Monthly Archives: September 2010

Day 4: BBC Studio Tour, Borough Market and the Thames River

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For the last day in London for the first part of the Kua family trip it was off to BBC studios for a tour of the BBC Television Centre at White City. Although the presence of BBC in the area will probably be no more by the end of next year for the moment at least it was easily accessible to us. The television studios were one of the first buildings designed specifically for making and transmitting television programmes.

The tour of the studios took us behind the public veil and into a couple of the working studios. As with all studio visits there is also an interactive element where members of the audience get to pretend to be on TV – either as news casters like Dad, or participants in a quiz programme, or working the behind the scenes in the sound booth.

After the tour we headed over to Westfield to grab some lunch – we ended up at GBK which surprised my family with how big their burgers are. Heh heh.

Fully stuffed we made our way over to the other side of town to take a walk from London Bridge to through the Borough Market and along the River Thames to see both London Bridge and Tower Bridge.

I was hoping that we would be around to see the Tower Bridge opening up but we were too early for that and as we had a dinner date with Pat’s roommate at the Bleeding Heart Tavern we couldn’t really hang around too long!

Mum must have been in the mood for food resembling her head size she chose this baby chicken for her dinner:

Too funny!

The Kuas at The Berkeley

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A quintessential experience for a visitor to England is to indulge in afternoon tea. Although the Berkeley’s Prêt-à-Portea is less traditional than most I quite like the fact it has its own spin on afternoon tea and everything is just so pretty!

The season’s designers were Erdem, Paul Smith, Yves Saint Laurent, Jason Wu, Anya Hindmarch, Christopher Kane Jean Paul Gaultier and Sonia Rykiel. Honestly the chefs at the Berkeley must have so much fun interpreting the latest fashions – and because they don’t have to serve the same thing for the entire year it would certainly keep their interests up.

So, what treats did we have today? Including the usual assorted sandwiches and layer of savoury treats including a crab handroll thingy and grilled prawns we had the stars of the afternoon tea:

  • Anya Hindmarch light apricot sponge summer “Halen” bag, wrapped in almond marzipan with playful bow
  • Paul Smith orange, papaya and pink lavender bavarois top with chocolate bowler hat
  • Season’s must-have dog biscuit adorned with chocolate brown studs and white leather glaze
  • Yves Saint Laurent soft romantic white chocolate mousse and raspberry custard finished with crunchy meringue scattered with mini strawberries
  • Sonia Rykiel nautical vanilla and raspberry jam layered mousse topped with humorous yellow hat
  • Belted Jason Wu poppy-seed cocktail dress biscuit embellished with ruffled purple icing
  • Erdem dark silky chocolate cake filled with passion fruit and delicate lace
  • Christopher Kane pale pink almond macaroon filled with chocolate and elderflower ganache topped with a pink checkerboard
  • Jean Paul Gaultier fluorescent cheese cake on almond and oat base accessorized with a bright yellow sugar twirl

Yep – the descriptions are almost as fun as the delicacies themselves!

Apart from going into a sugar coma I think my family really enjoyed the afternoon tea. The also enjoyed the banter we were having with the waiters and waitresses which culminated, once again, in us walking away with cute doggie bags. 😉

Day 3: Westminster Abbey, Harrods, and Sister Act

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Day 3 of the Kua Family Visit to London was a bit dreary and wet but at least we had planned mostly indoor activities for the day. Additionally, the drizzle cleared off by the time we emerged from our first stop at Westminster Abbey.

Westminster Abbey is the England’s coronation church. Many famous historical figures from the last couple of millennia are also buried underneath and its still a working church with regular services throughout the day. In fact, during our tour, each hour for a minute there is a pause for prayer.

The interior of the Abbey is quite a bit larger than one would imagine – no photos allowed inside however. You can do a free audio tour which is included in your entry fee or you can pay a few additional bucks for a special tour led by the one of the Abbey Vergers, and includes a visit to the Shrine of St Edward and a chance to sit in the choir area – both of which are not normally accessible.

Because the wet weather had cleared by the time we emerged a couple of hours later we had a nice stroll to our next top – Harrods. Purely a window shopping experience of course! Heh heh. Whenever we’re on holidays one thing that my Dad loves to do is visit a supermarket – in Harrods this consisted of the Food Hall which even I admit can be quite fascinating. Mum loved the Christmas Shop (a permanent shop fixture!) as it was bright and colourful and evoked memories of her childhood Christmas holidays.

After we’d had our fill of Harrods we headed over to my favourite afternoon tea place in the whole of London – the Caramel Room at The Berkeley. Awesome as always!

We walked off our afternoon tea by heading over to see Pat’s flat which Mum and Dad really liked before going to see Sister Act. Although everyone enjoyed the musical it was clear the heavy itinerary was getting to Dad, Mum and Stephen as they all fell asleep! Ha ha. Mum only briefly nodded off but I’m sure Stephen slept through the end of the first half … if not more. Poor things 🙂

Tierra Brindisa

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In contrast to the service at breakfast, the service at the end of the day at Tierra Brindisa couldn’t have been friendlier or responsive. Pat suggested Tierra Brindisa for a meal option to give my family a chance to sample some typically Spanish fare – tapas. I’m sure we have Spanish restaurants in Australia but I don’t think my parents or Stephen really frequent that scene. Its one of my favourite types of meals – but in London it can get expensive.

Tierra Brindisa is a small venue located in Soho – small and popular enough that you actually need to book well in advance to get a sitting. Its very cosy inside and as a result if you have any sort of large group near your, or a particularly loud person, it can get very noisy and disturbing. But still, we were famished enough to overlook the very loud table of bachelors sitting next to us …

The menu at Tierra Brindisa is not overlong and it is also constantly changes – in face the menu serves as a kind of place mat. Rather interestingly for tonight we had three different menus on the table! The waitress was a bit devastated … it took some time to work out which was the right menu but we got there in the end.

Food was pretty good although someone certainly had a heavy hand with the salt as most dishes were a tad on the salty side. The toast with the allioli was certainly tasty (though you probably wouldn’t want to be kissing someone afterwards the garlic was that strong) with my favourite items including the chicken croquette, a scallop dish, and leon chorizo.

Things I would pass included the cod croquette (again it was mainly the salt that got me on this one) and a squid dish which was kind of boring. The Patatas Bravas looked good but was a little flavourless – went well with the allioli from our toast! Everything else like the prawns, mushroom and spinach salad, kind of fell in between.

This is the kind of restaurant that I would happily return to – although not particularly cheap the constantly changing menu is appealing in the way that its almost like coming to a brand new restaurant on every visit. In terms of when to come, however, I would definitely try to come when its less busy because after a while the noise of what in total was actually not that many diners almost became unbearable.

Day 2: Changing of the Guards, Buckingham Palace, London Duck Tours

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Day 2 was another early start for Dad, Mum and Stephen. Although let’s face it the start of every day of this holiday was potentially going to be an early start. Heh heh.

After filling up on breakfast at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand we meandered through over to await the Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace. On the way we stopped in at Trafalgar Square and The Mall for the requisite photos. I got Mum do some silly poses in front of some sculptures and there were some workmen sitting down having their morning tea – they vastly entertained by us if their p!ssing themselves with laughter (in a good natured way) was any indication. I love how Mum will do pretty much anything I ask her. She’s great!

The Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace must surely be one of the most overrated tourist attractions in the world but its still gotta be done! You can read all the guides you want about the Changing of the Guards but the key to getting a good spot is to get there early. We thought that we would do something a little different and move around a bit so we could actually see the guards moving around – and not be stuck pressed to the gates of Buckingham Palace itself.

This kind of worked for us but it did involve quite a bit of running around!

It seemed fitting that having seen the Changing of the Guards that we would actually go in and visit Buckingham Palace itself. Although they try to regulate the numbers inside the Palace it still gets tremendously crowded – but it was worth the visit to see how much Mum thoroughly enjoyed it. She didn’t have to but she kept on thanking me for arranging for us to visit it! What a sweetie. I don’t know what Dad and the boys thought of it as we were milling around – we soon lost them to the crowd inside!

After Buckingham Palace we had some time before we did our London Duck Tour so we walked over from Buckingham Palace to the Eye, or pick up location for the London Duck Tours. Its so great how London is just so walkable!

The London Duck Tour was okay – though many of the sites it took us around were already part of our itinerary. Not sure it did much for our orientation but I guess it was pretty cool to take a dip into the Thames and see London from a different perspective. Our tour guide did his best to liven up the tour cracking some funny jokes and giving us some very random facts about London … sadly it was a little lost on the audience who didn’t seem to get it! Ah well.

After such a long day of running around hitting the tourist sites it was a very satisfied family that sat down for a rewarding meal at Tierra Brindisa.

Simpson’s-in-the-Strand

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Simpsons-in-the Strand is one of the oldest and most traditional English restaurants in London so I thought it would be an ideal please for us to get a great big breakfast to start off our day. There is a large variety of offerings on the menu from traditional English breakfasts to omelettes to fish dishes (e.g. smoked haddock kedgeree and grilled kippers) and other breakfast suspects like eggs benedict.

The item that intrigued me the most was the Ten Deadly Sins breakfast which basically was a full English breakfast with lamb kidney, fried bread, bubble & squeak and baked beans. Yep – I wasn’t going to go hungry for a long while! This is priced at £21.50 with the full English being priced at £19.50 – both prices are ridiculously expensive but justified on the basis that you’re paying for the venue and the price also included toast, pastries, coffee / tea, a choice of choice of cereals, porridge or half a grapefruit, and a juice – so I guess not to bad value.

Breakfast was a pleasant meal but that was purely because of the company! And certainly not because of the service which was ever so disappointing. For a start the restaurant did that terrible thing of asking you what drink you want before even giving us a chance to look at the menu, for another our waitress was sooo not interested in what she was doing that she barely explained how the breakfast worked. The last straw was that Mum’s dish had some strains of a steel wool in it! How that got in there is anyone’s guess. At least the manager had the good grace to comp us the meal – we didn’t ask for it and were certainly surprised he did so since he seemingly begrudgingly admitted the restaurant had made a mistake!

Simpson’s-in-the-Strand today was a restaurant let down by the disinterested and almost what I would consider cold service.

Day 1: Stonehenge, Bath, Windsor

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My parents and Stephen have less than three weeks to fit in London plus three European cities. I was determined that they would see as much as I could cram into their schedule … hence despite their arrival near midnight last night I made them get up super early so that we could fit in a day trip to Stonehenge, Bath and Windsor. Poor family! Ha ha!

For our trip I didn’t want to join one of those massive bus tours so I found International Friends who promised a more intimate visit (maximum of 16.) We met at the Cumberland Hotel where I took Dad and Mum inside to check out “our” bar before being picked up.

The most frustrating thing about day trips out of the London is that you quite often spend most of the day in your vehicle – especially if you’re trying to hit three different destinations like we were. Thankfully the traffic wasn’t too horrific and the time in the bus, when the guide wasn’t speaking, could be used by everyone to rest their eyes!

The way International Friends tours work is that the guide gives you a bit of a story whilst your in the bus, a short introduction when you get to the site and then you’re pretty much left to your own devices. This suited us perfectly.

Like anyone who visits Stonehenge everyone expressed their surprise at just how small it was. Although I was pleased to see that Dad was very excited and was taking photos all over the place. We had quite a bit of time at Stonehenge and pleasingly we’d beaten most of the giant tour buses so pretty much had it to ourselves. Having said that it was freakin’ cold so as soon as we were ready we ran into the shop! Ha ha!

A short drive after Stonehenge we got to Bath. Bath is known for its hot springs so we obligingly entered the Roman Baths museum. It was majorly crowded but, for me, extremely boring! But only cause I’d been there before. The most fascinating part of the museum was the video projection they had inside one of the baths of roman men taking baths … could you blame me for finding this interesting? 😉

Next up for the day was a visit to Windsor. By this time it was about mid-afternoon and we only had about an hour at Windsor. So what do we do? Oh no, we don’t visit Windsor Castle, instead we went into TK Maxx shopping for coats! Ha ha! We did have a fun time looking around though!

Pizza East

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We were in the area coming from the Experimental Food Society Spectacular so decided to tick off one of my to-do list restaurants. Pizza East has been on my list for over a year! so I’d forgotten the reason that I wanted to go there – heh heh. I think I remember being attracted by the promise of American style pizza maybe? Or the fact it was located in Shoreditch – whatever the reasons here we were for Saturday lunch.

The space inside is vast, but somehow there were still people waiting for a table when we left. It was lucky we’d arrived relatively early for lunch so we were pretty much sat straight down.

There is a lot more to the Pizza East menu than pizza though that was what we had come for. But first, we enjoyed some starters – a gorgeous Fig, Honeycomb and Ricotta Bruschetta and a fairly average Calamari. The calamari was small in portion (£7.50!) but the Bruschetta was worth every penny. I would have happily ordered another!

Moving on to our pizzas – Pat had a Ground beef, scarmorza, dried tomatoes (Pat was tempted by the fact the scarmoza was smoked) while I opted for a San Daniele, tomato, ricotta, pesto, ruby chard (my choice was purely for the pesto!) Our pizzas, when they arrived, were attractive enough for our neighbours to ask us what they were!

Sadly the pizzas looked better than they tasted. Well, Pat’s pizza was pretty good, but I should have known that, my love of pesto notwithstanding, the prosciutto on my pizza was going to ruin it for me. If it had been cooked in the oven along with the rest of the pizza that might have been a different story because then it would have become like a toasted bacon – but after a while of eating the pizza lack of strong flavour was too much and I couldn’t finish the pizza. PS both pizzas had way too much of a base versus ingredient ratio to my liking.

Because the menu has lots of stuff beyond the pizza I would probably consider coming again. Its not too bad for value and the service was efficient and friendly. Good vibe as well because of the open space though I could see that it had potential for getting too loud for my liking.

Experimental Food Society Spectacular

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There are all sorts of random events being held revolving around food recently. The last one we went to was the Bompas and Parr: The Complete History of Food which was truly interesting. Today it was the inaugural Experimental Food Society Spectacular.

The Experimental Food Society was started at the beginning of this year as a front for showcasing gourmet artists interested in more than just swallowing food. Bombas and Parr are members of this group.

It was crazy crazy busy when we turned up and you could hardly move for all the people inside. If it wasn’t for the fact I was keen to see what kind of genius creations people could come up with I would have bypassed the event altogether. Here are some pics of the things I saw today:

lovetocake’s Gorilla cake

Sharon Baker’s Body and Breast bread casts

Carl Warner working on his Lobster Landscape

Chocolate from Paul Wayne Gregory was just plain gorgeous. They were giving out sample lollipops which I nearly got stampeded over from girls trying to get their grubby mitts on them. This was one part of the event that I really hated – all these pushy people who didn’t care who they were pushing around.

This suckling pig look pretty rested …

Some sugar and butter sculptures

Oh, and look who we came across. Sam Bompas.

And some of their creations (in ethanol) in conjunction with the Robin Collective.

You got to play this ring toss “game” and then you’d get to sample some ethanol jelly … think it was nicer in concept than in taste. Very strong!

You’ve probably seen this guy’s work in an email forward somewhere. Takashi Itoh. Pretty brilliant carvings in watermelon.

Malcolm West’s Paul O’Grady in Jelly Bellies.

And finally, some live art. This dude started painting random people in the audience in chocolate. A brown guy in white chocolate, and a white gal in brown chocolate. Really funny.

PS Don’t you just love the pictures in the background!

We didn’t cough up the £75 for the banquet (which was basically grabbing whatever you could and eating it) afterwards but I’m sure it would have been interesting dining on the food that we’d all been looking at all day. I mean, imagine hacking at Sharon Baker’s Body of Bread. Ha!