Where to Eat Outside of London This Weekend
The second day-trip special edition of Six of One, featuring Hana Loftus, Naseer Chia, Ruby Atkin, Shekha Vyas, Susannah Moody and Alexandra Pereira.
Hello and welcome back to Vittles Restaurants.
Today, we take a break from our London coverage to bring you the second instalment of Six of One’s sister column, Half a Dozen of the Other, where six writers offer recommendations in towns or cities that are reachable from the capital for a day-trip.
As with issue one, we do also hope that this guide is useful for those who live locally. Below you’ll find Hana Loftus telling you about one of the most mercurial ramen shops in the country; Shekha Vyas eats all the pies in Reading; Ruby Atkin and Alexandra Pereira both find themselves in Margate; Naseer Chia details the importance of the kopitiam generally, but specifically the one he found in Bristol, while Susannah Moody tells us about an excellent south Indian restaurant, run by an accountant and an urologist, in Cambridge.
We hope you enjoy today’s edition, and please also do always feel free to pitch to us with recommendations for outside of London and we will try to do these issues more often. AC
1. G.Neko, Colchester
I come across the former pub, painted a bilious blue and halfway to the Colchester suburbs, but it appears to be closed. I check my phone: no, this is the correct place. I push the door and find myself facing a sliding screen painted with a giant orange-eyed cat. Welcome to the dreamworld of G, a Chinese former accountancy student in love with Japan, and T, his front-of-house partner. To this half-Japanese eater who also has a half-dreamt relationship with her mother’s country, G and T’s izakaya G.Neko is about as perfect as it gets.
G describes his Hsinking beef noodles as a memory of his hometown, yet it is entirely his own invention. The rich broth is clear as water, with a deep spice that lingers in your throat and chilli oil pearls that coat the soft cubes of beef as you lift them out of the bowl. The outstanding springy noodles are made to G’s precise method by his father. A folded-skin tofu block is made from scratch by his mother and added to a milky soy broth along with ajitsuke egg, finely sliced black fungus and those noodles that mimic the mouthfeel of the fungus strands. The tonkotsu broth is elevated, surprisingly, with a roux made from chicken schmaltz. Instead of the traditional chashu curl, two freshly sliced wafers of Serrano ham are griddled for a second for deeper smoke before turning opaque in the soup, their fat dissolving on the tongue.
Beyond the broths, there are spare ribs that come as a nugget of bone surrounded by just enough fat to sizzle under a crinkle of batter, drizzled with aged vinegar and spring onions. The surprise is a sprinkle of dried rose petals and lime zest, an imagined leap to a shady Damascus courtyard. Then there are East Asian padrón peppers and pork scratchings, a beef tongue carpaccio with yuzu and charred green pepper paste and chicken wings with scotch bonnets that the couple grow themselves, so they can be picked slightly under-ripe, when they are at their most fragrant.
We drink Asahi out of dimpled aluminium cups, then try great sake, warm or chilled. G.Neko offers insane precision, wit and warmth at an affordable price (a meal for four was £90), so you’ll share the room with sixth-form students, big and small families, solo eaters, musicians. They say they won’t leave Colchester, and I hope they don’t break their word. Hana Loftus
94 Military Rd, Colchester CO1 2AN
Behind the paywall: Tea in Margate, pies in Reading, Kerala cuisine in Cambridge and many more recommendations. You can subscribe to Vittles for £7/month or £59 for the whole year, which gives you access to restaurant recommendations from the last six years, including the Six of One map.