Eat Like Ushi

I've been meaning to try Piebury Corner for a while, ever since National Pie Week 2017. Lo and behold fast forward to National Pie Week 2018 and Timeout advertising a discount voucher for them to celebrate the week. As per usual Timeout overexaggerates the savings, stating the pie/side/sauce combo is £14 eat-in or £13 takeaway. Actually it's £10.5 eat-in or £8.5 takeaway, but it's still a saving with the voucher at £7 eat-in or £6 takeaway.

You're limited to selection from the 2 pies-of-the-day, which seems to be one meat and one vegetarian. On this day I was blessed to have the excellent sounding Ox cheek & venison as the special. The pie filling is thin but still nice and chewy and not crispy dried like others recently. The meat chunks of the cheek are tender and the venison is a little more stringy, as expected. My choice of side horseradish mash was a very large serve with pickles and mild horseradish noticeable throughout. The suggested red wine sauce wasn't really needed for the pie but it added an extra element to the mash.

I'll be back. Not only because I have 3 vouchers left to use but that does make it easier. And the Timeout deal goes until June...

I was looking for somewhere to eat before watching Girl from the North Country at the Noel Coward theatre. Luckily being very central there are no shortage of options. And since the lines and security are minimal, it really means you can take your time dining beforehand. Com Viet was just around the corner (with Amorino gelato opposite FYI).

The menu is very good and has a host of homestyle dishes including banh xeo and bo luc lac, which are less often found.

- Green papaya salad with prawn - a nice version with quite a strongly vinegared nuoc mam dressing. The prawns were juicy and there was a good amount of peanuts added;
- Fried quail - the quail itself was cut into 6 segments, quite tender and flavoursome. However the dipping salt was extremely heavily seasoned with full crystals of MSG visible throughout;
- Beef pho - a decently flavoured beef broth (MSG added no doubt) with excellent noodles that were cooked perfectly and not soggy at all. The raw beef had been dropped in and there were slivers of raw ginger, which seemed out of place;
- Bun bo hue - decently flavoured pork/beef broth although wasn't anywhere near chilli enough.

They didn't serve any Thai basil or sawtooth herb for pho or the laksa leaf for BBH, but instead coriander (which is fine in pho) and mint (which is ok for BBH).

The food is nice (with MSG) and the prices are a little more than the standard Vietnamese in London (owing to location). I'd eat there again although the overt MSG in their food may play on my mind a little...

Royal cuisine in Seoul

The Chinese characters in the restaurant name make it difficult for me to determine what the Hangul name is.

The memorable part of this meal was the Korean habit of letting you order one dish and supplying another 6 side dishes to accompany it. Excellent service in that.

There was no better way to bring in the New Year than a visit to Seoul's famed seafood market. Of course after scouring past endless containers of fresh and live seafood, we settled for a restaurant rather than trying to bargain our way around.

The experience highlight (as opposed to the flavour highlight) was trying live octopus. It wriggles around on the plate and in your mouth. The key is to chew fast before you realise how weird it is. Apparently not chewing enough means the suckers might lodge down your throat and seek revenge...

All sorts of animals and seafood are lined up raw and cooked to order.

On a quiet and cold winter night between Christmas and New Year, the friendly lady was happy for my patronage.

Geneva is probably one of the most uninteresting cities I've visited. There is the fountain jet in the middle of the lake but when I was there isn't wasn't on display. Other than that I remember very high prices (AUD30 for a bowl of Vietnamese pho - don't ask why I was there...) although the trip to the UN wasn't so bad.

This random restaurant specialised in Swiss cuisine including raclette (more cheese).

One of the (many) places in Zermatt to have traditional homestyle food including rosti smothered in cheese.

After being the only person to take the local 306 bus to the terracotta warriors and back, strolling amongst the street food markets of Xi'an was a sensory experience. I ate what I could and enjoyed it all.