My father has obviously missed me
and my ravenous ways since I’ve been in China, he’s decided that now I’m back
he wants to go on what can only be described as a restaurant safari. The safari
started earlier this week at a very interesting little place known simply as
‘Azeri Cuisine’ on Caledonian Road in London (95 Caledonian Road, London, N1
9BT, telephone: 0207 278 0206). This place served food from Azerbaijan, which,
even with my somewhat varied experience of international cuisine, I have not
experienced, so I was pretty excited to try it. First I’ll just let you know a
bit about Azerbaijan (what I know, anyway). Azerbaijan is a country on the west
side of the Caspian Sea, north of Iran and south of Russia. When you walk into
the cafe-restaurant (it’s only a small place) you’re greeted with an enormous
picture of what the proud chef told me was Baku. Baku is the capital of
Azerbaijan, nestling on the coast of the Caspian Sea. It’s been known in the
past and is still very much known by the oil industry for its vast oil
reserves, but is rather bad at distributing this wealth. In any case, it’s a
pretty interesting part of the world, but not one you hear of that much.
Azerbaijan
“So, what’s Azeri food like?”, I
hear you ask. Well, think sort of Turkish, but also Russian and eastern
European. In fact, the menu was really interesting. It had things like borscht
(Russian beetroot soup), grilled kebabs, various cabbage things and kotleti
(look out for these in the plethora of Polish places in London) and even
Iranian dishes like fesenjan (a dish with pomegranate and meat in-sorry for the
spelling!). Something that will probably pull in a lot of customers during this
time of cuts is the lunch deal, you can get a kebab with bread and rice or
chips for £5.30 between 12 pm and 3pm, amongst various other things. I was
curious about the more Azeri things, so I ordered various things from the
standard a la carte menu. To start with, me and my father ordered Azeri
Assorti, a mixture of pickles, some of which were homemade by the chef and his
wife, and Blinis with mince and fried onion. The Azeri Assorti was a real hit
for a pickle lover like me, there was pickled red cabbage, some gherkins and,
most interestingly, some aubergine that had a really strong salty pickle
flavour infused with a none-too-subtle mint kick. Very different. The blini
were different to Russian ones, they were wrapped up a bit like a burrito with
a tasty fried meat and onion filling, with a cumin touch. For those of you who
don’t know, blini are small pancakes made using baking powder, which are often
eaten with caviar, red onion and sour cream in Russia, so something of a
delicacy. These were much more down to earth, less expensive and, as you’d
expect, somewhat less delicate than their Russian counterparts. They came with
a good amount of sour cream, served in a separate little bowl.
The Azerbaijani flag
For our main courses we had Dushbara
and Kelem Dolmasi. Dushbara is a vegetable broth with tiny meat-filled
dumplings and I found it a little bland, but a great winter warmer nevertheless.
Kelem Dolmasi comprised of four large, steaming pieces of cabbage stuffed with
fried meat laced with delicious spicy flavours, they were somewhat reminiscent
of all-spice or cloves with cumin. I’d really recommend these dishes for those
after a hearty dish on a cold day. Tasty, no-fuss, down-home ethnic cuisine-my
favourite. We had an ayran each to drink (a yoghurt drink a bit like a salty
lassi, but a little thinner, available in most Turkish shops). I asked the chef
a few questions afterwards about the food and he was extremely friendly, the
service in general was very good and the staff were all friendly, there was a
real family feel to the place. The food was all served in courses and they
brought all our dishes at the same time, so none of those problems you
sometimes get in cheaper cafe-restaurant establishments. The meal was very
filling and very good value at £29, which the proprietor gave us a £2 discount for,
for no discernable reason other than that he was a thoroughly agreeable chap.
If you’re on a budget but you still want a really good warming meal head down
to this place. They also do grilled kebabs and other dishes to take away.
Kelem Dolmasi
Next post: I’ll tell you a bit about
the coffee we had in an oddly modern place and a tasty fry up joint on Upper
Street in Islington.
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