The Best Dishes Eater London’s Editors and Writers Ate This Week

Shredded beef at Etles | Hester van Hensbergen

Eater’s editors and writers share their highlights from seven days of eating

A warm welcome back to the column which highlights the best dishes (or things) Eater London staff and/or contributors ate during the week.

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Shredded Beef at Etles Uyghur

A method for the embrace of winter: Watch amateur fireworks. Do something new and scary to your hair. Wash the mounting pile of veg box roots and invent a pasta sauce. Try Horlicks. Remember that it does not, in fact, taste like the inside of a Malteser. Dig out your long warm coat: find it riddled with a new landscape of uneven holes and throw it into the bin in the rain. Get the train to Walthamstow Central and head for the duck egg blue caress of Etles Uyghur. Share lamb skewers. Imagine pulling them straight from the fire, the hot gleaming swords looming for your lips. Resist the urge to eat the leghmen noodles — sinuous and supple from the chef’s fingertips — with your hands. Order the fish-fragrant beef, wait to go dentist-numb, then look giddily at each other. Subtly angle for the last wood ear mushroom, wrinkled and slick like landlocked seaweed.—Hester van Hensbergen
235 Hoe Street, E17 9PP

Adam Coghlan

Hohaki’s bun cha

Grilled pork and chicken bun cha

Full thanks to the “flaneur foodie,” Feroz Gajia for his Instagram Stories recommendation (itself via Guan Chua) for small Vietnamese lunchtime spot — between Liverpool Street and Aldgate — called Hohaki. This is elite fast food; the best grilled meats I’ve eaten since Sunlight’s jerk chicken last week. The smoky char from the grill behind the till is prominent in both five-spiced chicken and pork, but because the latter had been given a little time to rest, after its fat had been rendered, it took on a fabulous, almost confit-like texture. Outstanding, delicious, it was served as a bun cha — on a bed of rice noodles, and some crisp crunchy salad with a fish sauce, rice vinegar dressing, and a dusting of crushed peanuts and fried shallots. —Adam Coghlan
68 Middlesex St, E1 7EZ

Moo Krob at Singburi

You are reading Eater. You are almost certainly well-acquainted with Singburi. You have picked the remnants of moo krob (thrice, I believe, fried belly pork) from your teeth on many occasions. So, I should be clever and talk about the chu chee stuffed peppers with ikura, which, if you squinted, wouldn’t look out of place on a much cheffier menu in a much cheffier restaurant — testament to Sirichai Kularbwong’s inventive cooking, which is much better than it needs to be, given what you pay to eat here. Or maybe I could mention the pork chop moo ping style — with a fat to meat ratio that would please Big Sam Allardyce (and me and my pals — we ordered it twice).

But I’m leaving London for a bit and this might be the last time I’ll eat at Singburi for a while so I’m plumping for a mainstay on the ever-changing specials board. I’ve eaten moo krob countless times, with countless different people. It’s a seasoning or punctuation for the entire meal: to be plucked at sporadically (and greedily) like popcorn or crisps. And it represents what Singburi is to me: a no-nonsense, crowd-pleasing mess of fingers, plates and conversation that delivers on tasty, consistent food like nothing else I know of in the city. What’s more, moo krob is versatile. On this occasion our fourth portion served as the perfect dessert. —Tom Ford
593 High Rd Leytonstone, London E11 4PA

Apoorva Sripathi

Fare’s tart tatin

Tarte Tatin at Fare

You know that Shania Twain song where she’s hardly impressed by anything or anyone? Well I can bet that this tarte tatin at Fare would indeed impress her much and keep her warm on a long, cold, lonely night. Warm, buttery, and indulgent, the pears were enveloped in a delicate pastry and coddled by a perfectly spiced caramel, and complimented by a cold scoop of ice cream — while my companion’s tiramisu paled in comparison. I don’t remember much about that horrid rainy night but I can never forget this wonderful dessert that I fell in love with. Everyone needs this in their life, including and especially Shania Twain. —Apoorva Sripathi
11 Old St, EC1V 9HL

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Last week’s best dishes: Friday 4 November 2022

Diya Mukherjee

Whole roast duck at Four Seasons.

Whole roast duck at Four Seasons

Until last month, my meals in Chinatown would always begin on an iconic green table in the erstwhile dumpling stalwart, Jen Café. Since its sudden closure, I feel like an anchorless ship in the area. If Jen Café was about whetting your appetite with dainty snacks, my new first port of call, Four Seasons, is about ordering a whole duck with all the trimmings, and feasting until you can scarcely imagine you will ever have an appetite again. It sets a rather different tone, but I’m starting to get used to it. —Sean Wyer
84 Queensway, Queensway W2 3RL

Apoorva Sripathi

Ham and pineapple pizza at Mamma Dough.

Five-Oh at Mamma Dough

There are occasions when only a pizza will do — Fridays, breakups, hangovers, leftover breakfasts, when the (or your personal) world is coming to an end... This was one such day, cold and windy with my ulcers closing in on me faster than adult responsibilities. Thankfully, this big boi at Mamma Dough Peckham (a stone’s throw from the Overground station which is handy) hit all the high notes: beautiful leopard-spotting on a fluffy, crisp crust; delicate cotto ham; sweet juicy pineapples contrasted from the chillies (and the additional chilli oil on the table); plus the freshest basil pesto to dip the crusts in. The five-oh was the stuff pizza dreams are made of, at least until the next pizza occasion. —Apoorva Sripathi
179 Queen’s Road, Peckham SE15 2ND

Hester van Hensbergen

Arrabbiata at Terroni’s, Clerkenwell

Arrabbiata at Terroni of Clerkenwell

The shelves of Terroni’s are a 21 century Andy Warhol: a matrix of true blue and butter yellow De Cecco packets in all their iterations. Above them sit castles of panettone in lilac and midnight blue boxes. You have to look up to notice them, though, and when I arrived, I had my gaze firmly fixed on the ground. The weather was bad and my mood unbudgingly so. Eyes on lap, I plunged my finger in the general direction of the pasta section and asked for a glass of red wine.

Two waiters flanked the arrabbiata, coaxing it towards me: one for the plate, the other for the pepper mill. A careful passage for an angry dish. The thirty tubes, nestled together in their spiky red swamp, were enough to pierce through my brain chemistry. They were enough to make me sit up, look up, and notice the rich bread disguised as celestial towers overhead.

The turnaround was fast: twenty minutes later, and I was stepping across the threshold, a pastel turret under each arm, lips upturned, and the cut of the arrabbiata — like a good first kiss — still nibbling at my tongue. —Hester van Hensbergen
138 Clerkenwell Road, Clerkenwell EC1R 5DL

Adam Coghlan

Yeah, sorry about the pic.

Breakfast burrito at Quarter Kitchen

The Mexican (especially breakfast) food at Rodrigo Cervantes’s Quarter Kitchen just keeps on getting better. Yes, the tacos are excellent, but it’s the burrito where Cervantes’s intelligence and playfulness is most evident. His breakfast burrito, he says, is based on the one McDonald’s serves in America. You can tell. It’s a high-low hot item: mostly a nostalgic embrace of all the quick wins in great fast food — salt, sugar, fat, acid, but through his salsas, the “build,” and the lightness of toasting, it’s also a little cheffy, just enough. This time round, I went off-menu, swapping out the sausage patty for Cervantes’s sugar-cured smoked streaky bacon. Together with eggs, hash brown, American cheese, and salsa roja, it was exceptional. —Adam Coghlan
St John at Hackney Churchyard, Lower Clapton Road, Clapton E5 0PD

Buttermilk-fried pheasant at 40 Maltby Street

In the current geopolitical climate, there’s few things that fill me with a deep, reliving surety so much as ordering a plate of deep-fried food from 40 Maltby Street. If there’s ever been a missed iteration of a croquette or fritter on their list, I haven’t witnessed it. No exception to the rule, this week’s buttermilk-fried pheasant with bacon, cabbage, and quince felt like the most welcoming segue into the firm autumnal flavours that will grace our plates for the coming weeks. It was perfectly pitched: soft and tender pheasant in a crispy exterior, a crunch of raw cabbage and a knife’s tip of quince — couldn’t have asked for a more satisfying dish. —Nathalie Nelles
40 Maltby Street, Bermondsey SE1 3PA

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