The Paddyfield

Address: 4 Bedford Hill, London SW12 9RG
Website: None that I could find…
Nearest tube: Balham

We stopped off for a quick after-work dinner at The Paddyfield, a Vietnamese/Thai restaurant in Balham.

It was surprisingly busy for a Wednesday night, with lots of walk-ins – and also a woman who could probably lay claim to having the loudest, fakest laugh in the world. Thankfully, she had been seated in the far corner of the room (so, even before giving us the menus, the staff got bonus marks from me for putting her there). The restaurant is rather tile-filled (including the table tops) and so there isn’t much to absorb sound, making it quite noisy. Maybe it’s not so bad when there isn’t a drunk hyena there…

Anyway, to the food. For starters, we shared Vietnamese prawn crackers, giant, pinkish crackers, with a faint taste of prawns and a bit of spice to them. More spice could be obtained from the accompanying chilli dip and chopped chillies. Needless to say, I didn’t trouble either of those.

I had a chicken pad thai for my main. This comprised chicken (obviously), Thai rice noodles, bean sprouts and spring onion, mixed with cooked egg (a bit like an Asian spaghetti carbonara, perhaps?), and sprinkled with crushed peanuts. It was served with a wedge of lime and a spicy dip.

At first, I wasn’t convinced I had made the best choice, as there wasn’t a great deal of flavour. However, as I worked through the dish – which was piled up on the plate – with more room to mix the different layers, and giving it a good squeeze of lime, I ended up really enjoying it.

Really, I should have started with what Mrs BYO had to eat, as her main course arrived a good five minutes before mine. She had beef xao sa: beef marinated in lemon grass, chilli and garlic, served with vermicelli noodles and mixed salad leaves. The portion didn’t look huge when it arrived, but it was surprisingly filling. Mrs BYO thoroughly enjoyed her main too.

The bill came to £31.62, which included service and two soft drinks. Corkage is £2. Ironically, given the blog’s name, we didn’t BYO. If we had done, the bill would have been £27.25 without any soft drinks.

The restaurant does not take cards, but doesn’t warn about this until the bill arrives. Luckily, there is an HSBC with a cash machine a couple of doors down, and I noticed that I wasn’t the only diner who had to pop out to get some cash to settle up.

So, the restaurant is pretty basic and the service a bit hit-and-miss – but luckily, the food they dished up made it worth it.

The Paddyfield is across the main road from a large Waitrose and around the corner from an even-larger Sainsbury’s, plus there’s an Oddbins on the way from Balham tube and the We Brought Beer craft ale shop on Hildreth Street Market.

Cah Chi

Address: 394 Garratt Lane, London SW18 4HP
Website: www.cahchi.com [Broken as at the time of writing]
Nearest station: Earlsfield

For our latest instalment, we visited Cah Chi, a Korean restaurant in Earlsfield. There is also a sister branch in Raynes Park.

Knowing that Cah Chi does not take cards, we headed straight from the railway station to an ATM at Barclays bank, just across the road and a few doors away from the restaurant. Not having brought any drink with us, we strolled down the road, past Cah Chi, looking for somewhere to buy a bottle – and failed. We then headed back up past the station, still unable to find any corner shop open. It was only then that we saw a Sainsbury's Local around the corner from the station and an alcohol-selling corner shop further up the road, which we had missed on our walk to the bank. Luckily, I already had an appointment booked at the optician for the following day…

We had arrived in Earlsfield rather early but these distractions had eaten up some time and we arrived at the restaurant on the dot of our booking. And I’d recommend making one – there wasn't a spare table to be seen and walk-ins were being turned away.

Before our starters arrived, four small plates were delivered to our table, compliments of the kitchen: a ball of cold mashed potato containing diced vegetables (surprisingly nice), two quarters of a boiled egg in soy sauce (ditto), kim chi and caramelised soy beans (extremely moreish, but not particularly easy to eat with chopsticks).

Next up were our starters, gun-mandu – five crispy homemade pork and vegetable dumplings with a soy dip on the side – and kkanpunggi – a generous portion of delicious chunks of deep-friend chicken with honey and garlic. The chicken was perfectly cooked and incredibly hot (temperature-wise, not spiciness).

For our mains, I went for the bulgogi, thin slices of beef cooked on a little barbeque on the table. In addition to the sliced beef, there are a number of barbeque dishes to choose from, including spare rib, pork and chicken. Unlike many Korean restaurants, the meat was cooked for us by a member of staff, rather than us being left to our own devices.

There are a number of optional side dishes which can be ordered with the barbeque dishes, including sliced mushrooms, onions and beansprouts. I went with the sang chu and pa sengs che: fresh lettuce with shredded spring onion and a dollop of spicy paste on the side. The staff show how it’s done – take a lettuce leaf, add some spring onion, some beef and a touch of the paste – and the whole parcel can be eaten in one.


Mrs BYO had her Korean favourite, a chicken bibimbap. And it didn't disappoint – just the right spiciness, and bursting with freshness and flavour. They even took the fried egg off the top, much to Mrs BYO's joy (she is not an egg person).

As a shared side, we had the gaji gui, grilled aubergine covered in a sweet miso sauce, something which we both really like. This one did not disappoint, though it was perhaps unnecessary on top of all the other food we’d ordered.


To drink, we had a bargainous bottle of Clearspring sauvignon blanc from Sainsbury's for £6 (which, from looking around the restaurant, was a popular choice with my fellow cheapskates), and Mrs BYO had two apple juices (£2.50 each). The corkage is a rather cheeky £4, though a total of £10 for a bottle of wine in a restaurant is still cheap. The restaurant is BYO wine only.

The bill came to £56.87, including a 10% service charge, which is automatically added.

Mrs BYO and I both agree that this is the best BYO we've visited so far. We’re definitely going back, armed with cash and our new-found knowledge of where to get our drink…