Mike & Ollie's Supper Club - SE14

Unfortunately (or fortunately really) I was so intent on eating all the delicious food at Mike & Ollie's supper club on Wednesday night that I didn't take any photos other than this rather lovely snap of my friend Amelia with the first thing on offer, an amazing frozen strawberry daiquiri (which looked pretty and went down a treat).  This was actually my first ever supper club so I really had no idea what to expect but thought it might be quite awkward, eating at a fold up card table in someone's living room.  How wrong I was - Mike & Ollie's is held in a cool warehousey style apartment in SE14 (New Cross) and the room had two large trestle-type tables, each with 12 people on them and an ingenious method of sliding the food down the centre of the long tables on wheeled planks, negating the need to reach over and deliver the food to each person.  My attendance was all thanks to my friend Gen who booked it all.  The food kept on coming after the daiquiri - we started with a scrumptious (I am totally going to run out of adjectives in this post) small portion of pork belly, with perfect crackling and some sort of stewed rhubarb on top.  As Amelia is a veggo, Ben and I split her portion (bonus!).  This was followed by steaming bowls of mussels with chorizo and broad beans which were also super tasty.  We then had a cute apple sorbet palate cleanser served in a hollowed out apple and followed up with delicious new season asparagus with two buttery dips, one flavoured with anchovy.  Picking up warm, sweet asparagus spears (as a side bar - if any of you have seen the Aussie original version of Kath & Kim you may remember Kim on E saying she was Britney Spears' sister "Asparagus Spears"...one of the all time best comedic scenes ever) and dipping them in savoury butter, then shoving them down your gullet is not only delicious but feels kinda dirty...in a good way....but then maybe that's just me....  Anyway - by this time we were pretty full (especially  young Ben and I, having had extra pork) but we wolfed down the scallop dish (served in the shell) although I have no memory of exactly how they were cooked, just that they were tasty.  We had also by this time downed a couple of bottles of wine and were happily chatting away to our neighbours who, it turned out, made cakes to sell at music festivals - nice job right?  The only slightly bum note in what was a night of amazing food was dessert - lovely strawberries and sort of a creamy, custardy substance (which I liked) but served on a weird, hard biscuity thing which Amelia said reminded her of a ryvita.  However let's not dwell on that because the food at Mike & Ollie's was seriously good  - it would actually be incorrect to say restaurant standard because this was way better than a lot of restaurants, I would happily have paid more than the £35 a head for what was a brilliant five course meal with sorbet and daiquiri (wine was extra).  Mike (who presided over our table and was remarkably calm given how many hungry foodies he was serving) & Ollie have a stall at the wonderful Brockley Market (check out their website here - if you are in the market for some food porn, this is a good place to start your surfing).  There are some upcoming dates for June - you can book on their website here.  I am now not only a big Mike & Ollie fan but also love the whole supper club vibe (I know, I know - I am late to the party) - my only worry is that my first supper club has set the bar waaaay high.

#Meateasy - New Cross SE14

I had never visited the Meatwagon, Yianni Papoutsis' hugely popular travelling burger van but became aware of it once it got stolen and Yianni ingeniously decided to strike a deal with Goldsmiths Tavern in New Cross Road to take over the upstairs room and turn it into a burger joint.  The blogs have been humming with praise and as lovers of a fine burger, the other half and I made the trek to New Cross last night.  I am a bit of a SE London novice, we have some friends in East Dulwich, I've been to Greenwich and have driven through New Cross on my way to the O2 but I have never hung out there, as much as in my head I am sometimes a groovy Goldmsiths' art student, writing beat poetry and smoking reefer while looking grubbily handsome...anyway....back to #Meateasy (hash-tagged because of the use Yianni makes of Twitter to update his many fans).  We were guided by scrawled messages on the outside of the pub to a side door and up some grungy stairs, hearing what sounded like a really wild party going on up above.  Entering the room, it was a bit like a party - super crowded, good music playing, lots of booze and the funky waitresses/hostesses occasionally banging on a tin bucket when someone had deposited a tip.  We were told that the wait for food (we arrived at 8.30pm) was around an hour and despite being starving we decided the burgers being carried past us looked worth the wait.  We consoled ourselves at the bar with excellent New York Sours (as pictured - I know it's weird to not have a picture of the burgers but the one I took is really just of a bun and doesn't do it justice so you get the drink picture instead).  The woman working behind the bar was obviously an expert mixologist 'cause these babies were sensational.  The one hour turned into almost two and we were getting delirious with hunger, also a little squiffy after two sours and a beer but the upside was that the place had started to empty slightly (it certainly couldn't have got any fuller) and we managed to nab a table.  I almost wept with relief when they called our number and shortly afterwards we had the main event put in front of us.  I had a cheese burger, the other half had a chilli burger and we shared the famous onion rings and some chilli cheese fries.  So was it worth the wait?  Oh yes people.  If you are a fan of burgers this is the nuts - soft, lustrous, savoury, meaty, perfectly seasoned goodness - I had to stop myself from wolfing it all down in one go.  The onion rings were also fantastic and the chilli cheese fries took me back to the end of big nights out in my younger days in Australia - there is nothing like fries covered in some sort of sauce and cheese, simple but delicious!  This place is a real experience and I loved the huge mix of people that were there - from the aforementioned Goldmsiths' students to ageing hipsters, businessmen and food geeks (whilst I may be a lithe art student in my head, in reality I like to think I am a combo of the last two categories).  But be quick people, this "residency" only lasts until April 16th - and my advice, get there as close to the 6pm opening as possible and definitely try out the New York Sours.