Conran Butler’s Wharf Chop House

Patrick London To Do, Restaurants, The 'He Who Knows' Challenge, UK Life

Butlers Wharf Chop HouseThe last time I had completed any of the “He Who Knows Challenge” was a very long time ago, so I thought it was time to pick one more off the list. This time around I thought it might be good to carry it out with the one other person who is also supposed to complete this challenge, so Ben, Michelle, my sister and I went out for lunch on Saturday to complete this next challenge.

Deciding on which Conran restaurant was the difficult part, with so many in London to choose from, and each offering different types of cuisines and experiences. In the end we picked Butler’s Wharf Chop House and though I wouldn’t necessarily say this restaurant is based on any of most extravagant of Conran’s designs, its decor complements the contemporary English dishes on offer. The booking process was extremely efficient, one morning I submitted a booking form online at about 7am, and at about 9:30am, someone called from the restaurant confirming the reservation.

The pictures on their site do little justice for the restaurant, with one of the highlights really being the wharf-front views, giving terrace diners unobstructed views of Tower Bridge itself. We were fortunate that London gave out what is probably the last summery days we’ll see, really lighting up Tower Bridge and giving us a splendid backdrop for a lazy Saturday lunch.

Looking out from The Chop HouseThe menu is straightforward with set prices for both a two or three course meal and a reasonable variety of dishes to choose from in all courses (in addition to the daily specials). Certain dishes have supplementary fees and you can order side dishes at an additional price if you like. We all ordered different things so it was great we could compare and contrast the different dishes. We started the lunch by ordering two courses, leaving ourselves to see how rich or substantial each dish might be before placing the dessert order. Even though each dish was reasonably sized, we all decided at the end of the main course to order dessert and I think we were all pleased we did.

Here’s a list of the things that I ordered (and apologise that I didn’t take a picture of the entire menu so the detail is not as accurate as it could have been):

I really enjoyed the afternoon spent with everyone, and the great weather really set a wonderful backdrop for the great conversation despite all the tourists walking by. I certainly couldn’t afford to do this every week but it is definitely a great place to indulge for a special occasion.

Details: Butler’s Wharf Chop House
Found On: Butlers Wharf Building, 36e Shad Thames, London SE1 2YE
Contactable On: 020 7403 3403 or via their website
Highlights: Contemporary and extremely high quality English cuisine served in affable surroundings looking out at Tower Bridge and the Thames. The food was delicious and extremely well prepared boosted by an extensive wine list and the experience from reservation to finishing up was excellent.
Improvements: It would be nice to have the current menu on offer up to date on their website.
The Kua Rating: 9 out of 10

London Underground Decorated

Patrick UK Life

When passing through some of the London Underground stations, it is all too easy to think that they are extremely unkempt places (which is true for the most part). A rare handful of stations participate in a program encouraging ‘Platform Art’ aiming to make public transport that much more enjoyable.

The Gloucester Road station is currently exhibiting work painted by Chiho Aoshima, with the entire piece titled ‘City Glow – Mountain Whisper’. Its bright pictures are painted in what looks like classic Japanese Otaku style, and its apt theme of a cityscape transformed into human-like characters really lightens up the entire station.

Chiho Aoshima - City Glow - Mountain Whisper

You can read more about the exhibition on the Transport for London website here.

It’s Pays to Really Check

Patrick Annoyances, Travel, UK Life

Or rather, you don’t have to pay (or something like that).

This weekend I booked a cheap flight with E@syj3t (no linking for your today!), one of those discount airline. Admittedly I was in a hurry and I thought I got a real bargain until I got two emails from them – one for the flight and one for the insurance! Though I checked my flight details very carefully as I don’t want to fly out of the wrong airport or dates and times, I had neglected to notice they had added insurance by default and I had to remove it. Very sneaky indeed.

Although I paid only £8 of insurance, I already have travel insurance and it added another 20% to the total cost!

The Vines @ The Forum

Patrick Music, UK Life

The VinesIn November 2004 the lead singer of The Vines (Craig Nicholls) announced he had Asperger’s Syndrome (a form of autism). Many music sources believed that it would be a while until they did any touring, if at all. I feel especially fortunate then that they have started once again, and that I bought some tickets for their London gig on Tuesday night.

They performed at The Forum in Kentish Town, a very appropriate setting to see any rock band perform. The Forum is a decently sized venue with two floors (the second with seating), but the best part is downstairs where it is easy to get a good view of the stage.

The Vines played a great number of songs from both of their albums, Highly Evolved and Winning Days, and a handful of songs from their soon-to-be-released album, all of which the audience completely lapped up. We stood downstairs, close to the front and right on the edge of the frenzied crowd that moshed almost all night long. A huge number of people even got into the crowd surfing, and though I didn’t count exactly how many people security lifted and escorted out, it would have been easily over 30! I thought The Vines performed extremely well and I was thoroughly impressed in the encore when they got the entire crowd singing with them to their cover of Outkast’s Ms Jackson song.

TheKua.com Rating: 7 out of 10

Back in London

Patrick Travel, UK Life

I arrived back in London on Sunday, after an entire but expected day’s worth of travelling from Australia. The flight to Singapore went extremely smoothly, made even faster by the on-demand entertainment system – the first time I’ve ever flown with one. I watched the movie Thank You For Smoking as well most of the second series of the great English series, The Office.

The flight from Singapore to London was a little less enjoyable after sitting next to one of those people that overflow into your personal space every way possible (out reaching legs, over stretching elbows, not to mention the countless number of times he unintentional pressed buttons on my remote with his elbow) but at least I had a window seat to which I could lean to and get some sleep. The trip went uneventfully and disappointingly this British Airways craft lacked the much more preferred on-demand system I had on the previous Qantas flight.

London, like most times, welcomed the flight with overcast skies and gentle rain but the arrival and proceeding through the usual immigration points went smoothly. My new project is a .Net one and I’m already enjoying with a great bunch of people.

Watching the English

Patrick Books, UK Life

Watching the EnglishThis book I chanced across in the library turned out to be a great read and I recommend that any foreigner living in London should read it (but it’s probably just as a good a read for English people as well). The premise of Watching the English, is the study of “Englishness” as researched and written by an English anthropologist, Kate Fox.

The author covers all aspects of modern English life included topics such as what constitutes valid topics of conversation, pub etiquette, queuing rules, dress codes and the English class system (that surprisingly has little to do with money). The focus of her research was to draw out the common but unique aspects that make English, well, English.

Part of her research method required her personal involvement along with her normal observations, and the author’s struggle against her “Englishness” added a lot of humour to the book as she describes forcibly attempting things that went directly against all her in-built mannerisms.

To some degree it explained a lot about the behaviour you see of ‘Brits Aboard’, especially their infamous Hen’s and Stag parties, as well as many other quirky behaviour foreigners typically comment on. At times her arguments fail to stand up as being exclusively English as there are always exclusions, but it is evident she made a strong attempt at keeping the focus on typically English-only behaviour. In many ways, you could interpret many of these common behaviours of people from ex-colonial countries as the influence of the English.

I think this book made a very enjoyable read and though the author attempted to formalise many of her conclusions, the humour and real life examples that she uses makes it very easy to digest. Many times I sat on the plane almost laughing out loud reading this book because it all too hard to live in England and not experience the very same situations she writes about.

Thekua.com Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Away On Holidays

Patrick UK Life, Website News

I’m on holidays for two weeks from today – I’m returning home for a short hiatus since it’s almost been one year since I left for the UK. It’s great being able to wake up late, go out for some great breakfast, read the paper and take my time getting to the airport. I’ve loaded myself with a number of books for the flight, updated the music on my MP3 player and now finishing packing.

I’ll be stopping in Signapore on the way over, so the site might not be updated for about a week.