Tonight was my third visit to Plum Valley in practically as many months and tonight Pat and I absolutely feasted.

In addition to starters of Ribs and Salt and Pepper Squid (which I’ve had on previous occasions to equal success) and mains of Mongolian Filet Steak (not as good as the time I had it with Caro) and Black Cod Tobanyaki (which whilst tasty has me suspecting that Black Cod is seriously overrated) we also had a mid meal dish of Chilli Garlic Crab!

The crab kind of came between our Starters and Mains and probably took us nearly an hour to finish on its own. It was sooo good and such good value at the 50% price of £9! Delicious.

After finishing our savoury dishes I was seriously feeling like I was just about ready to blow up but, in my warped mind, felt I could still fit in a bit of Willow Dew Cream which is a soupy dessert. It was yummy but totally unnecessary. Oh my stomach!!

Pat and I learned our lesson from last year’s Christmas meal so made sure to plan for half as much food for our meal this year. Though we loved the food eating for ten hours was way excessive!

We planned only four courses this time around:

– Jalapeno and cheese bread rolls
– Singapore chilli crab
– Roast chicken, gratinated potato, roast potato, carrot, broccoli, pepper
– Pear crumble with ice cream

However, Pat forgot to pick us up some crabs so we didn’t get to eat the chilli crab! A bit disappointed but he was able to find some substitutes in his freezer with steamed barbecue pork buns and toasted turnip cakes. Mmm …

Throughout the day after saying Merry Christmas to Australia we snacked on the bread rolls and the turnip cakes whilst watching DVDs. As our menu wasn’t so involved this year there was less action in the kitchen and in fact Pat did most of the work anyway as I was distracted by counting the vodka bottle change so it was a pretty relaxed day. heh heh.

Pat’s roast chicken was yummo (had to have two serves!) and the roast potatoes rate a very very special mtion. Still, there was heaps of room for the pear crumble with loads of ice cream. Mmmm …

Merry Christmas all!

Lana, Mike and I dropped in to Inn Noodle for a quick dinner tonight before heading off to see Avatar. This restaurant has been in my neighbourhood for a while but with a ton of other Chinese restaurants on the very same road with two of them in particular being a favourite of mine I’ve never visited. After tonight’s experience I’m not sure I’ll come back!

The signs that Inn Noodle were good was positive with lots of “native” people inside and it was also very full and busy. We were sat immediately despite how busy it was and we were entertained by the interactive tv at the end of our table.

Service wasn’t exactly great though we got what we ordered for in fairly short order. Food, however, was disappointingly flavourless and unimaginative. We had a few dim sum dishes and a big noodle soup. I wasn’t very enthused and neither were Lana and Mike. Think we left about 70% of our noodle soup behind.

Yep – not even the fact that Gordon has been the restaurant would probably encourage me to come back

How cute are these truffles that Caroline, a trainee at work, made

However, it was almost a mistake to eat it at morning tea as I started to get a bit dizzy from the strong alcohol content!

Jenny was back at Hammersmith for the afternoon so we decided to go out and try a restaurant that we’ve never been to but always wanted to try: Seasons Dining Room.

They have this lunch time deal where for a price you get a box which consists basically of your starter, main and dessert in one. Its an interesting concept. The positives are that:
– you can choose any starter, main, side and dessert that you want (though from a limited list)
– before food comes you’re served some lovely bread with gorgeous garlic butter and
– the food looks pretty attractive

Unfortunately the food only looked good. I so wanted to like it but everything in my box just didn’t have any flavour – its like the chef had forgotten to season it! And though the concept of having all your food at once was okay logistically it was difficult to eat and food rapidly cooled before it could be eaten.

Our waiter was also absolutely rubbish – I couldn’t understand what he said and he wasn’t very friendly at all. Though, to be fair, he didn’t make any mistakes with our order.

If I come again I’ll be sure to ask for extra salt (and I never ever add salt to anything if I can help it) and extra service!

Braving the snowy and chilly conditions I headed out to Brent tonight to meet Rehana for a meal. I figured since she always comes in to central the least I could was head out her way now. To be honest, however, I could have picked a nicer day to attempt my travel! Severe delays on practically every transport route but hey – I’m nothing if persistent.

Mesopotamia serves traditional Arabic cuisine in a very attractive setting. According to their website the restaurant is based on Babylon from the carved lions, to the blue wall at the end of the restaurant representing the Gate to Babylon, and to the tented look to match the ceiling to the rest of the restaurant them. The atmosphere could have only been improved with more customers and a belly dancer wiggling around.

Sadly for the owner, upon arrival at the restaurant, it was clear that we were the only patrons to have braved the weather conditions tonight and probably the only ones likely to visit at all tonight! I do wonder if Rehana hadn’t booked whether they would have actually remained closed. Still, the lack of any customers did not stop the owners/managers from giving us some very friendly customer service.

There must have been something in the cold air as Rehana and I were both feeling peckish tonight. Okay I’ll admit – I’m peckish pretty much all the time. Heh heh. At any rate we ended up ordering quite a bit of food but, as usual, still managed to fit in three courses.

We had a selection of three starters to begin: babah ghanouge, which went very well with the warmed pitta bread, bourak bul jeban, basically spring rolls filled with cheese and shredded mint (in combination this is always going to be a hit with me!) and potata chap which is a mashed potato outer layer stuffed with minced lamb and then the whole thing is deep fried. I’m sure the taste of this was quite nice for a lamb lover.

Mains at Mesopotamia were more for single person consumption rather than for sharing. I went for what is apparently the most popular dish, the tapsey samak (fish steak) which was a very generous meat dish cooked in various seasonings and spices. It was very tasty and felt very cleansing. Rehana continued on with a lamb theme with the hamidh hulu – a shamk of lamb cooked in dried apricot, prunes and spices. A dish I would have liked if the meat was anything but lamb!

Backlawa followed for dessert for Rehana and I had a very unusual Lemon Brulee. The top half was a gorgeous custard but then at the bottom was a lemon sorbet! I hadn’t read the description of the dessert properly and was very confused when I got the taste and texture of the lemon sorbet on my tongue as I thought it meant the brulee was still frozen at the bottom. Rehana encouraged me to a ask the staff about it and I felt bad when they came back out to explain what the frozen bit was! Quite a nice and unusual dish.

We had a lovely time at Mesopotamia. Friendly service, delicious food and a lovely atmosphere. Shame the restaurant isn’t located more central!

Sandra has never tried Filipino food and I didn’t really quite know how to describe it except to say its very home style cooking and consists of a variety of styles of cooking such as stewing, frying, and barbequing. Its not quite oriental though it does share some similarities. So, I thought the best way for her to experience it was by taking her to Josephine’s Resaturant, one of only a few Filipino restaurants in London.

I had a Taste London card so with 50% off we were feeling a big greedy so ended up trying three starters, two mains and still somehow found room to finish off with desserts!

For our starters we tried the spring rolls, beef skewers and lumpia – a kind of spring roll where the wrapper is not fried:

For mains I couldn’t resist getting us a pork barbeque and Sandra thought the Chicken Adobo (chicken stewed in a vinegar soy sauce mixture) would also go well:

The surprising aspect of our meal was that food came out super quick – almost within minutes of ordering. This was both good and bad – good as it didn’t give us time to rest and recover to feel full – bad because it didn’t give us time to rest and recover! Ha ha!

Dessert though didn’t come out so quickly. Though the restaurant wasn’t exactly full a big group of about ten people came in and the waitress couldn’t unfortunately handle it! Still, finally our desserts arrived. Poor Sandra doesn’t like coconut so she had some very limited options since almost practically every Filipino dessert has coconut in it in one shape or manner. Leche Plan (a kind of crème caramel smothered in a sugary syrup) was the only dessert she could try – luckily she liked it! I had the tricky halo halo (shaved ice and milk with lots of sweet stuff mixed in) to get down. The effort was definitely worth it!

I was trying to think what Josephine’s could do to “improve”. The difficulty is that Filipino food doesn’t really lend itself to fine dining. Its kind of the homey/safe/comforting type food. Filipinos are generally a friendly bunch so service was nice though I suspect the waitresses were still learning English. Food-wise it was all pretty tasty though the barbeque was a little tough and the chicken adobo a touch on the salty side. I’d probably come back again, especially on the 50% off offer, but that’s because I miss the pinoy sometimes!