Sista Blog

So, I’m briefly back in Ealing today to tidy up some work and of course we all had to go out for lunch I was happy that Jon suggested Silom Village Thai because I knew for sure that I wanted to go back and try their Fried Ice Cream!

Silom Village Thai has a large variety of dishes on offer and its almost difficult to narrow the choice down to one. Though it is predominantly a Thai restaurant there are also Malaysian, Chinese and other asian styles of dishes. In the past I’ve tried their Pad Thai and today I thought I’d sample Char Kway Teoh. Both dishes were delicous and very generous in their portions. Beware that when a dish has been marked with a chilli you are guaranteed its going to be hot! Prices at this restaurant are very reasonable so a meal here is good value for money.

Even though I was pretty full from my noodle dish I still had to try their Fried Ice Cream. I’ve had all sorts versions of this dessert (the best still being the very first I ever tasted) but I was happy to be introducing Jon and James to this potentially artery-clogging dessert. You can see how confused Jon was about this strange dessert. You must wonder how ice cream could possibly be fried? Well, in this case it involved the ice cream being wrapped in a very thin piece of bread, crumbed and then fried. Not a bad dish. Could have done with less whipped cream.

Finally, last words are that service at Silom Village has always been friendly though today we struggled a little bit with the language barrier. However, surprisingly, we all did get exactly what we ordered! The atmosphere is also quite buzzy though tables tend to be quite close together and cosy.

Definitely an option for good cheap Asian food in Ealing.

Yet another work do! This time for Gary and Caroline who are leaving the team and London but not the employer. Its kind of strange that they’re both leaving at the same time but made for a convenient joined leaving drinks. The venue: the Jugged Hare near Pimlico.

Actually its a very nice pub. The decor inside didn’t feel dated at all. I mean it was obviously a little old but it had worn down quite well. In fact I think the pub even used to be a bank. We also had an area upstairs all to ourselves so we were all able to have a seat. The atmosphere was nice and the service at the bar was efficient and friendly. The food offerings were interesting and of course the focus being on the “jugged hare” (a pie.) In fact I was impressed that they offerred a “pie-tasting” option which gave you a selection of pies to share for two.

Not one of the biggest nights we’ve had but an enjoyable night nevertheless.

My good friend Elvira is expecting a little one in June so on this fine Sunday I trooped over to her house for a baby shower. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been to a baby shower (if I’ve even been to one before) so I wasn’t sure what fun and games to expect when I got there. In fact it was rather civilised - some drinks, a very nice meal, some dessert, more drinks and then the baby talk and reminiscing!

Actually, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it could have been and actually its interesting to find out what’s new in the baby world. For example, did you know that these days you can actually freeze your umbilical cord blood. Why you ask? Certainly not to unfreeze and have for dinner one day! Apparently “umbilical cord blood banking” is becoming a little more main-stream these days as it allows you to keep something that is basically a perfect match for your newborn should he/she come into a health problem in the future. Saves you having to make a baby just to save your other children. Of course this is just another way for hospitals to make money .. then again it does make some sort of practical sense.

Its not often that I come across a genuine Malaysian restaurant in London. I was a bit concerned that being located in the trendy Sloan Avenue area of South Kensington that it was going to be all hype and no substance. To my delight we weren’t disappointed tonight with our meal.

We started off with some drinks at the nearby Bowler Bar and Grill which had a nice happy hour. Its actually a strange kind of bar - the strangest thing being that all the customers in the bar appeared to be female! The table service was a little slow, considering most of the customers were clustered around the bar anyway, and though my Mint Aero Martini was delicious I was surprised to find that it appeared that the glass had just been washed but not wiped down. Strange.

Moving on to Awana we were surprised to find that it was fairly heaving with diners. Probably something to do with the very good bargain which was 50% off their a la carte menu from toptable (of course an offer we were also taking advantage of.) Awana features a satay bar (where you may want to drop in for a quick nibble) and the restaurant. The room is striking and very appealing with warm colours. The chef at the satay bar was also very entertaining as he swirled around his giant pancakes. And the smells of the food all around us - just right.

From the outset the service at Awana was friendly and efficient. I don’t know how many staff members there were but it certainly seemed like there were a lot of them. Additionally it was pleasing to note that they were very helpful in helping us to interpret the extensive offerings on the menu and helpful in their suggestions of combinations to go for. To be honest there were so many things on the menu that I could hardly narrow it down to just one starter, one main and one dessert!

In the end for starters we mainly went for satays with Sandra trying the sajian laut goreng (basically tempura style fried seafood with sweet chilli sauce.) Not that we needed it but we also got some sides of the roti canai (a traditional malaysian style flat bread) to go with a red curry sauce and a dahl curry sauce. All dishes were cooked to perfection. I was particularly impressed with how tender and tasty the corn-fed chicken satay skewers were.

For our mains Amelia and Pauline went with curries and Sandra and I tried ikan panggang - a chargrilled butterfish wrapped in banana leaf with lemongrass, coriander and chilli served with shallot and cucumber salad which actually, for a dry dish, went surprisingly well with a side of coconut rice. The butterfish was divine - once again cooked to perfection and quite juicy.

Finally I couldn’t really go past the desserts. At 50% they were truly a bargain. I had to go with the chendol - pandan pearls with kidney beans in coconut cream with caramel and shaved ice. The other girls didn’t really like but I’m used to these kinds of desserts. It was tasty but its a shame my shaved ice actually became a block of ice!

Our Desserts:

chendol

pannacotta - sorry can’t remember the flavour!	tiga krim chocolate - trio of chocolate mousses, served on a crisp biscuit with raspberry sauce	dadar - pandan pancake roll with sweet coconut

Awana is definitely recommended for those who want to try Malaysian food. Without the current discount the prices may appear to be a little hefty but actually the food is quite good so its not too bad value for money at full price. Can’t wait to go back and try some more satays!

In the last few days I’ve dragged everyone from the team out to lunch to sample the Ealing offerings. It was kind of a Round the World journey with samplings of Japanese, Nepalese and English food.

Okawari

This smallish restaurant serves a wide variety of Japanese dishes from sushi, noodles, rice dishes, curries and teriyaki dishes. The most entertaining aspect for me was walking in to see that everyone appeared to be sitting on the ground to have their meals tatami-style!. In actuality it appeared that there had been holes cut in underneath the tables so you could sit comfortably at the table though Amelia opted to go the cross-legged sit anyway!

The restaurant was fairly packed when we walked in so you could see that it was quite a favourite for Ealing lunching. They have a lunch special which gets you a main dish, miso soup and green tea (free refills.) Portions were generous and food was fairly tasty so good value for money. Staff are friendly. I would have liked to have sampled their sushi and sashimi.

Monty’s

In contrast with Okawari our experience at Monty’s was slightly disappointing. Though the curry that I had was tasty the portion sizes were very small. D’s was so tiny that I doubt he even felt the slightest bit filled. The service too was a little blah as our waiter was quite indifferent. All the good reviews of this restaurant, however, want me to give it a second chance. I guess time will tell whether I visit again.

North Star

North Star is located right near Ealing Broadway so is guaranteed to be quite the popular hang out. They have a food/wine menu printed on cute browned paper which, we presumed, doubled as placemats. The service was a little bit slow both in placing our orders and in actually getting our food. Unfortunately for Jon the person who took is order didn’t pay attention to his request to remove the mayonnaise dressing from his fish finger sandwhich but that, other than the delay in getting our food, were the main negatives to the lunch experience. Food was quite tasty.

Its kind of hard to believe that this is the third year in a row that I’ve ventured down to witness the running of the London Marathon. It felt like a bit of deja vu as both Sandra and I repeated essentially what we did in 2006 to go and see Jules run this 26 miler. Don’t they say that the more things change the more things stay the same??

This time around however, unlike in 2006 when Jules actually ran for Martin, Jules managed to get a spot in the Marathon of his own through his running club. Wee James, along with the rest of his family, also joined our little support group as his sister was running her very first marathon. As in 2006 we started off at Bermondsey before making our way to Embankment. Our only concern was that Jules has been running much faster in the last couple of years so we couldn’t afford to dilly dally too much getting between the two sites. I must admit however we did have time to eat a sneaky sausage roll. Heh heh. (This actually saved us from an apparently horrendous downpour of rain. Thankfully for the runners this was the only spot of bad weather all day.)

We met up with Amelia and Andy, newcomers to London, at Embankment where they had a prime spot for a view of the race standing atop some fences. I wasn’t quite limber enough to get up there so Sandra and I settled on finding a spot by the railings opposite to them, safely on the ground. After seeing Jules go steaming by (there were too many runners this time and too much cheering for him to see or hear us) we rushed off to the end of the race where an unfortunate decision by me took us on a nearly 3 mile detour. Oops. Poor Jules was waiting for us for ages!

I was impressed with his time for the marathon of 3:00:42 which was frustratingly close to him breaking the 3 hour barrier. That pit stop half-way through the race really cost him. Still it was an extreme improvement of cutting his marathon time by 40 minutes in two years. James’ sister also clocked an impressed 4:39:49. Now if only I could find inspiration in their running …

Some photos from today:

Waiting for the runners	The Papp	The Women Leaders

The Wheelchair Leaders	Hope they can see each other	The Male Leaders

Elvis!	Its Jules!	Amelia and Andy

Amelia and Andy again!	Elvis again!	Jules again!

Two things to be chuffed about today - a celeb spot and seeing my brother during his short visit home from Calgary (catching him can sometimes actually be as elusive as a celeb spot - ha ha!)

So, as we making our way through to Covent Garden who should we see quietly having some coffee but Sir Ian McKellen! I couldn’t believe my eyes at first because I am totally rubbish as spotting celebs. He is known for many things but stands out as Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and Magneto from the, ironically, X-Men Trilogy.

After this bit of excitement we made our way to Wahaca - a Mexican place so funky that they don’t take bookings. It prides itself on being Mexican Market style-eating but yet being cool and stylish. It was clear that this has been a winning formula for the venue with lines often nearly out the door and the restaurant, tonight at least, very buzzy. Located in Covent Garden the restaurant, once you get downstairs, was surprisingly gigantic.

As with Wagamama the food arrives as it is cooked (which is nice to know that you’re getting it fresh) so you’re not guaranteed that it will come in any order but when it does arrive, and if you order enough of it, expect it to fill your table. You can go for the Wahaca selection which, for £19.50 gets you a selection of Wahaca’s favourites (about 10 various quesadillas/tacos and taquitos plus slaw and salsas) which I reckon would be enough to fill you. We decided to go a la carte as we also wanted to get some other non-standard dishes such as the main-sized Pork Pibil. We ordered what I thought was reasonable for two people but ended up being way more than I could finish. The chorizo, thyme & potato quesadillas were my favourite dish followed by steak taco. I’m sure I would have appreciated the melt-in-your-mouth pork pibil but was too busy recovering from mistakenly eating the hottest chilli I’ve eaten to date to really get into it. I swear that even hours after consuming it I can feel the burn in my throat. Not pleasant but I guess I should have been on the look out for it!

Service, although very friendly and helpful, was a bit rubbish tonight. It was slow and often it was difficult to find where our waiter had gone. More often than not he had disappeared to the other side of the room. We didn’t mind too much but I think if we’d been in a rush we might have been a bit p’d off.

Overall Wahaca is a fun place to come to try Mexican food in quite a lively atmosphere. The offerings are tasty and with fresh ingredients. Price are also fairly reasonable. If someone has hated Mexican food in the past I would definitely take them to Wahaca to see if you can change their mind. Oh - and another thing that differentiates Wahaca is the offering of chilli seeds in match like books. Nice.

One of the benefits of moving around for work is discovering new venues for eating (something which apparently is high on the 2008 agenda for me.) Ealing has a surprisingly wealth of restaurants and eateries to sample - my only concern was not having enough days there to try it all out!

Today’s choice was the English/French restaurant Charlotte’s Place which had an amazng deal of 50% of their lunch menu - so you could effectively have a pretty high quality 2-course meal for £6 or 3-courses for £7.50! Unfortunately we were kind of pressed for time so could only fit in time for the 2-course meal. The course options (or the Quick Lunch Meal) change on a daily basis so you can never be guaranteed the same dishes two days in a row.

We were lucky enough to get a Pork Belly dish (one of my all time favourites as everyone knows) and a crumble option for dessert (again one of my all time favourites!) I guess this was kind of a reward for braving the hail storm which appeared from nowhere to fall upon us as we made it to the restaurant.

I was quite pleased with my selections. Although the serving for the main dish wasn’t huge the quality and taste could not be faulted. The crumble too was delicious though I would have welcomed a scoop of ice cream over the slightly watery custard that came with it.

Service was very friendly and helpful if absent at times. The owner Alex Wrethman even had a little chat to us on the way out. The location was closer to Ealing Common than Ealing Broadway and is a little bit off the main street and seemingly in the middle of a residential area. But according to Alex there are plans afoot to move the restaurant more towards the Broadway which I think can only help it out.

If there is one good thing that our team at work is good for its organising “dos”. Tonight’s celebrations were for Jon’s Engagement and Akhlaq’s Leaving.

For some of us the celebrations started off fairly early with some drinks at Woodin’s Shades just near Liverpool Street. A few of us managed to get there very early (as we’d been at training and training days hardly last until the traditional end of the day at 5.) And actually it was quite a strange feeling walking about and going to a pub at that time - it almost has that cutting class at school feel to it! After a few hours there we moved on to the main event at Gulshan Tandoori Restaurant. Unlike the last time we did curry near Liverpool street Gulshan was thankfully not too far a hike from the pub.

There were 18 of us going to the dinner at Gulshan and although we kind of had a room to ourselves the restaurant’s layout didn’t really lend itself easily to physically accommodating such a large group. We ended up split at two tables with 12 at one and six at the other. I thought the least they could do was split the tables 50:50.

Service at the restaurant was quite good as we all know its not easy managing a group of our size. In general our food and drinks managed to be delivered to the correct people - which is always a relief. The other plus was that there was no attempt to rush us out of the restaurant at any stage which makes a nice change. My only complaint in relation to the service was how slow they were to deliver our food once we’d ordered. We even started the speeches because we had no idea when the food would come and, as sod’s law would have it, the food came in the middle of Caroline’s speech for Jon.

Food-wise it was a relief to see that many of the curries are quite familiar yet it also had some variety for the more adventurous. Staff were pretty good at answering queries about the types of curries. Quality of food-wise the curries were pretty good - quite tasty and decent-sized portions. Hard to judge whether the curry was value for money because there was quite a lot of alcohol flowing at the table and even after paying for some of the bill with part of the drinks whip it was about £15 (for shared naans, a rice and one curry each) which seems still quite high.

Dinner was followed by a visit to yet another pub where some of the more hardy of us stayed until we got chucked out. I think a good night was has by all.

To my surprise I totally enjoyed tonight’s screening of In Bruge. I didn’t even know much about this movie going into tonight’s preview screening - just the basics of two hit men being told by their boss to go hide out in Bruge.

The hit men are played by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, their boss Ralph Fiennes. All three deliver superb performance. I actually even came to like and admire Colin’s skills by the end of the movie - not something that I expected at all.

As Colin and Brendan bide their time in Bruge waiting for further instruction from Ralph we slowly find out why they have been told to flee England and its not a happy story. In the meantime the days are filled with the guys playing tourist and the night boozing it up … to an extent. Colin’s character hates Bruge whereas Brendan, who kind of plays a father-figure, finds his soul soothed and mind calmed by the beauty that is this medieval city.

Soon though the movie erupts into utter surrealism as they encounter a dwarf (quite possibly one of the highlights of the movie - everyone knows I have a soft-spot for the little people) filming some random Dutch movie, a romantic interest for Colin and some other odd ball characters including an arms dealer. Violence too erupts when Ralph Fiennes enters the picture. Be warned there are some gruesome scenes towards the back end of the movie.

This movie is a great mix of black comedy and emotion and, surprisingly, chemistry between the two leading men - Colin and Brendan. Although you will find yourself wondering where it is all heading, in the end you take it for the ride that it is - a fun, endearing, fresh look at life’s challenges.