Saturday, July 23, 2011

Our Tune

He says...
I'm on board for Belly Dancing! And the possibility of rubbing shoulders with 70s Radio 1 DJs Tony Blackburn and the mighty Simon 'Our Tune' Bates is too overwhelming to refuse. The tender and melancholy tones of the Our Tune backing music still haunt me to this day.

Hopefully they won't be expressing their post-fame nervous breakdowns over the stuffed vine leaves.

It also reminds me of this, Alan's own take on Our Tune...

Monday, July 18, 2011

If we make it to 40

She says...
Have just read about Jay Z apparently opening a restaurant in London with Ashley Cole, probably called 40/40 after his company, which is backing the venture. If we do one number a month we'll be at 40 by, er... October 2014. Loads of time for him to get it shipshape!

2 too many?

She says...
I didn't realise fonts had such an effect on food??

Well if the previous suggestions didn't titillate the taste buds enough, I've found another couple of  #2s...

A Turkish restaurant, Efes2, loitering on Great Portland Street, in central London, not a million miles away from the first 2 suggestions. It has an extensive menu of kebabs and other meze dishes, and if you book downstairs there's live music and BELLY DANCING! Oh my. AND, and this could tip the balance, it has been frequented by many a celebrity, as celebrated in a picture gallery on the site. There's no Princess Di unfortunately, but a prize to anyone who can actually name them all...



However, if we wanted to travel a bit further afield I've found a large glossy blue place near Finchley Central tube station - Two Brothers Fish restaurant. Now I think of myself as a bit of a chip connoisseur so this place (plaice?) appealed, until I read some pretty dire reviews on London Eating (one of my favourite and well used restaurant review sites). Small portions of dry chips would ruin our night out for sure. And in case you're interested, the best chips, in my experience, can be had at The Lock Tavern, Camden.

Friday, July 15, 2011

The menus...

He says...

The deep-fried courgette flower is intriguing, and I like the idea of a specifically Venetian restaurant, but there's one thing on that menu I DON'T like: the font. Piling italics onto already over-ornate lettering leaves me deeply suspicious that the place will have plastic flowers on the tables and a toilet seat that won't stay in the up position in the bog.

Meanwhile, Two Twenty Two's effort has that eighties squiggly-hand writing style that suggests that Princess Di might once have dined there before attending a Spandau Ballet concert. AND they serve apple crumble. No contest?

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Ideas For TWO

He says...
As dicussions continue for the second resturant it strikes me that I might have to pay this time around. Suddenly a nice trip to the very reasonably priced boozer the Crown and Two Chairmen in London's hip and happening Soho seems appropriate... only kidding...

Other options include The Two Brewers in Clapham, which has been 'proudly serving the gay community for 29 years'.... I couldn't find a menu on the website, but presumably there would be plenty of sausage on it...

Also intriguing is the Two Rivers restaurant in Hull... which - get this - is actually underwater. 'Diners are treated to a Mediterranean menu whilst being surrounded by some of Europe's best aquatic displays' reads the website. For a vision of dining in a post-global warming future, it's a must.

She says...
Hummmm Clapham sounds tempting, I do love a bit of sausage. However, bearing in mind I think he's just offered to pay, I'm now planning somewhere more sophisticated. With a bit of help from a Facebook shout out I've come up with 2 possibilities for restaurant number two.

http://www.twotwentytwo-london.com/ in Marylebone was recommended by festival friend Ruby, and looks prefectly presentable and could feasibly be combined with a trip to Selfridges. Which means I might finally get round to spending those vouchers from a birthday years ago!

However, http://www.2veneti.com/, which is by bizarre co-incidence just round the corner from Twotwentytwo, was suggested by Northern amateur restaurant critic Emily, and wins my vote so far for the 'stuffed courgette flower' on the menu. I heard about this Italian speciality for the first time just recently, from our Italian connections at the boy's birthday drinks. Gigi had gone as far as importing some from her hometown just ouside Rome on her latest trip, surreptitiously passing it over in a brown paper bag to her friend at the back of the pub, with lots of secret mutterings. Well, that's what they told me it was anyway...

Friday, July 08, 2011

ONE: 1 Lombard Street, London

she says...
Stuck in a restaunt rut? Always going to the nice little Italian down the road? The one with the fairly priced menu, the one you're so familiar with you've stopped even powdering your nose or squirting on deoderant before heading there? Or equally, are you fed up with reading about the same trendy new recommendations in Time Out and the weekend papers? Yeah me too.

So, how to randomly expand the taste bud horizons when there's so many restaurants to chose from, and so many people telling you about them?

Basically I wanted to rival our friends culinary journey through the alphabet... the obvious (to me anyway!) solution being changing to numbers, numbers in the name. Easily swayed, after a few drinks and some gentle leg rubbing, the boy agreed. "This will be FUN!" I announced, to a packed carriage.

he says...
The plan was devised about a month ago on a tube journey back from a birthday party where the birthday girl's husband revealed that for some time they had been undertaking a strange and futile culinary project. They'd been visiting restaurants around London whose cuisine goes through each letter of the alphabet in order. Beginning with 'A' with something like an Armenian eatery, followed by Bangladeshi, Cuban, Democratic Republic of the Congo, etc...

Intrigued, Kat decided we should visit restaurants that have numbers in their name, in order: 1, 2, 3 etc etc. Initially sceptical, I was swayed by the thought of eating out at random establishments... and I was also a bit drunk.

Friends I've told about this plan have generally responded with a befuddled 'Why?' - not an easy question to answer. Why indeed?

And so our number 1 was booked by Kat to celebrate my birthday: 1 Lombard Street, in the City, a restaurant that portentously describes itself as the Square Mile's 'most established resturant'. How do you go about being more established than someone else? How do you reach the pinnacle of establishment? We are about to find out....


She says...
So, starting in the immediate vacinity of London, it was a toss up between One Lombard Street and One Aldwych... the former won for its yummy sounding 5 course degustation menu for a measly £25.

The boy's birthday, Monday 4th July, arrived and I nervously contemplated being the only ones, or the only ones not on a city expense account at the very least, in the restaurant. But it wasn't nearly as stuffy as it could have been, seeing as it's situated in an old bank in the heart of snooty suit land. Our waiting lady did border on smarmy, but encouraged us to try a very appley and pleasent English, (if the French would let us it would be called Champagne), sparkling wine for an apperative... but after pondering our napkins for another 10 minutes we did have to specifically ask for the set dinner menu with an awkward "honestly we're not cheapo gypos" cringe.

A mini minty pea soup amuse bouche and 5 small but really very lovely dishes of mushroom & artichoke salad, tuna sashimi, scallops, roast lamb and strawberries later, I was giddy and 'just' about full enough. Do not try this if you're a starving giant, or someone who rates a restaurant on quantity over quality! I possibly ingested twice as much wine as food in fact, as we opted for 3 different (175ml) glasses of wine rather than a bottle. Not the sensible way to start the week - but fuck it.

We enjoyed being part of the establishment for the night, and wondered what deals we would have overheard being brokered by the Japanese businessmen on the table next door, had we been interested enough to listen. Smug smiles on faces as we fell asleep on each on the tube home, our weekend festival fatigue setting in. Well worth the final £145 (including service) bill.

she says... restaurant #1 = 9/10
he says... restaurant #1 = 9/10

Where next for number '2'?? Suggestions welcome!

Wine we tasted...
Ridgeview English sparkling wine
Gruner Austrian white
Verdejo Spanish white
Nero d'Avola Sicillian red