Weekend eats - Restaurant recaps

Miso Noodle Bar
67 Upper Street
London N1 0NY

Chilango
27 Upper Street
London N1 0PN

While I've often described myself as a goat, able to eat almost anything without fussing over it too much, I think I can still figure out whether or not a place is good to eat at. I'm not a food snob or an architecture critic. I'm fairly accepting of minor faults, but I'm not blind to them.



Searching for somewhere we thought we could get in and out of fairly quickly Saturday night, we settled on the Miso Noodle Bar - a chain that is apparently becoming more and more ubiquitous of late. The kitchen was open and kind of looked like a mess - it was a little off-putting and also the atmosphere seemed a little cool, lacking in energy. The layout of the restaurant though was clean and stylish.

I had the pepper chicken & prawn noodles while my friend had the pepper duck noodles - reasonably priced for larger sized portions and very tasty. We also had some dim sum even though it was evening and there was no tea. These pieces were also well sized although there was a lot of grumbling done over the fact there were only two 叉燒包 (char siu bao) rather than the typical three you see in other places. Service was fine for the most part, although there was confusion about how to pay - I eventually had to get up and find someone to deliver our bill. We ended up achieving what we had set out to, a substantial but prompt meal.

Would I go back? Yes, probably, although I'm not yearning or anything - I'm perfectly happy to search out other places along the same way. One such place being Chilango where we visited for lunch on Sunday.

Chilango's is a Mexican restaurant I would describe as "Subway except with burritos and tacos". They have four stores nationwide, two of them in London. I had never heard of them but enjoyed the results very much and would like to see them become more popular. We both had a steak burrito heavy on the filling. The only problem is the price - At £6.70 for a burrito about 6" long and an additional £1 for a teensy scoop of guacamole, outrageously expensive at least compared to other fast food restaurants! A lot, lot tastier though...