Disturbia the Book

Patrick Books, UK Life

Distrubia by Christopher FowlerOne of the good things about travelling somewhere is you can chill out for a bit and get down to reading or something a little bit less hectic. On my latest trip I borrowed Disturbia by Christopher Fowler – a bit of a thriller book set around London based around characters from two highly contrasting social classes meeting. Over time you find out one of the character is part of a mysterious society, and the main characters starts uncovering these activities of the society called the League of Promethius.

I enjoyed the book for some of the trivia of places around central London, though I’m yet to work out if any of it is true or not. If so, you could easily see a nice little tour around London based on the book (think the Da Vinci Code). I did find that sometimes the book wavered between moments that are completely believable and holds you in suspense to situations where you think it was a bit of an easy-out for the author to write and was just a little touch “lucky” for the main character. Overall though I think it was very well written and at least is easy to start off, building up very quickly. Best yet is the ending has a little bit of a twist that’s quite enjoyable.

TheKua.com Rating: 7 out of 10

The Feeling @ Hammersmith Apollo

Patrick Entertainment, Music, UK Life

On the Friday before heading out on holidays, I had a couple of tickets to see pop band, The Feeling at the Carling sponsored venue, the Hammersmith Apollo. Surprisingly the venue was busy but wasn’t completely sold out given a number of empty seats around us. The Fray performed as the support act and obviously had a large following in the audience given the amount of clapping from the audience. They placed a decent set that lasted for almost an hour before the switch to the main act.

The Feeling

The Feeling opened with an appreciation for their fans by projecting footage of their fans singing their songs on to a huge white sheet. The clips were pulled from You Tube and played for about ten minutes before kicking into the set for the evening. The band’s main singer, Dan Sells, though sometimes overly camp at times, performed perfectly as the hyper-active and obviously passionate lead singer. It was obvious that he enjoyed the attention of the crowd and fed that energy back interacting well with the audience. He had such a great rapport with the audience that he managed to pull off a harmony involving the entire audience – the best I’ve ever seen. They performed a great set, playing most of the songs from their album, a few covers and a double encore (admittedly the first only lasted a single song) and finishing up with the title song of their debut album, Twelve Stops From Home.

A fun performance with a great light show and a very entertaining set of performers.

TheKua.com Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Daddy Donkey Mexican Cuisine

Patrick Farringdon, Food, UK Life

Just like Japanese food, London doesn’t do Mexican cuisine very well with only a handful of places around London serving a pitiful Tex-Mex selection and a few others that are either poorly themed or otherwise over priced. Thankfully a new place opened up that I read about via an entry in one of my current favourite blogs, Londonist.

I thought it would be good to support a new venture whose goal is to establish more accessible and authentic Mexican cuisine. If you follow the link above you can find out more about what the owner (Joel Henderson) is trying to accomplish.

Daddy Donkey

I’m lucky enough that my current client is just a few streets away from Daddy Donkey’s current location in Leather Lane so I arranged a small outing with a group of us from work. Finding Daddy Donkey is easy – it’s the white cart playing Mexican music that helps make it stand out amongst all the other stalls. After ordering, they even have a couple of tables where you can eat your food at. These worked out well for us since the London’s lunchtime weather actually stayed shining for our entire lunch.

The choice of foods are simple at Daddy Donkey with £5 giving you either a burro, a fajita burro or a burro bowl (salad bowl) with the choice of chicken, meat or vegetarian fillings. All their ingredients are obviously very fresh and although £5 seems expensive for a meal without a drink or side dish, the size of each offering is enough to keep you full for the rest of the day. Levels of “hotness” seem properly adjusted for the English palette (i.e. hot is not really that hot) so make sure you ask for extra chillis if you really want some heat.

All of us who went out for lunch really enjoyed it and I think everyone would highly recommend it to anyone dropping into Leather Lane. One person did point out it could be made even more perfect if they sold Coronas.

Details: Daddy Donkey
Found on: Pitch 102 Leather Lane Market, Farringdon, London
Highlights: Fresh ingredients, large filling serve with simple offerings that hit the spot.
Room for improvement:Slightly more expensive for a standard lunch out compared to other places and could benefit from serving some beer as well.
The Kua Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Japanese Canteen

Patrick Food, Restaurants, UK Life

Ask people who live in London and I’m sure a few of them would have eaten at the Japanese Canteen. It’s one of those chain stores that specialises in, well I suppose obvious from the name, Japanese Cuisine. I’ve eaten there twice and been disappointed both times trying some of the different dishes. The katsu dish I ate was well over-fried, resulting in a very dry meat that should really be nice and moist, and wasn’t really helped by the excessive drenching of katsu sauce. I love katsu sauce on its own though its far too easy to get since it comes bottled in lots of Asian grocery stores. The katsu dish wasn’t even served with anything extra (no pickled ginger or side) other than lots and lots (and lots!) of rice – which helps to explain the cheap price tag. The other dish I’ve had there was sushi and it was definitely rather ordinary as well – they didn’t really have much variety and I definitely had concerns around what looked like, not-so-fresh seafood.

Details: Japanese Canteen
Found on: Lots of places in London
Highlights: Cheap, westernised version of Japanese
Room for improvement:Don’t expect this to come close to authentic Japanese cuisine.
The Kua Rating: 3.5 out of 10

Whisky Adventures in Scotland

Patrick Travel, UK Life

WhiskeyLast week I took a couple of days off to trip up to Scotland with some friends to go on a Whiskey Tour of Scotland. We flew into Aberdeen to drive down to a postcard perfect farmhouse in Dufftown – a place surrounded by whiskey distilleries. Glenfiddich’s distillery lies not far from where we were staying though we hit a few other ones from Speyside (the greater area). Unlike the Islay whiskeys, Speyside ones tend to be less smokey and cleaner on the palette though newcomers to whiskey drinking will tell you they all taste the same.

Through the whiskey barrelLike most good tours through any brewery or distillery, at the end you get a sample of wares to try. The most impressive range was at the Abelour distillery that gives you six drams to test out at the end – including one small one of the still (the end result of the distillation process that has a stunning 70% alcohol content).

The Scotch Malt Whiskey SocietyI really enjoyed the trip to Scotland. It has amazing scenery with rolling hills filled with trees, sheep, cows and horses. We ate some black pudding and haggis with breakfast, and even got to try the infamous (heart attack inducing) deep fried mars bar. Scottish people are extremely friendly and warm, making visiting all the places we visited all the more enjoyable. I even bought a bottle of whiskey that I found by the Dufftown Distillery distilled in the year and month of my birth. Scotland also has some fantastic produce with fresh fish, and hearty steaks and meat which means it’s really hard to not eat well.

A great trip with fantastic company – thanks Jason, Ali, Gavin, JK, Dave, Jake, Kate, Tom and Claire! You can check out a set of photos here.

I know it’s the wrong season but…

Patrick Food, UK Life

Is it ever wrong to have a BBQ? My texan friend Ajit has been talking about having a BBQ for quite some time now, and it was this weekend that he organised for a bunch of us to come around. Luckily for me I’ve gone back to eating meat, and meat there was indeed with a plethora of pork chops, steak and delicious Spanish chorizo sausages as well as all the sides. He’s got a great patio as well to grill meats which helps keep the smoke outside.

Weber

Meat, Glorious Meat

Patrick Food, UK Life

Well it’s been a month since I vowed to become a vegetarian so I thought it best to let you know how I went…

Being a vegetarian has been quite easy and I haven’t found myself any more tired or any more restless because of it. In fact I think I’ve actually felt a whole lot better overall since I think I’m getting my variety of fruit and vegetables every day. I don’t think I’ve eaten out as much and certainly haven’t had much Chinese in the last month compared to what I normally would (probably better for my sodium intake). Eating out with people hasn’t been as hard as I thought – generally it’s easier to choose because you don’t have as many options, and I’ve tried a whole new variety of things. I’ve also tried cooking a few things that I normally wouldn’t cook, and that has been very nice learning experience.

On the negative side of this experience, it’s meant missing out on a whole selection of foods that I could have tried at new places I ate at. I also was very conscious about not eating lots of cheese and eggs since that’s an easy choice but means that my saturated fat intake would have rocketed. I don’t have any cravings for meat, but the one that I think I’ve missed the most that would have made eating out much easier was really seafood – especially fish and prawns.

I haven’t decided if and when I will go back to eating meat – I might give it just a little bit of a longer chance to play out.