Food review: Farm Collective, Farringdon

The Farm Collective is in Farringdon on the corner of the appropriately named Cowcross Street where it joins Smithfield Market. Without going all Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on you I’m someone who likes to know where my food comes from (and I don’t mean ASDA) as I can’t stand bland and in my mind flavour, not quantity, is king which means making sure animals are looked after properly and that produce is properly grown and handled.

Having been to some decent restaurants in my time, and plenty of bad ones, I like to think that I know good food when I taste it and here, not a 5-minute train ride from my office, was a place that was saying “lets not forget that all of our produce tastes like food should; full or flavour, rich in goodness. Our food had credentials and it tastes brilliant.”. A frequent claim, but is it really true?

Having found the Farm Collective, a little tricky given the numbering scheme in Cowcross Street, I found it hard  to settle on a choice because they did seem to have all of the kinds of things I like and I eventually chose to go for the sausage and mash, seeing as I’ve probably tasted sausages from every end of the spectrum, both good and bad, so it’d make a good benchmark. 

Farm Collective is primarily a take-away although there’s a bench outside to sit on and a bar at the back with stools should you rather stay to eat, which in this instance I did. Taking a seat at the bar I tucked in and I have to say that I wasn’t disappointed. I’ve found that lesser sausages can have a variety of flavours and aftertastes that have nothing to do with meat but with these I got exactly what I wanted and happily devoured both the sausages and the creamy mashed potatos and began to reflect on what food can be, without turning into some kind of pretentious food luvvie or using phrases like “bursting with flavour“. The move in the food world, egged on by TV chefs, seems to be for food with a conscience and one of the pleasures in eating somewhere like the Farm Collective is that you know that your food wasn’t produced by the lowest cost provider but by people who genuinely care about what they produce.

I asked Craig, co-founder of the Farm Colletive with Dom, where my sausages had come from so he pointed me in the direction of Plantation Pigs where MD Hugh Norris has this to say about his pigs:
“Pigs are fascinating. Their curious shape, those improbably tough rubbery snouts perfectly designed for digging, their inquisitive and playful behaviour and not least their ridiculous attempts at sprinting. I am captivated by these marvellous animals.”
Doesn’t sound like someone in it for a quick buck or a slogan produced by a marketing focus group. I think I’m liking him already…
“We breed all our own pigs. We use ginger- and black-haired animals that can withstand the heat of a summer’s day and cold winter nights. Sows must be good mothers to rear their litters with the minimum of intervention from our stockmen. The breeds we use confer great qualities on the pork making it succulent and tasty. Its flavour will enhance both complex and simple dishes to provide a delicious, satisfying meal. Our pigs live outside in the fields. In summer they bathe in mud wallows to protect themselves from the sun. In winter we provide deep beds of clean straw for them to bury themselves in to keep warm. Plenty of fresh air and exercise helps to keep our pigs healthy and reduces the need for medication.”

So for £6.00, the price of a half-decent pub meal, I’d got something that was satisfying not just my lunchtime hunger but also going some way to supporting decent British farmers producing decent and tasty products.

I’m sold. I’ll be going back and working my way around the menu, although I’m going to have to try and fight off the sausage and mash temptation for sure. For the early risers they sell a variety of breakfast items and for those not into the hot food they have sandwiches and salads with ingredients as carefully sourced as my sausages. And they do deliveries too…

The Farm Collective
http://www.farmcollective.com/
91 Cowcross Street,
EC1M 6BH

Plantation Pigs
http://www.plantationpigs.co.uk

Wagamamas, Mansion House

On Wednesday afternoon I found myself with 45 minutes to spare between my last meeting of the afternoon and the beginning  of a meeting that was bound to go on most of the evening and involve alcohol. My mission, therefore, was to find something to eat that would be reasonably swift, that would also be pretty decent quality and go a long way to fending off my hangover-in-waiting. Once you rule out fast-food places, bars that do food on the side and restaurants that serve at a leisurely pace then the list can be fairly shortin the City, particularly when down near Cannon Street, so I eventually plumped for Wagamamas round the back of Mansion House station as a safe option.

Now unless you’ve been hiding out in an MP’s moat for the last few years you’ll know that Wagamamas started from a single restaurant in Bloomsbury many, many years ago and is now an immensely successful global chain of noodle bars which serve up 12 tons of noodles to the hungry masses each week and have various branches across the City. I’ve been to Wagamamas numerous times in the past and in several different countries but hadn’t set foot in one for a couple of years so I was wondering if things were as I remembered.

The Mansion House branch is tucked away in a little side street just behind Cannon Street and I got there as the clock approached 4.30 which is relevant for only one reason. It was delightfully empty. Having been there once before in the conventional lunchtime scrum this time there was only a tourist couple for me to share the entire place with and the waiter wisely put me some distance from them. After ordering I got down to reading the London Lite while waiting for my food to arrive with the main dish of ebi raisukaree arriving a minute or two before the side order of duck gyoza. Ebi raisukaree is a great rice dish as I’m not a particular fan of rice as such but this has enough sauce and spice to go with the tiger-prawns to keep the whole thing interesting. The duck gyoza looked a little powdery on the pastry side but lacked nothing in flavour, particularly with the gorgeous spicy hoi sin sauce they come with. I was out of there in plenty of time to wander over Southwark Bridge to my meeting came away happy with the whole experience. It’s not the style of food I’d eat every week but I need to remember to go there as a bit of a change from my normal routines. All in all it met all of my expectations for a quick and tasty meal and best of all….. hangover averted!

What I ate:
duck gyoza : five deep-fried duck and leek dumplings, served with a spicy cherry hoi sin sauce

ebi raisukaree: stir-fried black tiger prawns in a coconut and lime curry sauce with ginger, galangal, chillies, coriander, green and red peppers, red and spring onions and mangetout. served on sticky white rice and garnished with sliced red chillies and a wedge of lime

What it cost: Under £15 with no charge for tap water.

Wagamamas
4 Great St Thomas Apostle
off Garlick Hill
London
EC4V 2BH
phone : +44 (0) 207 248 5766
www.wagamamas.com

Saint George’s Week at Leadenhall Market

On Saturday I was partying with the Dutch but as this week is Saint George’s Week and Leadenhall Market is celebrating by showing off the best in English wine, ale and food so I popped along to the combined shop and cafe “Cheese”, who are marking the week by highlighting the great British cheeses that they have available such as the gloriously named Stinking Bishop and Isle of Wight Blue, to name but two. I suspect I’ve been one of many people who’ve lingered under the misapprehension that cheese basically comes in two varieties, namely the edible variety that comes on pizzas and burgers or the smelly variety which was created purely to challenge the gag reflex of young children.

I spoke to the immensely affable and approachable owner and manager Sue Cloke who dispelled that particular myth with a fabulous range of artisan cheeses and was able to tempt me to one of their upcoming events,
“informal master classes, where Sue will guide the student through the tastes and textures of selected cheeses and discover how cheese is made, their characteristics and suggested uses in cooking and entertaining.

Sue certainly knows her stuff having been at the helm in the cheese department of the well known Harvey Nichols store and prior to that was at Leathams Larder and Jermyn Street cheese emporium Paxton and Whitfield so if you’re either a cheese connoisseur looking for a knowledgeable cafe/retailer in the City or a cheese newbie who wants to leave the beginners pool of cheddar and mozzarella then I can thoroughly recommend “Cheese” to you. Tempted beyond endurance I bought a selection of cheeses, and accessories, to start me off on the road from cheese-novice to cheese-ninja!

Other events in the Market this week include the variously bearded bohemians who make up the lunchtime folk musicians and apparently on Thursday beloved London Mayor BoJo will be making an appearance at some point as part of his admirable display of support for Saint George’s Day events in London although it’s pretty unlikely that he was English and it’s quite possible he didn’t set foot in England at all. Never mind, let’s not quibble over the details.

… and I managed to get through the whole post without mentioning Monty Python’s “Cheese Shop” sketch….

Leadenhall Market
http://www.leadenhallmarket.co.uk

Cheese At Leadenhall
http://cheeseatleadenhall.co.uk/

St George’s Day on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_George%27s_Day

Cheese Shop Sketch
http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/activity/h/humor/Special/Monty.Python/cheese