AZBarLondon did it’s first ever back to back this week. The result was E and F on the same night. We did it the night of the Champions League quarter finals and just like the matches themselves it was a night of two halves.

The first 45 minutes was spent at the Edinburgh Cellars, 125 Newington street, between Highbury and Stoke Newington. Check out our full review below. While it wasn’t a bad spot we didn’t feel at all inclined to stay beyond one drink. We drained our Cracks in the Jacks and left for F quick enough.

View video here.
View Larger Map

We’ve long bemoaned the difficulty of acquiring top notch food at a decent price after the hour or 11pm in London. A city that purports to be a world capital turfs it’s citizens onto the street at closing time where the choice is grim. A bag of chips from the chippy or a pot noodle to take home from the corner store.

There are gems out there, we’ve been to one or two, but it’s a hard job tracking them down, and you can almost forget about finding them spontaneously.

So with all that in mind, and not wanting to come over as our usual negative selves, TrashBlanc.com is going to spend a bit of time on the coal face of late night London Eating.

Here’s our first report, and for the weekend that was in it we started at the Marathon Kebab. Befitting of it’s Camden location on the Chalk Farm road, Marathon is a big hit with the local musos. So much so that there’s a resident jazz-guy playing his sax along to lounge tracks in the back room. Atmospheric, yeah. The food is a step up from the standard kebabary. But only just. And for that it charges a pretty penny. £3.00 for a falafel kebab, £1.80 for nine onion rings and a mammoth £2.80 for a can of wife-beater. As Ricky points out in the video, getting served cans of Stella in a chip shop is a bonus to begin with, but paying nearly three large ones is a steep price.

Whether all of this is worth it depends on a couple of crucial variables.

1. Your distance from Camden. If you’re there already by all means go for it, but it’s not worth more than £5 in a taxi.

2. Your level of inebriation. This isn’t too crucial. TB had only a couple of pints and still took some enjoyment from the experience.

3. You tolerance for jazz, man. Speaks for itself.

All in all we’re giving a positive review, but with the proviso that there’s got to be better late night eats out there, right?

We wrote last week about Londonization, chain eating, the pleasure of knowing the same over-priced menu on ever high street. Well what are we going to do about it? We’re going to tell you what, right here on TrashBlanc.com we’re going to find the very weakest links in an all too familiar rusty toilet chain. Nobody is going to be spared. If we see what we think is a self replicating food emporium, we’re going to KAM IT HARD.

And we’re going to back that camera action up with some good hard facts. Like just who owns these cookie cutter outlets drowning London in a sea of ubiquity. And why the UK is a particular victim to this widespread lunching malaise.

Now we’ve got to lay down some guidance here as to how we approach this task. Sure MickeyD and the King are bigtime chains, but they’re not even trying to fool anyone. They’re saying “We’re cheap, we’re shit, we screw the planet daily, but hey, we sell 50 gazillion burgers worldwide per hour so fuck you pal”. Point absolutely taken.

No, we’re after the likes of old man Carluccio. The sly conieving types who pretends to inject class into the market until you get home to find your house knocked to the ground, your children gone, and a plate of very average blue cheese gnocchi being sold at £9.95 in their place. We’re not standing for this shit.

So here’s the chain of shame. It’s not definitive by any means, you comment and we’ll add.

• Carluccio
• Apostrophe
• Hamburger Union
• Busaba Eathai
• Gourmet HotDog
• Strada
• Eat
• Pret a Manger
• Pizza Express
• Leon
• Paul
• Ping Pong
• Wagamama
• Yo Sushi
• Wasabi
• Miso

(Scene of the detestation, Haymarket Wagamama. Thanks for pic Ewan-M)

Londonization. The French term for the decimation of the high-street by chain stores and chain restaurants. Walk down any street in the UK and you’ll see exactly what they mean. While we at TrashBlanc.com have to ‘fess up at this juncture to a fondness for H&M under-garments (boxer briefs, size large since you ask), we’re growing progressively less fond of eating where everybody knows the names, on the menu.

We’ve discussed prime offenders such as the Gourmet HotDog chain before. But now it’s time to do some solid investigation. Why? Becasue we’ve just eaten in Wagamama and let us tell you something, it was the worst bowl of soba noodles we’ve had in a seriously long time. Like ever! Bland, oily, mushrooms that tasted like they’d come from a metalworks. Three pieces of soggy tofu. All this ours for £7.50 (US$15).

When Wag came on the scene it was a breath of fresh air. All minimal underground hipness. Communal benches, open plan kitchen and servers with PDAs. Wow, the glamour. Surely this was modern China at it’s very best. Shame the miso tastes more like run-off from the lifeless Yangtze river.

Wag was launched by a man, Alan Yau, who has a handfull of Michelin stars and an MBA-esque know-how in successful franchising to his name. Well Yau has sold starred eateries and he’s obviously enjoying the proceeds somewhere far away from London.

Wag have over 20 locations in London, 50 in the UK and imminent expansion is planned in the US. They’ve also opened up in Heathrow T5. Now that makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is a notion that TrashBlanc will ever eat in Wag again. Not happening.

What is happening is a month on TrashBlanc devoted to exposing London’s other hyped but dodgy chains. We’re looking at you Carluccio.

Here at TrashBlanc.com we like to think we go the extra mile so that you don’t have to. We bite the burgers, finger the fries and taste the tacos so that you can get straight to the good stuff. 8 out of 10 times we come away with exactly what we put in. Three dollars worth of bland bananas. But every once in a while we hit the mother lode.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Stoney’s Pizza Van is something special. Check it out.

Overall rating ****
(out of 5)

Price: $3 per slice.

Video’s here.

We’ll have more on our trip to the wonderful Hula Hut out by the lake in Austin, but for the moment you can check the Trash Blanc lowdown on the Mexican Margarita. A little sweeter and greener than the standard tequilla cocktail, this house drink started off our last night at SXSWi with some style.

Overall rating: *****
(out of 5)

Price: $4 per shaker of liquid goodness.

Video’s here.

We’ll have our Nuclear Taco event video up later, but for us here at TrashBlanc.com the taco show was well and truly stolen by the Ice Cream Man. In fact, he may well have pilfered our entire SXSW food experience. In terms of right time, right place, right man, this guy hit a three run home run.

His stated goal is to travel the world and GIVE AWAY half a million ice creams,

“If I can do that I can do anything”

An obvious next question is how many have you given away so far mricecreamman. But TrashBlanc.com had brain freeze and we were thinking of nothing but blue food colouring. We had two ice creams, paid nothing and gave four TB stars to the man in the van.

Looking at theicreamman.com website, we can’t help feel there’s a more than a little corporate payola going on, but we’ll resist cynicism for the moment. Lick it up.

Overall rating ****
(out of 5)

Price: $0 per ice cream.

SXS-Eats: The 6th St. Pizza showdown part II.
TrashBlanc.com takes it to the house for the second in our heavyweight pizza reviews. Check it.

Overall rating: * */2
(out of 5)

Price: $4 per spinach/mushroom slice.

Video’s here.

Mayo Holly finally turns up which means we can start taking a look at meat filled dishes here on TrashBlanc.com. And no better start than a burger review outside BD Riley’s on 6th Street.

Overall rating ***
(out of 5)

Price: $8.95 for burger and fries.

Video’s here.

Drinking at SXSW we’ve learned here at TrashBlanc.com can be a tricky activity. Sure there’s plenty of free drinks sponsored by the likes of Google, Frog Design and lots of other companies trying to retain a level of cool they once had (or is that me being cynical). But they’re not really free. Payment takes the form of hour long queue surrounded by the type of people who think said queue must mean there’s a kicking party inside. Guys, there isn’t. We’re all geeks.

However, sometimes the geeks do get it right, Saturday night at SXSW being a great example. Instead of joining a line in downtown Austin, the collective intelligence that is Twitter decided on the wonderful Gingerman bar on West 4th. No freebies, no queues and somewhat unexpectedly no hard liquor. Instead there were over 80 draught beers on tap and an outside patio full of ‘Internet Famous’.

TB ignored the celebs in the back and sat at the bar for some Texan hospitality. In terms of beers, Arrogant Bastard was going down a treat, and there was one punter whose eight horse accumulator came in when he saw the bottles of Westmuler Triple in the fridge. No doubt he was caught in a Trappist. So a pretty impressive selection of yeasty hoppy goodness then. Our tipple of choice for the evening was a Hacker Pschoor Oktoberfest. No, we hadn’t heard of it either and we can only describe it as an amber viking of a beer. Red, rough and likely to rape and pillage a small Irish village if left to its own devices. We had a second pint before leaving and we’ll be back before the end of the week.

Midnight on Saturday night and TrashBlanc needed sustenance before hitting GaryVee’s ridiculous wine party. Nowhere better than Torchy’s Tacos. A local mini-chain by all accounts but with more than a dollop of character.

One of the great things about the food in and around SXSW is that it’s traded in US dollars, and when you earn GB pounds that means cheap eats. But Torchy’s sets a new standard in terms of cost:tastiness ratio. TrashBlanc went with the fried avacado on a corn taco. In retrospect we should have had two, this was pretty special.

It took TrashBlanc.com 24 hours in Austin to get our first proper sit-down meal. It was worth it. A hop skip and a quick jump under I-35 from the Austin Convention centre had us at Progress. Nothing super fancy, but some interesting taste marriages going on. Asian/southern/organic/bicycle mix. And it worked. TB went for the El Sol Rojo; Brown rice, black beans, green chile hummus, roasted corn onions guac and carrots. $5.99 and worth every penny.
A great escape from the fried cheese flavours of 6th Street.

TrashBlanc.com is going to be in New York for eight hours tomorrow  morning. From midnight to 8am to be precise. No doubt we’ll be hungry and there’s zero doubt we’ll be able to find good tasty food at any hour. Especially thanks to the likes of SeriousEats.com and their Late Night guides.

Compare this with the utter lack of either obvious eating options or a guide to find them by here in Europe’s self-proclaimed capital.  Seems to us that someone’s going to have to sort London out with a proper review of after hours eating. Stay tuned.

It’s not every day we feel like we’re breaking records here at TrashBlanc.com but surely there’s no more expensive hot dog in the world to be paid for than that at the Gourmet Hot Dog Company.

Is there a business school somewhere that teaches prospective MBAs that if they add the adjective “gourmet” to their food/eatery name they can also add 200% to the price? Becuase that’s the only thing myself and Beatmaster V felt we were paying a premium on Berwick Street in Soho.

The bun, nothing special. The meat (or in my case Italian mushroom), no better than Wicken Fen or other freezer cabinet fare. The condiments, as good as any US ballpark but no better. Save your money for for a batter sausage at some chipper, this is a record TrashBlanc.com will be playing only once.

Judging by the GHDC website, this is only the first branch in London’s next epicurean chain. Whether it has any legs will depend on whether they can do one of two things. Bring down the price or bring up the added value. And by that we mean give us more food. A foot of dog simply isn’t going to cut the mustard.

[video to follow]

Some things in life you know are going to turn out bad. But being humans we have an in-built sense of optimism. I’m sure at some stage of our evolution this made perfect sense. Ug decided to leave the cave because you know what, the lean-to that he could make out of wood was going to be a whole lot more airy. That kind of thing. But over time we’ve learned that this sense of adventure can get us into a whole heap of trouble.
And so to the Hoxton Beach Falafel Feast. Two big warning signs here:

1. Alliteration. Never a good sign with food. Screams of marketing desperation.
2. The word Hoxton. Shoreditch we can just about handle. But Hoxton and its square represents all that is bad about London’s creative fashion scene. And let me tell you, there isn’t a beach for 60 miles in any direction.

The £3.25 plastic wrapped falafel itself was bought in Planet Organic, just off Tottenham Court Road. A Whole Foods Lite for students at the University of London. Nothing wrong with that. What’s wrong though is the shit they sell.

The feast in question turned out to be a dry gravel like falafel, a metalic tasting tomato, some non-descript lettuce all wrapped up for our convienince in a rubber wrap. Now I’m sure that wrap wasn’t meant to be rubber, but hey, student’s will eat anything. At least that’s what the clowns in the Hoxton Beach hut are obviously thinking.

Well we here at Trashblanc.com certainly won’t. The falafel buying public have been let down in a big way here, thank heavens there’s nearly four weeks left in the month.

Here’s some video. We’ll have the full on TrashBlanc.com rundown a little bit later on.

And…