Daily Archives: September 16, 2011

Wimbledon Doggies

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After the Walthamstow Greyhound Stadium shut down the Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium remains the only doggie race track in London. I’ve been meaning to go there for a while now but somehow time got away. However, a Groupon offer of £8 for admission for two including a drink and burger each was just too good an offer to pass up. So, I rounded up some troops and off we were.

Getting to the race track is supposed to be quite simple, even by public transport and merely involves taking the train/district line to Wimbledon and then catching a bus … that is, if said bus actually turns up! We waited, with a ton of other people, for over half an hour for the bus to turn up but soon lost patience and hopped in a cab instead. Infinitely quicker and easier and at about £10 for the trip it was not so prohibitively expensive when split between 3-4 people.

Our experience at Wimbledon was vastly different to Walthamstow – where at Walthamstow we’d had comfortable seats and tables from which to view the race track, because we arrived late there were no tables or spare seating left so we made our way instead down to the race track itself. This actually proved to be fun in its own way as you get to see the dogs up close and personal … though it did start to get quite crowded by the track as the night progressed.

As cool as it was to see the dogs we were all there for a wee gamble and (hopefully) a win. I hadn’t really remembered much from my visit to Walthamstow as to how to choose a winning dog and I certainly hadn’t remembered how quickly the races were run! It seemed that just as one race was run the next one was nearly about to start again. As for winning – everyone has their tactics (bet on the big dog, bet on the inside dog, always bet on dog no.2 etc. etc.) but really it all comes down to luck most of the time. Taking a lead from Philomena (who ended up the biggest winner of the night) betting on a win actually wasn’t enough, you really had to start betting on two- or even three-dog combinations if you really wanted to make a decent return. This certainly made it more challenging!

In the end there were winners and losers … but the most important thing was that everyone seemed to have fun!

La Trompette

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It felt just a little bit naughty today to be taking an extended lunch break to meet Laney for lunch at Michelin-rated La Trompette in Chiswick. Even though I was legitimately away from work I had the same feeling that I would get if I’d been wagging the day off from school (not that I ever did that of course ;-))

Lunches are a great way to get that fine dining experience for a lower price – sure you’re not getting the full experience of a sumptuous tasting menu but three courses is certainly more than enough to give you a flavour at least for a restaurant. We’d chosen a beautiful day for lunch at the La Trompette and we were happily seated right by the floor to ceiling windows/doors so had great natural lighting and view out on to the road.

Food at La Trompette was not only gorgeous to look at but it also gorgeous to devour. I had a tough time choosing my dishes by the way as everything sounded equally delicious.

Here are our starters of Rare Grilled Tuna with sauce vierge, celery and black pepper crème fraiche (Laney’s dish) and Roast Quail with spiced aubergine couscous, orange, pomegranate, pine nuts and coriander. I love how they did the quail two ways on my dish. Doesn’t everything look just so scrumptious!

The mains that followed were Parmesan gnocchi with ceps, cauliflower polonaise, baby artichokes and truffle pecorino (Laney’s dish) and Daube de boeuf a la bourguignonne with pomme puree and spinach. I was actually torn between the gnocchi dish that Laney ended up with and my dish but the fact that I generally dislike gnocchi pushed me over to the beef choice. To be fair the gnocchi was pretty good for gnocchi as it had been infused with the parmesan and, if not fried, toasted to a good consistency. My beef was perfectly tender and juicy.

Finally we finished with Crème brulee and Lemon grass panna cotta with passion fruit, pineapple and coconut madeleines. A very lovely finish to our meals! Oh, but wait, they also presented us with petit fours of miniature warmed melty chocolatey cakes (okay I don’t know the technical term!) Not the grandest of petit fours granted but enough for us after the very rich meal we’d just consumed.

Service at La Trompette was efficient and friendly but it did suffer from that thing that seems to happen when the restaurant gets busy – somehow we kept losing our waitress and the service dropped off every so slightly (but noticeable enough) in terms of how slow/fast they were. On the plus they didn’t rush us to leave the restaurant long after we’d finished our meal.