Hibiscus, Mayfair

There are eight 2-michelin-starred restaurants in London and this is one of them. Sam is on a personal mission to eat at all of them and Hibiscus is one of the few to remain untried. Located just off Regent Street we were:

James
Linz
Pete
Sam
Vicki

This was a designated expensive month - the first in a long while. And Hibiscus certainly disappoint. Vicki, James and I arrived from a quick pitstop in a nearby pub to see Sam and Linz waiting in the front-of-house area for us. We were led to our table and Linz started a furious session of signing utility bills for Sam and James. Something to do with moving house and Linz being the most upstanding member of the community in our midst apparently. Vicki and I looked on blankly.

The room was a good size. Not too big, not too small. And the lighting and volume level was about right (although when we sat down we figured we were going to be at least triple the volume level of the next loudest table; things livened up though and by the end there was a good level of conversational hum).

There are basically three menus you can go for:

1. A la Carte (3 courses for £65)
2. Taste of Autumn (4 courses + a couple of palette cleansers for £70)
3. 7 course tasting menu (£85)

We went for the middle option and the friendly staff were only too pleased to substitute the fish dishes for Vicki and James. We ordered the food but not until we had been served and had polished off a number of cheesy balls. That description makes them sound a bit bog-standard but they were anything but. They were awesome. Warm and with just the right level of cheese. Quality stuff.

The first appetiser was a frothy pineapple and jelly shot. We were advised to sip a bit first and then down it in one like you would any other shot. There was quite a lot of it which made downing difficult. It was refreshing though.

The starter was an iced cauliflower veloute with warm rice and walnuts. An odd little dish which was a bit like a shallow soup and pretty much the only time in my life I've found cauliflower to be acceptable. And speaking of vegetables Vicki and Linz admitted to having recently visiting former Meal Club favourite Archipelago and to have compeletely ignored the entire point of the restaurant by ordering exotic vegetables. A debate ensued about how exotic a vegetable can possibly be. James was arguing the same point for fish but was quickly defeated by the suggestion of piranha.

The next course followed which was a confit of salmon with mucho beetroot, goat's cheese cream and a damson puree. This was pretty top drawer too and maintained the sense that Hibiscus was probably worth its 2-star reputation food-wise.

Wood pigeon quickly followed much to the amusement of our table because when sitting on the plate, it looked like...well....a fanny. Or as James described it a "slapped vag". It came accompanied by a dollop of peanut butter and some more dollops of what looked like poo but turned out to be a smoked whimberry puree.

What the fuck is a whimberry?

I should point out at this point that Sam, James and I had ordered the matching wines to accompany our meal. We'd had three glasses by this point (to add to the cocktail we'd had at the start of the meal). All of them were good but I can't say I could notice them complementing the dishes in the same was as I've done in the past at somewhere like Petrus. I'm no sommelier of course and the fact that I was trying to juggle these wines with a nursed mojito probably had something to with that.

Desert followed (I honestly can't remember what it was. The website says a dark chocolate tart but that doesn't ring a bell). Maybe because I was distracted by the fact that we didn't get a desert wine which meant we'd paid a cool £50 for 3 (three) glasses of wine. Fuck me that's an outrage.

Some chocolates and coffees finished the night off (which incidentally was a lot shorter than normal - we were in and out in about 2 hours).

Overall verdict? Good but not in the same league as somewhere like Petrus (on food and service) or Nobu (on style and atmosphere). For the price, I think there are other places that do better.

Stop Press: Sam asked the menu to be emailed to her and lo and behold it revealed that they'd blatantly fogotten to serve us our final desert wine. Sam replied with this fact and they phoned back to apologise and send through a free bottle.

They say that you can tell good customer service not just by how well they do the good things but also by how well they deal with the bad things. A phonecall gets them bonus points as it's more personal and shows confidence and maturity. But at the end of the day, there's NO WAY somewhere that merits 2-michelin star service should ever have forgotten something like that (not to mention 4 wines for £50 remains somewhat steep!).

Madsen, South Kensington

Bit of slackness on the organisation front this month. Firstly I forgot that it was me who was supposed to be organising. Then I thought I wouldn't have time to organise it. Then I thought I would have too much work to actually go. In the end, everything worked out well and we ended up at a scando restaurant pitched by Vicki and Linz called Madsen. We were:

Linz
Pete
Vicki

Becca was planning to come but got scuppered by work which meant that technically this doesn't count as an offical Meal Club....or does it? I'm proposing that under the current climate of reduced commitment to the Club, we allow "threes" to count from this Meal Club onwards. If you want to object then you need to comment on this blog, otherwise the motion shall be carried. Suck it!

So, onto the restaurant. It was pretty quiet - possibly because it's only been there 10 months and is perhaps not very well known. It's not even on Google Street View. The decor is modern, clean and...well....scando. There's lots of wooden furniture and all the staff were blonde. When I arrived Vicki was waiting and we quickly ordered a bottle of their finest, cheapest white wine (which I have to say was very decent for a house win). We spoke about househunting while mulling over whether to order the pigs' hearts. The menu helpfully has a little symbol to identify traditional scando dishes although this wasn't one of them which made me wonder why it's on the menu in the first place.

Linz arrived and we ordered starters while discussing whether Oscar is a dog's name or a baby's name. And what about Molly? Linz has strong opinions on the subject. Maybe she could get her two PAs to do some research on the subject. Vicki, on the other hand, was getting vexed about me saying she could pass for being jewish. I think it's her skin tone and slavic look. "Stop looking at me like I'm a jew" she ordered me at one point like I was Goebbels recincarnated.

All the starters were excellent. I had the breaded plaice with crispy capers, Linz had the asparagus with melba toast and Vicki had the salted ox tongue. Vicki, in particular, was thoroughly impressed by her tongue. A good start.

The mains soon followed. Vicki and I both went for the special which was danish meatballs with sidedishes of roast potatoes with bacon and onion and new potatoes with thyme. Very nice indeed. We were dubious at first at being presented with a mere four meatballs....but actually they filled us up quite easily. Linz had the haddock fishcakes. All of them were great. Perhaps it was just good to have something different to the norm but we were all in a good mood about this place. Perhaps it was the fact that our waitress looked like Su Pollard that cheered us up.

Vicki and Linz were curious about deep fried camembert being offered as a desert instead of a starter. Personally I didn't give a shit. We ended up having a Danish biscuit cake (me) and two "cold bowls" which is a buttermilk sauce with egg yolk and vanilla. Plenty of taste in that.

And the best bit of the night was still to come: The bill. I slipped Su Pollard my tastelondon discount card like some kind of low-rent secret agent and the bill came back at a cheapo cheapo £21 each including booze. Not half bad eh?

That's all for now. Vicki and Sam have got the next two months sewed up and the Fat Duck is being touted for November for those with expensive palates.

Dans le Noir, Clerkenwell

OK, I have to admit I didn't have high expectations of Dans le Noir. Pretty much every review I've read (or heard directly from people who've been) has been bad bad bad. So I've been trying to avoid going for a while but couldn't hold back the combined force of Sam, James and Linz any longer. We were:

Becca
James
Linz
Pete
Sam
Vicki
Will

We arrived about 20 minutes early because we had heard that they have a bar outside of the 'dark room' where we could have a drink. It turns out that this bar has, as James described it, the look and feel of an All Bar One; as long as that All Bar One had precisely one table. Luckily we bagged it and enjoyed a very poor whisky sour and a £7 glass of white wine for Becca. Will went for a beer instead of his usual tipple these days which is single malt. He takes it apparently. So not a great start and certainly not doing anything to convince me that my pre-held prejudices about this place were incorrect.

The only other furnishings of note in the bar area was a wall of varying sized lockers where we had to leave our bags, phones, watches and anything else that could potentially produce light or trip people up. And after several confusing attempts to order drinks from the french waiter (Becca asked: who's worse off - the French or the blind?" we were told it was time to go to the table.

Our waiter for the evening was a nice fellow called Gau. Like all the other waiters he's blind. He led us in a line (with hands on shoulders) up a narrow corridor and then into the dark room. And the room lived up to its name (a name which I've just made up for this blog). It was PITCH black. YOu couldn't see anything, not even your own hand in front of your face. Of course this gave James ample opportunity to start prodding people randomly and tugging at my ear. At one point Vicki asked him if he had his cock out but he maintained a denial on this issue.

We'd ordered our menus in advance (you get to choose meat, veg, fish or surprise but don't know exactly what you're going to get). So all Gau had to do was ask us which menu we'd ordered and he handed us the plates by feeling where we were. On the drink front we ordered a bottle of white and a bottle of red but once Gau had told us which was which, we were on our own and it was up to us to remember where each one was. I'd like to say we came up with a clever system but we didn't really.

It was actually rather exciting and fun. All our London cynicsm faded away into giggles at how weird it was to be in such darkness with your eyes open. Sam jabbed Will in the face trying to see how far away from her he was and at one point I drank Linz's white wine by mistake. Also Sam decided to tell Gau about the concept of Meal Club at which point James suggested that he read the blog. Doh!

But the crux was always going to be the food quality. It's not cheap (£38 for 3 courses + £22 for a bottle of wine) so the food needed to be bang on to avoid it being anything more than an overpriced gimmick. Will didn't think that it lived up to expectations (that's the veggo menu for you) but everyone else was pleasantly surprised I think. From my point of view, the food was great. Maybe it's because my expectations were so low in the first place. As I said you don't know what you're going to get exactly so it's a bit of a lottery - but I cleaned my plate on each course (or at least I think I did).

By the time we got round to deserts (chocolate brownie with pear and ice cream), we were the last table in the room for the first seating (which we confirmed by shouting out "is anyone else in here?"). Gau then led us back out into the bar area where we were shown what we actually did eat. A lot of the guesses were wrong and i was particularly poor which goes to show how much the brain can be confused by taste alone.

Meal Club Stats (as of June 2009)

Number of Meal Clubs = 34 (37 if you count the 3-man ones)
Average number of Meal Clubs attended = 17
Most attendees = 11 (Rootmaster, January 2008)
Number of expensive ones = 6
Number of Indian restaurants = 3
Number of Chinese restaurants = 2
Number of Hungarian restaurants = 1
Highest bill = £726.08 (The Capital, April 2008)
Number of December Meal Clubs = 0 (sorry Ger)
The one Pete missed = Mango Tree, March 2007
The number of times the word "shambles" has been mentioned = 15

Skylon, Royal Festival Hall

This month we went to Skylon which sits atop the Royal Festival Hall. Our resident South Bank guru Becca could get us a 20% discount so it was a no brainer – especially on a gorgeous sunny London evening as it was. After a couple of last minute bailouts we were:

Becca
Linz
Pete
Vicki

We met on the 5th floor bar of the RFH which, to my surprise (and mild disappointment), is not a special staff-only affair. Apparently any old hobbledy-hoy can totter up there whenever they want. Shocking. However I don’t think many Londoners know this fact because there were barely any people there and we had no trouble grabbing a little table. Looking over the edge of the balcony however, presented a different story: the bar and seating areas of the RFH terrace and restaurants below were crawling with people (aka suckers). Check it out:

Incredibly, Linz arrived half an hour early. I know you’re supposed to be sceptical about stuff you read on t’interwebs but it’s true, cross my heart! When we arrived we were given the once over by the strangely attired staff (grey tunics like the commanders on the Death Star) and led to our table in what can only be described as a funeral march. For some reason the woman led us to the table really, really slowly. How very odd. The room is a pretty decadent space with very high ceilings and a huge window across one wall looking out onto the river. When we arrived though, the view was blocked by the blinds which were down to prevent the room overheating. Apparently on the Southbank Centre daily complaints list the temperature at Sklyon crops up all the time. We were assured however that they’d be opened later in the evening (and when they were people whooped and clapped!).

We sat down and were immediately asked if we’d like some champagne to start our meal. One of those places eh? Heavy on the upsell. We declined. In fact, I’d say the staff were one of the key negatives of Skylon. Miserable bastards the lot of them. Not a single smile in the bunch. I did get the continual impression that they were looking down on us which is not good. The rest of the diners were all pretty upmarket I have to admit. Lots of jackets and grey hair. The kind of place someone like Jenny Agutter would visit.

Anyway, onto the food. The bread situation was a tad better than BBB but still not perfect as the butter was a little firm. But they did salt one pat of butter and kept refreshing the bread when we ran out so plus points there. They started by bringing us some amuse bouches to start things off (mushroom and cheese balls, salmon thingies and a tomato thingy – sorry, I don’t know how to describe them!).


The menu here is short. You have a choice between seven starters and seven mains. We didn’t go for deserts but from memory there were about 7 of those too. The food though was universally excellent. For starters I had a qual with rhubarb which was great. Becca and Vicki had a mushroom with some stuff in it; also nice. Linz meanwhile ordered crab for the first time ever. I was beginning to suspect that this was an imposter and that she’d been replaced by an evil early-arriving-seafood-eating automaton. But then she spat a bit out into her napkin and I relaxed.

For mains, Becca has a wild sea bass with some prawn tortellini and baby gem sauce. Yes folks – that’s lettuce sauce. Linz and Vicki has a rabbit ballotine with a herb risotto. I went for the halibut with squid and chorizo. All dishes did the job although when I got home Laura said she would have found them weird without any side dishes.

Later in the evening Becca was regaling us with stories of her computer programming skills and how back in Lincoln they used any excuse to have a street party (Princess Diana’s 21st birthday anyone?). I was laughing so hard at such a poor reason for a street party that I almost missed the fact that Jenny Agutter was sitting a few tables down from us.

The bill was a little steep even with the discount at about £40-45 each for 2 courses and a small amount of wine. Good food though, and a good venue. But for the future, maybe somewhere to go back to once you can get work to pay for it.

Beach Blanket Babylon, Shoreditch

I actually made some notes this time so this blog entry should be a tad more detailed than the last one. And no brain spasms this time either which is always a bonus. Becca suggested the venue for this month. We were:

Becca
Laura
Linz
Pete
Vicki

If the essence of Shoreditch put inside a home-made bomb, and said bomb exploded inside a Bethnal Green Road venue, Beach Blanket Babylon would be ther result. Upon entry, we were greeted by a very camp fella in a PVC white jacket (collar up naturally) with a tall, bleach-blono hairdo. He helped us through to our table at the back of a large room, decorated with a bunch of "random shit". Like I said, Shoreditch all over. There's a square bar in the lower area flanked by plenty of well-dressed trendies making me feel inadequate for rocking up in jeans, t-shirt and converse trainers. Although that was just my own perception to be fair. I didn't get the slightest impression that the people there (staff or punters) were as up their own arse as they appeared to be at first.


After a brief discussion about celebrity spots (Mark Owen from Becca,, Andi Peters (x2) from Laura and someone who looked a bit like Josh Hartnett from Vicki), we got down to business. Immediately they were on minus points thanks to the ever-difficult "bread and butter" provision. Seriously, how difficult can it be? They gave us a tray of bread but we had to ask for butter and when it came it wasn't particularly soft. So for the benefit of all you restauranteurs reading this (yeah right), this is how to do it:

Place enough bread for everyone on the table as soon as they're seated accompanied by plenty of softened, salted butter.

The wine we ordered was an excellent pinot grigio but the waiter commited the upsell faux pas of quickly pouring it all out before our starters had even arrived and then asking if we wanted more. Tut tut.

OK, that's the negatives out of the way. The rest of it all was all pretty positive. The service was, in general, fine. No complaints apart from the upsell nonsense. The venue, as mentioned, was somethign special in terms of decor. And the food was all very good. For starters we had scallops, crayfish tails, prosciutto with cannelloni beans and a spinach & goat's cheese strudel. All got the thumbs up. The mains were on par too with Becca trying to steal both my steak and Linz's sea bass before finally settling for her monkfish. Actually, one more negative was that my steak was far from being rare as I ordered it. It was medium at best. But I'm not going to mark them down for that because it's my own fault fro breaking my personal rule which is to never order steak in a restaurant unless it's a restaurant that specialises in red meat like Gaucho.

Deserts topped things off with a three butterscotch cheesecakes and a couple of warm brownies. Nothing spectaculr but pretty good.

Now for the best bit. We went here on a 50% off Toptable deal which meant we only paid £23 each. Total bargain. I may not eat anywhere again unless it's on a 50% off Toptable deal because it's such a nice surprise when you've forgotten about it.

Next month, we were thinking about Dans Le Noir but unless it's on a certain day then Laura and I may well be in Croatia. Potentially I'm going to miss only my second Meal Club. I'm sure James will insist I update the attendence record if I don't turn up.

ps. Linz stinks.

Salaam Namaste, Bloomsbury

Continuing a theme for this year, Meal Club this month was something of a hasty last-minute affair. Less than a week before the scheduled date a few suggestions were thrown out and the date was changed to the Friday (which surprisingly found quite a few of us social butterflies free). We were:

Becca
Laura
Mamps
Pete
Sam
Vicki
Will

A few of us met beforehand at a local pub staffed entirely by incompetents dressed like prostitutes. I was forced by Becca to down my pint lest Manpreet, who was waiting for us in the restaurant, should get angry at us. I took my pint with me and drank it on the way, student-style to be greeted by a secret text from Mamps saying that the indian waiters had been hassling her since she arrived.

Salaam Namaste is a self-proclaimed "new sensation in Indian dining". Check out their website which does well to slap a picture of a pissed-up Boris Johnson on the front page. Superficially it looks like a pretty standard Indian restaurant with perhaps a little more thought than usual put into the decor. The menu, to be fair is something special. The choice was huge and full of stuff that sounded great. Not your usual bhuna/korma/madras/vindaloo dishes either. Techically they do serve that but it barely registers with you when compared against the speciality regional dishes on offer.

Sam arrived a little late but that's forgiveable since she's managed to have a baby in between successive Meal Clubs but still attend them both. Good darts!

Ironically, one of the few things I can remember from the night (no note taking again from me!) was having a brain spasm where my memory went haywire. Maybe I've been watching too much Lost but I'm adamant there was some kind of time dilation thing going on. Seriously this is one of the weirdest things to happen to me and even as I write this I'm getting confused as to what I thought had happened vs what everyone else said had happened. I think this is correct:

After we'd finished the main course (mine being a meat dish served on a rectangular plate), I made some kind of comment about it which led everyone else to accuse me of being a mentaller because only the starters have been served. The problem is I was 100% certain that we'd had two courses by this point. The fact that the main courses then arrived meant I was clearly wrong but something weird was definitely going on in my brain.

I should point out that by this point I'd had two pints of beer (one near work, one near the restaurant) and while I'd been forced to drink both of them much more quickly than I normally would, I don't think this could have been the cause. Maybe I'd been abducted by aliens or something.

Anyway, back to the restaurant. I had ginger lamb chops which were great and that's pretty much all I can remember about the food. Sorry guys. Poor blogging I know. I'll take notes next time, promise!!

Also I have a vague memory of Mamps initiating more "what would you do for £1m" conversations.

by the way, until further notice, Meal Clubs are definitely on the last Thursday of every month.

Patterson's, Mayfair

Hello. This month's MealClub was quite hastily organised (by Vicki this time). We never really got into gear with the suggestions so went for something Linz had suggested a few weeks back. Patterson's is just off Regent Street and does the classic "modern european" bit of everything. We were:

James
Linz
Pete
Sam
Vicki

The restaurant is on one floor and nicely laid out with well spaced tables, white tablecloths, weird little mossy plants on the tables and paraffin candles. We entered (me, James and Vicki at first) and sat at our table for 4 to find ourselves bizarrely surrounded by several tables filled with some of London's fine oriental community. I had to remind James not to make any Krusty the Clown gags. When Sam phoned to say she could come after all we asked for a table for 5 and they accomodated us without any fuss with a table at the back. Brownie points were earned, although the table was next to another table with a bloody child on it. WTF? Luckily they'd gone by the time Linz turned up otherwise there might have been bloodshed.

Their brownie points were lost by taking ages to spot us and take our order, but when they did it was the manager who attended to us and was very good at trying to convince Sam that the lamb could be cooked well enough for a pregnant lady and still be tasty. She didn't buy it.

I should mention that we were here on a TopTable deal. 40% off if you have 3 courses (which we were always going to do, so it was something of a bargain!). It works out at £45 reduced to £27.

The menu is the kind of thing that looks dedigned to be deliberately pretentious. 9 out of 10 listed dishes had something unidentifiable on it....mache salad this, idiazabal cream that. Well, I guess Meal Club is all about trying new things and being adventurous so sod it. We dived in. (dove in?). Sam, help me out here.

For starters we had a duo of salmon and wild mushroom canneloni (both very good) and for mains we went for a mix of dover sole, sirloin beef and I had a "canon of lamb on braised auergine with a turnop filled with snails, pancetta and shallots, wild mushroom puree, split parsely jus and red pepper coulis". Complicated eh?

Deserts were also great. Special mention goes to the "chocolate sphere" which was a work of art (although according to James, the taste didn't live up to the presentation - which was about a million miles away from the presentation of the chocolate desert at Little Bay last month). Check it out:



So I can't remember anything else because I didn't make any notes but I can't really think of any major negatives about this place. Might be a bit pricey without the special offer of course but definitely a success.

Little Bay, Farringdon

Hello all! Throughout the month of February, the Farringdon branch of Little Bay shot to fame (in Metro and the London Lite) by allowing people to pay whatever they wanted for food and service. Piggy banks emptied, we ventured in. We were:

James
Laura
Linz
Pete
Sam
Vicki

The restaurant's in a bit of a transport black spot and so some of us struggled to get there. I had to walk from London Bridge, Vicki was stuck waiting 20 minutes for a bus and ended up getting the tube while Sam got a cab as she didn't fancy walking from Islington due to her big, pregnant clown feet.

Because of the highly unusual nature of the deal, we had to think carefully about our approach to the evening. Firstly, Laura had the great idea of checking the menus at the other branches to see in advance what the prices were. We'd been a couple of times before and it's actually a very cheap place for somewhere that's traditionally done pretty good food. Personally, I had a rough figure in my head for food and service and decided to work up or down from there based on actual experience.

The first three points of note were all negative. Laura reported that there was wee on the unisex toilet seats (minus 1 point), the waiter had a chronic case of Bill Oddie (minus 1 point in normal circumstances, minus 2 points every time he leaned over the table unleashing some weapons grade funk). And finally there was no butter with the bread on the table until we asked for some. Poor darts to start with but they were getting increasingly busy so you have to cut them some slack.

We ordered starters which came quickly. Sam and I had garlic mushrooms which were deemed to be "pretty good but nothing special". Vicki and James had the some kind of goat's cheese souffle which, again, was passable. Finally Linz had the soup which I shall describe in 3 words:

Worst. Soup. Ever.

Linz had eaten quite a lot of it and then I thought I heard her say something like "this is the worst soup I've ever had in a restaurant". An astonishing statement I'm sure you'll agree so I made her repeat it to make sure I hadn't misheard. She said it again. "This is possibly the worst soup I've ever had in a restaurant". Now Linz in no stranger to fine dining so this could have been an exaggeration but when we passed the bowl down for others to take a spoonful, it was confirmed that this thin, watery, fairy-liquid-tasting, unseasoned mess was indeed the worst soup in the history of the world.

Oh dear. Not a great start for Little Bay. We suspected that they may have taken their eye off the ball since the start of the month when all the journalists were in. We also felt that they had confused good service with very fast service. The speed or ordering and delivering plates was phenomenal but I don't think that's necessarily a good thing. It's actually a bit disconcerting and allows images of microwaves to sneak into your head.

The mains were decent enough but again, nothing great. All dishes which involved potatoes suffered from them being a little bit undercooked. Although I do have to say that my steak was cooked properly rare instead of "English-restaurant-rare" which was a plus. Deserts arrived soon after without spoons (which were then brought over and dumped on the table in a bunch instead of being handed out. Shocking).

Do I sound like a service snob? Who cares? Bad service is bad service and this was bad service. Linz's main course wasn't even placed between her knife and fork. It was just absent-mindedly put on the side of the table for James and Linz to decide between them who it belonged to. These are basic things which if you can't get right you're struggling.

What's weird is that I've been before and had very positive experiences. So why do this experiment to get people through the door if you're not going to do it right? It just means I'm now less likely to go there again when it's full price, which I might have done otherwise.

Deserts were shocking. Ok that's an over-reaction. Mine and Linz's deserts were shocking. A massive blob of chocolate angel delight substance slapped onto a plate. Linz kept repeating "I can't believe they haven't put it in a pot or something" in a confused near whimper. The pistachio creme brulees were pretty good and James and Sam lucked out with cheese and profiteroles respectively.

Sigh.

So, what did we pay? We all worked out what we wanted to pay for each course and then averaged it out. We thought service only deserved 5%. As per the rules, the wine and drinks were full price but we were happy to pay this as the house white was rather tasty. It ended up at £11 each for food + service plus another fiver for drinks.

If you're interested, this is how much each person decided to pay for each course.

Inamo, Wardour Street

Hello all. The first Meal Club of 2009 was somewhere that had been on the "potentials" list for a while now so we thought we'd give it a go. Inamo is, to be frank, a gimmick restaurant. The Japanese food it serves is nothing too out of the ordinary, but what sets it apart is the ordering system. In my opinion, any restaurant whose USP is centred around anything apart from the food is destinated for inevitable failure. But more on that later. We were:

Becca
James
Laura
Mamps
Vicki
Pete

When making the booking we were informed that there's be a £5 per person fee for cancellations within 24 hours (bad) and that we could only have the table for 2 hours (worse). They clearly haven't read about this campaign...but then again, since I spotted it I haven't heard about it since. When we arrived (Laura and I took up the mantle of Linz's absence by being late), they told us generously we could have the table for 2 and a half hours. Whoop-dee-do!

So the ordering system.... They do have waiting staff but their jobs are minimal. They show you to your table and bring you your food, but otherwise that's it. Everything is centred around your table which has a projecter above beaming down images. Each table has its own little mouse pad which you use to order your food and drink, change the table "wallpaper", access "chef-cam", keep an ongoing eye on your bill total and get beaten at battleships if you're Pete playing Laura.

It's certainly a fun way to entertain yourself during the meal. Because if you try to entertain yourself using the company of your friends you may struggle. The tables are way too far apart such that on our table of 6, we struggled to talk to the people at the other end. The atmosphere generally was quite weak - harsh lighting, not much "buzz". The restaurant itself looked like it wasn't designed for this purpose and that they'd shoved in tables wherever they could.

I've been a bit critical so far so it's worth mentioning that the food itself was very tasty. For starters we had seafood gyoza, prawns, beef in green oil, tofu, ribs and other stuff like edamame (which we decided tastes nice because of the salt and not the beans). All of them were pretty good to great. Can't complain about anything apart from portion size which was small.

Manpreet entertained the group in her usual fashion by asking us what we would do for cold, hard cash. In this instance it was about indecent proposals. According to James' notes on the night, Laura wouldn't sleep with her brother for anything but Becca would sleep with Will's dad for £7.23. We also talked about Derren Brown and doing impressions of Star Wars characters with your penis.

Mains were also good (lamb chops, veggie red curry, black cod, pork with chocolate sauce...) as were the deserts (particularly my weird black sticky rice with mango and citrus sorbet, although not so much Laura and Becca's weird green macaroon thingy)...but the problem was value for money. As great as it all was, I couldn't reconcile it with a bill well in excess of £200. No way muchacho. Not good enough. I suspect we were still paying for the overhead(s) projecters. Plus they charged 10% service sir! For what exactly? They do nothing that the good people at Nandos don't:

I'd go back if work was paying but not otherwise.

ps. Peggy doesn't eat bogies.

End of year report

Google docs doesn't seem to like graphs but this gives you all the attendence numbers anyway. A ranking is at the bottom.

(note, three restaurants in 2007 have been excluded for having too few attendees on the night)

Go here

View from Paris

Have recently been on a short trip to Paris with Laura and feel the dining there was worthy of the second in an infrequent series of views from abroad.

Leaving aside from the brasseries and cafes, I'm going to concentrate on our evening meals.

Thursday night - Le Bosquet
A smart little restaurant near our hotel in the 7th Arrondissement. It was quiet when we arrived but filled up a little more later (including an odd table near us full of americans and indians). We both had an awesome duck filet with dauphinoise potatoes. One of the best bits of duck I've had - it was cooked perfectly with just the right level of crispy bits. We even ate the salad. For desert Laura had a chocolate fondant and I had some ice-cream (including pistachio which actually tasted like pistachio).

Friday night - Le Relais de Venise
A London branch has opened in recent months and there's one in Barcelona too. The concept is simple. Forget about this "menu" bollocks. The only questions they ask are, "What would you like to drink?" and "How do you want your steak cooked?". You can't book but it's clearly a popular place we had to queue outside in the freezing cold for 20 minutes before getting in. Inside it's small, close, busy, loud, bustling, brilliant. The waitresses (didn't see any waiters) are all dressed in black uniform with the matriarch and table-giver was definitely Edith Piaf. They bring you a plate of bread, a green salad with walnuts and then two plates of steak and fries covered with their special sauce. Absolute quality. Even the house wine was good. I'll definitely be checking out the London one soon so I can act snobby by saying "The Parisian original is far better you know".

Saturday night - the amusingly named Vagenende
We spotted this place during the day while wandering around St. Germain. Inside it looks like the kind of place you'd see in a 1940s French film. Dark wood panelling, mirrors and dimmed soft lighting. We were squeezed in quickly even though it was very busy. It took a while to get our drinks but I never got the impression that we'd been forgotten. We ordered soft drinks and wine but they didn't bring the wine out until our main courses were ready and soft drinks finished. I had a big old portion of beef bourguignon and fresh pasts (interesting) while Lau had chicken breast with mashed potatoes. Both great.

Question...

If you were one of a few survivors to some kind of global catastrophe, what would you do first and who would you try to seek out? hmm?

Koba, Rathbone Street

Vaginismus. That was the theme of the night. Look it up like we had to.

The evening began, as is now traditional, with pre-dinner drinks in the delightful Bricklayer's Arms noff Rathbone Place but we were soon off to the restaurant. Koba is a Korean BBQ restaurant - one of these places with a burner in the centre of the table on which the food is cooked in front of you. We were:

James
Laura
Linz
Pete
Vicki

We chose this restaurant on a vote. It was between Koba and Inamo and Manpreet weighed in with the deciding vote. And then had to bail because Nasty Nick was demanding a rewrite. Or something.

For starters we went for a mix and match exercise with plenty of sharing afoot. Korean oancakes, beef, king prawns and chicken. So nothing spectacularly interesting but it was all perfectly pleasant. Linz turned up about half way through and was left with a couple of chicken balls. Despite a grand boast that she "can use chopsticks" she promptly spilled a ball all over the table. If I was an internet teen punk I would, at this point, say something like "Most Epic Fail Evar".

By the way, when we asked the waiter what "Korean Style" was his helpful reply was "with vegetables". If that's true then Andy, Will and Becca eat Korean style pretty much every night.

Onto the main course. Again, it was a good thing we opted to order a mix of stuff and then share because while the courses all came out together, they were, of course, raw. The waiter proceeded to cook each dish, one at a time, on the BBQ thingamybob in the centre of our table. So if you're going, don't order unles you plan to share. Especially if you order the pork belly like Vicki did - severely fatty. Like the fattiest bacon this side of America. Apart from pork belly we had a few beef dishes (some better than others) and a wicked chicken dish to finish the meal off. Again, it's nowt special but value for money is decent and we were entertained by a group of stereotypical far east businessmen laughing it up on the table behind us. The evening was finished in style as for the first time ever James' birthday scam worked. Although it doesn't really count because it was virtually Linz's birthday. Happy birthday Linz! As a gift I will drop my breach of copyright lawsuit against Lunchclub. The restaurant brought out a little cake for Linz (tea flavoured!!) and gave her a gift of a "multitool" which could act as a letter opener, hair pin or bookmark. It had a good weight to it I noted.

Meal Club Change

The next Meal Club will be on Tuesday Nov 25th.

Then there'll probably some kind of Xmas get together before MC returns for its 4th year in 2009 and will switch to Thursday nights.

The Lane, Brick Lane

How do?

This month we went to The Lane which is a relatively new Caribbean restaurant at the bottom (scummy) end of Brick Lane. We were:

Becca
James
Linz
Pete
Sam
Will

We began in the adjacent attached bar (which, in turn, is attached to a hotel). I believe the general opinion was that it had less atmosphere than a funeral. Not to worry though, this wasn’t the main event. The restaurant itself was well laid out but virtually empty. It’s a space large enough to have two rooms, plus alcoves and a baby grand piano (unattended) in the corner. We were 1 of 2 tables when we arrived. By the time we left I think there were maybe 3 or 4 tables occupied so the atmosphere was only better than the bar beforehand thanks to our sparkling conversation and wit.

The deal was £21 for 2 courses of £38 for 3 courses. I’m still not sure whether that’s a good deal or not. Actually the more I think about it, the more expensive that seems. It was nice food though. We began with freebie amuse bouches – a cup of kidney bean soup which was quite lovely.

A new party arrived at the next table – they had a couple of kids with them and Sam, of all people, was the first to note this as a black mark against the restaurant (no racism intended). Nothing that they can do about it of course but still – kids in restaurants are rubbish.

After being diverted by my failure to properly tell the Jamaica/My Wife gag, the food came and was generally good stuff. Very ornate dishes (think Delboy’s drinks). Our mains included sea bass, jerk chicken and (naturally) curried goat.

I’m going to be honest now. The notes I wrote on the night have faded into a blur against the blue envelope I was writing them on – so I can’t really read them. And can’t remember stuff either (that’s why I write notes). So in bullet point form, here’s some other stuff:

• No one's seen the Victoria Line Funky Tramp Woman for a while
• Eggheads is indeed a quiz show where punters take on quiz champions
• Some Indian guy knocked on the restaurant window and waved at me. No idea who he was.
• Becca once travelled for several hours on business only to be told the man she was due to see had had a heart attack and was in hospital. She was pissed off with him.

Table Turning

I agree with this

The Clerkenwell, in Clerkenwell (naturally)

Hello. This month we took advantage of another 50% discount offer. While such an offer turned Pho from cheap into supercheap, here it turned expensive into acceptable. In other words, if you can get the offer then go for it; if not then think twice. Anyway, we were:

James
Linz
Pete
Sam
Vicki

The evening started in farciacl circumstances as our Harry Hill lookey-likey maitre'd sat us at the wrong table and then had to shift us. But this guy was no slouch. He turned out to be something of a sly horse by expertly and instantly telling us about the type of cheese that was in the tart. Well done sir!

We had 3 courses and there were a couple of amuse bouches thrown in for fun - the first of which was a leek and potato shot. Basically warm soup in a shot glass with some bacon shavings on the top. It was actually very nice but my and Sam's enjoyment of it was tempered by insisting the waiter had said "liquid potato" instead of "leek and potato". We were wrong allowing James to smugly lord it over us for a good 30 seconds.

The service was polite and surprisingly quick. The starters came not long after we'd ordered (my rare tuna nicoise was so excellent that fish-dodger James tried a bit and didn't convulse as he normally might have done). Can't remember what everyone else had. Sorry. In my defense, James was writing notes this time. Poor note taking Hallam. Poor note taking. He was clearly too busy fooling us all into somehow agreeing that if we won the £100m Euromillions jackpot we'd buy him a massive house in Islington.

The main courses were also good. James and I shared a cote de boeuf (posh term for "massive steak"). I think someone else might have had some kind of fish. And Sam may have had the pork belly (or at least had asked earlier on which part of the pig Pork Belly comes from). Deserts were an incredibly rish chocolate fondant and some other stuff that, once again, I can't remember. All good though.

Some other stuff from the evening:

- From October onwards, MealClub moves to the last TUESDAY of the month until Sam finishes her course. Technically the rules are sacred and must not be changed but as a founder member and "top 3" attendee, anyone who disagrees can get jacked.

- Interesting story from Linz alert!....20% of her office does not like massages

- Is it acceptable to purchase and wear a new outfit in preparation for being proposed to?

- James told another stinker of a story. That's 2 this year Hallam. Poor darts.

- Which is the only weekday that is an anagram of another single word? And what is that word?

That's it then. We ended up paying between £22 and £34 depending on how much booze we had but even at that top end, that's a bargain. Until the next time, food fans!

Pho, Great Titchfield Street

Hello meal fans! This month's Meal Club was always planned to be a dirt cheap one - partially because the Fat Duck next month is going to wipe us out, but also because we haven't done a "cheap and cheerful" in a while. We opted for Pho, a vietnamese restaurant which has a couple of branches in London. We were:

Becca
Laura
Linz
Pete
Vicki
Will

Sam and James incidentally are on holiday (which, by tradition, is Will and Becca's cue to rock up).

We had a booth/alcove downstairs (which was empty when we arrived but quickly became as noisy and busy as the upstairs). The wooden benches were the kind of unforgiving furniture that tend to give you piles but no matter - we quickly ordered a set of drinks from the very efficient waiter. I say waiter but we suspected he had some kind of stake in the business as he wasn't dressed in waiter uniform and was unusually good. The drinks sparked off a conversation between Will and Becca in which the word "juicer" was used approximately 30 times. Luckily we were rescued by Linz who regaled us with her Tales of India. These included:

- A dead body
- A little girl pissing her pants in the street
- A guy with his brains smashed out all over the road
- A guy brushing his teeth in shit and sewage from the Ganges
- A dead baby with an arm missing

Basically Linz's summary is that everything there was basically shit. Fucking racist.

Anyway, I'd forgotten that we'd booked this place via the ever-reliable TopTable and it had a 50% off food offer attached to it, which meant we could push the boat out a bit. However, the place is already great value for money (most expensive main course = £8.95) that the deal made everything dirt cheap anyway. Becca and Linz had a massive crepe for starters while Vicki went for spring rolls. I discouraged Laura from getting the same as me (pork and lemongrass meatballs) so we could share and swap different dishes. Unfortunately I forgot this deal and wolfed down mine while Laura was stuck with a disappointing set of chicken rolls. Oops. Sorry!

The main courses are all part of the "theme" of pho - a vietnamese dish of noodles, broth and meat. I think we all went for this apart from Linz but they were all great really. Will may disagree as he wasn't expecting it to be in the form of a soup. Read the menu Head! The dishes came with a platter of herbs, limes, chopped red chilli and beansprouts for you to garnish your pho however you want to. Vicki asked what the big brown things were on the platter. They were spoons.

So all a bit Wagamama I guess but we all agreed it was better. More mushrooms in the veggie one apparently. Plus bigger bowls and tastier stock (which takes 12 hours to make no less!).

We didn't bother with the limited dessert selection and went straight to the fun bit: The bill! Tenner each for 2 courses and drinks can't be bad. In fact, it may be a Meal Club record. Get in!

Next month is a double header. A cheapish one on the normal date and The Fat Duck a few days earlier.

Petrus voted London's best

Article here and the MC review here

10 out of 10 for the Fat Duck

Bring on September!

Shocking News!

Neither Linz nor Vicki have ever visited YouTube. So presumably neither of them have ever seen this:

The Landau, Langham Hotel

After the weekend at Bectival it was something of a rush to book this month's MealClub...as it turned out, we went for the first offer we saw on TopTable. £28 for 3 courses (set menu) and a glass of champagne at The Landau. We were:

James
Linz
Pete
Vicki
Ger (not really)

Vicki, James and I met in the bar beforehand where James regaled us with a tale of a woman he'd shared a lift with who had hairy boobs but was wearing a low cut top. Good bar snacks. Regularly topped up spicy nuts and some dried salted bean thingys (although precisely 2.5 nuts were deemed to be "bad nuts"). Good attentive service which was to become a theme for the night.

We moved into the restaurant where Linz joined us. The space is excellent. Lots of sweeping curves, high ceilings, good level of lighting, not too many tables and little alcove tables. The aircon was a bit high but we soon forgot about that.

They opened up by immediately pouring our free glass of champage. It wasn't the cheap stuff either. I think it's actually quite good that they know immediately who the TopTable cheaops are because it avoids the embarrassment of having to say "you do know we're on the deal don't you?". They obviously had our number right from the start. We ordered tapwater and Linz refused the champagne before being informed that it was free. Nice.

Speaking of Linz, it seems she's been standing idly and accepting an outrageous infringement of copyright. Her colleagues have launched "LunchClub" which takes place on the last Thursday of evey month. Expect to hear from my solicitor soon.

Back to the food and drink. They waited until we'd finished the champagne before pouring our chosen wine (true to form we went for the cheapest red on the menu. £28. Quality wasn't great). The bread and butter was offered. Good butter presentation with separate malson sea salt to add if you wanted. Sam would have loved that shit.

The food was great. In terms quality of food vs TopTable value for money this was right up there with Villandry. But the environment and faultless service actually pushes it ahead I reckon. This place was up there. Three of us had an asparagus, duck parcel and poached egg starter. Execellent stuff. Linz went for a lightly curried cauliflower soup to get her in the mood for her impending trip to India. She claimed she "won" the starters but she blatantly didn't.

The plates were whipped away with great efficiency and the mains arrived in good time. Again, Vicki, James and I went for the same dish. A lamb thingy. I embarrassed myself by asking for it rare only to be told that it was a ragu. The waiter then jokingly asked James if he wanted his rare too. James fell for it, the loser! (In actual fact it came as casserole-sized chunks of nicely cooked lamb over a potato base with vegetables and sauce....that's not what I know as 'ragu'). Linz went for an atlantic cod dish. All of it was good stuff (although the sauce for the lamb was a little salty). Deserts was good too. Very rich but not too filling. Petits fours finished the evening off.

So that's it. A really good place to go on the TopTable deal. It would be very expensive without that (my cocktail beforehand was £16.50).

In August we're aiming for £30 a head. And in September there will be not one but TWO MealClubs. Last Wednesday of the month as normal will be a cheap £20 a head place - but a few days before that a few of us are venturing away from London to the famous Fat Duck. Onwards!

Meal Club Extra! - Hush, Lancashire Court

Laura received an email from TopTable offering her 1400 points for 1 booking. That's a free meal right there! We chose Hush. So a quick review:

• Outside table on a sunny evening. Good.
  
• 50% off food deal. Very good.
• Service. Atrocious.
• Main course. Decent.
• Deserts. Good.
  

Morgan M, Highbury/Holloway

Morgan M is an upmarket French restaurant in a downmarket area. It's to be found at the very northern end of Liverpool Road so well away from Angel and Highbury until you're nearly half way up Holloway Road (ie. in the midst of pound shops and kebab outlets). We were:

Linz
Sam
Pete
Vicki

I arrived first at about 7pm even though the table had been booked for 7.30. They graciuosly allowed me to be seated early, as well they should because apart from one couple in the corner the place was stone cold empty. Vicki arrived about 10 minutes later and we found ourselves whispering our conversation about Heroes Season 2 lest the surly French waiters tut at our C2DE conversation topic.

The restaurant is run by chef patron Morgan Meunier (hence the name you see?). He is reported to be one the best French chefs around. You may not have heard of him because he doesn't do much TV. I hadn't heard about him either but he did come over to the tables at the end of the evening to ask what we thought and what, in particular, we'd enjoyed.

Enough about him, onto the restaurant....: their first error was a failure to provide any bread, even though we'd been sitting there for about 40 minutes. It's not as if they thought we were scumbag wasters - we'd already ordered some of their pricey wine! There were other basic errors throughout the night (notably the early wine grab and the early plate removal) but the food, to be fair, was mostly very good.

£36 for 3 courses is not half bad for a restaurant of this quality. Plus a couple of amuse bouches added into the mix actually made a pretty good value for money evening (leaving out the wine of course).

We started with a beetroot and roquefort dish served in "nice bowls", followed by our starters. Vicki was initially planning on going for a un-PC dowble header by choosing fois gras followed by veal. She eventually bottled it and we both went for the snail ravioli while Linz went for the tuna. Both good. Sam's broad bean starter wasn't so great and she left most of it (a fact she gleefully revealed to Morgan himself later in the evening). For mains we had pigeon, veal and sea bass and there were no complaints there but it certainly wasn't as good as something you'd get in somewhere truly extravagent.

A second amuse bouche (can't remember - sorry!) was followed by deserts. My rhubarb tarte was excellent and Vicki's chocolate fondant was very rich. Sam wanted the cheese but that needed a £7.50 supplement on the 3-course deal. True to form Sam was onto them asking why it was so much. They didn't have a good answer and were (perhaps deliberately) stingy with her accompanying bread and coulis.

Ho hum. That's all for now. We wandered back to our respective tube stations (having missed the last Victoria Line train - thanks a lot TfL!) debating the merits of Morgan M. Was it worth it? £36 is a good deal no doubt. Service was poor though and location is a hassle so unless you're already in the area I wouldn't be rushing back.

Sitaaray, Covent Garden

Hello there!

This month’s Meal Club restaurant has been on the list for a while and was an early choice for the big birthday bash in early March. Thankfully Sitaaray’s TopTable offer seems to be a permanent fixture so we obviously went for it. We were:

James
Laura (guest!)
Linz
Pete
Sam
Vicki

We met beforehand and the burlesque themed Cellar Door bar in Aldwych which is still relatively new. Very decadent and plush with a happy-hour cocktail menu to boot. Decent quality too. Laura’s vodka, lime and lemonade avoided the typical bar error of overloading it with cheapo lime cordial. James, meanwhile, was busying himself sipping his usual whiskey sour while absent-mindedly flicking peanuts into Vicki’s open handbag. His night took a turn for the worse when he regaled me and Laura with a story of such poor quality I swear I could literally smell a bit of poo. This may have been the remnants of the bar’s former life as a toilet, but given that he was telling us the story as part of a wider “I told this story before and no one liked it” anecdote, we felt justified in shouting him down. Poor work James. Must do better next time.

Anyway, on to the restaurant. Usually the phrase “Indian restaurant in Covent Garden” conjures imagery of bog standard slop with greasy poppadums etc… Not this place. It’s a cracking little place with plenty of character. It has an overall Bollywood theme with film excerpts (the songs obviously) being played on numerous flatscreens while photos of Bollywood stars look on from the walls. Our little booth area was blessed with the finest array of moustaches this side of Bangalore. Sam fancied quite a few of them worryingly. One of them was “built like a shit brickhouse”.

I’ve been asked to mention the nice table design. It was nice. There.

The deal was £15 for unlimited kebabs and curries. They brought about 5 or 6 courses in all (mostly kebabs, one broccoli dish – WTF??). Chicken, lamb and fish (for the ‘pescatarians’) were all very good. I didn’t think they were that spicy but then I am extremely hard. The dahl tasted like oxtail soup. There’s not really much else to say about the food other than it was good quality and superb value for money when you think about it. After the curry we were asked if we wanted any more dishes but we were stuffed.

We had a quick chat about France and which games we were going to bring. Sam will “Fucking slap a chow” if people don’t play games and take it seriously. I’ve played scrabble with her before. I know from experience that the girl likes the games and the girl likes to win dammit! I reckon I could take her down on trivial pursuit though. We also voted Laura into Meal Club! (this despite James' protestations that it would be funnier if we all abstained on the vote).

And that’s about it. Really good place, strong recommendation. It worked about about £25 each including wine.

The Capital, Knightsbridge

What-ho! Time for an expensive blow out - the first in quite a while in fact. The Capital is a hotel restaurant behind Harrods in fancy Knightsbridge. We were:

James
Linz
Pete
Sam
Vicki

To be honest I can't remember a great deal about the evening which in entirely due to a few pre-dinner drinks combined with the sommelier wines served alongside each course of the taster menu. Luckily James kept some comprehensive and legible notes from the evening to act as prompts.

I arrived about half an hour before we were due to eat and met Sam at the bar (which I was only allowed into after I'd told them the name the dinner reservation was booked under). Sam was enjoying a glass of champage (£12) and some bar nibbles (olives, boozy cherries, some nuts and stuff). I ordered a bloody mary (£11) which was very good but not necessarily £11 worth. I guess you're paying for the service and environment too. The others soon joined, got some drinks to whack the bill up past the fifty quid mark before we'd even started eating. This was a sign of things to come as I believe The Capital has now taken the all time record for expensive food. More on that later.

So down to business. As usual with these places, we went for the taster menu. (We're not knowledgeable enough to be able to choose a la carte). Including everything from amuse bouches to petits fours there were 10 courses in all. James, Linz and Vicki were true to form in avoiding fishy stuff but these places have no problem in coming up with excellent substitution dishes. I'm not going to go into the details of each one but highlights were the john dory with calamari, lamb, rhubarb crumble, lychee jelly with white chocolate, fois gras (which I don't normally like but it worked well with a pineappale and passion fruit foamy type thing).

Quality wise it was very good of course but I wouldn't say it was any better or more exciting that the meals we'd had at nobu or petrus. Three of us had the matching wines (which were really good) and the bill came to a wallet-busting, faint-inducing £726.08. It's enough to make those of us of an Indian persuasion hang our heads in shame for being so extravagant. Oh well, fuck it.

I'm reading through the notes James has made but I can't really remember what they're all about so maybe it'll be better to leave it to your own imaginations:

- Pete generally can't be bothered
- "Show me your clap" and "Smell my ice cubes"
- Pete is a twat for not bringing his diary to the table
- Lunch plans that blatantly never happen
- Is Sam deaf?
- Sport in France
- Pete stitched up en voiture
- Vicki enjoys the "pumped up" men she does yoga with
- Pete + Sauna + Stinky Cheese = Trouble
- Is James gay?
- Vicki snogged a fit bloke who ate stinky cheese
- Inappropriate massages (labia touching)
- Are expensive sunglasses every permissable? (Sam no; Vicki & Linz yes)
- Maximum acceptable price for a lemoade sparkle (paying £2.50 makes you a mug)
- Smell venn diagrams

Next month is the postponed Sitaaray while the Fat Duck is also being lined up for a visit later this year.

Bincho, Oxo Tower

This month's meal club snuck up on us somewhat. We got to a few days before and hadn't really thought about where to go. The experience of 50% off at Villandry last month prompted some half-hearted browsing on toptable but nothing really stood out as being in the spirit of adventure. Luckily Linz came up trumps with the suggestion of Bincho - a Japanese BBQ tapas type place. We were:

James
Linz
Mamps
Pete
Vicki

Housed on the second floor of the Oxo Tower, the views of the river and St.Paul's are obviously great but the key attraction (for James at least) was that Bincho sounds a bit like" Benchod". Surprisingly, the restaurant was very empty. It's a pretty large place with seating for probably about 100 people but we were1 of maybe 4 tables in the whole place. The staff spent a lot of time twiddling their thumbs and were very willing to string out a conversation with us about the menu. When the waitress was explaining the menu to us (2 skewers per order, "order 6") we all started off paying attention but slowly realised that it was getting more and more baffling by the second. Gradually and one by one, we abandoned the lesson leaving Vicki to look attentive (although she readily admitted not having a clue what the waitress was talking about either).

To start we had edamame and some friend chicken in breadcrumbs - both of which were mucho tasty although they did come with some bizarro cabbage type thing on the side. Conversation turned to the impending visit to Warwick and how I was very unbothered by it all. I'm glad to say that I was right. It was a shambles of Bistro1 proportions. Additionally a conversation about weddings quickly turned to whether or not it's acceptable to have a "no kids" rule and then this, in turn, degenerated into a rant about whether or not it's acceptable to beat your kids. We're getting very Daily Mail in our old age.

Choosing our main course was something of a trial. James' now familiar "birthday scam" failed to pay dividends again so were stumped for 4 skewers each plus some rice (which was layered with chicken and mushrooms- it was great but a refilled bowl they brought out later was way too salty - even for James who'd been eating the rock salt out of its pot earlier). We eventually shared and swapped a lot of the skewers but between us we had chicken, lamb, eel, tuna, quail egg & bacon, aubergine,sea bream, tiger prawn and others. It's all cooked on this special coal called bincho (some of which I pilfered on the way out for no reason whatsoever) which gives it an excellent smoky flavour. It was all really nice and pretty reasonably priced too (£25-30 including wine) - even Linz who's been hit hard by the credit crunch (big fat blackberry with a crack down the middle of it plus the drinking of tap water!!). We also had a conversation about how Manpreet once ended up nearly being one of Grissom's investigations on CSi.

That's pretty much it. A decent place, worth going to if you haven't been before but probably not one to necessarily put on your favourites list. Next month is an expensive one and then in May we're going to to the postponed sitaary.

Villandry, Great Portland Street

Just as Sam and James had predicted and hoped for, February's MealClub almost didn't happen. Originally we had a booked a table at a new scandanavian restaurant near Angel called "Upper Glas". With a 50% off TopTable offer in the mixer, we were clearly onto a winner - until the restaurant phoned me up the Friday before to say that "problems with the bank" had forced them to close down. Such is the limited lifespan of restaurants in London.

With the suspicion that James was working some sort of voodoo scam on us, we pressed ahead with a hastily arranged alternative, unwilling to be defeated by the black arts. Villandry came to the rescue. We were:

Becca
Dom
Mamps
Pete
Vicki
Will

Take that Sam and James!! And in case you think this entire blog entry is an elaborate bluff, then take this too:















(Note Dom's reticence/politeness/wussiness)

Villandry is a deli store-bar-restaurant specialising in all things european and all things quality. It's a bit out of the way but there's a cracking pub nearby called the Crown and Sceptre which Vicki and I met in beforehand. Everyone else met in the Villandry bar at about 7.45 which was buzzing. The restaurant itself is housed at the back of the foodstore so you have to walk through it to get there. On the way out it was discussed how easy it would be to pilfer something like a posh easter egg or a 90p bag of hand-fried potato chips. Obviously being the upstanding pillars of the community we are, this was only mentioned and not acted upon.

The food was good. Not spectacular I wouldn't say but still very good. The artichokes Mamps, Becca and Will had for starters were massive and got Becca talking about "how much cheaper it is in France to buy these things". We're so middle class!

Or at least we are when we're not discussing TV Burp, some guy called Dominic Dosanjh, Mamps' sister getting hitched in vegas and tramps called "The bear woman".

Will and Dom Update: This month, Will had got over his previous disinterest in Dom's conversation topics. In fact they were so deep in discussion that when Manpreet asked Dom what was in a little silver bowl in front of him, he turned and gruffly said "Paste!" before turning back to Will.

Anyway, back to the food. A couple of coups and crudites completed the starters and we were onto the mains. I had steak tartare for the first time which pretty much amounts to raw beef plus a raw egg on top. My initial excitement about being asked whether I'd like it prepared "spicy" (which is always a good question to ask I find) was dampened when it arrived at the table sans egg. Nevertheless it was pretty good. Not weird at all. Dom had muscles, Will had macarone cheese, Becca and Mamps had some excellent fish while Vicki probably "won" this round with some wicked looking lamb filets. We had deserts too. And because the TopTable deal here was 50% off, we were pleasantly surprised to find that we'd saved £80 off the bill and it only ended up being £23 each including drinks. Bargain!

That's it. Can't be arsed writing more. TV Burp is about to start.

ps. Manpreet is on Wikipedia! Next stop: IMDB!

Britain's legendary customer service levels in action

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The First Amendment

Rule 5.1 - Restaurants for the month cannot be vetoed if you didn't attend the previous month.

RootMaster, Brick Lane

After a considerable absence we are Back Back Back!!

January saw MealClub enter its third year. From humble beginnings we've grown into something that's slightly less humble and you can't say fairer than that.

Not only was this the first one of the year but the last Wednesday of the month just happening to fall on Sam's birthday. Ever the trooper she insisted we go ahead (mainly to maximise the amount of presents she'd get I suspect). James suggested the venue - RootMaster. More of that later.

We began in Loungelover, beloved of trendies and people who don't mind spending a ludicrous amount on cocktails. At this stage we were:

Becca
James
Sam
Pete
Vicki

I can't remember the names of all the drinks we had but they were mostly great. Becca's first drink was a mint julep which I associate with southern gentlemen in white linen suits, mopping their brows as they lazily while away the evenig hours on their porchway accompanied by the soothing sound of crickets. Becca doesn't really fall into that category so, true enough, she didn't really like it. Too much bourbon. The camp waiter was helpful and understanding in suggesting alternatives - although he wasn't so helpful when James and I were giving him none-too-subtle hints that Sam needs to choose a BIRTHDAY drink. Looking back, maybe he was cleverer than we gave him credit for. Touché , camp waiter. Touché.

The only other thing to say about the cocktails was that I somehow mnaged to get the girliest looking drinks on each occasion. Nice.

Question: How many people currently have some form of MRSA or CDif?

So onto the restaurant. MealClub, as I'm sure you know, is all about trying new things and RootMaster is certainly that. As the name might indicate, it's actually an old Routemaster bus parked up in a square behind Brick Lane. The lower deck is taken up by the kitchen and the upper by the tables, so really you can only get about 15-20 people in per night. Already sitting at our table were:

Dom
Linz
Manpreet
Will

The other 'gimmick' about this place it's entirely vegan. And I do mean entirely. In fact when I snuck downstairs to ask the staff to bring out a birthday cake we'd bought at desert time they flatly refused.

Pete: We've got a birthday girl upstairs so when desert comes around can you...
Hippy: No
Pete: Um....yeah it's her birthday...
Hippy: Sorry. Is it vegan?
Pete: I don't know....how do I know?
Hippy: Well it's in an M&S carrier bag so almost certainly no
Pete: Um....ok (sheepishly makes way back upstairs)

This odd insistence of the rules made James and I later debate whether they would allow a new mother to breastfeed.

A couple of other bits of weirdness before we get onto the food:

1. No toilet. This was obviously going to be the case had we thought about it in advance but it still came as something of a surprise....if you need to go, you have to run across the square to the Big Chill bar on the other side. I thought it was illegal to have a restaurant and not have a toilet....

2. No tap water. They're not hooked up to the mains so bottled water only. Again I thought this was illegal. Plus how do they do the washing up? Do they just throw the plates in the bin and buy new ones every time. Not very green fo a hippy establishment.

Anyway, it wasn't long before we were joined by:

Andy
Ger

Full house baby! Full house!! (even though Andy mentioned that he needed to sneak off later to go to Trannyshack).

The food was (begrudgingly and against all my better judgement) pretty good. I wasn't overly enthused by my £12 plate of broccoli (pronounced 'brockley') but everyone seemed to love their grub. From Manpreet's vegan cola to the big fat flourescant green olives, stuffed mushrooms, vegetable tempura and other veggo stuff, it was enough for Sam to boldly claim that as MealClub's go, this place was "up there"...Again, birthday presents might have played a role here.

Lots of conversation topics so rather than be clever and weave them into the body of this narrative, I'll be lazy and list them bullet point style:

- Will and Becca struggling to choose from so many menu options
- Pete not liking the hippy woman but Becca saying if they were in thr 6th form, they would be friends with each other
- Manpreet refusing to weave planted words into the Eastenders scripts
- A reprise of the "Sam getting punched in the face in the theatre" story
- Will would rather read the London Lite than talk to Dom
- Will getting all worked up about candles after "Princess Ferguson's bathroom burned down"
- Pete being quietly grilled
- The waiter doing an impression of Sam with a shrill call of "Teryaki Stir Fry!!"
- The continued failure of Camera Club to get off the ground

So that's it really. We had a bit of a chat with the male-hippy at the end of the night. Apparently it cost them £18k to buy the bus, £8k to turn it into a restaurant, £1k a month in rent plus a forthcoming £9k to reinstall an extraction system. So fair play, they've done well. Plus anything that makes good use of a Routemaster bus gets my vote. Thumbs up.

Next month some people are skiing and Sam has laid down the challenge that "it won't happen"....but it bloody will you know. It bloody bloody will!