Tonight we had a work do at the elegant Maroush Gardens on Edgeware Road. Their website promised “a taste of Lebanese Luxury in London” and that is what we got. When you enter the restaurant you are greeted with a fountain and I belive a fish pond and when you make it into the restaurant proper you can look up to admire the skylight roof. To be honest when we 
booked this restaurant we were looking for a more intimate dining experience to try and re-create our last experience as a group on Edgeware Road. But it just wasn’t the same. Sure the food was very good (I can recommend the hot mezza Soujok and for a main course the Shish Taouk was pretty tasty and generous) and the service impeccable (if a bit in your face) but it was hardly the type of restaurant where you’d spend the whole evening just relaxing and enjoying the atmosphere. Unlike Mawal and our first choice Maroush I there didn’t appear to be any sort of entertainment (singing at Mawal and belly dancing at Maroush I) so as soon as we finished with dinner we headed off for a more suitable venue. I’m not sure where we actually ended up – downstairs at some bar behind Oxford Street. It wasn’t actually too bad a place because it wasn’t overly crowded, we had a nice area to sit (I know I wear my hiking shoes most of the time but I don’t know how others can stand to stand up (pardon the pun) the whole night drinking) and we didn’t have to shout to hear each other speak (pet peeve much?!).
Category Archives: Food
The Cow
The Cow Dining Room (sitting above the buzzing and smoky Cow Saloon Bar) is charming in looks and style so it’s a shame that the service delivered by one of our waitresses just wasn’t up to par. The Cow is owned by Tom Conran a
nd though I’m not sure you could really count this restaurant as coming under the Conran chain of restaurants if you go by price you might suspect it does. The food, simply prepared and presented, was high in quality but very expensive. A two and a half course meal consisting of a shared starter of smoked eel, potato salad and bacon with a dash of horseradish, mains of fish (halibut and snapper) and desserts (one of which was admittedly giant in size) and two juice drinks (that is, no alcohol!) cost nearly £70 – a bit much really for a gastropub. The food on the menu was varied despite not having the greatest number of selections (5-6 options each for starters, mains and desserts) with the most difficult thing for me being the interpreting of what exactly some of the fancy offerings were! In the end I think I went with safe and sure options.
Overall I was happy to have gone and despite paying what I thought was a hefty price for a pub I did walk away fairly full and satisfied. Final words of advice: If you go to the dining room upstairs definitely book ahead. It sits maybe upwards of 30 people and is usually always full with bookings so there is little, if no chance, of turning up on a whim and scoring a table. And this applies to any night. Of course you can always try your hand at squeezing on to a table in the cost bar downstairs which seemed quite the entertaining place to be.
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Mahdi Reunion
It is a week of reunions it seems. Tonight we had a catch up with some people including A (you may be familiar with his extremely whacky comments that he likes to leave on my blog for my reading pleasure) at our favourite Persian restaurant, Mahdi.
Mahdi serves brilliant Persian food and if you go for the specials is fab value (you will not leave the restaurant hungry I can guarantee!) For a while during the back end of 2005 we were going there for lunch practically every couple of days – we liked it that much. However, as with all things, I think we went overboard and as a result this year we have hardly gone at all. I suspect though it probably has something to do with the fact that the number one fan, A, has left our office.
I think a nice night was had by all.
Russian Reunion
Alsu, our tour leader from our Russian Christmas trip, was in town for a short visit and after some hiccups with last week’s plans we finally got our act together today and met up for a few cocktails and a late afternoon lunch at Loco Locale. It was nice to catch up with her (and the others too of course) even if some of the crew couldn’t make it. Most suprising thing to hear was that one of the guys was going to apply for a Russian visa so he could hop over to Moscow at every chance – ah, what we do for love!
So, Loco Locale wasn’t bad in terms of their cocktails (the espresso martini was delish and at half-price who is going to say no to a cocktail or four) and the actual food was pretty good (portions seemed gigantic and reasonably priced) and it is a pretty cool room. The only negative was the service which was relatively slow and quite awful in delivery (drinks were brought to the wrong people and carelessly spilled at times) and waitresses (or maybe it was just one in particular) had the worst timing often interrupting conversations to ask inane questions. Still, overall, it wasn’t bad at managing our relatively large group and even though we were there for nearly 4 hours didn’t put any pressure on us to leave … perhaps it was the number of cocktails we were ordering …
Kung Hei Fat Choi
My brother had a friend from back home visiting so, with some more friends of his, we headed out to Chinatown for some yum-cha. I’m not sure if it was a deliberate choice to do yum-cha on Chinese New Year but it was certainly interesting challenge. Making our way past Chinatown Mall (the hordes of people in the Mall dissuaded us from even thinking of making our way through the Mall) was frantic with many crowding the streets and pathways watching street performers (mainly the lions) or just plain getting in my way. You had to watch out for the kids and their random throwing of small fire crackers – not painful but a surprise if one pops at your feet.
Many restaurants weren’t taking reservations, and our restaurant of choice Laureate was no exception, so it was eat on a first come first serve. Surprisingly people were willing to wait for more than hour (us included) to be seated – though maybe it had something to do with the hostess saying that the wait would only be half an hour. The waiting area got so crowded at times that people were standing in the aisles between tables and all up the stairs! Just as well Laureate was not one of those trolley yum-cha places. Happily we were able to enjoy a giant feast – and we even had prime seating to see not one but two lions come in to bless the restaurant eating the lettuce hanging from the wall and then throwing it up on us. Pretty funny.
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M&M audit
Because clearly we have too much spare time on our hands, we thought it would be an interesting idea to collect plain M&Ms from all our travels around the world over Christmas. To my amazement we were prety successful at it collecting M&Ms from such far flung places as Saudi, Sth America, and Russia. Of course, it is all an excuse for me to feed my addiction but anyway …. we have taste tested a majority of the M&Ms and surprisingly they all are subtly different in taste. Calorie and sugar levels are outlined below …
| Country | Calories (per 100g) | Sugar (per 100g) |
| Austria | 490 | 65.5 |
| Australia | 490 | 64.1 |
| Bolivia | 450 | 57.43 |
| Germany | 490 | 65.5 |
| Holland | 490 | 65.5 |
| New York | 501 | 64.72 |
| Peru | 501 | 64.72 |
| Russia | 483 | ? |
| Saudi | No nutrional | info available |
| UK | 490 | 65.5 |
| Venezuela | 481 | 64.9 |
New Wag’s at Victoria
I can’t breathe. How did this come to be?
Well, don’t worry too much – its only a temporary thing … I hope!
So, tonight S invited me along to an exclusive opportunity to have a “dress rehearsal” meal at the not yet officially opened (opening officially tomorrow) Wagamama Restaurant at Cardinal Place, Victoria. We were each treated to one side, one main, two drinks and a bottle of water – all on the house (though service was discretionary). Add a cup of green tea to that and I think its fair to say that the meal was quite the feast.
Comment cards were handed out to us for completion, however I think it was hard to give a fair comment as to how service/food etc. was because, well to be frank, I think they had every member of staff in the restaurant tonight! – they must have had about 10 cooks behind the counter and the ratio of customers to waiters would have been close to 1:1 – no joke – so service was always going to fast and efficient. It was good fun though – and I loved our waiter, Fabio. Reminded me of a younger but just as cute John Leguizamo.
The Festive BBC Good Food Show
Good Food, Good Wine, Good Celebrity Chefs – what more could you ask for. Arriving early at the The Festive BBC Good Show is definitely a good move. With thousands of foodies and winies coming to eat and drink their way through the day, the Show can very quickly get out of hand – but in a good way if you don’t mind pushing your way through the crowds. Getting there early also means that you have the chance to grab the fire hot free tickets to The Festive Tasting theatre (tasting classes for wines and cheeses, beer, tea & biscuits and chocolates) and the Christmas Kitchen.
In the Christmas Kitchen, Jo Pratt and the delicious Kurtis Stone firstly entertained us with some party treats and then the main event – Rick Stein. Rick Stein really was lovely – he seems like a very genuine guy and he just couldn’t stop smiling throughout the whole performance. We had spent approximately two hours in the Christmas Kitchen and by then it was around 1.30pm and we were suprised by how many people seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Nevertheless we geared ourselves up to try push our way through the crowds. It may be an idea to try and approach the Show in an orderly fashion if you are interested in hitting all the stands – otherwise just go with whatever catches your eye.
The Show was definitely an interesting experience allowing us to taste a number of products – a range including cheeses, dips, sauces, jams, sausages, breads, ice-creams (including an interesting Red Hot Chilli number), sweets. A number of times during the Christmas Kitchen reference was made to the fact that the wine side of the Show definitely was seeing more business than the food side of the Show but to me it seemed evenly split. Not being a big drinker I thought a visit to the wine side of things was more for completeness than anything – but I did taste some really yummy toffee vodka so it wasn’t a complete waste of time :). Mmmmm.
Overall a nice way to spend a leisurely Saturday.
Rock and Sole Plaice
The experience that people have here seem to be a bit hit and miss. On this occasion it was a hit with extremely friendly (if at times slow) service with decent size portions and good tasting grub. A decent enough chippie for a quick bite to eat in the West End. Don’t be mislead by these pics which were taken when we had out-talked everyone else (we even missed our movie!) – as when we first came it in was absolutely heaving.
Night out at Edgware Road
Tonight was kind of a night out to celebrate our surviving the stress of the last few months. Sadly not 
all of the team could make it, however those of us who did manage to make it more than made up for their absence.
Continuing on with our current favoured Middle-Eastern-themed-eating, A and A number two had jointly chosen Mawal at Edgware Road as our destination. When we first arrived the lighting was shall we say romantic. It was not intentional however as we soon found out that electricity was at that moment in time strictly at a premium! It was slightly troubling as at first the wine was delivered unchilled, secondly my juice couldn’t be blended and finally food was served luke-warm. Service it seemed was also at a premium though strangely A number two’s more quiet hand in the air was more effective than A’s call for service. After this initial hiccup, and when we had finally filled our bellies, we settled in to enjoy the rest of the evening.
Overall it was a nice evening and a pleasant change from the usual Friday night drinks. For once it was nice not to be constantly shouting through the roar of the crowd and feeling the obligation to keep your glass full. Instead we exchanged the usual beers and spirits for a bit of wine, mint tea and shisha. Shisha was interesting for me and although now I cannot claim never to have smoked in my life I guess I can technically say I haven’t smoked the more obnoxiuos cigarettes. Shisha (also known as hookah, waterpipe, or even hubble-bubble) is basically the use of a water pipe to inhale a mixture of tobacco and some sweet substance such as apple, strawberry, melon etc. The mixture is heated using lit coals. A number two and S tried to explain how it worked to me but all I really needed to know was to take a pull through the hose. Anyway, however it works, it was an interesting experience. The night was topped off by some live entertainment by some very smartly dressed men who could have been pop stars for all we knew! Great night.