Happy Birthday Ah Ma!

Dear Ah Ma,

Millie wants to wish you “Happy Birthday” too!  It’s not midnight here yet so it’s still 22nd September and she’s still in time.  She’s just a little bit late because she’s a nocturnal creature and only just got up!

So once again GM and I, and now Millie too wish you a very happy, healthy, prosperous, lucky and smooth sailing year ahead! ♥

Anniversary Lunch

Happy Anniversary to us!

Happy Anniversary to us!

Happy Anniversary to GM and I……..

Happy Anniversary to us!!!

*(^______________________________^)*

FINALLY after three years, GM and I managed to remember our anniversary.  In previous years we’d get a phonecall in the evening from GM’s mum and the following conversation would ensue:-

GM’s mum:  Hi! =D  What did you get up to today?

Us:  Nothing…………………. why?

GM’s mum:  It’s your anniversary! D=

Us:  ……………………….. oh.

Hahaha.  But this year I made a note in my diary so we wouldn’t forget again and GM and I took the afternoon off to celebrate over a spot of lunch at Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley, a two michelin star establishment.

I met GM outside his workplace (which is very near mine) and we strolled in the beautiful sunshine to the Berkeley.  I love summer! (^_______^)

We were planning to have the lunch menu for £30 per person but in the end we decided to have the tasting menu for £90 per person.  I felt a bit guilty spending that much money on lunch in this sort of financial climate but GM justified it by pointing out that we were celebrating 3 years’ worth of anniversaries at one go.  So, okay! =D

The tasting menu consisted of 9 little courses, if you count the amuse bouches and pre-dessert.  I’m sad to say it made me really bloated because even though the courses were small, it was just too much to eat in one sitting.  So halfway through the meal I started getting gastric pains =(

And this is what we ate:

1)  Amuse bouche: hummous with croutons and confit of foie gras triangles.

Thoughts:  The hummous wasn’t what I was used to, but then it was a 2 michelin star concoction, not a £2 tub from Sainsburys! (I have to confess I actually prefer the Sainsburys……)  Croutons were a bit salty.  I enjoyed the foie gras triangles, but then I always like foie gras.

2)  Bread:  a choice of four breads including Swiss brown and sourdough but I chose the honey and potato.  GM chose the unsalted butter.

Thoughts:  The honey and potato bread was very good, very moreish.  Wonderful texture, chewy bread, crispy crust and slightly sweet aftertaste.  The unsalted butter was a bit unspreadable, I ate it in a slab!

3)  Amuse bouche again:  cold pea soup topped with warm cheddar cheese foam and parmesan breadsticks.

Thoughts:  The parmesan breadsticks were attractive aethestically, being really long.   The soup was really good, especially when you got both the cold soup and warm foam in the same mouthful.  Interesting and delicious.

4)  Pan-fried foie gras, rhubarb, Lapsang tea, gingerbread, quince jelly.

Thoughts:  The pan-fried foie gras was set atop a rhubarb compote and the two really complemented each other.  Apart from that I wasn’t sure what the gingerbread, tea and quince jelly added to the dish.  It didn’t gel for me so I ate the foie gras with the rhubarb and ate the rest of the elements separately.

5)  Honey soused red mullet, Burrata, piquillo peppers and tomato.

Thoughts:  This was another tiny little dish.  There was a tiny sliver of langoustine meat on top of the two little fillets of red mullet which was really delicious.  Burrata is a type of cheese that is not dissimilar to mozzarella and it was gorgeous when eaten with the little sunblushed (?) tomato topped with a slice of garlic, best bit of the dish for me.  I could have eaten a whole lot more of just Burrata with tomato.

6)  Roasted and marinated quail, white onion fondue, butternut squash and baked potato.

Thoughts:  We got two quail breasts on top of sauteed white onion, little (really cute) butternut squash balls with pumpkin (?) seeds, butternut squash puree and accompanied by a baked potato foam.  I was very excited by the thought of baked potato foam and it was interesting whilst being exactly what it was meant to be – a creamy foam that tasted of baked potato.  I liked that.  This dish was one of my favourites as all the elements were very tasty (in particular the butternut squash puree) and worked well together.  However, I think we could have done with less quail, maybe just one breast instead of the two, as it was just a bit heavy even if the dish was tiny.

7)  Scottish scallop, charred asparagus, sauce Matelote.

Thoughts:  Matelote sauce is a red wine with smoked eel sauce which they poured over the scallop.  I didn’t like this sauce at all as the smoked eel had a really unpleasant, fishy taste.  In fact it pretty much spoilt the dish for me.  They should have just left out the sauce and left us to dip the scallop in the asparagus puree if we needed a bit of moisture.  Other than the Matelote sauce, the scallop was garnished with two very thin slices of either uncooked or very underdone cauliflower.  That wasn’t too pleasant neither.

8)  Main courses:  Cumbrian lamb, braised belly, spring vegetables, caraway spatzle

OR  Anjou pigeon, poached and roasted, baby navet, pigeon casserole, glazed morels.

Thoughts:  I chose the lamb.  I expected the mains to be of substantial size since they were, you know, the MAINS.  But they turned up in little portions, just slightly bigger than all the taster dishes we’d had previously.  My lamb was alright, not fantastic but of a good standard.  My favourite bit was the artichokes.  GM let me try his pigeon which I thought was very good.

~  There was an optional cheese course for a £10 supplement after this.  We were too full so we chose to skip it. ~

9)  Pre-dessert:  chocolate and raspberry gateau and a passionfruit jelly with lemon creme and lychee vodka sorbet.

Thoughts:  I didn’t enjoy the little gateau nor it’s accompanying dollop of creamy concoction.  However, I loved the passionfruit jelly, lemon creme and lychee vodka sorbet.  It was tart but not overly so, tangy and refreshing.  Lovely.  I couldn’t really taste the vodka in the sorbet though, they put too little in for drinkers like me hehehe.

10)  Desserts:  Warm chocolate moelleux, banana jelly, banana ice-cream

OR   Granny Smith apple creme, spiced brioche crisps, popcorn, salted caramel ice-cream.

Thoughts:  I chose the chocolate moelleux.  I liked the presentation of my dessert, especially the little squares of banana jelly.  When I first popped a square into my mouth I was so surprised by the intensity of the banana flavour that I exclaimed to GM, “Oh my god, this is fucking good!  Try it!” which made him laugh.  The chocolate moelleux looked like a disc of chocolate cookie but once I cut into it, it was all gooey and chocolatey inside.  Overall I enjoyed this dessert, especially the banana jelly.  I also tried some of GM’s dessert of apple creme and I didn’t like it, mainly because the apple creme tasted very much like, err… when I had too much red wine recently and it had to come back up.  Yikes.  But I really enjoyed his salted caramel ice-cream.

11)  Bon bon trolley.

Thoughts:  After we were done with the menu we were offered coffees and teas, which we declined as my gastric was starting to spasm at this point.  Any more food/ drink would have pushed me over the edge I think.  Any more food/ drink other than the bon bons that is!  They wheeled around their lovely bon bon trolley which was an impressive looking two tiered contraption with around 5 or 6 kinds of different truffles in glass bowls.  I asked for a selection and was given 1) salted caramel, 2) white chocolate and cassis, 3) peanut butter and jelly, 4) chocolate ganache (?), 5) one covered in nuts, 6) Turkish delight and 7) another which completely skips my mind.  I had one bite of each and my favourite was the salted caramel, which is saying a lot as I normally detest caramel.  The white chocolate and cassis was also nice.  The rest were unremarkable but I must give the peanut butter and jelly a special mention because at first bite it was awful, rank even.  I didn’t like that one at all.

OVERALL EXPERIENCE:  Well obviously GM and I enjoyed ourselves – it was an afternoon off work and we were indulging in one of our favourite pastimes, what’s not to like? But let me break it down for you.

The decor of the place was a bit dark but I think if we had visited in the autumn or winter we would have felt right at home, it’s just that stepping out of the bright sunshine made it seem like we were entering a more severe environment than it actually was.  We were given a table next to the window, however, so we can’t complain.

The service was good, almost impeccable apart from one waiter who very nearly flung my pan-fried foie gras on the table at me.  I will excuse him and chalk it down to flamboyance and flair as I couldn’t figure out if he was indeed being flamboyant or if he was a bit short and rude.

The food was also good but I would say that we have had better at other similar establishments, both in terms of quality and value for money.  I felt the tasting menu wasn’t very good value considering we’ve had tasting menus at Claridges, Hospital Road and Nobu and the portions were substantially bigger at all of those restaurants.  I suppose it was a blessing in disguise that the portions were so small today bearing in mind my gastric was already struggling to keep up, but at times I felt like we were eating off side plates.  Also, at £90 per person I just expected more, at least something on par with its rivals.

However, even though I’m citing some negative points to this afternoon’s meal, all together they weren’t enough to mar the afternoon for us.  We had a nice time, the weather was good, we finally celebrated our anniversary and even managed to get home two hours earlier than normal.  All in all a good result!

You might have noticed that this post is very wordy and has not a single picture in it.  This is because I didn’t bring my camera this afternoon, I didn’t think I would want to take any photos!  Anyway, if you miss the photos and want to see some, I am going to Nobu this Sunday and Yauatcha next Saturday so I’ll try to bring my camera then!

Happy GM’s Birthday ♥

It’s GM’s bday today!

Happy birthday GM!  May you have a wonderful, successful, happy, prosperous and smooth sailing year ahead! *(^______^)*

GM’s colleagues at work gave him a huge (and very funny) card and a little Transformers present.  How sweet.  Everybody knows he loves Transformers!

They also gave him this very tasteful, and tasty, present.  Hahaha.

Before his birthday, I asked GM what he wanted to do.  He said, “Nothing really”.  So I planned a very relaxing day of going for sushi, followed by a movie.  However, when GM got up this morning he decided he didn’t want to see a movie after all!  And in the end we didn’t go for sushi neither because he felt like takeaway thai.  And what the birthday boy wants the birthday boy gets!  So I treated him to thai food, from right – pad thai (bit sweet), tom yam soup (good, it was nice and spicy today), green vegetable curry (we always get vegetable curry because we don’t like big hunks of meat in our curry), red vegetable curry (this was better than the green curry today), special fried rice and coconut rice.  We didn’t finish all of it because even though it doesn’t look like much, it was actually really quite a lot.  So that’s thai food for breakfast tomorrow! :D

Incidentally, if you look at the top left of the photo you can make out a steering wheel on a wheel stand.  That’s my birthday present to GM!  The steering wheel that is.  He won’t let me pay for the stand.

In the evening we went over to his parents’ place for a roast that his sister and her bf had prepared for him for his birthday.  How lovely.

GM’s plate of birthday roast.  Yum.  It was roast lamb studded liberally with cloves of fragrant garlic, accompanied by honey carrots and other vegetables, creamy mash, steamed white rice and onions in reduced lamb roast gravy.  Very good.

GM cutting the cake that his entire family baked him.  Isn’t that sweet?  Apparently this was a real joint effort by everyone, from GM’s mum to the kids (GM’s little cousins).  Awww.  I did some of the piping!  I did the chinese words (Gor gor) and some of the letters!

Cross section of the cake.  I think GM was happy.  Which is nice :)  I’m happy that he’s happy!

Happy Bor Lor Yau Birthday Di! * (^______^) *

Dear Di,

Happy Bor Lor Yau Birthday!!  Bet it’s the first time you’ve been wished one of these hehehe.

This is the very nice bor lor bao (pineapple bun) that we ate in HK last year, together with a thick slice of butter (thus making it bor lor yau).  It’s seriously YUM.

If we ever go to HK together, I will bring you for some Di!

GM and I both wish you a very fantastically fun and prosperous year ahead!                 * (^_______________^) *

Still the Third Day of CNY Where I Am!

My boiler’s packed up.  It’s not been working for 3 days.  The man came to repair it today and left with it in “full, working condition” but when we got home it was still broken!  What a debacle.  This means that GM will have to take a day off work tomorrow, what a waste of time.  I’m really annoyed and they will be hearing from me soon.  But only after they’ve fixed my boiler for real haha.

Talking about complaints, this made me laugh for a long time….. and I was at work!  Good job the boss was somewhere else hehe.

It’s Ah Pa’s birthday today!  Well it’s still Ah Pa’s birthday over here but I guess it’s not Ah Pa’s birthday anymore where he is.  I kept thinking that today is the second day of CNY not the third day because there are absolutely no CNY celebrations over here and it’s so hard to keep track of where we are in the Chinese calendar.  Oops.  Sorry Ah Pa.  Happy Birthday =)