SOFoodie

It’s very well presented and is designed to be eaten straight from the packaging so, just like a restaurant, you don’t have to wash the dishes, The roast mushroom duxelle was earthy, topped with a perfect slow cooked egg with a gorgeous runny yolk that burst on demand, adding even more richness to the parmesan cream. You could see just how slow cooked the beef short rib was; the bone just slid out from under it, the meat soft, melting and deeply umami, helped along by an extremely decadent red wine jus. The Israeli cous cous was slick with olive oil and layered with a rainbow of sweet heritage cherry tomatoes that spat as they were forked.

I miss the noise, I miss sitting at a different table, I miss having questions about the menu and struggling to choose what to eat. Pidgin, a small Asian influenced restaurant, just past the glorious green expanse that is London fields, had been on my list, a never ending, unyielding, always being added to list, of places to eat, for such a long time Over the past seven weeks, dishes have included,cold smoked mackerel, charred asparagus, napa cabbage, treviso, yuzu kosho buttermilk dressing, black lime and sunflower seed togarashi, followed by crispy fried pork pavé, thai style waldorf salad, tom yum emulsion, potato gratin and finished off with fermented black bean and sour cherry, sticky toffee pudding, jerusalem artichoke caramel, hazelnut, Galliano creme fraiche. And just like a homing pigeon, I will return each Friday for as long as I can capture one of those all important brown paper bags, filled with good things to eat, and a whole lot of love.

The gays of my life are leaving me, I can’t talk about it, they are going home, well B’s home, back to Sydney, sorry, happy story! Mostly, we are looked after by Nick and Darragh but by the end of the night, we meet most of the staff at some point. Darragh and one of the waitresses have a heated argument about gendering wine at the table and both end up sitting at the table drinking with us. Coffee and petit fours appear and, like much of the meal, I don’t remember the details.

This was my last night of Veganuary, and Gingerline didn’t let me down despite not knowing I was vegan in advance (I did give dietary so not sure what went wrong). I am a big fan of Kedgeree and I enjoyed my Vegan version which just omitted the haddock and egg, apparently it was meant to be topped with tofu but mine definitely wasn’t. The main course, for meat eaters, was Duck a l’orange, Roasted Duck Breast, Potato Fondant, Carrot and Orange Puree, Kumquat Jelly, Torched Orange, I had a vegan version which was really good, the meringue was perfectly balanced between crispy and chewy and it wasn’t too tart.