Prawnography – ooooo matron! Who are these punny fish fans? Well I discovered them as one of this year’s *new* traders at Dinerama is Prawnography and you can find them on the right hand side as you come in, with their little fisherman style hut, decked out to very much suit the cuisine.
Your captain is Jim Thomlinson, a Michelin Star chef who wanted to try his hand at fancy street food. Now although Prawnography are relatively new – I say this as they’ve been at Dinerama for a good six months now at least – they’ve been at Hawker House for two years but are fully embracing their new home in East London. Personally I am yet to visit Hawker House, but East London has a very foodie crowd which allows Jim to ‘fancy up’ his dishes and play around with his obvious Michelin quality presentation.
One of the highlights of having Prawnography present at Dinerama is their menu which has changing specials each week. The core menu is always there offering you crab meat fries, huge black tiger prawns and bang bang shrimp but it’s refreshing to go in and see what’s new and fresh from their minds and cooking stations.
The weekend of this particular visit brought us a BBQ Hake Fillet special, priced at £8 – I unofficially named it Hakers Gonna Hake.
The Hake was served with crispy squid on top along with a sprig of fennel, all resting on a blueberry pickle and variegated kale base. To look at, this is fancy. The squid was nice and crispy, quite light which is great because the whole dish was quite delicate. The fish was perfectly cooked but I did find the fish and fruit combination slightly confusing. We didn’t mind the combination of the sweet fruity and salty elements together and as everything was quite light in flavour it wasn’t offensive but I think we prefer just the savouries with our fish. However, it was still tasty, innovative and something I have never tried as street food before.
Our second special was Scallop with Oxtail on top of a celeriac puree. Gosh. The celeriac puree was DIVINE – delicious and creamy, similar to a fine mash. This was quite a sweet dish but in a different way to the fruitiness of the hake….with the scallop being cooked just right and very soft, it went very well with the succulent oxtail. To be honest I could do with a massive dish of this but just the mini size is what the special, and the charm of street food, is all about. If you gorged on just one item at Dinerama I feel it would be a waste and, therefore, not special. The smaller portions and ability to mingle amongst the traders is what street food is for. Even making me question that and want this dish as a hefty main is evidence of how impressed my taste buds were. My eyes were treated too as the scallop oxtail dream was served in a shell and we actually resorted to licking the shell clean.
Next up – a menu constant for Prawnography…..Gambas Al Ajillo.
What is this? In a nutshell (or prawnshell?), they are massive meaty prawns, cooked on a grill then blowtorched! Unfortunately prawns do grow to different sizes and this isn’t a problem if you are eating this dish alone, but sharing this time around between two and with two unevenly sized prawns wasn’t so good. I gave Toli a little jealous eye when she nabbed the bigger of the twins but she does love pr
awns more than I, so fair’s fair. The prawns are served head on so you have to pull the meat from the shell but it’s no fuss and when you do you get to experience the lush, meaty, garliccy inners. As I mentioned I haven’t been a prawn convert for very long but these I really look forward to. They’re luring me even further into the seafood world and the basting or marinading or whatever the team here are doing….well, they’re doing it right. The showmanship of cooking these bad boys with a blowtorch in front of the drooling diners makes an impressive showpiece and I do like a bit of theatre while I eat – it’s probably quite fun to do as well, if you were in the chef’s seat.
Those are just a few of the dishes served up by Prawnography – an innovative member of the London street food scene. The team are all lovely too so pop in and see what their special is this weekend. I haven’t even mentioned their crab fries here but I can reassure you they are delicious too. So much to offer on that menu, and it all looks ruddy beautiful too. Don’t miss out – go, eat and with the food looking this good… you’re going to have to whip out Instagram.
Forked by Stefpuff
Twitter: @PrawnographyLDN
Instagram: @ldnmesschef
fork my piehole 