Tag: prawns

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YO! Bento Box

I was in Leeds thinking about dinner, I passed the YO! branch in Leeds Trinity shopping centre. By the way when did YO! Sushi become just plain old YO!

Usually I don’t go to YO! as it can become quite an expensive meal, but I was a little surprised to see on their menu the prices were (in my t mind) significantly cheaper than I remembered. 

Their green plates were £1.95 and the blue ones were £2.95. Comparing the menu to the Bristol Cribbs branch I saw that the green plates were £3.50 but had more sushi. So I wasn’t misremembering, the prices in Leeds were cheaper. However, in the end I didn’t have small plates, I went with their bento box. These are only available at the following restaurants: Ashford, Belfast, Cheltenham, Exeter, Glasgow Braehead, Guildford & Leeds Trinity.

There are four to choose from and they cost from £9.95 to £17.95 and upgrades are available.

I went with the O! (meaning happiness) box and for £13.95 you got three small plates of sushi and a katsu curry bowl. From my seat I could see they were making my sushi fresh to order.

The sushi were crunchy cali roll, salmon maki with Sakura daikon radish, and smoky mayo popcorn shrimp.

sushi rolls

The shrimp had a nice crispy batter and the salmon maki were good. The crunchy cali rolls were my favourite and very tasty.

I went with the crispy katsu prawn bowl, which was authentic Japanese katsu on steamed rice with tonkatsu sauce and YO! smoky mayonnaise.

prawn katsu curry bowl

I got two large crispy coated prawns and a side of slaw which I wasn’t expecting. It was a very tasty bowl, though I found it challenging to eat with chopsticks so I went with a spoon instead.

I really enjoyed my bento box and I thought (for YO!) was really good value, with a five pound saving on buying the dishes individually from the main menu.

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Nice meal out in Helsinki

Back in February I was on a trip to Helsinki in Finland for a few days for work. I was staying at the Scandic Hotel Simonkenttä in the heart of the city. Though I did go to Momotoko for a number of meals, one evening our Finnish colleagues treated us to a meal at the Ravintola Sea Horse. We were eating from a set menu, with a range of choices.

For my starter I had the Shrimp Sandwich. This was a traditional open sandwich which was beautifully presented.

For the main course I had a Finnish Sirloin Steak. I did like the idea of the fish main course, but I had fish for my lunch, so fancied something different. This arrived and was presented on potatoes with onions, pickles, and sour cream.

It was lovely tender piece of steak and I liked the potatoes and other accompaniments.

For my dessert I had the frozen cranberries and hot caramel sauce, this was, well it was interesting, I really didn’t like it that much.

It was nice to have some Finnish cuisine in Helsinki.

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Tempura Prawns in a Lobster Sauce

One of the hotels I stay at in London is the Drayton Court Hotel in West Ealing. I was there in January staying just the one night. The last time I had been there was in May 2024. Since I was last there, they had done a load of refurbishment. There was a new larger reception area, and the rooms had been refreshed.

The food menu though was very similar. For my main I went with a pizza with buffalo mozzarella, tomato and basil which I have reviewed here. For a small plate alongside I went with the tempura prawns in a lobster sauce. Now this sounded like a real treat.

Tempura Prawns in a Lobster Sauce

Alas it wasn’t.

The prawns were terrible and the so-called lobster sauce was horrible. The prawns did have a crispy batter, but it was quite greasy. The sauce did not have any flavour of lobster and tasted like tomato puree.

I did not enjoy the dish and did not finish it. 

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Time to visit the Pelican State

When visiting London earlier this year I had gone for a walk around Bloomsbury before heading back to my hotel for steak and chips. On that walk I had noticed the brand of Pelican State and added it to places I thought I might like to try.

So on a more recent visit to London I decided I would head to the Pelican State and try out their food. I went with the Crispy Seafood Lunch Deal. This was prawns, green-lipped mussels, squid rings, red potatoes, large portion of fish and a sauce of my choice. I went with the aioli. 

It was served very quickly.

plate of crispy seafood

It was quite a substantial plate of food. I found the crispy coating more crunchy than crispy. It was a nice selection of seafood. I liked the prawns and squid, the mussels could have been better, as the crunchy coating made the mussels difficult to shell and eat. There was a large portion of fish. I think I should have had a side of coleslaw with it.

Overall I did enjoy the dish. They also do a Prawn Boil lunch deal, but I did think that it might be a bit messy to eat.

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Back to Master Bao

It had been a while since I had eaten at Master Bao. I really do enjoy a good bao bun and my first encounter with the Master Bao eatery at Westfield was back in December 2019 and a return visit in January 2020. I then made a visit back in September 2021.

So on a recent trip to London and needing some lunch I headed to the Westfield Shopping Centre. I did look around, but in the end headed to Master Bao.

I went with the meal deal of two bao buns and a side. I ordered the Prawn Bao and the Shiitake Mushroom Bao. The side I chose was fried vegetable dumplings.

The Prawn Bao contained marinated king prawns, fried, pickled mooli, spiced spring onions.

The prawns were nice and crispy, I liked the additions, and the bun was soft and fluffy. A really lovely bao bun.

Whilst the Shiitake Mushroom Bao had teriyaki shiitake mushrooms, pickled onions, miso.

Really nice mushrooms, with a strong savoury flavour, which contrasted with the soft fluffy bao.

I’ve had both these bao before and these were just as good, nice and tasty.

The vegetable dumplings had been fried.

I think they would have been better steamed, and then potentially fried in a pan. They were a little too crispy for me, I mainly prefer my dumplings steamed.

Nice lunch.

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Smoked Salmon and Prawn Cocktail

When I go somewhere to eat and if there is a specials board, I do like to try something from the board, as if I go again, it probably won’t be on the menu again. Not all places have a specials board, and most chains don’t. Of course you then have something like Bills where the menu changes on a regular basis, they probably don’t need a specials board.

I am a semi-regular visitor to a couple of Fullers’ hotels in London, Drayton Court and the Fox and Goose. Now and again they will have a specials board (or menu). On a recent visit to the Fox and Goose they had their specials board and I had a look over it. 

Specials board

Two of the items on the board were standard menu items, they were just telling punters what the soup was and what the pie was.

The chicken shnitzel (sic) was something I had before at Drayton Court. I did though quite like the sound of the starter on the specials board. 

Fullers’ London porter smoked salmon & prawn cocktail with Bloody Mary sauce and sourdough. So I went with that.

Smoked Salmon and Prawn Cocktail

The dish arrived, without the bread! So I asked and out it came. It was a large sized starter, bigger than I thought it would be.

I did think that the smoked salmon was more like smoked mackerel. This wasn’t slices of smoked salmon, more chunks of salmon.

The prawns were plentiful and good. I did wonder about the sauce, I didn’t really taste the vodka in there, and I felt there needed to be more sauce. I did like the addition of the cucumber and the tomato.

I think the sourdough could have benefited from being toasted, it felt slightly stale and dry.

Overall it was an interesting dish and an interesting interpretation of a prawn cocktail. I think though it could have been a much better dish with a few tweaks.

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A disappointing chicken karaage

I was in London and looking for lunch, it was raining, so the Leather Lane street food market was struck off my list of possible places as I didn’t want to get too wet. In the end I went to K10 and looked over their menu of hot food.

I decided I would have the chicken karaage. Chicken karaage is inspired by Chinese fried chicken recipes, karaage is a delicious izakaya or bento box favourite, comprised of crunchy, deep fried pieces of marinated chicken.

My food arrived promptly and I took it back to the office.

chicken karaage

The box was a bed of rice with chunks of deep fried chicken, chunks of cooked onion and pepper with spring onion and sliced chilli. This is then covered in a sticky sauce.

Alas, though I was looking forward to the dish, I was somewhat disappointed. The chicken was over-cooked and had dried out as a result of probably hanging around for a while. 

The accompanying onions and pepper were better, though I think they should have been cut up into smaller pieces.

I also ordered a side dish of prawn katsu. What I got was panko prawns, on shredded cabbage and carrot, with a sweet chilli sauce.

Overall I was quite disappointed with the food and I think I would have preferred to have got wet and got much better food from Leather Lane.

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Breton Fish Stew

I was staying in Ealing and having been disappointed that Reineta was closed I went to Côte. Reality was I did walk around Ealing to see what else was there and looking at various menus. So, in the end I ended up at Côte.

I had the Crab Maison for my starter. I stayed with seafood and I had the Breton Fish Stew for my main course.

This is a traditional coastal stew from Brittany with mussels, prawns, squid, seabream, in a tomato, white wine and chilli sauce. It was served with some French baguette.

There was a lot of seafood in this dish, yes it was mainly mussels, and there was only a single piece of seabream. There were plenty of prawns and squid rings.

I enjoyed the sauce, it was though similar to a soup rather than a sauce. The seafood was cooked well and wasn’t overcooked, which I did think it might be.

The bread was two slices of sourdough baguette. I think I would have preferred a more traditional French flute type baguette over the sourdough slices. 

I had wanted to try this dish for a while, and I enjoyed it. However it wasn’t amazing, so it probably wouldn’t be a dish I would order again.

To accompany my meal, rather than wine, I had a bottle of Meteor lager, which was crisp and refreshing.

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Yeah, it was what I expected…

I was up in Manchester for some meetings. I had planned in eating my evening meal in the hotel I was staying at, but it was closed, no reason given, but food was being served in the bar area. With a rather limited menu I decided to head off to the Trafford Centre, having enjoyed a meal at Bills there back in May last year. This time there wasn’t anything on the menu that inspired me.

The menu at Tru Street looked quite interesting with choices including bao buns for a starter, and lamb chops for the main. However it was a little more than I wanted to spend, and with the mandatory 12.5% service charge, would have stepped up the bill. What finally clinched it for me, to not to go, were the reviews on Google. Over a thousand reviews and the rating was 2.9 stars out of five. Put that into perspective, Bills has 4.2 stars out of five.

There is a huge choice of places to eat at The Trafford Centre, almost too much choice.

I did consider heading to Zizzi to have pizza, especially as I had a 30% off food voucher. However there was a bit of a queue for tables, and though I joined the queue, it wasn’t moving. I hate queuing so made the choice to go somewhere else. Next door was Thaikhun, a Thai buffet restaurant. They had an introductory £5 off deal, so kind of expecting nothing special I waited to be seated.

This was a self-service buffet restaurant with quite a selection of Thai based dishes. If you have been other buffet restaurants you might feel a little short-changed as compared to places likeZa Za Bazaar in Bristol the menu is limited to just Thai food.

Of all the dishes I had, I really enjoyed the seafood dish which included squid and prawns. 

Compared the excellent Thai food I have had at places such as Sais’s Thai in Oxford, this could be seen to be rather disappointing. However I wasn’t expecting anything special, so I did enjoy the food I had. Would I go again? Probably not.

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New Year Fish Supper

An annual tradition in our house is to have a fish supper on New Year’s Eve. This year we had a great selection of fish and seafood.

I bought some prosecco & lemon butter lobster tails from Aldi, these were rather good.

I made some crispy squid, using some fresh squid, which I then coated in seasoned flour and fried in oil. A combination of a crisp crunchy coating and sweet tender squid.

I also cooked some queen scallops, simply pan fried in butter.

I did baked lemon salmon fillets in the oven.

The prawns were cooked in a pan with herbs and butter.

All served with homemade paella.