air - and only in the air - is drink canned tomato juice. Now, I do this a fair amount on land as well, mostly out of the perceived need to combat all the cancers that the Daily Mail say I'm going to get from immigrants, opening letters and, er, tomatoes, probably. Looking at my habits, though, I do pretty much exclusively drink tomato juice on a flight AND it's the only real time I drink it with Worcester Sauce. So far from being a lone freak, I DO have tomato-juice-based idiosyncratic behaviour on a flight.

This article was recently published, based on research by "
Guillaume De Syon, a professor at Albright College and an aviation historian." He submits that drinnking tomato juice is a long-standing aviation tradition (um, OK). The article goes on to suggest a number of reasons we drink tomato juice in the air - it tastes better at altitude, it's learned/suggestible behaviour, it's simply because it's on the menu...before settling on the deafeningly unedifying ALL OF THE ABOVE. Thanks for that. I hope in 20 years we'll have the same academic insight into why we're watching old episodes of The Big Bang Theory.





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Never forget the muffins

11/9/2014

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Can we please just take a minute today to remember? One minute out of our busy lives? To remember one small act, one gesture that tried to make sense of it all?

Everyone surely knows where they were, what they were doing or who they were with when they heard that this Marriott hotel in announced free coffee and muffins to commemorate the victims of the terrible events of the 11th September, 2001. For thirty minutes. And the muffins are mini. Regular sized muffins would seem somehow...I don't know...ostentatious on a day like this. Miniature confectionery. That's corporate sensitivity in action right there.

Hard to believe but it's only one year ago. I know, the pain and anger is still there. Time eventually heals all wounds, but there are no short cuts. I wonder if there are mini muffins in heaven? Let's never forget, Marriott.

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Hello, kitty

3/9/2014

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It’s a Sunday afternoon and my friend meets me at the Ratchatewi Sky Train stop. She wants to take me to this novelty café she’d heard about – “It’s meant to be super cute!” she tells me.

I’m not someone who is regularly swayed by public displays of wanton cuteness, but I was going to keep an open mind. As we got to the café, there were some clues as to what lay inside – plastic, manga-style cat models, walls full of child-like doodles and excited squeals coming from inside.

I peeked through the window, and even my jaded, seen-it-all, post-modern, end of times western eyes found it hard not to be completely charmed. Inside the café were these enchanting little creatures, running around, eating from bowls, preening themselves and generally being as adorable as you can imagine. I watched them play and eat and show off their multi-coloured coats and revel in their little toys and accessories. I couldn’t wait to get inside and among them, and a minute later, we were called in to be seated.

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As we walked through the dining room, they shifted and stirred, some of them curling their legs up, squirming around, making way for us to sit down. Some of them were close up to our table, some in far corners...basically everywhere you looked, there was yet another and another, each more outlandishly adorable than the last. It was hard to know where to look. They made the sweetest little noises as their food came out, and I just wanted to take them all home with me, pinch their cute little ears, have them nibble on my fingers, and watch them as they ate their kibble with heartbreaking delicacy.

It’s no wonder they’re so universally loved, with their endearingly aloof air, their loveably quirky behaviour and unknowable ways – awwww, wook at you, sidling up to the table….what’s that you’re trying to say to me? Awwwwww…I don’t know what you want, I REALLY DON’T, but you look as cute as hell trying to tell me. What is it you want, you adorable little creature, you? What is it? Whadda ya waaaaaant? Is it this toy? Is it? Do you want to play? Do you? What’s that? Oh, you want to take my order? Fair enough.
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Yes, there really should be more cafes full of Asian people. I could stay all day just watching them interact and play with cats. Oh yeah, there are cats in this café. I forgot to mention that. They were pretty cool too. Not sure how hygienic that can be, but they served decent coffee, I guess.

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The million-dollar bar tab

30/4/2014

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Hey, you know those massively-overpriced drinks that restaurants sometimes come up with the get into the newspapers? You know, the ones that are all, "The world's most expensive daiquiri - it costs five grand and is made from distilled hummingbird tears and diamond juice and liquidised parts of Donald Trump and garnished with George Clooney's back hair!"

Yeah, those.

Well, what better to buy the insanely gullible billionaire oligarch in YOUR life than a trip which comprises EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE rip-off drinks? A holiday company in the UK is offering the 'Ultimate Drinking Holiday' for the "true connoisseur", where you can sip on ten of the world's most obnoxiously-priced liquids, including a £110,000 wine and a £100,000 whiskey. There's everything in between in various far-slung locations, including going down to a £50 Singapore Sling, which frankly looks embarrassed to be on the list. The 'ten iconic places' you get to go to? I hope you like conspicuous consumption. A LOT. And yes, that "icon" of drinking culture, Dubai, is obviously on the list.

You can see the full itinerary HERE. Just don't ask for salt and lime for that £400 shot of tequila. Remember, we at Shandy Pockets have our own guide to the world's most pretentious cocktail bars.

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Top Ten Hottest New Restaurants in New Orleans

22/4/2014

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Shandy Pockets recently ate its own weight in southern food and came up with this list of the best new restaurants in New Orleans. It's a hard choice, narrowing down the best culinary experiences in this town of food experts, but you know what? We're troopers, and we care about informing YOU, the reader. We're like martyrs to the cause, and if that cause involves high end restaurants, then it's hardly our fault now, is it?

Here's our list, written for our friends over at Zagat: 10 Hottest Restaurants in New Orleans

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Review: Thirst responder

8/12/2013

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I live in the marshy metropolis of New Orleans, and there’s some division as to how healthy or otherwise the Mississippi swamp water that comes out of the taps here really is. To be honest, most locals are fine with drinking it straight from the tap, but I’ve seen an awful lot of water filters in homes. Also, when you think about the brain eating amoeba that were found in local water systems this year, you kind of get on board with the filtration set.

The Western world is obsessed with filtered water. You only need be overwhelmed by the choice of brands in your local store to realise this. The other things you quickly realise about store-bought water though: it’s chronically wasteful and there’s all those plastic garbage islands floating around in the ocean. Also: you’re being aquatically mugged every time you buy a bottle if they’re charging you more than a dollar.

That agreed upon, it’s obvious that even the most urbane, soy-latte-chugging city dweller who consumes water that isn’t coming out of their own private spring could use and save wads of money with this little black bottle, going by the name of Water-to-Go.

It’s a water bottle, yes, but in its cap is a space-programme-endorsed filtration system that nixes 99.9% of impurities and contaminants. We’re assuming brain-eating amoeba fall into that number. The everyday pollutants that sneak into tap water, even in developed nations, are easy meat. You can treat 200 litres of water, which by my reckoning is about three or four month’s worth unless you’re a particularly Thirsty Theo.

Now imagine how useful this could be if you’re going to places where you can’t actually drink the local water, which to us sensitive westerners is just about anywhere they have to overdub The Big Bang Theory. If you’re heading to, say, Africa, then shoving this into your hand luggage could save you hours of dehydration and almost eliminate the worries you’d have about your digestive system holding up.

Your health. Your bank balance. Your liberal guilt about landfills. All could be assuaged with one water bottle. If you’re science-minded, you can find out more at www.watertogo.eu and there’s lots of info for none-scientists, too.  

Prices start at £25 for bottle plus filter, with filters costing £14.95 for two. See website for stockists.


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