Braise

This isn’t a review of Dove. Not because Dove doesn’t deserve one, but because I ate there the wrong way. I know this because when I made my booking — and again when I confirmed it — I was sent a message letting me know that the rest of the menu is “much more exciting” than the thing they knew full well I was there for: the burger. Braise is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In the year since I wrote the first iteration of Braise’s burger list, I’ve tried my best to keep up, but the city’s burger obsession apparently won’t slow down. The last 12 months have seen Jupiter Burger pay homage to In-N-Out, Dove go viral by restricting its blackboard burger to 10 per service, and Hanbaagaasuuteeki jazz its offering up with some questionable race politics.

If you’re going to drag yourself to the arse end of Canary Wharf at six in the morning and come home stinking of seafood with a pile of fish to scale and clean, you might as well treat yourself to some scallops along the way. This is, essentially, the sales pitch of Billingsgate Cafe. Well, for the punters at least — I suspect everyone who works at the market has a slightly different relationship with the place. It is, in most senses, an entirely normal caff.

Something strange is happening on Englefield Road in De Beauvoir right now: if you take a stroll one evening this week, you’ll find yourself forced to choose between two modern, European-inflected takes on Filipino food, each within a stone’s throw of the other. It won’t last long. Budgie Montoya’s Alpas is entering the second and final week of its residency in neighbourhood spot Albers, wrapping up this Saturday.

Are you a snack hacker? I think I might be, though I can’t say I’ve ever defined myself that way before. But I’ve never met an oven pizza I wouldn’t zhuzh up, an instant ramen I wouldn’t upgrade, or even a pot of houmous I wouldn’t drench in olive oil, lemon juice, and za’atar. So I can’t say I’m surprised that comedian George Egg’s book The Snack Hacker ended up speaking to me.

The hype cycle giveth, and the hype cycle taketh away.

It’s the dumplings that demand your attention at Saperavi Social, a Georgian wine bar and restaurant in Islington that opened this summer. Khinkali are one of the two dishes Georgian cuisine is best known for, alongside cheese-filled khachapuri flatbreads. Those are good here too — as is the extensive, affordable wine selection — but if you walk out the door without having tried the dumplings, you’ve done something wrong. Braise is a reader-supported publication.

A few weeks ago I took part in a friendly baking competition against my friend Tiernan. Suffice it to say I lost, and a big part of that was down to this excellent sourdough variant Tiernan whipped up, which pairs sweet roasted grapes with super savoury olives and a little touch of rosemary. Luckily for you, Tiernan has agreed to share her recipe with the readers of Braise. Luckily for me, that meant I got the excuse to give it a test bake myself and have been duly snacking on it all week.

I have a confession to make: I may have been doing just a teensy bit of gatekeeping around Akka Falafel. Not intentionally, per se, but I’ve been going for years — through name and location changes on its part, and two job changes on mine — without ever really letting anyone know about it. Even when it was one of my regular workday lunches, I was a little coy about letting my coworkers know where to go.

I was in a pretty rotten mood when I arrived at Camille on a quiet Tuesday night two weeks ago. Work had been long and intense, a 10-hour day with no real break to speak of, and a long, boozy, celebratory dinner was just about the last thing I wanted at that precise moment in time. All of which is only to give testament to the Camille kitchen, which turned out one of the most joyous meals I’ve had all year when I came in primed for nothing of the sort.