Author Archives: Grace

Shanghai Blues

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Cathy was gagging for sum yum cha (yay – another yum cha buddy!) so I thought it would be nice if we visited Shanghai Blues since they had a 50% deal. I also invited Craig and Lynley along since I know they enjoy their yum-cha too. The meal ended up being very cheap at about £12 each (including tea etc.) however! the yum cha was very poor. I wish I’d taken photos as on the whole most dishes we had were very ordinary – surprisingly since they sometimes throw dim sum making classes now and then.

The hau gau was falling apart with water from the steam getting inside the crystal wrapper as it wasn’t sealed properly (a sin), the cheung fung was unexcited and other dishes were just generally lackluster. Now imagine you paid full price on these dishes – you’d feel fairly ripped off. The one plus they did have some more unusual dishes such as the Tai Chi Dumplings (flour-made pastry with half black octopus juice to crest Yuan-Yang effect) and Quail Egg & Seafood ‘Sao Mai’ and which were good to try on a discount.

Overall a disappointing visit though we couldn’t complain about the price.

Bowling and Su’s Souffle – just another Saturday then

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After a late-ish night last night there was nothing that seemed more appealing than a competitive game of bowling … and I’m not at all being sarcastic. And even better the game was free courtesy of Su Yin’s groupon voucher. Ha ha. Well, I did have to work a little for it since I had to walk to the venue to book the game in for us as Su Yin couldn’t get through on the phone lines!

Out of the four of us, Laney, E-Yen, Su Yin and I, you can be sure that none of us are going to take the bowling world by storm. Su Yin could barely lift the lightest of the balls! Still, it was rather amusing. Especially as there was this little girl next to us who, though needing two arms, seemed stronger than Su Yin … She was very cute – every time she released the bowl down the alley she would turn around and grin at us.

After the game, E-Yen and I followed Su Yin back to her place where she lovingly cooked us up some soufflé. Now, soufflé is not the easiest of baking items to prepare – and it was made even harder by the fact Su Yin didn’t have a whisk! Oh boy. This was only the second time she’d made the soufflé and from the sounds of it she had learnt hear lesson well from the first (though apparently not well enough to think of going out to buy a whisk!) The soufflé was mostly a success – it rose in the oven, sort of, and for the most part kept its form after we took it out. Good taste too.

Drinkies at TGIF

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I didn’t fancy anything “fancy” for dinner tonight so convinced the girls to head over to TGIF for dinner instead of Gaucho’s as it still gave us the option for food plus some pretty awesome cocktails. To say it was busy tonight was a total understatement, it was spilling over with all these tourists! ha ha. We waited nearly an hour for a table! At least we had good music and good drinks to occupy!

The Flying Karamazov Brothers

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Laney and I went to see The Flying Karamazov Brothers (FKB) tonight at the Vaudeville Theatre. Once again I didn’t really know what I had booked us in for but I was quite pleased to find that we had a very enjoyable night. In short The FKB are a comedic juggling group. The show was witty and funny and included jokes which showed tailoring to the audience, namely English culture. The juggling required incredible co-ordination and the brothers also demonstrated considerable musical skills with the piano, trombone, tuba, alto sax, guitar and recorder all making an appearance – there was one particular set which had each other playing someone else’s instrument whilst keeping balls in the air! In fact, quite a few of the acts demonstrated the link between the rhythm of music and the rhythm of juggling. They even juggled dry ice and a cava (which eventually exploded.) Not every set was a hit, I mean there was this scene where the boys all donned ballet costumes and flitted around on stage. Not sure what this was about.There was also crowd interaction with audience members being invited to submit items for juggling, with the finale involving one lady getting up stage to have flaming items juggled past her.

Overall just the kind of light-hearted entertainment that we were looking for.

Babylon Roof Garden with Jill and Craig

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Jill has been so lovely to me over the last six years or so at work that I thought it would be nice to take hert our to a nice lunch before she leaves the team. I know she appreciates good food, not just the stuff you can get in our local pubs, so we headed over to Babylon Roof Gardens. Conveniently only bus ride away. It was nice to have the time away from the office and engage in chit chat that wasn’t work related!

Food at Babylon Roof Gardens continues to quite stunning if I do say so. I had a divine Pea Soup which really suited the cooler temperature we were having today, followed by a gigantic portion of a Roasted Pork Cutlet on a bed of apple and sorrel risotto. So filling Craig’s and Jill’s Salmon and Liver respectively were gigantic too. And all very good. Topping out a trifecta our desserts looked and tasted fab. The green tea and strawberry swiss roll worked particularly well.

It was a shame that it was absolutely tipping it down outside and there was a function downstairs so we couldn’t see the pink flamingoes close-up. I was, however, amazed at how busy the restaurant was. First of all it was the middle of the day! And second of all the weather really was terrible – I thought it would keep people away!

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

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The fact that the single biggest news item regarding this third instalment in the Transformers films related to Megan Fox being replaced by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley as the female lead made me a touch skeptical about the film. However, I enjoyed the first two movies for their total suspension of reality and and I have to say I enjoyed this one too for the same reason. Sure there were moments that grated like Shia LaBeouf, or his character at least, and the fact that McDreamy was cast as the bad guy (boo), and I nearly fell asleep in the middle of it (no comment on the quality of the action in the movie or anything – I was just a bit tired! and the movie was waaaaaay long) but overall I can’t help but adore the Transformers themselves (they are so cute) and of course the hot Josh Duhamel in his fatigues. Ah.

I could go into what the story-line is but I’m not sure there’s a point. Check your mind at the door and enter all those who just want to see loads of things blown up. For me it was just what the doctor ordered after a brain-draining last two months …

Dave Leaving Do and Pride

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Dave Chan departs the UK shores tomorrow for the land down under so, in tradition, he had some leaving drinks. I think it was a bold move to have leaving drinks the night before a flight that would effectively last 24 hours … a very bold move indeed! Dave’s drinks were at Thirst – one of the Chinese Crew’s favourite venues for cocktails … specifically Pina Coladas. And I could see why – those pina coladas were very potent! Ironically I don’t have many photos of the main man Dave!

Thirst actually ended up being a perfect venue to choose as we were right in the heart of Soho and right in the middle of Pride celebrations! It was a fantastic atmosphere out on the street and a more perfect evening you couldn’t ask for. Everyone was in a fantastic movie – everyone was dancing with everyone, everyone was snogging everyone and everyone was feeling up everyone (okay, that might have just been me under the influence of alcohol … 😉 )

This guy was just nuts, but funny!

Fabulous night people!

Janet at Royal Albert Hall: Number Ones: Up Close and Personal Tour

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Janet Jackson is an absolutely legendary singer and her music played a large part of my life in the 1990s. I couldn’t believe it when I heard that she was coming to the Royal Albert Hall for a concert. I was immediately on the website looking for tickets but was put off by the very expensive prices! Jo wanted to see Janet too so we comprised and got tickets Circle … which is only one level down from Standing! and it was still nearly £60 …

Doors opened at 7.00 for a 7.30 start. We thought that she might have had a support act but to our surprise there was no one! Finally, after 50 minutes, Janet made her appearance on stage! I couldn’t believe how good she looked – you’d hardly believe that she was already 45 years old!

I went to one Janet concert when I was about 16 years old. I know – a long time ago! And I remember how amazing the concert was from the cool sets, to our outfits to her way over the top energetic dancing. It was so theatrical and more than just Janet getting up on stage and singing/dancing. We didn’t really get this tonight … perhaps it was the venue which was limiting and yes there was smoke, there was a dance troupe, but it was fairly stock standard. Apart from the fact that there were a lot of videos that were used to fill in time – like showing all her clips from when she was on TV (like on Different Strokes), and her movies (Mo’ Money), and all her photo shoots. Each clip went for what felt like 10 minutes. If I had to guess I’d say Janet was on stage for about 70 minutes at most?

However, that is not to say we didn’t have a good time. It was fantastic to hear Janet live again. She has lost none of her voice or her moves and she was very gracious to the audience – blowing loads of kisses, saying she loved us, tagging those in the front row etc. but she didn’t really chat much (so it was more Up Close and less Personal.)

From the audience reaction she is still a much-loved icon which was really lovely to see. When she sang Scream in duet with Michael – the crowd reaction was just ridiculous. Fan loyalty was very touching. Her encore was a tribute to Michael, singing Together Again with arms outstretched to the air – so beautiful.

It was a nice trip down memory lane and if there was anything Janet inspired me to do tonight, it was to get out all her old stuff and onto my iphone!

PS Disappointingly no wardrobe malfunctions! 😉

Wimbledon 2011

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Akh proved he once again has the lucky charm when it comes to winning Wimbledon tickets. This year he couldn’t go so I was very lucky that he offered them to me. Best thing was that it was on middle Saturday on Centre Court so not only did I not have to take a day off, we were also guaranteed some high caliber matches.

I met D fairly early so we could have a look at what was going on around the outside courts. A group of protesters in the queue, however, held us up a little bit – officials had decided to shut the gates so gate opening time was delayed for nearly an hour. I was impressed that the protesters were identified – apparently they had paint and other stuff hidden in bags to make their protest banners. This didn’t delay the start of play, however, nor dissuade anyone from visiting Wimbledon. There were sooo many people inside already by the time we made it inside the gates.

The weather, though a little bit sketchy this past week, had been clear enough that matches had been moving on schedule so as a result many of the outside courts had mostly doubles and junior matches. The biggest star that we saw, that I knew at any rate, was Tamarine Tanasugarn who was playing a doubles match. Because Wimbledon was so crowded today it was actually quite difficult to get around to many of the courts to see many other matches. Just as well D and I had our centre court tickets!

Our seats on centre court weren’t quite the last row … but they practically were! I didn’t mind though because it meant that I could come to Wimbledon. The good thing about our seats were that we were sat with a view of the Royal Box – and today a whole heap of sports starts were in the box including Martina Navratilova, Sir Steve Redgrave, Dame Kelly Holmes, Jonathan Edwards, Sachin Tendulkar, Sir Roger Bannister, Amy Williams (won gold at the Winter Olympics if you don’t know) and a whole host of rugby, football and cricket stars. We were also marking Armed Forces Day so there were 14 members of the armed forces, nominated for exceptional service, in the box.

Three matches on Centre court for us today. First up was women’s number one seed Caroline Wozniacki who defeated Aussie Jarmila Gajdosova fairly handily but I must say that I felt that Jarmila lost the match more than Caroline won it. Though Caroline had some good shots – it was Jarmila who was going for everything. Unfortunately her unforced errors outweighing her winners meant she went down … but at least she went down fighting.

Next up on court was Roger Federer who outclassed David Nalbandian. Roger was just pure class and it was great to see him so comfortable in his element. There is just such an ease to his game and its like he can just turn the power or touch on just like that.

And yes, there were the shirt taking off moments too …

Final game of the match was Novak Djokovic (the number two seed this year) against Marcos Baghdatis. I really find it hard to like Novak. In today’s match he came across a spoilt little boy, he even broke his racquet! Nice butt though …

Marcos did well to keep up with Novak but the actually game wasn’t the kind of match that was very entertaining even if it was quite a close one. There were lots of long drawn out and often unexciting rallies. D and I left at the end of the third set!

Viajante

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When Viajante hit my to-eat list it was before it was awarded its Michelin star, and the reason I added it to my list was that it promised El Bulli / Fat Duck-esque type exploration of food without the El Bulli / Fat Duck-esque prices. It was supposed to be exciting, innovative, challenging. It’s a shame I didn’t get to visit before it was awarded its star this year, so I can never really know what impact the award has had in the restaurant.

Nevertheless, I thought it would be a nice restaurant to take Sandra to for her birthday.

Viajante is located in what used to be Bethnal Green’s Old Town Hall – a beautiful edifice, now also converted to a Hotel – and inside it is light and airy and actually a lot more casual than you would imagine. The kitchen is an open kitchen though those in the second room, like us, can only catch a glimpse because of the wall in between.

Rather cutely the wine list is incorporated into a “100 Great Wonders of the World” book to reinforce the “Traveler” theme of the restaurant (viajante is traveler in Portugese.) The personal touches of the restaurant came in little things like being given a bag hook … though rather oddly we were only given one … and bringing out free champers to celebrate Sandra’s birthday. 🙂

The first innovation that was evident in the restaurant was the bread. We were served hot potato bread served with two brown butters – one with crispy potato and black pudding and one with crispy chicken, iberica ham and potato powder. Neither were overwhelming in flavour but were sufficiently different to put them into a nice for a change category.

We were then served two amuse bouche: “Thai Explosion II” which consisted of crispy chicken skin on one side, coconut something on the other and chicken confit and quail egg and the second this Home Made Cheese with Peas and Spring Flowers. The first dish was great but the second dish was, despite how pretty it looked, was very plain tasting, except for the crust of salt! It was like tofu it had so little flavour.

Then it was on to our 6-Course tasting lunch. First course was Mackerel, cream sponge, preserved lemon and wood sorrel dressing. Not a fan of this sadly. The cream sponge rather oddly had the consistency and taste of the home-made cheese from our amuse bouche (namely flavourless and rather like tofu), and the mackerel was much too strong tasting for me, and I like fish! Both Sandra and I agree that the best part of this dish was the preserved lemon. It was the tiniest part of the dish but the best tasting!

The second dish continued on with the looking pretty but containing mild flavour concept. White, green and wild asparagus with milk skin. Very disappointingly bland! Though the clear jelly like “sauce” poured at the table around our dish did have a good asparagus flavour.

A photo break

And on to more food. This is a better close-up of the dish that is sitting in front of Sandra. Acorda de camarao (Confit egg yolk, Japanese prawn, fennel, and bread salsify.) This was very interesting and very rich. The egg yolk had been perfectly cooked and the prawns were fresh. Not sure I was feeling the bread salsify. I’ve had a bit too much of that this year.

The next dishes came as a pair – Bacalhau dos Mundos (Cod of the Worlds). The first thing to come to our table were two orange peels which was part of part one of the dish. Cod influenced by Japan, orange and tomato water, dill , seaweed, orange peel spritzed. Yeah, I couldn’t see the code either.

Part two was nicer – Cod from Portugal with crispy onion and potato and caramelised onion. This was really really lovely! The texture from the crispy onion did well to offset the silken texture of the cod.

Moving on to our meat dish (and our final savory dish) – lamb with coffee, macadamia and broad beans. I’m not a huge fan of lamb but this was actually my favourite dish at lunch. It was so full of flavour and contrasts. Everything that had come before it, with probably the exception of the second part of the cod dish and our amuse, was just too sub-par on the flavour levels.

Desserts were a delight. First a pannacotta ice cream with shiso granite and green apple cubes. I just didn’t like the bowl it came in – because it felt horrible to scoop from, it was like someone running their nails down a blackboard.

Reduced ilk ice cream, condensed milk, cucumber raw, smoked and pickled and black sesame made up our final dessert. I was rather surprised that, despite the different ingredients, that it was very similar to the first dessert. Thought it could have been taken into a totally different direction.

The petit four were interesting – there was a shot glass of cinnamon something, a jelly and then a mushroom (cep) truffle. What? A really odd flavour on the tongue!

So, food was quite below my expectations at Viajante. I was expecting to be stunned, to be surprised, to be excited but I wasn’t. Sure, I could see that there was an attempt to challenge our preconceptions of how food should be delivered and combined but from a flavour-perspective it just didn’t deliver. This was the greatest disappointment of the day. In all other aspects it was an enjoyable experience – the food looked good (though was quite minimalist), the restaurant had a nice relaxed atmosphere, food was pricey (£50 for the 6 courses) but filtered water was free and they didn’t overcharge on our soft drinks, and finally service was great throughout the meal, everyone made an effort to say happy birthday to Sandra and we were each given a menu upon leaving.

Perhaps we just visited on an off day for the kitchen. Reviews seem mixed as to whether food delivers on taste – would I come back again? The jury is still out on that one.