Awana Malaysian Satay Bar - Awana Eat Somewhere Else

"Oh Dear!" I thought as I opened the wine list and saw that the cheapest bottle in the "monthly promotions" was £27. Then I looked at the next page and my eyes spotted the £480 Chateau Mouton Rothschild. Wow, I thought. This place must really be something to have a wine list where 80% of the bottles are over £50. Maybe I'm just out of touch since I eat in budget places like Polpo and Koya and have rarely seen a wine list of this calibre outside of an enoteca where the wine list is the size of a bible and caters for every budget or a truly exceptional restaurant of the Michelin variety.

Nevermind, I thought, clutching my Toptable 50% off food offer - the cuisine here is going to knock my socks off so it is deserving of a great wine to go with it. Then I (happily!) found the £19 bottle of Argentinian Malbec at the very back of the wine menu. The waiter comes around and it is too warm. We ask him for a bucket to cool it a couple of degrees. He nods, then pours out a glass for everyone ignoring our request then leaves looking vaguely bewildered. We never see him again.

So far, we have staff with a ridiculous wine list and no clue how to serve wine.

The menu is tantalising, lots of great authentic dishes, a good handful of street food dishes - satay skewers, grilled meats, roti etc. Mains average about £10-£20 which makes the exorbitant wine list all the more baffling. Then the food arrives.

Our three starters are unremarkable. Spring rolls with very bland flavour, zinged up a bit by sweet chilli sauce. Ayam Cincang Wonton (little crispy parcels of chicken) are a touch greasy, not too crispy and taste of... bland chicken (a recurring theme, despite its "corn fed" status paraded all over the menu. Perhaps the corn was of a particularly crap vintage that year?) again zinged up by the sweet chilli sauce. My daging kerabu - strips of beef marinated in oyster sauce and palm sugar mixed with salad and sambal sauce was the most exciting of the three, nice smooth flavours, a little kick, but so far I hadn't been bowled over by anything. The sneaking suspicion that the quality of the food was probably lower than Busaba eathai (which is a third cheaper) was beginning to grow.




Four mains later and I was less and less thrilled. My tiger prawn stuffed corn-fed chicken with sambal belacan and stir fried pak choi came with no pak choi, but two tiny strands of baby broccoli, non-existant sambal belacan, the ever present sweet chilli sauce and zero flavour. I couldn't distinguish the prawn from the chicken, nor could you tell the meat had been anywhere near a chargrill (perhaps if I'd smoked a cigarette first or licked a lump of coal it might have improved things). Kung Fu noodles looked like a Mr. Wu £5 eat-all-you-like buffet noodle dish and tasted like one too, but cost £18. The other two might well have been the same dish except one came in a pineapple and one had a vague element of chilli which imparted some sort of flavour. Hooray! An achievement!

Thank god for the second bottle of Argentinian Malbec, so far my favourite dish of the evening.

The saving grace was the desert. I had a scoop of lemongrass and chilli sorbet which oozed delicate flavours and was cool and refreshing, sweet then tangy. Dadar coconut filled pancakes were incredibly morish and Kec Kakang chocolate cake was gobbled up so fast I didn't actually get to taste any.

With 50% off, four of us ate for £104. Decent, but when I think it would have cost £208 otherwise to eat something I could have picked up in Wagamama - but more flavourful, I balked.

Awana needs to buck up on its spices or introduce a decent affordable wine list as well as reduce its prices, right now it looks, feels and tastes a bit Hong Kong Phooey.

Jedi Nights at Gordon's Wine Bar

Continuing my foray into the world of internet dating... its amazing how fast two humans can arrange a second "date" once they've discovered a mutual affection for lightsabers (note: this is not an innuendo - I really am talking about Jedi techy stuff here).

So, not quite the Mos Eisley cantina, but dark, stuffy and sufficiently cavernous to pass for a distant Tatooine cousin, the Gordon's Wine Bar near Embankment station was the setting for an evening of too much (good) wine, too much (good, smelly) cheese but just the right amount of good conversation.


I love Gordon's. The cosy alcoves smell a bit like musty old port barrels, which is exactly what the place should smell like, the entirely French and Italian staff are mostly useless but somehow totally appropriate, the slabs of cheese are humungous and there's cornichons "a volonte" clearly, they know me well. They serve a really good selection of port, sherry, manzanilla, red, white, rose and madeira and also have a decent hot food buffet. Best in the summer months is the hog roast at the end of the long thin strip of patio/garden that stretches outside the wine bar along the Embankment gardens.
Shoddy lighting outside does mean that after sundown you're somewhat falling into/over people, although that might also just be the port talking. Cheese-wise, we enjoyed some Port Salut, a dolcelatte and some Stinking Bishop. I think. Divine.

A. drank something or other, E. drank something or other different, both choices were yum. A. and E. then both shared a bottle of Rose which was crisp and refreshing (yes, I sound as knowledgeable as a Wetherspoon's wine list) then A and E proceeded to demolish the leftovers of someone else's wine, thus proving we really are about as classy as those egg-headed creatures in the Star Wars cantina band.

With all that it's rather a miracle A. and E. didn't break out into an all out demented Ewok-dance fest on the tube.

GUSTO - gastronomic complex in historical centre of Rome

Residing in a fascist-era former government building behind the sleek, minimalist Ara Pacis exhibition space Gusto occupies several buildings on various floors, more of a brand concept than just a restaurant, combining chic Italian style with a laid-back dining atmosphere, intimacy and good modern Italian cuisine. What's the catch? The expensive prices. The food is good, but not deserving of a price-list more akin to a high-end eatery or set-lunch michelin star menu. Plus the wines by the glass in the restaurant start at 8 euros, despite the fact that many bottles on the menu are affordable and you can get a very good glass of wine almost anywhere in Italy for half of that.

The Gusto company itself runs a cookery shop, an enoteca (wine bar), retaurant and pizzeria, an osteria (similar to a trattoria), a cocktail bar, formaggeria (cheese tasting bar) and finally a fish restaurant. These all adhere to the crisp white walls, oak tables and exposed metal design ethic but each conveys its own ambience geared to reflect the product it is selling. The cocktail bar prides itself on its selection of martinis, inlcuding the famed Bond favourite, the "Vesper"which I admit to being rather partial to. At aperitivo expect to find baby squid, marinated anchovies, mushroom tapenade and home-baked foccaccia brought to your table by any one of the handsome, part-time model waiters. 

We dined at the restaurant, a two-floor affair with small rooms leading in to each other so as to enhance a sense of warmth and keep the noise to a minimum. You'd hardly know there was a large pizzeria downstairs heaving with Friday night work groups and hungry 30-somethings but the delightful smell of fresh baked bread fills the room. 

I had a sformato al nero di seppia e crema di patate allo zafferano to start with, a smooth, sweet golden potato veloutè with a rich and creamy mousse of potato and squid cooked in its own ink. The flavours were spot on, as was the consistency. We drank a pouilly fumè there were no Italian white wines by the glass (not that i'm complaining about what we drank which was very good, but i'm sure a tourist to Rome would want the option of a local wine by the glass). 

Francesco chose a millefoglia of aubergine, which was tasty enough, but not worth the price. Food like this can be made at home, and being all vegetable you really can't justify the 9 euro charge unless you're sitting in a real gourmet establishment. 

For primi I had spinach tortelloni stuffed with buttery rich burrata cheese, a sort of soft mozzarella with a fondant cream-rich core, pacchino tomatoes and deep-fried basil leaves. THe pasta was excellent, the flavours fresh and the cheese just enough not to be filling, although the sauce was a bit watery and the deep-fried basil simply didn't taste of anything, and looked rather like wilted leaves as they were transparent and disintegrated at the touch of the fork. 

Francesco had ravioli with cacio e pepe, the consistency was perfect, creamy, pungeant and peppery as good cacio should be. A working class roman trattoria classic well adapted for the restaurant scene. 

For dessert we shared a dark chocolate soufflè with strawberries and peach cream. No denying the chocolate was rich and indulgent and yummy, but I was expecting a runnier fondent centre and the two little slivers of strawberry were pretty bland. THere wasn't much of a peach flavour either as there literally were two dots of the stuff on the plate. But overall, we somehow finished the whole lot very quickly and were still licking our lips for more...

THe secondi sounded wonderful,  although we simply weren't hungry enough. I would return again to try them, although I do believe the restaurant is a bit too pricey for its overall quality and the wine al bicchiere list needs revising. You can't bully people into choosing a whole bottle because its cheaper if you want to be taken seriously as a wine bar/enoteca as well. 

I haven't eaten at either the osteria or the pizzeria, although I have heard very good reviews of the pizzas. One little black spot was the sight of a Coeur de Lion cheese in the window of the formaggeria. I know that the aim of the cheese tasting bar is to showcase the variety and wealth of Italian cheeses primarily, and I also know the great rivalry between France and Italy on ... well... just about everything culinary, but frankly it's insulting both to your customers and to the French to offer Coeur de Lion as your token french cheese seeing as it's simply a low-end supermarket camembert of very little flavour. You wouldn't put "invernizzi" packet supermarket mozzarella on the cheese list of a posh Italian cheese-tasting delicatessen or serve it in a high-end restaurant. This made me pretty angry as I assumed it was part of an ongoing campaign to convince the Italian public that the French can't make cheese, when of course, the French make outstanding, world-famous cheese that can easily rival the best Italy has to offer.

Altogether, Gusto was tasty, with well-balanced and interesting variations on Italian classics and good, efficient service. The prices were too high and the wines-by-the-glass list a little bit restrictive but I would come here again to try the mains and the pizzeria. If they were not absolutely magnificent I might reconsider.