Eat Like Ushi

Despite living in Mile End/Bow for over 6 months and passing through Victoria Park countless times, I've only ever had one chai at The Pavilion. It's probably because it tends to be the warmer months when the tables are all outside and full but the queue to order precludes patience.

No better time than a 10C sunny winter weekday which also happened to coincide with BBC 2 filming for a feature on the chef (they told me).

The menu is brunch/lunch with a nod to Sri Lanka and it's fun to read Sri Lanka The Cookbook from mid-2017 sitting on the shelves whilst waiting. After dinner at Hoppers a couple of nights earlier, it's a good daytime follow-up.

- Wild mushrooms with poached egg on sourdough toast £8.5 - an excellent dish of mixed mushrooms beautifully cooked with 2 soft poached eggs, quality sourdough and the lime brought all the flavours to life. Truly fantastic;
- Sri Lankan breakfast (turmeric egg curry, string hoppers, dhal, coconut sambal) £10 - a beautifully presented dish with a few setbacks. The potatoes in the curry were cold in the middle. The dhal and green vegetables were really salty. But it's ok.

The coconut chai is now cow-milk chai £3 and is very strongly spiced with loads of cardamom and some ginger. It's really excellent and different to the chais I've had around town (and so far in my travels).

I'll definitely try to get back before moving away.

I haven't explored much of Bethnal Green - to be honest I don't see it as particularly any better than a cross between Whitechapel and Mile End and not nearly as pleasant as Hackney/Broadway. A friend invited me for breakfast to a little place tucked behind the Bethnal Green tube and it was the first cafe in the area I have tried.

It's not a vego/vegan place, but it does have a good selection of food to cater toward those tastes.

The chipotle jackfruit tacos (homemade chipotle barbeque jackfruit, kale, jalapeños, avocado, crispy onion, salsa, spicy mayo) was an excellent dish full of vibrant colours, flavours and textures.

They do an excellent smoothie also and I will happily eat there again.

Other than the icecream stop (http://eatlikeushi.posthaven.com/efstidalur-ii-iceland-01-2018), a lunch stop was planned at either the tomato farm at Fridheimar or Fontana. I was hoping that with the geothermal bread they are famous for, there would be sandwiches and other options for takeaway to keep on the move and maximise the use of daylight.

They have a buffet lunch (and dinner) available for 2990ISK or 3990ISK but unfortunately the only sandwiches were thin bread open with smoked salmon and nothing else (for about 2000ISK). We didn't have time for buffet and the price for once little open sandwich seemed difficult to justify and so it was fortunate they sell the bread by itself in quarter loaves at 1250ISK each.

We ended up buying smoked salmon from Bonus and some nice cheddar cheese which filled out a couple of days of lunches. The rye bread is surprisingly sweet and no wonder it requires alternative flavours to balance it (ie. smokey fish).

I wouldn't pay that price for it but I'd be happy to eat it again.

Iceland seems quite keen on bread and it's probably the basis of the cheapest possible meal in Iceland (albeit not that cheap in itself). Sandholt I had read was an award winning bakery even though I had difficulty finding what it had won awards for. Nonetheless after visiting the church Hallgrimskirkja, Sandholt is a short walk away.

It's a nice pleasant and rather expensive looking place attached to a hotel. The seating inside is cosy with the back wall lined with couch.

The options are fresh bread loaves, sweet pastries and some sandwiches/croissants.

Viennese Roll with seeds 150ISK was eaten simply as is. Crisp shell and soft bread. Delicious.

The sweet choices were a cherry chocolate pastry 450ISK-ish and their apple Danish 890ISK-ish. The danish was my favourite for the size and price and it was beautifully textured with a layer of apple filling.

Happily return and try the bread loaves to take away next time.

No review websites seem to contain this venue but it's TA #1 which probably explains why there's a good deal of Americans there. Having said that now that I've been I can see why they visit.

Walking in you get hit in the face with a steamy humid atmosphere likely from the hot soup, the wait staff moving around, the human bodies and piled high insulated jackets. The menu is simple - shellfish soup or lamb soup in a bowl (1390ISK) or in bread (1890ISK), or the fisherman's fav 2000ISK which comes with sweet rye bread.

Both soups are excellent and full of flavour. The lamb had a deep earthy salty flavour and the meat itself was remarkably tender. The shellfish soup was creamy and contained little prawns and scallop pieces. It comes with unlimited refills which the staff are more than happy to provide  (although there may be a short wait if busy or they are creating more soup). If the bread bowl has been eaten or disintegrated beyond repair they give refills in a bowl instead.

The fisherman's fav is a mash of cod and potatoes and tastes as such. It's fine but the soups are much better. I'm not sure if it comes with refills but I didn't like it enough to get more. I did see another table ask for more bread and given sliced loaf instead of the rye.

Probably the cheapest all-you-can-eat in Iceland.

After the tasting and overall lack of enthusiasm for BBP (http://eatlikeushi.posthaven.com/baejarins-beztu-pylsur-reykjavik-01-2018), another chance arose to have a lunch snack when a sit down meal wasn't very enticing partially due to the perceived cost of what was available. I had no interest in trying BBP again and so looked online for the best-alternative hotdog to compare with.

The centrally located Pylsuhusid is in a central square area surrounded by the two other snack-junk food options of lamb subs (which were all about 4 times the price).

Compared to 450ISK at BBP, Pylsuhusid charges 490ISK for their standard. Interesting if you want to add a little bacon or chilli the price escalates to 1350ISK. How the hell is that increase justified?

Similar to BBP there's a standard bun, boiled frankfurt, sweet sauce, very very mild mustard, and the fried onions under this frankfurt were crispier than BBP. It's much of a muchness really so I suppose BBP is cheaper albeit with a queue.

Reykjavik decided to have a snowstorm on the Sunday afternoon before the free walking tour. There was some respite in the flea market but we also needed food to fuel the afternoon. Luckily the famous hotdog stand is located just opposite the flea market and it seems everyone had the same idea.

People (tourists) lined up around the corner in the light blizzard to sample the hotdogs supposedly translating to "the best hot dog in town" and made globally famous by Bill Clinton.

For 450ISK (the cheapest possible meal/snack in Iceland) you get a standard hot dog bun, a standard boiled frankfurt, some thick sweet sauce, very very mild mustard and probably the best part is the combination of raw and fried crispy onions. It's nice but the key component sausage is really nothing compared to gourmet sausages these days.

Worth a try and good for a cheap snack but otherwise nothing to return for or write home about.

After three visits between 06-2016 to 04-2017 at the Soho branch, I found an opportunity to take advantage of the bookings allowed at the newer St. Christopher's Place branch. It's a much much larger form than the tiny Soho original and much of the seating for 4 is shared whereas larger groups all seem to have curtained private rooms.

Given there were 4 of us, it allowed a wide sampling of this menu which does differ slightly from the Soho one. I still remain disappointed that the duck heart chukka isn't available any longer, but maybe next time I'll try to order it in advance. Failing that, I think I've found a replacement...

The start proceedings this evening, a Toddy Tapper part 2 £10 was ordered and it had a smooth smokey mezcal and tequila with sweetness from pineapple bark, lime, coconut blossom pickle and acharu. I'm not sure how all the elements contribute exactly but it ended up being similar to mezcal and pineapple juice but not too sweet and very nice.

- Chicken Wing Chukka £8.25 (for 4 pieces, instead of £6.5 for 3) - chicken wings in a rich thick tasty coating. It doesn't have the textural element of the duck heart but it's still good;
- Jaffna Beef Rib Fry £9 - this remarkable dish outshone the chukka in terms of strength of spice and flavour. The tender morsels of rib and the dry chilli surface were incredibly good. Reminiscent of Needoo's dry meat curry;
- String Hopper Seafood Kothu £12.5 - a mildly flavoured dish of cabbage with seafood topped with a soft shell crab. Very pretty and a reasonable size but I didn't think the flavour was very memorable;
- Aubergine, Bean & Okra Kari £7 - a tiny dish of curry with overall mild flavour. The aubergine had been cooked to the point that it was soft and stringy clinging to life attaching barely to the skin. Forgettable overall;
- Crab Kari £15 - a crab with very pliable shell that could easily to crushed and torn with the teeth. The meat was soft and juicy particularly from the body and the curry sauce had a heap of curry powder/leaves that formed the overall taste. The liquid was excessive and mopped up with the hoppers;
- Egg Hopper £4.5 - spongy inside, crisp surface, although I remember it being more sour previously;
- Masoor Dhal Ghee Buriani, Pineapple Acharu, Yoghurt £13 - I wanted the fish buriani but was trumped and ended up with dhal ghee instead. The rice was clean, not oily and mildly spiced. The raita and acharu added some tang and sweet notes.

It's still an excellent meal and one of the finest curries in the city. I'll definitely be back for the chukka, beef rib fry, and to try the Jaffna lamb chops (if it is anywhere as good as the Jaffna beef rib), black pork ribs and fish buriani. That's a lot to get through.

One of the essential stops along the Golden Circle route is Efstidalur. It's a dairy farm with the stench of fresh cow pervading throughout. That's a good thing I suppose, as is the casual indoor seating area to see the cows munching through loads of hay. I suppose being outside is better but in windy -8C perhaps not the time for it.

The icecream is made from their cow milk and are all soft, creamy and delicious. There was no ice crystals in it and it made a perfect stop between getting geothermal rye bread at Fontana and the stop at the geysir.

The blueberry, oreo and third flavour I can't quite recall were all good and mild. None of them were particularly outstanding but easily satisfying. The cinnamon cookie is probably one I should've tried too. The most memorable feature was the waffle cone which was the thickest bit of crunchy biscuit waffle I've ever had. It was remarkably good and easily the best in all gelaterias I've been to.

Within 3 days we ate at Katla twice - once when staying the night in Hvolsvollur and once on the drive back to Reykjavik. Within that time they changed their menu from allowing a half buffet 3350ISK or full buffet 3990ISK to only have the full buffet option for 3690ISK. I think the move was probably because the half buffet was a much better value option for anyone who wasn't going to eat excessively.

This is how it works - there's 4 sections: soup, salad, main courses/hot food, dessert. Half used to be 2 courses (main + other) and full is all 4. You get to fill up your plate and go back for one serve of seconds. It's a lot of food and noone really is going to eat 8 plates of food. 4 on the other hand is good value and you can even share bits (naughtily). So they removed it and such is life.

The soup options are a salty lamb with lots of vegetables, a creamy seafood which was a little scarse in seafood, and minestrone I didn't try. The salad options were mainly leaves and not overly exciting. The mains covered Portugeuse salted cod, Greek style ling, Chinese chicken, pork ribs, glazed chicken, rice, meatballs, some steamed vegetables, some kind of fajita and best of all roasted pork and the even better and excellently tender roast lamb. The lamb was easily the best dish with mild flavour, pink middle and very tender. Unfortunately for all of us they didn't have it available on the 2nd trip.

What's also good is that guides eat for free, which certainly factors into costs when they are this high.

If I was there early enough, looking around the lava/volcano centre in the attached building and the shop with many skins would be an extra.