Coren on SGR

edited January 2011 in Local discussion
Word on the street: the subject of Giles Coren's restaurant review this Saturday is Stroud Green Road's very own Seasons restaurant...

Comments

  • edited 11:48PM
    Word on the street is surely their chalked menu highlights?
  • edited 11:48PM
    Let's run a sweepstake on Coren's i) synonyms for 'grotty' as applied to SGR ii) thin jokes about wig shops.
  • IanIan
    edited 11:48PM
    Aha - I did predict this some weeks ago as I bumped into someone who knew he was going that night...
  • edited 11:48PM
    "grubby"?
  • edited 11:48PM
    Does anyone actually have a subscription to the Times though?
  • edited 11:48PM
    We get the Times on Saturday, so will post highlights (if any) in the morning.
    I'd guess he'll try to get "minging" in, or possibly the wig angle might be worked into something about figs.
  • edited 11:48PM
    He only lives up the road so he shouldn't be too shocked about the wig shop end of SGR.
  • edited 11:48PM
    The review of Season is indeed in the Times today, and is very nice with no sneering whatsoever. Although it does contain a dire warning about the future of Stroud Green.
  • edited 11:48PM
    I've just tried to access The Time's Life section online and notice you have to subcribe to gain access. I might buy a copy when I venture to the shops soon. Does he worry that Stroud Green road will turn into Upper Street or a Detroit-syle boarded up shop zone?
  • edited 11:48PM
    @kreuzkav - that's the case with all Times online content. Big experiment that all newspapers are watching. I doubt people will succumb to paying despite the massive advertising campaign. @topsfield - dire warning? More detail?
  • edited 11:48PM
    I hear that increasingly bands (and presumably actors &c likewise) are reluctant to be interviewed by the Times, because it's the one venue where their other fans around the world won't be able to read the piece via a link on Twitter or wherever. Which gives me hope that we might be seeing the first crack in Murdoch's ghastly empire.
  • edited January 2011
    Leaving aside my view that Murdoch and his empire are evil, I find the layout and journalism of The Times to be fairly bad for a broadsheet. I'm interested in knowing Coren's prediction for SGR but maybe not enough to spend £2 on it.
  • edited 11:48PM
    £1.50 on Saturdays kreuzkav, or nip into the library and read it for nowt.
  • edited 11:48PM
    Coren sez more restaurants as good as Season will lead inevitably to Stroud Green turning into Highgate. That sounds a bit far-fetched, but the very idea sends a chill up the spine.
    The only reason to buy the Times these days (apart from Mr Coren) is so you have something to rest the crossword on.
  • edited 11:48PM
    'cracking haunch of venison' .... We have already booked for Dorcas' birthday and Chang (who actually lives in Highgate -well he is a vet-) is coming down . The n6 n4 comparisons will be lively. Can't get a babysitter tho and Vitor has other plans? Any thoughts ?
  • edited 11:48PM
    I'm not sure I understand, can you reword the question please?
  • edited January 2011
    Me and cousin Peregrine have spent many fine nights in the rough old inns of Stroud Green, but never yet dined at Season. We're not sure it would be up to Peregrine's usual Highgate standards. Would you recommend it to a couple of raddled old-school debauchees from out of town?
  • edited 11:48PM
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  • edited 11:48PM
    I didn't pay attention in the grammar classes. Matron was always telling me off about that.
  • edited 11:48PM
    Not that it's any of my business, but why did your Matron take issue with your grammar Barky?
  • FinFin
    edited 11:48PM
    As someone who is mug enough to pay for a Times subscription, I've posted the review below for y'all to enjoy. To put it in context, the article starts with a withering review of Highgate.

    "So if you’re anywhere in the marginal vicinity, and in the car, I suggest you head on over the bridge towards Crouch End, then veer off towards Finsbury Park and home in on Stroud Green Road, where you’ll find Season.
    Season is small, independently owned, and as it endeavours to make its food as seasonal, local and sustainable as possible, they won’t serve you green beans in January. And because it’s Finsbury Park, they won’t charge you £20/head for one course and no drinks and then laugh behind your back.
    We went with my cousin Stefanie and her husband Paul, who live round there and had been a couple of times since it opened late last year. It is intimate, sensitive to its community, well lit, rather noisy and packed with good-looking young people who haven’t got much money. It is everything Côte is not.
    And the food is not bad. From a short (6-7-4) menu, we had sweet smoked salmon from Hansen & Lydersen round the corner in Stoke Newington, a pear and chicory salad with walnut and Stilton dressing, and two slices of beef (which they called “dry spiced” where I’d have said “cold roast”) with apricot and almond chutney and a pile of nice warm soda bread. There was also a soup, an escabeche and a pâté.
    I had a really cracking haunch of venison with a red wine and chocolate gravy. I’m not a deer and chocolate man, but this was exquisite, the chocolate just giving a shine to the sauce and a bittersweet lift, but nothing more. There was good clam and bacon chowder, slow-cooked collar of bacon in a huge pile with excellent, meaty pease pudding and heaps of cavolo nero, which is what you do want in London in January, not bloody African beans.
    Esther was a bit fierce in her assessment of the polenta with wild mushroom ragù and mozzarella, but she was nearly nine months pregnant and tending to be fierce in her assessment of most things.
    We had pudding – Cambridge burnt cream and a nougat glacé – and two bottles of the best wine on the menu, and coffee, and it came to about £120. This sort of decent local grub could do wonders for house prices around here. If things take off, Stroud Green could one day become the new Highgate – a suburb miles from anywhere with no shops or restaurants but a hell of a line in estate agents."
  • edited 11:48PM
    Hahahahahahahaha "young people who haven't got much money" hahahahahahahahaha "could do wonders for house prices around here". I mean, I know Giles is minted, and it <i>is</i> in the Times, but still!
  • FinFin
    edited January 2011
    Pretty sure those two comments are more a sarcastic dig at Highgate than a comment on Stroud Green Emma, which I appreciate doesn't really come through without the first part of the article.
  • IanIan
    edited 11:48PM
    Thanks for posting it, fair review I thought from our experience there. I hope Andy and Dave don't get the full weight of News International bearing down on them for copyright breach ...
  • edited 11:48PM
    @ topsfield, I was very close to Matron, she always wore such crisp white starched aprons and every Founders Day afternoon she would take me down to Limmins for tucker. That's when she would tell me off, when I said things like 'Peregrine and me really likes your shortbread, innit?' Mind you, Peregrine was closer, but we don't talk about that.
  • edited 11:48PM
    Ding dong!
  • edited 11:48PM
    @Fin. Thanks for the posting.

    @Miss Annie. Thanks for the tip about the price. It's 40 p cheaper than The Guardian's Saturday edition. The library sugestion is a good one too. However, with the onset of free online editions I often just read bits and pieces from them.
  • edited 11:48PM
    We went to Season tonight. We booked before we knew about the newspaper review. The staff were positively glowing with pride. We were the last to leave and we spoke to all of the front of house staff.

    Having been open for, what, three months and to be well reviewed in The Times (& Timeout, and others) I think they have every right to be proud and I wish them all the best.

    The venison truly is cracking.
  • edited 11:48PM
    I enjoyed reading the Coren piece simply because the crossposting of it is one in the eye for the thrice-accursed Murdoch.
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