Food: Curio x Ta Ta - Haggerston

It's a little too much when the new food craze is to suggest that rice must be eaten with the dishes served. What a revelation.  The curiously named Curio x Ta Ta is the collective brainchild of Zijun Meng and Ana Gonçalves (ex-Viajante and Chiltern Firehouse).  For three nights a week, they transform the small space at the Curio Cabal cafe in Haggerston into a capsule kitchen where the chefs entertain and delight with an interesting blend of Portuguese and Chinese dishes.  

What I loved about the meal was the non-ironic charging of £2.50 for a bowl of rice with 'house dressing' (aka soy sauce) but at least it served as a good vehicle to soak up the delicious smokey juices of the braised aubergine dish (not pictured as devoured too quickly).  

The "day catch" of white fish in a light dressing was perfectly delicious, consumed in between large mouthfuls of slightly sticky Japanese white rice.

Judicious use of micro herbs and flowers give an instant visual appeal to pork and black bean sauce.

Congee, is treated as comfort food in Chinese cuisine: it is the porridge, the chicken soup, mum's home cooking dish.  Boil rice, add water, cook to sloopy gruel like consistency.  Add ingredients, and in this case, an authentic blend of chicken stock, ginger, crunchy Chinese 'doughnut' (or croutons, I suppose), and with an inventive Ta-Ta style twist, crispy chicken skin and herby goodness. I could have eaten several bowls (because the bowls were really quite small).

What was less successful was the tofu dish. A big hunk of firm tofu needs a firm understanding of the beast itself.  Keeping it simple is fine, but it needs lashings of something, whether it be sauce, grill, smoke, braise, to give it either flavour or texture to lift it out of its cold, bland, original state.  

On the plus side, the coffee ice-cream with mascarpone and brown butter was served in a classic 1980s style dessert glass.  Better still it had the surprising element of tapioca balls ordinary found swimming at the base of bubble tea drinks.  As a topping on the espresso flavoured ice-cream, this is a stroke of minor genius.

Curio + Tata

258 Kingsland Road

E8 4DG

Open for dinner Thursday to Saturday

Food:"The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" at Cooke's Pie and Mash, Broadway Market, E8

A little bird flew into the apartment today. It was probably trying to escape the noisy din from three days of music in Victoria Park, bringing festival-going interlopers into the neighbourhood.

We walked to Broadway market late in the afternoon, following the path along Regent's canal, joining the strollers and cyclists lolling about. Sundays at Broadway markets are much nicer than the market day on Saturdays. This is when the cafes are free to breathe and spill tables onto the footpath.

The pie and mash shop has been taken over by a Japanese chef, but only on Sundays when the pie shop is closed. I cannot think of two things more incongruous and therefore more interesting.

"The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" at Cooke's Pie and Mash.

Handpainted watercolours adorn the exteriors

It runs every Sunday from 12pm to 9pm, serving either a set menu for £13, or takeaway bento boxes for £5.

Today's set menu: Tekkadon -- fresh tuna with rice, salad with rocket, cress, vine tomato, Hijiki with carrot and beans, Miso with clam, Pickles, Iced barley tea, or soba tea.

Isn't this the loveliest menu? 

Temple of the Golden Pavilion - set menu £13

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion specialises in Japanese home cooking. Every dish was fresh and crisp, presented beautifully. The clam miso soup was exceptionally tasty, the stock clear and sweet from the clams and not overly salty. A large bowl of soy-seasoned rice with large meaty slices of tuna sashimi. Cucumber pickles to round everything off beautifully.

Japanese wooden bowls.

It was quite a novelty for us to be having Japanese food in a pie and mash shop but the gentle, nonchalant ambiance inside the shop seemed to suggest that it was the most natural thing in the world.

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion also does catering and events. Contact details on their website.