Cuisine: Vietnamese
Price: 77 quid including 4 beers
Website: www.london-eating.co.uk/3831.htm
As always, please add comments and scores asap.
Some pics...
Friday, 31 October 2008
Old Street - Beth - 30th Oct 2008 - Cay Tre
The diners met at Bar Music Hall on Curtain Road for an aperitif among the Shoreditch/Hoxton set, narrowly missing out on a fashion party in American Apparel and a book launch at BMH itself. Assembled, and with whistles wet, the club made its way through the bitter cold to Cay Tre on Old Street, stalwart of Hoxton's Little Hanoi.
Cuisine: Vietnamese
Price: 77 quid including 4 beers
Website: www.london-eating.co.uk/3831.htm
As always, please add comments and scores asap.
Some pics...
Cuisine: Vietnamese
Price: 77 quid including 4 beers
Website: www.london-eating.co.uk/3831.htm
As always, please add comments and scores asap.
Some pics...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Dinner Club: Parte III kicked off with drinks in the cavernous Bar Music Hall, Shoreditch. Loads of room and plenty to see but the sheer size of this place ruins the ambience - it smacks somewhat of youth club. Nice enough but essentially a post water-shed “Why Don’t You?” on acid. By the time we’d had a chat, waited for Tim, laughed at Martin’s shirt, drank up and waded through all the lime green denim, Cay Tre had understandably decided to give our table up to other hungry revellers. Damn! Given I was in the DC driving seat, I take full responsibility. What followed was a heart-in-mouth 12 minutes of waiting, wondering, questioning, sweating and getting in the way. Finally we got a seat, not a bad table on the ground floor at a good vantage point over the sea of diners. The menu was massive, almost too much for me to handle by that point. I hedged my bets and didn’t take too long choosing, guessing it would be a sharing affair and that it would all taste good - all down to my complete unashamed naivety when it comes to Vietnamese cooking and culture of course. The house speciality (monk fish) to start with was surprising, tasty and unusual – I remember the cooking at the table was a well delivered, functional and modest gesture. The beef, prawn, duck, pork to follow was fantastic – the Asian greens the crowning glory and thankfully not a fusion dish in sight. Full on Vietnamese (as far as I could tell); a heady melange of lemon grass, ginger, chillies, fish sauce…fantastic flavours and good value for money (though we were not excessive in courses or drinks). All in all not a weekly event but easily a monthly treat. My only niggling down side to this place - I couldn’t help feeling that the skeletal staff were over worked and perhaps underpaid.
To summarise, the contrast between the try-hard BMH and unassuming CT was never more pronounced when we mused over which imported Vietnamese tipple to sample. The waitress’s “I don’t like beer” was perfect – a deafening down-to-earth riposte a far cry from the pretentious kids round the corner.
Cay Tre is raw, risky and right good...everything Dinner Club should be? 7 out of 10.
Beth was right when she said the place had dinner club written all over it - the wildly incongruous Hoxton wallpaper, more likely to be spied on a Happy Divali card in Scribbler, the steady stream of casual jumble-sale dressers ducking in and out, and the menu which listed frog as one of the appetizers.
The food was fragrant, ample and delicious. We didn't have frogs legs but we did go for the signature appetizer of monk fish. This dish required one of the staff to set up her gas ring literally on the table and fry off various odds n ends before our very eyes. The result was delicious. Other dishes we less memorable but still good. I was pleasantly surprised: I have never really enjoyed Vietnamese food - at the least offensive end of the scale it always seems to involve fiddly bits of meat and splinters of bone floating with some bitter leaves in a weakly salty broth; at the other end of the scale are sauteed organs and partially developed chicken foetuses. I was relieved that the menu presented many ways to avoid such gastronomic challenges.
As to Beth's suggestion that the affordable prices, no-name beer and simple waiting staff serve as some kind of antidote to the rampant fashionism and ego-mania that define Hoxton/Shoreditch, I am compelled to disagree. Au contraire! It's places like Cay Tre that underpin this cultural phenomenon. The Hoxton set loves Cay Tre and all it appears to stand for for the same reason it loves donning a hessian sack with a pair of its grandmother's lurid blue tights and calling it couture clothing. It's a post-ironic, pre-financial-apocalypse, cheap place to eat that makes the locals feel more well travelled, interesting or individual than they actually are.
Best yet: 7/10
I was late. Late again I reminded myself as I got out of the black cab on London's trendy Curtain Road. Damn. Having had a brief fling with the area the week before, in a warehouse launch party (no less) I felt I should know where I was going. But no, I had to look for a while so I was even later than late. Actually, Curtain Road is pleasant enough with the familiar mix of not-trying-at-all bar/restaurant/shop along with the trying-too-hard-I-am-near-Old-Street vibe going on.
Bar Music Hall is good as it has lots of beers. On the night we were there a section was closed off for a book launch. Some teenagers outside with silver trainers and their fathers deer stalkers confirmed we weren't really welcome.
It was just as well we headed to Cay Tre. Its a busy Vietnamese of which there are many in the area. Some don't have a licence and have plastic picnic chairs and tables but the most awesome food you have tasted, others have all the trimmings with real tables but mediocre food. The efficiency of the staff is counteracted with their wild running and bustling through tables making them look somehow clumsy and unorganised. I still can't decide if they are, in fact, just unorganised.
Starters were superb - the pancake roll was greasy but incredible, the lettuce and minced pork things were edible and some prawn based dish was deeply refreshing. The mains rolled in - as others have mentioned the cook-at-table dish was a real joy to watch and get served. The reality was fish cooked by a waitress (not a chef) served with drippings of hot fish sauce and coriander. The chicken I had ordered was spectacular. It had the bones left in and skin still intact but the flavour was totally unexpected. Order it if you go.
I feel ashamed this review has taken so long to write and I have forgotten some of the core details but I am confident that this was the highlight of DC so far. This restaurant is a master of its craft, its craft being serving fairly good, potentially Vietnamese food to locals.
7.5/10
Post a Comment