The Gate, 370 St John Street, EC1V 4NN

The Gate, 370 St John Street, EC1V 4NN
www.thegaterestaurants.com/islington

17/05/2015

She said:
Yes I already raved about The Gate in Hammersmith but we decided to try the sister spot in Islington. It looks like an unassuming pub from the outside but inside is a bright, atmospheric dining space dedicated to vegetarian cooking. The menu is the same as Hammersmith and again I loved my starter and main dishes. I wanted pudding but he was keen to move on and I was short on storage space so agreed. This remains a great vegetarian London offering that stands out from the hippy-bean alternatives and though the Hammersmith venue feels like more of a ‘find’ in a more creative space, if Islington is easier to get to, this one holds its own.

He said: Scroll down for our review of the original The Gate in West London which, for me, was a much better experience. The location in Angel is more convenient, and the space arguably nicer, but the food was somehow lackluster by comparison. Don’t get me wrong: it’s still nice to go to a restaurant and not have to scan the menu and settle for the one veggie dish you can have. But this was style over substance, more about the idea and presentation than execution. Or maybe I’ve been totally spoiled by Terre a Terre in Brigton: the best veggie in the South East. For whatever reason The Gate in Angel was just ‘meh’ for me.

Naamyaa Café, 407 St John Street, Angel Building, London EC1V 4AB

Naamyaa Café, 407 St John Street, Angel Building, London EC1V 4AB

31/08/2013

www.naamyaa.com/

She said: It was a lovely sunny day and we thought we’d cycle to Angel and meander around the antique shops. He wanted to eat at the shiny, contemporary looking Thai place we passed last week and though I was on the fence I did like the space so in we went. Naamyaa is of the Busaba ilk – trendy, modern interior, open kitchen and accessible menu of appealing dishes. I really liked the sound of the 48 hour braised mackerel so put in my order only to be told they didn’t have it. Not a great start. Still, there were other choices I had my eye on so went for the Prawn Green curry. To start we shared some spring rolls which were good. But when my Prawn curry arrived I managed to identify four small prawns and not much else. Very cheeky. Luckily we had ordered a side of Morning Glory which was salty but fine and I shared some of his Aubergine pot which was juicy but again far too salty. It’s a shame really as Naamyaa has that feel of a great local find, until you get to the food. The only reason we were upbeat on leaving was because our joyous dining discount card meant we paid £20 instead of £40, taking the sting out of a disappointing Thai experience.

He said: Naamyaa is definitely the kind of place being developed with franchising in mind: really strong brand ID (imagine Giraffe meats Busaba) and designed down to the most minute detail. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The menu is wide-ranging, pan-Asian rather than strictly Thai, with lots of choice for all times of day, including breakfast, and mid-priced. The food we ordered was just okay: it looked good on the plate, came in decent portions for the vegetarian things, but was so salty that it was hard to pick-up that magic simultaneous sweet/sour/spicy trick that Thais do so well. I was really excited to go here, having a soft-spot for sugar-high interior design, but the food was kind of a let-down. Drinks were good though, so maybe this is the place to go with the gang, sharing a whole bunch of small plates to keep yer heads screwed-on longer. That could be a good night actually: Naamyaa has a good energy to it; and, with all that drinking and peeing, the extra salt will probably come in handy.

Little Georgia, 14 Barnsbury Road, London N1 OHB

Little Georgia, 14 Barnsbury Road, London N1 OHB

25/08/2013

www.littlegeorgia.co.uk

She said: He loves Georgian food so we hit Little Georgia after a show at Saddlers Wells in Angel. What a pleasant surprise. Given the basic website and the ‘conversation by delayed satellite’ way in which I made the reservation with a sweet dear on the phone, I was expecting a small, simple family kitchen. However, Little Georgia is housed in a beautiful converted corner pub with Georgian newsprint wallpaper, posters and other paraphernalia adorning the inside. The menu contained all the classics and the portions were big which meant we reverted to our over-ordering-type. We shared a delicious beetroot salad (which he was so impressed by he subsequently has made it at home); a giant bowl of borscht; badrijnis salad which contained succulent aubergine and my favourite – kotnis lobio, a warming bean stew. We also had the traditional Georgian cheese bread ‘khachapuri’ which was actually my least favourite as the bread was thick and heavy and the cheese slightly sour (maybe that’s how it’s meant to be) but overall this was a spectacular meal at good value. The total bill came to just over £30 and we left feeling heavy and happy.

He said: Little Georgia deserves to be packed to the rafters every night. But I don’t know how it would cope if it was: what’s great about this place is that it tastes just like home-cooked food & I’m sure that if you went into the kitchen there would be no-one else but a slightly plump Mum with a paisley shawl on her head and a mouth half-filled with gold teeth, working though a cloud of order slips. We went on a Sunday night, with room for dozens more, and waited god knows how long for our food. But it was worth every second. Nearly every dish we tried was the best version of that dish we’d had in any of London’s surprisingly many Georgian restaurants. The borshcht was killer, the aubergine caponata-type thing was killer, the beetroot salad was so good that the second I went home I scribbled the ingredients on the shopping list so that I could make it myself in case of emergency. Just the lobio was a bit of a let-down. If you haven’t had it before Georgian food is similar to middle eastern food with echoes of Iranian; but it is also the very best, most evolved version of that tradition. It’s all familiar, but indescribably and so satisfyingly different. Lots of hidden walnut, pomegranate etc. So, so good. When you mention Georgian food the dish that everybody bangs-on about is kacha puri (flat bread with cheese baked-in), which is great comfort food if you’ve just escaped from months of captivity in some Chechen hell-hole, but it’s kinda ‘meh’ compared to everything else. Here it was really very good: the bread fluffy, and the cheese not fatty. But next time I will have lobiani (the same thing except with a heady kidney-bean mash instead of cheese). Please let it be soon!