thekua.com@rest

To celebrate the launch of their latest album, the Kaiser Chiefs played at The Forum on Monday night and I managed to get a couple of tickets. It was cold and wet outside, so I was thankful that we had standing tickets for downstairs that made heading out after work completely worth it. We managed to get fairly close to the front, bordering on the edge of all the more energetic people who jumped around most of the night, or pushed their way in for at least some of it. Other than a couple of, rather excessively drunk and, agressive people, the audience was rather quite friendly. Compared to the last concert I went to, the average height of the Brits made me need to weave in and out between the flowing gap between shoulders.

We caught the end of the first support act, The Hair and didn’t really hear enough to be able to give them any fair review. The second support act however was much more memorable with four really young looking kids called Late of the Pier. Energetic doesn’t even begin to describe them, each member playing several instruments throughout their set and the lead signer managing to knock over a couple of pieces of their kit on stage, to the point we would have bets what piece would be next to go. They still impressed me with their passionate performance, crazy antics with some decent beats and riffs to boot. I think that we even signed up to their mailing list.

The set changes came quickly and it wasn’t too long before the Kaiser Chiefs came on stage. With dazzling lights and tonnes of energy, they played a mix of all the songs from their previous album with a handful of ones from their recently released one.

In terms of entertainment value, it’s obvious the band cares about their audience having a good time, to the point where the lead singer ran through the crowd a couple of times, making sure everyone seemed to have a good night, and the lead signer encouraging the small number of crowd surfing antics with his own deeds.

I can’t remember how long they playted but they continued to impress all night, even getting the audience involved singing Happy Birthday to one of the band members. I don’t think I’ve been to a gig where the band have had such consistently high energy for all night and it really shows in their excellent performance.

TheKua.com Rating: 8 out of 10

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This blog originally started off being a catch-all, representing most of the different aspects to my day to day life. After some time, I realised some readers didn’t want to hear about all my work related posts, so I carved off another blog called TheKua At Work.

I now realise that not all of the visitors to this site care about all the different journeys I have with food as well, particularly when I travel overseas. I write about restaurants to help other people out, to provide better information about an experience at a place that I’ve eaten at, or where to find an unusual ingredient, or some other random topic about food. I search other people’s blogs when travelling to find out local places to dine at when travelling and only want to return the favour.

As a result, I’ve started another site, TheKua Does Food, where I will post all the food related entries you would normally find here. Feel free to add it to your RSS feed aggregator (if you have one), or just drop in for a visit now and again.

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What better way to spend a lazy Sunday that at a Belgian pub serving great organic produce, and with more than a hundred types of beers? That’s exactly what I got up to this Sunday with a whole bunch of friends to celebrate that yearly event that won’t be going away any time soon.

We headed to one of my favourite pubs in my neighbourhood, also home to many a frequent work social occasion, The Dovetail. With glimpses of sunny skies, we grabbed the set of tables near the front of house and stayed there at least until the early evening. With the strength of some of the belgian beers, it wasn’t too long before I started to feel the effects, and eventually headed home.

Thanks to all the people who came along and made it such a great day! You can find the small numebr of photos I took of the day here.

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This weekend had such great weather that I couldn’t but help but walk around, and so I headed out to Broadway Market where I would be going for the first time (at least during the day). Given the area is mostly known for its dodgy parts, Broadway Market is a street that, like it’s name, also holds a market during the day on Saturday, otherwise home to a hodge podge of art galleries, a number of cafes, pubs, and some notable restaurants including Buen Ayre, and The Dove. They even had a floating Thai restaurant by the water, with a live BBQ was really tempting to stop and have a bite to eat.

You had the usual market stall suspects, ranging from various forms of housewares, clothing, food stalls and all those knick knack places in between. Disappointingly I noticed a number of stalls manned by, what I would call, the market chain - a company tapping with a franchise-like presence at all of the different markets. It’s not such a bad thing but I can’t but help feel like they’re commercialising the unique elements that make markets fun to go to.

Much like Sunday Up Market, and less so Spitalfields, Broadway Market attracts a wide variety of locals, and I could picture many of them fitting right into the east end’s Shoreditch scene. It’s particularly busy around the several cafes along the way, with many just wanting to hang out and take in the atmosphere, or stand outside gossiping with a coffee or tea in hand and since I was there around lunchtime, very busy around all the food stalls as well.

The entire area of the market is not well served by public transport, with the only option really a set of buses that drop you a few streets from, but not immediately near the area. Perhaps there was a better way but I ended up for a leisurely stroll from Bethnal Green tube station, taking in all the grafitti (like the picture below), the small, probably family owned restaurants and cafes, and the rest of the atmosphere.

Broadway Market is great if you’re in the area, or a good reason to go out and see more of that area. Of course, you can also head to the other many markets around London better served by public transport. See the rest of the pictures here.

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My Italian friend, Luca had a spare ticket to see a band from his home country called Subsonica at Kentish Town’s The Forum on Wednesday night. It’s probably the first time that a thousand or so Italians descended upon the area and, at least, the first time I’ve been to a concert with so many of them. I couldn’t help but notice several differences in the crowd such as when, in the early part of the evening, heaps of people sat themselves down on the ground near the stage (apparently it’s a habit when waiting for a concert to start on all those lovely summer evenings). I always find that strange since most venues in the UK have seen more spilt beer, empty plastic cups and (formerly) cigarette butts than they had the underside of people attending.

People also didn’t seem to have any difficult pushing their way in, or out, of the crowd without so much an an ‘excuse me’. It didn’t really bother me, with the only noticeable impact being that I was slowly moved away from the front of stage by the audience as the more energetic people shoved their way to the front. I think I ended up at least a metre or two behind where I was standing by the end of the night. This may sound stereotypical, but even being moved back, I was still amazed that I had a pretty good view of the stage since most people were not significantly taller than me for once!

It was obvious that Subsonica meant business and that they only wanted to play for the audience - they didn’t have a support act and played a decent set of around an hour and a half. I listened briefly to their stuff on LastFm, although I can’t say I recognised any of the tracks they played. Either way, most of the people seemed to know a lot of their lyrics and jumped and danced alongside their upbeat riffs. Interestingly I found they drifted back and forth between different genres, and yet it all seemed to work out. They pulled out some trip hop stuff, sounds I’d classify more jungle, some pop rock and dance tracks and even a ballad or two throughout the night.

After a bit of confusion about whether or not they should perform an encore (it’s one of those things that don’t really happen in Italy apparently), they came back on stage obviously unprepared asking the audience and talking amongst themselves about which songs to play. They played probably two or three more songs before the lights came on one more time, though this time signalling the end of the evening.

TheKua.com Rating: 7 out of 10

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I’m taking a random day off on Monday. What would you do with a work day off and you were in London? Join the bustling tourists, or kick back and read a newspaper in some cafe? Leave a comment and let me know something great to do.

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What a weekend it was, with plenty of torrential rain to help the grass be greener, and to help weed out those tourists around town (easily spotted in poncho-form, drenched to the bone-form, or cheesy umbrella-form). At the end of last week, I think I managed to catch the virus going around town, so tried to keep the activity levels down, yet I still managed to get outside and catch up with a whole load of people.

On Saturday, I helped celebrate Kristy’s birthday and caught up with a whole bunch of people I hadn’t seen for a while. Kristy picked a wonderful location, Isola De Sole, and I thoroughly enjoyed the mega feast that we all indulged in. Sardinian food is wonderful, and can be quite different from the Italian foods you’d normally see, and I even spotted a bottle of limoncello in their fridge but was too stuffed to want to try any for dessert. It was also great to hear lots of the zany stories that Stacey had to share about living in Aberdeen, and was visiting on a special work trip down in London (or should that be Englishshire according to locals near her?). I unfortunately had to depart a combination of needing to get a few errands completely, and not feeling 100%.

Sunday I caught up with Ajit and Luca where we went down to South Kensington to have a very disappointing brunch at Aubaine. We walked around a little bit around the area, before heading back to raid Ajit’s place as he’s leaving for the US.

And suddenly, it was Monday again!

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I felt very disappointed by the experience I had at Aubaine at Brompton Road this morning, and wanted to share with you this experience so that other patrons may benefit from the feedback.

I had booked for three people for noon, hoping to have a leisurely morning with some good food and a great atmosphere. I will congratulate you on having a warm, bustling atmosphere however I would like to share what our experience was this morning. Other than having to ask for a couple of coffees and twice for tap water, everything from the ordering and delivering of food ran very smoothly. It was only after we had finished were we asked to move tables to seat a larger group.

We happily obliged as we weren’t too bothered by where we were sitting, however I felt extremely put out when, shortly after, another waiter asked us to leave because of a prior booking they needed to fill. Admittedly, we did not want to order any more food and drink as were full, however we all felt this was extremely rude, and a complete contrast from what you have on your website (http://www.aubaine.co.uk/about/brompton_road.html), “You could spend all day here. This is encouraged.”

I do not intend to come across as rude in my email, I simply wanted to share what our experience was like in the hope that you can look at why this happened and prevent further patrons from suffering the same series of events that made our Sunday morning less than enjoyable.

Yours sincerely,

Patrick Kua

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