Wednesday 20 August 2014

Tacutacu

After conquering many of the London street food markets @tacutacu have taken up a six week residency in Casa Bleu just at the end of Brick Lane.  We went along to try this place last night as a pre china celebration meal. Here's our little review....

Firstly the bar casa Bleu is an interesting place.  I would call it more of a cocktail bar than a pub.  The decor could be describe as 'vintage'.  The drinks menu is expensive for my liking with a draught beer costing £5 but I suppose you are paying for the location really.  This kind of reflects in how busy the bar was (just the two of us to be precise).

Below is a picture of the menu.  We chose the white fish tacos, the duck tacos, 2 burgers, some fries and the haloumi sticks (fatty mcfat fats ).

 
As always we arrived early and this meant that there was a bit of a wait on the food as the kitchen got up and running but the wait was worth it! The food came out at a decent pace and kept flowing! The fish tacos were seasoned to perfection and coated in a lovely light batter oh and the slaw to accompany it...well that was delicious!


The duck and cheese tacos were also nice and a decent size however for us they needed some sauce to give it that vava boom but ulitmately we were waiting for our burgers to arrive!


Unfortunately the shrimp burger wasnt prepped so we both had the 'Hot Havana' - 28 day aged beef blended with spicy chorizo topped with all sorts of delights including chipotle garlic mayo. The burger was really tasty, cooked medium rare and you could really taste the chorizo smokey meatiness running through! It is safe to say we smashed through both our burgers! Our only criticism was the bun which we were advised was due to the bakery he was using and would soon be rectified!
We washed both our burgers down with a side of fries and some halloumi sticks which were both delicious and big portions for the price. We really liked the burger sauce which accompanied the chips and the paprika sprinkled on them was lovely.



 
 
Despite being stuffed we really wanted to try the mojito cheesecake as these are two of our fav things however it wasn't set in time so we will try that when we are back from China!
 
We really enjoyed our meal at TacuTacu and really recommend it....maybe if it was popping up at a different location it would have the publicity it truly deserves!
 
 

Friday 8 August 2014

Specials a la Byron


We have both been fans of Byron since moving to London, and even bigger fans of their specials. So here is a quick run down of some of them (this is in no particular order.....to begin with).

I reckon a good place to start is the patties themselves. Each patty is made freshly from a good source of beef in Scotland. These are standardly cooked medium (however they will cook it how you like) and with love. Every Byron I have had (that's quite few) have been really juicy and flavoursome without being over seasoned.

Miami Slice – 6oz hamburger, crispy potatoes, spicy salami, American cheese, smoked paprika ketchup, sourdough bun. Served with chicharrones (pork scratchings) and Byron hot sauce on the side
This little thing of beauty was released end of April 2014, and was totally different to any other Byron we had ever had and boy did we enjoy it. The smoked paprika ketchup with the crispy potatoes (which we weren't sure would work) took this burger to another level.




















B-Rex - 6oz hamburger, onion ring, crispy smoked bacon, American cheese, jalapeƱos, pickles, onions, BBQ sauce and mayonnaise.

The B-Rex was a tribute to the first burger Fred (the head chef) remembered having after watching Jurassic Park. If this had been the first burger I could remember eating, its safe to say I would be a good 30 stone by now. The barbecuey, spicy goodness of this burger is just divine. The jalapeƱos, pickles and onions add a nice crunch which works well with the smokey BBQ sauce and bacon.



 


















The Ronaldo: two 6oz hamburgers, crispy smoked bacon, American cheese, buttered onions, crispy fried onions, pickles, American mustard and ketchup
The Ronaldo is the big boy of specials and a tribute to the one and only Brazilian big boy of football.  Byron released this as a world cup special and it proved popular.  However, for us this burger was just too big.  This burger wasn't as juicy as burgers we have had in the past, and its sheer size made very hard work for the bun to actually hold it all together.  Overall it did taste good and we do love crispy fried onions but this was not our favourite.
      























Le Smoky: 6oz hamburger, smoked Cheddar, streaky bacon, crispy fried onions, shredded iceberg, pickles and smoked chili BBQ sauce. 
AHHHHH OUI OUI!!!!! This burger is c'est magnifique!!! (that's about as far as French goes for me)  Le smokey is the most popular special that Byron have done and was my very first try of Byron.  It is easy to see why this little guy has made it on to the menu full time.  Le Smoky is packed full of flavour provided by the smoked cheese and smoked chili BBQ sauce.  When you add the rest of the ingredients this burger becomes out of this world in both taste and texture.

Holy Cheesemas:two 6oz patties, double helpings of bacon & quadruple helpings of cheese.
Launch date Monday 3rd November
As you can probably tell by the name this is the special for the run up to the festive period.  This burger is basically a tribute to cheese.  The patties themselvees were the usual Byron standard, however we were slightly dissappointed with the cheese element.  Both of us like our cheese really quite strong, we found the cheese on the holy cheesemas alittle bland and it wasn't quite the cheese fest we were expecting.







 

Over all our favourites so far are:-
Soph:
1. Le Smoky
2. Miami Slice
3. B-Rex
4 The Ronaldo
5. Holy Cheesemas

Sarah:
1. Miami Slice
2. B-Rex
3. Le smoky
4. The Ronaldo
5. Holy Cheesemas

This is by no means a definitive list of the specials or the menu available at Byron.  However a special shout out goes out to Byrons' Courgette fries and Mac n Cheese which are both awesome!!!

We cannot wait for the next special!!