We were once again cursed by the weather on our Cornwall trip – it rained every day until about 2 PM, after which time the sun did its best to break through the clouds (though it didn’t always succeed). Still, you have to take the good with the bad, so we did our best to see as much as we could!

On Wednesday, we headed out to Falmouth, which is on the southern part of the coast. The town itself was ok – nothing too spectacular, though we loved the little store called “Kit”, and had we have had more room in our suitcases, I suspect we would have gone a bit crazy with some purchases. But by far the highlight of the town was lunch at Risk Stein’s fish restaurant, where I had the best fish and chips that I think I’ve ever eaten.

The fish was sea bream, which has such a delicious flavour; not to mention that they use “beef drippings” (whatever that means) in their deep fryer, which gives a very “Sunday roast” flavour to the chips. It was just amazing!

In the afternoon, we headed to The Lizard, which is the southern-most point of the British mainland. We were lucky to have the best weather of the whole trip for the 40 minute walk out to the viewpoint and back!

The coastline was beautiful, and it was probably one of the nicest villages that we saw for the whole trip, simply because it was a bit quieter, and not quite so touristy.

We polished off our time in Cornwall with an early dinner at Senor Dick’s in Newquay. We managed to get to bed by 9:30 PM, which was a good thing, as the alarm was set for 4:45 AM to get an early start on the 5 hour drive back to London!

Chiswick High Road has load of restaurants along it, to the point where you’re actually spoiled for choice when selecting where to dine. Of course, it has its share of the high road regulars – Pizza Express, Nandos, Giraffe, etc. – but there’s also loads of others, which to the best of my knowledge aren’t chains.

Franco Manca

We were happy when Eco pizza opened up just before we left the shores of Chiswick for Putney. As it turns out, we must have been some of the only ones who were happy about it, because it didn’t last very long! The space it occupied has now been taken over by a sourdough pizza restaurant called Franco Manco – or perhaps Eco have just changed their name. Who knows!

Anyway, we’ve eaten there twice now, most recently just yesterday, and once again I’m happy to say that the food is excellent! They only have a short (pizza) menu, with around six different combinations of toppings to choose from, as well as a couple of daily specials. Their drawcard however, is that they use a sourdough recipe for the pizza base, which comes out of the oven quite thin, but very soft.

Sadly for Kristy, all of the cheeses they use are unpasturised, and unpasturised cheese is high on the “foods that may kill you and cause serious harm to those around you, if you’re pregnant” list, so she had to steer clear of all the best toppings. Worse yet, she reports that “no cheese == no flavour”, so it wasn’t quite the same experience for her. But my pizza with pepperoni, chorizo, and mozzarella was fantastic!

A word of warning on their service though – we dined around 8pm last night, and the restaurant was teeming with patrons. The staff had real difficulty coping with the numbers, and we waited a long time to be served. Trying to get the bill was even worse, and after 20 mintes of waiting, I walked up to the till and paid on the spot (after waiting a few more minutes for the staff to notice). And instead of an apology, the owner simply said, “Everyone came at the same time!”. As Kristy put it so well – who’d have thought people would want to eat around dinner time?! Madness!

Rice

If there’s one thing I regret about moving back to Chiswick, it is that we didn’t eat at Rice immediately after arriving. We went there for the first time last Friday night, as a farewell meal for the Cookes. Philip had noticed it – as well as another Persian restaurant directly across the road from each other – and suggested that we try one of them.

Truth be told, we originally had tried to get into the other one first, but upon arriving, we found it was full. When we turned around and looked at Rice, one of the street-side diners beckoned us over, giving us a huge thumbs up as encouragement. So over we trotted, and the friendly young lad, with a huge grin on his face, told us that the food was “amazing”. I was convinced that he must have been the owner’s son – but then the owner came out and I asked her, and she replied with – “I’ve never seen this man before in my life!”

Ok, so maybe it was all an act, but it worked for us, so we tried out luck. Our new friend even went so far as to recommend some meals for us – the sharing platter to start, and the mixed grill for mains – so that’s exactly what we had. And he was spot on – the food was delicious!

It was an absolute delight for meat lovers!

The other big winner for the night was our wallet! We were so impressed with the place that we were back again only two days later with Julian and Shelley, and to our delight, the owner recognized us! I suspect Julian and Shelley were equally impressed, though after dining they suffered somewhat from “I ate too much meat” syndrome. Ah yes, we’ve all been there!

Backing up from a weekend full of visitors, Jacob and Daniella landed in London to polish off what sounded like a fairly amazing honeymoon, only one week later! We arranged to meet up with them for dinner last Thursday (1st July), and I figured that for something fairly iconically London, we’d head down to Brick Lane for a curry. When I mentioned this to young Amjad (who I work with), he strongly recommended we go to Tayyabs instead. I’m always happy to take a recommendation, and given that it was only a touch further to walk, we booked ourselves in, and along we popped.

And holy moly, am I glad that we did! Easily, this was the best curry that I’ve had in London. Amjad was nice enough to print off their menu beforehand, and then highlight the dishes that he recommended we order. I’m not sure if he meant for us to take his advice literally, but the dude at the restaurant was well impressed when I handed him our pre-selected list of meals! “Oh, this makes my job very easy!” he said (or at least I think he said; his accent was well strong).

I think Jacob and Daniella thought we were a little crazy, given the quantity of food that came out (and seemed to just keep on coming); but no-one was arguing with the taste. And even though there was more than we could eat, including a jug of mango lassi, plus other drinks – the whole bill rang in cheaper than £60, for all four of us! That’s unbelievable. Take that, Brick Lane!

Berlin is totally gay! Well, that’s not strictly true, it’s not totally gay, but it is the third largest gay city in the world, behind (heh heh) San Francisco and Sydney. Somehow we managed to visit on the weekend of the annual gay pride walk, and suffice to say, there were some interesting characters about!

Queerness aside, I have to say that of all the places that we’ve ever been to, nowhere makes me wish I’d have paid more attention in Modern History class than Berlin. The amount of history crammed into the one city is nothing short of spectacular, and we did our best to learn as much of it as possible while we were there. To this effect, we signed up for a walking tour on Saturday afternoon, which was led by a rather upbeat young Swede named David. He reminded me a bit of John B, but Kristy didn’t really agree.

He was rather passionate about Berlin, and consequently he made for a really great guide. And the tour itself – though clearly well worn, based on the number of other groups that we bumped in to – was excellent, and I’d highly recommend it to any visitor. Truth be told, we tried to get ourselves onto a Segway tour, but it was booked out!

We covered loads of historic sights in our four hour walk, and David taught us loads of things about the city. I particularly liked the outdoor exhibition about the Berlin wall which he showed us (near Checkpoint Charlie); so much so that we came back on Sunday so we could read it all in detail. To commemorate the wall, two rows of cobbled stones have been laid along the path of the outer wall, and it was cool to see it weaving around throughout the city. What a different place it must have been.

Admittedly, our guided walk made us double up on a few of the sites, since we had spent the morning exploring on our own. On our flight over, I had read that the glass dome on top of the Reichstag was best visited either first thing in the morning, or last thing in the evening, in order to try and avoid the crowds. We heeded this advice and went along shortly after they opened at 8 AM, and even then we were greeted by a fairly lengthy line.

After about 10 minutes, a large tour group was let through in front of us, and we were stopped right in front of the next security barrier. Upon seeing that Kristy was pregnant (and perhaps with a bit of emphasis by Kristy rubbing her stomach) the security boy took pity of us and sent us straight in via a secret side entrance! Score!

The walk up and down the giant dome provided us with a great view over the city, and the accompanying audio guide did a pretty good job of pointing out some of the city’s sights. Best of all – it was entirely free!

The Brandenburg Gate and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe are both close to the Reichstag, so we paid them both a visit too.

The Hotel Adlon is also fairly close to The Reichstag, but it wasn’t until the conclusion of our guided tour that we learned of its significance. It turns out that loads of famous people have stayed there over the years, but perhaps none more famously than Michael Jackson, who proudly showed off his baby to the world by dangling it over the balcony!

One thing I particularly like about visiting Germany is the food, and, Berlin was no exception to this. On the beverages front, Kristy fell in love with apfelschorle; however I stuck to the safety of beer – bless those Germans and their purity law! We also enjoyed many fine meals, including bacon knuckle with sauerkraut, pork schnitzel, currywurst (pork sausage in tomato and curry sauce), and Zürigschnätzlets (veal in a creamy mushroom sauce). Yum!

I loved our time in Berlin, and our hotel was ideally situated thanks to a recommendation from Eva. Two days was barely enough to scratch the surface though; I think I’ll be putting it on to the list of places to visit again in the future!

View the Berlin gallery on Picasa.

Here was me thinking that finishing that phrase with “a horse” was merely a comment on the size of your appetite; I had no idea you could literally eat horse. And yet, nearly all of the menus around Lake Garda – where we’re currently enjoying an extended long weekend – have sported some type of horse steak on them.

It seems so wrong, and yet, when you see it advertised everywhere, you can’t help but feel a little bit curious… and so, I tried it.

Now before you think less of me, just remember that (a) it’s quite popular in some cultures, and (b) it’s better for you than steak – it has less calories, fat, and cholesterol, and is higher in protein and iron.

But how does it taste? Pretty good, actually! It’s tender, like a medium-rare eye fillet, and it’s just a little bit sweet, with a distinct flavour of peppercorns and cream – though that’s perhaps in part due to the creamy peppercorn sauce that was served on top of it.

I don’t know that I’d eat it again – if I’m honest, the thought of eating horse still feels a bit wrong to me, and I think I’m going to go vegetarian for the next week to make up for it – but hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained. And, when in Rome, and all that…

While we were in Italy earlier this month, Kristy and I made a bet about how often the bells from our local bell tower chimed in the morning – 15 minutes said I, whilst the wife went for every half hour. The loser of the bet – which turned out to be me – had to take the winner out to dinner at a restaurant of their choosing, and so on Monday night, off we trotted to Charlotte’s Bistro on Turnham Green Terrace.

Currently – perhaps as an opening special – they’re offering a great deal of a 3 course meal, plus a glass of wine, and unlimited sparkle sparkle for only £25 a head. Not bad at all! Their menu is fairly short and sweet, yet we each found ourselves with multiple selections that we had to whittle down. I ended up with mushroom risotto followed by the steak; Kristy went for watercress soup followed by the chicken. All of the meals were delicious, though perhaps a little on the heavy side – the chef’s motto seemed to be, “when in doubt, add more butter”. Indeed.

Though the meals were delicious, it was dessert where they really shined. My honey tart was great, and its side of peanut butter ice-cream was amazing! And check out Kristy’s macadamia brownie with pecan ice-cream!

Overall a smashing success, and with a very friendly cast of staff members, there’s really not a bad word to be said about it.

Dean, Lea, and Kylie had never been to the Cotswolds for a clotted cream tea! And since Dean and Lea are making their way back to Australia (taking the very, very scenic route!) we had to remedy this situation yesterday. We had an absolutely gorgeous day of sunshine, so it was a perfect day to be out in the country!

We started at Bourton on the Water – “The Venice of The Cotswolds” as they say, simply because it has a stream. Creative. We made the others take the Dragonfly Hedge Maze challenge, and they came through victorious.

Next, we hit up Stow on the Wold for some lunch. Having been there before and remembering the abundance of shops that were there, I thought we’d be loaded for choices of places to eat. But after walking around most of the town, we didn’t find anything that jumped out, and we eventually settled on a hotel who served us a fairly ordinary meal (or at least I thought so). This was certainly not the highlight of the day! We made a few obligatory purchases in the local chocolate shop before trundling off to Chipping Campden for the main event – Clotted Cream and Scones.

Oh man, they were so good – and so big! Usually two scones is the order of the day, but each of us could barely get through one!

It’s a bit of a hike to get there, but The Cotswolds always makes a lovely destination for a day trip. And now, I want some more clotted cream…

If you asked practically anyone to list the best things about the USA, I have little doubt they’d say something along the lines of:

1. The Cookes
2. Chipotle
3. Barack Obama
4. Root beer

And given that you can buy root beer at Chipotle, that makes number two a double winner! I know that most of you will be surprised to learn of my love for Chipotle, given that I rarely bring it up in conversation; but alas, I cannot deny it – it will always be my number one (food) love. As such, you can imagine how stoked I was to hear that they’ve finally opened a store in the UK. We headed down tonight with Kylie, to initiate her into the burrito faith.

Now, I consider myself somewhat of a Chipotle expert, having eaten there perhaps once or twice in my time. So I feel it’s my right – nay, my duty – to cast judgement on their flagship UK store. And pass judgement I shall:

They’re not quite there yet.

Yep, the burrito looked good, and it was definitely tasty. But their staff were way too slow on the production line, which meant the tortilla was a bit cool by the time it came to eating. Also, the carnitas:salad ratio was off – not quite enough meat, and a bit too much lettuce. And I had to double check if they had added hot salsa to my burrito, because I didn’t feel any spice on my tongue! Definitely shy on the chilis!

I’m hoping all of these problems are merely teething issues, and that they’ll all improve with a bit of time and practice. And given how packed the place was for dinner (and even more-so at lunch by Weezy’s reports), practice is something that they won’t be shy of.

I’ll give it another whirl in a month or so, but I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t walk away a little disappointed.

PS: No root beer! What the?!

We’ve been to La Trompette before, and we’ll (hopefully) go there again; and yet, with five years in London under his belt, Todd had never been! Sacrilegious! We had to remedy that, so that’s exactly what we did last night.

I’m not going to bother doing a review; it’s our favourite restaurant in London, need I say more? Instead, I’ll just post these photos of what I ate, which at the very least should make Ben and John jealous.

As usual, selecting only one thing to eat is near impossible, but I went with the cisp fried brandade and leek croquette with tartare sauce (or “fancy fish cakes” as the waiter called it) for my starter.

Duck for the main course; there was a crispy coating on the outside of it, and a bunch of vegetables, one of which was spinach. I must admit, I wasn’t a fan of whatever those white things were; I kept thinking they’d taste like picked onions but oh my, how they did not.

Dessert was my favourite course last night; a valrhona chocolate tart which had a crumbly coating that was to die for. I could have eaten 6,000 of these! The other bits were good too, but realistically it was all just a distraction from the tart.

I wish I had me one of those bad boys right about now.

Finding ourselves without plans last Wednesday night due to a certain concert being postponed, wife and I decided to spontaneously have ourselves a dinner somewhere. You know, somewhere “nice”! A quick scour of Timeout’s London Restaurant guide saw us ending up at High Timber, a “Modern European” steakhouse which got fairly good reviews.

I called to make a reservation, and Guido (may not have been his real name) took my call:

Me: Hi, can I make a reservation for two people, for seven o’clock?
Guido: For two people? At seven? You will not need a reservation.
Me: Oh, ok, great. Thanks.

Guido was definitely right; we walked in to find the restaurant almost empty, though this didn’t stop him from greeting us at the door with a friendly, “Good evening. Do you have a reservation?”. Dude! I just tried to make one and you wouldn’t let me!

Anyway, he somehow managed to find an empty table to squeeze us on to, and we promptly ordered. Gnocchi with mushrooms, spinach and parmesan cream for Kristy, and a medium-rare, 350g rib-eye, with peppercorn sauce for me. I honestly can’t remember the last time I had a steak, so I was absolutely salivating waiting for it to come out!

I’m pleased to say, it was good. Very good! Cooked to perfection, delicious flavour, and the peppercorn sauce on the side was so good I was tempted to drink it! The sides were also fantastic, especially the chips – I’m a simple man!

We were both quite filled after our delicious mains, but seeing “rhubarb fool” on the dessert menu piqued my interest. So I went ahead and ordered myself one; Kristy got a lemon and treacle tart to keep me company.

Turns out “rhubarb fool” is basically just mousse, cream, and cooked rhubarb. It was ok, though the rhubarb had a bit too strong of a flavour for my liking. Kristy also found her dessert to be a little too much, and I think our meals would have been better had we have gone without!

Still, it was overall a nice place to dine, and we have no-one to blame for our desserts but ourselves. After we asked for the bill, the manager (or at least, a bird whom I presumed to be the manger) brought it to us, enquired if our meals were ok, and then asked, “are you a food critic?”. “No!” I replied; “why do you ask?”.

“You took a lot of photos of your meal.”

Maybe I should be a food critic! After all, I do like eating…