Rache is pretty good at getting all her friends together for whenever she is in town for a visit – or it could be a sign that we miss her terribly whilst she has been living in Edinburgh! – and this weekend’s visit was no different. Though a few of us were nursing a bit of hangover from the previous night’s festivities, we all made it to a very boisterous and long lunch at Fire and Stone. Its kind of funny – though we individually each have strong connections with Rache and in fact have met each other on numerous occasions before hardly any of us catch up with each other when she is not around!

To celebrate Christmas Fire and Stone had a special Turkey Pizza on their menu. It was a Roasted Turkey, roast potatoes, chestnut and onion sage stuffing, pork and apricot sausage meat, brie, cranberry sauce and grav – who couldn’t resist it. Mmmm …

After Fire and Stone we rolled over to Bar Ciao Caffe, as is now tradition, for some of their funky ice cream concoctions. We lost a few people to various other commitments but still had a rather large group for the venue to handle – we ended up squeezing on to a table fit only for about 6 people max. heh heh. Nice and cosy.

Surprisingly Cam and Matt ordered what was probably the girliest items on the menu … though admittedly the strongest for alcohol 🙂

Nic and I opted for the kiddy ice creams – hers was supposed to be a clown (I think) and mine was supposed to resemble a bee.

Good times.

Tis the season!

Today was my first Christmas party celebration for the season. Our work do was lunch at one of local pubs, the Dove. I haven’t been to the Dove in years but its location by the river ensures it is popular year round. I was fascinated to see that they even allowed pets inside. So cute!

The Dove is very intimate and cosy inside. A few other departments were having their Christmas lunch today too but we were by far the biggest group. I was very surprised that the Dove did really well with our food – no big mistakes were made and they even showed some flexibility with some of the dishes to suit people’s diets. There was some ordering in advance but that couldn’t prevent last minute changes which included people arriving late!

I was very impressed with all the food that we had. Tasted really good and was extremely filling. We had a great lunch and then headed over to the Ruby Grand for the rest of the night.

Not many photos as I’m still too new to work to reveal my true paparazzi side. Heh heh.

Rehana generously had James, D and I over for a meal at her house tonight.

There is nothing better than a proper home-cooked curry made from scratch. It was obvious from all the activity going on in the kitchen and the pots on the stove that Rehana had put in a lot of effort and preparation in making our dinner tonight.

Doesn’t it all just look awesome!

Mmm … It’s a shame Indian curries are so filling – I could have gone on eating it all night.

Groupon recently had a deal where you paid £39 for what was purportedly a £120 six-course meal for two at Zen China. I was looking forward to what sounded like a nice meal at Zen China – the Chinese restaurant which is set within County Hall. The restaurant admittedly has a nice view and with the snow having fallen slightly it was very scenic indeed looking out. The fact I made much of the view looking out of the windows shows just how impressed I was by what was going on inside … which is to say not much at all!

For the six courses you could choose amongst the following options (the ones with asterisks next to it are the ones we decided to eat tonight)

By implication, the restaurant values each dish, on average, at £20! Imagine if you’d picked the steamed rice as one of your six courses and were paying full price you’d probably be feeling just a bit ripped off.

The duck was personally carved up by one of the chefs. They did the trick where they make the pancake for you and as a result instead of getting all of the duck you end up getting only half (at most) of the actual portion. They did come back and serve a bit more of the duck but certainly not the entire portion.

The rest of the food was disappointing. Each dish, apart from the Imperial Fried Rice, was basically a fried dish. Sure I would expect that for the Beef Strips but certainly not the sea bass and the king prawn. This ended up being basically a sweet and sour dish and then the meatballs were yet another version of a sweet and sour. The rice was hardly memorable.

The service was friendly with the waitress making lots of small talk with us. However, considering the restaurant was not very full, they didn’t pay too much attention to tables so, for example, getting our waters topped up and getting the bill proved difficult as we could never see where the wait staff were, or could see they were way over the other side of the room (it’s a pretty long room.)

Even on the groupon deal I didn’t feel Zen China made the most. They certainly didn’t have to fry and overcook everything and the wait staff really could have done with monitoring the room more closely. Not sure I’ll be rushing back over the Zen China in a rush.

James and I trundled over to D’s house today for a spot of home cooking by D and also, probably for the first time ever in history, to watch one of the Twilight movies where the ratio of males to females was in favour of the males. Ha! James I still can’t believe you maintain that when we went to watch New Moon the male/female split was even. Ha again!

D has certainly mastered the art of understated cooking. The whole process seemed so simple – a few cracks of pepper here, a bit of herbs there, some chill for bite on to the duck and into the oven she goes. In the meantime whilst that was cooking he also prepped up some salmon and prawns for our starters. Mmm ….

The duck came out gorgeous and though the potatoes were admittedly already pre-cooked they still roasted up very nicely. A great meal indeed by D and when visiting D you certainly can’t complain that he doesn’t feed you. I don’t think I’ll need to eat for a week … at least!

Sandra and I thought we should put our sushi making lessons to use by making dinner. It also was a good opportunity to check out her and Jules’ new digs.

We started the day by heading off to a farmer’s market to get some fresh salmon and other ingredients. Going to the local markets has a sense of rightness both in the freshness of the foods and also the feeling you’re supporting locals and not just a giant company. Then we went to the giant company, Waitrose, to get the rest of our ingredients. Ha ha.

Sushi making is a lot of fun. But the problem with sushi is that you use a heck of a lot of rice but you can only really feasibly used a small portion of your ingredients. As a result I think I ate more crab sticks and salmon and prawns than actually went into our sushi. Heh heh.

I can’t say I’m the best sushi roller in the world – in fact I’m downright horrible as I can never get the ingredients centred and I always over-fill the sushi but you gotta admit that no matter how bad you are the end product still looks pretty. The ones that look the best are Sandra’s!

Its fair to say we made way too much sushi – even for three people we had enough leftovers to feed ourselves for at least another meal.

Its been nearly a year since I ate at the Babylon Roof Gardens. On my last visit the food looked really good but I couldn’t taste any of it because of my cold! Its no hardship to visit the restaurant since is nearly practically in my neighbourhood and with me working just down the road for the time being it couldn’t have been easier to meet Su Yin there for dinner tonight. Approaching winter it gets really dark pretty quickly now so it was certainly a different feel to the lunch time visit I had previously.

Happy to see the fish were still there though in the toilets … well, as a wall between the men’s and ladies’ facilities anyway …

We ate off a set meal deal. Options on the menu were actually pretty good though, as usual, limited to three choices for starters, mains and dessert. Oh, we did get some bread … which had Su Yin engaged in taking inappropriate photos of … but the lighting was really too low to get a proper picture of the bread.

For starters neither of us could go past the promise of truffle in the Truffle Risotto. The portion size wasn’t huge but more than enough to get us started with our meal. Looks a bit scary up close but gratified to see plenty of evidence of truffle oil and truffle shavings.

For mains we had a choice between Pork Belly, Salmon and Butternut Squash Lasagne. All three very empting, even the vegetarian option, but certainly the pork belly was always going to pretty much get my vote. Especially as it too came with a truffle vinaigrette. Su Yin’s choice was the Salmon. Both looked very appetising and I was very happy to see both were wonderfully colourful and balanced out with some green. Pork Belly was lovely … though most people might say there was a bit too much fat. But you’ve gotta have the fat to make it tasty! Perfect crackling on top too.

Desserts were an absolute treat. Rather randomly the Crème Brulee, catching my eye because the brulee was supposedly infused with cinnamon, came with a Granny Smith apple juice served in a shot glass. Su Yin’s White Chocolate & Cranberry Cheesecake was less one cheesecake than a trio of desserts and included a chocolate madeleine and sorbet. You’d only deduct which of her three items was the cheesecakes from the fact you would recognise what the other three items were! And following the trend of the moment the cheesecake contained popping candy …

I was very impressed with the food at Babylon Roof Gardens tonight. On the set menu the food was certainly good value for money. Service was decent tonight without anything really to rave about.