A Taste of Laos in London's Victoria

Name: Laos Café - A Pop-Up By Saiphin (Rosa’s Thai Café) 

Where: 25 Gillingham Street, London SW1V 1HN, http://rosasthaicafe.com/

Cost: Average cost is £15 to £20 per person (not including drinks). Small plates are priced from £5 to £7, main dishes for sharing cost from £6 to £15, sides of noodles or rice cost £3. The drinks menu is small, and includes Thai Chang Beer at £4 per bottle, and the Spanish house red and white wines at £18 per bottle.

About: Laos is very close to my heart as I have had a couple of wonderful visits to the country recently, you can read more about the gorgeous Luang Prabang (former royal cpaital) here and here and also the current modern capital Vientiane here. One of my favourite restaurants in Paris, Lao Lane Xang, is Laotian (read about it here), and so I was thrilled to hear of the opening of the Laos Café in London and hurried along to give it a try during its short life.

This Laotian pop-up in Victoria, a 5 minute walk from the train station, is the brainchild of Saiphin Moore, Head Chef and co-founder of the Rosa's Thai Café group. This is the only restaurant in London serving Laotian food and it’s surprising that none has opened until now. The food of Laos is varied and delicious, sharing many similarities with Thailand’s northern region of Issan (which has over the centuries been part of both Thailand and Laos), but it is also distinct for its own local produce and as a former French colony, for influences from French cuisine.

The small open-plan kitchen at Laos Cafe Pop-up

Taking up temporary residence in what will become the 7th Rosa's Thai Café, the pop-up will run until the end of February 2016, seating 25 people in a simply furnished but comfortable café.

The menu is designed for sharing, and features a total of 18 dishes from the land-locked country that once formed part of French Indochina. Nearly all the food is prepared on charcoal in the minute kitchen. 

What We Ate: We ordered a selection of 5 small plates and main courses to share, and dishes were brought to our table as soon as they were ready in no particular order.

We kicked off with a gorgeous chargrilled seabass (£15), stuffed with lemon grass and served whole and skin-on. There was a coating of sea salt over the skin making it deliciously salty and crisp. The fish was accompanied by a selection of fresh green herbs including basil, mint and dill, as well as noodles and a bowl of pounded spicy grilled aubergine with garlic, red onion, nam pla and chilli. 

We ate this by wrapping the fish up with noodles, herbs and the aubergine sauce in a lettuce leaf, making a great, spicy and refreshing start to our meal.  This was the star dish of our meal and great value at £15.

Next was the spicy grilled pork salad (£8) served with tender slices of pork, red onion, dried red chillies, toasted rice and herbs including mint, basil, dill, coriander and lettuce leaves. This packed quite a punch of chilli heat, balanced by the refreshing herbs and zingy dressing. I loved the toasted rice powder in the dish for both its flavour and added texture. A delicious dish I would love to try again.

The laab or laap had to be ordered - this is a traditional salad of minced pork, poultry and sometimes fish, served raw or cooked and highly seasoned – it is incredibly refreshing and one of the national dishes of Laos. The Laos Café’s duck laab version (£8) was served as is traditional at room temperature (but not raw), with tender grilled duck morsels, red onion, dried red chillies, toasted rice and mixed green herbs. We liked this dish, though sadly the flavour profile was very similar to the pork salad we had just eaten – had I been informed of this when ordering I would have chosen something else.

The seafood salad & glass noodles (£10) had many ingredients including prawns, squid, red onion, spring onion, Chinese celery, cherry tomato, fresh red chilli, coriander and dill but oddly no glass noodles! The seafood was lightly poached, and very tender, enlivened by a zingy lime, nam pla and chilli dressing and the accompanying herbs.

The papaya salad Laos style, known as Som Tum (£11.50) was similar in style to the Thai version (shredded green papaya, green beans, crushed tomatoes, peanuts and nam pla) except that it contained pounded Laotian anchovies and whole small crabs which had been roughly crushed. In my opinion this was the only downer of our meal – authentic though it may have been, my mouth got full of tiny, unpalatable crab shells with each spoonful making it difficult to eat. I was looking forward to crab when ordering this salad, but not its shell!

To accompany our meal, we shared two portions of white and brown sticky rice (£3 each), which were beautifully presented in banana leaves.

We shared 5 dishes and 2 portions of rice – in retrospect 4 dishes would have been enough as they were generously sized. This means that a meal at Laos Café costs around £15 to £20 a head (not including drinks), which in my opinion is excellent value. This is a unique opportunity to taste good and authentic Laotian cooking in London without breaking the bank.

This intriguing little Laotian café is only open until the end of February 2016, after which it will be refurbished as another branch of Rosa's Thai Café. If you haven't tried the food of Laos before, or even if you have, hasten over to Victoria to sample the food of Laos Café before it turns Thai. Rumour has it that if there is sufficient demand, Saiphin may open a permanent Laotian restaurant in Shoreditch!  So help me in this quest.

What We Drank: We had a glass of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc (£6.60) and a bottle of Chang beer (£4). We were served plenty of tap water on request.

Likes: The seabass was spectacularly good as was the grilled pork salad. Friendly service.

Dislikes: The drinks menu is limited and it is unfortunate considering this is a pop-up that BYO is not available. 

Verdict: The Food at Laos Café Pop-up is deliciously zingy, spicy and authentic. It is well-priced too though sadly only available until the end of February 2016. Recommended.

Kouzu - The New Japanese Restaurant Destination in Belgravia

Name: Kouzu

Where: 21 Grosvenor Gardens, Belgravia, London, SW1 0JW, http://kouzu.co.uk/

Cost: Starters range from £4.50 to £13, sashimi from £11 to £17.50, and sushi is offered individually, and ‘omakaze’ or chef selection platters ranging from £23 to £60. Cocktails are priced from £8.50 to £12. Entry level wines start from £25 for a Picpoul de Pinet or £22 for a Chilean Merlot. There is a good selection of fine wines with even finer prices.    

About: Just a stone's throw from both Buckingham Palace and Victoria station, this restaurant opened in November 2014, with Chef Kyoichi Kai (formerly of Zuma and the Arts Club) heading the kitchen.

The restaurant claims to have all-Japanese kitchen staff, but walking past the basement kitchen I could not help but notice a lot of westerners working alongside the Japanese. Not that I mind, but it seems an odd claim to make if it isn't correct.

Housed in a grand historical grade-II listed building dating from the 1850s, the restaurant has an impressive entrance with a massive chandelier, and a glamorous cocktail bar.

It has a Japanese-style simplicity to the design, with dark slate floors, top quality but unstained and unvarnished tables, and restrained cream and grey fabrics for the blinds, benches and chairs, with a few prominent displays of orchids.
  

What We Ate: From the ‘New Stream Sashimi’ section, we ordered the lime-cured seabass with a green pepper salsa (£13.00) - this was a stunningly presented dish decorated with micro herbs, chervil and pink peppercorns and served with semi-dried cherry tomatoes which worked surprisingly well with the fish. Although I could not taste much lime-curing in the seabass, the dish was very well balanced and one I would definitely order again.

Also from the 'New Stream Sashimi' section, we had the beef fillet tataki (£17.50) - this was a seared fillet cut into fine slices and served with a sauce of soy sauce, mirin and sake, and a generous serving of julienne salad. In fact the serving of salad was so generous that visually it rather obscured the beef. I enjoyed this dish though - the flavours were fresh and the meat was tender and of good quality.

For mains, we had two items from the charcoal grill selection – the lamb chops with spicy miso and the beef fillet. 

The lamb chops with spicy miso (£12.00), was probably the best dish of the evening and at that price, incredibly good value too. There were two perfectly cooked lamb chops, pink and succulent, served alongside a gorgeous selection of char-grilled vegetables including courgettes, tomatoes, peppers and onion. The spicy miso was a great accompanying sauce with a lot of umami flavour and just the right amount of heat, complimenting the meat and the vegetables without overpowering them.

We also had a 200g beef fillet (£31) that came with a choice two of sauces – an European red wine sauce or a citrus Japanese ponzu dressing served with yuzu kosho (a condiment made from yuzu peel, chillies and salt) - we opted for the latter. Like the tataki starter, the beef was of excellent quality, well cooked, and delicious. My only criticism with it was that rather than being served with yuzu kosho as an accompaniment, I was given a spicy oroshi (a mixture of grated daikon radish and chillies).

To accompany our mains, from the small dish and salad menu, we chose the assorted mushroom salad (£11). This was truly impressive and included a selection of four different mushrooms - eringi, shimeji, shiitake and oyster mushrooms - as well as pine nuts, walnuts, radicchio and green salad leaves dressed with ponzu sauce.

We also ordered a selection of tempura, including prawn (£7.50 for 2), along with aubergine, eringi mushroom and asparagus, but sadly it never arrived. 

As is customary in Japanese restaurants, a ‘shime’ (normally rice and miso soup) is served to end a meal. To that effect, we were served a chef’s platter of sushi including a maki roll and some nigiri.

The spicy California roll (£8), made from crab, avocado, cucumber, flying fish roe, and spicy mayonnaise was superbly made with a very fine layer of sushi rice rolled in shichimi pepper for the spicy heat.

The nigiri sushi were unagi eel (£4 each), and chu-toro (tuna belly), priced at £6.50 each. These were exquisite, but sadly quite steeply priced.

With our selection of sushi, we had three slices of yellowtail sashimi, served in a covered glass bowl (£11). Delicious though it was, again we felt this was not great value for money.

For dessert, we opted for the Tart au Mont Blanc with rum and raisin ice cream (£9.50).  It may come as a surprise to those who have not visited Japan, but Tart au Mont Blanc is a very popular dessert there. The version on offer at Kouzu reminded me very much of examples I ate in Tokyo, and was superb.

We also had the dark chocolate mousse and apricot brandy sauce with hazelnut ice cream (£10.50), which again showed real patisserie artistry at Kouzu.

What We Drank: We started with couple of cocktails - the Yuzutini (£9), was a delicious variation on a familiar theme with intense citrus notes from Yuzu-shu (yuzu-infused shochu), Russian vodka and lemon. The Smoky Negroni (£11.50) was strong and well made from 12-year old Bowmore whisky, along with Campari, ume-shu (plum liqueur) and orange peel. I liked this Negroni although I felt that the whisky was too overpowering a spirit and I would have preferred it with gin.

To accompany our dishes, we opted for a bottle of Masi Valpolicella Classico Ripasso (£30). This was a straightforward wine, with vibrant red cherry notes on the nose and palate. A light, fruit-driven wine, it had very little tannin or complexity, but was very drinkable.

Likes: A perfect meal at Kouzu would start with one of the ‘New Stream’ sashimi dishes like the sea bass, followed by the wonderful lamb chops in spicy miso, ending with the delicious Mont Blanc dessert.

Dislikes: There is a night-club style background music, which seems a little out of place in a restaurant of this quality. The food is very good, but while the waiting staff are polite and attentive, they seem to understand rather little about the food they serve, but these were early days for the restaurant. They also, annoyingly, forgot to bring our tempura. Not all the dishes were served as described on the menu (grated radish instead of yuzu-kosho condiment).

Verdict: Great Japanese-European cooking with some inventive ‘New Stream’ sushi and sashimi on offer and fine patisserie. Well-conceived, Kouzu is a new Japanese restaurant in Central London to be reckoned with. Recommended.