Angeles

ANGELES

Cuisine: Sichuan

Nearest tube: Kilburn

Address: 405 Kilburn High Road, London, NW6 7QL

Tel: 020 7625 8686

Sichuan food is Cantonese food's younger, sexier sister. This is where she lives.

Don't get the two mixed up - as far as Chinese cuisine goes, the two are a world apart. Sichuan is a heady mix of strong, spicy, aromatic flavours, and whilst Angeles serves both Sichuan and Cantonese food, the former is definitely the best option.

This is one of those restaurants where Chinese people go - the restaurant is always packed full of locals crowded round a bubbling hotpot. I have yet to try the hotpot, but the menu is so good that there's plenty to be getting on with in the meantime. 

The restaurant is split in half - the left side is a grotty all-you-can-eat buffet, serving stodgy crap like sweet and sour chicken for the local yos and yoettes. Stay out of there, lest you catch a stray bullet. The right hand side is the bustling hub of Sichuan activity, in a spacious dining area that affords you a good peek at what everyone else is eating.

The food is truly excellent. We go for a platter of mixed grilled skewers, which include ox tongue, curried squid, cuttlefish cake, tofu, sweetcorn, king prawn, spicy lamb and chicken wings. All are delicious, with the cuttlefish particularly outstanding - a wonderful spongy texture, perfectly crisp on the outside, with a sweet teriyaki-style sauce. Main dishes include mapo tofu, a little too oily but with that distinct pungent soybean flavour unique to this dish. The stir-fried green beans with chilli are delicious, spicy and savoury, and the dandan noodles are wonderfully moreish, in a tasty, meaty sauce with that aromatic Sichuan aftertaste. 

Mapo tofu and green beans with chilli

My one problem with Sichuan food is that it's not the healthiest cuisine - most dishes are rather oily and greasy - but the unique flavours more than make up for it. Despite feeling a little bit sick afterwards, I thoroughly enjoyed this tasty meal that is far more lively than its oriental counterpart.

If you haven't tried Sichuan before and you have an adventurous palate, get yourself down there for some red hot foody action.

Service 4/5

Food 4/5

Value 3/5

Ambience 4/5

Total: 15/20

Why you should go there: Authentic food bursting with flavour.

Don’t leave without trying: Green beans with chilli

Pacific Plaza - Hot Korean

HOT KOREAN

Cuisine: Korean

Nearest tube: Wembley Park

Address: Wembley Retail Park, Engineers Way, HA9 0EG

Remember my lament for the deceased Oriental City? In looking up the address, I found out that a reincarnation has existed in Wembley Park for almost a year, complete with pan-Asian food court. I could barely contain my joy, and less than 24 hours later, here is the full report.

It's about 10% the size of Oriental City, and largely consists of a couple of shops and a food court. The food court currently has about six stalls (Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Malaysian etc.) so here is the review for one of them - Hot Korean.

Being currently bunged up with a stinking cold, I go for the spiciest dishes I can think of: Tteokbokki (rice cakes in spicy sauce) and soon-dubu-jjigae (spicy tofu seafood soup). The friendly waitress compliments me on my Korean pronunciation (yeah, I'm awesome) and we even get our food brought out to us! Pacific Plaza 1 : 0 Oriental City.

The food is ready in minutes, and it's delicious. The Tteokbokki are cooked perfectly with just the right level of spiciness, and the soon-dubu-jjigae is piping hot, full of generous chunks of tofu, squid, clams and a runny egg-yolk (which I opt to put on my rice). The meal is spicy, bursting with flavour, and at around £5 per dish, reasonably priced.

This is what my soon-dubu-jjigae might've looked like if I hadn't eaten it immediately without taking a photo. Whoops.

So, a promising start for a food court that I am VERY excited about. I will definitely be returning soon to try out some of the other stalls.

Service 5/5

Food 4/5

Value 4/5

Ambience 2/5

Total: 15/20

Why you should go there: Cheap, authentic Korean food.

Don’t leave without trying: Soon-dubu-jjigae

Wing Tai

WING TAI

Cuisine: Chinese

Nearest tube: Brent Cross

Address: 395 Edgware Road, NW2 6LN

Tel: 020 8452 2333

On June 1st 2008 something very precious to me died. 

Oriental City, AKA Yaohan Plaza, was the finest oriental shopping centre to grace the planet. The two jewels in its crown were: 1) the food court, which had about a dozen stalls selling dirt-cheap top-notch food from any Asian cuisine you could think of; 2) China City, an outstanding Chinese restaurant. Brent Council closed it two years ago for redevelopment, and a little part of me died inside. No demolition or building work has yet taken place. The building remains boarded-up and empty. This makes me so angry, words cannot do it justice.

So that's the history lesson over. The legacy being that since 2008, I have been looking for a Chinese restaurant to replace it. A few have come close, but never matched the quality of the legend that is China City. Until now.

Wing Tai is a restaurant that appeared after the redevelopment of the Staples Corner branch of Wing Yip, a popular oriental supermarket. It sits just on the corner of the complex, in the same building as the supermarket and the delightful Reindeer Cafe (review coming soon). My knowledge of Wing Tai was limited to peeping through the windows, but last night I finally got round to eating there. And boy, am I glad that I did.

The decor ticks all the boxes, elegant and traditional with that reassuring touch of tackiness that comes with huge golden dragons stuck to the wall. Despite being sat on a table by the wall (giving me a majestic view of the car park through the window), this is a nice place to eat in. It fills up quickly, and it's easy to see why. 

First course, the only way to start any Chinese banquet - deep fried soft shell crab. If you haven't tried it before, stop reading this and go get some. Rarely have I had a bad version of this dish, but Wing Tai's is particularly good. It's crispy, not too greasy, well-sized and served with a generous amount of that wonderful diced onion, chilli and garlic relish that is nearly as good as the crab itself.

Soft shell crab

For mains, we go for three kinds of roasted meat: the duck is adequate, the belly pork is crisp, and the char siu is truly delicious, moist and succulent. The mapo tofu isn't the best I've tasted, the sauce being overly salty and lacking the pungent flavour of fermented beans that I know and love.

Mixed roasted meats (front) and mapo tofu (back)

The mixed seafood ho fun is wonderful, an enormous portion packed with juicy king prawns, huge sweet scallops, and thick chunks of surprisingly tender squid. The noodles themselves are cooked perfectly, with that unique burnt oil taste that I crave. The real standout dish is the eel in black bean sauce. The eel is fresh, moist and creamy (I imagine it's been bought fresh from the neighbouring supermarket and their remarkable fish counter). The sauce is exquisite, so much more than normal black bean sauce, with a delicate combination of flavours between the salty beans, the sharp tang of ginger, and a wonderful bitter citrus hint of what I can only imagine is finely diced orange peel.

Eel in black bean sauce

Mixed seafood ho fun

All in all, this was a truly delicious meal that rivals any Chinese restaurant I could think of. It's not cheap (around £80 for three people) but I wouldn't expect food this good to be cheap. The service was a little slow, but our comedy waiter made up for it ("What's that dish those people are having?" "Sizzling . . . something").

Congratulations Wing Tai, to the top of the Chinese restaurant league you go.

Service 3/5

Food 5/5

Value 3/5

Ambience 4/5

Total: 15/20

Why you should go there: The best Chinese food in town.

Don’t leave without trying: Eel in black bean sauce

Byron

BYRON

Cuisine: American

Nearest tube: Covent Garden

Address: 33-35 Wellington Street, WC2E 7BN

Tel: 0207 420 9850

Aha. So that's what a burger is supposed to taste like.

I'll go on record to say that this is the best burger I've ever had, and I don't even like burgers that much. My solitary trip to GBK I found uninspiring, yet something about this chain of diners brings an otherwise dull dish to life. Going out to have burgers for an evening meal was once unfathomable to me, but having been to Byron twice, it's likely to remain a staple of my eatery circle. 

Byron is decked out in classic American 50's diner deco, with a touch of class (note the mirrored toilet doors) and is usually full, as I suspect its reputation is beginning to spread. Upon arrival, one of a gaggle of cheery female waitresses welcomes us in and seats us, reminding me how much of a difference service with a smile really makes (note to waiters/waitresses in general: cheer up, might never happen.)

The menu is minimalist and reassuringly simple, a small piece of card with a list of about five different burgers and side orders. So many restaurants have such a bewildering range of options that choosing your meal can become an ordeal (GBK, I'm talking to you). It's refreshing to have your choices limited, and the only real option here is a classic cheeseburger. My connoisseur friend Gerard assures me that American cheese - the luminous orange processed variety - is the only way to go, so I advise others to do likewise and avoid the temptation of messing around with mature cheddar/blue/Monterey Jack/Gruyere. It's an American classic, so let's leave it to the experts.

The burgers arrive: colourful, traditional, and mouth-wateringly simple. The bun is toasted just enough to have blackened slightly around the edges, giving a subtle charred edge to the flavour; the burger itself is thick, juicy and pink the middle, with a course, meaty texture and that distinct flame-grilled taste that I can only seem to find in France with a good steak hache, the kind of flavour that Burger King lie about having. It's nice to find a burger that isn't well-done by default - I wouldn't eat a steak like that, so why should my burger be incinerated? Byron gets everything spot-on.

Therein lies the beauty of the classic burger that has sadly been lost over the years. It doesn't need to be anything fancy. There's nothing extraordinary here: bun, burger, cheese, tomato, red onion, lettuce, mayo. But it just works. When you have good quality ingredients cooked to perfection, very little else is needed to deliver a top-drawer meal.

I haven't even mentioned the sides yet, which are of the same high quality: the French fries are faultless, the home made skin-on chips are thick, crispy and tasty. The onion rings are excellent, and the courgette fries - lightly battered slices of courgette - are definitely worth trying. I accompany all of the above with my own special concoction of Ketchustanaise (ketchup + mustard + mayo - try it, it's the only thing you'll ever eat with your chips again). Washed down with a can of cream soda, what more could you want?

In short, this is the perfect burger. Simple and delicious. The service is great, the prices are reasonable, and the food is faultless. Do yourself a favour, get down to Byron, and fall in love again with an old classic.

Service 4/5

Food 4/5

Value 4/5

Ambience 3/5

Total: 15/20

Why you should go there: A neglected classic brought to life with elegant simplicity.

Don’t leave without trying: American cheeseburger

Megabite Cafe

MEGABITE CAFE

Cuisine: Chinese

Nearest tube: Holloway Road

Address: 117 Benwell Road, Islington, N7 7BW

Tel: 0207 697 0891

Arsene Wenger, and Arsenal Football Club in general, have Megabite Cafe to thank for my continued support.

It is no lie that were it not for this wonderful little eatery, I would go to Arsenal home matches far, far less than I do. It is a compulsory part of the matchday experience, and depressingly, is usually the highlight of the day.

To give it a football analogy, Megabite Cafe is a bit like Cesc Fabregas. An unpolished gem that's been around for ages, great value, magnificent quality, and has blossomed into the heart and soul of the football club. Rumours of Barcelona attempting to purchase the cafe and airlift it to Catalonia are yet unconfirmed. (And if you're reading this Pep Guardiola, fuck off, there's no Barca DNA here)

Very much in the Wong Kei mould, Megabite serves huge plates of delicious food for next to nothing, minus the rude service. Most meals cost under a fiver, and range from my usual favourites of mixed seafood ho fun, lamb with sea spicy aubergine and crispy noodles, to my friends' usual choice of mixed meat Thai curry. All of which should of course be smothered with the fantastic chilli oil. Every dish, without exception, is expertly cooked, in a huge satisfying portion that will never let you down as much as the football inevitably will.

In short, this little cafe has become a treasured part of my life. I've had some real moments here over the past four years: counting down the minutes on a rainy Tuesday night before a big Champions League match; celebrating a victory on a Saturday afternoon by swearing at the passing away support coaches; or even just cramming in a quick meal before going to the pub to watch a game on TV. Win, lose or draw, Megabite Cafe always delivers.

Service 4/5

Food 4/5

Value 5/5

Ambience 2/5

Total: 15/20

Why you should go there: Brilliant food, huge portions, dirt cheap.

Don’t leave without trying: Lamb with sea spicy aubergine

Sarashwathy Bavans

SARASHWATHY BAVANS

Cuisine: South Indian

Nearest tube: Wembley Central

Address: 549 High Road, Wembley, HA0 2DJ

Tel: 0208 902 1515

If you haven’t tried South Indian food, you must hate yourself. Why do you hate yourself?

So to give you a quick summary, it’s completely different to the Indian most people are used to. Firstly, it’s completely vegetarian. Don’t let that put you off. Still with me? Secondly, it’s about half the price. Yeah, now you’re interested, you tight goink. This is the place my girlfriend Lauren demands we visit, without fail, every time she’s in London. It’s easy to see why: the food is delicious, and it’s obscenely cheap.

The restaurant itself is big and bright, old Christmas decorations and fairy lights stuck to the ceiling, and is slightly clinical, a bit like a hospital canteen. It’s usually empty up until around eight o’clock, when it really starts to fill up. The fact that this place seems to be a favourite with the locals is a big plus, because there are a LOT of curry houses in Wembley. All the diners eat with their hands, but if you attempt this, avoid the common faux-pas and make sure you don’t use the hand you use to wipe your arse. Or just use cutlery. And toilet paper.

The food, ah the food. A compulsory opener is a mango lassi, a thick, cool, creamy drink which is almost better suited as a dessert. Starters include bhel poori (think rice krispies + spices + salad, trust me, it’s better than it sounds), gobi 65 (spicy battered cauliflower) and mogo chips (fat, crispy plantain chips). The speciality main course is the massala dosa, a huge crispy pancake filled with creamy spiced potato, but other favourites include the Madras thali, an enormous platter complete with about ten different curries (all of which are delicious), pappadoms, rice, salad etc. Lauren’s dish, which I’m pretty sure she loves more than she loves me, is the chola poori: a buttery, fluffy fried bread, the size of a goddamn airbag, served with a chickpea curry. If pooris were a person, I’d be single.

Mysore masala dosa

Chola poori, modelled by the lovely Lauren

The service is generally good; the head waiter is a friendly chap who knows us, knows what we order, and bullies us into having starters in an almost menacing fashion. It’s usually fast, but does tend to grind to a halt after eightish, so unless you want service slower than a council worker on a bank holiday, I recommend an early visit.

And boy is it cheap. Cheaper than that level in Mario filled with flying Cheep-Cheeps. (One of the luxuries of writing my own blog is including jokes that nobody will understand but me). You can eat on a fiver, and even if you completely stuff your face like a big fat bastard, you’ll struggle to spend more than £10 a head. Get down there now.

Service 3/5

Food 4/5

Value 5/5

Ambience 3/5

Total: 15/20

Why you should go there: Delicious food and criminally cheap.

Don’t leave without trying: Massala dosa