For ease of simplicity 1 March has always been heralded as the first day of spring though technically I don’t think its Spring until the middle of March. Still, there were signs that London is starting to thaw out a little. We had a lovely lunch in the beer garden at Anglesea Arms. It was even warm enough, under the sun at least, to sit in just a short sleeved top though I note none of my fellow diners, all English, felt quite brave enough to follow me. Heh heh.

The Anglsea Arms is not a typical pub. Priding itself on daily revolving menu it features such interesting offerings such as a Pint of Prawns; Pigeon, Foie Gras Salad, Pomegranate, Greens; and Pink Veal. I was feeling the Broccoli, Feta and Almond Tart:

Yummo! And what a lovely way to spend a glorious day!

Whilst on our walking tour a month ago Sandra and I had noticed HiSushi across from one of the theatres on our walk. Mostly we noticed that they had an all you can eat sushi menu so we were determined to come back and try it one day. For £14.80 you get as much sushi as you can eat in two hours off a select number of dishes plus up to seven hot dishes (on a once only order).

HiSushi is actually quite an attractive restaurant. On the ground floor there is a koi pool and waterfall out the front and you can sit around the sushi bar. Upstairs most of the tables are sunken into the ground to give the feel that you’re kneeling at the table like a traditional Japanese restaurant.

As for the food the offer sounded too good to be true and it kind of was. Sushi choices were dominated by salmon with the following on offer: Clam Sashimi, Salmon Sashimi, Salmon Ngiri (Sandra’s favourite and probably the best value choice), Inari Ngiri (my favourite even though it was basically only tofu skin stuffed with rice!), Cucumber Roll, Salmon Skin Roll, Salmon & Avocado Roll, California Roll, Spicy Salmon Roll and Spicy Tuna Roll. You could also order for one time only the Tuna Sashimi (which turned out to be rather sad anyway) and the Prawn Tempura Roll. So it was kind of like what should we have – salmon, salmon or salmon? Ha! The sushi itself was pretty good but with the limited choices started to be a bit samey.

The hot dishes sounded promising and included Wasabi Prawn, Chicken Teriyaki, Prawn Tempura and Tonkatsu but they were quite horrible. Serves are small and they crammed all our selections onto one plate so all the flavours contaminated the other flavours. Because its an all you can eat offer they say that they have a right to charge you for uneaten food so we had to great creative and hide some of the uneaten hot food under the lettuce!

Service was decent and, bearing in mind the time limit, they were at least were reasonably responsive in taking our orders for and bring the sushi to us.

Looking at the menu they offer a lot more than what we saw – its seems harsh to judge just on the all you can eat purely for this reason. If you like salmon sushi then Hi Sushi all you can eat menu is for you! Guaranteed you’ll get filled up – we certainly rolled out tonight.

Three people have watched the most recent series of the F Word and immediately texted me to say that they wanted to eat at the restaurants which have been featured on it: Rehana for Simply Thai, Sandra for the steakhouse Santa Maria del Sur and Rache for The Pheasant. Its great how a show like the F Word can generate interest in these local restaurants.

First off the to do list was Simply Thai. Simply Thai is located in Teddington so it is a fair hike to get there. But getting there proved to be the least of our difficulties with our main difficulty getting a booking! Rehana tried the supplied number quite a few times over a course of a couple of weeks and then I tried my hand too. Every time we called the line either kept ringing or was diverted to a message. Finally by sheer luck I got through to someone and made our booking for tonight.

Patria Weerapan is the chef/owner of Simply Thai. I didn’t see any of the episodes of the F Word but I read that she is a bit of a tough cookie. She practically prepares and cooks all dishes that she serves at the restaurant which, sounds great until you get to the practical application of it. There is no doubt that this one-woman wonder is a hard worker. The restaurant reached the semi’s of the F Word so I was expecting good things.

We were, unfortunately, a little late for our reservation (just over 10 minutes) however I did try and call the restaurant to let them know but, like our problems trying to make a reservation in the first place, no one was picking up. When we got to the restaurant we very nearly were turned away. The restaurant is extremely tiny (seating at the most about 35) and was surprisingly full (I think with mostly loyal locals) with not many empty tables. (In fact at least tow other groups who’d not made any bookings had to be turned away).

We were quite disappointed that they’d already given our table away after 10 minutes. In the end we had to sit at one table whilst we waited for some other diners to finish. It was not a great start.

Finally after half an hour we were moved to another table. It would be another 40 minutes after that before our first course was delivered so we entertained ourselves trying to work out which celeb was sitting at the table next to us (it turned out to be tv presenter Andy Peters). Unfortunately for the restaurant the two waitresses couldn’t handle the busy restaurant. Though they were friendly girls they were seemingly run off their feet and when combined with the fact that there is only one chef in the kitchen to prepare all these dishes efficiency was not the order of the day.

We started with Grilled Spicy Prawns and Chicken Satay. The prawns were amazing – juicy and tender and succulent. The Chicken Satay, whilst tasty, was not the best I’ve ever had but they were fine to plug a little of the whole in or stomachs! For mains we had ordered three dishes: Crispy Sea Bass on Jungle Curry vegetables (a signature dish and cooked on the F Word), Massaman Curry beef and Spicy Braised Aubergine. Strangely the Massaman Curry didn’t arrive until way after we were on the way to finishing our sea bass and aubergine dishes. All three dishes were lovely and, to my taste buds’ pleasure, slightly sweet. The aubergine was my favourite dish of the lot. Interestingly Simply Thai offer Brown rice of which we ordered one serve at first but had to order a second order of rice (Jasmine this time) as it was clear the one wasn’t enough.

By the time we’d finished our mains (around 9.30pm) I was reaching, or actually had reached, my fullness tipping point. I adore desserts however and it didn’t take much from Rehana to convince me to try something. Rehana tried the Coconut Crème Brulee and I, of course, went for the traditional Thai sticky rice pudding with fresh mango (which again was cooked on the Fword though that wasn’t the reason I went for it – I’m a sucker for rice pudding). I really liked my rice but Rehana said she could barely taste the coconut in her dessert.

Overall, food-wise, I’d say it was pretty good though, in all honesty, not exactly worth an effort for us to come all the way out from Central London. I’d reckon this would be pretty popular with the locals though. Service-wise they really struggled to cope with a full restaurant from the waitresses to Patria in the kitchen. It’s a shame because I’m sure if she got some help into the kitchen and the wait-staff to ease the strain her business would be vastly improved.

It was a triple threat date today being Valentine’s Day, Chinese New Year and Caro’s Birthday! To celebrate Caro’s official birthday we headed to Princess Gardens. Normally I would say that Princess Gardens is a 100% guaranteed a great experience for yum cha but today, on arguably one of their busiest days of the year, they really struggled. Although they weren’t officially taking bookings, seating on a first come first serve basis, Caro had called ahead a couple of weeks earlier to reserve a slot. I don’t know how the not taking bookings but taking bookings tricked work but we were more than happy to walk past the groups crowding the entrance and lounges of Princess Gardens to a table.

Service was rather abrupt and short. I don’t know why Princess Gardens didn’t have more staff on as clearly they were going to need them! Food took a while to come out and then we almost felt like we couldn’t order additional rounds (thought that didn’t stop us.) I was not impressed when we ordered crispy duck and though they prepared our first round of pancakes for us they took away the rest of the duck! Not good. I didn’t think the food, when it arrived, was up to the usual standards though it was still delicious and as we were all famished soon disappeared from our table.

Aside from the slightly les than ideal service and food we still had a lovely time. Overate as usual but hey – isn’t that the point of going out? Heh heh.

Satori Robata is another Japanese restaurant located in Knightsbridge so I was hoping for an experience that was a little better than Viktor. Disappointingly we didn’t get it. 50% off (which is the offer we were taking advantage of from top table) is no excuse for 50% off service and food quality.

To be fair the service wasn’t bad however there were a number of occasions where the restaurant fell down – they forgot to deliver our order of tempura and it was difficult to get the attention of the waitress even though we had a button (once we had to push it a few times before anyone came over). Once we got service, however, it was very friendly and very good. Our waitress was genuinely upset that we hadn’t got our order and one of the chefs apologised for not delivering it etc.

At Satori Robata there are two eating sections – around the conveyer belt for the more casual diner, that was us, and at proper tables which was located down stairs. Eating around the conveyer belt was a bit strange. Atmosphere was a bit lacking and it didn’t help that the sushi belt was awkwardly positioned particularly where we were sitting with a very narrow wall behind us. At least they spread customers out around the belt so that we weren’t jammed together. If there is one thing that can be learned from Yo Sushi is that hooks for bags or coats under the table are handy. Normally the seats at the conveyer belt don’t have any sort of back upon which coats and bags can be hung so without one you’re left with having it either scattered on the ground or inconveniently balanced on your lap.

Because of the friendliness of the waitresses I really wanted them to succeed but sadly they didn’t live up to expectations. Food-wise – the food on the belt was not very fresh and were clearly not turned over much. At least on our offer we could order from the menu (unlike at Yo Sushi were you must eat off the belt to take advantage of any discounts) so I would recommend that is what you do when you dine here. Without a discount food would have been very expensive with plates ranging from £1.75 at the cheapest up to £5.55 at the most expensive. Hot food wise you can also order yakitori averaging around £3.00 for a couple of sticks or go for something like seafood tempura for £10.90 or, the disappointing, duck teriyaki for £14.95 which was two very small duck breasts. Tempura was light but tasted like old oil, chicken was very tender (in both the karaage and the yakitori) as was the duck and beef. But all were lacking in serious flavour. In fact even the wasabi and soy seemed a bit “faded” in their flavour.

Would I come back here? At 50% off and on another night when the kitchen crew were in better shape I might possibly give it a second chance.

Its nearing Chinese New Year so Chinese restaurants across London are starting to bring out some special dishes. We have been waiting for the golden custard buns to become available at Phoenix Palace for a while now and how happy were we to find out they were available today! But one custard bun a meal does not make so we made a slight detour to have some yum cha dishes and to sample something new. What I love about Phoenix Palace is that although it has some of the usual sorts of dishes you expect on the menu they also do some dishes, and not a prohibitive prices like Hakkasan or Plum Valley, which you wouldn’t find in many other Chinese restaurants. Our new dish of the day was Yin Yan Fried Rice (Chicken in Tomato Cooli & Prawn in Egg Glazed on Fried Rice). It was gorgeous! I’d have eaten the whole thing if I wasn’t leaving room for the custard bun …

And then the dish we were waiting for – the golden custard buns:

Remind you of anything?

The buns were delicious though we have subsequently deducted that the cause for the liquidy goodness inside was a heck of a lot of butter! However that won’t stop me having another one next time I’m in the neighbourhood …

Laney got back to London a couple of days ago after spending a couple of months back in sunny Perth over Christmas and New York. To welcome her back her flat hosted a sushi party. Sushi is a great idea and I love going out for sushi but when you put it into practice at home you generally end up with a whole load of sushi made with only one ingredient! because as you can imagine you don’t need a whole lot of ingredients with the main component being rice!

Therefore the idea of a sushi party is great because you get to share your sushi creation with a load of people which means a wider variety in what you’re sampling.

We had a great night tonight. The superior sushi maker was definitely Randy, who took to it like he was an expert (he’d done it once or twice before) even going for an inside out roll and attempting ngiri. My sushi roll, though not the most professional, was the most definitely the largest though I had a hard time sealing it with all the ingredients I’d stuff into it. Tasty though. Heh heh.

How cute is Laney’s rice cooker (the little one on the left)!