Jenny BBQ

Jenny has had a pretty amazing year this year with a new job, a new engagement (!) and a new house (!!) And with her birthday just having gone by a couple of weeks ago today she was having a celebration barbeque at her new home … which was a very lengthy journey on the tube (all the way to the end of the central line) and then a taxi at the other end! Not that I minded – she, after all, has to make quite an effort to come in central to do stuff with me.

She’d been blessed with some pretty damn fine weather and, if she’d had a pool, it would have been perfect conditions to don our cossies! We had to settle for walking barefoot in the grass and lounging around in her fairly sizable backyard. She’d gone to sooo much effort with the food. I love that about Jenny – she just gets so excited about her food. And they had sooooo much meat. Sean was on the barbie all afternoon and into the early evening grilling stuff for everyone. Not sure how many people turned up as it was a mixture of Jenny’s and Sean’s friends but it had to have at least been 45 people if I had to guess at a minimum?

A fun day.

Jill leaving do

I didn’t take proper photos at Jill’s leaving do tonight but I took enough to show that the Thames was very low today. Apparently it happens quite often when the tide goes out but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the water levels so low!

Jill’s leaving do was at this cute little pub/bar on the Thames. The weather was quite lovely so we took it out on to the terrace. She kindly bought everyone’s first drinks and also arranged for food platters and had even got her family to join us. It was good to meet them! Jill is such a sweet person – it was her leaving do but she’d gone and gotten me a card and a voucher for ticketmaster! So thoughtful! I’m definitely going to miss her.

Another BBQ at Caro and Nate’s

Who said England doesn’t do summer! Okay, admittedly the weather has been sketchy this entire week but today it was rather brilliant … and perfect to enjoy Caro and Nathan’s barbeque feed outdoors. The food was especially delicious today, mostly to do with Caro’s skills in the kitchen, but in part it must have surely been something to do with eating it outdoors.

Gaspar certainly enjoyed his time outdoors running around picking herbs and then giving them to me! And Cesar also certainly didn’t mind having his feed outdoors. Yum!

We finished with some very decadent and rich cupcakes

Zoo Lates

The concept behind Zoo Lates at the London Zoo is that the adults get to be free of the little kids to enjoy the Zoo in relative peace and quiet. Plus, with the temperatures being a bit cooler, in theory at least, the animals will be less lethargic and we would have more opportunity to see them. Throw in cocktails, market stall food and a silent disco and you can really party.

Tonight I met up with Su, Shahid and a bunch of Shahid’s friends and I was very amused to find that everyone was acting like a little kid! Nothing was holding anyone’s attention for very long and we were flitting around from one zoo enclosure to another as soon as something caught someone’s attention. Very ironic.

It was definitely a lot cooler in the evening and I was also looking forward to seeing the bed-time rituals of all the animals. I’d heard that one year people got to see a hippo having its teeth brushed! Unfortunately for us the animals were pretty quiet and in what seemed like a bed-time mood already. Well, the big headline animals such as the lions and tigers at any rate.

I had a sighting of a pygmy hippo, but not getting its teeth brushed 🙁

Have you ever sen a white echidna? These creatures were very odd looking!

At the zoo they also have a farm area that allows interaction with the animals including feeding. The llamas and alpacha were happy to see us. I was pleased to see they had anti-germ soap everywhere to wash your hands afterwards.

The most exciting animal sighting was the komodo dragon which was in the process of eating a whole live chicken. Greedy little thing tried to swallow the chicken whole and even after about 20 minutes it hadn’t made much progress on it. We left it to eat in peace.

We had a brief sighting of one gorilla but he wasn’t doing anything too thrilling and soon wandered off out of our sight.

Having had enough of animals the “kids” and I headed over to where the party was happening – the food stalls and the Silent Disco. I have to hand it to the London Zoo, they’d arrange a pretty good range of foods for our enjoyment ranging from American grill, to spit roasts, to falafels, to curries, to South African brai etc. It was very good. The only complaint some of the lines were very slow.

The Silent Disco was a must to work off our food and boy it was fun. The enclosure for the Silent Disco was pretty small so it soon got quickly crowded. The music was good and we had two channels to choose from. The DJ, however, had to keep telling us to keep the singing down as the Zoo animals were sleeping. Hmmm … at about 10 minutes before it was going to wrap up the heavens opened. We’d been lucky the rain had held off until then to be honest. Some people braved the rains but we took off and sought shelter at one of Gordon Ramsay’s gastropubs just down the road.

Overall I did enjoy Zoo Lates as a concept, it was good to be visiting the animals at a different time of day, and I enjoyed the food and Silent Disco.

Awana

I’d gotten Su Yin a groupon voucher meal for two at Awana for her birthday as I’ve always been pretty happy with the food there and being Malaysian I thought she would enjoy it. She nicely took me as her plus one. We started with some (non) alcoholic cocktails before getting into the food proper.

The key dishes I like to enjoy at Awana is their satay, preferably chicken. Alas on the set menu was the beef satay! Okay it was pretty delicious being tender, juicy and with a hint of smokiness, but it was no chicken satay. Su Yin ordered what she thought would be a fresh prawn spring roll but it ended up being deep fried.

For mains it was more beef for me with the massaman curry and Su Yin opted for the lighter fish dish, which would have been my first choice except I’d had that before. For me the beef wasn’t quite as tender or juicy as I’d want it to be – I thought it would be fall apart tender and whilst it wasn’t tough, it was just a touch on the dry side.

Desserts were Pisang roti canai a sweetened crispy flat bread filled with banana in heavy milk served with chocolate and lemon grass ice cream and a guava cheesecake and banana ice cream. Both were quite good but I couldn’t really fit much of them in. I know. How odd. Maybe my drink had been much too creamy at the start.

A Doggy Birthday Present

Sometimes it’s the simple things that amuse me … such as seeing the drug dogs in action. Today the dog bust was happening at South Kensington tube station. This is not a station that I would ordinarily associate with rampant drug use/carrying … but then again Notting Hill station doesn’t normally strike me as a station susceptible to such matters but they often have them there too and the dog once even picked me up!

Today I saw two dogs in their shifts whilst waiting for Su to arrive, the first was a white lab who was pretty uninterested in matters, though that could have been something to do with me catching it at the end of its shift, and then they brought this black lab in. He was sooo energetic, following everyone he could and jumping around from person to person … but oddly the three people he picked up all had the same style: Backpack, giant headphones (like DJ style) and male. So funny! It certainly made my birthday.

Rasoi Vineet Bhatia

So technically my birthday is right around the corner but, except for my 30th, I’m not normally one who likes to celebrate. On the other hand, I’ll take any excuse to go out for a nice meal. Heh heh. Groupon had nicely co-operated by offering an excellent deal (half price on their tasting menu before service) on 1-Michelin starred Rasoi Vineet Bhatia, a very small and intimate, well hidden, Indian restaurant in Chelsea. Rehana had cause to comment it was almost like having a meal in someone’s dining room. You even have to buzz to gain access like you’re visiting a friend’s home for dinner. I quite liked the vibe, and despite the fact the weather wasn’t the greatest, appreciated the sky light that sat above our table. As a result of the intimate surrounds you are a lot closer to your fellow diners than is comfortable but with about 20 people in our room max it didn’t get too loud or overwhelming and thankfully no shouting required to be heard.

Rasoi Vineet Bhatia’s Indian style is best described as fusion in the way that Benares is, but more.

We started off with our “bread” course of pappadam with Mint and Mango Chutneys and two amuse bouche – which was a short of watermelon with spices mixed in and this beautiful mouthful of something which I unfortunately cannot remember the name of but Rehana said was the restaurant’s posh and refined take on some typical Indian dish. Incredibly delicious. If every dish was as good as these pre-starters then we were in for a real treat. And we were!

Spinach tikka chaat and warm potato-pomegranatea chaat were our first courses. The potato-pomeranate chaat in particular was a winner in this dish (the one on the left) – it was both sweet and spicy and tangy and all ingredients (not sure what the mysterious green sauce was) were so well in combination together. I wanted more but new that with six dishes to come, even if they weren’t going to be huge, I would have to pace myself.

Lamb dominated the next course and though not a fan of the meat found myself liking Gilafi lamb seekh kebab, lime lamb samosa served with herb and olive chutney respectively. Interesting ingredients to use in this dish.

And we come to what undoubtedly was my favourite dish of the night Wild mushroom and truffle oil laced khichdi (rice with lentils or simlar) sitting below Tomato “Makhni” ice cream. I could not go into just how amazing and exquisite the khichdi was and the tomato ice cream surprisingly did well to complement the dish. Incredible.

Apologies for the lighting on the next series of photos. The restaurant decided that it would be a good time to start some romance! Grilled Gun powder crusted sea bass, curry leaf upma, Moilee sauce, coconut chutney. After the amazing dish that had come before, everything following was going to pale in comparison to be honest but the sea bass did try its best. Taken alone it was a solid dish, sea bass was perfectly cooked and again had that touch of sweet and sour in the moilee sauce and the coconut chutney. Really good-sized portion on the sea bass too. Normally you’d get only mouthful sized portions on a tasting menu.

A melon and black pepper sorbet came next to cleanse the palette. I was happy that the chef continued to use distinctively different ingredients from the norm.

Then, as the finale to the savoury dishes, a bit of theatre with our Smoke cloud-Punjabi herb chicken tikka, Biryani rice, Sambhar sauce and “Salli” potatoes (though Rehana swapped her chicken for a paneer. Again another good solid and fun dish. Chicken was so tender and juicy and just the right level of smokiness leant to the tikka.

We were really quite satisfied at this point but had our final dish, dessert, to go. Cheekily called the Chocomosa: Warm marbled chocolate samosa with fresh rose petal-vanilla bean ice cream. Sooo good. Think fondue but inside a samosa wrapper and also mixed in white chocolate. The rose ice cream worked very well with this dish.

Petit fours wrapped up a pretty incredible dining experience at Rasoi. Food-wise there can be no complaints – all top-quality, well-thought out dishes that tasted incredible. Its not the kind of place that mixes ingredients just for the sake of being different – every ingredient was truly considered to see what it would add to the dish. From a service perspective the wait-staff were incredibly efficient and friendly and gladly not in our faces at every moment! Just the right level of service with the commitment to adjust our menu and their service to our needs.

The only minor drawback I would have in recommending this place is the price. At full price the restaurant is tre expensive – at £85 the tasting menu brings it up into nearly the same price category as such 2-Michelin starred restaurants as The Ledbury (http://www.thekua.com/sista/?p=13436) which is a big promise to deliver on something big. And they do deliver, only people might be reluctant to pay that much for Indian food, however fine it is. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend as a special occasion venue.

All You Can Yo Sushi

Yo Sushi currently have a promotion which allows you to eat as much as you can for £18.50 .. off the conveyer belt and excluding the more expensive yellow and grey plates .. which is not too bad for sushi … provided the kitchen put quality stuff out on to the conveyer belt. Its a frustrating way to eat sushi to be honest as the items that you probably want to see could possibly not end up out on the conveyer belt. On the odd occasion, as with other Yo Sushi deals, you may get a friendly chef who will make something at your request to put on to the belt. But this is the exception rather than the rule. The best advice for taking advantage of this offer is that you visit a restaurant which has high turnover and also that you visit a bit later than the 6.30 that started at, as the kitchen is likely to put out a wider variety of plates on to the belt. For us we ended up eating way too many fried stuffs and salmon ngiri and sashimi. Still we definitely left quite stuffed and I think Sandra’s facial expression says it all about how many plates we ate at Yo Sushi tonight:

The full picture of what we ate: