Confederacy of a Dunce - Green and Red

Thursday, August 17, 2006

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Yesterday Mrs. Dunce and I took another step towards indoctrination into the cult of Circulus, following their charismatic leader into a "rather quaint old slaughterhouse at the top of Brick Lane" (his words, not ours) yet somehow escaping with our lives (although perhaps not our free will; the combination of Moog and sackbut is dangerously hypnotic). Our first stop on our way there was the revered Wenlock Arms where Mrs. Dunce made a beeline for the Mild (makes sense, as she'd spent a long, hard day at the factory and needed a combination of low-alcohol drink and sustenance). But this entry is really about the interval between our stop at the Wenlock and our arrival at the Cult Member Processing Centre. You see, it involved a visit to yet another well-regarded Mexican restaurant in London. And lest I be accused of being obsessive about this topic, erm, well, I suppose those accusations should stand.

This time it was a visit to Green & Red (just around the corner from aforementioned slaughterhouse), a place that's been receiving quite a few good reviews, both for its focus on drink (Time Out), and its food (london-eating). The food reviews in particular gave us some encouraging signs: frequent references to authenticity and regional focus (Jaliscan in particular), and contrast to the standard "London Tex-Mex" which has been so rightly scorned by so many for so long. We arrived and managed to get one of the few remaining tables (all had "reserved" cards, but we were seated anyway, thanks to some combination of charisma, persuasion, and maybe a sense that we would go berserk and run amok if denied a table) in the dining area (there was also a very nice-looking downstairs bar area). We started off with a selection of tasty cocktails mostly along the tequila dimension (Margarita, Diablo, and a pomegranate something-or-other). My Diablo was nice, although perhaps nothing to write home about (yet here I am doing exactly that). But we were really just biding our time until the food arrived.

After not very long at all, it happened. The highlight of the meal was one of the starters: excellent guacamole with totopos. Not a very large portion at all, but then again it was a starter. We also had a relatively spicy (and also not very large) chile relleno, and some fairly ordinary (perhaps a bit citrusy/spicy) corn-on-the-cob. Those all disappeared rapidly (think heads down, spray of saliva, blur of forks, etc. Or at least that's what my side of the table was like). And then it was time for the mains. I ought to mention that the menu is quite limited (it does seem more like a bar than a restaurant; the drinks menu is far more extensive than the food menu): six choices of mains: four meat, one fish, one vegetable. So it wasn't too difficult to decide what to order. I had the fish, a very nice sea bream cooked in a banana leaf + tomato/ancho salsa; we generally thought this was the best of our main dishes. Mrs. Dunce had a pumpkin thingy ("Roast ironbark pumpkin with lentils, sweet potato and chayote"); and the mysterious third party had the birra, a slow-cooked marinated lamb shank that's featured quite frequently in reviews of the place. Along with the mains came a somewhat paltry serving of refried beans (nice, but small), shredded cabbage, small (freshly made) corn tortillas, and a couple of salsas. We all had the same general reaction to the food: we enjoyed everything, and considered it far, far beyond "traditional London Mexican fare", but (except for the guacamole) we were not truly excited by any of it. Maybe we've become jaded by the sudden boom in good Mexican food in London, but there are still a couple of restaurants I think are better than Green & Red: El Panzon and Mercado (I'll start subtracting points if Mercado's website stays as it is. "Opening May 2006" indeed). As far as Mexican *restaurants* in London are concerned, anyway. Green & Red's strength seems to be as a cocktail bar, moreso than a restaurant. We paid our bill (just under £90 including 12.5% service charge) and made our way to be indoctrinated by the Circulus cultists.

consume

Thursday, August 17, 2006 1:00:22 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)