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.

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.

Eva and Ali told us that Café Plum at Hammersmith did a good English Breakfast, so on Sunday morning we headed down to check it out with Julian, Shelley, and Bryce (Shelley’s friend from work). At £6.25, it’s a little more than our local favourite, but oh my was it worth it! The meal was fantastic, and their coffee was so good that Julian and I had two each!

We arrived within a few minutes of them opening, and shortly after we arrived, it was almost completely full! Clearly we weren’t the only ones in the know, though after sampling their food I’m not terribly surprised.

The only thing I can mark them down for was their service; certainly quite prompt and efficient which I love – but not super friendly. In fact, I swear that the girl rolled her eyes at me just before I ordered, which I found very off-putting. OK, it’s possible I imagined it, but she was a long way from having a bit smile and making me feel like a local.

None-the-less, I think we’ll see ourselves back there again in the not too distant future. It’s a bit too far to go for a “I’m spontaneously hungry and need to eat now” type of affair, but with a little bit of forward planning it’s easily achievable. gerrod.com rating: 9.5/10.

Instead of catching public transport home, we decided to walk off our meal by taking the scenic route along the Thames. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite the sunny day that we’d enjoyed on Saturday, though the rain mostly held off, and at the very least it was a nice walking temperature.

There’s five caches that we passed on our way back, but we were only successful in retrieving two of them. On one of them, the description of the terrain was, “a little wading may be required”; but given that it was high tide, “a little wading” would have actually been “a little swimming”. Another one we searched for for around 15 minutes before declaring ourselves failures – only to find that today it has officially been declared missing! And the third one was blocked by construction, so we had no chance to begin with. So really, it was 2 from 2 – a much better success rate!

Our walking must have worked a little too well, because we were all feeling peckish again by the time we made it home! Kristy sent us all out for Nandos while she stayed at home and tidied up a bit.

We whiled away the afternoon with some chit-chat, but we must have been boring Kristy because she fell asleep on the couch! Julian and Shelley took this rather personally and promptly left; I’m not sure we’ll be seeing them again anytime soon. Whoops!

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…

Last night I joined some of my ex-work colleagues to farewell Charlie, who is headed home to Sydney! He’s been away for three years (I think?), and is feeling the call back to the home land. It was great to catch up with him, as well as lots of the other friendly faces that I used to work with!

One beer led to another, and before long we felt the call of ribs for dinner. We ended up going to the Chicago Rib Shack for what they claim to be “the best ribs in London”. Well, they certainly were ribs, but definitely not the best ribs I’ve ever had. Tip for next time (should we ever go again): stick with the Baby Backs; the St Louis ribs were nowhere near as good! Oh, and avoid the spicy wings; they aren’t kidding when they say, “They’re really hot”!!

Stacey is down for the weekend! It’s so good to see her again; it feels forever since we’ve seen her! But unfortunately I’ve woken up with a touch of a cold (sore throat, low energy, headaches), which is totally not good! Things didn’t get any better when we discovered the house is almost completely void of food, so figuring that a decent meal is needed for some cold-fighting energy, and to finally finish off the £5 breakfast challenge, we headed to Natalizi for the full English. Kristy joined us later after she’d finished up at the gym.

As you can see, it was a very comprehensive breakfast – two pieces of toast with butter, baked beans, a sausage, bacon, eggs, tomato, and mushrooms. In terms of taste – sure, it’s not the best breakfast you’ll ever eat in your entire life, but it was good – really good, actually, given that my taste buds were suffering a bit with the sickness.

But the big winner for Natalizi is the service. The staff were so, so nice! Everyone was happy and smiley! And if you look closely, even the meal is smiley!

The breakfasts were £4.90 each, which included a coffee or tea of choice. We both went for tea since we had coffied before leaving home, but I was pleased to see they used Lavazza beans (which generally is a good sign), and their espresso machine was quite clean. I’d feel confident in ordering a latte there. Each of us also had a large glass of very freshly squeezed OJ, which at the reasonable price of only £2, brought our meal total to £13.90.

Given that all of the restaurants offer a pretty similar meal for around fiver, there’s really not much you can use to differentiate between them. And yet, Natalizi was by far my favourite – simply because of how friendly the staff were. They really made you feel like you were their favourite customer, who they were pleased to see every Saturday morning. It’s now my new favourite place for breakfast, and I will definitely be going back there. gerrod.com rating: 10/10.

Venue number four in the £5 Breakfast Challenge was Sandwich Box, which is the last one on our side of the road before Acton Lane. Given that it’s right next to the Luna Caffe it’s pretty easy to miss, or at least to mistake them as the same place!

Coming in at only £4, including a coffee or tea (with no extra charge for a latte), their Full English Breakfast is easily the best value that we’ve encountered so far. Their coffee was really good, too – a little on the large size for me, but the favour was great.

As you can see, the food was also generously proportioned: two eggs, two pieces of toast, a sausage, two rashers of bacon, a hashbrown, baked beans, mushrooms, and tomato. On the plus side, the eggs were perfectly cooked, with solid whites but runny yolks. I also quite enjoyed the sausage – a little salty, but it had a nice smokey flavour, like at Luna.

The rest of the meal tasted good enough (though once again I wasn’t a fan of the bacon); however this is the first place we’ve eaten at and felt a bit shady afterwards. Perhaps it was from the sheer quantity of food, though we both think that the quality of the ingredients may have been on the lower side of average.

They also lose points for not offering any fresh juice; I had trouble with the bird’s accent and couldn’t work out if they had run out or if they simply didn’t have it, but I suspect it’s the latter.

To their credit, we walked away feeling very full, and at only nine quid for our two breakfasts and a bottle of juice, my wallet didn’t even take too big a hit. If I was only after a coffee, then Sandwich Box would be top of my list of places to revisit, but for breakfast, I think we’ll be taking our money elsewhere. gerrod.com rating: 7/10.

Next up in the £5 breakfast challenge was the Hot House Cafe, only a few doors down from the Blueberry cafe. It markets itself as an internet cafe, but with a Full English Breakfast for sale at only £4.95 including coffee, it’s definitely a contender for the breakfast crowd.

(It was raining quite heavily when we went, so I couldn’t take an outside photo.)

One of the first things that we noticed about Hot House was that it seemed to have a bunch of regular patrons; either that, or all the waitresses were psychic and were doing a lot of mind reading. I suspect it’s the former. This suggested to me that we were in for quite a treat!

Hot House’s “Full English Breakfast” consisted of two bacon rashers, a sausage, mushrooms, two fried eggs, a hash brown, baked beans, and two pieces of (heavily buttered) toast. Like Blueberry, I wasn’t given an option on the type of toast that I wanted, but their default option tried to cater for everyone with one piece each white and brown bread. Their breakfast also included a tea or a coffee which I thought was very generous, even though they charged me an extra 50p to upsize to a latte (instead of regular black coffee).

Overall, the meal was quite good, though everything was rather salty, most especially the bacon. Also on the downside was the hash brown which was a little soggy, and the baked beans which were quite bland – as if the sauce was there just to hold the beans together but not to provide any flavour. The sausage was quite good though; the mushrooms were even better, and the eggs were the absolute highlight of the meal – perfectly cooked with solid whites, but runny yolks. Yum!

My 50p coffee was acceptable, though I wouldn’t go there if all I was after was a coffee. They didn’t use fresh beans, and instead opted for pre-ground coffee from a tin in the fridge. And though the coffee didn’t taste bad, it was a little light on any. Perhaps a second shot would have helped, though not as much as freshly ground beans would have.

Kristy opted out of this challenge, and instead had smoked salmon (which was quite generously apportioned) over scrambled eggs, and a freshly squeezed orange juice. Bonus points to them for taking “freshly squeezed” very literally, with a huge orange juicer behind the counter!

All up we paid only £11.35 for both of our meals, and we both walked out with very satisfied bellies. I don’t think the quality of the food was quite as good as it was at Blueberry, however it wasn’t far off. Hot House definitely scores higher on both variety and value for money though, and given the choice between the two, I’d be hard pressed to make a decision. gerrod.com rating: 8.5/10.

When we first came (back) to Chiswick to sign the lease on our flat, I noticed that between here and Turnham Green, there are at least 5 cafes that each offer some form of breakfast for £5 or less. Helllloooo… do I hear a challenge in the making? Yes I do!

Enter: The £5 breakfast challenge. Yes, it’s an extremely creative name, and I laboured over it until I was happy. I was also considering dropping the pound sign, and instead going for “The five pound breakfast challenge”, because I’m using a US keyboard and I don’t have a convenient button for “£”. However, I felt that our dear American readers may think I’m trying to eat five pounds of breakfast foods, rather than spending five pounds on breakfast. It’s an important distinction.

Anyway – the first cafe to unknowingly step up to the plate was the Blueberry Cafe. From the outside, it definitely looks like the swankiest of them all, but a rather unfortunately placed red statue blocks its view of the high rode. (Note: it may look like a mail box, however Royal Mail are on strike these days more often than not, so it doesn’t work like a mail box).

Blueberry’s £5 breakfast comes with two fried eggs, bacon, sausages, mushrooms, baked beans, and two pieces of wholegrain toast. Kristy and I both liked that wholegrain was the default bread – given the option of white, we both probably would have taken it, yet the wholegrain was delicious and nutritious! Still, some options would have been nice – I’m not really a bacon person, and would have preferred to swap out my rashers for sausages if I could have; and I love me some breakfast tomato.

A few points off for not offering any beverage with the meal – we each ordered a freshly squeezed OJ, which we felt was a decent size, and fairly good value for money. I also ordered a latte, which unfortunately was about the size of a child’s beach bucket, and far, far too hot for my liking.

The addition of three beverages to our meal drove the cost up to around £16, however I figured that if you’re going to go somewhere for breakfast, you’re likely to want at least one accompanying beverage, so they should be part of the review.

Blueberry suffers from “the first cab off the rank” syndrome – once we’ve been to each of the cafes, it may on reflection be the best, but until that point we can only rate it on its lonesome. The food was definitely well prepared, and high quality, but not quite enough variety to bring home the proverbial bacon. gerrod.com rating: 8/10.