Kristy and I ate at Valentina at East Putney last night. It’s a rustic Italian restaurant, and Julian had told us that it “looked like a place where we would eat”. Well, we didin’t want to let him down!

My immediate impression of the place was that it was Carluccio’s, just going by a different name. Kristy disagrees, but:

• They have the same blue and white coloured banner out the front of the shop;
• They have various foods for sale as soon as you walk in, including a fresh food deli;
• Just beyond the food section is the restaurant section; and
• They serve illy coffee.

Sound familiar? I’ll admit that I’m not sure which brand of coffee they sell at Carluccio’s, but I’m willing to make a (small) bet that it’s illy!

Anyway, on to the food. Neither of us could decipher the wine menu, as everything was listed by region, and none of the bottles were described. Fail! We had to ask one of the waitresses for a recommendation, and ended up with a bottle of one of the house whites. It was actually really nice – not too sweet or dry, fresh, fruity – really easy to drink. Should have got the name of it!

We shared an entrée of scallops wrapped in bacon, served on a salad. I’m sure it was described more nicely than that, but that’s effectively what it was. It was tasty enough, however we were a little disappointed to only find two scallops on the plate – at £7.50 for the dish, it seemed a little pricey.

My main was a whole sea bass with olives, capers and potatoes. The sauce was nice enough but the fish had so many tiny little bones in it that it really ruined the experience.
Kristy had a pasta dish of sorts – a giant parcel containing pork meatballs and tagliatelle, wrapped up in ham, and served with a tomato sauce. It was delicious! I had definite food envy!

Overall the bill was about £50 including tip – not exactly the cheapest night out, and having been disappointed by the size of the entree, and all the bones in my fish, I don’t think I’d rush back. Though if I did, I’d definitely be getting the meatball thing, it was really quite good. gerrod.com rating: 6/10.

Last year I read in a local ‘time out’ style guide that there was a chocolate factory down the road from my work. Within walking distance. I got very excited. Then I kept reading.

Turns out it was built in 1870 and doesn’t in fact produce chocolate any more. BUT, now there’s a cosy little theatre in its place! So last night Shannon and I visited the Menier Chocolate Factory theatre to see Stephen Sondheim’s musical, A Little Night Music. The theatre is so tiny teeny that when the characters waltzed around the stage during the opening number I had to pull my feet in under my chair.

I saw a Sondheim musical years ago (Into the Woods) and loved it, so happily went to see this one having no idea what it was. Shannon was just as clueless asking me, “is it a play? is it a comedy?” to which I had no satisfactory answers. “I think it’s a musical, and it’s probably funny.” Everyone else in the audience was about 60, probably making Shannon doubt me on that last point.

But it was hilarious and poignant and so captivating that we didn’t realise three hours had passed. Some of the actors were so convincing that we felt like a fly on the wall in their bedroom, watching their lives unfold. It’s a must see play – I think this run has sold out, but I’m told that popular shows from Menier sometimes get upgraded to larger Covent Garden theatres.

g.com rating: 10/10. One of the best productions I’ve ever seen.

On Sunday, Karl and I ventured into the land of women: a cinema packed with chick-flick fans. “In the Land of Women” (or ITLOW as the ad campaigns keep calling it) is the latest chick-flick to leave me feeling shallow and dissatisfied.

Years ago I would have said that this was my favourite genre of film, so I’m in the routine of going to see every new one that comes out, yet I never seem to be able to muster much enthusiasm about them afterwards!

It’s supposedly a romance/comedy/drama about trying to makes sense of love. It touches on lots of topics but never really nails any of them. Adam Brody (the geeky guy from the O.C.) plays a frustrated young writer who is dumped by his girlfriend and runs away to take care of his ageing gran (Olympia Dukakis). As he settles into suburbia he meets the lovely ladies of the neighbourhood, hears all their confessions and musings on love and theoretically learns something from it all.

There are some great comic moments, so maybe I should give the director the benefit of the doubt and say, they didn’t answer any questions on love because they want to give me the chance to work it out on my own.

kristy.gerrod.com rating: 5 out of 10. Painless fun, but can easily wait for DVD.

Something strange is going on in New York (well a lot of the USA in fact) – it’s freaky hot. It’s supposed to be the dead of winter, but yesterday and the day before, we had temperatures around 20°C! It’s very strange seeing people out on the street wearing shorts and t-shirts!

To make the most of the splendid weather, and as a farewell to Caroline whose last full day it was in New York, we headed over to Bizarro World – or more accurately, the West Side – and up to a little diner called Eatery. We’ve read countless reviews of this place, and we’ve seen it on programs that talk about the trendy places to eat in New York, so we figured it would probably be a bit of alright.

Turns out that for the most part, it was a bit of alright. The food was reasonably priced with a brunch main hitting the wallet at around 13 bucks, and for that you get a decent serving of whatever it is that you ordered. The menu itself was just about the right size – not so huge that it’s overwhelming, yet extensive enough that even the biggest whingers should be satisfied.

It seems the meal of choice for our table was the buttermilk pancakes (three of), with rum caramelised pears, plus bananas and strawberries and maple syrup. Kristy, Karl, and Casper all ordered that and seemed satisfied with their choices. Just to be different, I hit our waitress up for their variation of eggs benedict called “E-Benne”. Instead of being served on an English Muffin, it came on a Maine crab cake, which was then stacked on top of a vegetable potato cake.

On the downside, the bread was pretty festy – quite hard and almost stale tasting, actually – but I don’t know if was just a strange variety of bread or if I just scored the dodgy bits of the loaf. Worse than the bread was their “latte” – it tasted more like they’d thrown instant coffee into an espresso machine, then topped it off with super bubbly milk. Yukko!

But on the upside, everything else was tasty as. Karl and Casper both polished off their plates in record time, so I guess the pancakes were pretty decent. Kristy and I both said that Eatery is a place that we’d happily eat at again, but we wouldn’t feel disappointed if we didn’t. gerrod.com rating: 6.5/10.

Everyone that we know that has seen Casino Royale has told us how good it is, so we figured we’d best see it for ourselves. And you know what? It’s good!

I must admit that I was a little confused at the beginning, as the opening scene suggests that Bond “hasn’t made double-oh status yet”, which suggests that this film is set at the beginning of Bond’s career. Is that because the actor that’s playing bond (Daniel Craig) is new to the role, or are we not supposed to notice that Bond is continually played by a different actor, and this is really the beginning of the career of the one-and-only Bond?

Either way, I guess it doesn’t really matter, because Craig does an excellent job as Bond. The second scene, which involves him chasing a bruvva through a construction site is wicked good – especially on the part of the bruvva. Truly amazing agility!

The rest of the movie isn’t quite as exciting as the opening scenes – well, not as much fast paced action, anyway. But it’s still engrossing, and overall very entertaining. And of course, the movie ends on a high action note, which is well worth waiting for. See this one one the big screen, and you won’t be disappointed. gerrod.com rating: 8/10.

Kristy has been hanging to eat at The Risotteria in Grenwich Village since the day that we walked past it, and yesterday she got her wish! We were all craving some carbs after our huge workout in the morning, so risotto seemed like a sweet fit.

The restaurant is quite small, but always seems very busy, even at the unusual time of 4:30PM that we were eating. Needless to say, we all ordered risotto – Kristy got chicken with pine nuts, Jo had calamari with olives and hot peppers, and I had roast lamb with spinach and Gorgonzola. It was a tough choice though – the menu has about 25 different risottos on it, including heaps of vegetarian ones (we thought of you, Cathy!) and almost all glutton gluten free.

Not surprisingly, our meals were all delicious, and decent value for around 10 – 15 bucks for each of our huge servings. They also serve a $15 bottle of their “wine of the month”; yesterday’s was a Coppola red blend which was fantastic!

We will certainly be dining there again. gerrod.com rating: 8.5/10.

Spurred on by Nathan’s new earphones, I decided that it was finally time to part with the crapola earbuds that Apple give you with an iPod, and get a decent pair of headphones instead.

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Our Amazon.com delivery came through a couple days back, and one of the things that it brought with it was our new coffee grinder! As I mentioned earlier, we got this one at a bargain price of only $29.99.

Well, they say that you get what you pay for, but so far the jury is still out on this one. If I had have paid the full price of $79.99, then I’m pretty sure I’d be sending it back. But at $29.99, I haven’t decided if it’s a keeper or not.

It certainly looks stylish enough for our little New York apartment, but that’s about as far as the pluses go. Unfortunately though, there’s plenty of negatives. Firstly, though you can turn the hopper to adjust how fine beans should be ground, it doesn’t seem to go low enough. Even on the finest setting, the grind comes out much too coarse. This means that you have to tamp the coffee extra hard in order to get the flavour out of it.

Secondly, the litte chamber down the bottom which catches the ground beans is very badly designed. There’s a bunch of static electricity in there, which means the grinds all stick to the edges of the chamber instead of collecting in a nice pile down the bottom. And lastly, it makes a really nasty noise while it’s on – not only is it loud, but it’s quite high pitched and hard on the ears.

At the end of the day, the coffees that we’ve had by using it have been very watered down (grind too coarse), but they taste ok if you don’t mind weak coffee. We’ll give it more of a run over the weekend, and send it back next week if we’re still not happy.

A bunch of us went to see the musical Avenue Q on Sunday night. Yes, even I went along – I mean, with great reviews from everyone I know that has seen it, a slogan of “Just like your life, only funnier”, and – most importantly – with the main characters played by puppets, what’s not to like?

Well, we certainly weren’t disappointed on the funny angle. The show featured many hilarious lines, songs, and situations that raised heaps of laughter from the audience, albeit sometimes a little crude for my taste. My favourite characters were the “bad idea bears” – 2 furry little things that looked a bit like Care bears, who drifted in and out to signify the evil side of the puppets’ conscience.

Though I enjoyed this musical, it certainly isn’t for everyone; folks that are easily offended would be walking out before half an hour is up. I definitely thought it was an “Adults Only” type of play, so I was a bit shocked to see some very young faces coming out of the theatre – I would not be taking kids to this one!

And like most musicals I’ve seen (with the exception of The Lion King), I felt myself fading towards the end. On reflection, I think this is because the level of humour isn’t really kept up throughout the show – it starts out extremely funny, but as the show rolls on and they have to “tie up all the ends”, the laughs are fewer and further between. Nonetheless, the length was probably about right, and since it started at 7 PM we even managed to have an early night.

gerrod.com rating: 7/10.

Since being here we’ve visited the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art. Neither really inspired us. In fact, Gerrod was so disheartened that he didn’t want to go to any more museums at all!

So this week, on one of my last days of freedom I headed up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And here, my interest in museums was renewed.

This place rocks!!! Nestled in the side of Central Park, the Met (as it’s affectionately known) was built in 1872 and is a work of art in itself. The building is beautiful, though you can’t get a good shot of it because it’s undergoing exterior renovations.

Inside they have every art imaginable, ranging from authentic Egyptian temples reconstructed here indoors, entire facades of famous two story buildings (again indoors), modern art, greco-roman sculptures, historical fashions, african art, photographs, armor, you name it! It’s all here!

You really could spend day after day here and still not see everything. I’d give it a kristy.com rating of 10/10! I can’t wait to take Gerrod back. He’s gonna love it!