Plastic Pot Luck
Pro Some highly authentic-feeling, uncompromised flavours.
Con Quality, like life, is a rollercoaster. It has ups and dowwwwwns.
Pay
€€
Per Person Three shared mains €17- €20.
In Short
Hopes. Authenticity?
Reality. Quality variation from outstanding to average.
USP? It's all in the well-known name.
The offer in three words. Curate's egg curries.
Sustainability? Plastic:paper ratio: 100:0. 33% too many plastic pots. Green plastic bags, too. Which aren't green.
Friend friendly? Doable, if you choose right.
Change one thing? Roti done right.
Reorderability. So-so. One great dish plus two with faults doesn't cut it, really.
In Pictures
On Google Images
What's the story?
You need to navigate carefully to get the best from Kitchen 154 Malasaña.
Companion to the immensely popular market stall/restaurant at Mercado Vallehermoso, we opted to order and take home as an experiment for the evening. Three dishes, no desserts or drinks, seemed a reasonable sample to judge from.
Roti Daal
A game of two halves, Gary. The lentil component's a great, flavoury generous portion. Not at all bad on a cold winter's night.
But the roti itself's just too greasy for its own good. The effect on the flavour is unfortunate. It's that oiliness that means you're not sure you're not still going to be tasting it at the back of your palate a week later. As a result, the two components two don't gel well. A shame.
Prawns Sri Lanka
A terrific dish, almost - almost - worth it on its own. Half a dozen perfectly cooked langoustines and a terrific spicy-smokey sauce make a serving big enough to easily share. Good start.
It's a total winner and as good as we've found. Even the coriander/cilantro was fresh and added that distinctive touch. We used up a fair bit of rice with the excellent sauce on its own, which I finished off with a spoon. It's a generous very tasty portion, with decent spicing. Good stuff.
Butter Poussin/Picanton
We picked the picanton to try something different, and it came with a terrific, moreish sauce that demands you make the most of it. The dish looks spectacular too, with that wedge of lime and excellent thinly sliced crunchy vegetables acidic and texture variety to the sauce. It's a great balance of flavours and feels pretty authentic and is top-notch tasty.
But there's an issue. The bird. It's a toytown chicken and obeys the laws of physics - less surface area means much less volume, which means much less meat than it looks like you're going to get. After a few mouthfuls of breast you're picking at tiny morsels from the rest of it. Not fun and a waste of a load of excellent sauce unless you are willing to risk choking on chicken bones. Not wise. There was the odd reddish, undercooked patch near some of those bones, too. Not the best. Give me a quarter of well-cooked full-size chicken, ta. A mini - very mini - naan had more in common with a mexican tortilla. Something odd, there.
Home eating was our lazy choice for this dinner and the busy, smoky compact dining space in the restaurant made us glad of it. Sometimes you need to be in the mood for a busy bustling space, don't you?
So, when it comes to home eating, shall we talk logistics? We picked up this ourselves, cutting out the delivery costs and getting to visit the busy, smokey crowded and rather stressing interior. Packaging was comprehensive and kept things hot but wasn't too well thought out. Three small rice portions didn't need three plastic pots. Joined up thinking needed. They could have been - they'd fit - in one. We had six of them in total, plus a large tray for the chicken. We'll reuse them, but less is more. More ecological, we mean.
Some good dishes, with hopefully, others of equal quality to discover. Fingers crossed if you give Kitchen 154 Malasaña a go.
Food ★★ VFM ★★ Sustainability ★★ (If you're taking away on foot.)
Pro Some highly authentic-feeling, uncompromised flavours.
Con Quality, like life, is a rollercoaster. It has ups and dowwwwwns.
Pay
€€
Per Person Three shared mains €17- €20.
In Short
Hopes. Authenticity?
Reality. Quality variation from outstanding to average.
USP? It's all in the well-known name.
The offer in three words. Curate's egg curries.
Sustainability? Plastic:paper ratio: 100:0. 33% too many plastic pots. Green plastic bags, too. Which aren't green.
Friend friendly? Doable, if you choose right.
Change one thing? Roti done right.
Reorderability. So-so. One great dish plus two with faults doesn't cut it, really.
In Pictures
On Google Images
What's the story?
You need to navigate carefully to get the best from Kitchen 154 Malasaña.
Companion to the immensely popular market stall/restaurant at Mercado Vallehermoso, we opted to order and take home as an experiment for the evening. Three dishes, no desserts or drinks, seemed a reasonable sample to judge from.
Roti Daal
A game of two halves, Gary. The lentil component's a great, flavoury generous portion. Not at all bad on a cold winter's night.
Prawns Sri Lanka
A terrific dish, almost - almost - worth it on its own. Half a dozen perfectly cooked langoustines and a terrific spicy-smokey sauce make a serving big enough to easily share. Good start.
Butter Poussin/Picanton
We picked the picanton to try something different, and it came with a terrific, moreish sauce that demands you make the most of it. The dish looks spectacular too, with that wedge of lime and excellent thinly sliced crunchy vegetables acidic and texture variety to the sauce. It's a great balance of flavours and feels pretty authentic and is top-notch tasty.
Home eating was our lazy choice for this dinner and the busy, smoky compact dining space in the restaurant made us glad of it. Sometimes you need to be in the mood for a busy bustling space, don't you?
So, when it comes to home eating, shall we talk logistics? We picked up this ourselves, cutting out the delivery costs and getting to visit the busy, smokey crowded and rather stressing interior. Packaging was comprehensive and kept things hot but wasn't too well thought out. Three small rice portions didn't need three plastic pots. Joined up thinking needed. They could have been - they'd fit - in one. We had six of them in total, plus a large tray for the chicken. We'll reuse them, but less is more. More ecological, we mean.
Some good dishes, with hopefully, others of equal quality to discover. Fingers crossed if you give Kitchen 154 Malasaña a go.
Food ★★ VFM ★★ Sustainability ★★ (If you're taking away on foot.)