Category Archives: Going Out

Las Vegas Warm-Up

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The alcohol test run tonight for Las Vegas did not go very well at all. Oh – don’t doubt that I didn’t have a good time tonight/last night as I most certainly did but I was very disappointed that taking anti-histamines didn’t stop my body rejecting the alcohol! Laney invited me over hers to try and help me conquer my alcohol “allergy”. She thought – anti-histamines, safe environment, pretty cheap alcohol (we could buy the bottle and mix our own drinks), greasy food, a couch for when I pass out!

It didn’t work 🙁

Laney said I was a really awful drunk. I don’t know what I did that was particularly bad though I do recall asking Jonny to strip … don’t think that was supposed to be on the agenda! I think I also worshipped the porcelain goddess a few times. Maybe that’s why Laney wasn’t impressed – because I couldn’t keep up!

I think it was doing three shots in a minute that did me in …

10th at the Match Bar

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Rehana celebrated her 10th year at work a few weeks ago so James thought it would be a lovely idea to surprise her with some celebratory drinks. I had the task of setting her up and James the task of getting people together for it. It was difficult to get Rehana to a bar without lying about what we were actually going to be doing as we normally go out for a lovely meal or theatre show which requires booking but also I didn’t want to say we were going to be eating somewhere or seeing a show when we actually weren’t! Additionally I couldn’t just tell her to meet at the bar because I know that if she’s early she has no problems with going into the bar/restaurant or venue by herself and we couldn’t have her arriving before anyone else did!

It was very nearly undone by one of our bosses sending her an email to say sorry she couldn’t make the drinks! Luckily she also copied James into the email and as Rehana was not working the day that the email was sent James was able to get IT into her inbox to get rid of it. So funny.

Anyway, we all had a great time at the Match Bar tonight which was very busy by the time Rehana and I walked in at 6.30 but pleasingly it wasn’t difficult to get to the bar for drinks at all, despite various groups setting up camp around it. There is plenty of seating for a relatively small venue though James had thought ahead and booked us an area so there were no problems for us.

Vapiano

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Annie’s sister, who I’ve never actually met, has been visiting with any for the last few weeks (mainly on a whirlwind tour around Spain) but leaves tomorrow to return to Oz. To give her a proper send off Annie got a few of us to come out for a meal. We ended up at Vapiano which is a German Based Italian restaurant chain. Its actually a pretty big chain internationally with locations including Australia, Estonia, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and, naturally, Germany.

This is no ordinary Italian restaurant. It’s a pizza pasta bar where food is made to order. Each customer coming into the restaurant has to pick up a chip card at the front door which you then use to wave in front of the counter when ordering your food and drink. Chargers are then accumulated on the card and there are no problems with splitting the bill. It’s a very casual restaurant with heaps of dining split over two floors. It does get very busy, however, and if you’re in a big group like we were then it could get difficult to find space all in one area. Even on a Sunday night it was heaving.

The great thing about Vapiano is that you don’t have to rely on a waiter or waitress (except to clear the tables) – its help yourself so you can go order your food whenever you want how often you want. This is ideal when in a big group, so you can stagger your orders so you can keep your table, but may be awkward if you’re trying to keep the table but you all want your food at the same time. Because there’s no service there’s no pressure to finish your meal and get out of there so you can stay as long as you like.

Food is surprisingly good and cooked fresh in front of you so you can see it all happening and also customise your dish (in terms of amounts of salt, chilli, pepper, garlic etc.)

An interesting option to add to my portfolio of food.

Mirela visit London

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It has been a long time since I’ve last seen Mirela – gosh it must have been Madrid in June last year and that was only a very fleeting visit. Since then she’s left Madrid, gone to work at a summer tennis camp in the States and then gone back to settle back home in Greece (moving in with her boyfriend to the new apartment that her parents built her) so a lot has happened. Further I don’t think she’s visited London since November 2008.

Although February is probably not the best time for someone who loves the sun and warmth to visit London at least the weather for her this past weekend has been fairly lovely. Especially on Friday when I took the day off from work to spend with her traipsing around London.

In every conversation that we’ve had since she booked tickets to come visit London the very first thing that comes up is Crispy Duck. Her flight was delayed coming in on Thursday night so we didn’t end up leaving Heathrow Airport until just before 9pm. We were both absolutely starving by then so we made our first stop one of my favourite local Chinese restaurants: New Fortune Cookie! We didn’t even bother stopping at home to drop off any luggage – lucky she packed relatively lightly. I love the staff at New Fortune Cookie. I don’t know if they recognise me, I do get take-away and eat-in quite often, but they are always ready to greet me with a friendly smile and friendly service. I also don’t know if they remember Mirela visiting last time and her total obsession with the hoisin sauce they serve with the crispy duck. It was rather amusing! The crispy duck went down an absolutely treat that’s for sure.

This weekend with Mirela wasn’t planned at all which is very unlike me as most people know! But because I also had to consider Sabrina’s plans, one of Mirela’s close uni friends, it was a bit hard to organise anything such as tickets to an event or even to organise drinks. But I think it worked out okay.

As I mentioned Friday weather was absolutely lovely. We started off with coffee for Mirela from Starbucks before walking down Kensington Church Street to get to Giraffe for brunch. Mmmm … love their English Breakfast. Even the vegetarian version, which is what Mirela had, isn’t too bad.

After brunch we headed up the Babylon Roof Gardens for a peak, a quick drop by some of the shops and then it was off to the Tate Modern to meet up with Fabrizio, another of Mirela’s Uni mates. Interestingly this guy never works and has spent most of his 30+ years at school! He has recently decided that he wants to move to Spain somewhere. To do goodness knows what but hey – he seems happy.

The current installation in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall is Miroslaw Balka’s giant grey steel box which is in essence a vast black dark chamber. Its supposed to represent aspects of Polish history (the artist is Polish). Supposedly the experience creates a range of “sensory and emotional experiences … provoking feelings of apprehension, excitement or intrigue.” Er … it was literally a big box (think huge container van) with no lights on inside. We walked up to it, into it, fumbled around, got to the back and then walked out again. Mirela, who can cannily imitate a barking dog, entertained us by displaying her skills and as a result a bunch of teenage girls ran screaming out! Anyway, if a big vast black box sounds like you’re kind of thing you have until 5 April to visit.

Another meal that Mirela was keen to have was sushi. It was kind of awkward timing at 3pm by the time we ate – we returned to HiSushi which was okay but as they were nearly closing down we were pretty much rushed to order our food.

After heading back to my place for a bit of a rest, we’d been walking for quite a few hours by then so we were rather weary!, we headed over to Sabrina’s house for a night out in South Kensington. After a couple of hours mucking around at Sabrina’s we stopped at Carluccio’s for dinner, which as usual even at 10 pm was heaving (we had to wait about 20 minutes for a table”), and then headed to Vendome for some drinks: 3 drinks for £30 – ouch!

Vendome was more bar than club – its quite a small venue with plenty of seating around – so it was quite relaxed but it was filled by what I imagine to be a typical South Kensington crowd. Music was not too bad but quite mainstream. We managed to dance the night away but with the bar closing at 1am it was an earlier end to the night than I was expected. As it turned out it nearly took me two hours to get home anyway – it didn’t help that I was quite a little bit tipsy …

On Saturday we all woke up a little worse for wear – we only had three drinks each at Vendome! But we had planned on a pretty quiet day of shopping at Westfield so it wasn’t supposed to be a demanding day. We made the mistake of trying to lunch at Westfield right in the middle of lunch time. Sabrina was craving Nando’s but the line for it was massive. To be fair the line for most other places was the same. We must have waited nearly an hour – I didn’t think we’d make it we were so hungry!

Surprisingly we actually lasted the whole day in Westfield though Mirela did have a few naps:

Ha ha. Just kidding! We did also spend quite a bit of time admiring the hot guys at Hollister – couldn’t believe there was a queue to even get into that store!

Sabrina then cooked us some dinner at her home:

On Sunday all we had time for was to say goodbye to Mirela. A quick visit but one that we appreciated. Its only now that she’s gone that I’ve realised how much I’ve missed her!

Day/Night in Watford

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A day out in Watford today turned out to be big a day/night affair today. It was a glorious day today which was a good thing because we started off with a few golfing drives at Top Golf. I love coming here – nothing more satisfying than (attempting) to whack the hell out of a little golf ball with a massive driver. For Akh’s birthday I got him a surprise present:

Heh heh.

Although both James and Akh are always trying to beat my long drives at golf on this occasion I had a few lucky hits that got me firstly 144, 152 and then a massive 186 which turned out to be the drive to beat for the day. Just a lucky hit really as I’d been slicing them off the “course” all day (the balls at Top Golf are smart balls but to measure the distance they have to be hit into a legal zone – though we couldn’t really work out the pattern for when a ball would be a good or when it wouldn’t be.

Our game at Top Golf was followed by a take away lunch which we at Akhlaq’s house and then the afternoon and early evening was spent playing the wii! Amazing how time passes so quickly when you’re the wii.

The evening was finished with dinner and sheesha in the cute tent area of a restaurant called Pyramid in Edgware. It was quite funny – especially when I started to get dizzy off the sheesha.

Sheesh … it was only tobacco! Ha ha!

Ice Wharf

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After dinner at Viktor I headed across town to meet up with the trainees at the Ice Wharf in Camden as it was results night and they were all celebrating/commiserating passes/fails. The Ice Wharf must have expected some trouble because they were IDing everyone – irrespective of how old people were. Pete had to head across to a pub on the other side of the lock as he’d forgotten his ID!

I knew that turning up at the Ice Wharf gone 10pm was dangerous as the rest of the group were going to be at least 4 hours of drinking ahead of me! Ha ha! When I turned up James had already pressed a champagne glass into my hands and topped it up within a few seconds. Rather amusing. More amusing was the fact that at one stage a bit later that night Charlotte got a little carried away trying to drink champagne – there were five empty bottles on the table and she tipped each one into her mouth to get the very last drops! LOL!

Jenny sure was happy with passing her last set of exams:

grace kua night

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I always get excited when I see my name has been used for a business whether it be a restaurant, a shop, a building so I got super excited when I heard there was a grace bar opening in London and even more excited when I heard there was a bar named for my last name. Therefore I decided to have a grace kua night for fun.

grace bar turned out to be where sugar reef used to be. I don’t know why they felt they needed to rebrand and refit the bar since sugar reef seemed okay as it was but hey what are you to do. We started with some dinner in the bar section of the grace bar (as opposed to the restaurant) and I’m afraid to say the experience was a little disappointing. Though our waitress was friendly enough when we got her attention – she was not very good at her job and as a result we barely saw her and she forgot one of our orders. Additionally the bar was extremely slow in getting our drinks ready and the kitchen super slow in getting our (overcooked) burgers out to us. Very disappointing and if we hadn’t had the 50% food and drinks voucher I might have had words.

Hilariously I asked for a kahlua and milk drink for my second drink and they served it as two separate drinks:

After our dinner and a couple of drinks we decided to head over to the second half of the evening – the kua bar. The kua bar is located in the Cumberland Hotel just behind Marble Arch. Unfortunately the closest we got was the door because apparently it had shut for the night (it was only 8.15!)! Apparently it’s a bar that the hotel keeps open for as long as they have customers … I guess tonight it was a quiet one.

Lana’s 30th: Sushinho

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The problem with my visit to Sushinho tonight was that I was expecting a restaurant which delivered a meal as spectacular as the one that I’d had at Sushi Samba in New York. Basically the two restaurants have the same premise – the fusion of Brazilian and Japanese cuisine but where Sushi Samba really delivered on presentation and content I felt Sushinho was a little flat. But that’s not to say it was overall a terrible experience because some of the food, the tempura especially, was quite nice.

For starters we all ordered some sushi, whether it was a sushi special or the platter. We were expecting the dishes to come out served individually but for some reason rather than present the dishes separately, to emphasise the ingredients, they piled everything on to one plate. I understand that they were trying to encourage shared eating but when I compared it with the flamboyance of Sushi Samba it kind of paled in comparison. My sushi special was the samba roll (eel and papaya, tobiko, lime dressing, 6pcs) as I can never resist eel. Taste-wise it wasn’t terribly exciting – the eel flavour wasn’t strong and even the lime dressing didn’t even cut through.

Things improved when it came to my seafood tempura. I have to hold my hand up and say that it was quite possibly the best tempura I’ve ever had. The batter was perfectly light and crispy and the dish somehow managed to stay quite warm. It was delicious through and through.

The hot mains (or the sushinho specials and grills as they are called on the menu) are served as is (that is with no accompaniment) so bear that in mind when ordering as you’ll likely need a side of rice or something to bulk up the dish a bit. My dish was actually quite attractive – red snapper fillet with gnocchi (about five pieces) cooked in squid ink, cucumber and fennel salad and black sesame sauce. It was an odd combination but actually worked quite well. At £22 I felt it was slightly over-priced but I guess this is what you get when dining on King’s Road!

We didn’t get to try any of the desserts which was both a curse (cause I love dessert!) and a blessing (saved myself a bit of money!) as Lana had brought her own dessert! We were actually at Sushinho to celebrate Lana’s 30th birthday so she had planned ahead and bought a dozen beautiful cupcakes from Lola’s at Selfridges! How nice of her! The cupcakes were delicious but after a big meal we all got to take a “doggy-bag” cupcake away. Heh heh. I was impressed that the staff didn’t say anything about us having the cupcakes there but to be honest tonight the service was fairly relaxed anyway!

Overall I’d say Sushinho was a nice, though pricey experience. It’s a pleasant atmosphere (room is quite dark and minimalist so quite intimate) and I imagine on a busier night they might even have some funky South American music going on (I didn’t really notice if any was playing tonight as we were to busy chatting!) Not quite as brilliant as Sushi Samba but from the reviews I’ve read it has certainly improved since it opened just over a year ago. I’d really like to see them innovate on their sushi a bit more and work on presentation.

rob’s leaving do

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One of the key officers at our client is sadly leaving our client so I went along to his leaving do tonight. He will be missed!

Its difficult to know sometimes with clients whether its appropriate to go to their social event and what line to draw as to how long you stay, how much you drink etc. but they are a pretty good bunch and didn’t seem to mind that their auditor was out on the drink with them!