The Kitchen
Everything here is a real recipe with real temperatures. Nothing needs a restaurant kitchen — a pan, an oven, and something to drink while you wait.
24 showing · 444 plates · 15 drinks
Tofu gets its reputation from people who boiled it. Torn instead of cubed, so every ragged edge goes gold. Salted straight out of the fryer, vegan black pepper mayo alongside.
From behind the bar: Freeze the pressed block overnight and thaw it, then squeeze. The ice crystals leave the tofu spongy and craggy - more surface, better crunch, and it grips the dip.
Sweet, hot, sticky, loud. Korean fried chicken technique aimed at a vegetable, and the double fry means the shell outlives the sauce for longer than you will need it to.
From behind the bar: The first fry cooks the cauliflower, the second builds the shell. Skip the 5-minute rest between them and you get one soggy fry instead of two good ones.
The Chinatown late-night plate, no compromises made. King oysters fried in seasoned starch, then thrown through a screaming wok with chile, garlic and serious white pepper.
From behind the bar: Keep the wok dry. Any liquid at all - soy, vinegar, wine - and the crust turns to paste in seconds. The seasoning is a powder and it stays a powder.
Spanish onions in cold beer batter, fried until they rattle on the plate. Sweet and slumped inside, shattering outside. Order them for the table, then don't offer anyone one.
From behind the bar: Dredge every ring in dry seasoned flour before the wet batter. Skip it and the coating slides off in the oil, and you are eating fried nothing.
Falafel that gave up on the pita and took a stool at the bar. Dried chickpeas ground raw, pressed into thick batons, fried dark. Green and steaming in the middle. Tahini for dunking.
From behind the bar: The 18-hour soak is the recipe. Canned chickpeas are already cooked and will dissolve into the oil, taking your dignity with them.
Dill chips, buttermilk that never met a cow, cornmeal crust. Salt and vinegar with a crunch on it. The dip is ranch and we are not doing a bit about that.
From behind the bar: Dry every slice between paper towels. Wet pickles steam their own crust off from the inside and you will blame the batter.
No egg, no fuss, batter mixed badly on purpose. The lumps are what make the lace. Sweet potato, shiitake, shishito, nori. Light enough that you will finish the plate and order it again.
From behind the bar: Overmixed tempura batter turns bready. Twelve seconds with chopsticks, lumps intact, bowl sitting in ice the whole time you fry.
The mozzarella-stick problem, solved. Cashews and tapioca do something under heat nobody asked them to do, and it ends up breaded, fried and stringing across the table. Start them in the afternoon.
From behind the bar: Freeze the breaded sticks solid before they hit the oil. Cold center, hot oil, that is the whole trick. Warm ones blow out and you get a pot of soup.
ถั่วทอดสมุนไพร (thua thot samunphrai) · Bangkok
Peanuts fried with garlic, dried chili and makrut lime leaf. The bowl that shows up before you have ordered anything, and the one that keeps getting refilled.
Where you'd actually eat it: Comes free at ya dong stalls and half the beer bars in town, in a small steel bowl. Lao khao, or a bottle of Leo you have not finished ordering food around.
From behind the bar: Fresh or frozen makrut lime leaves only. The dried ones go papery in the oil and taste of nothing.
เต้าหู้ทอด (tao hu thot) · Bangkok
Firm tofu fried until the skin goes chewy and blistered, dipped in sweet chili with crushed peanuts and cucumber. Cheap, salty, endlessly refillable.
Where you'd actually eat it: Cart food outside night markets and the standard jay-shop order; also the snack plate at Chinatown beer bars. Leo over ice, or soda water if you are pacing yourself.
From behind the bar: Read the sweet chili label. Several Thai brands slip fish sauce or shrimp extract into it. Most supermarket bottles do not, but check before you call it vegan.
Peixinhos da horta · Lisbon
Little fish from the vegetable garden: green beans in a beer batter, fried until they look like whitebait. The Portuguese carried the technique to Japan in the sixteenth century and tempura came back the other way.
Where you'd actually eat it: Tascas and petisqueiras across Alfama and Príncipe Real, usually with a mayonnaise dip on the side you can wave away. Cold vinho verde branco.
From behind the bar: Cold batter into hot oil is the whole trick. Keep the beer in the fridge until the second you use it and never let the batter sit warm.
Bombay mix (chivda) · London
Fried gram flour noodles, peanuts, lentils and curry leaves in a bag of chili and turmeric dust. Sold in half the pubs in London and it will catch you out around pint four.
Where you'd actually eat it: Corner shops, cash-and-carries and pub snack racks all over town; the good stuff is Wembley and Green Street. Bag torn open flat on the table, dusty fingers, cold lager.
From behind the bar: Sev needs an extruder press, so everyone buys it. Read the packet — some brands fry in ghee or add milk powder, which kills the vegan claim.
onion bhaji · London
Sliced onion bound in spiced gram flour and fried into a ragged tangle. Gram flour and onion, nothing else — it was always vegan, nobody ever made a thing of it.
Where you'd actually eat it: Brick Lane and Whitechapel curry houses, ordered with a pint of Cobra before anything else lands. Also the thing that turns up on every pub curry night in the city.
From behind the bar: Standard mint chutney is made with yogurt and is not vegan. Blend cilantro, green chili, lime and salt instead and lose nothing.
salt and vinegar crisps · London
The default. Potato sliced thin, fried, salted, soured. Bag torn down the seam and laid flat in the middle of the table so everybody can reach without asking.
Where you'd actually eat it: On the clip behind every bar in London. Worth knowing: cheese and onion nearly always contains dairy, and some salt and vinegar brands carry lactose. Read the bag.
From behind the bar: Bagged crisps get their bite from sodium diacetate, not vinegar. Vinegar powder is the home equivalent; a soak alone gives a softer, rounder sour.
pimientos de Padrón · Madrid
Small green peppers thrown in hot oil until the skins blister, then salted heavily. Most are mild, roughly one in ten is not. That is the whole game and the reason they get ordered.
Where you'd actually eat it: Galician by birth, on every Madrid bar menu regardless, and thrown in with a beer at the jamón bars on Cava Baja. Order them first, before anything fried.
From behind the bar: Dry the peppers properly or the oil will spit across the room. A lid held at an angle is your friend.
champiñones al ajillo · Madrid
Mushrooms griddled hard, then hit with raw garlic, parsley, and lemon off the heat. On the Cava de San Miguel they come on a slice of bread with a toothpick through the middle.
Where you'd actually eat it: The mesones under Plaza Mayor on Cava de San Miguel, where they cook on a flat top all evening. Beer or a rough red, and singing you did not ask for.
From behind the bar: Mesón del Champiñón stuffs each cap with chorizo or jamón before griddling, so that version is not vegan. This one is. Keep the garlic raw until the end.
Habas enchiladas · Mexico City
Dried favas fried until they shatter, tossed with chile and lime. The bowl that lands with the first round, before the kitchen decides whether it likes you.
Where you'd actually eat it: The default free bowl in pulquerías and older cantinas, alongside peanuts and pepitas. Pulque, beer, or whatever the house is pouring by the jarra.
From behind the bar: Lime in advance turns them soggy within the hour. Squeeze it on the plate, not in the pan.
Cacahuates enchilados con ajo · Mexico City
Skin-on peanuts cooked slowly in oil with sliced garlic and whole chiles. The first thing a cantina gives you, and the reason you order a second drink.
Where you'd actually eat it: Every cantina in the Centro, in a small dish that reappears without asking. Also the pulquería standard. Beer, pulque, or a caballito of whatever is cheapest.
From behind the bar: Eat the garlic and the fried chiles too. That is the whole reason to make these rather than buy a bag.
polenta fritta · Milan
Coarse polenta cooked stiff, chilled overnight, cut into batons and fried until the shell shatters and the middle stays soft. The default fried thing on a northern bar counter.
Where you'd actually eat it: Fried-snack counters and Navigli buffet tables, usually in a metal tray under a lamp. Salt, rosemary, cold beer.
From behind the bar: Vegan as written. The version bars serve smothered in melted gorgonzola or taleggio is not — that is a different order.
Panisses · Paris
Chickpea flour cooked to a porridge, set firm, cut into batons and fried. Crisp outside, soft as polenta inside. Marseille brought them north and the wine bars kept them.
Where you'd actually eat it: Marseille street food that colonized the natural wine bars of the 11th. Chilled rosé or a fizzy pet-nat, and no apology for either.
From behind the bar: They can be baked at 425F/220C for 25 minutes with a good coat of oil, but they will be firmer and less pillowy. Frying is the real version.
Piments de Padrón · Paris
Small green peppers thrown into a screaming hot pan with oil and salt. Mostly mild, occasionally one takes your head off. Two minutes of work and they land on every wine bar table in the 11th.
Where you'd actually eat it: Galician by origin, Basque by route, and now default apéro food in the natural wine bars around Oberkampf and Charonne. Pet-nat or a cold light red.
From behind the bar: Roughly one in ten is hot. That is the whole game, and there is no way to tell which by looking.
감자전 (gamja-jeon) · Seoul
Grated potato, its own starch, salt. Nothing else belongs in it. Crisp edge, dense chewy middle, and it exists solely to be eaten with a bowl of cloudy rice wine.
Where you'd actually eat it: Makgeolli houses in Jongno and Ikseon-dong, and every mountain-side shack on the way down from Bukhansan. Ordered with a brass kettle of rice wine and nothing else.
From behind the bar: Reclaiming the settled potato starch is the whole trick. Throw the liquid out wholesale and the pancake falls apart in the pan.
김치전 (kimchi-jeon) · Seoul
Old sour kimchi, flour, its own juice. Fried thin so the edges shatter. The best version uses kimchi that has gone too far to eat straight, which is most kimchi eventually.
Where you'd actually eat it: Rain in Seoul means makgeolli and something fried, and this is the cheapest version of that. Every neighborhood drinking house has it, usually for under ten thousand won.
From behind the bar: Kimchi that is three weeks old or older. Fresh kimchi has no acid and no juice, and the pancake comes out flat and sweet.
揚げ出し豆腐 (agedashi dofu) · Tokyo
Tofu with a thin starch crust, sitting in warm broth with grated daikon and ginger on top. It goes soft as it sits, which is the point. Order it early.
Where you'd actually eat it: A quiet izakaya counter with good sake, ordered second, after something cold and before anything grilled.
From behind the bar: Most izakaya versions get a shower of katsuobushi on top. Ask them to leave it off, or you have ordered a fish dish.