Clinton Street Baking Co. & Restaurant, New York, USA

I love the Lower East Side. I've always tried stay in the general area since I started visiting New York for work (hello Soho Grand, Tribeca Grand, Thompson Lower East Side and Rivington Hotel) although I do also love Soho House, in the meat packing district with its awesome suites. There's so much eat and shop (Reed Space, ARC, the shopping centre of Soho itself). I'd wanted to eat at Clinton Street Bakery, but as consistent winner of accolades such as best breakfast, best brunch, best pancakes and so on, inevitably means that there are often queues of 1-2 hours on weekends. Clinton Street Bakery, which opened in 2001, is the genius of a husband and wife team, Neil Kleinberg and DeDe Lahman



A warm September Monday morning seemed like the perfect time to give this place another go. Nevertheless when we arrived there was still a 30 minute wait at 10am. We were sat right at the back of the restaurant, sandwiched between the toilet wall and neighbouring foursome of Danish ladies. There didn't seem to be a single group there without a camera snapping away at the food and the clientele. The menu is sizeable featuring their award winning famous Blueberry Pancakes and the mammoth Po' Boy sandwich for lunch. Drinks range from shakes made with flavours from the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory to Root Beer Floats, which I had to order. My girlfriend went to college in Ithaca, and strangely she'd never heard of the drink company. In the world of floats for me, nothing beats a root beer float. Perhaps not normally accompanying breakfast though.



With my various intolerances unfortunately I can never bring myself to ordering a whole portion of pancakes to myself. I chose the farmer’s plate, a dish of soft scrambled eggs, farmhouse cheese, herb roasted tomatoes, and sourdough toast. The scrambled eggs are indeed soft, the only way I ever expect them to be cooked. The cheese is a hard cheese with a light nutty taste and drier than cheddar. I have no idea what it was. It was a good choice at the time, enough to satisfy my egg craving.



When you come to Clinton St for breakfast it is really all about the pancakes. At almost any time in fact. Whether it be served with Maine Blueberries or Banana and Walnuts, it is both delicate and substantial. Like all American pancakes, portions are gargantuan but rather than being cloying, they are moist and tender from start to finish. The warm maple butter, that some have been known to drink straight from the jug, is rich and extremely sweet.



The Pancakes at Clinton St. are probably the best I've ever eaten... so moist they barely even needed the luscious warm maple butter. The trick to Clinton St. is to pick a weekday morning to avoid the masses of regulars that hit this place on a weekend. No one really likes to queue but 30 minutes is more manageable than the 1-2 hours you might have to wait on a weekend. Another great brekkie in New York.

Clinton Street Baking Co. & Restaurant, 4 Clinton St., nr. Houston St., New York, NY 10002 646-602-6263

HIX, Brewer Street, London

I was intrigued to read BooinLondon's recent blog about HIX on Brewer Street having noticed it a week or so back when going for a drink after work at The Glassblower. HIX opened at the start of October this year on the site of the Aaya which closed sadly before I was able to go. Here's the Giles Coren article. Apparently Mark Hix chose the site because of its very central location and its recent refurbishments while as Aaya. HIX is the third and most recent of the chef Mark Hix's restaurants, which include Hix Oyster & Chop House in London’s Smithfield’s Market and also Hix Oyster and Fish House in Lyme Regis. The head chef at HIX is Kevin Gratton, formerly of Le Caprice.

I arrived during a very busy lunch service although I was able to book the table for 2 about an hour prior to my 13:15 seating for a lunch meeting. The white-ceiling front of house is bustling and noisy and I was lead to our small wooden dining table. We had already been served our own personal sliced mini bloomer and butter and a jug of filtered tap water. The menu read like a British menu with the kind of things I'd like to see in modern British menu - examples including Pollack Fish Fingers on Mushy Peas, Roe deer chop with celeriac mash and sea buckthorn berries, Heaven and earth (a black pudding hors d'oeuvre with apples and potatoes). I knew that I was going to like this place.

(A collage made with picnik using photos taken with a Blackberry Bold)

We started with the Blythburgh pork crackling with crab apple sauce. This is hardcore stuff and quite the jaw workout. Crunchy is one thing but I can imagine a couple of clientele losing a crown or two over this. I think they needed to keep a bit more of the soft fat to help with flavour but the accompanying crab apple sauce works very well with it.

My first course is an entree of Rabbit and crayfish Stargazy pie. As it turns out a traditional Stargazy pie is a Cornish dish made of baked pilchards, covered with a pastry crust. The pilchards are arranged with their tails toward the centre of the pie and their heads poking up through the crust around the edge, so that they appear to be gazing skyward. In this instance the rabbit has been carefully slow cooked and the crayfish added to give a fantastically rich, sweet flavour. The pie crust is a traditional suet crust pastry (like a great steak and kidney pie) with the heads of two crayfish arranged in the Stargazy fashion. If you'd like to recreate this at home, here is Mark Hix's BBC food recipe. My only ever so minor grumble is that there were perhaps one or two many little rabbit bones. What is the elegant way to remove them from one's gob? I had a side of very simply seasoned Purple Sprouting Broccoli.

And so there was pudding... Bramley Apple Pie and Custard. Good old english pudding. A cute round little pie with a creamy light custard that perhaps needed just one more egg yolk for colour but was perfectly sweet. The pie pastry tasted almost like a digestive biscuit. I really enjoyed this.

So, Mark Hix's signature sees him take British classics and update them with fresh ingredients and modern gourmet-fied recipes. I feel like a bad foodie for having missed an entire season of Great British Menu when it turned out that he won the main course with this very Rabbit and Crayfish Stargazy Pie. He did also win the dessert with a perry jelly and summer fruits with elderflower ice cream. Other things on the menu definitely struck a chord with me including the 65 quid Porterhouse Steak for two, a behemoth 1kg bone in steak that no less than two steaks in one (Sirloin and Ribeye). Also the Roast Wooley Park Farm free range chicken with toasted garlic sauce, supposedly a dish for two to four, although rarely has there been a roast chicken that I haven't been able to devour wholly by myself. At £50, this could be the best roast chicken I've ever eaten, or not. I love my Bresse chickens... I really enjoyed my meal and despite service being a little slow (a 25 minute wait for our main and yes, Jay Rayner, I did complain), I can definitely see myself coming back here with friends...

HIX, 66-70 Brewer Street, London, UK +44 (0)20-7292-3518