Latest news with #smallplates
The Guardian
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Marjorie's, London W1: ‘Original, and truly, madly good' – restaurant review
Some new openings just sound unappetising on paper. Take the cave à manger Marjorie's in Soho, a brand new, Parisian-inspired wine bar serving small plates in London W1. 'Oh God,' I said on learning that its proprietors are Michael Searle and Josh Anderson. 'Never heard of 'em.' Sorry to quibble, especially seeing as this seems to be their first hospitality venture, and I am well aware that eating out for a living is a huge jolly, but eating in wine bars? Well, I am not a fan: too noisy, too boisterous, too give-me-my-bloody-dinner generally – not to mention too many drunken elbows in your toastie de fromage while a sommelier bores on about beaujolais nouveau. Also, Marjorie's is alarmingly close to Carnaby Street, the natural habitat of the disappointed diner. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. So I set off down Foubert's Place, muttering to myself that at least I'm not heading for the nearby Kingly Court food hub that brims with dining options, each of them more impersonal and oversubscribed than the next. Back in the noughties, Carnaby Street still gave a slight nod to its Swinging Sixties roots, with a few remaining independent shops selling goth gear, pantaloons and bongs. Today, however, it is a shiny row of sleek international flagship stores, with the wondrous, olde worlde Liberty at one end, clinging on for dear life, the poor love, before she is inevitably turned into a Lululemon. Anyway, it turns out that it is for all these reasons that we should actually be grateful for Marjorie's, because, yet again and with no fear of this letting up any time soon, it also turns out that I am an absolute idiot. Marjorie's may look like a wine bar, but Searle and Anderson have opened something tiny, brave, bespoke and appealingly odd. Oh, and delicious, too, because the duo have tempted Giacomo Peretti, formerly of Le Gavroche, to cook for them. He has also worked at the crowdpleaser Temper, the wholly underrated Firebird and the dependably brilliant the Culpeper, and if you head down to the basement, where there are more tables, you'll be able to watch him weave his magic. Snaring Peretti to do wine bar snacks and letting his imagination fly is a stroke of genius, because now you have a brilliant chef serving gooey chicken liver 'rocher' – think rich, nutty, nibblable savoury Ferrero Rocher – pretty little yummy crab tartelettes made all the merrier by the addition of kumquat and a delicate and rather bizarre lamb tartare dotted with spring vegetables, goat's cheese and a tiny fresh strawberry. Surprise! This is actually, and quite unexpectedly, a restaurant with serious food; in fact, it might well be the most earnest, accomplished, imaginative food being served in this square mile right now. Yes, you could play safe, grab a space at the long bar upstairs, order from the exclusively French wine list and feast only on a selection of La Fromagerie cheese and rustic pain served with a shedload of salted French butter, perhaps with some saucisson with cornichons on the side. But don't do that: Peretti's larger and admittedly stranger-sounding dishes are well worth the risk. There's a bowl of escargots with seaweed in a silky pinewood cream and a soft, delicate salad of good, mixed green leaves with a sweet, citrussy, orange blossom vinaigrette. Original, perhaps offputting to some, but truly, madly good. Two other standouts were a stinky, slightly warm piece of runny brie de Meaux served with lush fresh apricot – outstanding – and some proper French soul food: poached chicken on white rice made decadent with brown butter. This was a rhapsody of classy, beige carbs, and I scraped at the bowl like a sad labrador released from her kibble diet. Slices of tempura courgette, almost like cigars to look at, came dotted with trout roe and rouille, and were equally weird and wonderful. The dessert list offered a millefeuille with crème diplomate and strawberries, but my eyes had already been greedily drawn to a warm, frothy, olive oil-strewn bowl of fresh chocolate mousse topped with crunchy hazelnuts. Again, this was just heavenly. As a non-drinker, I spend little time in wine bars these days – after all, as the old saying goes: 'If you stay in the barber's long enough, you'll probably end up with a haircut' – but for Marjorie's I'm making an exception. Service is prompt, the menu intriguing and there's a sense that you're in on a secret that no one else knows about. Go for the vin, the gossip, a bowl of nocellara olives and some great baguette; stay for a dinner that's currently one of the best in London. It's really worth going to Carnaby Street for. Courage, mes braves! Marjorie's 26 Foubert's Place, London W1; (no phone). Open all week, noon-11.30pm (Fri & Sat midnight, Sun 10pm. From about £40 a head, plus drinks and service
Malay Mail
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Malay Mail
sits, Mont Kiara: The tiny wine bar and restaurant with outstanding bar food like addictive stuffed peppers and a comforting tiger prawn ‘pao fan'
KUALA LUMPUR, June 8 — When I first heard of sits (styled in lowercase, like a password) opening in Arcoris late last year, I thought, 'Great, just what Mont Kiara needs. Another derivative 'small plates' bar. The kind where the wine is only ever described as 'funky', 'small-batch' and 'biodynamic', the menu 'modern', 'Asian-inspired' and 'playful', and the chefs and servers somehow have more tattoos than the food has salt.' These places always seem to serve the same plate of corn ribs, dusted in mala spice, salted egg, curry leaf, or my personal favourite, just 'herbs'. Groundbreaking. But a few months passed, and a friend whom I know to be the last person swayed by trendy buzz insisted on bringing me there. We had to actually find it first, though. Despite being on the ground floor of Arcoris, it's all the way at the far end to the left, completely hidden behind a myNEWS and a sweeping café that's usually empty by the time sits opens in the evening. There's no more than a handful of tables perched out front, and the door is all glass, with specials and wines scribbled on it in colourful marker ink. Past the entrance, a spiral staircase leads to a few more tables upstairs, while the kitchen on the right is so small I've seen cupboards with more room to move. And yet, despite the squeeze, the food being sent out is far more expansive than the setting suggests. Built on a distinctly Chinese foundation (the founder spent close to two decades in China), the menu follows two simple principles: is it bursting with flavour, and does it go with wine or beer? If the answer to both is yes, it makes the cut. Zesty garlic 'edamame' is an addictive snack. — Picture by Ethan Lau Take the zesty garlic edamame (RM9.90), which reimagines the Japanese izakaya staple as something closer to Chinese smashed cucumber, doused in vinegar, minced raw garlic and plenty of chillies for a zingy, sharp snack that is impossible to put down. How about a more luxurious bite? Soft and seductive, the braised beef tongue in red wine, topped with onion marmalade (RM39), is a luscious trip to France for the palate. Every bar has chicken wings, but not every bar has a dipping sauce like this. — Picture by Ethan Lau Any bar worth its salt must have chicken wings, but the winner here is the dipping sauce. The wings are simply deep-fried, with barely any batter, but they're served with a sweet fermented rice chilli sauce (RM39) that's impossibly delicious. More sweet and fragrant than hot and spicy, it's a sweet chilli sauce actually worth bottling. On another visit with my parents, old folks who were pleasantly surprised by how much they enjoyed the food, the nomad's spiced lamb skewers (RM39) were predictably heavy on the cumin. Spiced lamb skewers that aren't groundbreaking, but satisfying. — Picture by Ethan Lau But between bites of supple lamb and slurps of the signature hand-pulled noodle (RM18), there still was not much to complain about. The noodles were served cold, wide and flat, slicked in shallot oil, vinegar, chilli oil and bits of dried shrimp, then topped with a heap of crunchy, pungent strips of scallion whites. Slick, cold noodles that pack just a touch of heat. — Picture by Ethan Lau Both craft beer and wine are offered. The wine list is a quaint little handwritten booklet, with helpful tasting notes for the uninitiated. Nothing groundbreaking, but much of the inoffensive selection suits our hot, humid climate and is approachable even for the most inexperienced drinker. The house white, a crisp, dry Castillo Rodafuerte Airen (RM29 per glass), is typical of wines made from the Spanish grape: acidic, but light in body and character. It's something refreshing to mindlessly sip on, which is ideal here, because the real magic is in the food. The best bite on the whole menu, Charleston peppers stuffed with pork and red capsicum paste on the side. — Picture by Ethan Lau Charleston peppers, stuffed with pork and served with a daub of red capsicum paste on the side (RM28), might just be my favourite bite here. The porky filling brings to mind yong tau foo, while the mild, subtly fruity green pepper recalls grilled shishito. But these are definitely fried, more like the way Padrón peppers are treated for tapas, and mopping up the sweet, bright-orange capsicum paste is a must. I'd take 10 plates of this over another grilled corn rib any day. The fragrant, fruity note of roasted green peppers is on show in my second favourite dish here, the brined beef skewers (RM34). Thin, silken slices of beef, slippery as you pull them off the skewer with your teeth, are smothered in a smoky, peppery sauce. It is one of the more peculiar yet compelling skewers I have tasted. The brined beef skewers have a peculiar, slippery texture that's rather enjoyable. — Picture by Ethan Lau Even at a tiny bar like this, the pull of a large, bubbling pot of carb-filled stew to end the night is strong. The braised oxtail with white radish (RM79) is full of deep beefy flavour, with fork-tender meat and soft, yielding radishes. But the real showstopper is the tiger prawn pao fan (RM59). It announces itself by smell before sight, usually from a neighbouring table's order. Then yours arrives, and the heady, rousing fumes of crustacean essence set the scene for pure prawny pleasure. Best to wait a moment for the piping hot broth to cool, revealing a gorgeous orange sheen and the sweet, concentrated flavour of tiger prawns, soaking into the rice. It's the perfect send-off. The small front of sits. — Picture by Ethan Lau There's a wide mirror hanging above the entrance to sits. Spelled out in strips of red tape is the Chinese idiom '酒足饭饱', which dates back to the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty in 13th-century China. It roughly translates to 'drinking and eating to one's heart's content', and I can't think of a more fitting ethos for a night at sits. Creative, not convoluted, but most importantly: extremely satisfying. Being this wrong has never tasted so right. sits G-7, Arcoris Jalan Kiara, Mont Kiara Kuala Lumpur Open Tuesday to Sunday, 5-11pm Tel: 019-228 0288 Instagram: @ * This is an independent review where the writer paid for the meal. * Follow us on Instagram @eatdrinkmm for more food gems. * Follow Ethan Lau on Instagram @eatenlau for more musings on food and mildly self-deprecating attempts at humour.
