Photo: MrLerone

Highs

1.Polpo – my new favourite restaurant. Very good Italian style tapas eating.

2.Sydney Breakfasts – just the bomb. I wish i could start every day Sydney style.

3.Whole Foods Market – the big one on Ken High Street is like heaven on earth.

4.Good Coffee – being shown what real coffee should taste like by Campos and Kaffeine.

5.Stuffed Courgette Flowers – still really chuffed about making these bad boys in France.

6.Engagement Dinner at Brasserie Balzar – the perfect Parisian place to pop the question.

7.Ramond Blanc’s Kitchen Secrets – for my money, the best cookery show of the past year

8.The Santa Barbara Shellfish Company – one of the standout meals from our California road trip.

9.Good Mexican Food – from Benitos Hat to La Super Rica the Mexicans have been killing it. Me gusta.

10.Birthday Dinner at Scott’s – very special, and Michael Barrymore was in the house. What more do you want?

Lows

1.Tierra Brindisa – my once favourite Soho restaurant has gone down hill. Sort it out lads!

2.Cattle class – feeling like rushed, harassed cattle by the service at The Wolseley.

3.The Delicious Miss Dahl – no idea how this got commissioned. A truly terrible, patronising, fake show.

4.Just Falafs going out of business  – really miss a decent falafel fix at lunch time. Please come back.

5.Borough Market Prices – its become a rip-off. Stuff there gets more expensive every time I go.

6.A.A Gill – Sunday Times food columnist. Self absorbed, pompous, objectionable, baboon shooting twat.

7.Sourdough skills – still not managed to make a good sourdough loaf yet. But I won’t stop till I succeed.

8.Byfords – supposedly one of the best restaurant in Holt. The deli cafe is good, but the restaurant is truly terrible.

9.Uncle Bens – this TV ad makes me want to murder people. Make it stop.

10. The Hairy Bikers – sorry fellas, but you continue to annoy the f**k out of me. How the hell did you get on TV!?!?

My day job takes me in to central London each day, and whilst I’m spoiled for choice for places to get lunch, I tire of giving the Prets and Eats my cash every day.  That being the case, a year or so ago my old work partner and I set ourselves on a bit of a mission to find some alternatives to the standard fayre, the results of which you can find on this map. I’ll be posting about some of the names on the list in the not too distant future, but first up I want to talk about Benito’s Hat.

No longer the preserve of stoned Californian students, the burrito has made it’s way to the UK (well London at least) and seems to be growing in popularity. I used to get my fix from an imaginatively named place called ‘El Burrito’ which promoted itself with a young Mexican kid dressed as a donkey (burrito means ‘little donkey’ in Mexican) handing out flyers, and then Benito’s Hat opened across the street. I think I went in there on the day it opened, and I’ve never darkened the donkey’s doorway since.

Based on Goodge Street, Benito’s hat has been open for a little over a year, and pretty much every lunchtime has a queue out of the door. It’s not hard to see why. The food is fresh, tasty and fast, and if you leave out the sour cream and cheese, probably not that unhealthy.

I’m a bit of a creature of habit, and always opt for a burrito with pork, black beans, hot sauce and guacamole (which costs an extra 50p – my only complaint). Once unwrapped from the foil, you know you’re in the presence of greatness. The tortillas are as soft and as warm as (I apologise for this analogy) a baby’s bum. Taking a bite you immediately get a hit of the seriously tasty stewed pork. Very similar to a ‘carnitas’ burrito you’d get in the states, the meat is intensely flavoured with lime, cinnamon, oregano and pepper black pepper. Then you taste the beans, then the heat of the chili sauce, before being soothed by the cool of the salad and guaca. The flavours are big and bold. It’s a seriously tasty and satisfying lunch.

I’ve tried other things on the menu, they’re all good, and would easily rival anything that you’d get in the Mission area of San Francisco, but I’m not sure that I’ve really done the experience justice here , so do yourself a favour if you’re in the ‘hood and eat like a Mexican this lunch time.

As mentioned in the last post, I’ve just returned from a holiday in the States. From a food perspective, one of the things that I noticed about a lot of the stuff we tasted in California was the Mexican influence. Plenty of lime, avocado, coriander, chilli and corn. Fresh, tasty flavours.

We also ate quite a bit of of straight up Mexican food. Great Burritos in the Mission in San Francisco, Huevos Rancheros for breakfast, torta Mexicanas in LA, but the pick of the bunch was a a tiny little place called La Super-Rica in Santa Barbra.

Reputedly Julia Child’s favourite Mexican restaurant and tucked away in the Mexican area of town, La Super-Rica is basically a little shack with a tent attached to the back. Always busy, the tiny kitchen knocks out fantastic traditional Mexican street food. There are daily specials, firm favourites and apparently the best horchata you’ll taste outside of Mexico.

We tried the daily special, a vegetarian tamale, which came served in the corn husk it had been steamed in with a side of pork and beans. The corn meal was really tasty and kind of creamy, enriched with a bit of cheese and with vegetables through it. We also had a portion of the most delicious buttery guacamole, and a couple of servings of chorizo tacos. Amazing.

It was also a really charming place. No frills and not in any way poncy, it’s location also means that you have to make a real effort to get there, so people really go for the food. And there was a proper cross section of them. From the WASPy Santa Barbra set to students, Mexican locals and hipsters. I’d go back at the drop of a hat.

Super-Rica? As Omar Little would say, indeed.