Category Archives: Food

Ping Pong: Liverpool Street

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To bring in the New Year Ping Pong have started to push their Healty fix menu. With apparently only 487 calories and reasonably priced for £9.99 (a New Year’s promotion special) it was the reason we chose Ping Pong for our catch up meal tonight. Guilt-free money and calorie-wise! However, the offerings:

Soup
Chicken wonton
Steamed
1 coriander
1 spinach and mushroom
1 har gau
1 vegetarian sticky rice
Fried
1 vegetable spring roll
1 Vietnamese spring roll
Vegetable
1 steamed choy sum
Dessert
mango pudding

were just a little too healthy for me so I opted for another set menu that contained a few more fried items. heh heh.

The Ping Pong venue at Liverpool Street is tucked away behind the station and probably proves a popular venue for the city workers at lunch time. When we arrived at just after 6.30 there were a few small groups in there – all work crowds and no tourists – but strangely it didn’t really pick up until after 9.30 when we were leaving. I guess they do work long hours this side of town – even in this economic climate!

Another Sunday Roast at Caro’s and Nate’s

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It seems to be a regular Sunday type thing for me now to head over to Caro and Nate’s for a meal of some sorts followed by an afternoon of DVD. Today Caro cooked up a lovely whole chicken roast. As usual it was perfectly delish. I would have liked to eaten more but that would just have been a bit piggish of me!

We followed this meal by watching Tropic Thunder. This movie left me speechless it was so outrageous and funny for so many wrong reasons.

Tom Cruise’s cameo was the highlight for me especially his bump and grind at the end of the movie. Hi-larious!

Ninja New York

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When we arrived at Ninja New York we were escorted down some stairs to our table. Interestingly they have chosen to make the dining experience a private one for all diners so that everyone is effectively dining in private chambers and caged in by bamboo walls/gates. The restaurant itself is apparently designed to depict a ninja castle from feudal times which was maze-like and filled with lots of contraptions. Strange! Not too long after sitting down our “ninja” waitress came along to introduce herself and the menu. Her whole mannerism was exactly how I imagine a ninja would act like!

The ninja theme was maintained throughout the whole restaurant from the waiters/waitresses and table space as already mentioned, to the dark alleys in the restaurant, to the menu scrolls and to the toilets (though technically I guess the toilets are more Japanese rather than ninja-specific.) If you ever go to this restaurant you must take the toilet for a spin if you’ve never been on a Japanese toilet before. The toilets had a warmed seat and will wash, dry and everything else you can imagine your touché! Ha ha.

Food at Ninja New York is mainly Japanese with slight twists. I couldn’t decide on individual dishes so opted to try the $90 set menu deal. A bit pricey but included quite a few dishes that I want to try anyway so I felt it was relatively good value for money. The cocktail menu is rather interesting and varied and had quite a few strange cocktails on there including Zai (meaning tofu) which was a “A refreshing cocktail for summer consisting of Crème de Cassis, Orange liqueur and Tofu”! Tofu!! What!? I didn’t try any cocktails as I didn’t want my eating experience to be marred by my being affected by alcohol. Maybe next time.

My set menu consisted of six-courses:
– Batto Jutsu. Thai style, Roasted Duck and Bell Peppers dress with Citrus Coriander Sauce mixed with bit of Japanese Herb “Shiso” Leaves. Marked as a Ninja Art Dish the dish was a cold dish served in two dishes. The salad served in a cocktail glass and the duck served on top of a banana leaf sitting across a bell pepper filled with frozen ice (the special part of the dish.)
– Ngiri Sushi. The chef’s specially selected six pieces of Ngiri Sushi. The ngiri sushi ended up including salmon, two tuna, squid, mackerel and one other fish I couldn’t recognise. Sushi was quite fresh which was pleasing to taste.
– Red Pond. Fried Chilean Sea Bass in a bloody spicy pond. This was marked on the menu as a special dish. The special part consisted of me drawing a ninja blade from the top of the lid covering the dish. I would have liked to have kept the blade but the ninja server was pretty quick to retrieve it from me. 🙂 The pond was very bloody indeed in this dish. I couldn’t really recognise what the sauce consisted of and though not exactly spicy it was quite tart. Certainly not the best sea bass dish I’ve ever had but still not too shabby.
– Ribeye Steak. 22 OZ U.S Ribeye Steak served with Garlic, Wasabi and Teriyaki Sauce and mixed Vegetable tossed with Sesame Sauce. This dish was awesome! Not only was the steak gigantic in portion (I swear bigger than my head and at least an inch thick) but O.M.G. it had to have been the best steak I’ve ever had. It was melt in your mouth tender and tasted sooo good. Its beyond description. Its just a shame I was already so full at that stage that I couldn’t eat the steak on my own. I must have given at least a third of it to my brother and another bit to my cousin.
– Choice of Dessert. It’s a shame that most of the desserts on the menu were chocolate based. Since the others chose the Rose Chocolate (four layers of chocolate parts, flan, cream, sorbet and caramelised Mousse accompanied by a Rose flower sitting in Rose-infused Mist) and Tiramisu designed as a bonsai tree I opted for the Ninja Star which was described simply as “The NINJA ultimate weapon.” This was another Ninja Art dish. In this case it involved some magic. I was presented with an empty plate. Our ninja waitress then covered it with a lid. Gave me a stick to bang the top of the lid and wham bam she lifted the lid off and below was my chocolate case styled in a star. The dessert was just so so and if I’d paid full price ($12) I probably would have felt a little ripped off.
– Sorbet served with fruit.

Before our desserts were served a magician also did the rounds. He didn’t do anything spectacular but I was impressed with the few tricks that he performed. One involved the change the $1 note into $100 and vice versa and the other one, of which I have totally no idea how he did it, involved him giving us a pack of cards on which were pasted various movie posters and then we had to choose five or so for him to guess. We didn’t even have to give the pack back to him. We just had to think about the movies we had chosen. And he managed to pick them all! My cousin gave him a $20 tip for his efforts. Not bad earnings!

We all had a great night tonight. Very entertaining. Ninja New York is worth a spin – if only for the novelty factor. The steak is to die for too so don’t overlook that!

NY NY NY NY NY NY NY NY

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Continuing with our annual visits to New York (technically we’ve already been in 2008 way back in Jan with the rest of the fam but who’s counting 🙂 ) Pat and I flew out from London on Boxing Day. I was hoping for a white “Christmas” but apparently we missed most of the snow in the past week so when we got to New York it was a little nippy but not that much colder than London and with no snow in sight. How sad. But never mind, snow or no snow, I always have a fabulous time in New York and this visit has been no exception.

Our visit to New York was quite long this time for some reason. Most visits have been about a max but on this trip we were in New York for nearly a fortnight which, considering our numerous visits previously (this is my eight!!!), may seem excessive but somehow we managed to fill every day! Probably due in part to taking time out in the middle of our visit to drop in to Boston (for more on that visit see previous post!)

Photos, Photos, Photos.

27 December 2008

On our first day in New York we hitched a ride in to lower Manhattan with our cousins in the early morning and started by having a nice stroll through Chinatown and Little Italy down to downtown. Suitably energised and filled from some quick pastries (Chinese and French) we then headed to Century 21 for some shopping. Best advice for shopping and general mobility in this bargain department store is to hit the place as early as you can. We got there just for opening (by chance) and within a couple of hours the place was packed with people, some polite, but also some a little aggressive and rude!

We ended up spending a couple of hours inside Century 21 by which stage I’d amassed a basket of goodies but had barely touched one of the other floors. I could easily have spent another couple of hours in there! But by then we were keen to grab some lunch. Pat had researched some barbecue places for us, gotta love American barbecue, and somehow, rather than choose somewhere nearby, we made it from downtown all the way up to Virgil’s BBQ at Times Square!! Half walking half catching the subway when we got bored of walking. At Virgil’s we shared some spiced-flour onion rings for a starter (a pretty big serve in all honesty) and then had a two-meat bbq combo platter (ribs and beef brisket for me.) Disappointingly I could only eat two sticks of my ribs! I couldn’t believe it!

28 December 2008

Our highlight on this day was a visit to Ninja New York. I don’t know how I came across this restaurant but it sounded very intriguing and promising an interesting dining experience. The website talks about ninjas, special “ninja art” dishes and entertainment. It certainly delivers and for this reason requires its own blog entry.

02 Jan 2009

On the second day of the New Year Pat had organised for us to do a Foods of New York tour of the Chelsea Markets. This is one of those places that shows that even having visited New York on numerous occasions before you can always find something new to do. The Chelsea Markets are a very cool and funky place. They even have free wifi there which requires you to “ .. promise to refrain from any hanky panky. Or anything that would make anyone cranky. Anything [you] do with [the] connection that is lame [You] absolve Chelsea Market et al of any blame.” Cute huh?

Chelsea Markets are housed in the old Nabisco factory complex where the delicious but politically incorrect Oreo cookie was invented (strangely enough for British consumers who thought that other cookies produced by Nabisco were too plain!)

Our tour guide was a local stand-up comedian so he was very funny and he seemed to know quite a few people in the food industry and have connections with various restaurants. Actually he said he used to be a waiter for Martha Stewart at one of these posh Japanese restaurants and boy did he have a lot of stories about her including the fact that she always wanted to use the private tatami room in the Japanese restaurant but without paying. Also, she apparently always went through every item on the bill and on one occasion questioned one of the drinks. He replied by saying that her guest had ordered it and she said I didn’t say they could do that. Imagine begrudging one drink!

The tour started off pretty well with sample foods including a cookie from the cupcake store (Elenis), chocolate milk from Ronnybrook Dairy, Italian goods (cold meats, cheese etc.) from Buon Italia, scones and jam (though not allowed to call it jam as it was missing a particular ingredient – had to be called fruit preserve) from Sarabeth’s, tea from The T Salon, chutney and cheese and salts (including an interesting vanilla salt) from I think Chelsea Market Baskets, and ice-cream from L’ Arte Del Gelato (pumpkin flavoured for me!) It sounds like a lot but they were only little sample portions and after that there was no more food. Admittedly a couple of places were closed for the holidays, like The Lobster Place, so we missed out on a bit. One of the interesting facts was that many shops have historically had their rent fixed for a certain time at something like $5,000 a month compared with new tenants who can pay in the vicinity of $45,000 a month! Pretty steep!

In place of the closed shops/restaurants our took guide also took us into Iron Chef Morimoto and Iron Chef Batali’s restaurants but only for a look and to tell some stories. We then left the Chelsea Market are and did a quick run through the meatpacking districting and to a friend’s $9 million brownstone. Admittedly now it’s a B&B but it was nice to get inside a Manhattan home to see what one looks like. Finally he took us up to this place called the loft on the top of Hotel Gansevoort from which we had sweeping views across the are and from where we could also see a rooftop pool that featured in Sex and the City.

03 Jan 2008

This day dawned really bright and beautiful so we decided to spend some time in Central Park admiring the sights. We found there were heaps of people also doing the same – in particular runners who were no doubt trying to work off their festive season eating!

We then headed over to NBC for a studio tour. This tour, given by pages working at NBC, was slightly disappointing as it probably lasted just under an hour and felt like most of the time we were getting shuffled between floors. The tour started with a video which was about 10 minutes long before we moved on to a news stage, Conan O’Brien’s studio (super small and they use all sorts of tricks, like having rounded edges on things and Conan and the band pretending to shout at each other even though they were actually only about a metre or two apart, to make the studio appear bigger than it actually is for TV), the SNL stage, a small costume room (where we saw yet another video) and finally we got to see two of the audience have a go at reading the news and doing the weather. The last time I did this tour in 2003 I got to see Matthew McConaughey rehearsing for SNL! No celebs this time unfortunately.

After the tour we headed to Katsuhama for some katsu before heading home so that we could get ready to join my cousins Kathleen and Audrey and Audrey’s bofriend Andres, for Buddha Bar. Actually Pat didn’t need to primp and preen like us girls did so returning home early was mainly for my benefit 🙂

Buddha Bar is a trendy restaurant located in the meatpacking district with reasonable quality (though slightly over-priced) food. I made the mistake of allowing Kathleen to ask for bottled still water and we ended up finishing four bottles between the five of us at $8 a bottle! Ridiculous. I know that it’s a trendy restaurant etc. but I’m disappointed with the bottled water option. They even treated the water like wine/champagne by placing it into ice buckets! But moving away from this complaing, Buddha Bar is quite an attractive restaurant including the jellyfish behind the bar, there is also the trademark giant Buddha (though unfortunately we weren’t sitting in the same room as the Buddha), high ceilings and lots of brown/warm colours. Our waiter was actually pretty funny and fairly attentive though when another, bigger table, sat by us he had to then split his attention between the two of us and was not as responsive or attentive as I would have liked. I think that everyone enjoyed themselves though which is the main thing.

04 Jan 2008

Two words only are required for today’s entry: Woodbury Common. Ha ha. Not much to say about Woodbury Common except its an awesome place to go shopping. Loads of shops and cheap prices! The only low point of the day were the super-aggressive Chinese women in Coach. Kathleen reckons they were all in the shop to grab bags to replicate! We got out of there pretty darn quick that’s for sure. Its always one of the more popular shops in Woodbury Common even having to implement nightclub style entry sometimes!

05 Jan 2008

Today Pat had arranged lunch with his mate Karl so I spent my time just wandering around with no real destination in mind. I managed to get around all over the place and even made it so far as A&F from 34th street – it felt like quite a walk. If you’ve ever seen A&F models you would think they all came from the store. It is totally intimidating being in there with all the staff being way too beautiful to be true. They aren’t necessarily models but hot damn they are attractive. I wanted to get a photo with the half-naked guy at the front of the store (ha ha) but I didn’t manage it as I had to run back down to Madison Square Garden to meet Pat for tour (a tour we probably shouldn’t have bothered with it turns out!)

The tour was horrible. It started with a 15 minute video on the place. Okay fair enough its important to put the tour into context etc. but really – the tour was supposed to be an hour (it turned out to be much much shorter than that) and 25% of it is watching a video? Our tour guide was totally awful. There were so many awkward moments where we were just sitting around looking and waiting for him to say something. Plus he rolled his eyes constantly which was totally annoying. We got to hear from one of the cheer girls, dressed in her skimpy cheer out fit, though that proved a little awkward in itself. She did her little speech but no one had questions and no one wanted a photo with her. Think we were all a bit shy to do so! Then we were taken to some private grill area. Uh … boring – could have gone there ourselves without the tour. Then we were taken to a private corporate box. Our tour guide couldn’t even tell us how much the boxes went for. Then finally he took us down to some ring-side seating. At least we got to see some action via the children’s ice hockey game that was just starting as we reached ring-side (although that meant we missed out on going into the locker rooms!)

And then, after some more weird silence, that was basically the end of the tour. $18.50 later and 40 minutes later we were done. The biggest waste of money ever. Even the NBC studio tours was a little bit better as it at least had decent tour guides who gave us some funny stories and we got to see some “private” areas.

By then it was about mid-afternoon and just before we were meeting Kathleen and Audrey for dinner in the Village at Sushi Samba so we decided to have some afternoon tea dessert at Max Brenner’s – chocolate by the bald man. You can also get ordinary food at Max Brenner’s but, if you have time, you must go there for the desserts.

They are quite extensive so don’t fill up on lunch or dinner too much before hand. I decided to go for a white hot chocolate with crunchy bits PLUS a chocolate pizza which only came in a half pizza portion! It was so rich – a pizza base topped with milk chocolate, white chocolate plus marshmallows. Delicious for the first bite but definitely way too much after a couple of bites.

We then headed to SushiSamba where were proceeded to have probably the best food I’ve this visit to NY. Except for Audrey, who has quite a small appetite, we all got pretty carried away with our food choices. I ended up having a Antichucho, a hot appetizer, a samba roll (actually about six pieces of ngiri style sushi) an entrée AND dessert. The waitress initially told us that the non-entrees weren’t very big but really they were huge. Combined with the Max Brenner we’d just eaten I was done after the Antitchucho and the hot appetezier. SushiSamba is a very attractive place with the dominant colours in the restaurant being oranges and yellows. The wait staff are fairly attractive too and though our waitress was okay the fact that she walked away at one stage with us still having questions about the menu wasn’t very good. She probably thought she was being cute most of the night but really we just wanted to know about the food. The fusion of Japanese, Brazilian and Peruvian meant there was heaps on the menu that we didn’t know about. In fact, the way she seemed to sell it was that we should leave it up to her to bring out selections of food for us until we said we were full rather than us having to choose. But as we had different tastes we wanted to choose something for ourselves.

Food-wise SushiSamba really delivers. It was super fine. The ingredients were clearly very fresh, superbly seasoned and, to my pleasure, offered some very unique combinations like the sushi samba roll I had called El Topo which consisted of salmon, jalapeño, shiso leaf, fresh melted mozzarella, and crispy onion. Nice! In addition to tasting good and looking good, you can also have a decent meal for a very reasonable price – if you don’t go overboard like we did that is! Well, I thought so anyway.

On the busier nights the restaurant even has a DJ and in the summer the roof top opens up for a very pleasurable dining experience. Reservations are definitely recommended in this restaurant for later dinners, weekends or in their peak. Otherwise you’re like to wait up to two hours for a spot and that may only be at the sushi bar. In another Sex and the City reference this is where the girls like to eat!

06 Jan 2008

We kind of had a recovery day and stayed local to Flushing. But the day couldn’t pass without us indulging in a least one meal and that was Korean’s answer to KFC – Chicken BonChon which serves Korean Fried Chicken. Next to my Dad and my Mum’s fried chicken 🙂 this has to have been some of the best fried chicken I’ve ever had. The chicken is cooked to order so you know at least its fresh. It may take up to 25 minutes between ordering and munching but the wait is worth it. You might pass the time eating their Popcorn Shrimp which, garnished with oregano and what appeared to be parmesan, is delicious. Be warned though that the minimum size order of chicken pieces (wings, drummettes, drumsticks) is about eight pieces so don’t stuff yourself with preliminaries too much. The chicken comes in two flavours – Soy-Garlic (a touch on the sweet side) and Spicy (very very spicy!) Both were fantastic and the chicken remained hot and juicy until the last bite was swallowed. True to their word none of the marinade or oil on the chicken hangs around on your hands. I don’t know how they managed it but it was like magic. Mmm .. my mouth is watering just thinking about how tasty it was!

07 Jan 2008

Our final day in New York was spent squeezing in a few more touristy type things. As predicted by BBC the weather was pretty awful today – heavy rain (yes they actually got it right.) Well, it wasn’t quite as heavy as I imagined but it was persistent enough to be annoying and for me to actually use my umbrella you know it had to be quite drenching. As most people know I hate using my umbrella.

Highlights were: free access to the Sony Wonderlab, free tour of the New York Public Library (which prides itself on allowing anyone to access its resources – they even have this reading room which is something like six football fields big? and it’s a truly beautiful building. Ironically this free tour was better even than the NBC and Madison Square Gardens tours!) and quick stop in to Serendipity 3 where we had the largest frozen mint hot chocolate you could imagine!

According to wikipedia in November 2007 Serendipity unveiled a $25,000 dessert called the “Frrrozen Haute Chocolate,” which Guinness World Records declared the world’s most expensive desert. Now, the menu simply offers a dessert for $1,000. You know, if you can spare the change. Serendipity 3 is also famous for being a favourite hangout celebs including Marilyn Monroe.

New York – Done!

Boston

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So, my last post for 2009 is going to about Boston which is quite fitting because that’s exactly where we have been traveling back from today, on New Year’s Eve day.

Photos, Photos, Photos.

When? Late Dec 2008
Why Go? Lovely architecture, fun city, seafood!
Weather Cold be clear (except on our last day – heavy snow!)

The Experience

Day 1

So, we had to get up at 4am in order to get in to Chinatown in Manhattan in time to catch our 6.30am bus ride to Boston with Fung Wah buses. If you’ve ever wanted to get to Boston on the cheap and don’t mind being on a bus for nearly four hours then Fung Wah are for you. Its not the only discount bus operator between Boston and New York, competitors are located just around the corner from their offices, but it was the original. Bear in mind that a cheap price tag does bring with it some drawbacks such as other bargain-hungers who are aggressive about getting on to the bus so there’s a chance you may not get on the bus, or get the seats you want, reserved ticket or not. This wasn’t so much of a problem with us on a cold wintery morning but be prepared mentally to fight for your seat in the summer or during peak times! Don’t dilly dally either with handing over your ticket because the ticket taker will not hesitate to by-pass you, after duly shouting at you, and move on to the next customer. Everyone should take the bus at least once – just to experience it.

When we got to Boston it was about 10.45 so it wasn’t too bad of an effort to get to Boston. I was a bit disoriented when we got out of the bus terminal as I was a bit groggy from napping on the bus however, to my amusement, we walked down the road and found ourselves in Chinatown! Of course.

Chinatown didn’t occupy us too long as it was probably only a couple of blocks square and didn’t take us much time to circle around and being mid-morning on a Monday it was relatively quiet. Our first stop was to grab some breakfast from a Chinese Bakery in the form of our favourite Chinese pastries. I hadn’t really done much planning on what we would do in Boston though Pat a hit list of sorts that suited me. As we had a few hours before we could check in to our hotel we decided to take a giant walk around Boston. Its not a huge city and being relatively flat, despite the number of cars about, was relatively easy to walk around. I’d spotted an interesting restaurant, The Legal Test Kitchen, in the guide book Pat had borrowed from the library so we decided to meander on the way to it. The restaurant happened to be on the other side of the city and over some river so in the end it ended up being quite the walk though still perfectly doable. Along the way we saw some very pretty buildings including the Federal Reserve building and some sort of fire station in a giant building. We also had time for a stroll along the waterfront which looked like the kind of place that would be pretty cool in summer but in the middle of winter was almost ghost-town like. The building with no doubt the best view of the ocean was the John Joseph Moakley US Courthouse. A building that cost about £130m to build. Its whole side facing the ocean was like a wall of glass.

Boston is known for its seafood and seafood we were keen to eat when we got there. I saw an entry for LTK (Legal Test Kitchen) in our lonely planet guide and it intrigued me. It claimed that the bar/restaurant utilised innovative technology (don’t get excited about the technology bit – all I could see was that they had a mobile credit card device!) and was at the forefront of some creative cuisine. This is the place where they test food for Legal Seafoods – another chain of restaurants. Our meal at LTK started with some sort of white bean pesto dip with some warmed buns which was very yummy.

For my meal I opted for one of the specials of the day which was a Lobster Macaroni and Cheese dish. The thing with specials is that the price always ends up being a surprise and surprised I was with the price – £25 for mac and cheese! Admittedly there were some reasonable chunks of lobster and it was pretty delicious but it wasn’t exactly an American-sized portion – I wouldn’t have thought I had more than half a lobster in the dish and with lobsters being in quite abundance this season it was a little over priced.

After lunch we continued our walk though this time heading to our hotel. We were hoping to see The Boston Tea Party Ship and Museum …. but it wasn’t there! Apparently it is being renovated or whatever you call it when you take a whole ship away and refurbish. So, we continued on to our hotel.

On the way we noted that many places still had their Christmas decorations up including The Union Oyster House (which is an Oyster Bar which has been designated a National Historic Monument for being the oldest restaurant in the USA) which had a Christmas tree decorated with stuffed lobsters! So funny.

Our hotel room, The Onyx Hotel, was expensive (though not any more than any other hotel in Boston at this time of year.) It was actually quite a funky hotel and it proved to be a dog-friendly place as well which was demonstrated by the food/water dishes at the front door accompanied by a little welcome card (with photo welcoming the next dog to arrive), and dog-sitting and dog-walking services. I also love the fact that the room provided leopard print PJs and bathrobes for guests! Oh oh oh and an ipod docking radio.

The best thing about Boston is that you can just go exploring and will probably find yourself running into one sort of attraction or another. Without even looking at a map we found the State House just near our hotel. If you want to go inside this beautiful building there are regular free tours. It’s a nice building and we got to see the Senate and House of Rep rooms where we also came across one of the outgoing senators.

Leaving the State House we found ourselves in Boston Common, one of the oldest parks in the US. Its 50 acres in size but a lot smaller than I imagined it to be. As is common at this time of year an ice rink had been set up in the park which was kind of fun to watch for a while. We kept on walking and after walking through what seemed to be the main central shopping district we somehow ended up in Chinatown again without realising it! By then it was dinner time so we headed over to Quincy Market which, coincidentally, happened to be on the way back to our hotel. Quincy Market is a building in a shopping area called Faneuil Hall Marketplace. It used to house groceries but now seems to mainly house loads of food stalls and a couple of restaurants including … Wagamama!! I had to go to Wagamama just to check it out and yes – its pretty much exactly the same as what you get in London. There is heaps of buzz in this area and though it mainly attracts tourists does attract quite a few of the locals too.

Day 2

Day 2 dawned bright and blue for us. Happy days! As it was such a nice day it made it perfect to go up the Prudential Tower for views over Boston. After grabbing a quick pastry for breakfast from the local Au Bon Pain we slowly meandered over to what I think was the Back Bay area through Boston Common and through the adjacent Public Gardens (just about half the size of Boston Common.) Pat had actually been to Boston on a short visit before and stayed in the Back Bay area. He could even point out the exact room he stayed in!

We spent about an hour up in the Prudential Tower. We probably would have been quicker but the free audio guide was actually quite good (I liked listening to the kid’s version) and since the day was so magnificent we really admired the views. You could even see clear across Charles River to MIT and Harvard which was going to be our next stop after grabbing some lunch and a quick trip to the Mary Baker Eddy Library.

Our fuel ended up being clam chowder in giant bread bowls. Mmm … very yummy and very filling! We were also given oyster biscuits to garnish the clam chowder but with the bread bowl seemed a little overkill with the carbs. It was yummy and because it was so thick eating the bread bowl didn’t prove to be as difficult as I thought.

You can visit the Mary Baker Eddy Library for free but the highlight of the library is the Mapparium which is a three-story tall glass globe of the world made of stained glass. You have to pay $6 to join a tour that takes you into the Mapparium and once there you get to walk on a 30 foot long bridge and view it from the inside. Wherever you stand you will be the same distance from all different points on the map and also it works as a whispering gallery so if you stand at one end of the bridge and whisper your friend can hear you at the other. Definitely a cool (and attractive) concept if a bit pricey to see. You could see though why kids would be fascinated by such an attraction.

After this quick trip to the Mary Baker Eddy Library we hiked over what I think was maybe Harvard Bridge (not to sure on this one) to visit first MIT then Harvard. I can tell you that despite it being a clear beautiful day it was darn cold and windy. At one stage I swear I could have leant into the wind and it could have held me up purely on its force alone! I was surprised that we could walk anywhere we wanted on the campus at MIT. It felt quite cool to pretend I was a uni student again. What I wanted to see really was the buildings designed by Frank Gehry, the Stata Center which took $300m to build. I’d seen them from the Prudential Tower so had a general idea of where they were but not specific enough to find it straight up so we just wandered around the campus. I’m pretty amazed we found it really! The buildings are definitely worth seeing. They were visually stunning and with the effect from the sun – truly magical.

After these buildings Harvard seemed a little boring. Though a straight line from MIT it’s quite a long walk to Harvard. Every time we came to an area which seemed like it was a little built up it was like “are we there yet?” When we did eventually arrive at Harvard I’m not sure we even found the actual campus. The closest confirmation we got was a van with the Harvard uni logo stamped on it!

Our final (proper) meal for the Boston trip was at Durgin Park. If ever there was a tourist trap this restaurant would be it though having said that it apparently attracts the locals too. Located in Faneuil Hall Marketplace this restaurant always seems to be written up in tourist guides. I wanted to go there mainly because I wanted to try Indian Pudding (molasses and cornmeal baked for hours and served with ice cream) and this was one of the best places to get it. Waitresses are supposed to be quite cranky (kind of like the reputation that Wong Kei has in Chinatown London) but ours was quite friendly and very quick. She was clearly a marvel at juggling several diners at once! When we got to Durgin Park there were giant carcasses on display downstairs. This was disturbing to the extent that it seemed a bit smelly (and not in a good way!) The restaurant is actually upstairs though so at least the smell didn’t permeate too much during our meal. Meat seems to dominate the menu but there is also plenty of fresh seafood on offer. Pat had a seafood basket but he couldn’t “see his food” through all the fries on his plate! I almost had no room for dessert but just had to have the New England classic Indian pudding. Oh boy – this is one dessert that was even too sweet for me to finish! It was interesting to say the least.

Day 3

Day 3 saw us back on the Fung Wah bus to New York. I was hoping to get back early enough to maybe see about heading in with my younger cousin to spend New Year’s evening in Times Square (I know I swore off it last time but thought it would be nice to spend it with my cousin and her friends but it ended up taking us nearly seven hours to get back to Manhattan because the weather decided to throw down some snow on us! I was very hungry even though I hads me some pizza for breakfast before getting on the bus …

Fung Wah drivers have a bit of a bad reputation but I reckon our bus driver did very well to get us back safely and relatively quickly in the conditions (I looked out the front of the bus at one stage and couldn’t see a thing!)

Final Words

Boston is a beautiful city and from what I’ve seen in the last couple of days seems like a totably livable city. Its not the biggest city in the world but certainly is charming enough. The fact its a university city also gives it an extra little bit of character and probably makes it a fun place in the evening during university times.

Christmas Meal 2008

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For Christmas this year I decided that since neither Pat nor I were heading over to Australia that it would be nice to spend Christmas day cooking and relaxing. We had started planning the event weeks before – with me choosing the menu and Pat running around getting the ingredients in the lead up to today’s event (and there’s no way I will forget that he had to get up at 5am yesterday morning to hit Smithfield’s to get the meat for our meal!)

Our celebration started with Christmas Eve when Pat cooked up some yummy ribs. We’re both suckers for it and he prepared two styles of rib for us to sample. They cooked for a few hours so by the time we got our teeth into them they were nice and tender and juicy. Eaten whilst watching DVDs it was a perfect lead up to events today!

We woke up quite early on Christmas morning and after wishing each other a Merry Christmas we got online to speak with the Family in Oz. Its geeky I know but we were going to broadcast what we could of our cooking and preparation whilst it was still Oz waking hours.

Our menu read like this:

Starters
– Seared scallops wrapped in crispy bacon
– Curried parsnip and apple soup with home-made parsnip crisps. Recipe courtesy of Delia.

Mains
– Roasted belly of pork with crackling
– Baked pheasant stuffed and seasoned with sea salt and lemon thyme

Sides
– Garlic and herb roasted sweet potato wedges
– Fresh herbed-chicken stuffing
– Brussel Sprouts

Desserts
– Mini baked ginger cheesecake
– Pavlova served with generous lashings of strawberry and passionfruit

A lot of food right!?!

The day of cooking started at around noon with preparation of the cheesecakes and parsnip soup. Between preparation, waiting for the soup to be set, speaking to the fam back home in Oz it was just under two hours later before we sat down to enjoy the soup. It was delicious and actually I think my favourite dish of the day!

Soon after we finished guzzling down the soup we put the pork belly into the oven to start its five hour journey to something soft, tender, juicy and ready for our bellies! Ha ha. Whilst we waited for the pork belly to be readied we ate the scallops, downed some sorbet (which Pat made using his ice cream machine) and entertained ourselves with a few DVDs. Fantastic!

We also started to prepare the pheasant for the oven. I volunteered to chop the ingredients for the stuffing and so Pat had to prepare the pheasant. It’s a very gamy bird and bought extremely fresh from the market was quite bloody and even had a few feathers still to pluck. Lucky Pat got this job!

Finally our pork belly was ready and after plating we were ready to chow down.

Oh boy, after the pork belly I was more than ready for bed! I was so stuffed but we still had pheasant and two desserts to go! Phew. In the end I couldn’t finish much of the pheasant but of course downed all the cheesecake and pavlova. Who could overlook dessert! We even finished with yet another sorbet.

And that, folks, is how to have a Christmas meal in ten hours. It was just past 10pm when we were done and dusted. Hard work but I had a fabulous time.

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.

Carvosso’s at 210 Chiswick

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I love how Christmas time means going out for a meal especially, when someone is leaving the team. Today Jenny and I had our last lunch together forever at work. Very sad to be losing her! We decided to head up to Chiswick to see what we could find. After checking out a couple of places, most of which were busy with Christmas parties, we stumbled upon Carvasso’s. For some reason we’ve never spotted this place when we’ve been looking for a lunch venue in Chiswick. Such a shame because it’s a great find (although the prices are a touch high for a regular weekly lunch.)

The bar has a nice warm atmosphere inside with lots of tan coloured wood throughout. Without feeling too crowded the venue was able to give an impression of coziness and privacy as it seemed to have lots of nooks and crannies everywhere. Apparently it has a courtyard out the back too which should be explored in the warmer weather.

The food was very good quality and filling and there was plenty on the a la carte menu that caught my attention. Service was attentive and responsive though they seemed happy to leave Jenny and I to gossip until we were ready to go.

During our meal I was also quite busy checking out what everyone else was having. I can’t wait to go back and try their pork belly which looked spectacular!

North London Tavern

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We stopped in to the North London Tavern for a quick Sunday lunch before heading off to Wembley Stadium to see the Race of Champions so I didn’t have much time to absorb the true atmosphere.

It seemed like a beautiful pub though with high ceilings, warm dark wood everywhere and comfortable seats. Pauline complained that she could feel the vibration from the nearby train but I didn’t really notice it that much.

As we got there on opening for Sunday the staff was still getting their instructions from the manager. However they didn’t mind us placing our food orders though they didn’t seem to know how to put them through the registers! Staff were very friendly and they even kept us in the loop with the progress on our Sunday dinners (because they knew we had limited time to eat!)

Food was pretty good and obviously cooked fresh. Shame we didn’t have more time to relax.