Reviews: a transcendental bread course at Oma and a sugar overload at Apple Butter Cafe

Grace Dent initially swoons but then slightly regrets breakfast at the Apple Butter Café in London for The Guardian

Mushed avocado on toast has had a bad rap for its wicked role in the housing crisis, so just wait until the grownups find out about Apple Butter Cafe’s black forest pancakes with chocolate sauce, cherry compote and gold powder dusting that cost £14.50 plus service.

This wanton expenditure on pure pleasure will send some onlookers berserk, but then, when the world isn’t particularly sweet, sometimes we all need a sharp blast of teeth-chattering, sugary goo. There is something wildly childish and hyper-real about Apple Butter’s daily special pancake offering that seems to take the edge off normal life. My stack of blueberry pancakes consisted of three discs at least an inch thick, all drenched in blueberry syrup and topped with a handful of poached berries and a large slab of Cookie Monster-blue chocolate. The first pancake was delicious, the second was verging on overindulgence and, midway through the third, my mood changed to one of defeat, shame, regret and biliousness. Which is not exactly ideal when the bill for two comes in at more than £80.

That bill creeps up thanks to the likes of fancy sesame lattes at £6.50 and Turkish coffee at £7 a cup. The sesame latte, incidentally, is eerily grey, is served in a beautiful glass and tastes like delicious caffeinated tahini. The turmeric, charcoal and creme brûlée lattes are equally pretty and punchily priced. Still, service is perfunctory, the tables are stark and undressed, and the savoury dishes rather uninspiring, so it’s worth noting that breakfast at nearby Claridge’s comes in at roughly the same price, though there they bring the food with the correct amount of forks and spoons, and don’t squirt the tables with spray cleaner mid-service, as if you were in some greasy spoon.

We ordered togarashi scrambled eggs – two eggs on a sesame bagel with a sort of okonomiyaki-style mayo – for £16.50, though the eggs were an omelette rather than scrambled, and I failed to detect the togarashi seven-spice blend anywhere. The £18.50 barbecue beef sandwich was even more surprising, because what came was a hotdog-style brioche bun with a light filling of beefy mush and a side of fries.

Photo: www.facebook.com/applebuttercafe/photos

Giles Coren is a willing carb convert at Oma in London for The Times

Oma was sold to me as “Greek”, which it sort of is and isn’t. What it is, more importantly, is the newest thing from Dave “Smokestak” Carter, the Bajan genius (and former Gordon Ramsay front of house) whom I first met doing brisket buns (him, not me) at Dinerama or Hawker House or somewhere like that in east London, during the street food explosion of the early 2010s, before he went on to launch Smokestak in Shoreditch and the stunning nose-to-tail Italian, Manteca.

I normally stay off the bread – fills you up, spoils your dinner, makes you fat – but here it’s a specified two-option course from the bakery downstairs and, my God, the “Wildfarmed laffa” alone would have me heading back there every day for a week. It’s a hot, light, fluffy lattice of the puffiest flatbread I’ve ever known, judiciously scorched, torn and stacked and when dipped into a cool mound of labneh topped with its own salt cod XO sauce, which bleeds pungent amber oil over the stiff yogurt.

The acma verde was described as a sort of Greek bagel. Which is true in the sense that the Parthenon is a kind of Greek shed. Sure, it is a glossy bun with a hole in the middle (I think it’s actually Turkish), but when you tear the hot crust apart there is an explosion of steam, which parts to present a fairy-light crumb, gently flecked with an emerald green that might be from… wild garlic? I don’t know.

Then, stop all the clocks, comes the spanakopita. Seriously. It is a dipping bowl of melted sheep’s and goat’s cheese and spinach, herbed and spiced, with a square of Yemeni flatbread, flaky-sticky like the finest roti. My eyes rolled back, my tongue lolled. Life would never be the same.

There is a “Skewers” section next (those last ones came from the “Small” section), from which we had half a dozen new season asparagus spears slathered in grated graviera, which is a Swiss-style Greek hard cheese that I think gets its name from old Stavros’s best efforts at saying “Gruyère”, and a double skewer of tender grilled baby squid seasoned with another cheese, galomizithra and, for crunch, carob rusks.

Photo: www.instagram.com/oma.london

Rosalind Erskine is delighted with delicate and complex courses and "the best dessert ever” at the Gannet in Glasgow for The Scotsman

Our meal started with a mini sausage roll served with brown sauce. These meaty morsels were topped with a splodge of delightfully aromatic sauce, and were bursting with flavour.

The leek terrine was a deconstructed number, with soft white and light green circles of leek grouped together, and surrounded by mouthfuls of flavour in the quail’s egg, potato purée, thinly sliced radish and tapenade. The leeks, cooked al dente to give bite were used to mop up the various additions on the plate – all of which added their own flavour.

The seafood soup was a vibrant taste of spring, with squid, mussels, wild garlic, peas, broad beans and asparagus, and was both light and refreshing and absolutely decadent. Our surprise course was a beautiful pickled halibut with yuzu gel, radish, wasabi ice-cream and sweet and sour fukaki.

The Barra skate was served in a rich beurre noisette sauce with mounds of foam, piquant capers that cut through the sauce, and more of the delicious potato purée from my starter.

Across the table, the thick cuts of gravy-topped aged Scotch beef was served with two grassy green spears of asparagus – topped with tiny flowers – a diamond of crisp portato, a macadamia purée and cubes of coffee jelly.

After a palate cleanser which was like lemon posset with coconut cream and ginger crumb, desserts were served – mine the tart and light cherry soufflé, topped with a sinking of vanilla ice-cream and my boyfriend’s the ‘best dessert he’s ever tasted’ choux filled with chocolate cremeux, dulce de leche, topped with pecans and served with a fragrant tonka ice-cream.

Photo: www.instagram.com/thegannetgla/