Cronut @ Masters Sandwich Bar

You may have heard of the 'cronut' food fad that's been going on for some time. Billed as part doughnut, part croissant, this hybrid was born on the streets of New York (where else?),

I'm not one to jump onto 'trendy' food in general - quinoa, kale and acai existed long before they were famous and I'm pretty unimpressed by the practice of doubling the price of something because it's a 'superfood' or the like. That said, I had been intrigued by this alleged crossing of textures for a while, and decided to take the plunge. What would it look like, this chimerical beast that had attained near-mythical status in its quick and meteoric rise?

Pretty much like a doughnut, as it turned out.

So far, so ordinary. However, an unusual flavour was on offer in the form of caramel and pistachio. Now it was starting to grab my attention!

At £3.50 for a single piece it was certainly steep, so my expectations were high. As I bit into it I was immediately reminded of...a dense doughnut. It was quite heavy and there was none of the characteristic lightness and flakiness of a croissant in the texture. It was also somewhat dry and the pistachio and caramel flavours didn't hold their own in the overall balance with the dough. I was disappointed.

Wondering what all the fuss was about and thinking of how many decent pieces of sushi I could have procured for my £3.50 (probably 1), I took a second dejected bite -

And everything changed. What was this? A generous river of thick-flowing caramel hiding in the centre of the dough? Hallelujah! It was like irrigation to parched lands, delivering crucial moisture to the dough with a knockout punch of delicious buttery flavour. It was like butterscotch with a pistachio topping: at once devilish and heavenly.

Perhaps the jam version wouldn't have been as good, but I can heartily recommend the caramel-pistachio cronut as a bit of a gem. Try it once - you'll probably spend the next year running it off.

You can find Masters at 53 Great Portland Street; the closest Tube station is Oxford Circus.

@FerventFoodie

£5 Lunch, Match Bar

The novelty of the (actually rather good) office canteen was wearing off, as was the grind of assembling a packed lunch every day. If only there were some way to find a balance between the hole in my stomach and the one in my wallet, alas! So it was that I went, in search of cheap eats nearby.

A chalk board on the street advertising cheap food in central London is always likely to grab my attention – my Fervent Foodie sense is engaged 24/7 (I dream in sushi). Such was how I happened upon Match Bar’s ‘lunch for £5’ deal. 

The lunch on offer is simple fare – eggs benedict or a choice of filling for your ciabatta/pitta/salad. Avocado & prawn and jerk chicken were both contenders, but in the end I could not resist the lure of chicken and chorizo, in a salad.

The food arrived at the table bursting with colour and I was glad to see that the chorizo was in satisfying chunks. The salad consisted of leafy greens, tomato, cucumber and herbs. It looked good, but another of my first impressions was of the portion size – really rather small for a main. That explained the low price.

Meat.

The chicken was in grilled strips and the salad had a good mix of textures between the tender leaves, crunchy cucumber and juicy tomato chunks. It would have been decent, if unremarkable were it not for addition of the chorizo. The rich and oily, almost nutty quality of the chorizo stood out against the mild backdrop of the chicken salad, which enhanced the depth of its flavour. It was a classic example of how judicious use of a bold ingredient can add life to an otherwise plain dish.

Though the taste of it was great, by the end of my meal I was left feeling hungry: the portion just wasn’t big enough. Perhaps the ciabatta option, with its thick wedges of bread, would have gone some ways to solve this problem but on the flavour-balanced salad option I can only recommend it for small appetites or a light lunch.

You'll find Match Bar at 37-38 Margaret St, the closest station being Oxford Circus