Dining Out Digest: KHAO SŌ-i, Decimo, Peckham Cellars

All the good stuff from the w/c 18th May.

Not sure if you’ve heard but it’s fucking hot out. I am writing this on my sofa, wearing a gigantic Janet Jackson t-shirt, with two drinks on the go and my shit Argos tower fan pointed directly at me. It is, and can only be, summer in London!! As such, I have a few very sunny weather-appropriate establishments across the city that I have enjoyed over the last seven days to tell you about, if you like.

As I mentioned in Sunday’s free post, I’m going to start doing weekly digests for paid subscribers, so if you’d like to know more about what I am getting up to, this is where you’ll hear about it outside the weekly free post. This week, however, because I am like Mother Teresa in my generosity, I am sending it out to everyone for free so you can get a sense of what it’ll be like going forward. As such, here it is: My Week of Gout and Indigestion, ft. incredible Thai noodles, posh Mexican food, wine happy hour. Let’s go!

KHAO SŌ-i

You know when it’s boiling and people do that annoying thing of being like “haha just have a hot drink it actually cools you down” and you do that thing of being like “please fuck off” back? Well unfortunately it seems that these pedantic freaks might actually be onto something. I say this because last Friday, on the first properly hot day of the year, I had lunch at KHAO SŌ-i in Fitzrovia, and despite the fact that the food was spicier than a group chat where all the members share a mutual enemy, I actually can’t really think of anything that I would have preferred in this weather.

Khao soi is a Northern Thai noodle dish made with egg noodles and curry broth, and this is what KHAO SŌ-i, fairly obviously, specialises in - but when I say they specialise, I mean they actually specialise. They press their own coconut milk in the basement of the restaurant (allegedly very rare in London though I’d love to hear about anywhere else where this is done!), and the herb mix that flavours the soup is precise, and relies on the importation of some ingredients. What I’m saying is that these lads are serious about soup - and considering that this is the first KHAO SŌ-i outpost outside of Asia, that is not entirely surprising.

There are a bunch of different khao soi varieties on the menu - you can go for wagyu, chicken, tofu, langoustine, ox cheek, and a load of other good sounding stuff. Each order comes on a tray: the main event is a bowl with noodles, a soup, and your protein, and then there are your extras, like fresh herbs and pickles and chilli flakes for garnish, traditional crispy noodles to chuck in and add crunch, and some additional coconut milk to cool things down if you find that you are too much of a baby for the Full Monty.

Sitting up at the counter so we could watch the chefs work (btw: Adidas shorts and a wooden stool on a hot day: don’t do it), I went with a scallop khao soi - and, by the way, a sliced scallop on top of some noodles has absolutely no right being the best cooked, softest, sweetest scallop I have eaten in months (and possibly even all year) but this one managed it - and some shared sides, and I was so impressed. Due to being quite rubblishly travelled, I’d never tried fresh coconut milk before this, and the difference between this and the regular degular stuff is quite mad: this was creamy and dimensional, managing to stand up in the flavour stakes to a complex herb mix and a lot of chilli (a lot).

The noodles were properly toothsome - chewy in the way where you have to actively chomp; slurpy in the way that makes them categorically not first date noodles - and the crispy, peppery beef makwen side was so good that I’d have eaten these long strips of sirloin like gummy worms for hours if such behaviour weren’t frowned upon.

I’d say of all the things I ate last week, this is the meal I’ve thought about the most - not least because of the glamour girl cocktails (Thai Sunset is the one to order), and the perfect desserts, which included a tea-flavoured Basque cheesecake, and a beautiful little snowball of ice cream, made from that pure, fresh coconut milk. What a fantastic place.

Thank you Connie and Crab Communications for this one, I’ll be back so soon, largely because if I don’t eat that ice cream again I will never recover.

Decimo

Decimo - the upmarket Mexican restaurant on floor 10 of The Standard Hotel - has got a new head chef in Paola Arenas, and I went along last week to a big group dinner to celebrate and try out her new menu.

I’d never actually been to Decimo before so it was fun to see how the other half (that is, people for whom staying at The Standard is “normal” and not “the literal best night of their life” as it was for me, when I reviewed for Time Out, ordered a burger to the room and watched Bridgerton in a king sized bed by myself) live. The decor is extremely summery - lots of wicker - and the welcome Palomas went down more quickly than they should when you are on SSRIs, but it was the first evening of the heatwave, and I was excited, so allow me.

This welcome dinner for Paola was extremely generous, with samples of basically everything on the menu. There was a lot to admire - though maybe a little less to truly love - but I especially liked bread with an oily, piquant roasted red pepper puree, a very spicy scallop and melon aguachile, and a chocolate mousse served, as is the fashion, tableside.

I could have given or taken a carnitas taco, which I found surprisingly fatty but not in a fun way, but the snack-sized tuna tostada, with a smoky sour cream hiding beneath the fish, and a big old hunk of wild bass on pistachio mole made up for it. Honestly, the pattern that very much emerged was that the seafood was the new menu’s big success, and it would be fab to see Paola and Decimo lean into that more.

The service was lovely (my favourite bit of the meal was when my server asked if I’d like more wine, I said, “No thank you,” and then she looked at me concernedly and went: “What about something else? Like a daiquiri?”) and the surroundings, fairly obviously, are gorgeous, with the skyline view ostentatiously trying to catch your eye from the floor to ceiling windows, wherever you look.

Would I advise going for dinner and, inevitably, spending out of your absolute arse? Probably not. But if you’re asking whether I’d recommend going in for a few drinks, a veritable tower of those tuna tostadas, and a sweeping view of London, then I actually really, really would.

Thank you to Gemma Bell and co., who always treat me like a princess, for this.

Peckham Cellars

Just a quick one to remind you, during this, the heatwave, that Peckham Cellars near Queens Road station does glasses of really nice wine for £7 every Tuesday, and they have a big outdoor seating area. Last week when I went they were also serving sausage and mash off their small plates menu, which I respect no end. Let’s hope this week it’s fish and chips.

Double Raspberry Magnum

Just had one while I was writing this and you really do just have to say: wow.

That’s all for this week, but next week I will be back with some thoughts on Bar Etna - the new pizza place for seeing, being seen, and secondarily, eating pizza - a couple of wine and cocktail bars, and the new Jackson Boxer spot on Exmouth Market. Big kiss and thanks for reading, xo

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