Oak
Last night I tried to get into the new Rowley Leigh restaurant in Bayswater Le Café des Anglais. Cornelia and I didn’t book a table but tested our luck anyhow. Tough luck. The swanky new venue in Whitley’s shopping centre was fully booked and even Cornelia’s strong sense of persuasion wouldn’t persuade Hannah at reception to find us a corner. We will try again, but not for an intimate one-on-one. The huge dining space is nothing but intimate.
Instead, we went to the second floor of the Oak on Westbourne Park Road, near Ledbury Road, where there was plenty of intimacy to be had. England was losing to Croatia at the same time so there was enough space in an elegant and still terribly cool room. The tapas were delicious. We had some beef carpaccio with truffle oil and a most luscious consistency and a vegetable antipasti with Buratta. What is buratta? Well, it’s sort of the new mozzarella. Not quite new (it has been discovered in the states quite a few years ago and invented in Italy in the 1920’s) but definitely the new rage in the London restaurant scene. It is a soft cheese made from buffalo milk. It comes from Puglia and is best eaten within 2 days of its production. It is so creamy you only need a small knife-scrape of it. The taste is heavenly and a small online search shows you can get it from Manicomio restaurant/deli on the King’s Road in Chelsea.
Comments
Having become a fan via your recipes as published in the Guardian, I bought the book as soon as it was issued. It's pretty good, bu I was disappointed to find that none of my favourite recipes seems to be in the book; this means I still have to keep bits of paper around and/or search the web. Perhaps a cheap paperback supplement of recipes would be popular?
John. The recipe book is meant to represent the food we serve at ottolenghi. we decided to do it after many requests from dozens of customers.
my vegetarian column is a separate thing. your idea of compiling the recipes into a book or a short supplement is a good one and I will bring it up with the Guardian, as I know many readers collect the recipes.
Hiya,
Or could you perhaps ask the Guardian to bring their online archive up to date? My torn out copies are falling apart now, so I was delighted to find all your recipes archived on their website... I started to make a little collection from there, but frustratingly many of them don't have the corresponding photograph.
It's great that they have archived the recipes, but if they could check and update then it would solve the issue of many old torn out recipes!
Thanks.
Ella, I have forwarded your request to my editor at the Guardian. I hope they can do something about it though I know that the photographs are only a recent addition to the online version so they might not have the old ones.