Category: Eating Out

The Art of Lee Miller followed by Dinner at Cambio de Tercio, Z/Yen Staff Christmas Event, 14 December 2007

Ian and Janie

The above picture, from Cambio de Tercio, is possibly the last photo taken of me before I grew my beard over that Christmas break. I suspect I should be “crediting” Monique for it, or possibly Jez given the proximity of the photographer to Sarah.

Earlier in the evening we had all enjoyed a cultural time at the V&A. Most people followed Linda’s lead to The Golden Age of Couture, but I was keen to see photography instead; The Art of Lee Miller. I think Janie had already seen the couture, so some folk joined us for the photographic exhibition.

Cambio de Tercio is a fine restaurant and we indeed had a very fine meal there.

The song that year was, ♬Santa’s Using PropheZy At Z/Yen♬ to the tune of Santa Claus is Coming To town:

SANTA’S USING PROPHEZY AT Z/YEN
(Sung to the tune of “Santa Claus is Coming To Town”)
He’s made an edict!
He needs to know why!
He’s out to predict,
He will classify;Santa Claus Is Coming To Z/Yen,
PropheZy has done it again,
Santa’s using PropheZy at Z/Yen!Santa’s making a list,
He’s checking it twice,
His model works out
Who’s naughty and nice.

Santa Claus Is Coming To Z/Yen,
PropheZy has done it again,
Santa’s using PropheZy at Z/Yen!

He predicts when you’re not sleeping,
He predicts when you’re serene,
He computes if you’ve been bad or good,
In Support Vector Machine!

A Santa index,
A Santa Claus game,
A Santa benchmark,
The answer’s the same;

IndeZy is coming to Z/Yen,
ExtZy is coming to Z/Yen,
PropheZy is coming to Z/Yen.

The boys and girls in Z/Yen-land,
Want to know the reason why,
Each name has got to start or end,
With a Z and then a Y.

They’re eaZy to use,
They’re peaZy to play,
No sleaZy abuse,
When done the Z/Yen way;

IndeZy is coming to Z/Yen,
ExtZy is coming to Z/Yen,

Here’s Bruce Springsteen’s version of Santa Claus Is Coming To Town:

I seem to recall that a very good time was had by all that evening.

Dinner With John White At The Chancery, Preceded By A Drink In The Cittie Of York, 26 November 2007

This evening did what it said on the tin, I should imagine. It was my turn to pay and John I think felt at that stage of the season that we both needed to be fairly close to work and to routes home – hence the location choice.

I reported it very briefly in e-mail form afterwards as:

great to see you last night

While John’s report back included a caveat…

Lovely evening on Monday but sadly I had to catch a bus from Bishops Stortford due to engineering works. Commuter troubles. A late night in the end. Must learn for next time.

Ouch.

Both venues are still there at the time of writing (January 2019) I think:

Trip Advisor on Cittie of York

Trip Advisor on the Chancery

But I don’t recall The Chancery looking like that – have they changed the frontage or even moved since our visit.

Perhaps John knows and/or remembers what we ate.

Dinner With Charlotte At The Ealing Park Tavern, Then The Glass House Kew, 14 July 2007 & 7 September 2007, not 4 August 2007

Charlotte (Charlie) went through a small phase that summer of staying with us overnight Saturday to Sunday and we’d take her out to dinner.

The first of the two that summer was an excellent gastro pub, the Ealing Park Tavern.

Still well regarded at the time of writing – click here for a link to reviews.

The second was at the Glass House Kew.  Trendy and very good food if I remember correctly.  Click here for reviews.

I originally thought the second evening was 4 August, but we needed to postpone that one due to my dad’s indisposition, so we rescheduled for 7 September.

The weekend before that, 1 September, Anthea and Mitchell came over to to Sandall Close for dinner.

Thems was very pleasant evenings, thems was.

 

Dinner With Mum, Dad and Janie at Lamberts, Balham, 29 June 2007

8504679068_bbe0de7c6e_z

A painful memory, this one. Not for the dinner itself, which was a culinary and social success, celebrating Janie’s birthday.

Painful, because we now know that dad only had a few weeks to live. There were just a couple of clues on the  night.

Dad was just shy of 88 and was finding it harder to get in and out of the car without help, but on this occasion he needed a lot of help; far more than he had needed before.

The other clue was that dad didn’t finish his meal. He said the food was very good but that he didn’t have the appetite for any more than he had eaten. This was a very unusual thing for dad to do/say, but we thought little of it at the time.

In fact, dad was riddled with cancer by then. In early August, when he collapsed and we were given the news that he was in such a bad way, the specialist couldn’t believe that he had been more-or-less symptom free until five weeks before he collapsed.

There are a few other photos from the evening including the one above – click here if you want to see them. 

Dinner With Michael And Elisabeth At The Painted Heron, 16 June 2007

I recall this was a fairly pricey but excellent Indian meal in a trendy setting on Cheyne Walk.

At the time of writing (September 2018) the place seems to be closed, but I remember looking it up quite recently with a view to eating there again and it was open then, so perhaps a temporary closure.

It was well received review-wise from the start – this link should find topical and old ones alike.

Michael and Elisabeth arranged Babysitters for the kids on this occasion and brought the start time forward from 8:30 to 8:00 to accommodate a sitter.

I do recall we all had a very enjoyable evening and thought we might eat there again – but so far Janie and I haven’t.  I cannot speak for Michael and Elisabeth.

 

Dinner At Merkato With John White, 20 March 2007

Judging by the e-mail correspondence and crossings out in the diary, the arrangements for this one were a bit messy but it all came good in the end…

…appropriate for this form of cuisine, because…

we ate at Merkato, an Ethiopian institution in Kings Cross. Quite a messy business, Ethiopian-style dining, if you do it in an authentic stylee.

This was about a year after Janie and I visited Ethiopia, so I wanted John to experience Ethiopian-style eating and my description of it had sparked John’s curiosity to try it.

Me and our guide, Dawit, dining in Ethiopia, 2006, taken by Daisy

Trip Advisor speaks of Merkato thus – click here. Clearly still doing OK at the time of writing – April 2018.

John and I had a good evening at Merkato – certainly I remember it fondly. We were in part looking forward to and plotting a gathering of the four of us (including Janie and Mandy) for a few week’s hence at John and Mandy’s place.

Some Meals With Friends Ahead Of Trip To Cuba, 20 January 2007 & 10 February 2007

Quite a few crossings-out in that early part of 2007. For example, we were due to see Kim and Micky in early January, but I think that got cancelled/postponed and became instead the gathering on 10 February.

20 January 2007

A Saturday evening out with Jamil and Souad. We started the evening at their place for drinks. Janie and I are straining to remember where we ate.

We know they like to eat at Noura in Belgravia (and have eaten there with them more than once) but Janie and I both have a feeling we ate in Mayfair that night. Perhaps they just fancied the change or perhaps Belgravia was unavailable when they chose to book.

In any case, we had a very pleasant evening as always with those two.

10 February 2007

We had Kim, Micky, DJ and his then girlfriend Julie over for dinner at Sandall Close that night.

We can’t honestly remember the menu, but with two vegetarians in the group (Kim and Julie) almost certainly one of Janie’s takes on Lebanese food (perhaps inspired by the Noura experience a few week’s before) so that four of us got a good meaty main course while the others had loads of dips, tabbouleh and the like to make up a substantial meal.

If it was anything more complex, there’d usually be some tell-tale notes in Janie’s diary, but there are none…

…except for:

collect shoes Kogee

…I don’t think Janie cooked those.

Fun evening it was, that much we do remember.

Dinner At Les Trois Garcons In Shoreditch With Anthea & Mitchell, 27 July 2001

Photo by Dr Neil Clifton / ‘Les Trois Garçons’, Bethnal Green Road cc2.0

A Friday night get together with Anthea and Mitchell. It had been a busy week, both workwise, social-wise and semi-social-wise.

I had played bridge with “the gang” on the Monday evening.

On the Tuesday evening, Janie had joined me on the Lady Daphne for the “formal” (London) book launch of Clean Business Cuisine. I surely made less of a mess of it than the preview book launch in Halifax 2-3 weeks earlier:

My First Ever Book Signing, Clean Business Cuisine (the book), Actors’ Workshop Halifax (the venue), Yet Something Was Missing, 5 July 2000

As for dinner at les Trois Garcons, I remember the evening quite well. I found the ambience of the place rather creepy – stuffed to the rafters with artefacts, many of them stuffed animals. The food was great, though. Here’s a proper review of the place, from a few year’s later, which didn’t save the place from the chop a couple of years after that.

Les Trois Garcons

Several Midweek Evenings Out In Late June 2001

Özer-like restaurant image generated with Nano Banana 2 via Google Flow

The diary is light on details. Frankly, the memory is similarly light on some.

Meeting Up With John White, Starting At “FOB Office”, 19 June 2001

John was Chief Executive of The Federation Of Bakers at that time. My e-mail archive, usually so good at digging out details, draws a blank on this one. Perhaps John had just started there and we set up the whole thing by phone. For sure I scribbled down the Catherine Street address and telephone number in the diary. I suspect that we had a drink somewhere more than half decent in Bloomsbury, followed by a meal nearby in a restaurant that was also more than half decent.

Janie & I Visit Brendan & Fi For Dinner, 22 June 2001

Brendan was a client in his capacity as Chief Executive of the Marine Stewardship Council. Fi also worked there. Brendan & Fi very kindly invited me and Janie to their pad in Farringdon for dinner. I recall a very jolly evening.

In particular, I remember that Brendan had a very grand piano – I think it might actually have been a mini grand – around which we stood and sang some spoof songs. Brendan was really a classical pianist, so we spoofed pop songs that have been written to classical tunes. Billy Joel (This Night), Eric Carmen (All By Myself) and Barry Manilow (Could It Be Magic) all got the treatment.

Özer Restaurant With Kim & Micky To Celebrate Janie’s Birthday, 26 June 2001

I remember this meal very well. We all wanted to try this new Özer Restaurant in Langham Place and we were not disappointed – the food was excellent. I came hot foot from a Z/Yen boat trip, upon which I had been suitably abstemious so as not to impede the birthday celebrations.

I always was happier on dry land in a middle-eastern restaurant than I was on a boat trip and probably always will be.

I recall everyone being on good form and a super midweek evening.

I can see from my diary that I had a busy day the next day, including a return to Marylebone for rare business lunch at Caldese.

No wonder I had more trouble maintaining my weight back then, than I do now.

Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner At Café Rouge Maida Vale, 14 June 2001

Café Rouge Maida Vale…is no more

An early example of John Random organising an Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner (gathering of 1990s NewsRevue writers) by e-mail, in John’s inimitable style.

The day after the event, the following e-mail arrived from Random:

Thank you all those came to The Cafe Rouge and to those that didn’t, hope to see you next time, whenever that is. You missed a great evening, especially the surprise visit of Bill Clinton who interrupted his golf game to come over and say how much he’d enjoyed Billy Don’t Be A Hero (February 1994) no he didn’t.

John was no doubt referring to this lyric of mine – quite possibly because Mike Hodd had waxed lyrical [did you see what I did there?] about it at the dinner.

Billy You Ain’t No Hero, NewsRevue Lyric, 17 January 1994

I think I have identified, from the e-mail addresses, all the people to whom John wrote. Presumably not all attended, given the words John chose. Anyway, here is the Random hit list from June 2001:

  • Me
  • Random
  • Jonny Hurst
  • Graham Robertson
  • Mike Hodd
  • Jasmine Birtles
  • Barry Grossman
  • Sheila Hyde
  • John Cowen
  • Colin Stutt
  • Neil Watson
  • Terry Franks
  • “Ivan Shakespeare” – presumably Elspeth, Ivan’s partner, who only attended once or twice but I suspect that John kept her informed on the circulation list, regardless of whether or not she was attending, for quite some time.
  • Debbie Barham – I don’t remember Debbie ever attending one of these dinners; she was already very seriously ill with anorexia by the time Ivan Shakespeare died. I had stayed in touch with her, sporadically, by e-mail, as had John, presumably. Debbie’s trademark “skcollob.win-uk.net” e-mail domain name was one of a kind. Like me, for business reasons, in the very early e-mail days, she’d gone with a WinNet e-mail account so she could name her own domain. Mine was sensibly corporate, whereas Debbie’s was bollocks backwards. Typical.