http://hungryinlondon.com/2011/01/brawn-bethnal-green/
I have to start with some food-independent whining. I have spent the last 2 weeks studying (ergo reduced posting frequency) and should still be studying for my viva on Monday but if someone mentions the word immunology to me ever again or asks me anything about gamma-delta T cells or psoriasis, I might have to kill him/her. (This in fact doesn't bode well for my examiners.) So please keep your fingers crossed for me on Monday!
So I decided now to focus on something more interesting (although I don't know if anything could possibly be more interesting than skin gamma-delta T cells..) and this is my recent meal at Brawn with the lovely Uyen from Fernandez & Leluu.
Brawn, which for the non-English among us means Presskopf (G) or head cheese (AE) or (other languages), a dish I am in fact not desperately keen on, is the sister restaurant of Terroirs in Covent Garden. It has opened a couple of months ago in Columbia Road in East London, where you can find the most amazing flower market on Sundays, so this is worth checking out independently of Brawn anyway. Like Terroirs and also some other recently opened places such as Polpo, Brawn's concept is the sharing of small plates.
I desperately wanted to like Brawn I liked the location, the decor, the atmosphere, the wine list, the waiters and the fact that they gave us a free dessert after we found a shell in our pork rillette. But in the end what really counts is the food and I just really wasn't blown away by any of the dishes served.
Once in a while I feel like Pork Rillette (6) salted pork meat slowly cooked in pork fat. The version at Brawn was certainly generous, even a bit too generous actually. If we had finished this heavily cholesterol-rich dish between the two of us, I don't think we would have had space left for any more food. It was pleasant but undistinguished. If you want to save money however, that's the way to go you can have a perfectly filling, artery-clotting meal for 3 pounds/pp. (I know I should shut up about health considerations when talking about restaurants, but once in while I just can't hold myself back, forgive..)
My favourite dish was the Dorset Palourde clams & Manzanilla (8). The clams were nicely cooked but the real winner was the sauce a heaven of olive oil, garlic and sherry. I ate most of it dipped with bread.
The Hand-chopped Tuscan style beef (8) was certainly of high quality and served with lovely warm, toasted bread. It however lacked any kind of seasoning, and was therefore utterly dull. I think this would have been very successful with some salt and pepper, some herbs and maybe a tiny bit of chili
The 1/2 pint of Atlantic Prawns with mayonnaise (8) came exactly as advertised. Again high quality ingredients but nothing was done to elevate the dish above the plain mediocre.
We pointed out to the waiter that there was a shell in midst of our pork rillette. The manager immediately came to our table, apologised and gave us the pork rillette and a dessert for free. I mean this is truly fantastic customer service and hardly ever encountered in the London restaurant scene. I should also mention that we ordered the wrong bottle of wine by mistake and could change it without even having to pay for the sip we had already drunk. Thank you Brawn, you were nice to us (slightly difficult customers).
So then the dessert with the very promising name crepes with salted caramel butter (5) arrived at our table. I took the first bite and found the combination of salt and caramel really lovely and unusual. But then the bitter aftertaste of burnt sugar kicked in, overpowered everything else and spoiled everything for me. I don't know now if this dish was supposed to taste like this and I just did not get it or if the caramel had been burnt by mistake.
Overall, I think Brawn is not a bad place and much less pretentious than Terroirs. However, I wouldn't go out of my way to eat there. Sorry. read more