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.

Brockley Market - SE4

So after wanting to go for some time we finally made the trek (3 trains - not sure we did it the most efficient way) to Brockley to check out the Saturday market.  Running from 10am to 2pm in the Lewisham College car park, this is a real local gem.  I had heard lots of good things about the market, in particular from some faithful blog scouts, Ben and Gen.  It was a magnificent Saturday when the other half and I made the trek from the SW to the SE and by the time we reached Brockley station we were starving.  First stop was the wonderful Browns of Brockley for a flattie - it was so hard to resist the yummy food on offer there but we had come to Brockley Market to eat and I wanted an empty stomach to fill with market treats (that sounds kinda icky - sorry).  With the Spring blossom coming out and the sun shining, Brockley looked its best and the streets we walked through to get to the market were really lovely, by the time we reached our destination we had made plans to move to Brockley.  It felt so peaceful and the streets lined with large red brick Victorian houses were as nice as you'd get in more "sought after" areas (and a lot less hectic).  At the risk of sounding twee, our stroll also included a friendly cat sitting on a gatepost who rolled over to have its belly scratched.  Anyway enough Brockley love, on to the market.  First impressions were that it was

small but perfectly formed - given we were miles from the tourist hot-spots of Borough we didn't have to deal with the hordes (although if jokers like me keep writing about it it won't be long).  As much as we wanted to check out the fresh produce stalls, it had been a long time since we woke up, so getting some food tout de suite was priority numero uno (I do like to see how many languages I can fit in one sentence).  We decided to divide and conquer and split the proceeds - the other half went straight for Mother Flipper's burgers.  With high praise from burger aficionados like Young & Foodish I knew this burger would deliver and it did.  For me, the secret to a great burger is the bun - the patty goes without saying but the bun is key to take a good burger into the realms of greatness and the Mother Flipper burger got it spot on.  I am still dreaming of this burger 2 weeks later.  My side

of the shared breakfast was a slow cooked pork torta from Luardos, Mexican street food served from a bright pink van (called Mary - the van, not the torta).  Watching this baby being made was like food porn, good thing upon good thing kept getting piled on (check out the photo for an almost complete torta) - amazing slow cooked pork, black beans, homemade guacamole and tomato salsa and hot sauce - be warned, I said "medium hot" and it was pretty zingy.  This was messy but so friggin' delicious.

As we sat there in the sun, taking alternate bites from the burger and the torta, life felt pretty darn good.  We decided that we should walk a little to aid digestion and make some room for something sweet (sorry, I really do have to stop making digestive references, not sure what's going on with me tonight...) so we took a couple of turns round the market, checking out the amazing fresh local produce - as always I bought a jar of something that looked great but will probably sit in the cupboard gathering dust, but hey that's what farmers' markets are about.  I really wished I was pig enough to squeeze in a Scotch egg from the Scotch egg guy - but I couldn't and plus Ben had bought me one a couple of weeks before so at least I knew how delicious they were.  We ended up at a great cake stall and decided on the splitting option again, this time a perfect chocolate brownie and a millionaire's shortbread sold to us by a friendly young chap with whom I discussed the merits of different brands of gin, which is the sort of conversation I am always pleased to have.  We accompanied our cakes with a decent flat white from the Dark Fluid coffee cart.  By this point we were fit to burst so decided to call it a day.  I loved Brockley Market - the food of course, the environs definitely but also the people.  Brockley seems to do cool locals - for those of us from the leafy SW it was nice to have a break from the yummy mummies and the rugger buggers (not that I am dissing my 'hood - well maybe a little, but only because I love it really).  The Brockley locals looked like they could be architects or perhaps work at an indie record label rather than the hedge fund crowd - but mostly they just looked friendly and up for it and perhaps slightly hung over.  All in all a lovely day - I can highly recommend a Saturday trip to SE4, but just don't tell too many people about it.  After queueing for ages to get into the Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy this weekend and being told last Thursday night at Ceviche that we had to wait at least an hour for a table I have decided that there are just too many people in London so I don't want them all crowding down to Brockley Market because it's the "thing to do", so I probably shouldn't be writing this blog post, but I can't not, because it's just so lovely and my mission, nay - my raison d'etre - is to tell you about lovely, unmissable things to do in London and this, my friends, is one of them.