Category Archives: Going Out

Fatkins’ Housewarming/30th

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Fatkins’ has done what I haven’t so far – bought some property! It was a bit a chore at the time but he says he was really lucky in that the first place he saw was the one he wanted. I’m still in the process of looking but can’t find anything yet! (And that’s before even seeing whether I can afford to buy a place!)

So, to celebrate his being able to finally move in and feel settled in his new home, plus with his 30th just around the corner, he had a few of us over to rock the neighbourhood. 🙂

Some pics from the night courtesy of Wongo:

Fulham v Boro

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Yep its that time of year again when Fatkins, Lofty, Jules and I head to Craven Cottage to check out the Fulham v Boro football match. I can’t believe at nearly 4.5 years in London the only Premiership matches I’ve seen in my time here are between these two teams! Ha ha.

We started off with a lovely lunch from The Coat and Badge. Not unexpectedly for a game day it was absolutely packed and when combined with a big Christmas party it meant that at one stage they had to shut the kitchen until they caught up on orders. We managed to get our lunch in on time but sadly we couldn’t get any dessert so we stopped at a corner store where Jules bought us some chocolate bars.

Both Leah and Caz were also coming to this match which was good timing and we found out we were even seated in the same section though they ended up on the other end of the row about a couple of rows in front of us so I didn’t catch up with them until after the match when we went and had a few drinks at Fulham Broadway.

Being winter the day moved slowly from a lovely Saturday afternoon, followed by a gorgeous sunset and then dark just like that!

The game was actually a really good one for once. Lots of goals scored and even though we didn’t get to the predicted 7-3 score line (Lofty’s prediction) the game did get pretty close. More goals scored today than at the total of the three games we’d seen before! Most of the action ended up at our end too so that was quite cool.

Another Christmas catch-up and the Leicester Square Christmas Fair

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I met up with Rehana and Alli tonight for a bit of a catch up tonight at FuLuShou at the Empire Casino. Between Rehana now being a mother of two and Alli expecting we had a lot of baby talk tonight! But I still quite enjoyed hearing their various stories … not that it means I’m feeling clucky or anything of course. Ha ha.

FuLuShou was also hosting a few Christmas parties tonight and I managed to convince the waitress to give us one of the Christmas crackers to have at the end of our dinner. The crackers were a lot more sophisticated than the ones we’ve previously had at our Christmas lunches. The cracker was even wrapped in paper intertwined with felt. Very decadent.

Alli left at about ten but Rehana and I hung around a bit more having a bit of a catch up. We then headed for a walk around the Leicester Square Christmas Fair. Its not particularly huge but it certainly was attracting a fair (ha ha) number of customers. In particular the stalls where you win giant prizes were very popular. I was trying to convince Rehana to enter the basketball one but she couldn’t be convinced …

Bluebird Restaurant

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For our last meal as the current team Jenny and I decided we needed to find a nice venue for our Christmas lunch. Toptable and the credit crunch were more than happy to oblige in delivering to us the Bluebird Restaurant in Chelsea.

Bluebird Restaurant is quite a hike from any nearby tube stations so bus is the best option for getting to this restaurant (that is, unless you can afford a chauffer like many of the locals …)

We took advantage of the lunch deal on toptable (some set course meal) and it turned out to be very good value for money for the quality of the food that we got and even the portion sizes. I have a big appetite (as everyone knows!) and even I was full after the first two courses which consisted of a beautiful velvety and rich mushroom soup and perfectly cooked steak with side of fries. We were also served some delicious buns baked fresh on the premises to accompany the meal.

The restaurant itself is very attractive. The room is gorgeous with high ceilings (so feels particularly light and airy) and funky furniture. Sadly we weren’t lucky enough to see any celebs during our dining experience but apparently it is a frequent celeb hangout and I don’t blame them for coming to this lovely restaurant. Service was pretty good although strangely they were quite slow with pouring our wine. Wine was hidden away behind our booth in an ice bucket so we never knew how much was left.

Christmas party 2008

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Getting up this morning for our area team’s official Christmas party for the year was a little bit difficult. I could barely walk because my feet were still so sore from dancing last night after the London conference. The only consolation was that we didn’t have to meet until 10.30 where other teams were meeting for 8.30!

We started the day in a pub in Holborn with a very tough quiz! It was all done in good spirits though with the highest score being about a 50% correct answer rate we were certainly scratching our heads on many of the questions.

We then headed over to Boulevard Bar Brasserie for lunch. This was an exercise of controlled chaos with three big groups (our group along must have been greater than 30) having their Christmas party there. The pros with this restaurant were that they were very flexible. Whilst most other places at this time of year require confirmed numbers and meals pre-selected before sitting Boulevard Bar Brasserie were happy to flex our numbers and didn’t require us to pre-select meals. Though this worked well on the one hand (as it turned out numbers for us kept fluctuating as people went off sick etc.) it also worked to our disadvantage with delays in our meal coming out. Between our starters and mains there must have been at least an hour if not more to wait. In this time a good deal of wine was consumed as you can imagine as we waited for our food so probably the restaurant was happy. Service was pretty good considering how many of us were there. Food was fairly ordinary and my turkey seemed a tad dry and overcooked. Not gigantic portions so even after our desserts a number of us were still fairly peckish.

Overall not too bad for lunch for Christmas but at the price we paid I’ve experienced better. Because the restaurant was quite relaxed I must say that it’s the longest we’ve ever spent in a restaurant for a Christmas do. Normally they are keen to get you in and out but we must have easily spent four hours in there!!

Finally, we moved on to the Bier Bunker in Covent Garden for drinks. It was clear that other companies had the same idea as to even get into the place you needed to be checked off the list. They seem to relax that a bit later on but seemed fairly strict for a bar at 4pm but I guess it was a very busy time of year.

I left the beer buying to the boys. Bier Bunker is a microbrewery so has a wide variety of beers on tap. Space-wise it seems quite large with a third of the room dedicated to long (for sit-down) tables and the other parts to empty space surrounded by more couches. Strangely empty for most of the early evening it suddenly seemed to get very busy very suddenly with heaps of people on the dance floor. We eventually also headed out to the dance floor and by the end of the night I was lucky to be able to physically get home – me feet were sooooo sore I was tempted to crawl the last few hundred metres home!!

London Conference Makarena

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Every year at work we have a London conference which is really the only time that everyone, admin/audit/support, trainees/principle auditors/managers etc. in the London region is together. It ends up being quite a good day because even though the messages during the day tend to be quite dry the champagne open bar session at the end of the day makes it all much better (ha ha.) This year, being held this side of Christmas, it almost operated as a kind of quasi-Christmas get together too with many people partying on at the Camel afterwards including having a bit of a boogey.

We even had a makarena line going:

Skating at Natural History Museum and Strawberry Moons

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Social ice skating I guess is a typically girlie thing to do. Admittedly there are quite a few guys out there strutting their stuff but for some reason most of the guys I know are just not into it with most of them citing a fear of getting their fingers sliced off as their reason for not coming! So, tonight a bunch of us girls including Rita, Caz, Leah, a few of Rita’s girlfriends and one token male (Werner from Austria not Australia) ventured out to the Natural History Museum.

It’s a beautiful venue for skating with the twinkling fairy lights in the surround trees and the gorgeous building of the museum itself in the background. Quite magical.

For the most part getting our skates was relatively straight-forward though getting served was a bit haphazard with some staff handing out skates only and one member of staff doing the coat/bag checks which made queuing and orderly progression a bit haphazard. The good thing was that the coat/bag check guy was really good and we were able to check in at least four items for the price of one!

The vibrant blue skates for hire were a bit more painful than I’ve had in the past. As usual sizing was a bit of a quandary for me and I had to exchange my size 6 boots (normally I think I’m a UK size 5 in shoes) for a size 7 (fairly easy to do) to get something remotely resembling comfortable. I knew I was in for a world of pain though as soon as I stood up I could already feel an ache in my arches.

We got out on to the ice fairly quickly after the zambonie had done its task of re-melting and smoothing the ice out and it was darn slippery at first. After a very scary wobble when I thought I was going to go down I managed to recover and things after that were fairly smooth sailing. That is, if you don’t count Caz zooming around trying to take us all down! Ha ha. Rita proved to be the expert on the ice with Caz just behind her. Both could seriously motor around the rink whereas I resorted to mainly skating very close to the wall.

Showing once again that the world really is a small place one of Rita’s girlfriend’s girlfriend was a girl who’d gone to school with one of my brothers and who’d been a couple of grades behind me at school so it was good to see and catch up with her.

We all had a great time out on the ice and only one casualty really and that was Caz who took a dive early on. Unfortunately the photographic evidence of this fall was on her camera! LOL

After the ice skating we headed on to Strawberry Moons to dance off more of our energy. We didn’t think it would have a cover charge as we got there for just before 10pm but they were charging £8! It was pretty crowded on the dance floor with lots of Christmas parties and hen does. One group in particular was really getting into it with their very elaborate costumes – Strawberry Moons just seems to attract this type of clientele.

Flame at the Empire

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As I clearly eat out in London quite a bit sometimes I feel the pressure to find somewhere interesting and different to eat when people rely on me to choose a venue. I’m also conscious that I shouldn’t choose anywhere too prohibitively expensive for people. Toptable has definitely been my friend this year in providing me with dining options – tonight’s venue for a catch up with Rita and Ade was Flame at the Empire Casino. I used to work with the two of them at my current work place and strangely we never really went out when we were working together. Time to rectify that!

I’ve written before about the Empire’s other restaurant (FuLuShou) and in Flame you get, I guess, Grill/Modern European options versus the Orienal options at FuLuShou. The restaurants in the Empire are like hidden little gems – not overly busy but with the buzz of the casino around you the restaurants have a nice atmosphere and deliver some high quality food.

The set menu at Flame is quite simple but I believe provide good options for most palettes. Interestingly all three of us ended up choosing exactly the same thing for our three courses tonight – Pumpkin Soup, Grilled Salmon and Sticky Toffee Pudding! Another case of great minds thinking alike.

All three dishes were perfectly cooked and so tasty. Not so heavy as to sit in your stomach and make you too tired for a bit of a tipple on the casino floor of course. 😉 The service at Flame was great as well. The right level of attentiveness, extremely friendly and efficient.

After dinner I also took Rita and Ade down to the casino floor. I wasn’t actually going to even play tonight, and despite how it may appear that wasn’t the reason I chose Flame as a venue tonight, but the blackjack was too tempting. We ended up staying and entertaining ourselves for another couple of hours though poor Ade and Rita did have to watch me work the table for a little bit. They brought me luck though so I was happy with that. 🙂

It was great to catch up with the pair of them tonight. Good to hear that they’re both happy in their new jobs though from what Rita says she could do with a bit more work! Be careful what you ask for I told her! I’m always happy to find new playmates and even though it looks like Rita will be heading back to Oz mid-next year I’m looking forward to doing more things with the both of them over the next few months. Not sure we can convince Ade to go ice-skating with us though …

The Graduation

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One year in the making Mirela was awarded her Masters today. The year has fairly flashed by since I met her and she began her Masters. Mirela jokes that in my reviewing and editing her assignments I contributed somewhat to her award. Ha ha. I ended up taking half a day from work to attend the graduation which was held mid-afternoon at the Barbican. I’ve never actually been into the Barbican and I must admit it was an impressive and nice venue for the graduation. When I arrived the Barbican was fairly buzzing with all the students and friends and families milling about.

For some reason Mirela’s class (admittedly pretty small with about 15 graduating students) was being awarded their Masters with the School of Architecture students. The graduation ceremony itself was not very exciting. Various official people gave some speeches with a guest speech and honorary distinction being awarded to some dude who, though graduating with fairly average marks, has gone on to be revolutionary in charitable work in building and architecture. After he gave his speech is was a matter of sitting through and clapping through what felt like a couple of thousands of students! It did go by very quickly but my hands were a bit sore from all the clapping. Sadly two students had died since finishing their course so their degrees/masters were awarded posthumously. As you can imagine they got some of the biggest claps and congratulations.

Tickets to the graduation ceremony had to be paid for and this was to cover, presumably, the hire of the hall, tea/coffee/champagne/juice and biscuits. The price, which I can’t recall how much, was pretty cheeky really for what was served.

After the ceremony we headed to a nearby Italian where Mirela’s parents shouted the bunch of us (the family, Enrique (Mirela’s boyfriend), Mirela’s cousin Harry, Sabrina (who had also finished her Masters but had chosen not to go to the ceremony) and Sabrina’s boyfriend) the celebratory dinner which was nice of them!

We finished the evening by heading over to St Katharine’s Docks near Tower Hill for a couple of drinks. St Katharine’s Docks is really very pretty and it’s a shame to say I’ve never been there in my years in London. By the time we got there it must have been about 9.30 or so – so it wasn’t too busy and actually most restaurants/bars seemed to be closing. However the Prohibition Bar was still open for business. Actually part restaurant part bar Prohibition was pretty cool. There was also plenty of seating as it was relatively quiet. Drinks were impressively reasonable and different from the usual offerings – including the non-alcoholic versions.

The night couldn’t last too long as we all had to get up before 5 the next morning so that everyone could catch their flights to Madrid so we managed to catch pretty much the last tube home. Hopefully Mirela had a nice day today!

The Greeks descend – Part 2

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After the Good Food Show I caught up with Mirela and co for drinks before Mirela headed off to pick up her boyfriend from Victoria. Whilst she took him back to Sabrina’s house to settle in and for some dinner I went for a walk with Mirela’s Mum, sister and Aunt from Westminster to Trafalgar Square. It was a beautiful evening for a walk if a bit nippy.

Currently at Trafalgar Square they have a new art installation called under scan which runs from dusk until midnight.

The concept behind the installation is that motion detectors will sense whenever someone is standing within the installation and this will trigger a very life-like projection of video portraits on to the ground that will “shadow” you. It was pretty cool and the projects were very effective.

Some video footage here:

After this little walk (which ended up being a couple of hours) I met up with Mirela and Enrique again for a drink at Eclipse in South Kensington. Mirela’s cousin Harry also joined us. Eclipse wasn’t a very big bar/club (not sure what it was) but it was pretty busy for a Sunday evening. It seemed to be split into two rooms – one side filled with dancers and the others with sitters. By the time it was all done I got home for 2. Thank goodness Harry drove me home otherwise I may have been asleep on a London night bus somewhere. I think I’m going to be a little tired tomorrow!