Iranian Food? In East Sheen?

I work in East Sheen, which is not exactly a hot bed of different cultures, cuisines and craziness - instead think of nice middle class couples with their 2.4 children and their 4 x 4's splattered in desginer mud bought at Harrods.

While I was lamenting the fact that I would have to grab a bus into Richmond to find an interesting place to write about for this blog - my collegaue told me 'oh no Helen, one moment please, before you completely write off East Sheen. I will take you to a wondrous place of Iranian loveliness were one can feast for the bargain price of £3.50!'

She had my attention!

So she took me one wet and wild Thursday afternoon to Faanoos (481 Upper Richmond Road West, SW14 7PU), an Iranian restaurant, where you can BYOB and dine quite cheaply, or more lavishly if the purse strings can cope.

As it was my first time, I was told I simply must sample the delights of the kebab. The £3.50 treat she had spoken about to tempt me to try this place. She went for chicken and I went for lamb, and I believe my eyes must have widened by at least a couple of cms when they brought the kebab beasts over to my table.




It was unlike any kebab I had seen before - large, handmade warm bread and deliciously cooked meat. My colleague had been right - it was a feast for the bargain price of £3.50. I quickly took two snaps of the food for your viewing pleasure - you are lucky, as the delicious fumes had already begun wafting towards my nose and I showed considerable restraint not to immediately tuck in.




The gigantic kebabs come equipped with equally gigantic pots of spicy tomato sauce and a garlic type mayonnaise delight. If on a hot date I would not recommend using either on your kebab, but as I was merely going to be breathing on my lovely but ' I don't want to throw you on my bed and have my wicked way with you' workmates, I had no such qualms about liberally spreading the sauces upon my kebab - this proved a wise move.



Now I had a food baby, a kebab baby to be more precise growing inside my expanding belly - but I was here on a mission - to sample the menu. A menu can never be really and truly sampled until one has tried the desserts - and I had never had Iranian desserts, so I thought 'why not'?

So I tried the most unusal dessert on the menu of course! Faloodeh, which is Persian dessert. It is a frozen dessert, a bit like a sorbet. It is rose ice mixed with thin vermicelli noodles that are frozen with corn starch and with some blackberry jam on top - the jam threw me too!

This is an intriguing dessert, and to be honest I am still unsure how I feel about it. I love 'rose' flavoured things, so this bit was tasty - but I couldn't shake the fact that there were noodles in the delicious rose ice and the blackberry jam - well this just seemed odd. Though this isn't anything against the restaurant, more my inability to believe that noodles are a pudding food.

If you are ever in the Richmond area while in London, then I would recommend taking that 5 minute bus ride from the Richmond centre into the delights of East Sheen and checking out the Faanoos. There is a lovely brick oven that bakes the most delicious bread - and the smell - oh Lord the smell :)

Dim Sum Finally!!! Golden Pagoda Style

So after the mis-start of greasy loveliness last weekend, I finally made it to my favourite Dim Sum place - The Golden Pagoda in Chinatown. I was introducing my friend Hannah to its delights, before we embarked on a crazy suicide mission - shopping on a Saturday afternoon in OXFORD CIRCUS!



Dim Sum is actually a Cantonese term for 'snack', and that is what they are - little snacks! So perfect for lunch, and with the exception of one restaurant I have yet to find a place that serves Dim Sum past 5pm - The Golden Pagoda doesn't.

Now - if you are wanting nice friendly service with a smile - you are in the wrong place.

If you want awesome cheap food of greatness then -yeah! - you have come to the right place sirs and madams.



This restaurant has three floors - I am usually taken to the attic room in the rafters, but for once I was put on a table downstairs. The waiter in a wonderfully surly tone asked our order for drinks, then we were left alone for a while.

You are given a Dim Sum menu - they are not always on the table and sometimes you have to ask for them, you will get the menu with a side order of eye rolling. Then you have a piece of paper with numbers on and a pen. The numbers correspond with menu items, so you simply place the amount of the dish you want next to the number.



I went for the usual prawn and chive dumplings, prawn and mango deep fried dumplings etc. I make it a rule to try a dish I haven't had before when I visit this place. Last time I was with the lovely Mj from Lunch Quest: Edinburgh and we went for a tripe dish - we couldn't remember what tripe was!!! This time I tried the lotus paste in bread dumpling. This was not a good choice - it looked somewhat like a heavy duty glue inside bread. The taste was bitter and peanutty and stuck to the rim of your mouth.



One of my favourite Dim Sum dishes is Deep Fried Custard Buns. I LOVE them, and this is the only place I have found where you can get them. I have seen the custard bun itself, but never deep fried. I would recommend ending any meal you have here with this dish, as it is heaven - or hell depending on how you look at it, as it is swimming with grease.



When you have stuffed your face and realise you have another meal still left on the table, you grab the attention of the Waiter and ask for take out boxes - another eye rolling moment and surly lip curl - but they will bring you take away boxes with a bag, so you can pack up what is left and re-heat it the next day - joyous!



Each dish is around £2 - £3, and you can heat heartily for around £10-15 per person, but with leftovers for the next day!

This really is a Dim Sumlicious delight - and I urge all of you if out in Chinatown in the afternoon to try it and go to the Golden Pagoda (15 Gerrard St, Soho,London, W1V 6PD) - I challenge you to be brave and order carelessly and haphazardly from the menu - all my favourite dishes have been impulse orders.

From Dim Sum to Bouiboui - The Effects of Too Much Caberet and Liquor

So I had meant to find myself in Chinatown, sipping a glass of water while chowing down on the delights of Dim Sum in my favourite restaurant. However, due to a night spent revelling in Dalston watching peacock feathered burlesque dancers, clowns falling in love with blow up dolls and a man dressed as a pig, dressed as woman, I found myself unable to get on the Tube and travel long distances.

Instead I ended up in Wood Green attempting to buy socks, when the 'morning after hunger' siezed my stomach and I had to find food - stat! And this resulted in me having the great pleasure of frequenting the delightful little bouiboui by the name of 'Cafe Villa De Fiori'.

Bleary eyed we wandered, on the hunt, through the market of the Wood Green Mall, and being the only eatery open we stumbled over the Cafe Villa De Fiori's threshold. Stale drink controlling our brains meant that the ordering centered around grease, grease and more grease - luckily they only seemed to have grease on the menu.

I myself ordered the 'Spicy Bean Burger' with a side order of chips, orange juice and coffee. My flatmate Lucy went for the 'Vegetarian Breakfast', which involved mushrooms, hash browns, beans, toast and much more.

Now before I begin to divulge my thoughts on the cuisine - let me explain our surroundings a bit better. I am not sure how many of you grew up in similar towns to myself and Lucy, but in our hometowns there was always a little market that sold everything from cheap toiletries to fabrics - from DVDs to pet supplies. You would go to this indoor market on a Saturday with your mum a couple of times a month, and when there you would eat in one of the little cafes that were dotted here and there.

I had not thought these little strange markets existed in such a big city as London, but there we were, hungover and reliving out past. It seemed as though London melted away and we were children again. It was quite a heady feeling, and nostalgia tinged our visit, causing our opinions to sidle more to the positive side than negative - that and the silly cheap prices (3.20 for a large breakfast and coffee!).


Now to the food - I was pleasantly surprised. The spicy beanburger was spicy without being too hot, and the bread (usually hard and crusty in these establishments) was soft and the right size for the burger. My chips were smothered in grease, but were crispy on the outside and nice and mushy within. For the Vegetarian breakfast the hash browns were an exceptional example of this British breakfast staple, and the mushrooms were very tasty and not cooked in meat fat, which was a bonus. The toast, however, was cold and a little soggy and they only offered white bread, there was no brown bread option, which I think would have been a nice feature to have. Lucy felt the beans were microwaved to perfection.

All in all, this meal was perfect for what we wanted and served us in the same way a fine cavier would serve you, while you are in a Michelin star restaurant, with a beautiful date across from you, and a string quartet playing in the corner.