Drakes Restaurant, Brighton

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Drakes is a lovely cosy restaurant located in the basement of a boutique Brighton hotel which we stumbled over at the last minute when planning our Brighton itinerary. The hotel is very cute actually – and I love their exterior and interior decorations. I liked this particular piece which we encountered on the way down to the restaurant from the reception:

Cuisine at Drakes is best described as Modern European with a pleasingly rotating menu to take advantage of seasonal ingredients. For a very reasonable £55 Cathy and I sampled the Chef’s Tasting Menu and for the vegetarians out there they also have a very decent vegetarian Tasting Menu – which we could testify to as Jumana (more pescatorian really) took up this option. Along with our five courses we were also supplied with an amuse bouche and a pre-dessert – so great value indeed.

First up was our amuse of Duck Rillette and Fig Jam. I’m not normally one for pates but this was quite tasty and coming as an amuse bouche meant the portion size was just right! Fig really does impress me as an ingredient and it provided a nice balance to the rillette.

Combining two rich ingredients was our first official starter – Sauteed Fresh Cep Mushrooms on Toast with Poached Duck Egg. The duck egg was perfectly poached to runniness and I love the smear of mushroom on the plate to really lift this one. Yum. (Although I do have to admit I probably would have preferred a regular chicken egg as the duck was just a touch too rich for me.)

Arguably my favourite dish of the night was up next to the bat – a Squid Ink Risotto with Poached Lobster. Fantastic ingredients, risotto was cooked to perfection and the poached lobster on top just finished the dish off perfectly

Pan-roast Duck Breast with Sweet Potato Fondant, Baby Vegetables and Cherry Sauce is how I like duck served – tender and juicy with a crispy salty skin.

At this stage we were all fairly full – finishing the cheese and desserts was going to be a big ask but none of us backed away (okay – I didn’t quite finish my crackers from my cheese course. Heh heh). Four cheeses (blue, camembert with walnut, goat, and a mild cheddar) were accompanied by sultana and walnut rye bread, water biscuits and grapes. Grapes were so sweet and went very well with the blue and goat.

Our pre-dessert being a vanilla pannacotta, berry puree, and pistachio cream in a shot glass was very cute and thankfully not super rich.

This paved the way for a beautifully baked and risen Mirabelle Souffle with Poached Plums. Plums were a little on the tart side but the soufflé was incredibly light and fluffy and sweet so eaten together it was a lovely mouthful.

Service at Drakes was attentive without being overbearing. And very friendly too I must note. We girls had a lovely time and would recommend this restaurant for all.

Sports Day

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The peeps sure know how to throw a Sports Day event. I was impressed at the turn out, impressed with the equipment (thanks mainly to Andre!) and even more impressed that the turn out was fairly evenly split between the women and men … and no, the women were not on the sideline all night as this photo might suggest. Heh heh.

First event was the Egg and Spoon race. Impressively eggs were only dropped once or twice over the 20 metre run. However, I was laughing so hard I missed the finish!

Next up was the three-legged race. Tip: pair up with someone with the same length of leg! My partner was tiny and it felt like I was practically dragging her along. Still, somehow we didn’t come last 😉

Then it was the welly throw. If you have never thrown a welly you’ll never realise just how tough it is. Underarm throws win the day!

The wiffle ball was up next since everyone had warmed up with their welly. MUCH easier to throw!

Cheerleeders:

Then quite possibly the best event of the night, the obstacle course. Mega cool – it started with a maze you had to complete with your feet, then a crawl through a tunnel, a jump over a little hurdle and then a final sprint with a balloon between your legs. Hilarious.

I thought we should have finished with that but we still had a couple of more events. The long jump:

The sprint:

And a penalty shoot out.

Great defending by Andrew on this one.

Mahdi

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Geez, I thought I’d seen everything at Mahdi … that is until lunch today with Reza. That man sure knows how to order a feast. We had so much food it was ridiculous … and you know that’s a ton of food coming from someone like me! Seeing all the food come trundling out I thought for sure we’d be having take out for days … but the boys did the business and ate everything up!

Respect La Diva

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Not the most awesome of musicals I’ve seen but this tribute to a range of female “divas” such as Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield, Dolly Parton, Whitney, Diana Ross, Madonna and Beyonce is touching and sweet enough that you don’t mind too much (especially for those of us with discount tickets!)

There is no real story to the musical and they did tend to wander from one song to another without a real sense of connection. Other than that it was a touch of nostalgia in the air as all four leading ladies, Sheila Ferguson, Denise Pearson, Katy Setterfield and Zoe Birkett (who I recognised from her stint as part of the original cast of Priscilla) belted their hearts out. The ladies were also ably supported by Andy Abraham (2nd in X Factor in 2005) who played host.

Let’s face it you don’t come to a show like Respect La Diva for the story but a chance to walk down memory lane and hear those classic songs of the past. If that’s all you’re looking for then you’ll definitely enjoy your evening.

GreenCity: Angel Building

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Open-City, formerly Open House, events grow every year and are concerned with creating better places, better cities. I know them mostly for their work on Open House. This year I thought I’d check out their new event, Green Sky Thinking, a nearly week long programme highlighting new thoughts and solutions in incorporating sustainability in architecture. In addition to gaining access to buildings in the way Open House allows, the events also include talks by a number of architecture and design firms. I wanted to go to all of them! But unfortunately I could only narrow it down to one event as most of the sessions were during the working day.

The Angel Building, Islington, was completed in 2010 and cost £72 million to retrofit.

It used to be an ugly environmentally unfriendly 1980s commercial block that BT moved out of with 7 years left on the lease. After Derwent London were done with it 100,000 square feet had been added to the building (an increase of 73% net floor space) by building outward not upward, two roof top terraces, reduced energy consumption thanks to a number of innovative measure such as 6m glazed bays providing natural light, wrapping the existing concrete frame with a highly energy-efficient glazed skin (which also reduced the amount of demolition required), rainwater recovery (used to flush toilets saving 455,000 toilet flushes a year), installation of waterless urinals (saving 87,000 liters of water per year), and passenger lifts which recycle energy as they descend. Yes the lifts are a bit slow but they do use 50% less energy to power. Then there are all the technical things like biomass boilers etc. etc.

Add in some art. Add in communal meeting spaces, breakout areas, cafes and benches (so you can mingle with other tenants in the building rather than just being secluded to your own business.) Add in some trees. And you get quite a beautiful building inside and out that would just be a joy to come to work to.

Current tenants include Cancer Research UK (the first time they have all been in one building allowing them to save 20% on costs), Expedia and Sage.

The environmental/sustainability theme even trickled down to our afternoon tea which included muffins, carrot cake and “Green” tea (as in environment not just green tea …)

The architects were really inspirational. They really sounded like they were into the whole sustainability concept including having the belief that if they can’t walk to a site/building then they won’t buy it and they don’t consider themselves developers but refurbishers. The Angel Building was shortlisted for this year’s RIBA 2011 Stirling Prize. (Update: The prize this year was won by the Evelyn Grace Academy, London by Zaha Hadid Architects)

HK Diner

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Ha ha, dinner at HK Diner just in time. Although I do like the fact they have to tell people they are closing at 1 am … like that is unusually early on a Sunday night??

3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstacy

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People may accuse me of being a perv, and yes I do just love looking at anyone and anything, but I’m sure admitting to going to watch this movie in a public cinema no less would certainly cement that title! Ha! It had me wondering what other type of person would go see this movie and looking around at those in attendance today I have to say that I couldn’t really pin-point a type!

Need I even bother with a plot? Well, ok – in short there is an egotistical scholar who thinks that to get the most out of life you should get as much sexual pleasure as you can. Although he falls in love with a woman she ultimately isn’t enough for him and off he goes to find pleasure elsewhere. I’m sure there’s a moral in there somewhere (Chinese stories always do) about love eventually triumphing but it was lost in the gore and horribleness that was the conclusion.

For those looking for eroticism and a bit of sexy fun don’t bother with this movie. If you want to laugh your head off then you may enjoy it … that is until the last third where suddenly there are some truly awful rape and dismemberment scenes. Not awful in the sense of bad acting but awful as in horrible, dark, and downright unpleasant. I’m not really sure why it needed to go there because up until then it could at least be sold on its merits as somewhat of a comedy.

Not really date material this one!

Roast and Duplo – great ways to spend an afternooon

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I worked up quite an appetite trekking around seeing all these lovely buildings for OpenHouse so it was with great delight that I landed on Nate and Caro’s doorstep for another beautiful roast prepared by Caro. She really should think about opening up a restaurant! But then … no doubt a food blogger will pick it up, her food will get all trendy and I’ll never get a booking! Ha!

I love visiting Nate and Caro. Not only do I get a proper feed, get a chance to catch up on all the goss in their lives but I also get to play with their adorable little darlings, Gas and Ces. Both are growing up so quickly and I’m honoured I get to spend time with them at this precious time of their life. Ces may be growing up too fast with his cigar …

… just kidding. He sure likes those breadsticks though!

Gas’s duplo train set got a work out, and we got to see what Dad Nate’s engineering skills were like .. um … maybe stick to your day job Dad? Just kidding again (sort of – heh heh). Nate made a decent enough track with the train … too bad Gas was most interested in destroying things!

Ces wanted to get in on the act too. Bless he is starting to turn over on to his stomach now. Won’t be long before he is up and running everywhere!

And then Gas did the most gorgeous thing ever – he started to play with my hair like he was a hair dresser – working my hair until it was “just right”. Soooo cute!

OpenHouse 2012 – Day 02

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Day 02 of my OpenHouse 2012 itinerary featured three distinctive buildings, all located in a nearby neighbourhood of Kensington High Street.

First up was the interesting flat called The LuxPod. The LuxPod was near and dear to my heart simply because I couldn’t conceive that there might actually be a shoebox smaller than mine that someone could actually live in!

At 13 square metres (!) the LuxPod is a super clever and inspired studio. You’d never believe it but in that tiny space there is a fully functioning:
– living area,
– kitchen,
– bathroom (complete with underfloor heating and a heated mirror wall.)

You also of course have a place to sleep in the form of a double-bed and all the high-end gadgets you could ask for including a smashing speaker system with ipod/iphone dock, a flatscreen TV, electric curtains and a super-cool lighting system.

Yes, admittedly you need to be rather tidy and you need to be moving your furniture around a bit but the way the whole flat has been designed actually makes it all fairly easy to manage. Not surprisingly you need to reserve your spot to go and see this house on OpenHouse weekend (since it could probably fit at the most four or five people in the space.) However, if you want to check it out outside of OpenHouse weekend I’m sure proud owner Judith Abraham would be more than happy to show you around. She was incredibly friendly during our visit and definitely deserves to be proud of what she has achieved with the flat.

From new to old my second building for the day saw me strolling back up to and down Kensington High Street to the Former Commonwealth Institute and future Design Museum. The building has stood empty for nearly a decade but with money to invest the Design Museum plans to relocate here in 2014. The Commonwealth Institute used to house an exhibition celebrating the 54 nations of the Commonwealth. The building itself, with its radial design extending from a circulate platform located exactly at mid-point of the height and diameter of the building, is the symbolic centre of the world of the Commonwealth. The copper roof itself was specifically designed to allow harmonization with the greens of Holland Park and the tent-line exterior to blend with the soft treelines of the park.

A more creative photographer than me would have had an amazing time with all the interesting angles and shot possibilities in this empty space. Beautiful even if a work in progress.

Finally a quick stop at the Leighton House (Museum.) The centerpiece of the house was the entrance hall with a beautiful display of gorgeous Islamic tiles and this really set the tone for the rest of the house. Full of dark rich colours – I like how each of the chairs seated a pine cone. The garden or backyard really was lovely too. Shame no photos allowed inside … hence my short visit. Ha ha.

Red Fort/Zenna

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Rather confusingly I didn’t know whether I was eating at Zenna or Red Fort – I think the cocktail bar on the one hand (located sub-ground level) and the restaurant (located ground level) must have some sort of connection though if this is the case I don’t know why they bothered giving them separate names. But anyway, Roops was good enough to plan a catch up tonight and we did start with cocktails downstairs before moving to dinner upstairs.

Red Fort is a very posh Indian restaurant located in Soho. The cool thing about the restaurant was that it offered some pretty cool drinks and unusual lassi. I especially liked the Salted Caramel Lassi but they also offer an intriguing sounding Vanilla and Cashew Lassi, Coconut Lassi and Super Fruits Lassi (in addition to the more traditional Mango Lassi) and though I enjoyed the lassi the cynical side of me was thinking it was a good excuse to charge you cocktailish-esque prices …

… speaking of prices the food at Red Fort is higher than your average Indian food for not much more portion-wise. Admittedly you are sitting in some fairly swanky surrounds, the food was a bit posher than your average Indian restaurant, and their dishes did offer something a little bit more special than regular offerings. And they did well to mix British ingredients with the Indian. However, do you really need to pay £18 for a curry or £5 for rice??? They don’t even have prices on the menu on their website (which I really really hate! Is this to trick me into the restaurant? And yes I’m well familiar with the saying “If you have to ask how much …”) I’ve read lots of reviews claiming that the food is exceptional, outstanding, best food ever … but I think I would settle for it was pretty good, but you’ll certainly pay for it.

Though I have to say it was nearly worth paying just to see this little fella come out: