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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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…
We didn’t often go to seriously fashionable restaurants with Kim & Micky. Kim is vegetarian and tends to order “plain” more or less wherever we go. But Kim is partial to Indian food and this Chelsea place, under big name chef Vineet Bhatia, was making media waves by gaining a Michelin Star.
Just imagine – an Indian restaurant with a Michelin Star! Well, in 2001, it was unusual – indeed I think a first.
In those days Zaika was in Chelsea – so all those readers who are screaming at their screens that Kensington and Chelsea are not the same place…stop screaming. Zaika moved to Kensington a year or so after our visit.
This was, actually, a very memorable meal and memorable evening. The food was exceptionally good, as was the ambiance and everything about the experience.
All four of us were on good form. Whether that was down to Vineet’s skills or not I cannot say. We could all four be on good form without eating at a place of Zaika’s quality.
Here’s a review of the place from the Observer a few weeks before our visit. Reading it has made me feel hungry!
I needed to do some electronic archaeology to ascertain that John White & I ate at Cigala that night. But I do remember the evening and the restaurant well. A great meal and, at that time, a rare opportunity to meet up.
Work was at full pelt at that time for both of us, plus John was up to his elbows in little ones. Here’s a quote from our e-mail exchange arranging this one:
We must get something in the diary. Call me at the office. Here all day Friday. Home is usually not good because I am either in the middle of cooking, eating or controlling children. When you rang on Monday I was literally up to my elbows in vomit. Joy. Don’t ever have children.
Cigala was a new opening at that time and had been getting rave reviews. Here’s Jay Rayner, for example.
I ate “well posh” all day that day. I had spent the morning running a Fishy Bourse game at St James’s Palace for delegates at a Marine Stewardship Council event. I got Prince Charles to hand out fluffy fish in the prize-giving, which I thought was pretty cool and His Royal Highness didn’t seem to mind.
The Daily Telegraph was strangely silent about the fluffy fish.
Lunch included the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) as well as the MSC (coincidentally, John White was soon to move on to the timber trade and encounter FSC certification a lot).
Fortunately for we guests, the St James’s Palace chefs cooked MSC product rather than FSC product. Even more fortunately, at that time, Western Australian rock lobster was one of the few species MSC certified, so that’s what we ate. It was delicious. I mean, someone has to eat that sort of thing.
I subsequently discovered that my mum called Linda at our office several times to ask for more copies of the photograph below – she must have sent the darned thing to everyone she knew…and maybe even some people she didn’t know.
Oh mum!
Prince Charles, John Gummer and me, with the fluffy fish cunningly hidden about my person
…informed by the fact that Janie and I were constantly unavailable on Saturdays because we were going to the theatre.
Why don’t we all go and see…
…I can almost hear Kim suggesting to Janie.
Why not? I can imagine all of us agreeing to this with ease. This production soon became one of the hottest tickets in town, not least because model and celebrity Kelly Brook was playing the role of a pole/table dancer. Janie sorted out the tickets – presumably ahead of the reviews and brouhaha, £16.50 x 4 according to her diary…
…plus some very specific timings to get all of us from The Riverside to the Thai Bistro for supper after the show…
…as if we would need the heat of Tom Yum after the hot totty on show at The Riverside.
But who would have possibly imagined, at that time, that Janie would, a mere 17 years later, decide to give pole dancing a go herself, with considerable (albeit, mercifully, private) success.
Why a picture of me eating wonton soup? Because our diary notes for Hil & Chris’s weekend visit are light on detail, other than Janie’s “menu”:
Wonton soup;
Shin of veal;
Triffle [sic].
Despite the trifling spelling mistake, I expect the desert was just as enticing as the other courses. The wonton soup will have been my contribution and it will have been excellent.
I have even less intelligence on the first seasonal Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner. It was a Cafe Rogues [spelling mistake intentional] in Maida Vale. But the soon-to-be traditional sounding of the alarms and post mortem e-mails from John Random were not forthcoming back then…
…or if they were forthcoming, they self-destructed in five seconds or something like that.
I don’t think the tradition of quizzing and trophy awarding got started as early as that first Christmas, but I might be wrong.
I’m leaving it to Random to do whatever archaeology he can, be it excavation of ancient scrolls, old computers or his own brain, to see if any further information survives.
No pressure, John, but this one is all down to you.
