The final stop on the Christmas 2007 Friend Catch Up Express was at my childhood best friend Nic’s house at Springfield Lakes. And didn’t she turn it on. She even managed to turn the wet and cooler weather into something resembling summer at last – I couldn’t believe it – blue sky, sun, drier weather, warmth and humidity (though admittedly we could have all done without this last thing!) It was the most amazing day though later I found out that the weather back on the Gold Coast still hadn’t cleared up. This is the view out of her house. Nice right?

Not only did Paul (Nic’s husband) and Nic put on a very nice barbecue lunch they even opened up their home to a couple of our other friends from school Rod and Andrew, and their partners and in the case of Andrew his cute little daughter Tia, so we could have a proper catch up. Whilst the boys did the whole boys and their barbecues things outside and the kids did the running back and forth thing inside and out, the girls stayed inside in the blessed air-conditioning doing the prepping the rest the meal thing (salads, breads etc.) but also the gossip thing.

Its been a couple of years since I saw these guys and its really nice to see everyone with their partners and families. Nic has a truly gorgeous family with Megan, her oldest child, now in grade 3 but seemingly more mature and a very good help around the house (apparently takes after her Dad) and little Alex who, despite being a boy, is exactly as Nic was when she was younger – all bouncing energy, all hyper active and all happy happy happy. New to the family as well this Christmas was Charlie the Wonder Dog who was adorable. I was trying to sneak him into my bag to take back to London with me but Megan and Alex were a little too sharp for me. 🙂

It was only going to be a matter of time before I had my first drink of 2008. As most people will know my allergy to alcohol means that I don’t drink that much but how I could resist have an Espresso Martini at 1 degree tonight with Jen and James? 🙂

1 degree is a small cosy bar locate on the river at Brisbane’s Eagle Street Pier that offers drinks and dining. Their cocktail menu is very impressive and contained quite a few cocktails you don’t see on the regular cocktail menu. Its a good place to meet and have pre-dinner drinks.

Moving on from 1 degree we braved the awful weather and the fact that I didn’t bring an umbrella (how very un-English of me!) the few hundred metres to F!x’s at the Port Office Hotel. I thought I remembered this restaurant as being a place where you could get really good (and gigantic) mussels and buckets of chips. Unfortunately no mussels this time around (had to settle for swordfish – I know poor me right? heh heh) but we did get some of tastiest chips I’ve had in a while. Sprinkled with what appeared to be a mix of paprika (according to the waitress) and a sugar/salt combination the chips were very mmmmm. Not served in a bucket this time round however. I think I had too many chips as I wasn’t feeling dessert but that didn’t stop Jen and James sharing a “Strawberry semifreddo Martini w burnt honey & vanilla cream” which I must admit I did get a sneaky taste of. I think it was a very good choice for dessert!

It was nice catching up with Jen and James tonight. Both of them have done the whole London thing but decided to come back to Oz permanently so it was interesting to get their take on whether it was the right move or not. I guess everyone has their path to take and mine, for now, remains in London.

I said I was being spoilt on this trip and today it continued at Juanita’s house where she cooked me up a four-course feast. Any excuse to pull out that deep fat fryer for spring rolls and dim sum and to eat spaghetti pizza is a good excuse I reckon. I last saw Juanita in Feb in early 2007 when she’d just had little Ryan (her second) so it was good to check in with her and see how the boys were going and to just generally catch up. Both Hayden and Ryan are growing so quickly. Hayden is just reaching that age when kids are just so much fun to be with – they suddenly have this awareness of what is going on, they can communicate with you and they are just so engaging and charming. Ryan is just about to have his first birthday and even at this age he just wouldn’t be put down for his afternoon nap when he realised how much fun we were having!

After having the yummy lunch that Juanita cooked up for me as pictured below (try and contain your jealousy and your appetites! heh heh) we settled down to having a bit of a play.

Spring Rolls and Dim Sum Starters	The infamous Spaghetti Pizza	Caramel Mudcakes	Macademia Tarts

One of the best things about having kids is that you get to play with their toys. I don’t know about all the other supposed “grown-ups” out there but Juanita and I are just big kids at heart I reckon so we wouldn’t think twice about picking up any of Ryan’s or Hayden’s toys to muck around with. Even sitting there with the kids as they colour in or do their puzzles is okay. Juanita’s latest, I don’t want to say obsession cause it sounds a bit extreme, interest is in the Thomas the Tank Engine & Friend’s wooden train tracks. The good thing about this train track is you can buy the tracks, trains, trees, decorations etc. in individual pieces or packs of x amounts to build your own train track and it can be as big and complicated as you want it to be. The only problem is that to buy original Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends branded items is RIDICULOUSLY expensive. For example, this roller coaster-type track which takes the track up and around a couple of times was something like $230 which is crazy money. So Juanita thought she could try and build something similar. It started off with a cardboard model and moved on to balsa wood:

If there is anyone who can build this type of thing its Juanita. I can’t wait to see the finished product!

After the pampering that Jen gifted with me earlier today Lana and Mike took me out to dinner and dessert in the Valley. I am getting so spoilt on this trip its not funny!

Fortitude Valley, a couple of minutes drive (or a kilometre) from the Brisbane CBD, has seemingly experienced a bit of a revival in recent years and seems now to almost be the place to be for couples and generally the younger crowds. It has always been known as a bit of a hot spot for nightlife but it seems than in only a few years it really has cemented itself as a centre of dining, arts and well, of course, partying.

Kohya

Our first stop tonight in the Valley was at Kohya. We got there just as it was opening and all the chefs, waiters and waitresses were getting their pep talk in the kitchen. It was kind of nice to see that they were all getting gee’d up for a fairly big night it seemed. Bookings are a must at this very popular Japanee BBQ restaurant. As I said we got there for opening but apparently by about 30 minutes into opening the place was packed. However, because we were sort of in a private walled off area I didn’t even notice this until I got up to visit the ladies!

At Kohya you can order off the a la carte menu but if you really want to make the most of your visit you will go for one of the all-you-can-eat BBQ menus where you have a choice of up to 40-48 individual dishes for $40-$50 with offerings such as dried ray wing, garlic & mushroom with butter, edamame, stewed beef, ox tongue, beef rib, beef loin, chicken, pork rib, beef liver, prawns, squid, and japanese curry – all of which you can order as many times as you think you can eat! With the deluxe buffet you also get a selection of sushi and eel. The meats and prawn and squid and the raw vegetables you cook yourself on the grill in front of you. Lana and Mike did a good job of making sure we had a good turnover of food cooked and food ordered. With only 90 minutes to complete the meal you need to be quite efficient! 🙂

Come to Kohya with an appetite, and in fact, I wouldn’t eat at all that day before dinner because the food is not only plentiful but so delicious that you’re going to want to eat as much as you possibly can. It is high quality tasty food, something which I have come to expect from most Japanese restaurants and I wasn’t disappointed.

Freestyle Tout Emporium

You would think that after stuffing ourselves at Kohya there could be no more room for anything … well, going to Freestyle Emporium proved how wrong I was! Freestyle Tout is a dessert cafe and I’m sure the first one that popped up in Brisbane was in Rosalie, about five plus minutes drive from our unit at St Lucia, and we used to visit it quite regularly all those years ago for their decadent desserts. Due to rennovations of the shopping complex that used to house it (or something like that) it has moved to the Emporium in the Valley. This has turned out to be a very good move. It was very popular back then and its even more popular now. Seating in the evening is by first come first serve and its not unusual to see a long line of people waiting to sit down until late into the evening. The Emporium was specifically developed as a retail and dining complex with 35 speciality retailers, restaurants, and cafes (according to the website) including Wagamama and Freestyle. Surrounded by over 230 apartments I think the restaurants and cafes at least never seem to want for customers.

Tonight we were lucky enough to get a table straight away though I think in hindsight I could have done with a bit of a wait to let my dinner settle a bit! ha ha. Apparently you can now also order normal regular meals at Freestyle though when looking around the room it looked like most people were here for desserts. The menu at Freestyle is quite diverse offering the Freestyle spins on traditional desserts such as sundaes, creme brulee, tarts, puddings (including a very rich Saucy Chocolate Pudding that Lana went for), crumbles and cheescakes but also some less traditional desserts such as White Chocolate Raspberry Brioche Dumplings (Mike’s choice!) and White Chocolate Macademia Slice (My choice!).

After all this we rolled ourselves out of Freestyle and to Lana and Mike’s place to check out their wedding vid/photos. Nice!

Today was my first of three days in Brisbane of catching up with a few peeps. Although Brisbane is actually only about 45 minutes drive from my home it just seemed a lot easier to see a few people within the same time frame and stay up in the unit I used to live in when I was at Uni.

My stay in Brisbane started off very nicely with Jen having planned a day of pampering for me. After a quick lunch at the Hanaichi Sushi Deli for some giant sushi rolls that I miss terribly when I’m in London we headed across the road to the Holistic Health Centre for an hour aromatherapy salt glow body scrub and massage. Apparently this centre is very popular for those working in the city as it is conveniently located and fairly flexible. With our package we also had free access to the sauna, steam room, spa and lounge area (where they provided cold water, tea, coffee and sweets.)

The experience was a little different to the treatments in Marrakech in terms of modesty within the treatment rooms. The therapists at the Holistic Health Centre were very concerned never to have me exposed than necessary and this included leaving the room whilst I took my bikini top off, holding the towel up when I had turn over an just generally making sure that towels covered up all pertinent bits at all times. The massage was very nice and seemed to be a mixture of massage styles including relaxation, deep tissue and something else which I didn’t quite catch. All I know is that I’m fairly sure I fell asleep at some stage during the massage! The salt scrub was invigorating though ticklish when my therapist was spreading the salt scrub all over my body.

As if the treatment package at Holistic Health wasn’t enough pampering for me Jen then took me over to the newish Queens Plaza in Brisbane’s Queen Street Mall to Coffee & Chocolate, a cafe serving luxurious hand-made chocolates, cakes and drinks. We both took the Hot Orange Chocololate for a spin and of course couldn’t resist having a few of the chocolates to nibble on. Very rich but very yum.

Frankies Italian Bar and Grill is one of Caro and Nate’s favourite restaurants. They have been talking about it for ages! With restaurants at Knightsbridge, Chiswick, Putney and now Selfridges its clear that this partnership between jockey Frankie Dettori and chef Marco Pierre White is a highly successful one.

The Knightsbridge restaurant is located underground and is decorated to give the impression of intimacy, despite the size of the room, with the dark colours offset by golden balls and mirrors along the wall. Tables are, for once, nicely spaced apart. The restaurants are billed as family restaurants but clearly at this time of year most of the customers appeared to be office/work christmas parties.

Despite booking, when we first arrived we were first directed to a small lounge area near the bar whilst our table was prepared. It wasn’t a particularly busy night but because of an apparent staff shortage service was very slow – it took a while for us to be seated, menus provided, drinks served and eventually food delivered. We were starving by the time our main meals were delivered so just as well we’d ordered a starter and bread to share. Based on reviews of Frankies slow service is pretty much the norm.

The food, when it arrived, was very impressive. Good portions and very tasty. My veal milanese was perfect. Our desserts, when they did finally arrive, were also great and the cheesecake in particular was delicious and huge.

Caro’s Lasagne	My Veal	Our Desserts

Overall, I’m not sure how to judge the restaurant. It was very good food but the speed of the service, though friendly when we got it, was abominable. However we did get some benefits out of it – we given a Frankie’s card which will give us 20% off dining whenever we produce it plus all our desserts were given to us free of charge! So, for the three of us, including service and a couple of glasses of wine and for basically three courses the bill came to just over £45. Not too shabby for a night out in Knightsbridge.

Finding somewhere nice to eat at 11pm on a Sunday night in Covent Garden is surprisingly difficult. Excluding all those tourist traps around Leicester Square tube in the end we were left with a choice of TGI Fridays or Nando’s. Nando’s won it. See how happy we were?