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Tag Archives: London
Food review: Chop’d
New chain offers a green & healthy option for lunch.
Chop’d is a relatively new fast food chain, with five branches in London. They are, apparently, “on a mercy mission to bring delicious food into real working lives”. They serve breakfasts (porridge, yogurt, muesli and fresh juices), soups, and salads. Everything, they say, is freshly assembled each morning in-store. You have a choice of pre-assembled salads – tuna nicoise, jerk chicken, superfoods (edamame beans, avocado, beetroot, carrot, broccolis, spinach, seeds and sprouts), parma ham & mozzarella, smoked mackerel, and the particularly frightening (to me, at least) powerfoods (broccoli, green beans, carrot spaghetti, beetroot spaghetti, more seeds).
The more exciting option, however, is the “create your own salad” challenge, where for £5 you can choose a base (leaves, pasta, rice noodles, couscous, potato or any combination thereof) plus 3 “house” ingredients (vegetables and fruit, plus the scary beetroot or carrot spaghettis), add 1 “deli” ingredient (cheeses, fish, meat, avocado or pine kernels), 1 “garnish” (fresh herbs and seeds) and a dressing (they offer 14 choices, from the naughty blue cheese to the low fat miso or no fat thai dressing). You can add extra ingredients for 25p to £1.
Chop’d get green points for offering you an extra house ingredient if you leave without a carrier bag for your salad, and also for offering free water if you bring your own bottle (not sure if they just fill it up at the tap though as we didn’t have a bottle with us). Also the bins they provide in store allow customers to sort the waste for later recycling.
The staff were all friendly enough on arrival, though when it came to serving us one staffer came to the counter and asked if we needed help, and then turned around and admonished a co-worker for ignoring us, walked off and made the co-worker serve us! Said co-worker looked a bit sour about that. Apart from this they were all charming enough.
I went for leaves (which considered of iceberg, cos and/or romaine, which was just started to get a tired edge to it — surprising considering it was 11am), chickpeas, carrots, fresh peppers (I forgot to claim my free fourth ingredient, and they didn’t offer!), chicken plus avocado (an extra £1), fresh basil, and sesame soy dressing. We sat in to eat. The portions were certainly generous, all of the ingredients bar the leaves were very fresh, and the dressing very tasty. I’d say good value in general, though I was not happy to have paid an extra quid for some seriously under-ripe avocado. I did manage to spend £8 with my extras (which also included a brownie and sparkling mineral water). The brownie was good and moist and chewy, but nothing particularly special.
Seating at this branch was limited inside, but includes plenty of extra tables outside on the station concourse.
I think a few improvements could be made but will definitely visit Chop’d again if I’m in their neighbourhood.
I visited the St Pancras branch at about 11am today.
Chop’d
Unit 34, St Pancras International
Pancras Rd, London, NW1 2QL
020 7837 1603
Tagged food, London, restaurant, review
Duckett’s Common
Still grey and cold in London. Dreaming of chocolate Easter eggs and
four days off work. I thought they would be quiet days, but there’s
three gigs and a party. Dammit.
Tagged Duckett's Common, Haringey, London, Turnpike Lane
Burglar Alarm
I’ve lived in my current flat for about 12 years now, and during that time I have been burgled twice, had a car stolen, stopped a burglary in progress on my downstairs neighbour’s flat, and they’ve had their car stolen. All this in a "good" neighbourhood where the average price of an average sized two bed flat is £250k+
This morning, unfortunately, there was another break-in. I did some work from home and was about to walk out the door at 11:00am when I heard some smashing/crunching sounds. I went out back to check, couldn’t see anything, checked the basement flat, and peeped over the fence at our neighbour’s side gate and back door. Couldn’t see anything. I ended up thinking it must have been the recycling truck. As I went out the front door I saw that one of the next door neighbour’s windows had been smashed and forced open. I went straight back in to call the police. Maybe 15 to 20 minutes elapsed between the time I heard the sound and the police pulling up (they were great – responded in less than 10 minutes!) and by that time the burglar was gone. I think they were gone by the time I called the police to be honest.
It’s always unnerving when something like this happens on your doorstep. I’m one of those people who leaves the radio on when I go out. (I remember a Fast Show sketch where the burglars waited in the garden until the radio went on, as a sign the house was empty.) And I have ‘beware of dog’ signs in the garden and on the back door. It makes me feel better, even if it’s pointless. We have good locks on all our windows and doors (that would prevent the kind of break-in that happened today) but I still feel nervous about burglaries. It’s difficult to get good insurance in rented flats in London. I think I’ll have to try harder to find a good policy.
Tagged burglary, London, Photography
Restaurant review : Mercado / London N16
Mercado Bar and Cantina
26 – 30 Stoke Newington Church Street, London, N16 0LU
T: 020 7923 0555
http://www.mercado-cantina.co.uk
Left: Queso Fundido 
Right : Burritos
Somehow we managed to avoid food altogether until after 7pm today. It was one of "those sleep late, walk directly to computer, loose 5 hours" days. When our bodies finally triggered the alarm, we realised we had no food in the house and we opted to stroll through Clissold Park and enjoy the sunny evening, heading for Mercado, our local Mexican cantina.
When Mercado opened, it struggled with a lot of negative feedback from patrons, who (I felt) didn’t have a real appreciation of Mexican cooking. The British palate associates Mexican food with what I would call Tex-Mex : nachos, fajitas and chimichangas. Mercado was dishing up more authentic fare : mole , pasilla and salsa verde sauces for example. Eventually the restaurant conceded and added fajitas and burritos to the menu. It seems to be working for them – the restaurant was nearly full on this Sunday evening.
Unfortunately on this visit I have to say I was not impressed. It was the third time I’ve eaten there. Last visit I had Coctel de Camaron which I found too sweet (but put that down to my taste) and the Carne Asada which I found a bit unexciting. On this visit things didn’t improve.
I started with Queso Fundido – basically a bowl of melted cheese – or a kind of Mexican fondue, if you will. Usually the recipe involves several types of cheese (Monterey Jack, Mozzarella or Manchego typically), some poblano chiles, maybe some red pepper, and some wine. Mercado’s version was a duller affair – simply cheese with a few chuncks of chorizo thrown in. It did the job but it didn’t bear repeating. Damon had what the menu called "Quesadillas", which were not made with tortillas as expected, but instead were more like an empanada. Filled with cheese, they too were quite bland, but saved by the addition of some guacamole and warm salsa on the plate.
They were out of my first choice – Chiles En Nogada (poblano chiles stuffed with beef or vegetables) so we both opted for Burritos. Though the menu described them in the plural, it was really one large burrito cut in half. The filling was a very bland mixture of ground beef and onion, wrapped in a flour tortilla and topped with some guacamole, lettuce and sour cream, and accompanied by a dull tasting red rice. We had to ask for a bottle of hot sauce just to give the burrito a bit of flavour.
Add to this that our margaritas (we tried the Fallen Angelita) came served with a rim of sugar, not salt, and it was not a meal to write home about. Had we not been so rampantly hungry I’m sure our disappointment would have been greater.
Service was okay: not good, not bad. Two margaritas, two beers, two bottles of water and the bill came to £48 for two. We won’t be rushing back again.
Tagged food, London, Mexican, restaurant, review
