Author Archives: Grace

L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon revisited

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Lana and Mike are soon to depart for Australia so I thought it would be a good idea to take them to a nice Michelin starred restaurant which offered decent value for money. At two courses for £22 or three for £27 (it’s gone up £2 in less than a year since I’ve been here!) before service L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon gives the punter a bit of a taster of the potential the restaurant could offer. I also like the fact that, generally, you get to dine at the bar which surrounds the kitchen and prep area which makes for a pretty cool dining experience.

After the last time I ate here I said I’d eat off the tasting menu rather than a set menu but of course I hadn’t anticipated that I’d be coming back from a holiday where I did enough shopping to fill my suitcase, practically empty on departure, to the brim. Heh heh. So, only the more budget-conscious menu for me on this occasion.

Once again the starters offered a choice of a terrine (wild boar) and veloute (corn). At least the ingredients were different! I quite liked my veloute of Hot Corn, shallots and golden croutons though I could have done with a bit more … but I always say that don’t I … greedy thing that I am!

For mains the options were between a leg of lamb or hake. Cleary I was going to go for the hake! The hake came with a requisite breath of foam and smeared puree (of parsley roots.) I could have done with a triple portion. In hindsight I should have done what the guy to my right (who Lana swears was some sort of celebrity) did and ordered extra dishes from the a la carte menu! Actually, celebrity or not, it was clear that the guy was a regular visitor as the wait staff spoke to him as if they saw him every day and even asked if he wanted his “usual” whatever that was.

Dessert of the day was this apple cake/crumble combination which worked very well though I was hoping they’d do their signature chocolate dessert dish.

I hope that Lana and Mike enjoyed themselves tonight though I think we were a little less focused on the food and more on catching up since I hadn’t seen them since we parted our ways after the Lapland trip!

Plum Valley III

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Tonight was my third visit to Plum Valley in practically as many months and tonight Pat and I absolutely feasted.

In addition to starters of Ribs and Salt and Pepper Squid (which I’ve had on previous occasions to equal success) and mains of Mongolian Filet Steak (not as good as the time I had it with Caro) and Black Cod Tobanyaki (which whilst tasty has me suspecting that Black Cod is seriously overrated) we also had a mid meal dish of Chilli Garlic Crab!

The crab kind of came between our Starters and Mains and probably took us nearly an hour to finish on its own. It was sooo good and such good value at the 50% price of £9! Delicious.

After finishing our savoury dishes I was seriously feeling like I was just about ready to blow up but, in my warped mind, felt I could still fit in a bit of Willow Dew Cream which is a soupy dessert. It was yummy but totally unnecessary. Oh my stomach!!

New York New York

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In visits past shopping and family have featured but normally mixed into that is also a fair amount of food and sightseeing however shopping and family dominated my New York visit this time around. My cousin from San Fran, Penny, was home for Christmas – normally I miss her – so it was a good chance to spend time with her. Additionally I made sure to make an effort to make my way to Connecticut to visit one of my other aunt’s and her families.

More photos here.

The Shopping

Thanks to the tightening of security controls for flights in and out of the US my flight arriving in Newark was delayed nearly two hours. The security measures, which involved searching us at the gate, not allowing us access to any of our items in the last hour of our flight, treating us like prisoners but requiring us to have our hands on our laps in clear sight of the flight attendants at all times for that last hour and, unbelievably, having our luggage scanned once the luggage came off the plane prior to releasing it to us!, did not reassure me that I was any safer than normal. Some security consultant is certainly earning a sh!tload to create these suggestions – all they probably do is inconvenience the regular flyers – because, you know, as a terrorist you’d wait until the last hour of the flight to start any monkey business right? Ridiculous.

So, by the time I arrived in Flushing and got ready for bed it was just about 2 am on Sunday morning. Six hours later I was waking up to get ready for Day 1 in New York – shopping at Woodbury Common! Ha!

I absolutely love Woodbury Common and its unusual for a trip here NOT to result in me walking away with a ton of bags. And this visit was no different from any previous shopping visits although I did try to consolidate my shopping into as few bags as possible both for environmental and ease of carrying around the shopping reasons. Often its only when you get home that you realise what seems like so much shopping is just actually a heck of a lot of giant shopping bags!

The day was rather a glorious day and when combined with the fact there were post Christmas sales to say that Woodbury Common was busy was a total understatement. Its just as well we arrived reasonably early as we were able to get a fairly decent car park – many others had to resort to going into the overflow car park across the other side of the highway! Unfortunately queues were the order of the day from the Coach shop, to the Ugg Boot shop and to even leaving the complex. It took us just under two hours to crawl our way out of there at the end of the day.

On Day 2, whilst Kathleen headed off to work, Penny and I hit Barneys. I’ve never really gone into Barneys before and today’s experience proved why: super expensive price tags on everything! The dressing rooms are even personalised to the shop assistant (at least on the top floor) – I guess to give the guests a sense of pesonalised service but also to ensure the shop assistant gets his/her commission. Even the gear on the sales racks were pretty out of my budget! We started on the top floor where prices were scary but, opposite to my expectations, the lower we went the higher the price tags got. The good thing about Barneys is that it was not at all crowded except for the shoe area which, because of the sales, was absolute chaos. Whilst Penny hunted around for the perfect shoe I sat back and watched all the goings on. I can tell you that there are certainly some very spoilt people in the world. One lady, her husband and daughter had taken up a whole section and had what looked like about 60 pairs of shoes scattered around her. The daughter, who was about 10, was running around grabbing shoes and imperiously ordering the shop assistant around. What a pain in the butt she is going to be when she grows up! Needless to say they didn’t bother to help at all in putting the shoes back to where they came from or even pretend to be civilised about their browsing. Guaranteed they didn’t even buy one pair of shoes.

SoHo was Day 3. It was an absolutely freezing cold day so we, Penny, her Mum and I, made sure to stay inside the stores as much as possible. In fact we didn’t spend that much time in Manhattan that day purely because it was so cold. Just a few hours were spent whipping around Old Navy, where Penny and I rocked out on the Band Hero they had on display (probably there to entertain the men/kids who come in accompanying the women!) and UniQlo, where most of the time was spent in a gigantic queue. On the ground floor they had every attendant who could operate a till on the tills (at least fifteen!) and it still wasn’t enough to get the line moving. The store is massive but the sales meant it was super crowded.

The other day of shopping was my second last day in New York when we ended up going to Woodbury Common again (!) because Kathleen wanted to return some clothes. This time the queues seemed more reasonable, probably because it was absolutely fricken cold, only being three lines snakes long rather than five … so we waited in the queue to get into Coach. Not unexpectedly we were in there for a while though I had to escape because the women in there were driving me crazy! Because this was the second time in a week we were at Woodbury Common we didn’t spend much time faffing about. In fact the day was so absolutely freezing that we didn’t stay long at all! Just hit the shops we wanted to hit and got the heck out of there!

The Family

So, other than spending quite a bit of time with my Flushing family I also headed up to Connecticut to spend time with my Hartford family over New Year’s Eve. Hartford should have been an easy just over 2.5 hour bus ride but instead we ended up stuck at the Port Authority Terminal for a couple of hours as they cleared a “suspicious” van in Times Square. It wouldn’t have been so bad if we’d known the reason for the delay. The bus ride itself was great – our bus was quite comfortable, we had the funniest bus driver and, apparently, we even had free wi-fi. Nice huh?

I arrived in Hartford just in time for dinner. My Aunt, Uncle, Jesse and Ruthie took me to one of their Italian favourites. Food was pretty delicious and, naturally, with huge serves. They had the must divine garlic bread sticks which were bottomless, as were our sodas and ice teas! You gotta love America! After dinner, a quick visit home so I could meet Marley, their gorgeous chocolate lab (he’s so gorgeous I could easily forgive him chewing my boots up!), my Aunt and I drove to their cottage on the lake to spend a girlie night catching up.

It was great – a cosy cottage, a nice fire, a great DVD (Under the Tuscan Sun) and great conversation. She’d also made some delicious sticky rice for dessert. Mmmm …. I’m surprise I didn’t wake up halfway through the night to finish it off!

In the morning (New Year’s Eve) we woke to a beautiful snow covered landscape. The lake was nicely frozen over and was clearly solid enough for people to go cross country skiing and walking on. Out in the distance we could also see a hole in the lake where people had started to set up a fishing spot. After breakfasting in the enclosed patio my Uncle came to pick us up to bring us to Old Sturbridge Village which is basically how you’d imagine rural New England to be back in the early 1800s. It was a well cute village – farm animals, shoe makers, potters, candle-makers etc. The snow, which fell by the bucketloads whilst we were there, made it even more magical.

After Old Sturbridge Village, Ruthie wanted to take me shopping and to see a movie. We ended up going to see It’s Complicated with Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin. I loved the movie – probably because I’m well into Alec
Baldwin at the moment thanks to his stint on 30 Rock.

By this time we’d worked up quite an appetite and were well ready for our New Year’s Eve meal which was at one of their favourite Mexican restaurants. A bunch of my Aunt and Uncle’s friends came out as well and it was very lively meal. The evening happened to also be a full moon or new moon and therefore the restaurant was all themed around a blue moon including blue tortilla chips! It was a bit weird! The meal was yummy though. My New Year’s eve was actually fairly sedate – we got home just in time to watch the ball drop in Times Square on TV. I was trying to find Audrey on the broadcast, one of my Flushing family, as she’d gone in to Times Square with her boyfriend. She actually got there for 6.30am to try and get a good position. What a trooper!

The Food

Other than some fantastic cooking by my Uncle at home (I love love love his ginger chicken – he makes the greatest sauce ever) I had two notable culinary experiences: Korean at Bann and L’Ecole at The French Culinary Institute.

Bann was notable for the way they present their tea to you – in cute little box with a backlit screen – and their desserts – which included a crème brulee three ways (tonight it was vanilla, ginger and strawberry.)

The food, which included a delicious Korean pancake and gorgeous Kal Bi Jim (beef short rib simmered in a sake ginger soy glaze served off the bone), was pretty damn tasty too. Though our dishes did look particularly brown!

L’Ecole at The French Culinary Institute, where I decided to treat Penny and Kathleen to brunch, was something just a little different.. All food is prepared by the student chefs but what made our brunch visit different was that, unlike all the other meals, the brunch service is not actually part of The French Culinary Institute’s curriculum but is carried out by volunteer students – so you know they wouldn’t be there unless they wanted to be.

The venue is clearly a popular place so it was lucky they could fit us in. The room is nice, bright and airy and, thankfully, sound levels are just right to give you that kind of a buzz without having you feel like you need to shout. The food was absolutely divine from the freshly baked breads to the Butter Poached Shrimp, Andouille Sausage and Grits (yummo – more please!) to the perfectly cooked Steak and Eggs, French Fries, Béarnaise to my Crème Brulee. We had a lovely time but if there was one thing they were let down on it was the slowness in the service – though our waiters were perfectly friendly, as they inevitably are in the US, they were a little slow. It was still a lovely way to finish off my visit to New York.

Christmas Meal 2009

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Pat and I learned our lesson from last year’s Christmas meal so made sure to plan for half as much food for our meal this year. Though we loved the food eating for ten hours was way excessive!

We planned only four courses this time around:

– Jalapeno and cheese bread rolls
– Singapore chilli crab
– Roast chicken, gratinated potato, roast potato, carrot, broccoli, pepper
– Pear crumble with ice cream

However, Pat forgot to pick us up some crabs so we didn’t get to eat the chilli crab! A bit disappointed but he was able to find some substitutes in his freezer with steamed barbecue pork buns and toasted turnip cakes. Mmm …

Throughout the day after saying Merry Christmas to Australia we snacked on the bread rolls and the turnip cakes whilst watching DVDs. As our menu wasn’t so involved this year there was less action in the kitchen and in fact Pat did most of the work anyway as I was distracted by counting the vodka bottle change so it was a pretty relaxed day. heh heh.

Pat’s roast chicken was yummo (had to have two serves!) and the roast potatoes rate a very very special mtion. Still, there was heaps of room for the pear crumble with loads of ice cream. Mmmm …

Merry Christmas all!

Guess how much?

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My brother’s roommate has this giant vodka bottle filled with coins. Whenever I see that many coins I can’t help but itch to try and count it. So, what are your guess for how much is in this bottle? It was so big I had to roll it rather thank pick it up to get it into the lounge:

It took me hours to get it all organised and about four counts to get the value right. It only took Pat moments to destroy my community of coins!

Click here to see if you guess right.

My Christmas Eve Lasagne

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I made a pretty kick-@ss lasagne tonight if I do say so myself. Note how I didn’t even pretend it was a reason to eat salad …

I added the smallest bird’s eye chilli in the world to the lasagne but to my surprise it gave it a great bite.

Fantastic. I think I could go another piece …

Avatar in 3D

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I tried to get a group of people to come see this movie with me but being this close to Christmas and also no one else but me being that truly geeky to even know what Avatar was about I didn’t have many takers. My brother, Lana and Mike were up for it though and that was enough for me. I booked tickets at bfi imax as soon as the tickets were released. I don’t think my friends who didn’t want to come are going to realise just how big this movie is going to be.

The film is James Cameron’s first directorial film since his blockbuster Titanic and he has waited a number of years for it to be created, something about waiting for 3D technology to catch up with his vision. As a visual experience the movie is truly spectacular both in the 3D effects, the animation, the colours etc. It was truly amazing. To see it on the three storey screen at the imax was an additional bonus. The only thing was that when I walked out at the end of the film I felt like throwing up! Our seats in row K were just in front of the premium seating but even there I felt we were mega close. Poor Lana and Mike were a few more rows in front of us!

The story is, appropriately, set up around a green theme telling of the story of man, in particular a big nasty corporation, trying to exhaust the raw materials from another planet. Valuable to the earthlings for one reason (as a source of energy etc.) and valuable to the locals from a spiritual perspective. There is loss, there is action and, ultimately, there is a love story. Its not a particularly innovative story line but served its purpose.

I personally enjoyed the film. It was at all times absorbing and fascinating to watch. But then – is that cause I’m such a geek?

Inn Noodle, Bayswater

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Lana, Mike and I dropped in to Inn Noodle for a quick dinner tonight before heading off to see Avatar. This restaurant has been in my neighbourhood for a while but with a ton of other Chinese restaurants on the very same road with two of them in particular being a favourite of mine I’ve never visited. After tonight’s experience I’m not sure I’ll come back!

The signs that Inn Noodle were good was positive with lots of “native” people inside and it was also very full and busy. We were sat immediately despite how busy it was and we were entertained by the interactive tv at the end of our table.

Service wasn’t exactly great though we got what we ordered for in fairly short order. Food, however, was disappointingly flavourless and unimaginative. We had a few dim sum dishes and a big noodle soup. I wasn’t very enthused and neither were Lana and Mike. Think we left about 70% of our noodle soup behind.

Yep – not even the fact that Gordon has been the restaurant would probably encourage me to come back

Aladdin

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When I heard that Pamela Anderson was going to start in the panto Aladdin this Christmas season I simply HAD to book tickets to go check the panto out. I love panto season in London and I haven’t gone to nearly enough during my stay here! Anyway, as Lana and Mike were in town I thought it was a great time to drag them along and expose them to something which is pretty quintessentially English.

Unusually for a panto one of the lead roles was actually rotated over the season of the panto with Ruby Wax, then Pamela, then Paul O’Grady and finally Anita Dobson taking on the role of genie of the lamp. If I could have spared the money and the time I would have liked to have seen all four versions for the no doubt customised jokes and bantering.

Before I get on to assessing what we thought of Pammie I wanted to make a comment about the panto itself. I absolutely loved it. There was a fantastic set, there was great audience involvement (which is what you expect of a panto) including dragging three kids up to the stage to perform!, there was a lot of witty one-liners (kudos to updates by the brilliant writers), and the musical score was pretty fine.

The cast were excellent. In particularly Brian Blessed as the evil Abanazar was truly the ultimate villain complete with evil laugh and sinister mocking and the dame Widow Twakney played by Jonathan D Elli and was hilariously and suitably a big large drama queen. Aladdin’s brother Wishee Washee as played by Paul Thornley played a pretty good comic foil too. I’ve got plenty of time also for Djalenga Scott who was extremely sexy as the Slave of the Ring.

As with most pantos Aladdin had a lot of pop culture references including even a skit targeting Jedward and I’m pretty sure I spotted Harry Potter somewhere on the stage at one point too! Can’t get more pop culturish than that.

But the true reason that Wimbledon Theatre was full tonight was clearly the debut of Pammie on the panto stage. Bless. The poor lady has never been involved in a panto before and I’m not sure she really has much stage experience. THAT red bathing suit made an appearance and the twins were out in full glory. Of course the writers also had to include scene of her “running provocatively towards you” and plenty of references to her not that successful romantic history.

Pammie didn’t appear until nearly the end of the first act but her arrival was worth the wait, most especially for the crowd reaction to her appearance in THAT bathing suit. Pammie, though she spoke very quickly at times and seemed to rush her lines, did an admirable job with her character. She played up to our expectations to the hilt and I thought added a bit of punch to the show. She’ll never win any Tony’s for the performance but I felt she was very charming and a great sport. The crowd loved her too.

A very enjoyable panto.