Cay Tre Soho: Fancy Vietnamese with a Heavy Helping of Delish

The fashionable dining space at Cay Tre Soho.

Name Cay Tre Soho
Address 42-43 Dean Street, London W1D 4QD
Phone 020 73179118
Web site http://www.caytresoho.co.uk/
Main dish price range £8-11
Rating 3.5 Stars.  Not the most authentic spot, but a great place to impress a picky date! 
Recommended dishes La Vong Fish, Slow-Cooked Mekong Catfish

Here at the blog we've recently been on a bit of a Vietnamese kick, inspired by the yummy Banh Mi place that recently opened down the street from our apartment (post forthcoming).  So we decided to finally try Cay Tre Soho, a French-influenced Vietnamese place recommended highly by a Vietnamese friend here in London on a recent Friday evening. 

The restaurant definitely has a different vibe that a lot of places we review here. It's decked out in sleek, white-topped tables, and has a very design-y entrance, with bits of the menu scrawled in white letters across a glass wall. It would be the perfect place to go to impress a date or ease a friend not accustomed to hole-in-the-wall ethnic places into the wild world of ethnic cuisine. (We haven't been, but are told for a more downmarket, authentic option, try Cay Tre's location near Old Street.)

Desert or dinner?  Slow-cooked Mekong catfish.

Despite it's trappings of fanciness though, Cay Tre definitely did not disappoint. Our friend recommended the La Vong Grilled Fish appetizer (£6.50), and it definitely was the perfect way to kick off the evening-- the waitress brought a hot plate right to our table and cooked it in front of us, in a little wok piled high with fresh dill and cuts of monkfish so fresh I imagined they caught the fish out back. Also impressive was the Slow Cooked Mekong Catfish (£9.50), which was cooked in a carmelised fish sauce. As I got tipsier as the evening went on, I kept trying to sop up more and more of its sweet, delicious sauce with my rice, unable to let any bit of that dish go away uneaten.

BBQ with Rice Vermicelli.  Photo courtesy of Flickr.

One thing that's great about Ca Trey-- and good Vietnamese food in general-- is that freshness can be king in a cuisine like this, and one can leave the evening without feeling loaded down with heavy creams and starchy foodstuffs. For food along those lines, we loved the Lemongrass Wok Fried Squid (£10), which was hardly fried at all, but instead a mix of super fresh, high-end vegetables, including some delicious tiny, green heirloom tomatoes. Lemongrass, Chinese celery, green chili, and dill rounded out the dish, which managed to be delicious and somewhat healthy all at once.

The only thing we had at Cay Tre that we wouldn't get again was a dish we got on a subsequent visit-- the BBQ Pork with Rice Vermicelli (£9). This has long been a favorite dish of mine at some Vietnamese restaurants, but here the staff added their own twist, choosing to garnish the tender pork slices with fried spring rolls and bits of daikon. The fried bits took some of the focus off the meat and added a dose of crunchy tastelessness. I will give the kitchen staff credit though for nicely dusting the whole thing with peanuts and fresh chilis.

UPDATE: After vacillating between giving this place 3.5 or 4 stars, we've decided to leave Cay Tre at 3.5. We'd like to note though that the Old Street location has made us feel more positive about the Cay Tre brand. Although the Soho locale has a fancy, precious feel, Nick and I have come to really enjoy the vibe at Old Street, which has the same menu, but a much more diverse clientele. The giant, ridiculous-looking cocktails on offer, however, still cause us to raise our eyebrows. Supposedly they're "Vietnamese inspired" but they don't remind us of Vietnam. 

Chowki in Picadilly

Name Chowki
Address 2-3 Denman Street, London W1D 7HA Phone 020 7439 1330
Web site http://www.chowki.com/
Main dish price range £10-15
Rating 3 Stars. Solid pick, you won't be disappointed.
Recommended dishes Lucknow Lamb Korma

Pankaj Mishra, one of my favorite Indian authors, recently wrote a piece for the FT lamenting the state of Indian food in London, India's former imperial capital. As I've mentioned here before, it's all very much true, and in my opinion mostly due to the fact that when the tone was set for Indian cooking, the whole idea of food was not very much appreciated. It was the 60's, mostly people ate boiled meat, and salt and pepper were viewed as indulgent spices. It's not wonder that when Britishers think of curry, they think of mutely-colored, mutely-flavored, heavily creamed dishes.

So when Pankaj Mishra went on to list what he viewed as the only decent Indian joint in town as being Chowki, and that Chowki happened to be right near my office, I simply had to go. Chowki specializes in Indian regional fare, which I suppose is it's way of saying that the food they serve is the food that one might expect if one were actually in a region of India, as opposed to what passes for Indian food in London. Chowki is very much representative of a new wave of Indian immigration, itself representative of an entirely new India. The decorations are cheerful, the clientele and service young and busy, and the modern din is much reminiscent of the places my young colleagues have taken me to in Bangalore or Hyderabad. Chowki violates all of the interior-design rules set by the earlier generations of curry shops: there are no white table clothes, they use glasses rather than goblets, and there are large windows through which one can actually see the street.

I've read that Chowki's menu varies to reflect a different region of India every few months. Apparently they've abandoned this, and now just have a number of dishes from named regions, arrayed across a rather confusing glossy menu. The food, once ordered, is promptly served in a set comprising of a main dish, a plate of rice, and a lentil dal. It's exactly how a modern Indian would expect to be served, if he were trying to imitate the individual-serving style of western restaurants, but seeing as how Chowki's patrons are mostly trying to escape these staid western traditions, it's not clear why the food doesn't simply come family style.
But no matter. The food overcomes the jumble of its presentation. It's easy to see Mishra likes it -- the curries were very well prepared, nicely spiced, with succulent meat and not a hint of curry to pander to the punters. The Lucknow Lamb Korma stood out as exquisite -- it was clear that the meat was marinated as it should be, and the sauce was absolutely divine -- a finer balancing of flavours I can't recall having.
I'm not really an expert, but I do have reason to call into question the regional provenance of the dishes -- the names are a bit condescending and hardly apropos of anything. Hyderbadi Chicken Curry? Why, anyone who's ever been knows that the dish of that fine Deccan city is Biryani. I spend three months there and can't recall a Chicken Curry. Similarly, the Keralan Prawn Curry, I expected to be a verion of the fine seafood molees that are served in delightfully light coconut broths… instead it was just variation of a basic (but good) tomato curry.

I will certainly be back to Chowki -- even if the menu is a bit weird and gimmicky, and the service chaotic. It's a great spot to get re-aquainted with the flavors of India as they were meant to be, and it takes a rare place among London restaurants that are both cheap and good.

A solid 3-star pick. Better ambience and a more artful menu would easily put it into 4-star territory.