Phoenix Palace

As if I wasn’t full enough from my cream team at Warwick with the girls when I got back to London I met my brother for an early dinner at Phoenix Palace! He’d remembered how much he liked the kangaroo from the last time so we went for that again. Other additional dishes were the Crispy King Prawn Stuffed with Prawn Meat in Crab Meat Sauce (don’t be armed by the googly eyes!) and as a stomach filler (you gotta have one when you eat Chinese) King Prawn Fried Noodle. We also tried a banana toffee for dessert.

Mmm mmm it was delicious even though I could barely get it down. Service was very good tonight. For some reason one of the managers was paying particular attention to us even right down to telling us a couple of personal stories including something about his wife’s specialty in the kitchen being the prawn stuffed with prawn covered in prawn sauce. Heh he.

Oh, I also couldn’t resist taking a photo of the restroom which was particularly attractive but also had a double toilet paper dispenser (one for left-handers one for right) in my stall.

Warwick Castle

The day after I got back from Tunisia I went on another trip – this time to the more nearby Warwick Castle. As the name suggests Warrick Castle is located in Warwick, a 2 hour and 15 min train ride out of Marylebone and therefore a fairly easy day trip out of London. The four of us, Rache, Rita, Phelon and I, set off at a fairly reasonable hour and arrived in Warwick just a bit early for a Sunday roast. We wandered the high street for a bit before settling down at a cute little pub. We got a nice hunky army guy to take a photo of us.

A history lesson on Warrick Castle can easily be obtained from the internet so I’m not going to bore you with any of the details. Hints on visiting the castle are to look out for deals on websites such as lastminute or days out because tickets cost over £15 at the door (with a 20% saving if booked online.)

Attractions at Warwick Castle include the trebuchet, the largest catapult in the world. You don’t quite grasp how gigantic this 22 ton baby is until you see the little men running around operating it during the demonstration. For non-static attractions there are also live shows on during the including a live falconer exhibition.

Otherwise we entertained ourselves but climbing towers (one tower being 530 steps high), visiting the garden, exploring the interior of the castle, climbing into dungeons, donning costumes, playing with exhibitions and trying, but not succeeding, in entering the Princess Tower. Apparently, all adults must enter with at least one child! Hilariously one of the other billboards read: “All Boys, Dads, Grandpas, Uncles, Nephews and Brothers. You may find the content of the Princess Tower offensive. You have been warned.”

And because we worked so hard and burned so much energy making our way around the castle we stopped at the Thomas Oken Tea Room for an afternoon cream tea. Mmmm ….

Ice Cream Boutique

Convinced by the hype I got Rita and Rache to come with me to the Ice Cream Boutique, run by The Icecreamists, which has opened up in Selfridges’ Ultralounge for a limited time. No one knows who exactly The Icecreamists are however they specialise in staging dramatic high-profile events. Whatever their political agenda we were only interested in their ice cream. Ha ha! We girls decided to mix things up a bit and start with ice cream (dessert) before heading onwards to our dinner (main course.)

However what we didn’t realise was just how rich and filling the ice cream would be.

Don’t be astonished by the prices on the Icecreamist menu because if there is one thing I want to say upfront is that the icecream was very very good quality. I do think they were still over-priced but I guess you were also paying an additional premium for the “drama” and the “entertainment” and the “atmosphere” that accompanies the ice-cream.

It’s a pretty cool joint. If you enter off the side street you are greeted by hot pink curtains black painted walls and a staircase that opens to reveal this:

Pretty different from an ordinary ice-cream parlour huh. Complete even with beach chairs:

So, what can you get? Well, some of the offerings on the menu were almost a little too cool for me and not entirely appropriate, methinks, for an early Tuesday evening. This included the “S*x Pistol” which involves “A classic Fior di Latte or Milk Ice Cream blended with Ginkgo Biloba, Arginine and Guarana for blood flow and energy. Scented with a gentle infusion of citrus zest. Topped with a shot of La Fee Absinthe. .” Not surprisingly I believe they have a limit of one customer on this offering. It also comes complete with a hot nurse and IV stand. You’ll also pa dearly for it – £19.99 a pop!

We three girls were salivating over the items on the menu. The prices were a little heart stopping but we thought since we were there we might as well treat it a like a “dinner” instead of a “dessert” and splash out a bit. Rache decided to split her order into two items: a Frozen Hot Chocolate (a few scoops of chocolate ice cream served with a thick chocolate sauce on the side) and a serving of ice cream: £7.99 and £4.99.

Rache’s Rita’s Mine

Rita arguably went for the most decadent offering out of our three choices. She opted for a “The Chocoholic” (priced at £16.99.) Although the description rabbits on about “one night stands”, “marriage proposals”, “x-rated” in essence it was hot thick Belgian chocolate poured over about five generous scoops of dark chocolate ice-cream. Its now wonder Rita appeared to enter an ice-cream/sugar coma soon after consuming her dish. It was cutely served in a silver top hat which was oh so tempting to sneak into my bag …

Finally I was feeling a bit greedy and wanting to taste several of the ice-creams so I went for the Queen Size Sub Zero Banqueting Menu – £14.99. Most normal diners probably share this between two …

Flavour-wise we found the following on the menu: Vanilla Ice Baby, Obamarama (Chocolate ice cream), Obamarama at the White House (Swiss White Chocolate ice cream), Choland Yard, Nuts about Chocland Yard, Nevermind the Hazelnut, Taking the Pistacchio, Espresso Yourself, Carameltdown, Living in Cinnamon, The Custardy Suite, The Molotofee Cocktail, Glastonberry, Lemony of the State and the ice creams I ended up choosing: Vogue (Licorice), Gingiana Jones, Axl Rose-Water and Born & Bread (English Brown Bread Ice Cream.)

I tell ya – someone sure had fun naming things on the menu.

By the time we were done with our ice-cream we were seriously done in and also seriously on sugar overloads. I was craving something savoury something chronic but at the same time the thought of eating anymore nearly made my physically sick. It was too much! LOL. Even Rita, our ultimate dessert queen, was dying from finishing off her dish.

In all honesty though the ice cream was good I felt that it was seriously over-priced. I think to some extent this was reflected in the number of customers when we first when it – which was not very many at all. In addition I felt that service was kind of a bit half-hearted. One manager was really funny and really friendly but the rest of them were awful. We walked into the place and not really knowing what to do there was no one to either direct us to the counter to put our orders in or direct us to a table for table-service. There was a girl standing around with a clip-board looking all maitre d’ like but she didn’t seem interested in helping us at all. It was very confusing. Even having one of the waitresses get up and sing (pretty decently mind you) didn’t really make up for it.

At least we had some good ice cream.

Brunch at Spitafields Market and then a bit of Basketball

I never know with my Sundays whether to fill it completely so that I will forget that Monday is just around the corner or whether to take the slow and easy approach. Today I thought I would kind of go in between starting with brunch with Rita at Spitafields Market. Yes we did end up at a chain restaurant – Giraffe – but I simply can’t resist their English Breakfast. Mmmm … soo very good. I think it’s the potato wedges which have me.

After brunch we took a slow stroll through the market with Rita buying some incredibly cute baby clothes and then we wandered into some sort of posh tea store where I saw these:

Yes – that’s right £17 for a paper cup holder. Yes a true bargain. They are hand-made and everything!

And then a sight that fills me with pleasure – a before and after shot of the roasting pig carcass!

To work off our brunch (though to be honest we’d walked quite a bit around the markets) we headed to Rita’s for a game of tennis and then when we didn’t burn enough energy doing that I decided to see if I could borrow one of the boy’s basketballs, since they weren’t using it, so that we could throw some hoops. I wasn’t even planning on doing any sort of running – my kind of basketball these days consists of playing those arcade games where you sink hoop after hoop of balls! – however the boys had other plans and challenged us to a game of pick-up instead! I was actually flattered they thought we could actually give them a work out of sorts. But we did!

Turns out one of the boys was only just learning to play. I can report, no boast, that we kicked butt! Personally I think they were just a bit too polite to hussle us physically but we had no problems trying to intimidate them ourselves and that meant steal after steal and free rides to the basket. It was quite a work out!

Dans Le Noir

Dining in the dark. Dining in the complete dark. Soooo much easier than it sounds.

Approaching Dans Le Noir? you walk into what looks like a bar from the outside. Opening the door what greets you is vast area of open space (no seats or anything much) and a small bar at the back. You are probably supposed to be greeted immediately to guide you through your experience however our member of staff took a few minutes to get to us. There are about five or so Dans Le Noir? staff floating around who are there to basically check your booking, explain how Dans Le Noir? works, ask you to choose a menu (2 or 3 courses from either a meat, seafood, veg or chef surprise menue) and then either direct you to the bar if you want a drink before going in or hand you over to a blind waiter who will bring you in to the restaurant.

Just note that at this stage there seems to be quite a lot of pressure to buy drinks from the bar or to upgrade to one of the packages which includes drinks.

To be honest we were a bit confused by our greeter. We said we happy to sit down immediately for our meal and just go with tap water. But he kind of just directed us to the bar and left us hanging. We weren’t really sure what we were supposed to do. We must have looked helpless as another guy, I think the manager, saw our confused faces and asked us if we were ready for our meal.

Inside it is pitch black. And by pitch black I mean not an ounce of light. I really thought that there would be some sort of dim lighting. A silly thought I know as clearly they are trying to replicate a blind person’s environment and blind people will have no perception of light at all. In aid of this they get you to put all your belongings in a locker so this stops people with their mobile cameras, normal cameras and also to give you comfort that your precious valuables are not being spirited away. Slightly irritatingly the guy next to us had a watch that flashed every 30 minutes or so. In the pitch black darkness this was actually quite distracting. Otherwise it was a total visual sensory depravation.

Its amazing to realize just how much I rely on my vision to move smoothly, to eat, to drink, to bob out of people’s way if you can see they’re on a collision course for you and to even speak. It was bizarre to hear Rehana’s voice “appearing” out of the dark and actually it “felt” like it was coming from somewhere higher than I thought. However, although your sense of hearing is intensified it was also it was a bit difficult to speak because it was very noisy in there – not sure if people were shouting to be heard over each other or shouting because they couldn’t see – but everyone was definitely speaking louder than necessary. The waiters working the restaurant must like it because unless they said something near you – you could never get their attention unless you shouted their name and hoped they were in the vicinity of your table! As a result they probably get pestered less than in a normal restaurant.

Tables are practically communal. I’m curious just how large the room is – you never rally find out. At least we were at the end of the table so only had to deal with jostling from one side. We seemed really close is all I could tell.. There was also the danger that your neighbours might drink your drink! Further, Rehana seemed to have a problem with wait staff continually knocking into her or her chair though my position wasn’t nearly so exposed. A few times our water touch my shoulder or felt my side just to check my position and I got a few brush by’s but no one really knocking into me.

So, food-wise what did I think? To be honest except for a couple of dishes like the tortellini starter and our dessert combination the food wasn’t as stimulating to the taste as I expected. Food wasn’t served particularly hot to start with (probably to reduce the chances of someone burning themselves) and I think our flavours got seriously mixed up. Our starters of Grilled English asparagus and quail egg with crispy lardon and mixed cress selection and Gorgonzola and walnut tortellini with wild mushroom sauce was easy enough to separate but when we got to our mains, which ended up being three different type of game in three different styles of sauce, everything got mixed up. They change the menu regularly so I don’t think there’s a danger in disclosing what we had to eat: Crocodile stir-fry with soya sauce and fennel seeds, Oven roasted spring bok with apricot chutney and crispy pancetta, and Breasts of Guinea fowl with roasted vegetables and gravy.

The other thing the experience at Dans Le Noir? proved was that I clearly do not know a lot of my food – meat especially as I couldn’t even begin to have guessed what we were eating! The funniest part of the night was the fact that I ended up using my fingers to sweep my plate to ensure I’d finished as I lost count of how many times I picked up my fork to find nothing on it! Hope there was no one sitting around the room with night-vision glasses on!

To finish our desserts of Chocolate cups with marscapone, vanilla and red berries compote, Lemon Posset and Pear tartlets with citrus dressing were pretty divine. Again I had no clue what we were eating (except for the Lemon thing) – I’d even guess that the chocolate cups were coffee flavoured!

Ironically, not having bumped into anyone inside the restaurant, knocked anything off the table or spilled drinks/food on myself or anyone else, it was when we entered the lit entrance on exit when I finally ran into something. Bl**dy hurt my arm too! I blame it on the fact that I was blinking like a mole emerging from his hole at the time. At this time they show you a little folder with photos of the food you’ve supposedly just consumed. They really could have served you anything and you wouldn’t have known it (for example, I thought we’d eaten beef, some sort of bird, and potentially lamb!)

Overall, Dans Le Noir? is quite an expensive adventure but worth it for that one off experience. I’m still undecided whether I’d go again – there’s nothing like that first experience of a place like this and I’m sure second time round it might have lost some of the charm it would otherwise hold.

The Zetter

Even though we were still super full from our breakfast and lunch earlier in the day Pat and I rocked up to the Zetter for an earlish dinner. Pat had made the booking so it seemed a shame to waste it. ;-P

My fullness also didn’t stop me from eating the bread:

The Zetter Restaurant is located in Clerkenwell in, wait for it, The Zetter Hotel! Just like the hotel which markets itself as a funky little boutique hotel the restaurant is equally funky and stylish. The Restaurant space itself is dominated by a rather long bar and it also has a more relaxed casual area almost like a café off to one side. As a result rather than feeling posh and stiff it was a pleasantly welcoming environment and we felt at ease despite the white linen table-clothes and well dressed wait staff.

Before I get into the food I have to comment on the service which, unlike our earlier dining experience at Smollensky’s, was just about perfect. It was friendly, efficient, and charming. Food came at a good pace and we never had to do more than lift our heads to get attention if we wanted it from the wait staff. Fabulous.

The Zetter is labeled as Modern European with an apparently monthly changing menu. I almost couldn’t make my mind up about what to get! I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves for the moment.

Our starters: my Garlic roasted prawns with chorizo, sweet potato & glazed pork belly and Pat’s Aubergine, yogurt and cumin soup:

Our mains: my Linguine with crab, chilli & coriander and Pat’s seafood paella:

Our desserts: my crème brulee and Pat’s I think berry tiramisu.

The food was divine. I absolutely loved my starter and I actually didn’t finish my main meal because I wanted the highly recommended cream brulee. I was dying because I was overeating but I had to finish dessert …

Lovely venue and would highly recommend!

Smollensky’s On The Strand

Its Openhouse weekend this weekend and since I’ve missed the last couple this year I wanted to make up for it with a vengeance so I set out a fairly ambitious schedule. To ensure that we had the right kind of energy hiking all over London and up and down buildings my brother and I decided to stop off at Smollensky’s on the Strand for some lunch. That we could take advantage of a top table 50% off offer just sweetened the deal.

Today, Saturday, seemed to be kids party day with a whole area dedicated to the little munchkins and their parties. For the most part it didn’t really interfere with our meal though I couldn’t help but look at the clown with apprehension. I HATE clowns. They scare me to death!

The menu at Smollensky’s is what you’d expect from a grill with a predominantly American selection including ribs, burgers, mac and cheese with some, as the website describes it Mediterranean and oriental dishes. Normally the kind of menu I would drool over though in all honesty both Pat and I were still fairly full from our breakfast at Giraffe!

Given the very American styling of the restaurant we expected the service to be just as top notch as what you get in American. We were sorely disappointed. We had come in for lunch relatively early and thought we would beat most of the lunch time rush. Sure there were a couple of groups of kids but since they were being entertained by the scary clown and therefore weren’t exactly clamouring for waitressing attention for the early part of our meal it was just a couple of other tables and a few wait staff. Therefore we were very surprised when it took them forever to take our order, then clear our table, then offer us dessert. We couldn’t even hail a waitress for all the money in the world and at one stage when asking for the bill I took a chance to ask one that I encountered on the way to the toilets! However that’s not to say the wait-staff, when we did get their attention, weren’t friendly – they were just so slow and clearly struggling to cope! We had to ask for our water and dessert a couple of times.

Food-wise it was, if not divine, at least not too terrible. Pat wasn’t too impressed with his rack of ribs which appeared to have been boiled and then simply smothered in barbecue sauce. His favourite item was the chipotle mayonnaise … I went for the Smollensky’s Macaroni Cheese which is your traditional mac and cheese with some leeks, chicken and bacon thrown in. It looked tasty but was mainly salty from what I recall. Strangely a bit watery too. The main reason I wanted to go to Smollensky’s was to try the Grandma Smollensky’s Peanut Butter Cheesecake. It was as rich sounding as it the name suggests. Even for a sweet-tooth like me it was just a little sickenly sweet.

Overall I wasn’t left super-impressed with Smollensky’s. I do however quite like American grill food so would be willing to give it a chance again, with different meal choices, with the 50% off and hopefully improved customer service.

PA celebration and Ozer Restaurant

James and Catherine from work have recently been promoted so they went out for a few drinks after work to have a mini-celebration. I met with the lot of them fairly late as I went along after my yoga session. However, in hindsight, it was a bit of a huge mistake to come out tonight after my session of Bikram Yoga. Not only was I feeling super relaxed and lethargic but I also downed a few too many drinks too quickly including skulling some disgusting ale. Eugh. Anyway, I paid for it by getting a splitting headache and being sick in the restaurant toilets at Ozer. Gross huh?

Still, I had a good time otherwise. We ended up at Ozer Restaurant for an extremely late meal (nearly 11pm.) Ozer is a branch of the Sofra stable of Turkish Restaurants. It’s a really nice venue a short walk from Oxford Circus. I don’t know if it normally happens but the restaurant was extremely generous with their freshly warmed bread and hummous tonight. It kept coming and coming and coming. Being rather hungry we kept eating and eating and eating … as a result I couldn’t even finish my main course of spicy venison! Prices here are fairly reasonable especially if you go for any of the specials including the “healthy” menu with 12 dishes!

Hummingbird Bakery 1.03

Another day another bake-off!

This time Caro and I decided to try our hand at one of the cheesecakes from the Hummingbird Bakery book. The Raspberry and Dark Chocolate cheesecake was astonishingly rich and smooth. The chocolate part of the cheesecake in particular was divine and that’s high praise indeed from a non-chocolate-dessert over like me.

The day went very smoothly and seemed so simple. I guess the main difference was the fact we were only sticking with one recipe instead of three! Ha ha! As a result I got to spend some time with little, or not so little, Gaspar! He is growing at a tremendous rate and I hope Caro doesn’t mind me mentioning this but he is such a hungry little eating machine that he has tapped his mummy out! LOL! He’s gorgeous though and remained surprisingly cry-free most of the day.

Buddha Bar in London

When Buddha Bar came to London it was apparently one of the most anticipated launches in 2008. Literally located under Waterloo Bridge it is dark, lusciously red carpeted, intricate and of course features the world reknown giant Buddha statue. I had been to the one in New York early this year so I was interested to whether the concept had been brought over in full in London. It pretty much had though I don’t remember the restaurant in New York being quite so dark – tonight we could barely make out what we were eating! Ha ha!

Just like in New York when you walk in there are a plethora of wait staff to direct you to your table or take your booking. At first we didn’t really know who to look at as they all kind of just looked at us without any particular person taking charge!

Just like the visit in New York we were not sat in the main room with Buddha presiding over us. Not sure why but actually it turned out okay because we had our own little Buddha’s surrounding us in the area we were in and actually it was a little more private and less loud than the main room which suited us girls (Pauline and Anna) for our catch up.

And just like our visit in New York our waiter was really funny. He had me cracking up but he was super attentive not only in his presence when taking our orders etc. but also paying attention to each of us girls!

Food-wise it was actually not too shabby and with the top table 50% offer was decent value (without the 50% off offer I think very seriously over-priced) though servings were not particularly generous. The problem, I think, with the Buddha Bar concept in London is that there are sooooo many uber-cool Pan-Asian restaurants in London already that the market is just over-saturated with the cuisine. As a result it makes it difficult to deliver food which is unique. Still I was pretty happy with our main options in the shrimp tempura with spicy dressing and the surprise of the night for me was the five spiced grilled chicken. Ordinarily I’d avoid chicken being what I would, probably unfairly, consider to be a fairly bland option but the five spiced one was tender, moist and superbly marinated. The lamb rack was unfortunately not great though … tough and, to me, too much lamb flavour! Ha ha! Photos are a bit rubbish – I’d brought my camera but left the battery at home!

We didn’t actually check the bar out but I read that its proven to be popular especially being open with their late licence until 4am!