The London Aquarium

Patrick UK Life

Last week I took advantage of the Oyster card 2-for-1 entry into the London Aquarium. I’ve been past the area plenty of times before and thought it’s about time to make a day out of it. With the two of us, entry is just under £7, a reasonable fare for entry into a decent underwater world as far as London goes. Compared to the aquariums I’ve visited in Australia and Singapore, I’d have to say that London disappoints.

Perhaps I found the crowds too pushy. Most especially were a number of foreign couples who didn’t even have kids trying to squirm their way in front of a tank for photos I could tell just wouldn’t work out. Surprisingly I found those who had kids appeared the most placid, wildly aware of the chaos the tiny make.

London Aquarium

They have a decent number of collections, especially a large tank holding a number of sharks and a huge assortment of fish. The aquarium also has a display showing mangroves, and the best part, a touching pool where curious stingray swim towards the number of arms reaching out to pat their scaly backs.

Would I recommend this place to visitors? I probably wouldn’t unless they’ve never been to an aquarium before. It’s not bad to do if you’re running out of things to do in London (is that even possible?) though I think there is much better places to go to first.

Dragon Castle

Patrick Food, Restaurants, UK Life

Elephant and Castle isn’t exactly well known for its thriving Chinese community and so Dragon Castle is a great surprise for those craving Chinese food on the south side of the river. You enter the restaurant through one of two doors alongside a towering red gate fronted by two standard Chinese lions only to enter a small foyer entrance. Compared to the other restaurants found in Chinatown, I thought this place looked much larger in space.

Dragon Castle

Given the large spaces, I thought the waiters and waitresses would push carts around though it turns out I was wrong. Instead, you walk down a large and grandiose path placed alongside the wall of the stretched out room and then shown to one of the tables clustered next to each other on the other, ordering from a small menu.

The attendants really earn their service in this place. Unlike many other dim sum places, our pot of tea always remained piping hot, constantly filled without any requests. The little parcels arrived at a steady pace without the sudden overcrowding other places give you and they quickly whisk the dishes away as soon as you’re completely done and, most importantly, not when you’re almost done with your chopsticks still picking up the food.

Dim Sum

The food is excellent value and the quality reasonable though I wouldn’t claim it’s the best that I’ve had. The dim sum menu isn’t as overwhelming as many other places, instead keeping to a core set of favourable dim sum favourites. We also managed to order a main dish that remained off the dim sum menu and they seemed happy to oblige.

Details: Dragon Castle
Found at: 100 Walworth Road, SE17 1JL, London
Highlights: Decent quality dim sum at extremely reasonable prices in the place you’d least expect it.
Room for improvement: Would be a much better experience if they used carts to wheel food around for a more authentic experience.
The Kua Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Alicia Keys @ The O2

Patrick Entertainment, Music, UK Life

Friday night saw a large crowd descend upon the O2 to witness American superstar, Alicia Keys. We had fairly decent tickets on the side of the stage, especially considering how many different tiers the O2 has. Unlike many other configurations in the O2, on this night all the area in the middle had been filled with seats. It kind of makes sense when you think about how laid back many of Keys’ songs can be.

Alicia Keys

The first support act was unmemorable in the form of some DJ playing R&B tunes followed by the old band, Soul 2 Soul. Although Soul 2 Soul looked like they’d recently joined with plenty of new fresh talent, I found their act quite weird. They had one big hit that they saved until the end, although the band seemed like a tribe of musicians where the actual make up changed through several generations.

And back to the main act. Keys played a great collection from her new and older albums, including saving many of her popular songs like Fallin’ for the final encore. Impressively I think she played for almost a straight two hours, weaving a semi dramatic story to tie all the songs together and give the show some flow. It was obvious the audience really enjoyed the show Keys put on, and evident that Keys really enjoys performing with her beaming smile and delightful laughter filling in the gaps between her conversations with the audience.

Candy Cakes

Patrick Food, UK Life

The bright colours and huge display of cakes in the window attracted us to this little cafe off the side of on the seven dials streets in Covent Garden. £2.60 will buy you one of these colourful cakes with plenty of flavours including Banoffee, Lemon and White Chocolate, Carrot, Raspberry and Peach and many more, with all of them uniquely decorated and distinctly eye catching.

Candy Cakes

When I bought one, it seemed too big to be a cupcake, yet too iced to be a reasonable sort of muffin and I guess when I tasted it, also seemed to have that confused identity just as well. If it was a muffin, it was a little bit too tough, and if it was a cupcake, definitely not moist enough – either way the batter seemed like it’d been overmixed when put together. I made the mistake you normally don’t make with a balanced muffin/cupcake by eating the top bit separately from the rest of the cake. Without the super sweet icing, the base cake just seemed rather bland, and then with just the icing top and the top, the sweetness and raw flavour overpowered what cake was left.

Unfortunately I don’t think these cakes are for me – the excessive sweetness imbalance out weighing the attractiveness of this cakes. Had I needed something to display on a table, or needed a super sugar rush, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy them though I think it’d be a plain waste. It might suit some people out there though.

Details: Candy Cakes
Found at: 36 Monmouth Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9HB
Highlights: Eye catching colourful cakes attract you to an equivalently brightly decorated cafe
Room for improvement: Excessively sweet (at least for me) and the cake wasn’t light enough or crumbly enough to make it a truly satisfying cake.
The Kua Rating: 6 out of 10

Life is a Cabaret ol’ chum

Patrick Entertainment, Theatre, UK Life

I have no idea what made me agree to see the musical Cabaret – it could have been the discount tickets combined with not really knowing much about the story. I was expecting the worst, and I guess it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting it to be. Very disappointed with the last real west end musical I saw, I left the show probably best described as slightly ambivalent.

We had excellent seats and it’d been the closest I’d been to a stage yet at only three rows away from the front. Whether or not it’s good or bad, we could see everyone’s face in so much detail that we could, to much of our amusement, see the spit fly into the audience as they annunciated their words as much as possible. Fortunately they limited their sharing with the audience to the front row.

I guess the performers to Cabaret must be comfortable with each other with several scenes best described as, how do I put it, rather raunchy in either the things they did or the things they wore (and sometimes what they didn’t wear). The story is set between the 1930s and 1940s and centres around an American guy and English woman in the heart of Berlin. One of the other actors, best known from Home and Away plays a very poor German, his accent slipping into a blend that sounded almost Russian at times and the other probably most well known celebrity, Julian Clary who plays the narrator, surprisingly good at his role.

Whilst I wouldn’t recommend this musical for everyone, I guess some people would find the story entertaining, or at least recognise some of the songs that made this musical famous.

Thekua.com Rating: 5 out of 10

Farewell To More London Friends

Patrick Brisvegas, Travel, UK Life

I’m a little late posting this, as you can see from Gerrod.com, though I still wanted to write this up. Last Saturday I went out to Chiswick to farewell good friends Ben and Michelle as they go on a huge trip travelling around before heading back to Brisvegas. Here they are below:

Ben and Michelle

I can remember when I first arrived in London, one of the first things I did was attend a surprise birthday party Michelle organised for Ben and, I guess he was quite shocked to see me. It helps you, when moving to a new city, to have people you already know and having Michelle and Ben around is like the solid rock you get as a foundation to build on. I know they’ve had plenty of fun, lots of travel and met lots of new friends. I’m very glad they’ve had a great London experience.

John, Michelle and Ben

I wish them the best for their travels, and though I know I’ll be sad to not be able to catch up with them in London, I know I will see them sometime in the future. Best wishes guys and happy travels!

Mexicali

Patrick Food, Restaurants, UK Life

One of the greatest things about being in our office is its location right on the corner of Covent Garden with so many places accessible by foot. Our lunch time outings seems to have formed a little ritual I will miss when I get back on a project. The other day, we went over to Mexicali, a place I’d noted when I’d visited Yauatcha. Although I consider myself a huge supporter of the Daddy Donkey stand, it doesn’t mean I can’t try other Mexican places such as this.

Burrito

£5.20 will start the process of a soft fresh tortilla pulled from its stack, then wrapped around chunks of whichever meat you order, beans and a fairly ordinary salad together. I ordered a pork burrito that, although tasty, wasn’t as flavourful as the adobo one that Freebird (a Mexican stall at Exmouth market) offers. According to Luca, the flavour of the chicken also didn’t cut through the 50p guacamole and the beans. Mexicali’s establishment appears extremely new filled with some fairly casual tables and chairs, each topped with their very own cactus and Cholula hot sauce that does wonders to pep up your non-customisable burrito.

They have several other options on the menu although we didn’t get a chance to try them out. Unlike other places, this place also offers their burrito with a small serving of corn chips although they’re pretty tasteless without any options for salsa on the side and the like. I didn’t like the fact that they don’t offer upgraded chilli levels.

Details: Mexicali (website still in progress here)
Found at: 4 Berwick Street, Soho, London
Highlights: Reasonably priced burrito with extra hot sauce on the side
Room for improvement: Average taste with no room for customisation.
The Kua Rating: 5 out of 10