Ian Louis Harris

The Argument by William Boyd, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, 19 March 2016

We love the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs. We love the upstairs too, of course, but we really have seen some cracking stuff downstairs.

This piece doesn’t really make the cut as “cracking stuff”. I enjoyed it more than Janie did; she found swathes of it irritating.

There’s not a great deal of plot. Young couple, compulsive arguers about nothing, fall out proper when the shrewish intellectual snob of a wife extracts a confession from the strangely timid yet BSD husband that he has been having an affair with some trollop through work.

Then wheel in the best friend of each spouse plus both of her parents and watch every plausible pairing (and some implausible ones) argue. Some scenes were genuinely laugh-out-loud funny; others were a little “smug sitcom” for our taste. What little plot there is progresses quite slowly and predictably.

It was good to see Michael Simkins (aka Fatty Batter – one of the funniest cricket books I have ever read) on the stage. Last time I saw him in person was at a county cricket match at Lord’s 10 years or so ago; he was with Michael Billington and we three chatted very pleasantly for a brief while.

Plenty of good acting on show, as is pretty much always the case down there at Hampstead. Indeed, in some ways it was the high quality of the acting that irritated Janie. The characters were all unlikable and the actors did a terrific job of projecting that unlike-ability. It is difficult for a play to work if you really don’t care much for any of the characters.

Still, we enjoyed our evening and in some ways the slight disappointment was based on the very high expectations we have now when visiting the Hampstead Theatre – what a huge leap forward from a few years ago when the whole place was in the creative doldrums. Edward Hall has done and is doing a cracking job there. We look forward to seeing the new Neil LaBute upstairs there in a few weeks’ time. I think we saw Mr LaBute himself crossing the Finchley Road while we were on the way to the theatre; quite possible as that upstairs show is still in preview. There’s another fellow we haven’t seen in person for a decade or so.

Christian McBride and Edgar Meyer, Wigmore Hall, 18 March 2016

Janie and I are huge fans of solo and small ensemble jazz at the Wigmore Hall; it sounds great in that place. We have encouraged “The Wiggy” to put on more of the stuff over the years and we were delighted when they came up with the idea of curated jazz series.

Double bass virtuoso Christian McBride is the latest jazz series curator. Based (or should I say bass-ed) on this concert, his first appearance as curator, he seems like a superb choice.

Neither of us had heard two double basses as an ensemble before. Should I call that ensemble a duet or quadruple bass? Anyway, the second bass player, Edgar Meyer, was also quite brilliant.

Both Christian and Edgar (you soon feel on first name terms) are composers as well as musicians, so we heard some of their own pieces as well as their take on some good bassy jazz standards. Occasionally one of them would take to the piano, but most of the pieces were double bass duets.

Between pieces, taking the copious applause, they looked like a bit of a mutual admiration society, each denying that the applause was for him and insisting that it was mainly for the other bloke. But that was the only slight irritation for us the whole evening. They are clearly good friends and have a wonderful understanding of each other when they play together, which is the important thing.

This concert was cool. Seriously cool. Elvis Costello was sitting in the audience about half way to the back of the hall and to the side – that’s how hot a ticket this cool concert was. I hoped to say hello to my old pal Elvis as we left the hall, but unfortunately his entourage appeared and grabbed his attention just before I got my chance.

Escaped Alone by Caryl Churchill, Royal Court Theatre, 12 March 2016

A conversation with Janie back in January.

Janie: I’ve just heard Front Row. They were talking about an amazing new play by Caryl Churchill at the Royal Court.

Me: (inquisitively) Yessss…

Janie: …so why haven’t you got us tickets for it?

Me: (nervously) Cripes – I’ll look into it. Leave it to me.

But of course, I had already bought tickets for Escaped Alone at the Royal Court. I’d bought tickets for the play so long ago, Janie and I had both forgotten about it. So long ago, that we hadn’t then quite worked out when we were going to take our winter break. I had, for that reason, booked for right at the end of the run, 12 March, to ensure that our holiday window was as wide as possible.

By the time we returned from our winter trip to Nicaragua, we were aware that Escaped Alone had received rave reviews from almost all the critics, that several of our friends had already seen it and that no-one seemed very able to explain what the play is about.

Thus we went to Sloane Square with a great sense of expectation; perhaps that in part explains why both of us found the play rather disappointing. Yet I didn’t find the piece quite as obscure and mysterious as critics (and friends) inferred. So, for those readers who wonder what this play is about, (even those of you who have seen and/or read it) here is my take on the work.

Caryl Churchill gives us, at the front of the play text, the quote “I only am escaped alone to tell thee” from the Book of Job (Job’s servant with bad news) and also from the epitaph to Moby Dick (Ishmael’s words). But I don’t think this clue leads naturally to the idea that Mrs Jarrett’s (Linda Bassett’s) dystopian speeches are supposed to be her describing actual experiences prior to visiting the garden and/or that the garden scenes take place while other aspects of the world are turning hellish.

The start of the play reveals that Mrs Jarrett knows the other three women only slightly when she joins them in the garden. The other three clearly know each other well; that familiar trio are given and use only first names. It is only Mrs Jarrett, the surnamed partial outsider, who steps outside the comfort of the garden to make dystopian speeches in partial, flashing light of the outer stage.

In the garden scenes, as the play unfolds, each of the three familiar friends makes a relatively lengthy speech in which they reveal their inner demons. In Sally’s case, it is the fear of cats. In Lena’s case, it is workplace-induced depression/agoraphobia. In Vi’s case, it is obsessive thoughts about her killing of her husband and the effect it has had on her life since. Mrs Jarrett doesn’t make such a speech within the garden – we have heard plenty about her demons in her dystopian speeches from the outside. So Mrs Jarrett merely says the phrase “terrible rage” many times over, when it is her turn to open up to the others with a longer speech in the garden.

The point is, I think, that all four women are describing inner demons; Mrs Jarrett only articulates hers outside the garden. We all have inner demons, which we can only really “escape alone”, or sometimes reveal to friends as personal dystopiae, because those worries are unique to us. There is an interesting counterpoint here with Hitchcock’s take on inner fears (which in his case manifest as plot devices and ways of making the audience anxious) – fresh in my mind after seeing Hitchcock/Truffaut the previous day. Perhaps Churchill’s subtle focus on the notion that everyone has inner fears explains why Escaped Alone seems to have resonated so well with the critics (and perhaps also audiences).

Janie and I have seen a fair smattering of Caryl Churchill in our time. They are often short works, with an absurd, obscure and/or dystopian feel to some or all of the piece. This piece didn’t seem, to us, to add much to that Churchill oeuvre. Among the critics, only Billington (whose review was also very good) at least alluded to dystopia overkill and the use of similar ideas in earlier Churchill works. Blue Heart, A Number and especially Far Away all came to my mind while watching the play, prior to reading that Billington review.

Yes, Escaped Alone had a super set. Yes, the production had a superb posse of senior actresses, but the play/production simply didn’t resonate well with either of us, unlike many of Churchill’s earlier works.

The audience was ecstatic at the end of the show, but then it was a last night audience and the critics had universally told readers that the play/production was top ranking. Thus the audience went into critic-induced raptures at the “Da Doo Ron Ron” rendition by the four ladies in the garden, sandwiched between two of Mrs Jarrett’s dystopian speeches, soon after Sally’s cat phobia speech, just before Lena’s depression/agoraphobia one. An excessive response, in my view, to something that was a nice touch but not a coup de théâtre.

Similarly, the universal acclaim for this play/production seems excessive to both of us, although perhaps this piece does far more for people who have been less steeped in Caryl Churchill.

Hitchcock/Truffaut, Curzon Bloomsbury, 11 March 2016

We hadn’t been to the movies since our “Christmas break Curzon film fest”, unless you count watching movies on the plane crossing the Atlantic on the way to Nicaragua as “going to the movies.

The decision to put this movie shortage right came within minutes of the Curzon Spring brochure coming through the post. First on our list was Hitchcock/Truffault – see IMDb entry here.

Good movie, this. Probably aimed more at aficionados and media studies types than at us. (Hard for us to tell who it was meant to be attracting, given the super-sparse late afternoon/early evening audience when we attended.)

Truffaut was a fan of Hitchcock and approached the great man in the early 1960s hoping to interview him. The resulting series of interviews became a seminal book on the art of cinematography. The relationship between the two directors also blossomed into genuine friendship for the remainder of Hitchcock’s life. Truffaut’s life was tragically cut short just a few years after Hitchcock died. Both of them died when I was at Keele, which gave the Film Society good excuses (if such were needed) to have mini festivals of their works.

I must confess that I have always been fascinated by Hitchcock’s films, although his movies are not really “my type of films”. I should also confess that I have never really “got” Truffaut. I know that I was supposed to like Jules et Jim, which on paper is my type of film, but I didn’t like it.

Still, what I did like was this Hitchcock/Truffaut movie about Truffaut’s interviews and resulting examination of Hitchcock’s oeuvre. Some fascinating additional notes/appearances by modern directors such as Wes Anderson and Martin Scorsese add somewhat to the “meeja-studdies” feel of the movie, but joking apart also add a great deal of sensible and interesting comment on why Hitchcock’s work and Truffaut’s examination of same were so important to the development of the art of movie making.

If nothing else, if you have never seen the very best shots and clips from Hitchcock’s movies, this is a great way to see most of those in one short sitting. If you have seen them before, you know you’ll relish seeing lots of those clips in one sitting.

German Skerries by Robert Holman, Orange Tree Theatre, 5 March 2016

The questions Daisy and I debated over our Spanish dinner at Don Fernando after this short play were “why?” questions. Primarily, “why on earth did Paul Miller choose to revive this particular play?”

Yes, the Orange Tree rubric about this play – click here – says that Simon Stephens reveres Robert Holman. Any friend of Simon Stephens blah blah…

…but this play, which won awards and all sorts in the late 1970s, must have either come from a lean year (1977? – I don’t think so) or simply aged badly, as some plays do. It simply didn’t resonate for either of us.

Some of it felt like writing by numbers to me – the birdwatchers spot a cormorant impaling itself on some stray wire, presumably the wire is there because of the industrial activity out by the skerries. “Oh dear”, I thought, “one of the characters is going to cop an industrial injury before the 80 minutes is up.”

It didn’t help that I have a slight cold (or do I mean man flu?) on our recent return from Nicaragua – from 30 Centigrade to 30 Fahrenheit overnight is a bit of a shock to the system. I did a pretty good job of stifling the sniffling and coughing, despite the cast members smoking pretty constantly and the smoke machine designed to make the night scenes seem misty being located right by my seat! Thank goodness for the trusty bottle of water when you need it most.

We had other why questions; such as why did the young man stay up by the bird watching hut leaving his young wife to take the injured man to hospital alone? There was a bicycle in the hut which seemed to have been left there for a purpose (perhaps that purpose) but the bike was ignored when crisis struck. Perhaps a change of heart from the writer, left hanging like…

The subject matter had the ability to resonate – ordinary folk in Teeside, caught up in the late 1970s industrial changes and disquiet…but by gosh this is a slow and dull piece. The play had only the faintest echo of the power possible in similar small northern town microscope pieces, such as Stockport by Simon Stephens. Yes, I can see where the influence on Stephens might have come; yes I understand that the industries that were controversially established on Teeside in the 1970s are controversially shutting down now. But 40 years on, leave it to Stephens…or revive a Stephens, don’t try and revive this dated and clumsy piece.

Michael Billington and his good lady were in the house tonight sitting opposite us. Billington is a great supporter of the Orange Tree but I suspect he’ll struggle to give this piece a favourable review – it will be interesting to see what he writes about it.

Daisy struggled to stay awake and was fearful that she might have nodded off while the young man character was bird watching in our direction through his binoculars. I don’t think she nodded off at those particular junctures, nor do I think that Michael Billington nodded off at the times when the binos were pointing his way, although I cannot vouch for the wakefulness of Billington’s whole evening.

We too are long-term supporters of the Orange Tree and think that Paul Miller’s tenure so far has had more rock than a massive outcrop of skerries, but this play missed the mark for us by a long way. We know that financial pressure is a major factor, so these joint productions are doubtless the way. Perhaps this piece will work better in Northern towns (although frankly I doubt it). But in any case, I’d prefer to see more risk in joint productions – better the odd miss that has given a young writer or an emerging theatre troupe a chance, than a revival miss that leaves us simply asking, “why?”.

The Encounter, Complicite/Simon McBurney, Barbican, 27 February 2016

When we heard about this Complicite production, The Encounter, Janie and I were really keen to see it, so much so that we sort-of organised the Nicaragua holiday around it; spotting good seats available for a bit later in the run and thus booking to go away beforehand.

Janie and I have always had a soft spot for Complicite – by chance the spare ticket I had which became Janie and my first date in 1992 was for one of their shows at the National; Street of Crocodiles. That was the first time either of us had seen Complicite, so I suppose we were transfixed by Complicite as well as each other.

These matters are all about timing I suppose. Our timing for seeing Encounter, just a few days after returning from Nicaragua, was perhaps not so clever. The jet lag together with the change from 30 degrees Centigrade to 30 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures gave both of us some trepidation ahead of an evening out.

Still, the show is inspired by the novel Amazon Beaming by Petru Popescu, so perhaps we would at least be transported back to that warm tropical feeling? Too right!

Indeed, the show uses an amazing binaural sound technology, where you wear headphones and sense the sounds coming from any direction around your head. One of the tricks is the incredibly realistic sound of mosquitoes buzzing around you. Now we had surprisingly few encounters with those little pests while we were in Nicaragua – the dry, windy season saw to that. But of course everyone is in fear of mozzies out there just now, with prophylaxis unavailable for the dreaded dengue fever, Chikungunya and topically tropically Zika viruses. Indeed Mukul was at only 60% occupancy when we arrived even though it expected 100% occupancy, as 40% of the expected guests (all bookings from the USA) had cancelled in fear of Zika. Suffice it to say that Janie and I were still highly sensitive to that mozzie sound. Thank you, Mr McBurney.

But of course the show is an absolute triumph. We lost ourselves in the Amazon of our heads for a short while much as Loren McIntyre was genuinely lost in the Amazon for a long while back in the 1960s.

Here is Complicite’s own bumf on the production. Here follow some of the deserved rave reviews from Edinburgh:

Of course Complicite (at least in the hands of Simon McBurney himself) is no longer acrobatic, movement-oriented shows like Street of Crocodiles. Be fair, the physical stuff he/they were doing nearly 25 years ago was extraordinary enough. So McBurney now adapts his imagination to other means of stimulating our senses – mostly aurally this time – and still he can surprise and thrill.

This was one hot ticket and we are so pleased that we made the effort to book and make our plans around this wonderful production.

Painting the Modern Garden: Monet To Matisse, 26 February 2016

While we were away, Janie got very excited about the prospect of seeing this show about gardens. Janie is a friend of the Royal Academy now, so we can go when we like. We both thought that the Friday afternoon of our return might be a good bet. Perhaps 16:00ish – between the earlier in the day Friday-offers and the after work Friday evening-istas.

But of course it didn’t work out that way. “I’ll be over around 15:00” became “15:30” and then at 15:30 came the call, “I’ll probably be another hour or so”. It enabled me to get other stuff done. In the end, Janie turned up at the flat around 18:00 so we decided to load up the car and drive in to Mayfair – so we got to the Academy at the prime time for the late crowd, especially as the free guided tour was kicking off.

At the start I saw several stylish works that all resembled the backs of peoples’ heads rather than gardens, but then Janie came up with a cunning plan to whiz through to the end of the show and work backwards-ish, avoiding the heave. This cunning plan pretty much worked, apart from the last room with three of Monet’s giant water lilies. I thought we’d seen them before in the major Monet exhibition some years ago, but Janie insists these particular three are ones that hadn’t been exhibited before. You need to be an expert/completist to tell one triptych of Monet water lilies from another IMHO.

Reviews in major papers such as the Guardian and Telegraph tell you all you need to know about what you are and aren’t getting in this exhibition. Yes, you are getting lots of Monet. No, you don’t get much Matisse, nor much Klee, Van Gogh etc. Only one Kandinsky but it is a cracker. Ditto Klimt.

Worth seeing, this exhibition, especially if you like gardens and you like Monet. It is beyond chocolate box but it is mostly easy-going eye candy.

Nicaragua, Overview, Summary and Links, 6 to 23 February 2016

I think we’re now done with the blog materials from our wonderful trip to Nicaragua.

The best of the photographs are up now as a Flickr album – click here and link through.

The itinerary produced by Ultimate Travel (whom we highly recommend for this sort of thing) can be downloaded on the following link: Harris and Wormleighton final itinerary – Feb 2016.

If you want to read my blog sequentially from the beginning of the trip – then start by clicking here and work forwards. Well worth the effort in my view.

But those seeking highlights and low-lights, you might find what you are looking for this way:

Don't try saying "La Cuneta" in polite company after two or more rum and cokes — Mondongo by La Cuneta

Nicaragua, The Search For Music, 6 to 23 February 2016

When we travel abroad, I tend to spend some time finding out about and buying local music. Over the years, given our predilection for visiting developing nations, this has not always been an easy search and for sure the lagging end of my cassette collection, for example, was music bought abroad long after cassettes had become obsolescent back home.

Nicaragua proved especially challenging on the music front. I thought Leon would be our best bet as it has a reputation as a student town with a vibrant live music scene. But the live music scene seems well in decline, such that midweek there is no scene to be seen (or heard).

Our local guide in Leon 8 February, as reported in my blog for that day, drew a complete blank on both the matter of live music (probably because there really wasn’t any that midweek night) and CDs. We did a little bit better on the CD front under our own steam on 9 February, but only through the good offices and guidance of a nice man in the musical instrument shop, helping direct us to (possibly) the only recorded music vendor in Leon.

The Leon CD vendor spoke no English and probably would be minimally helpful in Spanish too. In broken Spanglish we asked for Caribbean-style Nica music and he indicated that no-one on the Pacific side of the country buys or sells that stuff. Instead, he talked us into buying a second Nicaraguan typica/folklorica CD, probably surplus to our requirements. Still, at about 50p a pop, the extra CD was not exactly a big deal to us. Perhaps more of a big deal to the vendor.

On a Spanglish request for modern music, he simply stuck two CDs into my hand; one named Bacanalero to Brutal, which is basically a various artists mix of Latin American merengue, bachata and salsa music, primarily from Dominican and Puerto Rican artists. This was similar to the response we got in Guatemala 12 years ago to a similar request – except that the Leon vendor didn’t put the CD onto a sound system so we could hear it and thus the locals didn’t all start dancing in Leon, unlike the Lake Atitlan Guatamalan menengue-dancing locals. The sounds on my Bacanalero to Brutal CD are reasonably up to date though and the disc has the reassuringly modern “2014” on it. The other CD was named La Cuneta Son Machin and the vendor signaled to me that this second one was “really the one” in his view.

Our attempt to get some Caribbean music with Guillermo the next day did not fare much better – he didn’t think Masaya would yield anything so we ended up in Granada where he picked up an MP3/CD with a bit of absolutely everything on it, including some Caribbean side music, including the recommended Dimension Costeña, but this is clearly even more of a low quality bootleg jobbie than the regular CDs you buy on the street.

When we got to Mukul, I did a bit of Googling and ascertained that La Cuneta Son Machin is becoming one of the most successful Nica bands ever – half populated by sons and nephews of Nicaraguan folklorico patriarchs Carlos Mejía Godoy and Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy. La Cuneta’s latest album, Mondongo, has just been nominated for a Grammy award; apparently the first time a purely Nica band has been nominated for a Grammy. We’ll find out whether they won while we are at Mukul. How cool is that? Well, just a little bit cool. And no, they didn’t win, but heck, to be nominated is still a big deal. Just don’t try saying “La Cuneta” in polite company after a couple of rum and cokes…

…anyway, it should be easy enough to get hold of this historically successful and current album, right? Wrong. We tried. Mukul itself only sells bog standard stuff – Putumayo world music CDs at over £20 a pop. Managua Airport shops? Not a chance. So in the end I needed to one-click a download of Mondongo from Amazon.co.uk…

…not exactly helping the Nicaraguan economy the way I had hoped (and boy does the Nicaraguan economy need help – the inability to buy local music locally is but one example of the commerce shortage in this country, which has in theory been a liberal democracy with an open economy for 25 years) but at least we were able to get our lug-holes around the album. Yes, it really does rock, btw, before you ask.

You can see, hear, dance and sing along to the amazing title track, Mondongo, on this link.

Try listening to it twice and see if you can avoid the infectious rhythm and sound being stuck in your head. This is the sort of track that could be next summer’s global craze. I encourage all Ogblog readers to open their windows and play Mondongo loud, to ensure that you and your neighbours are similarly infected, thus all dancing, clicking and buying the album. It’s the least you can do.

Nicaragua, Mukul, Dining, 16 to 22 February 2016

The dinner on our first evening – reported here – left us pretty optimistic about the quality of food at Mukul.

17 February 2016

Breakfast the next morning (as always, after tennis) was served to us by Juan, a jolly, chubby waiter who was delighted to learn that we were Londoners because he loves the late Princess Diana and Big Ben. Bless. I explained to him that the Clock Tower of the Palace of Westminster (the icon he actually loves) is not actually Big Ben but is that part of the Palace containing a huge bell, which is named Big Ben. He seemed pleased to be better informed. We did not discuss my take on the late Princess Diana.

By Diliff (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

On Juan’s recommendation, I tried a smoothie named “green machine” which was mostly fruit with some spinach for colour, edgy flavour and lots of goodness. Janie tried a more conventional fruity one. I tried the nica chilaquiles; quite spicy with chicken and cheese, certainly worth trying once. Janie asked for a salad with rocket and goats cheese. The only weakness in the breakfast was the regular coffee, which tasted a bit strong and stewed, so I resolved to try a proper americano (with espresso coffee in it) henceforward.

We tried La Mesa (the haute cuisine restaurant) that evening. We shared an octopus carpaccio starter. I had a slow-cooked daube of beef dish, while Janie tried pork cooked three ways. We shared an ice cream/sorbet desert. Very rich meal. Orlando looked after us again, as did Hungarian sommelier Imre who recommended a very tasty Malbec; Bodega Noemia A Lisa.

18 February 2016

Breakfast the next morning was served by someone other than Juan. I opted for a lighter meal of granola pancakes while Janie opted for omelette and bacon. At the end of the breakfast we were furnished with an unexpected extras bill for the smoothies, my choice of coffee and even for Janie’s toast to go with her egg and bacon. I refused to sign the bill and raised the matter with Frederico, whom we had in any case arranged to see that morning about the boat arrival debacle. Frederico agreed that we would not see such extra charges for our breakfasts.

That evening we decided to try the new Beach Club, which only opened in December and has just started doing dinners with an experimental snack foods menu. We thought a lighter meal would go down well. Daisy started with tempura prawns and moved on to steak. I started with tostones with queso (plantain fritters with a sort of local haloumi on top) and followed with a sort of shrimp cocktail. Chips, veg, shared ice cream to finish and two glasses of house wine. Over £80, which seemed steep (like St Tropez prices to us, without the St Trop. setting) for such a casual meal, especially when compared with the higher but relatively modest charges for the haute cuisine food. To be fair, this Beach Club thing is still experimental and the staff were delightful, but there is work to do on menus and pricing.

18 February 2016

We both opted for smoked salmon bagels as the main part of our breakfast. These were really delicious and we guessed (correctly) that we would both return for these again before we leave.

This evening is Italian night in the main restaurant but you can mix and match with a la carte. So Daisy started with a mozzarella and pomodoro thingie, while I indulged in red snapper ceviche. Then I had a pork with yucca dish ( a sort of posh vigoron presumably) while Daisy had stingray with mash – she decided that stingray is not really her thing on the back of that experiment. We finished off our delightful bottles of wine from earlier evenings.

19 February 2016

This breakfast time we both opted for croissant french toast with cream cheese. The “with cream cheese” bit deceived me into thinking this might not be insanely sweet, but it was. Yummy though. The green machine smoothies made the breakfast feel that little bit less naughty.

This evening we thought we would try the shrimp ion the main restaurant. We both started with an excellent gazpacho soup, “almost as good as Anthea’s” we agreed. Daisy had her spicy shrimps with coconut rice, whereas I took mine as advertised with yucca chips. We shared a piece of grandma Pellas’ special rum cake. We both drank Muga Rose this evening; Daisy (the lush) had two glasses while I had a modest one.

20 February 2016

It is traditional in Nicaragua to eat Nacatamal with your family over the weekend, so Sunday morning had to be the day for me to try it at Mukul. Much richer and more yummy than the one we tried in Leon, but what a massive portion for breakfast! Daisy was having none of it and went English style for scrambled eggs and bacon that morning. Wimp.

That evening we returned to La Mesa, the haute cuisine restaurant. There we tried a smoked fishes platter as a starter to share, then I had a wonderful lobster tail dish not vastly different from Daisy’s wonderful lobster tail thingie. Daisy tried a lamb stuffed in cabbage dish, which was also very good. We shared an ice cream/sorbet again. We tried Kendall Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay to wash it down; there’ll be some of that left for tomorrow.

21 February 2016

Last breakfast and we both wanted to return to those yummy bagels. So we did.

We both wanted to eat light, as we were getting up so early the next day. So we decided to do without a starter and simply order mains with fries and a salad to share on the side. I tried the shrimp burger – an unusual idea that works well (or at least this particular recipe works well). Daisy tried a more conventional burger with bacon and cheese. (The shrimp burger also has cheese). We went for the shared ice cream/sorbet desert again – we have mixed and matched different flavours across the days, so as not to be samey. Daisy had a glass of tempranillo with her steak, allowing me one and a half of the two remaining glasses of Kendall Jackson.

Overall, for sure we ate well during our week at Mukul and the staff couldn’t have been nicer.

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