Category: Eating Out

Eye Contact by Neil Monaghan, Riverside Studio 3, Then On To Thai Bistro, With Kim & Micky, 16 December 2000

This was probably Kim and Micky’s idea…

…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.

Images from late 2017, written up here.

Dominic Cavendish seems to have hated it…the Eye Contact play, I mean, not Janie’s pole dancing:

Eye Cavendish Telegraph Eye Cavendish Telegraph 12 Dec 2000 The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Rachel Halliburton similarly, was disparaging:

Eye Halliburton Standard Eye Halliburton Standard 7 Dec 2000 Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Irving Wardle was a bit kinder, right at the end of this three review piece:

Far Away Wardle Sunday Telegraph Far Away Wardle Sunday Telegraph 3 Dec 2000 Sunday Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

But did we have a good evening? Of course we did. We saw a show and had dinner with Kim and Micky. Simples.

A Trifling Family Visit & The First Ivan Shakespeare Seasonal Memorial Dinner, 9 & 14 December 2000

Me eating wonton soup

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.

National Youth Orchestra Of Great Britain, BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, 4 August 2000

Pauline, The Duchess of Castlebar, was partial to a youth orchestra concert at the Proms. We always used to book at least one of those for her per season.

This one also had a fair smattering of her favourite type of English composers (Elgar, Walton) plus some family favourites. The royal theme to the first half of the concert was because that very day was The Queen Mother’s 100th birthday.

  • Unknown – National Anthem (arr. William Walton)
  • William Walton – Coronation March ‘Crown Imperial’
  • George Frideric Handel – Music for the Royal Fireworks
  • Edward Elgar – Overture ‘Cockaigne (In London Town)’
  • Hector Berlioz – Symphonie fantastique

Roger Norrington conducting the youngsters – what’s not to like? Here’s a link to the BBC stub for this one.

Tim Ashley in the Guardian was very much taken with this concert:

Norrington Ashley Guardian

Article from 8 Aug 2000 The Guardian (London, Greater London, England)

Matthew Rye in The Telegraph was less sure about the large-scale baroque, but was otherwise seemingly very pleased with the concert:

Norrington Rye Telegraph

Article from 7 Aug 2000 The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England)

After the concert, we went to a new restaurant in Ealing named Parade, which Janie and I had wanted to try. I don’t think Pauline was as keen on this idea – I have a scribbled note in my diary “Pauline will try”. I think she preferred familiar food and guaranteed fawning waiters by that stage of her life.

I’ve even managed to find a contemporary (2000) review of Parade in the Standard – click here.

Some Dubs At Queen’s With Abe Koukou & His Pals, 24 November 1999

Same place, 20 years later

I have previously written about my inadvertent act of gamesmanship – specifically guestmanship – with Abe Koukou at The Queen’s Club earlier in 1999.

Lawn Tennis At Queen’s, In Which I Inadvertently Deployed Gamesmanship Masterfully, Yet Still Lost, 24 June 1999

This note in my diary reminds me of one of the occasions when Abe nevertheless invited me back to play doubles with him and his pals. Not on that wintery-looking grass court, of course, but indoors on the carpet.

I don’t recall what happened tennis-wise – I suspect that I partnered the best of the four and that we had a decent game on the back of that.

I remember what happened afterwards more clearly. Abe was keen to see the progress (or lack thereof) in my Clanricarde Gardens flat, which had been a conversation piece over drinks. I think we also agreed all to dine at The Park Inn, my favourite Chinese restaurant, on Wellington Terrace just a few strides from the flat. So all four of us bundled over to my part of Kensington as it were, to see the flat.

It was very much still work in progress. I remember one of the guys questioning whether it would all be done before Christmas if, as I had described, Gavin was unable to retain a member of staff even for half a day so was effectively working alone on the job.

I also remember one of the guys (perhaps the same one) suggesting that the smell of solvents inside the flat was so great that it was making his eyes stream after five minutes and was surely so strong that anyone working in there for several hours would be “high as a kite” for much of the day.

Valid points, I sense.

Eventually it was all done and lovely…much to the relief of all of the then residents.

I don’t much recall the meal either. But at The Park Inn it will have been good.

Bank Holiday & Birthday Treats: Dinner At Nobu & A Party At Lammas Park Tennis Courts, 28 & 29 August 1999

Nobu Tuna Sashimi Salad by Tzahy Lerner, CC BY-SA 3.0

Janie’s treat to me, I suppose: a slap up meal at Nobu in Mayfair, which was all the rage back in the late 1990s and priced accordingly.

We were there just a couple of months after Boris Becker’s now famous tryst in the broom cupboard, of which we were blissfully unaware when we visited.

Everyone who was anyone dined at Nobu back then…and so did we. I recall the meal being fabulous and I also realise that it was the first (but far from the last) time I tasted black cod in miso sauce. Exquisite.

Lammas – returning to the scene some years later

Back then we played tennis at Lammas Park Tennis Courts every weekend – much as we now play at Boston Manor. It was run by a chap named Larry and his belle, whose name escapes me. When things went awry between those two (not long after this party) things went rapidly downhill at Lammas Park until we had long since escaped and then the place got taken over by Will To Win (or initially one of its predecessors).

Anyway, this bank holiday party was billed as “party – bring wine”. Which we did. It was informal and fun I’m sure.

Dinner At Club Gascon With Michael & Elisabeth Mainelli, 9 April 1999

CLUB GASCON [2]  CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This was a memorable evening at Club Gascon in Smithfield. It was a new place (it had only opened a few months earlier) and all the rage when we visited it with The Mainellis in April 1999.

That was our first but certainly not our last visit.

I’m pretty sure the place became a reasonably regular haunt for Michael, at least for a while.

Janie was especially taken with their use of foie gras, which was celebrated in Club Gascon’s early incarnation. I too was taken with the food, but I am not partial to foie gras.

The restaurant gained a Michelin Star a couple of years after our first visit and still thrives at that location – here is a link to its website.

The Day We Went To the Oriental Restaurant In The Dorchester Hotel And Later Ran Out Of Monet, 1 February 1999

Did you see what I did there?

Janie and I had a day off.

We went to the Dorcheter Hotel for lunch at the Oriental Restaurant. We had been dying to try the place and had been tipped off that the lunchtime offering was a much better deal than the evening meal.

We both remember it being excellent scoff.

Jay Rayner in The guardian wrote up the notion of going to the place for lunch a few years after we worked that out. I don’t recall our lunchtime meal revolving around dim sum – I think that was a later lunchtime innovation there.

Then on to the Royal Academy to see Monet In The 20th Century, which was an excellent exhibition.

Big thumbs up from Laura Cumming in The Observer:

Monet Cumming ObserverMonet Cumming Observer 24 Jan 1999, Sun The Observer (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Sebastian Faulks in The Standard seemed less sure.

Monet Faulks StandardMonet Faulks Standard 22 Jan 1999, Fri Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Dinner With Mike Ward At Silks & Spice In Foley Street, 15 December 1998

I know that Mike and I had tried to meet up for dinner in London a few times in the mid 1990s without success. This might even have been the first time that our diaries conspired to enable us to meet for dinner in The Smoke. We dined in Silks and Spice

We certainly weren’t conspiring in the manner of Bryce Taylor & Max Clifford, who famously had liaised in that very restaurant in the matter of Princess Diana photographs a few years earlier. Nor would we have been discussing my Princess Diana lyrics, e.g. this one, which to all intents and purposes died with her the previous year.

But no doubt we were discussing his forthcoming Actor’s Workshop New Year Revels show and possibly his plans for writing a couple of plays and shows, which Mike wrote and produced over the next few years.

I remember the restaurant being quite a good one. it is now, 25 years later, Foley’s Restaurant, a modern fusion take on South-east Asian food. Just around the corner from the old Harris family homestead, as I now know. Back then, who knew? Well, I sort-of knew but didn’t pay the matter much heed back then.

Mike and I will have had a very pleasant evening no doubt.

Z/Yen Christmas Dinner At Caldesi, 10 December 1998

Photo: Mike Quinn / Caffè Caldesi, Marylebone Lane, W1

I remember this Z/Yen Christmas event being an especially good meal. We were depleted in numbers that year for some reason – I think one or two illnesses – so Kim & Micky joined us as guests rather than allow paid-for dinners go to waste.

I wrote up the event for the Now & Z/Yen newsletter, which survives on-line despite several deportations in the intervening 25 years – click here.

Just in case a future deportation upsets the above link, here is a scrape of that page. And just in case you don’t like clicking, here is the raw text I wrote in 1998 that became the relevant paragraph on that page:

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
[xmassy picture]
The annual Z/Yen Christmas stuffing took place at Caldesi, our favourite Tuscan restaurant. Z/Yen staff bravely fought their way through six courses, including Jane Beazley’s birthday cake, as well as through one badly mangled Christmas carol, to the tune of “D-Mark! Z/Yen Angels Sing”. Contrary to our seasonal hopes, the heavens did not flood the party with D-Marks (current currency of choice in the run-up to the Euro, as recommended by one self-interested wife), nor were angels or singing much in evidence. A great time was had by all and huge relief sighed by the restaurant staff when they realised that Z/Yen people were not going to conduct quantum physics experiments on their fibre optic Christmas tree.

I particularly like the reference to quantum physics experiments, especially as, 25 years later, we really were conducting quantum physics experiments (specifically Einstein’s two clock time dilation relativity experiment using NPL nano-clocks), rather than writing about quantum cryptography , some apparatus from such experiments was on the site of our 2023 Christmas lunch.

The Now & Z/Yen write up also refers to Michael’s attempt at a seasonal lyric – this 1998 one was his first for Z/Yen. Let’s just hypothesise that Michael is better at quantum physics than he is at song lyrics. Evidence below:

D-MARKS! Z/YEN ANGELS SING
(Sung to the tune of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” or “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” in the Mariah Carey style)

“D-Marks!”, Z/Yen angels sing

Glory to the Euro thing

Peace in Europe, markets wild

Blair and Schroder reconciled

Joyful all recessions rise
Join the Bank of England’s sighs
With Zeee/Yen consultants claim
Markets are in may-eh-hem

“D-Marks!”, Z/Yen angels sing
Glory to the Euro thing

Glo….oh….oh…oh…oh….ohria

In consultants’ fee-eees
Glo….oh….oh…oh…oh….ohria

In consultants’ fee-eee-eees

Z/Yen by highest fees adored

Z/Yen for those who can afford

Late in time, does Ian come

Often late, the favoured one

Z/Yen, so fresh the clients see

Hail, the astronomical fees

Pleased as gods with men to dwell

Z/Yen as blasphemous as hell

“D-Marks!”, Z/Yen angels sing
Glory to the Euro thing

Glo….oh….oh…oh…oh….ohria

In consultants’ fee-eees
Glo….oh….oh…oh…oh….ohria

In consultants’ fee-eee-eees

Nikita’s Restaurant, 10 October 1998

Photo “borrowed” from Google.

In those days we sometimes went to restaurants on a Saturday night. On this occasion, a posh Russia restaurant named Nikita’s.

Gone now, 25 years later, but still with a website – here’s a link to it.

Here’s a scrape of it in case the website has gone once you get here.

No doubt several of Janie’s clients put her onto it, no doubt the following rave review in The Standard encouraged them:

Nikita's StandardNikita’s Standard 22 Sep 1998, Tue Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

It was very good.