Restaurant review - The Yellow House, Canada Water

Like Cafe Amisha, The Yellow House is one of the restaurants that we frequent when we are tired and don't want to cook. Which means that I always forget how nice it is.

We went the other day and had fondue to start which was interesting - I am more used to fondue as a main meal.  For my tastes, the fondue was a little too boozy,the booze slightly overwhelmed the cheese which was a shame because the texture was perfect.

The pizzas that we had to follow were perfect, though - crust nice and thin and flavoursome.  One of the things that I particularly like about The Yellow House is its selection of small sweet things.  As regular readers will have noticed, I don't have that much of a sweet tooth but every now and then I fancy something sweet at the end of a meal.  Restaurant puddings are usually too much for me but a couple of chocolate truffles or pieces of fudge are perfect.  The handmade chocolate truffles at The Yellow House are absolutely amazing, some of the best chocolate that I've ever had, I think mostly because of how freshly made they are.

Pizza - leek/roquefort and sundried tomato/aubergine/mozzarella

Leek and Roquefort pizza

A few years ago, my lovely husband acquired a pizza dough recipe from an Italian friend of his (Guisceppe - I don't suppose you're reading but, if you are, we love you and your pizza recipe!), and we've used it regularly ever since.  It produces perfect (Italian-style, thin crust) pizza every time. 

I reproduce it below as given to us as, frankly, his directions are a lot more precise than mine.

Aubergine, sundried tomato and mozzarella pizza

Usually, we slightly ruin the purity of the recipe by piling it high with all kinds of things.  Oh, we have onions, let's put those on, look we've got half a jar of olives left over from caponata, we'll pile those on, oooh but we have that bit of gorgonzola..  etc, etc.  Our pizzas are usually half pizzas, half mountains.  Anyway. 

This time we decided - for no particular reason - that we'd try to be a bit more focussed and so we we went for one pizza with white sauce, leek and roquefort and one with tomato sauce, sundried tomatoes/aubergines/mozzarella.  We fried up the leeks before putting them on the pizza and roasted the aubergine slices.

They were Good.  

Leek and Roquefort pizza

Sundried tomato, aubergine and mozzarella pizza

Pizza dough

Prague restaurant reviews - Knotra and Maitrea

In a departure from the usual London restaurant reviews, a couple of restaurant reviews from Prague where we spent a couple of days as part of a holiday.

First up, Pizzeria Kmotra which I'd been to before - quite a few years before.  It was lovely then and it's still lovely now.  There's an English menu and the staff are cheerful and willing even if you don't speak any Czech.  The pizzas are lovely traditional pizzas but with some innovative options - e.g. I had one with blue cheese and potatoes which is definitely a combination that I'm going to experiment with at home.  It's also incredibly good value - we had four main courses and soft drinks for about £20.  Very highly recommended.

Second, Maitrea, a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant.  A lovely atmosphere - lots of Buddhist decoration and a water feature (!) in the downstairs bit.  A slightly insane variety of food on the menu - there were some Mexican options, some Chinese-style food, some standard European fare, some traditional Czech options.  The three of us went for things from all corners of the menu but all were good - I enjoyed having the chance to have something in the traditional Czech style as that's not easy when you're vegetarian.  Again, very good value - the three of us had main courses and soft drinks for around £20.  Recommended.