Author Archives: Grace

Bale de Rua

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Well, there wasn’t much in this show for D – all the dancing nearly naked gyrating men were really for my benefit. Heh heh. There were a couple of ladies in the show, including a singer, but not as much eye candy for D as the lads were for me. Bale de Rua (literal translation Street Ballet) is a mix of hip hop, African dance, samba and capoeira. The dances are shown through a series of stories from quiet almost sad slave numbers to big large high energy dance scenes. The dancers, all male but one, certainly leave nothing behind and carry it all off with a grin (when appropriate of course).

Many of the men also take a turn on the percussion – which really gave a Carnival feel to the performance. It’s a shame the rest of the soundtrack, save the female singer, was not performed live but on playback.

I wish I could say I enjoyed the show totally but it was a bit weak and dragging in parts. I think it was the lack of direction at times which caused the rhythm to be disrupted as it was caught between the storytelling side and the performance side – with the little narrative in between it was hard to hear the full message. Still, there were some spectacular numbers and the costumes and colour of the whole show really gave it that party flavour which made it overall an enjoyable performance.

Babylon Roof Garden with Su Yin

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Its been nearly a year since I ate at the Babylon Roof Gardens. On my last visit the food looked really good but I couldn’t taste any of it because of my cold! Its no hardship to visit the restaurant since is nearly practically in my neighbourhood and with me working just down the road for the time being it couldn’t have been easier to meet Su Yin there for dinner tonight. Approaching winter it gets really dark pretty quickly now so it was certainly a different feel to the lunch time visit I had previously.

Happy to see the fish were still there though in the toilets … well, as a wall between the men’s and ladies’ facilities anyway …

We ate off a set meal deal. Options on the menu were actually pretty good though, as usual, limited to three choices for starters, mains and dessert. Oh, we did get some bread … which had Su Yin engaged in taking inappropriate photos of … but the lighting was really too low to get a proper picture of the bread.

For starters neither of us could go past the promise of truffle in the Truffle Risotto. The portion size wasn’t huge but more than enough to get us started with our meal. Looks a bit scary up close but gratified to see plenty of evidence of truffle oil and truffle shavings.

For mains we had a choice between Pork Belly, Salmon and Butternut Squash Lasagne. All three very empting, even the vegetarian option, but certainly the pork belly was always going to pretty much get my vote. Especially as it too came with a truffle vinaigrette. Su Yin’s choice was the Salmon. Both looked very appetising and I was very happy to see both were wonderfully colourful and balanced out with some green. Pork Belly was lovely … though most people might say there was a bit too much fat. But you’ve gotta have the fat to make it tasty! Perfect crackling on top too.

Desserts were an absolute treat. Rather randomly the Crème Brulee, catching my eye because the brulee was supposedly infused with cinnamon, came with a Granny Smith apple juice served in a shot glass. Su Yin’s White Chocolate & Cranberry Cheesecake was less one cheesecake than a trio of desserts and included a chocolate madeleine and sorbet. You’d only deduct which of her three items was the cheesecakes from the fact you would recognise what the other three items were! And following the trend of the moment the cheesecake contained popping candy …

I was very impressed with the food at Babylon Roof Gardens tonight. On the set menu the food was certainly good value for money. Service was decent tonight without anything really to rave about.

Caro’s Roast Beef

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From one baby lunch yesterday to another today, ha ha.

For today’s treat Caro had a lovely roast beef recipe I hadn’t yet tried. She and Nate really should start charging me on the basis I eat at their place so often! Not to mention just how good Caro’s cooking is. Yum yum.

The beef was cooked perfectly, great gravy, roasted potatoes to die for and even homemade Yorkshire puddings!!

And then came dessert. Talk about heaven!

It was only politeness that kept me from really pigging out. 😉

Welcome Matthew

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Its baby making “season” for my “generation” of friends … the latest cute addition to the world is Matthew – Connie and Michael’s little gem. I must say Connie and Michael are one of the most relaxed parents I’ve met. They hardly seemed stressed at all when I went to visit them today! Nothing seemed to phase them – even though admittedly its only been a few weeks I think they’ve got a good routine established already.

Connie’s Mum was over Oz too so it was good to catch up with her as well – its been years!

Matthew was really well behaved during our lunch. Yes – he is in that mostly sleeping stage but he hardly fussed … even when it was time to feed him and change his nappy. I can see he is going to be one of thosse very happy good-natured babies.

Viet Grill

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Kingsland Road in Shoreditch has a plethora of vietnamese restaurants along its long stretch. Viet Grill is one of the ones I’ve actually avoided because it looked too … well, polished. You can’t always judge a book by its cover, however, so it only seemed fair to give it a chance. Sandra and I arrived fairly early after work so we pretty much had the place to ourselves. You would have thought this meant a decent level of service. I think perhaps we caught them a bit unprepared as the service we got was a bit patchy. When we ordered our mains the starters arrived in reasonable time but then with our mains they either forgot my dish (we had both gone for a one bowl meal thing) or the kitchen’s timing was seriously back-firing. I couldn’t imagine the timing could be so off that all the tables around us (by then the place had filled up pretty quickly) were getting their food but we were still missing parts of our order! Getting the attention of wait-staff proved to be quite difficult too …

… but moving on from the service to the food. Was the food good enough to outweigh the not so fantastic service? Hmmm …

Piggy grilled aubergine – topped with minced pork & poached spring onions. This didn’t look like the best thing ever served and is expensive at £6.50 for the portion that we got but it was probably the best tasting item we had tonight. The Fresh summer rolls were fairly average though nothing to complain about. For our mains we decided we’d both go for an all in one bowl – when mine eventually came (charcoaled pork loin marinated in lemongrass & crispy imperial spring rolls with bun) I did enjoy it. The pork loin could have had more of a smoky charcoally flavour but otherwise it made for a satisfying meal. Sandra’s complaint about her dish was that it was much too spicy – a warning that wasn’t very obviously stated on the menu.

If Viet Grill could just do something about the service I think I would like it a whole lot better. Having said that prices are not unreasonable and if you’re prepared to potentially wait a long time for your food – its not half bad.

Love Cooking Festival 2010

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Its not often that you get to see a whole load of top chefs appearing live on stage all in one day. Sure they make their appearances at foodie festivals etc. but this was a whole day dedicated to chefs shuffling on and off the stage to both entertain and cook for us. This inaugural Love Cooking Festival was held at Royal Festival Hall. There as plenty of auditorium space … but it was rather random which tickets you would get. Its apparently first come best dressed … and we ended up with front row seats though off to the side. This was quite good as we were right up there with no one the block our view … but it was sometimes awkward as the camera man would often get in our way! Still, that didn’t stop us enjoying our day.

After each cooking session the chefs were then available to sign their books. Laney and I got into a rhythm of running outside as soon as the session was finished to line up for the autographs. There was an hour in between screenings but this wasn’t nearly enough time for the chefs to get through the queue! It was quite hard work today – literally from 12 until 9.30, except for a small break for dinner, we were running to and fro. Very funny. It would have been a longer day but unfortunately Gary Rhodes, who was scheduled for the first session, couldn’t make it 🙁

First up on the bill was Richard Corrigan and Mark Hix (for the cooking) & Oz Clarke (for the drinking)

Gino D’Acampo, known as Hot Stuff, was the next session. What a beautiful man in both looks and personality … shame he is already married! Gino got out the pasta making machine and went back to basics just to show us how easy it was to make pasta. He also bunged some tuna on to the grill … for which he got the help of a lucky lady from the audience. Strangely rather than being excited to be both on stage and being up close to Gino the girl was oddly unaffected and barely even cracked a smile!

We make a nice couple huh? Heh heh.

Ainsley Harriott was up next. Ainsley is just a totally adorable man. The cynic would expect that such a big personality who comes across as bubbly and friendly on television might not really live up to this perception. We were really pleased to see that Ainsley is a genuinely lovely man.

Ainsley cooked up some soul food for us and Laney was lucky enough to get to go up on stage to sample. She looked after us though by bringing down some snacks for us tool. Good looking out Laney!

Rick Stein then took us into the dinner break. What I love about Rick is that he is just so very down to earth. Its really all about the cooking for him. There is no pretention and no pretending he’s this big superstar with an attitude. I really like that about him. He had us giggling about the first time he went on tv and cut his finger. The fact the video man kept flashing up the scene of the cut finger behind Rick at random intervals (so that we would all be laughing and then Rick would turn around to see what was going on but of course the scene was gone from the screen) had us laughing even more.

The laughs of the night had to go to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who hosted the last session. Hugh is best known for his “grow your own” philosophy and his commitment to eating seasonally, locally and ethically. He was another really down to earth chef. I don’t think he was drunk tonight but he was moving around the stage like a mad man – but in a really endearing fashion. He very self-deprecating and this really was quite charming. I don’t really remember much of the cooking but I remember it being a really good way to end the day. There was the cutting of the pumpkin moment …

Roast

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Roast is tucked upstairs at Borough Market and has a reputation for making some k!ck- @ss roasted meat – in particular their slow-roasted pork belly … yummmm. At lunch time they have a downstairs stall which sells the take away sandwiches. It was too early for us to be ordering from the meat menu but I always love the breakfast menu.

In addition to being a weekday, we caught Roast in the in-between brunch and lunch time so it was actually pretty empty! Oddly this didn’t actually mean good service! That’s not to say it was terrible but they didn’t really pay much attention to us including our food taking AGES to arrive. Think they were to busy re-arranging our tables.

Food is a little over-priced with two Eggs Benedict costing £12 … it comes plainly served without any accompaniments. A three egg omelette was £7.50 which I guess it a little bit more fairly priced. The Eggs Benedict were perfectly cooked but the sauce a little on the skimpy side. Overall I was a little underwhelmed.

I’m willing to come back to try lunch or dinner though ..

the craze that is zumba

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The world is zumba crazy at the moment. Well, at least Laney and Mei are absolutely obsessed with it! They invited me along tonight so I could join the craze … for those who have somehow missed the hype zumba is a new dance fitness program played out to Latin and pop music and borrowing moves from Latin dance including salsa, mambo, flamenco, samba and with belly dancing and hip hop thrown in.

The class is totally dominated by girls (e.g. tonight there were like two guys and nearly 30 girls) so lads – if you want to meet some ladies this is a fantastic opportunity. And .. even if the students aren’t eye candy enough for you, the instructor is normally quite hot and sexy. Classes tend to be oversubscribed so if you’re unfamiliar with the moves it would behoove you to stand right at the front of the class so you can see the instructor. And there are no prizes for holding anything back – you want to dance your socks off!

I did have a lot of fun tonight with the great music … but I’m not sure I’ll be a frequent attendant … my dancing is totally atrocious! 😉

LostInLondon: Halloween at the Coronet

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Laney and my original plans for Halloween fell through but she managed to score some tickets to the Lost in London Halloween event at the Coronet. We had no idea what to expect but were promised some entertainment. The Coronet Theatre was supposedly the original venue when Michael Jackson made his first appearance in the UK .. .and he was supposed to make an appearance at the stroke of midnight …

We were also promised a couple of DJs up on the main stage, a couple of DJs in the Silent Disco, plus a giant snow machine, giant stilt walkers and trapeze artists. Well, we didn’t get all of that but we certainly got some entertainment on the stage in the form of some lady dancers!

Then they brought out fire

Interesting! We unfortunately didn’t see any of the stilt walkers or Michael Jackson – but the venue is huge and tonight it was super crowded so I’m not surprised we didn’t get around to everything. I eventually got home at 7am … and the night was made all the longer since the clocks went back an hour so it was actually 8am … I think its going to take me a few days to recover!