Jilly, Mandy, John, Janie & Me, in The Punch Room
Long in the planning, unfortunately Annalisa got her weeks mixed up, but the rest of us found our way to the appointed places at the appointed time.
John is keen on cocktail bars these days and was keen to try the Punch Room in the Edition Hotel, which is suitably close to our chosen restaurant, Pahli Hill Bandra Bhai. Ogblog fanatics might recall that John, Mandy, Janie and I went to Pahli Hill relatively recently…
…and so taken with it were we, that we all agreed it would be a suitable venue for this slightly larger gathering. Which it was.
But first the Punch Room, which had a really good early evening ambiance – good music but not too loud – other trendy people, but not too many and not too loud. Interesting cocktails list. Nice waiting staff.
Strangely, I realised a week or so ago that this weekend is the fortieth anniversary of Jilly’s visit to Keele in February 1984:
The waiter took a lot of pictures of us (see headline example). We realised that the gathering included two whites, a black and (in maiden name terms) a browning. I thought we should go for a sepia version of the group photo in recognition of this colour palette.
Then a five or six minute stroll through Fitzrovia to the restaurant, Pahli Hill . When you book, they say that you cannot dictate where you would like to sit, but I requested downstairs, where we had previously enjoyed the ambiance before and they e-mailed back to say that they would be able to comply with that request as ours was an early evening booking. John has been back there himself upstairs since our previous visit and concurs that upstairs has less atmosphere to his taste, so I’m especially glad I did that.
No pictures of Janie in the restaurant, sadly, as she took the following photos, while the rest of us focussed on eating and drinking.
As with our previous visit to Pahli Hill, by the time we’d finished with small plates and grills, we had no space for big plates, although we did find space for desserts.
It was a really lovely evening. Great food and drink, but most importantly very enjoyable company.
