Category: Eating Out

Dinner And Music Biz Chat With Simon Jacobs, Ladbroke Arms, 20 March 2018

Simon Jacobs very kindly took time out from his hectic promotion schedule to meet me for dinner on Tuesday. Simon’s new single, Sore, came out three days later – today at the time of writing.

You can hear the song and watch the vid on the embedded YouTube below.

Once you decide that you want to own Sore, you can buy it at all the usual places or, to save yourself a few pence, directly from Simon’s site – click here:

The first thing I feel bound to say about our evening on Tuesday is that the song Sore is most certainly not the story of Simon’s evening with me. Neither of us drank excessively, although we did share a bottle of rather jolly Alsatian Riesling, nor did we dance on any tables in a shirtless stylee.

Of course, what Simon did after we parted company on Holland Park Avenue is a matter solely for him, but I can report that the song and video were already in the can by Tuesday, so if Simon’s lyric is reportage, it is reportage of some earlier evening. Come to think of it, it could be reportage of a great many evenings at Keele “back in the day”. but that is an entirely different matter.

Anyway, we dined at the Ladbroke Arms, which had impressed me when I met Kristof there for a drink just before Christmas. I had resolved then to try the food some day soon – so when Simon suggested that I find a gastro-pub near me for our meet up this time, it seemed an ideal choice.

Click picture for link to pub’s site – photo borrowed from that site

The staff took my request for a relatively quiet, corner table literally, so we were in the snug back area in the corner, which actually is a nice quiet spot for a chat.

Simon and I discussed all manner of things, but clearly at the forefront of Simon’s mind was his music career, past and present.

“When I was very young, I briefly joined the Jackson 5”, said Simon.

Now I have known Simon since we were both 15 or so and this was the first I had heard of this matter.

“I know it sounds strange,” said Simon, “because my name isn’t Jackson…”

“…also strange because I don’t recall one of the Jackson 5 being named Simon,” I chimed in, somewhat suspiciously.

“OK, name them all then,” said Simon, confidently.

“Michael, obviously”, I said tentatively, “Tito, Marlon…um…Jermaine…um…um…”

…”and Simon”, said Simon, who then embarked on quite a long story – 45 seconds to a minute – more than my full attention span anyhow – in which I thought he explained that, as a nipper, he imagined himself to have been asked to join his heroes in the Jackson 5 and managed to convince some naive fellow nippers in the park that Simon was now a Jackson.

“It is morally reprehensible to lie about one’s singing career”, I thought quietly to myself, “but if merely a pre-teen fantasy lived out in the park one day, I suppose it is just about forgivable after all these years”.

But when Simon sent me a kind note the following day, he included this factoid:

PS: Marlon, Tito, Jermaine, Simon, Michael… and when Jermaine stayed with Motown and the rest of us went to CBS, little brother Randy joined… it’s all on Wikipedia…

So is it true? Was Simon really a member of the Jackson 5 back then? Or was Simon guilty of generating a bit of early 1970s fake news, which for some reason (presumably to bolster his current musical career) Simon still seeks to perpetuate?

I decided that I would have to investigate this matter for myself.

My first ground for suspicion was that Simon’s surname is Jacobs, not Jackson, so how could Simon Jacobs possibly be “a Jackson”?

Well, actually, Wikipedia puts that matter into clear perspective. The original line up, known as The Jackson Brothers, included “childhood buddies Reynaud Jones and Milford Hite playing keyboards and drums, respectively”.

OK, so it was not unprecedented for a non-Jackson to join the Jacksons. But the Wikipedia entry for that group clearly mentions a brother named Jackie – the one whose name had slipped my mind (and presumably Simon’s too) – who was in the Jackson 5 throughout. So could the Jackson 5 ever have comprised six people?

That’s not quite as daft an idea as it sounds – we all know about the lesser-known fifth Beatle and the lesser-known fourth and fifth Marx Brothers. But the name “Jackson 5” does seem, at least to me, to have a cardinal-numeric requirement to it. When Jermaine left, Randy stepped in to keep the arithmetic pure to the eponymous value “5”.

Yet, even though I could find no textual evidence that the Jackson 5 sometimes exceeded five people, I did find, also through Wikipedia, the following fascinating piece of photographic evidence:

Jackson 5 1974
By The Jackson 5 (eBay front back) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Now sums is not necessarily what I do best, but I am pretty sure that there are six people in that picture which is clearly labelled “Jackson 5 1974” on Wikimedia Commons.

So perhaps Simon really was in the Jackson 5 at one time. I must say that, by the time I got to Wikipedia, all mentions of Simon were omitted from the Jackson 5 entry, but perhaps that is simply some sort of spoiling tactic by Simon’s competitors, who know he has a single coming out today.

So does Simon sound like a former member of the Jackson 5? Does Simon look like a former member of the Jackson 5? I am hopeless at judging these things and am open-minded, so I’m sitting well and truly on the fence for this one.

You, dear reader, should judge for yourself, by listening to Simon’s new single, watching the video and possibly then buying the single, e.g. directly from Simon’s site – click here:

Anyway, as usual, it had been a fun evening chewing the fat with Simon. Big tick in the box for the Ladbroke Arms food and service too.

And to reiterate, I was not sore the next morning…at least not until after I had played two hours of tennis from 8:00 a.m. straight through to 10:00. Then I was very sore.

Keele Alumni Gathering At The Red Lion, Parliament Street, Then Dinner With Bobbie Scully At Roux, 7 March 2018

The above photo of The Red Lion is courtesy of TripAdvisor

When the e-mail came through from the Keele Alumni office, suggesting an informal “Keele In The City” at The Red Lion on Parliament Street, the timing seemed perfect to me.

I expected, by chance, to be in Westminster that afternoon, a few hundred yards away from The Red Lion pub.

This photo of The Red Lion is courtesy of TripAdvisor

I e-mailed Bobbie Scully (who is often at work in the Supreme Court, across the road) and John White (who often hangs around in the Palace of Westminster lobbies) to see if they were around and/or up for it. John said no, while Bobbie said yes to meeting around there, but suggested that we make it a quick drink and then a longer meal to catch up after so long – good thinking in my book.

As it turned out, my afternoon meeting in Westminster was somewhat curtailed, so I sloped back to the flat for a couple of hours, waving at the pub as I descended into the underground, then sloped back to Westminster early evening.

Down in the tube station at mid-afternoon, I ran into my photographer friend, Steve, who proudly showed me the pictures he had just taken of Theresa May with Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS) – one of which looked rather like the one at the top of this article – click here – but clearly is not exactly the same photo.

I hadn’t seen Steve for ages. He wasn’t an official photographer for this MBS visit, but apparently he had been the Prime Minister’s official photographer for the general election. He told me one or two things about our dear leader that didn’t surprise me but still horrified me. The word “chaos” is the one that sticks in the memory, perhaps due to frequent repetition.

I returned to Westminster about 18:50, some 20 minutes after the appointed hour with the Keele Alumni but 40 minutes ahead of the sort of time I figured Bobbie might show up.

Derby Street – the side road on one side of the pub – was chock full of police vans, which were themselves ram-packed with policemen. I recalled the wise words of Malcolm Cornelius, formerly of the Keele parish in our day:

“it is extraordinary how many policemen you can get inside one of those vans”.

I wondered whether the police had been tipped off about the Keele Alumni gathering. Facebook, after all, is said to be a fine source of security intelligence. The Keele Alumni announcement was full of key words that might trigger security concerns for the authorities…

Keele…Law…Moot…Court…Parliament…Basement…March…Red…

…sounds well dodgy, algorithmically.

I wandered through the pub in search of the basement, then saw the roped off stairs, jumped the barrier, went downstairs and found it was all locked up. Confused, I wandered back through the pub and then got caught up in a massive swarm of policemen on Parliament street, all heading from the vans towards Downing Street.

Now dazed as well as confused, I was unwilling to go back inside the Red Lion, which was absolutely heaving with people – unlike my previous visit there, to decompress  after the Payroll Giving Awards. 2011 I think that was, when we held the event at Number 11 Downing Street and I met GOD – I’ll certainly retro-blog that evening in the fullness of time.

Seconds later, a drove of legal-looking folk marched purposefully down the side of Derby Street. Although I recognised no-one, the look and demeanour of this flock could only possibly have been the Keele Law Moot lot.

I joined the throng, as the advanced members of that party threw aside the basement rope and stormed the basement.

“I tried that five minutes ago – it was all locked up down there”, I said, dolefully.

“Oh, don’t worry, they’ll soon negotiate our way in”, said a cheery member of the moot party…

…which indeed they did. Very rapidly. Of course they did. They’d just been mooting all day.

I was assured that no actual donkeys were separated from their actual hind legs in those negotiations. On reflection, by the standards of mooting in the Supreme Court, persuading a publican to open his doors and sell drinks to thirsty Keele Alumni was probably not an especially tough argument to win.

So we were in.

I didn’t recognise anyone, but soon I was approached by a gentleman named George who had studied Psychology and Sociology in the 1970s. We chatted for a while as the moot brigade got their drinks orders in and started to quench their debate-weary thirsts.

Soon after that, Zoë Hollingsworth from the Alumni team came up to me. She had clearly mugged up on some of my post Keele activities and we chatted about charities a bit – a shared interest.

Then a very pleasant surprise – Andrea Woodhouse (formerly Collins) showed up; unexpectedly (to me), although she insisted that she had mentioned her intention to visit on her Facebook page. Perhaps I live on Facebook less than most people, but unless a Facebook posting specifically hails me, I’m unlikely to see a friends posting, unless, quite by chance, I am on-line around the time it is posted. But no harm done – it just made it a nice surprise for both of us on the evening.

Then Bobbie showed up.

Then we all chatted and drank for a while – drinks gatherings are a bit like that.

Around 20:00, Bobbie and I figured we should go and claim our Roux At Parliament Square table, so said goodbye to the drinks party. A shame in a way, as it was a very jolly, not overly noisy and not over-crowded gathering. We’d have enjoyed meeting some more of the people there.

Still, Bobbie and I really wanted to catch up with each other – we hadn’t had a chance to do that for a long time – so a quiet restaurant with some fine food and wine was probably a more suitable setting for that.

Out on the street, the police vans had all gone. The mean streets of Westminster had returned to a more tranquil state – perhaps those dodgy-sounding key words from the Keele Alumni message had now been reinterpreted as benign. Bobbie and I strolled the couple of hundred yards to Roux.

Roux at Parliament Square

The food at Roux really was superb. They sort-of specialise in tasting menus, but I didn’t really fancy those and Bobbie was happy to go along with a more regular choice of dishes, so we had:

  • Dorset crab with Apple, Fermented chili, Dashi (Bobbie’s starter);
  • Pork cheek with Carrot, Ale, Mangalitsa black pudding (my starter);
  • Venison with Savoy cabbage, Pine, Alsace bacon (Bobbie’s main);
  • Halibut with Cauliflower, Grape, Tarragon (my main).
Dig those mains – mine in the foreground
A closer look at Bobbie taking a closer look at her main

We even both had a desert. Wines by the glass to complement the food.

It was great to catch up with Bobbie – no excuse really for leaving it so long but we have both had a lot of family stuff to deal with over the past few years, not least conclusive parent stuff.

Bobbie insisted on picking up the tab, noting that she (and Dave) had enjoyed our hospitality several times in succession…

…then Bobbie suggested that, on that basis, she probably should have taken Janie out to dinner rather than me.

I passed on that last reflection to Janie, while showing her the above photos.

Janie expressed envy at the sight of the meal and agreed with Bobbie that she has suffered an injustice…

…I don’t yet know how Janie expects me to redress this matter, but no doubt I’ll find out soon enough…

…I might need some of those Keele moot people to help argue me out of this tight corner.

Heck, but whatever the penalty, it was worth it – a most enjoyable gathering and then dinner.

Thank you, Keele Alumni team, for setting up the evening.

Dinner In Clerkenwell With John White At The Modern Pantry, 22 February 2018

It was John’s turn to chose and mine to pay – John almost apologised for booking a place we’d been to before; The Modern Pantry in Clerkenwell. That place needed no apology for a revisit – I remembered it being excellent.

A couple of years ago, we tried the newer Finsbury Square Modern Pantry – click here or below – and we had agreed that Clerkenwell was far more interesting and to our taste.

The Modern Pantry – Finsbury Square with John White, 31 March 2016

John suggested that we meet at Ye Olde Mitre, as he had some vital business to conduct in there ahead of our evening. This idea also seemed like no hardship.

I had a very interesting audience with Nathan Myhrvold that afternoon, before getting some bits and pieces done at the office and then joining John in The Mitre.

John’s vital business seemed, to me, to be a few beers and a chat with some friendly colleagues, at least one of whom I had met before. Actually I had a feeling I’d met both before at one time or another.

Vital business concluded, John and I then strolled from Hatton Garden to Clerkenwell proper for our dinner.

Here is a link to The Modern Pantry website.

Here is what we ate:

  • Smoked burrata, roast romanesco, pomegranate molasses roast red onion & kaniwa salad, roast apricot relish, seed crisp bread – John’s starter
  • Cornish brown crab rarebit, yuzu guacamole, shichimi – my starter
  • Lime leaf & red chilli marinated chicken breast, braised rainbow chard, crispy salsify, black garlic & ginger dressing – John’s main
  • Red wine & star anise braised ox cheek, truffled celeriac puree, mange tout, runner bean & turnip salad, lemongrass & Aleppo
    chilli dressing – my main.

We talked about all sorts of things, like we do. I should write up the highlights…

…or should I? That would be predictable almost to the point of being dull. I’m always writing up the highlights. This time, here are the lowlights.

John informed me that he would be going to see Leyton Orient play in the  FA Trophy that Saturday. When I playfully quipped that, like him, Janie and I had nothing better to do that day, John informed me that it was only £10 a ticket and that Janie and I would be most welcome at Orient.

I explained that Janie feels cold at Lord’s in June and that she is probably, if such is possible, even more averse to football than I am.

John and I then hatched a small practical joke along the lines that I really wanted to go to this football match…which, as I suspected, didn’t work very well, as Janie knows only too well that I’d be hard to persuade to the football even for a very big match on a very warm day.

I then announced that it was the 40th anniversary of my being in the school play, Andorra, the very next day:

Andorra, 23, 24 & 25 February 1978

John and I then swapped school play stories for a while. John had played Private Hurst in Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance at school. John especially remembered finding the scenes between Hurst and Annie very difficult for his (then) shy nature:

Fair use image from stage play uploaded for a non-profit, educational purpose – for source & more details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sparky_and_Annie.jpg

I think Hurst would be the deep-set eyes geezer watching on from behind in the above image – that Hurst bears more than a passing resemblance to John, as it happens.

When I got home, I read the play for the first time in decades. I reckon John’s shyness in the liaison scenes would have worked fine. My reading of the Hurst character is that he projects himself as a soldier who is/has been a womaniser, but the character is in the zone for his mission during the play, with no interest in the attentions of poor Annie.

Not exactly the Stanislavki or Lee Strasberg way to achieve the desired effect, but as long as the young woman was showing the requisite enthusiasm, I should imagine that John’s lack of electric response would have made those scenes worked better than John imagined.

Perhaps John is now planning to reprise his role as Private Hurst using “the method”; that might explain him conducting his vital business in traditional taverns like Ye Olde Mitre.

However, the later scene which, as John described it, went as wrong as any scene in any school play could possibly go wrong, was so amusing a story I laughed long and loud. I felt bound to insist that John write it up as a guest piece for Ogblog and now feel bound to pre-announce it.

No rush John, no pressure.

Anyway, once again we’d had an excellent meal at the Modern Pantry. The food we think is outstanding. Perhaps the service was a notch below the level I remembered from the first time, but that might have been caused by as little as being as little as “one down” on staff, which can happen to the best of places.

If you like TripAdvisor links – click here for The Modern Pantry.

As always, it was fun to catch up with John – even on a bitterly cold February evening…

…I didn’t envy John’s journey home…

…nor his impending afternoon at the Leyton O’s.

A Matter Of Some Urgency, Dinner With Rohan Candappa At Supawan Thai, 21 February 2018

I always like to think that I would be there for a friend in their time of need.

So when I got a message from Rohan Candappa that:

As a matter of some urgency…

…there’s a Thai restaurant in King’s Cross that I think we need to go to…

…I was on the case straight away, like a fourth emergency service. Within hours, we had an evening date in the diary for a week or so hence.

Supawan is the place – click here for the website…

…or if you prefer TripAdvisor – click here. 

The urgency, it seems, was that Rohan had read a super review of this place and thought , “I always read these super reviews and never actually try these places. This time, I really must…”

Yes, Rohan, I was there for you. I just hope that you would be there for me in a similar emergency.

Indeed, Rohan’s stipulations went beyond the location…

we’re having Yum khao tod, Peek gai sai and menage phuket. They’re three small plates from the menu. You can choose the rest.

Actually, when I looked at the menu, all three of those starters were probably the very ones I’d have chosen, so I suggested that we both choose the mains, which was an equally easy task – we both liked the sound of the stuffed squid with mushrooms and the slow-cooked pork belly.

In truth, it was a near miracle that we were able to eat the Peek Gai Yud Sai  – stuffed chicken wings.

This was the week of the KFC supply crisis – click here for a post mortem piece from the BBC website.

When I pointed out to Rohan that this Thai restaurant was possibly the only source of Kentucky fried chicken wings in London…

…while he was eating his Peek Gai Yud Sai…

…Rohan couldn’t stop laughing for quite a while.

In truth, the culinary highlights were:

  • Yum khao tod starter, which was a sort-of sophisticated Thai-style chat;
  • Moo hong – Phuket-style pork belly.

But of course the highlight, more than chewing the pork belly fat, was chewing the fat conversationally with Rohan. A bit of reminiscing. A bit of swapping notes on the stuff we are writing.

Rohan clearly appreciated the fact that I had responded to his emergency call, as he presented me with a kindly gift – a book named Pop Sonnets – click here.

I’d like to show the image of Pop Sonnets cover, but sadly that image is subject to copyright, so all I can do is encourage you to click the above link and show you the image and vid below:

As we left Supawan, Rohan and I took a look at Keystone Crescent – click here – an extraordinary place – which I took to be late Georgian but is in fact as recent as 1855 – not that much older than my own place.

A fun evening – happy to have been able to help in your time of need, Rohan. Any time…within reason.

Festive Dinner At The Chelsea Physic Garden With Kim & Micky, 13 December 2017

Janie has become very fond of the Chelsea Physic Garden, following our Gresham Society visit in the spring:

I DID Want To Go To Chelsea, Gresham Society Visit To Chelsea Physic Garden, then The Other Side Of Hope, Curzon Chelsea, 30 May 2017

Janie’s subsequent joining (thanks Toni) and a couple of splendid dinners there, not least with John and Mandy for the birthdays:

Birthday Dinner With John and Mandy At Chelsea Physic Garden, 29 August 2017

So Janie was very excited when Marc tipped her off to the idea of a December festive dinner indoors.

Not quite the magical atmosphere of summer dining in the garden itself, of course, but an excellent opportunity to get together with Kim and Micky during the festive season.

It was a super meal; similar in cooking style to the summer fare but using seasonal winter ingredients.

Here’s the menu:

From coincidence corner, a fellow member of Bodyworkswest, a gentleman named Lance, was sitting at the next table to us. We all had a chat for a while.

Micky won a tiny pack of  cards in his cracker, so we played poker, black jack, beat your neighbour and snap for a while. Micky wanted to play canasta but we’d need to mug up for that game.

You get the idea – we had a very good time. Kim and Micky are really looking forward to trying the summer experience at the Chelsea Physic Garden next season…as are we.

An Amazing Week Of Grazing And Moral Mazing, 1 to 7 December 2017

It’s a cracker

It’s December, so of course the eating and drinking goes into overdrive.

Starting on the very first day of December; lunch with Michael Mainelli, Brendan May and John Lloyd at the Guildhall. Great to catch up with those guys, it brought back to my mind a quite interesting 2003 evening in a TV studio with Brendan and John – now Ogblogged – click here.

The next day, cousins Jacquie and Hilary Briegal came to Noddyland for a late lunch that morphed into early evening. Jacquie couldn’t resist bringing some of her famous chopped herring for us, although, as any fule no, chopped herring cannot take part in “herring of the year” contests, which in any case have to be held at Jacquie’s place – click here for the most recent example.

In any case, herring didn’t form part of the Noddyland meal, which comprised smoked salmon nibbles followed by Janie’s (Daisy’s) famous wasabi beef fillet dish and finally danish apple cake. We hadn’t seen Jacquie and Hils for over a year; it was great to see them again and have a chance to reciprocate Jacquie’s warm hospitality.

As usual, Daisy had massively over-catered, so I was able to lunch on some left over beef, sauce and potatoes couple of times during the week, including Thursday…

…which was probably just as well, given the tardiness of the Cafe Rogues meal in Holborn that evening, at the comedy writers Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner.

I reported last year on the ruthless efficiency with which the venue forced us to pre-order and the chaos and long waits that nevertheless ensued. Last year, it was Jonny Hurst who took the brunt of the tardiness, waiting about an hour longer than everyone else for his main course. This year, Jonny was again such a victim, but I too was one of the chosen people for this indignity. Perhaps we weren’t served a full hour later than everyone else, but surely at least half an hour later.

I suppose you can chat, drink and even be ruined while you wait for food

To add insult to indigestion, four of us were served our deserts some 30 minutes after everyone else. Jonny escaped this time, but I was caught twice – along with Jasmine, Barry and John for the lengthy dessert desert.

Still, everyone seemed to be in a good mood. Nine of us gathered this time; me, John Random, Jonny Hurst, Jasmine Birtles, Colin Stutt, Hugh Rycroft, Gerry Goddin, Mark Keagan and Barry Grossman.

Jasmine and John brought crackers. John Random’s were very special; he had doctored some real crackers, emblazoning them with a picture of Michael Buerk and describing them as Moral Maze crackers.

With Jasmine’s crackers, we played our regular Christmas game of trying to work out the feed line from the punchline of the corny cracker jokes…with limited success this year as the jokes were so corny. Examples:

A. A monkey burp.

Q. What’s silent and smells of banana?

A. Mrs Sippi

Q. Who is the most famous married woman in America?

But John had doctored his crackers with moral maze dilemmas to replace the corny jokes. Example:

Q. What do you get if you cross a sheep with a kangaroo?

A. A series of far-reaching ethical questions that go to the very heart of modern genetics.

Tut tut if you read that question and thought the answer was, “a wooly jumper”.

Jasmine and John pulled…
…which left Jasmine grappling with a tricky moral dilemma.

Traditional quizzing after dessert…or in the case of the four of us sorely neglected souls…during the dessert.

Colin Stutt again did a warm up game, taking the best jokes from the fringe for the last few years and seeing if we could remember the punchlines or construct good/better punchlines ourselves. I reckon I did a reasonable job on 10-12 out of 30 of them, actually knowing the answer to only a couple.

Mark, the holder of the Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Trophy, naturally led the main event quiz. I’m usually in with a chance when Mark writes the quiz but so are one or two other people. In a close run contest this year:

Mark had bubble-wrapped the trophy for safe-keeping…
…let’s hope that Jonny also treats the magnificent artefact with the respect it deserves.

Yes, the place was ridiculously noisy. Yes, the service was poor, except when it was terrible. But at Christmastime, almost everywhere is thus. These Ivan Shakespeare gatherings of good old friends are always lively, witty evenings that make me happy; that is the bit that really matters.

Dinner At Oklava With The Friends And Friends Of The Friends, 21 November 2017

Tom Friend arranged a surprise birthday dinner at Oklava for his mum, Toni.

Janie and I had eaten at Oklava in July, with Toni and Lisa, at the latter’s well-chosen behest, click here. We hadn’t realised that Toni and then Tom in turn had taken a shine to the place and eaten there more than once since.

How Tom kept the event secret goodness only knows, but Toni was genuinely surprised to see us sitting there in the restaurant waiting for them when she and Tom arrived; she genuinely thought she was going out for an evening just with Tom.

Unexpectedly, a cast of thousands…well, eight actually. From left to right behind me and Janie: Lisa, Toni, Sophie, Claire, Mike and Tom

On our previous visit we’d enjoyed some sort of special set meal based on some award-winning dishes. On this occasion we tried a more regular style of Oklava set menu (if you can describe any of this food as regular):

A couple of unusual looking wines caught my eye; so unusual that the waitress suggested that I taste them before choosing them. The white was a dry muscat; perhaps she thought I was expecting something sweeter but it was in fact more or less what I expected and a very interesting wine.

The waitress warned me that the red, a blend of noble grapes, was quite a lot sweeter than one might expect. On that description, I anticipated the taste of communion/kiddish wine – heaven forbid – but of course it was a very interesting blend, a little sweeter (perhaps through the riper Turkish growing conditions) but well-suited to the Turkish style food.

The food was excellent again at Oklava. The chilli roast cauliflower was a highlight for me (Janie didn’t like that one much), but the pomegranate glazed lamb breast and yoghurt was a hit for both of us.

Boys talk? Claire can hardly contain her excitement while Mike and I hold forth, hence the half-closed eyes
Girls talk? Actually I think this was Toni’s “happy birthday to you” moment
Thanks to Janie for the pictures…apart from the top, waiter-assisted one, with all of us.

It was a superbly convivial evening. Lisa, Janie and I hadn’t met Mike, Claire or Sophie before, yet it felt like a gathering of eight long-standing friends from the word go.

Well done and thanks, Tom, for gathering all of us together; it was a very enjoyable evening.

Dinner With John White At Galvin La Chapelle, 15 November 2017

This time it was my turn to chose the venue. I did a bit of research and decided that Galvin La Chapelle was conveniently located for John to get home to Saffron Walden and for me to get home after an afternoon in the City.

I’m normally a bit disappointed when choosing City places – usually high prices and not special food – but this turned out to be a very pleasant exception – an extremely good meal. Not cheap, but good value for the quality of food,

My turn to chose the venue meant it was John’s turn to pick up the tab. Many thanks John.

John came round to see 41 Lothbury on the way – he’d not been to our new (not so new any more) offices yet.

Then we wandered in the direction of La Chapelle. I thought we might go to Balls Brothers on Bishopsgate, not knowing that it is now a building site.

So we had a quick drink in the ever-reliable George Pub, on the junction of Liverpool Street.

It was there I told him about Janie’s new hobby, pole dancing. I also showed him the photo Janie had sent me on the Monday.

Daisy Up A Pole

The above news and views seemed to lighten John’s mood considerably.

We then had a lengthy debate about whether we were less than five minutes from La Chapelle (as John thought) or more than that (as I thought). Mr Googlemap said six minutes but John decided that means less than five at our walking pace.

But by gosh it was worth the five-and-a-half minute walk, it really was.

Here’s the menu.

John started with the velouté, while I had a crab lasagne starter. John went on to the mushroom risotto while I went for the duck. John tried the cheeses after, while I tried the cheesecake.

Truly excellent food and (after a slightly slow start) very charming and superb service.

John was a big hit with the waitress who brought the bread, charming her with bread facts, such as:

  • in the old days the bakers’ sweat was part of the enzyme process that brought the yeast to life and thus gave the bread its texture and flavour;
  • the phrase “sent to Coventry” comes from bakers being expelled from their guild and prohibited from practicing within 100 miles of London. This second “bread fact” does not stand up to Wikipedia scrutiny, which prefers the Civil War rationale.

When the same waitress turned out to be the cheese waitress, John considered mugging up on some cheese facts as well, but I suggested that it would be a better, more self-effacing ploy to admit to knowing little about cheese. This tactic did seem to work pretty well and the waitress confessed that she too was new to the cheese duties, but then went on to explain the cheeses in great detail.

You get the picture; it was a fabulous meal and I always enjoy such evenings with John even when the food is less fabulous. So this one was well-memorable.

A Return Visit To Paradise by way of Kensal Green, 8 October 2017

No comedy moustache this time…
…nor festive cracker hats!

We returned to the scene of last year’s Christmas festivities (those December 2016 ones depicted above).

It was almost the same group of us too, except was around and Micky joined us this time.

The place is probably better suited to a regular Sunday lunch feast rather than the Christmas feast. The regular Sunday lunch is gargantuan enough, but within a tolerance that doesn’t require several days of overindulgence-recovery-time.

Good food too. Janie and I both especially enjoyed the crispy belly pork. I found the Sunday roast trimmings (not least Yorkshire pudding) went surprisingly well with it. Yummy starters too – mine was a seared tuna salad, Janie’s a crab thing.

But of course it was the company that really made the day so good. Even after Micky, Max and Kim had gone, Janie and I stuck around chewing the fat with DJ until long after dark. Winter is setting in!

Dinner At The Phantom Pig With Lisa Opie and Toni Friend, 22 September 2017

Chef Vix and his trusty sous chef Luke explain stuff with attentive care

This was Lisa Opie’s idea…and a jolly good idea it was too.

Several of her friends and clients had recommended this pop up restaurant in West Ealing, currently popping up just once a month at The Orchard Cafe, serving the sort of haute cuisine tasting menu food you’d normally expect to find in a far more sprauncy location than the regenerated former Green Man Estate.

We were up for it as, fortuitously, one of Helen Baker’s wonderful wine tastings, which had been scheduled for this night, had to be moved to a later date. Toni Friend was up for it too, so I was to be an honorary girl again for the second time in the last couple of months.

What a find this pop up restaurant is.

First up was a tipple with mystery snacks – the snacks comprising straw-smoked potatoes, a chicken parfait tart and a cauliflower soup – all good but the latter was outstanding.

The tipple, it seems, came whether you went for wine matching or not. We did opt for wine matching with the food. The tipple was a cocktail shot of flavoured liquor (brandy we think) that tasted mostly of lemongrass – probably to lull us into a false sense of healthiness – not least because it was served in a sort of test tube thing. Janie said it looked like a urine sample.

I’m not selling the whole experience very well, am I? Because actually every aspect of the meal including the way it looked and was served was very elegant and thoughtful.

Perhaps best I let pictures tell most of the story – with thanks to Janie, Lisa and Toni, all of whom provided some pictures. All three of them went a bit berserk with their smart phones once the courses and wines started to flow:

The “Beauty Of The Bulb” starter had a phallic look, apparently
Vix described the starter while sprinkling the apple jus
Attentive listeners, eh?
Janie and Lisa both got a bit snap happy across the table
“Never mind the photos…grubs up!”, I say.
Exquisite chicken, cod, ink and mushroom sauce.
The wine keeps flowing; one glass per dish
Here comes the superb duck…
…and here comes Mandy with the wine for the duck!
Mandy can also explain the meal to us.
Ged mucks in by tucking in to the duck.
Toni has a laugh with one of the charming waiting-folk…
…then listens with rapt attention to Vix’s description of the pud.
Toni asked the team kindly to sign a menu for Ogblog
Here also a list of the wine matches

The food was superb, the service delightful and the wine matches well chosen and very generously sized doses…

…perhaps a little too much so for part-timers like me. After Janie and I had been home for about five minutes, Janie rather cruelly snapped me taking a short nap on the bed before completing all of my pre-slumber procedures…

…but after a ten minute snooze I got up and sorted myself out properly. Someone else, who shall remain nameless, didn’t brush her teeth and come to bed properly until about 4:00 am…

…and still I couldn’t beat her on the tennis court the next morning.

We had a great evening and really look forward to trying The Phantom Pig again. We’d highly recommend it; the young and innovative Phantom Pig team are top notch and deserve to do really well.