Ferrara's View

English high tea is still a celebration, though an overpriced one at The Savoy

2012-01-22T18:17:00.003Z

One of the classic questions in job interviews is: "are you an optimist, or a pessimist?" Journalism school's infusion of cynicism, and 25 years of banging my head against various corporate brick walls, can incline my knee-jerk reactions to the latter. But I think this blog probably gets to the essential, more positive nature of my character.

Since the turn of the year I could have shared my anxiety over the renovation of my mother's house in St. Louis, sucking in enormous amounts of cash to bring the place up to a standard that will sell. Or the even greater worry about what happens if it doesn't sell. Back home, I could tell you how my property woes continue with expensive repairs to my old house in Datchet, now rented out. I could moan "why me" about the complete collapse of my lovely convertible, which now requires a new engine. (You may sense some stress about cash flow here.)

I could whinge quite a bit about being sick; the hair loss, the lack of energy, and the lingering chest cold that morphed into pneumonia, or the horrible pain every time nurses go digging around trying to hit one of my delicate, hard-to-find veins. I could bore you with my panic over my rapid weight gain (the combo of stress eating and no ability to exercise is lethal). I could explore the frustrations of returning to the office, especially during the nightmare of planning and budget battle season (which I will never do, of course, because I don't blog about my work). Or I could consolidate it all and tell you about the stress dreams that are coming every night, usually about being lost, late for an important date, or both.

But such gloom is not what this blog, or Ellen Ferrara, is all about. I far prefer to concentrate on the fun, cheerful, entertaining and glamorous side of life. Must have been that steady Disney diet in childhood. So today, we're going to talk about afternoon tea.

Back when I was just an eager and occasional British tourist, I had a vague idea that just about everyone in the country paused to drink tea and consume a light, sweet snack around 4pm in a civilised prelude to their late dinners. Moving here, I learned that "tea" is an alternate word for dinner for many people (especially northerners), or the evening meal you serve your kids before putting them to bed and having a proper dinner with your partner. The idea of most people, who barely have time to gulp a sandwich at their desk for lunch, stopping for a sophisticated afternoon ritual is ludicrous. The "tea" that Americans expect has been relegated to holiday afternoons or grand hotels. And the latter are usually filled with foreigners trying to capture a ritual that's only flourishing in the England of Downton Abbey and the other historical dramas that shape the rest of the world's perception far more than reality of this country.

All of which brings us to the Savoy. My visiting American had never had the full on ritual. Turns out I was lucky to get a table. Working 10 days out, on a Wednesday in low-season January, the Ritz and Claridges were already booked. (Recession? What recession?) But the Savoy had a table. I hadn't been there since its recent refurbishment, which closed the place for three years and cost the new Fairmont Hotel group owners more than £220 million. Why not?

The restored and updated Thames Foyer, home to the afternoon ritual, is an architectural triumph. They've opened up the ceiling to natural light for the first time since WWII, filling the central space with a gazebo topped with a stained glass dome, all modern but channelling Edwardian elegance. The room is finished with subtle, classic Georgian decor and generous couches and arm chairs with more of a French feel. It's elegant, sophisticated and you can comfortably settle in for hours.

The tea itself is less impressive, both in experience and taste. Even with the finest of ingredients, I figure the per-head wholesale cost for high tea can't be more than £7. We're talking a couple of scoops of gourmet tea with some hot water; a variety of narrow finger sandwiches with the crusts cut off (generally an allowance of one complete sandwich per person, if you joined up the strips); scones with clotted cream and jam (generally

two each); a variety of gorgeous, mini French pastries and thin slices of cake (about four per person). Even adding in a percentage of staff costs, running costs for the building and the salary for the pianist, you're still making a hefty margin. Because tea in any of the grand hotels is around £40. Add a glass of the heavily promoted champagne, and the tip, and you're crossing the £60 mark.

All of which means this is about the experience, not the meal. It's likely to be for a special event. Given those dynamics, I expect perfection, especially from the service. The Savoy tries, but is not up to standard. The food is average. The sandwiches were the traditional fillings, thinly spread, unremarkable ... and I even tasted a few slices of bread that might have been approaching stale. The scones were fine, but I've had far better in many a countryside tea garden, and the pots of both jam and clotted cream were too small. Sure, you can ask for more, but then you have to wait on the staff. (More on them to come.) The pastries and cakes were the best of the offerings, but this quality is easily bought in from a range of French patisseries in London. I must commend them on having a more savoury tea for the less sweet-toothed, which cut out the scones for scrambled eggs and salmon ... though I wondered why they didn't make the substitute for the much sweeter pastries.

Most impressive on the culinary front is the tea menu itself, which featured multiple pages of beautifully-described exotic teas. It's no wonder part of the renovation is a new tea shop, given that most of this stuff isn't generally available.

Service is genial and, as we've come to expect at every level of London establishment, foreign. Everyone's English was excellent, but nobody got any points for speed. Glasses of water requested while perusing the menu took ages to arrive. We ordered champagne, which seemed to be a signal to the staff to hold back the pots of tea until our glasses were empty. Meaning there was still no sign of the tea to go with the scones, which is about the only food on the planet with which this confessed coffee preferrer thinks the stuff actually works well with. We finally had to ask for it, and our different pots arrived and were poured at different times. Sure, there were five of us, but as this variety is the point of high tea and they had plenty of staff, this shouldn't have been a problem. The more savoury tea was a lovely idea, but they didn't coordinate its serving with the traditional one, meaning Piers was lagging far behind the sweet-toothed girls and had to call over the staff to get two of his four courses started.

Since I know the majority of my payment is going to service, I have to put the Savoy far down my value for money scale. Seeing the restoration was worth it, and the company and occasion (a reunion of our bridesmaids) made for a delightful afternoon, but I'm not setting foot back in the place unless someone else is paying. My own cash ... with more extended reservation time ... would go to tea at Claridges, which impressed me when last I indulged and recently won one of the papers' best tea in London award. And I wouldn't mind trying the Ritz, though I expect to be surrounded by Americans and Chinese. I haven't been since my first London trip in '82, when the then-£20 fee (now £42) was a painful sacrifice. But it served as dinner, and it had to be "done" to say I'd had the full London experience. I can't deny it. That early foray into the sophisticated luxury of one side of English life, no doubt, influenced my desire to move here and the entertainment choices I've made since.

Clearly, my tea cup is ... and has always been ... half full.

Locatelli's back on form, while L'Ortolan gives culinary cred to Reading

2012-01-18T18:46:00.004Z

It's a rare and wonderful thing to hit two Michelin-starred restaurants within a week. Something I haven't done in years, and something quite unexpected while still working quietly from home while dealing with the chemotherapy. But the motivation mounted: I wanted to pamper my visiting friend, I had a coupon and I got a sign from God.

Anne, the closest thing I have to a sister, returned to London after the whirlwind tour of serving as my matron of honour for the wedding. This time, it was to be all about R&R, and her birthday. She wanted to look after me and have a quiet life, reading, watching TV and generally relaxing. A very far cry from the action-packed, pressure-driven life driven heavily by a 3-year-old back in St. Louis. Toddlers, I have been told, aren't really conducive to relaxation. Much less to high-end restaurants. So I thought we'd lay it on thick.

For Anne's birthday, we started at Nirvana Spa, which I've joined since that great outing with my bridesmaids in September. (See 14.9.11) We soaked in the hot jet pool, napped on the heated ceramic lo

ungers in the twilight-lit, Morroccan inspired fountain court and had a dainty ladies' lunch. The virtue of which was undermined by a shared bottle of Pinot G

rigio. Then it was off to the nearby one-starred L'Ortolan, which had sent a five-course for £45 invitation out to all spa members. How could one say no?

L'Ortolan occupies a charming old vicarage house in a village on the outskirts of Reading. It's not the kind of place you'd expect to find such high end cooking. (Reading would never make the "exclusive" list and the village of Shinfield is isolated and otherwise entirely residential.) The restaurant has maintained the feel of a private house; you enter into the staircase hall, turn right for the bar which extends into the conservatory, left for the restaurant that occupies the rest of what were once the lounges. Upstairs are three private dining rooms and I sense from the website that they do a roaring trade in small special events.

The food is solidly in the modern, French-inspired gourmet range, with innovative pairings, exquisite presentation and all the latest cooking trends. We went for matching wine flight, which of course blows the value-for-money curve, but is always my preferred way to do a chef's menu. Especially when you have a good sommelier, as this one was, who's ready to chat about the pairings.

We started with confit salmon (cooked "souvide", of course. Can any chef resist the slow water bath at the moment?) with olive oil jelly, beetroot, pink grapefruit and liquorice oil. I know, it sounds like a bizarre combo, but it worked well. Brought together by an Austrian Grüner Veltliner. Yes, I know this variety. But only as the fruity, somewhat raw stuff you drink in tankards during new wine celebrations in the taverns of Grinzing. Usually at some stage before climbing on top of the table and pretending to be able to sing in German. This one was sophisticated and well balanced, making the grape worthy of further exploration.

Next, the foie gras course, with white wine jelly, raisin puree and smoked duck. Could have had seconds. Served with a gewürztraminer that was drier that the usual foie gras pairing, but held up ... perhaps

because the jelly and the raisins were bringing in the sugar from elsewhere. Next onto skate for a main course, layered with chicken mousse and watercress panna cotta, dressed with samphire, brown shrimp and cockles in their exquisite little shells. An elegant dish, made more so by the white Burgundy from Saint-Veran that gave off a wonderful little hit of peach on the first nose.

Then came a cheese course. Not the traditional cheese trolley wheeling up for your choice (though they have one of those as well), but the chef's selection of a blue cheese and a small goat's cheese parcel rolled in hazelnuts. Served with a very agreeable port that made Piers, the evening's designated driver, quite glum he couldn't indulge. Finally a plate of rhubarb multiple ways for dessert: as compote, ice cream, crisp and poached. Served with an Asti moscato, the first sparking dessert wine I've ever had, but it won't be the last.

At just a 25-minute drive from the house, L'Ortolan is worthy of note as a local "special event" restaurant. The problem, of course, is that it is a drive, meaning one person will always have to forgo the wine. But, unlike its London fellows, they do seem to do more deals to bring in the diners. One to keep an eye on.

That was meant to be the big treat of the visit. But with my chest cold refusing to clear, my oncologist had set up a day of tests, culminating with a visit to a chest specialist, the afternoon of Anne's arrival. The plan was to pick her up at Heathrow, drive into town, do the medical stuff, meet up with

Piers for dinner and drive home. Giorgio Locatelli's new cookbook and series inspired me to call the restaurant, which isn't too far from the medical crowd on Harley Street. He's always booked months in advance, but there might be a cancellation... And sure enough, there was my sign from God that he wanted me to give Giorgio another try: a table available at 6:30.

I'm delighted to report that Locatelli's is back on form, after the disappointment there last year that saw it slip from my No. 1 slot. (See 21.5.11) Anne and I started with the papardelle with wild boar sauce, which really is one of the supreme winter comfort foods of the Italian kitchen and exquisitely done here. Piers went with an equally satisfying pasta with wild mushrooms. It was definitely a winter menu and we all opted for comforting, warming main courses: rabbit, veal, venison. All beautifully cooked, with highly flavoured sauces served atop decorative yet delicious sides. And, unlike most French-based Michelin starred places, these are plates substantial enough that you're challenged to finish them. The sommelier was on hand to recommend an interesting and moderately-priced (for this wine list) Puglian red that had all the deep fruit we needed for our respective meats.

There were no cannoli to tempt me to disappointment on the dessert menu. I went surprisingly simple (and at £5,50, the bargain of Giorgio's menu) and went for the ice cream. The pistachio here is a real standout, made, so I read in the new cookbook, from nuts from Bronte that are considered the best in

the world. If the gelato was anything to go by, it must be true. Anne was duly impressed by the Locatelli classic cheese plate with the matching honey pots. Piers, however, was let down by the tiramisu, which was beautifully served in an oversized martini class but not enough of anything besides delicately flavoured whipped cream to make much of an impact.

Overall, a delicious and deeply satisfying meal. But does it put Giorgio back in my No. 1 spot? Probably not, I must admit. Not because of quality of food or service, but on the value for money scale. Regular readers will know I've increasingly become a fan of the tasting menu. Let the chef direct you, and graze over a variety of five or six smaller courses to experience a complete culinary picture. Locatelli's does not do, and has never done, tasting menus. You are on your own for three courses. Or, if you really wanted to push the boat out, you could do the traditional Italian four, with antipasti, pasta, main and sweet. But the servings here are large enough to make that rather excessive. And expensive. Three courses and with generous wine at Locanda Locatelli will cost you about the same as a tasting menu and wine flight at other places, and while Locatelli's place scores high on the satisfaction and comfort index, it's not the rounded experience that a chef's menu might give you.

I still have to ask myself ... if London had better Italian restaurants overall, would Locatelli's be so exceptional? And able to charge such a premium? While I have not had any better Italian in England, I've had plenty of equivalent meals, for much less, in the Italian countryside. Given the cost and time of travel, however, I suppose Giorgio nets out OK if you consider him not just a meal, but a quick trip to Italy. He's still in my top five.

Random musings from the sick bed

2012-01-08T19:00:00.011Z

What an odd 11 weeks it's been. Time seems to have flown as quickly as ever, despite the fact that I've spent most of it in bed or on the couch. Free of corporate politics, deadline pressures and a packed social diary, you'd think time would crawl. No. Life continues upon its rapid pace, but with a different focus. A more esoteric focus, perhaps, as my waking hours have mostly drawn in to books, TV and the internet, as anything more active than a short walk is just too much effort.

Here are some random observations from my sedentary life.

I shall be slower to bash the long-term unemployed.

Though few people will be so vocal in front of strangers, get any group of middle class professionals going on the long-term unemployed, or, indeed, on most people on benefits, and the attitude is pretty harsh. Why don't they just get a job? Easier said than done for many reasons, but after 10 weeks off sick I realise it may not be because they're lazy bastards, or because there are no jobs out there. It may be that their minds have atrophied beyond the ability to embrace a work ethic. Work is no different than a tough gym workout. Do it every day, you get used to it. The longer you lay off it, the more alien it seems. I'm back to work this week ... part time, as I have the energy, and on background projects ... and it is HARD.

Concentrating on a tightly-packed, activity-mandated eight hour stretch after weeks of complete freedom is a challenge. The bad bits of the job look worse, and the challenges steeper, after time away. How much more difficult if approached after a long break, when real fear would have built up about whether you could handle such things. The brain is like a muscle, responding best when trained to handle certain tasks. If you've allowed it to go stale for a long time, the re-entry would be difficult, if not impossible. Of course, my brain's far from dead. It just hasn't been thinking about anything modern or corporate. Instead...

Tolkien deserves his reputation, many of his imitators do not.

The first thing on my reading list, with weeks of time stretching before me, was The Lord of the Rings. These are perhaps the most critical books of my husband's formative years, and he still finds joy in re-reading them, and in a role-play version of the world on line. I've always been more of a Chronicles of Narnia girl, never making it past the mid-way point of The Two Towers back in high school. But I've enjoyed Peter Jackson's films and read plenty of fantasy indebted to Middle Earth, most notably George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, of which I am an avid fan. So, in order to fill in a shocking gap in my core reading, and to bond better with my husband, it was time to knock off the whole trilogy.

It deserves its magnificent reputation. I don't think I was old enough on my first attempt, thus got bogged down in the gloom of the second book. But it really is a delight, and so obviously the mother of a genre. The complexity, the depth, the rich characterisation are all so much better than much of what's being written now. I emerged with not only an increased respect for Tolkien, but for Peter Jackson, whose accomplishment of putting together the films is even more obvious after reading the source material. Ditto my admiration for Martin who, on close examination, does indeed deserve all those comparisons to Tolkien. Sadly, modern writer Christopher Paolini doesn't fare so well.

My next book after LOTR was Inheritance, the fourth and concluding book in the series he started with Eragon. Having read the first three, I was compelled to wrap it up, but it was a trial. Maybe I wouldn't have been so hard on it had I not just emerged from Middle Earth. But it was badly in need of editing, far too derivative of Tolkien's original and just plain boring. Why his publishers didn't force him to combine books three and four and wrap things in a traditional trilogy, I'll never know. (Well, yes I do. Profit.) The fantasy genre in the hands of masters like Tolkien and Martin is worthy literature; Inheritance was just painful.

I finally understand Thomas More

I've been balancing my reading with a steady diet of BBC documentaries, fed up on demand on my iPad via iPlayer. One quirky little show was on the education of his daughter, Margaret More, using her as a focal point for looking at the details of a humanist education of the 16th century. (Arguably, one of the best ages for a liberal arts education ever.) The presenter emphasised that Cicero was an almost sacred text. Everyone would be familiar with him, and every lawyer would know him intimately as one of the founding fathers of the profession. Which triggered a revelation for me. I've never been able to fully understand More stubbornly sticking to his principles, leaving his family behind and going to the scaffold in opposition to Henry VIII's marital and church manipulations. But if you're a Cicero worshipper, it all falls into place. Just like the great Roman, you're taking a stand against tyranny. And like him, your stand will take you to a noble death. More was following a historical precedent established and well known by all those who shared his education.

Maybe I do want to visit Jerusalem

The Holy Land has never even approached my top 20 travel destinations. To say I had no desire to go there is an understatement; I'd probably actively avoid it, given how many other destinations in the

world I'd find more interesting. Why, in that area alone Petra, the crusader castles, the ruined city of Palmyra or the beach resorts of the Red Sea all seemed a far better use of time.

I can thank Simon Sebag-Montefiore for getting me to re-think my opinion. His three part history of Jerusalem on the BBC was absolutely fascinating, liberating the city from religious hyperbole and modern strife, instead putting it in a historical context as a city drenched in the culture, stories and architecture of many notable societies. I was so captivated I downloaded the accompanying book and tore through it at high speed. It is an epic story filled with scores of fascinating characters, the majority of whom you've probably never heard of. The Caliph Hakim (aka the Arab Caligula) and the crusader Queen Melisende could both carry their own feature films. Architecturally, Sebag-Montefiore goes beyond the look at the usual religious sites to introduce a layered city where most buildings combine notable architectural elements from a variety of great empires. Of course, it's a tragedy as well, the most illuminating thing in this history being the fact that over 3,000 years more bloodshed ... and far more lost opportunity ... has come from arguments within religious groups than between them.

So if someone wants to drag me to the Holy Land in the future, I won't be so reticent. As long as I have my copy of SS-B's book on my Kindle to lead the way.

Giorgio suggests Sicily has arrived

One of my best Christmas presents was Giorgio Locatelli's new cookbook, entirely devoted to Sicilian food. That a Northern Italian, Michelin-starred chef would write what's essentially a hefty love letter to Sicily is a surprise. One compounded by his new television show on the BBC, where he wanders the island with his mate Andrew Graham-Dixon, art historian and Caravaggio expert. (Two intelligent, sexy, middle aged men wandering around Italy indulging in art and food ... this is pornography for the cultured woman.)

On my first trip to Italy, I spent the summer with a wealthy family outside of Milan, who shared their class' horror of Sicilians. Lazy, useless, a drain on the national economy ... take every bad opinion of ghetto dwelling American blacks, transpose it to Italy and you have the opinion. I kept my mouth shut about my origin. If Europeans went to Sicily at all, it was to get cheap beach villas, ignoring the poor ... and perhaps even dangerous ... inhabitants. The new cookbook and the TV show indicate a sea change. Europeans are looking at Sicily seriously as a cultural destination. The mafia is a spent force and culinary exports are highly prized. Looks like it might be time to be proud to be Sicilian.

PD James brings Austen back to life

Another favourite book of my sick leave was Death Comes to Pemberly, crime writer PD James' homage to Jane Austen. James takes Pride and Prejudice and extends it, with such literary dexterity in the early chapters you'd swear you were reading an actual Austen manuscript someone had just unearthed from her Hampshire attic. Many people have attempted Austen sequels, and I've read a fair number, but I've never read one that captures both the tone and mood of the original so well. Of course, James being James, our plot soon becomes a murder mystery. It's not the trickiest of plots; I'm not sure a fan of the crime genre would be that gripped. But it's enough for any Austen fan to delight. Particularly as James doesn't just bring the former Misses Bennett into the action. References to characters from other Austen classics waft through the plot, giving you a delightful sense that this is a real world, where all of those classic characters co-exist and might, on one eventful night in Bath or London, actually bump into each other at the Assembly Rooms. As with the TV show described above, this was so good, it too can be described as pornography for the cultured woman. Or just the literary equivalent of a very large box of Godiva chocolates. Pure bliss.

The Frette sheets are worth every penny

And finally ... I've always considered bedding to be an important investment. After all, even when you're healthy, you're spending at least a third of your life there. So I've never had an issue investing in the Hungarian goose down pillows and duvets, the high thread count sheets and the best blankets. But, admittedly, over the years I have wondered if the £300 I laid out on my various Frette sheet sets were worth it. I mean ... it seemed reasonable to me at the time, I got all three sets for at least 50% off ... but more than a few people's jaws have dropped at the price tag for sheets. (Not my mother, bless her. Joanlee knew a bargain when she saw it.) The oldest of those sheets is now a decade old, and still like new. And you know what? Given the amount of time I've spent in bed the past three months, that cotton is more than just a sheet. I sink into the crisp, heavy, cool luxury, settle my now chemo-balded head into that hungarian down, and feel like I'm in a 5-star hotel somewhere very far away. Not in suburban Basingstoke, fighting chemo side effects and a chest cold and watching time go by until I finally feel human again. Yup. That's worth the money.

Quiet and full of free time, it's the most organised Christmas ever

2011-12-30T17:26:00.011Z

The run up to Christmas is, usually, crazed. There's that inevitable surge of work before the holidays, paired with the round of unmissable work related parties and the need to see all your friends before they disappear home for the holidays.

Being off on sick leave transforms things. No mania, no business. Quiet. Enormous stretches of sleep. (The side effects from the first chemo treatment have mostly been exhaustion. Far worse has been a bad cold with chesty cough that settled in on the 12th and is still hanging in there.) I am more organised on the holiday front than at any time in my life.

Decorations were up around the house by the 1st. I bought my last Christmas present on the 15th. I baked eight varieties of Christmas cookies: pignoli (an Italian macaroon-like disk

topped with pine nuts); cherry biscotti; chocolate chip; sugar-free chocolate chip; white

chocolate and macadamia nut; raisin bars

(using the recipe from the Party Pastry Shop in Chesterfield, Mo.); gingerbread; rolled vanilla shaped by cookie cutters. The

last two formed the basis of a cookie decorating evening with my godson Sacha and his siblings, before we settled into a more grown up dinner with his parents.

The cookies formed half of our home-crafted Christmas gifts. The other half was alcoholic. Inspired by those infused rums we tasted in Mauritius, Piers and I decided to play around with infused alcohols. We made apple and cinnamon flavoured vodka, vanilla rum, bramble gin (infused with blackberries, blueberries, damsons and a bit of rhubarb) and Tuscan vodka (infused with sun-dried tomatoes, basil and a bit of lemon).

I also messed about with candle making, but couldn't get those to a quality I was satisfied with giving away. There lies a continuing craft project for the winter. A project, by the way, that already makes me appreciate why good scented candles are so expensive. Unlike the alcohol, the DIY option here is no big cost saver.

Having reached these levels of domestic goddess-dom, I turned to my computer and did something I've been meaning to for years: a detailed Christmas card spreadsheet. Track what's come in, what's gone out. Track annually, eliminating sending cards to anyone from whom you haven't received in two consecutive years despite your mailing to them. Sound theory, though I think I've finally gotten around to this level of organisation as the tradition dies. 68 sent, 27 received. I'll continue the traditional approach for one more year before I consider transitioning yet another aspect of life online.

Christmas Eve brought lows and highs. My hair started coming out in great handfuls. Exactly between two and three weeks after the first treatment, as the books said. Fortunately, Ferrara hair is so thick that we can loose a lot of it before showing any impact, getting me to midnight mass looking normal. Bef0re church, however, we went for a nice meal.

Finding a restaurant open on Christmas Eve is a challenge. My top two options near church were closed, by next booked. We ended up at the Thomas Cubitt, an upscale gastropub I'd enjoyed at a business dinner a couple of years ago. (See 9.12.08) It's a classic English menu, with presentation and fine touches taken up several notches. Highlights were my scallop and black pudding starter and our mains: pork belly for Piers and a succulent venison for me. Piers Mum reported her salmon Wellington good but a bit overcooked. Desserts of chocolate fondant, Christmas pudding and cheese board all looked good and tasted fine, though not exceptional. The upstairs dining room is a beautiful space. Classically Georgian with plaster moulding, fireplace and sash windows overlooking Elizabeth street, it's painted in a soft grey and decorated with black and white photos of the legacy of Thomas Cubitt, architect and master builder of the mid-Victorian age. An fine choice for this area, keeping up the quality I found on my first visit, but not value for money. Three courses, two vegetable sides, one bottle of wine, one glass of house red, three glasses of port ... £70 per person. About £10 past what I thought the meal was worth.

Oh well, it was Christmas. And the five minute dash to church from there meant that we got excellent seats for the spectacle of midnight mass. First, candlelight carols. The golden altar looked magnificent, glittering beneath the brass chandelier and the towering candlesticks. More delightful for me than the carols themselves, which combined several I didn't know with three traditional ones that are sung to different melodies in the UK. A lovely concert but, for me, missing the joyful ability to sing along. The drama kicked it up a notch with the procession of the clergy ... 10 on the altar for the big night ... and a dramatic ringing of hand bells when the main lights were thrown on. The highest of high masses followed, featuring Haydn's St. Nicholas Mass, a ceremonial laying of Christ in the manger and our vicar, Father David, handing out chocolates at the door afterwards. A nice mix of drama and community.

We spent Christmas ... our first together ... at home alone. We exchanged gifts, watched TV, rested and indulged

ourselves. Piers took on cooking duties and serving up a very Danish meal, with home-cured gravad lax followed by duck with bilberry sauce, red cabbage and fondant potatoes. A few luxury cheeses, ending with slices of our wedding cake (which has been preserved in rum since September) and port.

We emerged from our solitude for a family Boxing Day lunch at my brother-in-law's in Putney, for which I got to contribute the dessert.

I opted for Heaven and Hell cake, the signature recipe of Dallas' master chef Stephen Pyles. It's a layered concoction of angel food cake, devil's food

cake and peanut butter mousse, iced with chocolate ganache. Not difficult, but not for the time constrained. I counted no less than six hours of prep time. Another sweet consequence of this season's bonus of free time.

Da Vinci exhibit deserves its accolades; not just for the paintings, but for context and big picture

2011-12-05T08:00:00.013Z

Museum exhibitions can change lives. At least in the Ferrara family.

A touring collection of treasures from the Vatican museums in mymother's childhood (sent out to raise money for restorations after the trauma of WWII) set her on a firm path as an artist and art historian. During my senior year at university, I couldn't afford to get to Washington for The Treasure Houses of Britain exhibition. Later, descriptions of the show and its contents set a blueprint for holidays that eventually led to me settling in England. I suspect Leonardo Da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan will have life-changing effects on many. It is certainly a show that deserves the much overused accolade of "blockbuster".

This is the biggest show in London this year, and in recent memory. Its claim to fame is bringing together more Da Vinci paintings than have ever been on view in one place before. Given how few he actually finished, there's a good proportion of his work here.

For me, there were three specific highlights.

The Lady with the Ermine (Cecilia Gallerani). An incredibly famous work I never thought I'd see, as she lives in Krakow. More on her in a moment.
The two versions of the Virgin of the Rocks, one from the Louvre and ours from the National Gallery (below on the left, recently cleaned and restored to dramatic effect). I'd seen both of them before, but being able to stand between them and compare and contrast is fascinating.

A full-sized copy of the Last Supper done by one of Leonardo's pupils before the original started to deteriorate. I didn't even know this existed. It is supposed to be a remarkably accurate copy, giving you a sense of the colours, expressions and details that would have been in the original.

Curators are likely to add a fourth here: the revelation of a newly-authenticated, previously unknown Da Vinci called Salvator Mundi (saviour of the world, as in, a portrait of Jesus). It is fascinating, and interesting, but was a bit of an anti-climax for me after the aspects above. And even if it is by the master, it doesn't have the emotional depth and other-worldly beauty of some of the other pieces.

Despite the superlative of "most in one place ever", there are only nine of Leonardo's paintings here. For two ... both the Salvator Mundi and the Madonna Litta from the Hermitage ... the attribution is questionable. So how do you build a whole show around so few paintings, and make sure the punters get their money's worth? Adult tickets were almost £20, which is lofty.

Here's where you have to give the curators some real respect. Leonardo was as prolific with his sketching pencil as he was frugal with his paintbrush, and thanks to the Royal Collection and the British Museum, a large proportion of those sketches can be borrowed from resources just up the artistic road.

Thus in each room we have one or two of the masterpieces, surrounded by related sketches and works by Leonardo's pupils. It helps us to understand what drove the great man, how he

worked and how he influenced all of artistic life at the Sforza court.

The best illustration of this is the room anchored by two gorgeous portraits. One, La Belle Feronniere, is probably Ludovico Sforza's wife Beatrice d'Este. The other, the aforementioned Lady with the Ermine, is his 16-year-old mistress.

In both cases, Leonardo was more concerned with creating an ideal beauty than depicting reality. (And, frankly, both of these portraits are far more spectacularly beautiful than the Mona Lisa.) In the series of sketches we see not only how he created perfection with the women, with obsessive studies to find the perfect finger, forehead or

eyebrow line, but even how he applied his composite approach to the ermine.

A symbol of the Sforzas, having Cecilia hold one marked her as Ludovico's. Thus Da Vinci needed an idealised animal: strong, handsome, noble, sexual. We see sketches of dogs' paws, and a gorgeou

s study of a bear's head, all used to

create a gorgeous creature that's half ermine, half mythical beast and entirely memorable. I suspect Ludovico was pleased.

The approach is particularly effective with the true-to-life-sized copy of the Last Supper. I have been lucky enough to see the real thing three times and, frankly, seeing this copy and all the sketches was a lot more impressive. This is not to take anything away from Da Vinci or the valiant curatorial team at Santa Maria delle Grazie. It is a masterpiece. But it's a faded wreck, and the copy is a vivid glory. It hangs dramatically over the gallery, while all around you can see Leonardo's specific studies for different apostles' heads, feet and movements. It is a masterstroke of curation.

There is something beyond painting in the best of Da Vinci's work. Stand before the National Gallery's Virgin of the Rocks, pristine in is new restoration, gaze into the angel's face, and the room disappears. You don't sense people or the architecture around you, or the painting's frame, or even the rest of the scene. You're simply drawn in by that face, more beautiful and serene than anything in your real life. That, of course, is the point of both devotional paintings and idealised portraiture, but few artists really achieve it. Leonardo's work transports you to another reality.

If you don't already have tickets for this exhibition, I'm afraid you're unlikely to get in. All tickets through its close on 5 February are sold out. There are a handful of tickets released each day on a first come, first served basis, but the news reports people are queuing for three hours or more and they sell out quickly every day. Is this a show worth sleeping in a cold and rainy Trafalgar Square for? Quite possibly. I, for one, am glad I responded to the National Gallery's marketing and booked in June. In this case, advanced planning paid fine dividends.

Lion in Winter and First Actresses make fine theatrical-themed holiday treats

2011-12-03T12:32:00.008Z

Theatre is one of the exceptional glories of London. I'm not talking opera, ballet or musicals (though there are plenty of those), but proper plays, well produced and often anchored by stars of global renown. It is a point of guilty regret that I only seem to get to one of these a year.

The show that got me to the box office in 2011? The Lion in Winter. Its film adaptation would be one of my "desert island videos", and though I was aware it was based on a stage play, I'd never had

a chance to see it live. The Theatre Royal Haymarket indulged me, and all other fans of cutting wit and verbal repartee, with a revival anchored by Robert Lindsay and Joanna Lumley.

This is the ultimate dysfunctional family story; a very modern exploration of damaged relationships set in a distant past. It's 1183. Henry II gathers his family for Christmas. He's cobbled together the greatest empire since Charlemagne, but he's troubled by who will follow and the legacy he'll leave. Joining him is his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, once his great love match but now a political enemy held prisoner for a decade because she backed a rebellion against him. They each have different ideas

about who should take the throne next. Eleanor supporting the eldest, Richard, Henry backs baby John and nobody supports clever middle son Geoffrey. A parental division which, of course, puts all the sons at each others' throats while making them distrust their parents. Joining this tense gathering is the young king of France, who's elder half-sister has grown up in the English court, betrothed to Richard since she was seven but who is now Henry's mistress. In one intense, 24-hour period plans rise and fall, alliances change, secrets are revealed and relationships falter.

What makes The Lion in Winter so special to me is the sparkling writing. This could have been a straightforward, tense, dark, drama. But it's a glitteringly clever comedy, too, with all those moments of sharp passion cut by wry one-liners. (Eleanor, after a particularly bitter confrontation during which all the relationships have imploded painfully, shrugging her shoulders and saying "oh well, all families have their ups and downs.")

It's brave actors who even consider following in the footsteps of Richard Harris and Katherine Hepburn in the film version. Though not quite as good as their mighty predecessors, Lindsay and Lumley have the talent to carve their own identity on the roles. I've been a Lumley fan since her Ab Fab days and have an enormous respect for the travel programmes and political campaigns she appears in as herself. But I'd never had the chance to see her on stage. She was a more flirtatious Eleanor than Hepburn, who was all iron. Lumley's portrayal offered more of the feminine wiles that covered the master politician. Lindsay, on the other hand, I'd seen in a great version of Richard III in 1999, when I first discovered his tremendous range. (He's known more as a comic TV actor here, but his dramatic heft is impressive.) They each capture the sense of ageing without grace that's so essential to the characters, and make the love/hate relationship between them entirely credible.

It was only after seeing the play that I read the reviews, which are universally poor. Crit

icisms of facial expressions and costuming I can't agree or disagree with; we were in the balcony. But from there, everything looked fine. All of the reviewers bashed the play itself, and several used its likeness to Blackadder as a criticism. And there's the difference. It's precisely because this is Blackadder turned serious drama that I love it. So I'll leave you to make your own decision from there. If you're a fan of historical drama, wit and clever banter, it's on 'til 28 January.

Just around the corner at the National Portrait Gallery is another theatrical treat. The First Actresses: Nell Gwynn to Sarah Siddons gathers together the depictions ... many of them quite famous ... of the actresses that rose to prominence on the London stage from the first legalisation of female acting in the Restoration through the Regency period. As ever with the NPG, while portraits are the visual fodder, the exhibition explanations and catalog help you to understand life stories, and through them, the times themselves.

Acting was a scandalous profession, something no fine lady would consider, and yet the stories revealed here make it clear it was packed with vivacious, intelligent, powerful wo

men. Women who channeled their exceptional charisma into acting then, but might have easily been politicians or corporate executives as much as media stars today. Though they may not have been considered "good" society, most had fascinating lives, and they certainly didn't all have bad ends.

We start with Nell Gwynn, who ended up a popular mistress of Charles II and, through him, matriarch of two English aristocratic families. (They're still around. I once spent an evening knocking back port in a cellar with one of them.) Another aristocratic line comes from the union of William IV and Dorothy Jordan, whose three dramatic portraits here leave you no doubt that she was gorgeous and interesting. While her royal children did well she ended sad and strapped for cash; she'd stayed faithful to her lover, but when he became king he was forced to put her aside, after more than a decade, and marry. Mary Robinson (pictured here in Hoppner's famous work), was also known as "Perdita" from one of her more famous roles, did slightly better after briefly being the mistress of William's brother George IV when he was a prince. She went on to be a poet, playwright and respected authority on the Georgian arts scene.

In fact, most of the women in this exhibition did fairly well for themselves. Some married into the industry and retired to management (Elizabeth Ann Linley, who married the playwright Sheridan). Some were so alluring they got the full marital prize from their admirers. Lavinia Fenton became the Duchess of Bolton, Elizabeth Farren the Countess of Derby. Sarah Siddons, after locking her reputation as the finest tragic actress on the London stage, went on to become tutor to George IIIs daughters. Her full length portrait here is as dignified and stately as any Jane Austen heroine. Of course, there are the tragic young deaths, a few addictions and plenty of sexual impropriety on display as well. A fascinating preview of our modern age, as is the cabinet of little statuettes of the actresses in some of their leading roles, and the display of first editions of their memoirs. Clearly, the cult of celebrity is nothing new.

The show spreads over just four galleries and, like most NPG shows, isn't very crowded. There are exhibition catalogs scattered on benches throughout, allowing you to linger, read the stories of the various women, look into their engaging faces and speculate on what they were really like. This show is a lot less known, but a heck of a lot easier to get into, than the far more famous exhibit around the corner. That's coming next.

A lot of tradition and a few gourmet touches mean a Thanksgiving unlikely to be repeated

2011-11-27T18:27:00.007Z

Last entry I wrote that eight courses, with balance and discretion, can leave you feeling light and energised. At the opposite end of this spectrum we have Thanksgiving, where just a few courses can leave you feeling like you've swallowed lead weights and need a nap immediately. Still, it had to be done.

As I establish the routines of my married life, there are a handful of traditions, some family and some American, I'm passionate about keeping alive. At the top of this list is Thanksgiving. You don't realise just how wonderful this holiday is until you move to a country without it. A day specifically set aside to count your blessings and give thanks for them. A holiday filled with family and friends, but without the pressure of gifts or excessive decoration. A formal start to the Christmas season.

These things have nothing to do with food, and yet the procession of dishes required at the table is as formulaic as the words of a church service.

It's just not Thanksgiving without ...

If you're American born and bred, you'll end this sentence with three or four essential dishes. (In addition to the turkey, of course.) While the basic components are the same, every region and every family has its own culinary traditions, without which the holiday would not be complete. Americans have no problem with variety at Christmas, but don't mess with the Thanksgiving menu!

We had six friends over, and I wanted to produce a classic Midwestern, Ferrara/Wallemann family table. The dishes I grew up with.

Five things strike you immediately when putting together this particular meal instead of our typical dinner party:

The predominant elements of the Thanksgiving menu are starch and sugar. Nobody planning a balanced meal would ever whip this up.
The number of side dishes is wildly out of proportion with the mains.
Traditional Thanksgiving recipes rely heavily on processed food products (Libby's tinned pumpkin, French's fried potatoes, Karo syrup, tinned sweet potato) that are hard to find here, requiring specialist sourcing or timely work-arounds.
Turkey is a rare bird here. Forget the loss-leader approach, where you get your free 20-pound Butterball when you spend $200 at Schucks. You can't even find frozen turkeys here outside of Christmas, which forces you to order birds direct from specialist farms. Making this menu far more expensive than the typical dinner party.
Thanksgiving is usually a pot luck affair, with everyone bringing a dish. It's actually a hell of a lot of work if you're doing it all yourself. But you can't really ask the Brits to bring anything, because they aren't familiar with the traditional recipes.

I write this last point as a reminder to myself for next year. I've rolled out all the traditional dishes once. Next time, I'll be doing a Thanksgiving-themed dinner party instead, with more balance, fewer sides and a lot less work. But for the inaugural Thanksgiving in the Piers Bencard household, I think we can proclaim a success.

So what featured in this Midwestern feast? Guests nibbled on crab dip and cheese and sausage balls as everyone gathered. The latter is always a big hit, simply mixing Bisquick with cheese and cooked sausage, pressing into bite sized balls and baking. No Bisquick in this country, however, so there's the first of the "convenience" recipes that took extra time.

My first course brought one of the three gourmet twists I incorporated into the meal: peanut soup. Most Midwestern Thanksgivings aren't formal enough to get a first course. You nibble on appetisers in the kitchen until the buffet is laid, then fill your plate in one go. But I thought that might be a step too casual for the Brits (and certainly for my husband), and I like an excuse to get out my massive but rarely-used Portmeirion soup tureen. The soup recipe is from the King's Arms pub in Williamsburg and, I think, really gets at the soul of colonial America.

Next, to the main event. Second gourmet touch: brining the turkey. We normally just slathered the bird with butter and threw it in the oven, or on the Weber. A bird as expensive as most Americans' grocery bill for the entire Thanksgiving meal needed special care and attention. Taking Saveur magazine's regional holiday guide to heart, I chose their Midwestern recipe for cider- and sage-brined turkey. The night before cooking, you boil up cider, sage, salt and sugar into a solution, add more water and plunge the turkey into it overnight. Some chemical magic takes place to make the bird retain moisture and take in the subtle flavour of the sage. I don't know whether it was the brining, or the rare breed, but this was the best turkey to ever grace a Ferrara Thanksgiving table.

Alongside, we were in deeply traditional territory. The family stuffing: an everything-but-the-kitchen sink hybrid of Wallemann and Ferrara recipes, blending stale bread with wild rice, toasted pecans, sausage, apples and herbs for a side dish that's a meal in itself. Sweet potato crisp from the Blue Owl in Kimmswick, Missouri. A dead simple mix of tinned sweet potatoes and cream cheese, topped with chopped apples and cranberries, then an oatmeal, sugar and butter crumble. Made a lot more complicated in a country without the tins, forcing you to roast and prep the potatoes in advance. Which, I have to admit, made for a much better dish that wasn't so cloyingly sweet, though my husband still found it rather pointless. The classic mushroom soup and green bean casserole. (Vile. What a way to ruin both green beans and fried onions, proclaimed the love of my life.) Spinach loaf. Frozen, drained spinach mixed with butter, pine nuts, basil and eggs and banged into a loaf pan to cook, then cut and served in slices. Much to my surprise, Mr. B quite liked this one. Mashed potatoes. Cranberry Sauce. Sheila came up with two cans of the jellied stuff ... another unobtainable, foreign item here ... and I made my usual from scratch with orange and port.

Dessert brought my final gourmet innovation. Ferraras are content with pumpkin pies with a bit of Cool Whip on top. We need nothing else to mess with the purity of this delight. But most Europeans only try pumpkin pie grudgingly (see 29.11.08) and Cool Whip is both unobtainable, and would be considered an abomination by residents of this land of premium dairy products. I thought wider variety on the dessert plate was in order. Though pumpkin was essential, and we made the trip into John Lewis' food halls in London to get the requisite tins of Libby's. The final dish ... which I'm kicking myself I didn't photograph ... was a deep, individual pumpkin tart baked in a mini brioche mould, topped with a scoop of home-made pumpkin ice cream, accompanied by a wedge of chocolate pecan pie. There were few remnants to scrap off plates.

And thus the first Thanksgiving in my marital home passes to memory. What have I to be thankful for since last year? Friends and family, as ever. For a husband who, even though I didn't meet him to my mid 40s, was worth the wait. For a wonderful wedding that went to plan and a honeymoon that was the trip of a lifetime. For a secure job in a frightening economy. For my mother slipping away easily and painlessly with friends around her. For the remarkable medical imaging equipment that found my cancer and, once again, is allowing early treatment that will prevent its spread. Perhaps most important, that last one. Because I have a lot more Thanksgivings stretching ahead to plan.

Bath Priory delivers great spa deal and dinner to make memories

2011-11-21T18:27:00.013Z

Rarely does 24 hours go by on the Bencard TV without the appearance of a celebrity chef. We love them all, but pay special attention when Michael Caines turns up.

He has all the usual creds ... Michelin stars (two, at Gidleigh Park in Devon), impressive training (a protege of Raymond Blanc), does great takes on the classics and has an engaging, easy-going way with the camera. What makes Caines worthy of special attention is something he rarely talks about, but you can't fail to notice. He's missing his right arm.

He was already a rising culinary star when he lost it in a car accident. You'd think that would be a career-ender for a chef. But he was back in the kitchen in weeks, transferring knife skills to his left hand and learning how to make the most of his prosthesis. And from there to one of the top five chefs in the UK. He's the kind of person who reminds you that "I can't" shouldn't be part of the human vocabulary.

Caines is the executive chef at The Bath Priory, meaning that while he doesn't run this kitchen, he supervises the menus and staff and sent his No. 2, Sam Moody, up from Gidleigh Park to run things. While the place doesn't have a Michelin star yet, it's now the top ranked restaurant in Bath and 45th in the country, according to the latest Sunday Times and Harden's guide. Common sense said we really couldn't afford to sleep at the Priory (a luxury Relais and Chateaux loca

tion), but we decided to make splashing out on dinner there our treat of the weekend.

But first ... the spa

The last thing I expected was a deal. However, online comparison showed the spa here to be far better value for money than the Bath Thermae, and we assumed (rightly) that the small, boutique luxury hotel location would give us a quiet, intimate experience. The half day package, with a one-hour treatment and use of the rest of the facilities, is £75 on weekdays. Including, critically, Friday afternoons. If you want a longer treatment (which we all did), you can just pay the difference.

The spa is small but beautifully appointed and well managed. The comfortably heated pool is perhaps 16 feet wide and 30 long; not large, but big enough for a few laps and lounging. There's a bay on one side with jacuzzi jets, beautifully positioned to look out the French doors onto the formal English gardens. Designers have managed to pull off a fine balance of traditional and modern.

That garden view and the Cotswold stone paving say olde England, the long, thin, brown and black streaked tiles, artwork, grey and black loungers and curving walls with glass insets scream of the latest design. There's a round, free-standing steam room with benches of tiny, sparkling tiles lit by mellow coloured lights. I am normally not a fan ... wet saunas remind me too much of summer in St. Louis ... but here the steam was permeated with eucalyptus, clearing out the nasal passages and bringing a sense of well-being to your whole body. There's a large dry sauna behind this.

The treatment rooms are in a different building, requiring a quick outdoor dash up stairs and across a gravel path. Worth remembering when booking in the depths of winter. I had the Mala Mayi Wrap, one hour and 25 minutes of pure bliss that counts as my best spa treatment ever. Yes, even better than that open-air massage looking out over the Zambezi (See 6.10.09). First, an exfoliating scrub for your whole body. After that, warm, mineral-rich mud gets massaged into your skin. Then you're bundled in the towels that were draped beneath you, secured by the heated pad you've been lying on, now transformed to a warm cocoon. While that mud is doing its good on your skin, the therapist gives you a deep scalp massage and puts super moisturisers on your hair. Then you rinse everything off in a hot, scented shower before returning to the table to have rich moisturisers massaged into all the treated areas. I've had a lot of spa work that feels great at the time, but this one came with lasting benefits of rejuvenated skin.

And now to dinner

You can imagine our state of complete relaxation by the time we left the pool at 5:30 to get dressed and drift upstairs for cocktails. Entering the drawing room, it's immediately obvious what paying three times our B&B rate gets you. There are two elegant rooms to choose from fo

r your lounging, each exquisitely furnished with art and furniture to such consistency this could serve as a Downton Abbey set with little change. The larger drawing room has a sport and military theme, dominated by a wonderful portrait of a whole family painted, life sized, in their motor car, and another dashing chap standing confidently with his polo stick. For the turn of the century, there's a modern, trendy edge here; back in Downton world, this would be the home of the newly-enriched Sir Richard. The other lounge is decorated with portraits of dramatic and romantic women of the time. We had aperitifs in the first, and digestifs in the second, with impeccable service in both.

Settled before the fire with a kir royale in one hand and the menu in the other, we considered our choices. We were aided by a diminutive plate of nibbles featuring polenta cakes with blue cheese and some particularly tasty juniper- flavoured potato crisps, cut into perfect, flat rounds to serve as sandwich top and bottom for steak tartare filling. We could easily have polished off a platter of those!

As with most establishments of this sort, it's "in for a penny, in for a pound". Experience has taught me that going a la carte is never the cheaper option, even though you may think you can reign in expenses this way. The extras and the individual wine prices will always kill you. Especially if your friends have particularly good taste in wine. Far better to go with the tasting menu and the matching wine flight. Take the price tag hit once, gasp with shock, move on and know there won't be any other surprises.

There were three tasting menus on offer. First, the Master Chef menu, three courses that contestants prepared for guests at Gidleigh Park in the finals of Celebrity Masterchef, at £47. The seven course tasting menu was £84, and the seven course signature menu (full of Michael Caines specialities) was £95. Calculating the per-course price, we figured seven courses were a much better deal than three; we felt the bigger menus were the more fiscally responsible path! We were tempted by both, but there were a few dishes we found more intriguing on the regular tasting menu, so went in that direction.

We started with a mushroom velouté topped with roasted peanuts; a surprising but very pleasing combination. The sommelier ... our new best friend ... matched this with an equally surprising Riesling, magnificently dry but with a sweet finish. Next up, duck two ways. Or, as the menu put it, "Salisbury mallard, hazelnut crust, pâté en croûte, soused vegetable."

The fish course was a highlight. Truffle butter poached turbot served with beef cheek, a duxelle of wild mushrooms and a cèpe velouté. Anyone who says they hate fish would be converted into a true believer by this dish which, thanks to the fish's ability to take on the flavours around it, was as meaty as anything to come out of the deep forest. The Californian pinot noir that came with it was light enough to not overwhelm the fish, but had depths to match the meat. Sublime.

The savoury dishes climaxed with local rabbit done four ways (loin, rack, offal, confit leg) with pease pudding, ham hock and mustard jus. I know this sounds heavy as a sledgehammer with flavours that can overpower. But the dish was elegant, subtle, light and beautiful to look at. I, the offal hater, didn't even know it was there until I reviewed the menu afterwards. It was simply a great dish, and one that made us all wonder why we don't eat rabbit more. If for no other reason than to drink big, bold bordeaux like the liquid garnets they poured into our glass with this one.

Hillary and I were unable to decide between cheese and pudding. The truncated-topped pyramid on the cart announced the presence of my favourite cheese on the planet, pouligny-saint-pierre. Meanwhile, the dessert menu promised chocolate fondant. What's a girl to do? The lovely waiting staff, warmed up now by 90 minutes of our charm, suggested we split a single extra plate of cheese, and then loaded it high. Adding four options from the French regions and boutique English producers to join that lovely goat's cheese.

Next, the pre-dessert. Such a fine concept, meant to transition you slowly from the height of your savoury experience to whatever sweet blockbuster is coming. In this case, a light vanilla panna cotta with fig and cinnamon. A fine contrast and appetiser to the chocolate fondant.

Many try with this dish, and few succeed. This one was perfect, if too small. A tube of hot, firm cake, oozing semi-liquid, steaming chocolate, gone in two bites. The diminutive size was compensated for by the exquisite presentation. A paint strip of chocolate, accompanied by two circles of passion fruit coulis with dot of chocolate at each centre, a chocolate cup of the same size and shape as the fondant filled with tonka bean sorbet (tastes like passion fruit). A study in black and orange. Rarely have I wanted so badly to lick my plat in a restaurant, but I reminded myself that ladies do not do such things. (Real ladies, no doubt, wouldn't have the thought, much less revel in multiple desserts.)

Finally, on to coffee and petit fours, which counted as one of the seven courses. I like the honesty of this. With many menus it's an extra, but coffee is usually essential, and can be an expensive add-on. If you're going to make it a formal course, however, then the petit fours better be up to it. Which they were here, with a range of truffles, brownies and tiny pannacottas with a black current caramel crisp. Seeing the extent of the final course, and the chocolate on offer, we could have chosen the cheese over the fondant without feeling deprived. Three full dessert courses was, perhaps, a bit excessive!

You'd think the whole meal would feel excessive, but this is where the magic of the chef's planning shows itself. Despite the heavy flavours, and the hearty and substantial ingredients, everything balanced beautifully. Because each plate was just a few bites perfect bites, all that food left you feeling satisfied, but not stuffed.

Sam Moody may not be as famous as his boss today, but I suspect it's coming. As, one assumes, is the Bath Priory's Michelin star. Wonder if that spa deal will get more expensive when that day arrives?

Bath surprises with fabulous, continental-style shopping

2011-11-20T18:25:00.011Z

Were it not for breast cancer, dear readers, this week would have brought a series of reports from Barcelona. It was time for the annual Gartner IT Expo, and the usual holiday extension into the weekend afterwards. After years of returning to Cannes the conference organisers had moved to Spain's most trendy city for art and culinary experimentation. The Northwestern girls were excited. But medical leave put an end to both the work trip to Spain, and the fun afterwards.

We still wanted to get our traditional girls' Christmas shopping weekend in, especially since it's now decided that I start chemotherapy on 7 December. Some power shopping, spa relaxation and good food sounded like a fine idea before the medical hijinx. Where to go to find that variety without too much driving? Bath.

The Northwestern girls had been there together years ago, and I've lost count of the visiting Americans I've taken around the sights. It is undoubtably the most beautiful and extensive Georgian town in England. Huge swathes look pretty much the same as they did when Jane Austen lived here, which is why keen eyes will pick out Bath in the background of just about every film set in the 18th century, no matter where its action is supposed to take place. As if Georgian architecture weren't beautiful enough, all of Bath is built of that distinctive, golden Cotswold stone, which gives it a rich yet mellow glow under most lights, and it's built up the slope of a bowl-shaped valley, adding height and drama to the views.

Tourists usually wander about the ancient baths after which the city is named (with plenty to see from the original Roman complex), the abbey, the assembly rooms where the Georgian great and good socialised, Pulteney Bridge and the aristocratic housing developments of the Royal Crescent and the Circus. There are enough architectural highlights, small museums and neighbouring country houses (Dyrham Park being a favourite) to keep a serious culture vulture occupied for a week.

Having done all of this before, our primary objective was the Bath Thermae spa, which opened in 2006 in some of the historic spaces that had been public baths in earlier centuries. Research, however, cooled our enthusiasm. Treatment prices were at least 10% higher than nearby luxury hotels, and did not include the price of admission. You have to pay an hourly fee just to get into the complex. When we discovered they also charged for dressing gowns and shoes ... and found a better package spa deal at a five star hotel nearby ... we decided on a change of plans. I still plan to pop in to the Thermae someday, but only for the main facilities and not for the overpriced treatments. (For more on the spa day we ended up with, see the next entry.)

The real surprise of Bath was the shopping. Based on previous visits, I'd thought of it as a mix of tourist tat, chain stores and dusty old antique shops. No longer. The chains are the more upscale ones, and at least half the shops in the central district seem to be independents. The town is now awash with trendy clothing boutiques, interesting galleries and fun home decor shops. New arcades and alleyways have been developed, and everything feels far more prosperous than it used to. (Our B&B host attributes this to the spa bringing a more affluent type of tourist, and broadband allowing more people with well-paying London jobs to move here.) In a country where shopping is increasingly homogenised, this was a retail experience closer to our outings to Venice or St. Paul de Vence. We will all be going back.

If heading there yourself, explore Milsom, George and Bartlett Street, paying special attention to the latter two. George Street is now a string of independent boutiques and galleries. Check out Prey, which carries quirky stuff like buttons and aprons made from vintage fabric, and silk scarves copied from ancient book frontispieces, screen printed by the same workshop that produces Hermes scarves. They have a great range of cards, jewelry and home decor items. A few minutes' walk east is Via Appia, an Italian boutique filled with exquisitely designed knits and formal wear and some surprisingly reasonable, yet beautifully designed, jewelry. Just next door is Topping and Company, an independent bookshop so redolent of individual taste and good advice (hand written descriptions and recommendations taped to shelves below books) it almost makes you want to give up your Kindle. If bookstores are to survive at all, I'm convinced this is the kind of place that will hang in there.

Turning up Bartlett Street ... a small lane that heads north and is a prime cut-through to get to the Circus and the Royal Crescent ... you'll find more women's boutiques like Mee, Lux and The Loft that all carry boutique brands with interesting cuts and distinctive looks. Not cheap, mind you, but if you want something that's obviously top quality and is unlike what everyone else is wearing, this is a place to wander. The Loft is also a home decor shop with some great rustic furniture and modern accessories.

After a satisfying and successful day of Christmas shopping in ever increasing crowds, we were glad that our B&B was outside the bustling city centre. Bathford is just four miles from central Bath, but could be a village deep in the Gloucester countryside. Except that its architecture is a spill-over from the Georgian jewel. In fact our B&B, Eagle House, was designed by architect John Wood, famous for the Circus and Queen's Square in town. If you want the experience of staying in grand Georgian architecture, but don't want to pay for a grand country house hotel, this is a good option.

Eagle House is a classic small country house of the era, with an imposing classical pediment surmounted by an eagle on the garden face that looks out over gardens and sweeping views. Inside, guests have access to a gracious staircase hall, an octagonal drawing room with towering ceilings and a large dining room used for guests' breakfasts. Several of the bedrooms are large and quite grand, sharing the same view as the drawing room, and there's a large family room with three beds that's perfect for our girls' trips.

Despite the grand architecture this is more standard B&B than luxury experience, certainly one step down from a place like Cotswold favourite Windy Ridge (see 27.7.10). Though, sadly, not that much cheaper. This is still very much a family home, with surroundings being a hotch potch of items (including some shockingly out-of-context works by an artist son) rather than a carefully put together decor. Architectural damage like a glass screen at the top of the stairs and odd interior windows harkens back to the building's days of institutional use from the '50s through the '80s. There's a gorgeous fireplace in the sitting room but it's not lit, and there's no honour bar to draw people into the room or encourage them to linger. Most irritating, there's a charge for a cooked breakfast. At £45 per person per night ... £135 for the room ... we thought this was a bit of cheek.

I had used Eagle House seven years ago for a house party to celebrate my birthday, and it was ideal for booking out for exclusive use. The location, beauty of the house and helpfulness of the owners still puts it on my "must consider" list for Bath. But after this trip I do have to question value for money, and think I may be doing a bit of web surfing to see what else is in the area.

Of course, if money were no object, I'd be sleeping at the Bath Priory. For our adventures there, see the next entry.

The Hunger Games are gripping, frightening ... and make me ponder differences between generations

2011-11-12T17:47:00.004Z

I have been a voracious reader since childhood. I don't actually remember learning to read, in fact, I just recall retreating to my bedroom as a very small girl, alone, with a stack of books. Classic only child syndrome, I suppose. I graduated quickly from picture-heavy books to the Chronicles of Narnia, the Wind in the Willows, Nancy Drew (the original 1940s books inherited from my aunt, in which Nancy drove a "roadster", wore "smart frocks" and never even kissed Ned Nickerson) and anything about classical mythology I could get my hands on. From there, I remember jumping pretty much straight into grown up fiction.

There was no phenomenon of "young adult literature" in the late '70s when I was in my early teens. Nor do I recall everyone reading the same thing in cult-like fan groups. We all had our own tastes, and, frankly, I don't remember sharing mine with many classmates. About half my reading was fantasy like The Lord of the Rings, the Shannara series and the Dragonriders of Pern books, common enough amongst the boys but a bit rare at my girls' convent school. The other half was detail-rich historical romances by people like Jean Plaidy and Victoria Holt. (Pen names for the same writer, it turned out, an amazingly prolific Englishwoman named Eleanor Hibbert.)

Now, of course, young adult literature is one of the hottest categories in publishing, with readership stretching up into the adult world. The phenomenon seems to have established itself with the Harry Potter series and flourished (at least amongst women) with the Twilight books. Next up: The Hunger Games. I'd been hearing about the last for at least a year. With strict instructions to stay immobile for a few weeks after surgery, my friend Hillary had the entire trilogy delivered to my door. Three days later, I'd finished the stack. "Powerful read", "fast paced" and "a gripping page turner" are all much-used cliches on back covers, but they're well applied to these books. But if these are books for teenagers, then they must leave any adult reader with one big impression: How times have changed.

Author Suzanne Collins mixes inspirations from Greek mythology, ancient Rome, modern politics and reality TV in her dystopian vision of the near future. North America has emerged from an horrific war into a ruthless dictatorship, ruled by The Capitol somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Citizens here have a life of plenty and leisure, their primary concerns being fashion and entertainment. Their good life is provided by the labour of the people in the 12 Districts ... what's left of the United States ... now little more than gulags where slave labour produces whatever the Capitol needs. To make sure the Districts remember who's boss, and never forget the failed rebellion that destroyed the 13th District, they are each required to hold a lottery every year at which one girl and one boy between the ages of 12 and 18 are sent off to The Capitol as tributes, just as myths have young Atheneans going to the Minotaur. The 24 tributes are then given stylists and production crews, pampered and trained, then thrown into a 24-7 live broadcast reality show cum gladiatorial games, where there can be only one winner. The rest must die.

We follow our heroine Katniss Everdeen as she participates in the games and, through her natural teenage rebelliousness, becomes the catalyst that starts to unsettle the whole society. It's dark, violent, disturbing and utterly compelling. And it got me thinking: why are the books today's teens read so much more sinister than those I consumed 30 years ago?

On simple question of plot, I think it's because the "darkness" is so much closer to real life. Lord of the Rings baddie Sauron was pure evil, but was never going to make an appearance in the real world. No more than were the dragons, elves and magicians that populated most of the books I read. There were good guys and bad guys, the lines were solidly drawn and good always triumphs. Harry Potter draws a lot from that world, but arch villain Valdemort has gone bad because he was an abused child. Scary and potentially all too real. Valdemort's followers are all for racial genocide of the muggles, again fictionalisation of things readers will have seen on the news. The Twilight Vampires are good guys who've overcome their taste for blood, but we're still dealing with a frightening world of random violence and murder, while our main characters have some nasty emotional demons to deal with. The Hunger Games is scariest of all, because it creates a world that seems just a few steps away from what could really happen if humanity took some wrong turns. It brings a horror of the future that, I suspect, readers encountered when they first read 1984 or Brave New World.

As to the question of why today's teenagers are consuming this stuff rather than the simpler, happier-ending, clearer moral grounds of my youth ... now that's a tougher question. As an adult reader, they're simply great books, but I have no teenagers in my life to give the youth perspective. One assumes that it reflects the tougher, more honest world they've grown up in. One of greater moral ambiguity from the start, more violence, more skepticism. Maybe a purely good heroine, and an entirely evil bad guy, just won't fly with this gang. Or maybe it's the publishing phenomenon of upselling these books to adults in their millions; if the over-20s are going to buy them, they need a harder edge.

If I had a 12-year-old, would I want her reading The Hunger Games? Probably. But I'd want us to read them together. We'd have a hell of a lot to talk about as she worked her way through. And I'd expect a few nightmares. Who knows. Maybe the dark, rich complexity of today's teenage literature will produce a generation with both greater moral certainty, and a better understanding of the motivations and nuances of others. We'll have to wait and see.

Little known Flying Dutchman may be my favourite Wagner opera yet

2011-11-05T19:00:00.008Z

My first post-surgical foray out of the house, other than for doctor's appointments, was to the opera. I was still floating on pain medications and not good for much more than six hours of continuous activity, but we'd had tickets to Wagner's The Flying Dutchman for ages (Piers' reward for coming to La Traviata last month), and I really didn't want to miss it. Even though the drugs in my system pretty much ensured that this was not going to be the first Wagner opera through which I managed to stay awake from start to finish.

That's not to say this is a long or a boring show. In fact, at three acts in just over two hours hours it's a snippet in Wagnerian terms. The only problem with this running time is that producers need to decide whether to put intervals after each short act, or just run the thing straight through. The ROH went for the latter. And even with a good plot and a nap, the cheap seats up top are not built for that kind of extended incarceration.

The plot deals with grand legend. A captain and his crew have been cursed to sail the seas forever, only coming ashore once every seven years. If, in that brief shore leave, the captain finds true love, he can break the curse. (Yes, you recognise this from the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Wagner's not the only one to get some mileage out of this plot.) In a boring Norwegian town, a young girl named Senta has fallen in love with the legend and dreams of breaking the curse. Things look set for a happy ending when Senta's father, also a ship's captain, brings home a fellow captain he's met at sea. It's the Dutchman, and he and Senta fall in love immediately, making plans to marry. Unfortunately, a local boy with a passion for Senta shows up to plead his case, and his very existence causes the Dutchman to doubt Senta's constancy, and the wisdom of her commitment. So he sails away.

In Wagner's ending, Senta throws herself into the sea after his departing ship. She dies, but this proof of her enduring love breaks the curse. (You didn't expect a cheerful close, did you?) For some reason ... maybe it was too expensive to stage a watery suicide convincingly? ... Senta doesn't die in the current version, she just sinks to the stage cradling a model of the Dutchman's ship, over which she'd been obsessing since before she met him.

I'm not sure it was Wagner's intent, but the main theme in this production seemed to be the dangerous passions of teenage girls. The staging was modern and grim. Senta worked in a grey sweatshop. She would have indulged in any fantasy that would get her out of town; one that involved mythic passions and redemption was irresistible. There is a stage in the lives of most teenage girls when they cling to the tale of Romeo and Juliet and think there'd be nothing better than to die for love. This is just where Senta is when we meet her, and why her foolish love-at-first-sight for the Dutchman is actually so credible.

Though not considered one of Wagner's greatest operas, I quite possibly enjoyed this more than the installments of the Ring Cycle we've seen. Good plot, credible impetus for the love story, and the action moves at a decent pace. A great overture that evokes the stormy majesty of the seas, with equally dramatic music throughout. I wouldn't mind sitting through another interpretation of The Flying Dutchman to see what other companies would do with it.

Cardinals and cancer are an odd match; let's hope I'm as victorious as the Redbirds

2011-10-29T19:00:00.010Z

In 2006, I had breast cancer, and the Cardinals won the World Series. In 2011, the Cardinals returned to the championship, and my cancer came back.

I do hope they're not related. It could kill my love of my home team.

The cancer showed up in my annual ultrasound on October 11th. A tiny dark streak on the screen. "It could just be scar tissue, but it wasn't there last year, so we want to be extra careful," said the doctor doing the scan. "We're going to do a biopsy." In that moment, five years fell away as I remembered, vividly, the pain of the first one. The guys at Guantanamo Bay had it all wrong. Forget waterboarding. Biopsy a bit of breast tissue and people will tell you anything. No question of refusing, however. The results are more important than the pain.

Sure enough, a new cancer in the same breast as 2006. Strange, as I'd had a total mastectomy so there shouldn't be any breast tissue left in there. Post surgery, tests proved it to be lymphatic tissue, though all lymph nodes tested were clear. Which means I'm destined for a winter of chemotherapy, once I heal from the operation. I had the surgery on the 27th, just 13 days after the biopsy results confirmed there was something in there that needed to come out.

A routine operation, a small cancer found early, a positive prognosis. Add all those things together and it still doesn't take away the anxiety. Especially for poor Piers, who could only watch from the sidelines and have all the stress of dealing with this the first time around.

We spent the night before surgery in town, since my 6am check in time made it impossible to come up from Basingstoke. We tried to make a celebratory evening of it. An indulgent dinner at Orrery with the tasting menu and the wine flight. Should anything have gone wrong on the operating table, it would have made a fine last meal. Traditional French with modern twists, a progression of small, delicate plates, that exceptional cheese trolley and a satisfying chocolate tart. Still on the same form as previous visits (see 10.12.07), reminiscent in quality and price to Roussillon, though not quite as elegant and innovative, with a far less intimate dining space. A good option for fine dining in that part of town.

We then retired to Hotel La Place on Nottingham Place. (The club, sadly, had no rooms available.) A Victorian townhouse remodeled as a small B&B, going for the upscale boutique hotel category. The room was lovely, with traditional dark wood furniture, beautiful upholstery and a crown-style canopy with falling drapes above the bed. All very English country house transported to the city. The public areas were a bit pokey and Piers reported an unimpressive breakfast (consumed while I was under the knife). For general London tourism, I'm sure you could do better for your £180 a night, though the room was admirably large for a centrally-located hotel. But for our primary objective ... be able to walk quickly to the Harley Street Clinic ... it was a decent option.

So the surgery went well. The doctor got the entire cancerous spot out without having to disturb my breast implant, so no major follow up work will be needed there. Floating on anesthetic and pain killers, I slept for most of the day. Wide awake, then, for most of the night. Just in time for Game 6 of the World Series. Without doubt, the single most exciting game of my life. Any baseball fan will already know the story. Texas led the series three games to two. A win that night locked their first-ever championship. (The Cards were playing for their 11th.) The Cardinals had already come from behind to tie or lead the game three times, but they entered the 9th inning down by two. And were still there as they got to their last out. When local boy David Freese drove in two runs, tied the game and sent it into extra innings.

In the 10th, the Rangers quickly put two runs on the board. I could hear the groans all the way across the Atlantic. Could we come back from behind for a fifth time in the same game? Yup. Again down to their last out, Berkman hit the tying run, forcing the 11th inning. This time, the Cardinals held the Rangers scoreless, then Freese returned to the plate and hit a leadoff home run. This was, frankly, as good as a Hollywood screenplay. Even if I was experiencing the game in the oddest of ways.

The first five innings streamed onto my iPad via MLB.com with no problem. Then the hospital WiFi went down. Really, there's not much you can do about that at 3am. The night nurses can handle any crisis of the human body, but network issues had to wait for the day staff. I tried a few options on my iPhone, with no luck, and ended up following the rest of the game through text messages from the Bruneel household in St. Louis. (I watched the game the next day when I returned home.) Despite the bizarre relay reportage, despite sitting alone in a dark hospital room, the game filled me with joy. And a very pleasant distraction from the medical situation.

Back home the next night, the joy returned. Still on an irregular sleeping pattern, I slipped downstairs to the couch from 1am to watch Game 7. Not nearly as exciting as No 6, thank heavens. The Cards had a job to do; they went out and did it. I think the previous night had ripped the heart out of the Rangers, frankly.

There was much joy in St. Louis, and for St. Louisans around the globe. Good thing, too. Because as those anesthetics wore off, I realised just how much even a small incision can hurt. I was very happy for the distraction. And I hope my beloved Redbirds can do it again soon. But please, let me be cancer-free next time.

Despite the cruise ship, Comms Directors' Forum a bust

2011-10-15T19:00:00.006Z

This recession has killed a lot of events.

Before the crash, I used to be asked to speak at three to five conferences a year, and was invited to scores more. (The former invitations, all expenses paid, I often accepted. The latter, at several hundred pounds a day plus travel expenses, I usually skipped.) Most of those conferences have disappeared. Even prosperous companies aren't paying to send their employees on educational breaks these days.

That validates the cleverness of Richmond Events' simple idea: book a cruise ship; invite big corporate representatives free of charge; get agencies to pay for everything in exchange for guaranteed meetings with the big names. Given that most big corporates limit their vendors to those on a rostered list, and most corporate execs brush off new business calls like dandruff on a collar, this gig is one of the few ways a small agency has any chance of having a sustained conversation with global corporate types. Why they consider us nirvana, I have no idea. (In my experience, large mid-market companies are far more profitable on agency books.) But their enthusiasm has kept the Richmond Events cruise going.

Granted, it's a lot smaller than it used to be. On my first outing, the Communications Directors and the IT Directors split the whole cruise ship. There were hundreds of communications types, and more than 20 just from the IT services sector. It made for a fantastic three days, networking with colleagues, comparing issues and getting ideas for improvement.

Times have changed. Though the conference concept has survived, there are now five different types of directors on the ship. Meaning the specialist groups are much smaller, and the industry specialisms amongst them are tiny. (I still managed to find a happy cluster of colleagues from BT, IBM, Orange and Nokia to drink with.)

It is always valuable to get out of the office to mix, mingle and compare experience with colleagues. Beyond that networking, however, I found myself questioning the value of the time away. Perhaps I'm just getting too old and cynical. Perhaps, now that I'm head of marketing communications, I should have been on the marketing directors forum. But I found the seminars, on the whole, to be distressingly old hat. Surely, these are all the same issues, and all the same bits of advice, I heard at my first such conference in the late 1980s. The critical primacy of internal communications. The need for employee, marketing comms and PR to work together. Confusion over measurement. The call to understand the company's overall goals and lash yourselves to business basics. Good lord. Has the industry not moved on at all in 25 years?

I found myself deeply depressed, and indulging in my recurrent fantasy of becoming a farmer or a restorer of Georgian plasterwork. One thing, at least, comforted me. When I indulged in deep conversation with colleagues, I found their issues to all be the same as mine. If these conferences do nothing else, they remind you that you are not alone.

No time for post-honeymoon depression as London return piles on the glamour

2011-10-08T19:00:00.011Z

On the plane back to Heathrow, I was thinking I'd had enough excitement, and it would be nice to get into a quiet routine for a while. Honest.

Clearly, I hadn't checked the social and work diaries before having that thought. If I had, I would have seen tickets for the Royal Opera House after the first workday back. Piers' annual company social ... a grand masquerade ball ... on the Friday night. The next week, off to a cruise ship to the Channel Islands for three days on the Communications Directors' Forum. So much for a quiet life.

Heading to the opera on our first night back wasn't ideal, but it was the only night we could get my father to the performance before he went back to the States on Wednesday. I've never seen anything I didn't like at the ROH, of course, and it's the grand, established blockbusters of the repertoire like La Traviata where they really hit their stride. Even the great critic of Italian opera, my new husband, can't say too much against this particular work. Grand setting, great music, good pacing. What's not to like?

This is a production first created by Richard Eyre in 1994, and is one of the ROH's most regularly revived works. The sets are a show in themselves. The first party scene is a dramatic two story affair with guests coming up and down curving staircases as action takes place in the drawing room at the top. The gambling den at the end of act 2 is smoky, a bit sinister yet echoingly grand; a perfect evocation of the raffish end of late 19th-century Parisian high society. The action wraps in Violetta's simple, impoverished bedroom, but the tall windows and use of space convey an almost church-like atmosphere as our heroine reaches her end.

You've barely had time to settle into your seat at the start when the rousing drinking song "Brindisi" makes you want to jump up again and raise a glass. (We didn't, of course, but we did exchange warm smiles. Remember, dear readers, this is the song we played as we entered our wedding meal.) Russian soprano Marina Poplavskaya and American tenor James Valenti were excellent as Violetta and Alfredo, not just in the quality of their singing, but in their acting. This is perhaps one of the most poignant yet believeable stories in all opera. Violetta, the courtesan with the noble heart who finds true love, then gives it up for the greater good of family honour. Alfredo, passionate and impetuous, who is too thick to see the sacrifice his one true love makes until she's on her deathbed. The couple played out the arc of falling in love, falling out, bitter recrimination and regret, ending with understanding, love and loss with a passion that had me reaching for the tissue.

The PWC annual party later in the week wasn't quite so grand as Violetta's salon, but it wasn't far off. After years of cost constraints at my own company, it was delightful to get treated to such a sophisticated and well-funded display of employee appreciation. Maybe I should have been an accountant. (Hmm. Would have required maths skills. Maybe not.)

The venue was the headquarters of the Honourable Artillery Company, a hidden gem in the City of London. The HAC is a voluntary regiment of the Army, founded in 1537, prestigious ever since and now acting as both a registered charity and an active military unit. Their headquarters is a gracious Georgian house a stone's throw from Moorgate tube, fronted by six acres of garden. This is all ringed by city buildings, so you'd never know it was there unless you were actually seeking it out. Once inside their grounds, you have the bizarre spectacle of country house and expansive lawns entirely ringed by urban tower blocks. We were in the Prince Consort Room, a modern, purpose-built function space to one side of the house. Smaller parties can take over the main building itself which, as the website shows, is an early Georgian blockbuster replete with wooden paneling, impressive portraits and glittering chandeliers.

The PWC party didn't need the glitzy background, however, since the guests themselves were a star attraction. This was a full on masquerade ball, heavy on the Venetian influence. Women in glamorous evening wear, men in dinner jackets, and the whole assembly in masks ... with a good portion of the masks large and flamboyant enough to hold their own on St. Mark's square any night of Carnevale. The girl who won the best mask of the evening award had gone to a makeup artist earlier in the day and had hers painted on, swirls of powder blue and gold to match her gown, highlighted by sparkling crystals affixed in curves across her brow and cheekbone. Another of Piers' colleagues had a full mask topped by a tricorn hat and flamboyant feathers, worthy of Casanova. Had I known how seriously Piers' colleagues take their dressing up, I would have made more effort!

As it was, we got lucky. I grabbed a mask I'd brought back from Venice off the shelf in my office for myself. With a bit of time to spare on Wednesday evening, I went to the craft store, found a blank plastic plague doctor's mask (the traditional one with the big beak) and jazzed it up with some baroque-style wrapping paper and red feathers. I was just trying to get something that vaguely matched my headgear, but it turned out he was awarded the best home made mask prize. Now, this might have been because in this sophisticated and free-spending group, most people hired masks rather than making their own. Or maybe they just felt they should be nice to the newlywed. I like to think it was an honest acknowledgement of artistic ability. (My mother would be proud.)

Whatever the case, it was a nice conclusion to the first week back. So many friends have warned me of post-honeymoon depression, where you get all glum and bored because your post-marital life is dull in comparison to the excitement of planning the wedding and traveling afterwards. If this week is anything to go by, I think I'm safe from that complaint.

Food and wine are matches from heaven at Birkenhead

2011-10-01T17:28:00.000Z

I wrote this entry after returning from Honeymoon, but the posting date coincides with when we were actually experiencing what's described here.

I have never before been formally introduced to the head chef within five minutes of checking into a hotel. Turns out nothing could have been more appropriate at Birkenhead House, since Nico Verster's kitchen is the thing that tips this place from delightful to truly extraordinary.

The culinary style here is global fusion layered on a classical foundation, taking advantage of the abundant local larder of the Cape. Wine is an integral part of the meal, with each server having a comprehensive knowledge of the house wine list (at more than 20 bottles, no small task) and the confidence of a trained sommelier to recommend food and wine pairings. Whatever the meal, dining here is an experience. At breakfast, there's not only a buffet groaning with home made breads and pastries, gourmet muesli, exotic fruits, cereals, etc. and the option of a traditional cooked breakfast, but also the chef's breakfast of the day. One day banana crepes, another an omelette Florentine. At lunch, weather permitting, the whole dining room would be transported to the patio, complete with fine linen and crystal, so you could dine at the cliff edge.

And dinner! The magic started with the descent from our room, with each step of the marble stairs leading to the dining room illuminated with votive candles. (When you returned to your room after dinner, you found votives glimmering around your bed.) Before dinner there was a proper cocktail hour during which you could sink into the couches in front of the fireplace, talk to fellow guests, drink your fill (the staff didn't need to be reminded of your cocktail of choice after your first order) and nibble on passed hors d'oeuvres. You could linger here as little or much as you wished before crossing to the candlelit dining room to indulge in three decadent courses with plenty of fine wine. Then it was back to the couches, where you could linger over your choice from a wide selection of after dinner drinks, including a range of whiskys, cognac, armagnac, several grappas and sweet stuff like Cointreau and the local take on Baileys, Amarula cream.

One of the things that makes the whole experience so special is that costs are all inclusive. You're not left feeling guilty about whether or not you should get the more expensive wine, wondering whether you can afford another cocktail or feeling that dessert or that single malt after dinner is profligate. Another is that with every meal, whoever is running the kitchen comes out to chat about the menu with you, answering any questions and suggesting alternatives if there's anything you don't like.

Adjusting dishes is no problem. One night, when told about the magnificent beef the chef had received that afternoon, Piers ordered his steak "blu" (extremely rare), joking that he'd take tartare if they could do it. We would, but we don't have any gherkins, the distressed chef apologised. He'd get some on his way to work the next day, so Piers could have a rare steak now and tartare later. Another day at lunch, we were having trouble choosing from the range of intriguing starters, so the chef offered to create a combo platter for us. Not only was it one of the most beautiful dishes of the trip (see photo at right), but it delivered a range of extraordinary flavours, like Asian beef salad and mussels in a cream sauce.

As already mentioned, however, the real delight of eating at Birkenhead was the wine pairings. Your all inclusive deal includes any wine on the house list, and there are roughly 10 reds and 10 whites to choose from. After seeing the knowledge of the staff, however, we didn't bother making any selections ourselves; we left ourselves in their hands. Sometimes, we even reverse engineered the menus to match the wine. "I haven't had the pinotage yet. What should I eat tonight so I can try it?"

Memorable pairings included a luncheon main of grilled calamari salad with sun dried tomatoes, red onion and goat cheese, matched with a Bouchard Finlayson blanc de mer which was mostly riesling with a bit of semillon. I would not have thought of that combination of salad ingredients, but the meaty squid, salty cheese and sweet tomatoes blended well, augmented by the same sweet yet sharp notes of the wine. At the same time, Piers was eating a gnocchi with blue cheese and fig and cream sauce with a bit of dill. Once again, sweet and sharp flavours in the food picked up the wine.

Lamb with shavings of deep fried squash went with a South Hill cabernet sauvignon from the Elgin Valley. This was a classic Ellen wine; big, bold, rich with berry flavours. Sadly, I wasn't having the lamb, so only stole sips of this off Piers. I was having sea bass, heavy enough to carry a light red wine in the Newton Johnson Felicite pinot noir 2011 from the nearby Hemel-en-Aarde Valley. I can't better the tasting notes on this one: red berries, brambles and pomegranates on the nose; poised, elegant, smooth on the palate with a lingering finish. The next night saw it equally well matched with mushroom soup dressed with truffle oil.

One of the best matches came with a humble but delicious burger. Add Spookfontein Phantom, 2006, also from Hemel-en-Aarde. Ruby red in colour, with hints of mulberry, raspberry, red currant, cherries and vanilla. The tannins would be a bit much to drink on its own, but great with food.

For a lighter touch, there were the scallops and bacon with pea puree and a bit of garlic butter, served with Groote Post Weisser Riesling, 2010. Fresh and clean with simple, unchallenging flavours, Piers thought the acid, apple and crispness didn't necessarily give a roundness to the wine, but there was enough body beneath it to prevent acidity from overpowering. We thought it would be exceptional with curry or other spicy food. Another fine white was the Beaumont chenin blanc, 2009, from Botriver (an area you drive through on the way down to Hermanus). This was a fresh and vibrant fruit combination of lemon, green melon and tropical guava, paired with tempura crab claws that delivered incredibly sweet flesh in a very light batter.

Back with the reds, Gabrielskloof's "The Blend", 2009, also from Botriver, was a Bordeaux blend on par with any of the big, traditional wines from France. This went with those lovely fillets, served with aubergine puree and red wine jus. This was a really magnificent red meat wine, deep and rich with hints of liquorice and chocolate. And the next day, when the fillet returned as the custom-created tartare? The Beyerskloof pinotage from Stellenbosch was fruity, a touch peppery, and very reminiscent of a good Rioja.

If ever you need proof of the sacred match between great food and fine wine, plan a trip to Birkenhead. At every meal we were presented with beautiful elements that could have stood alone, but were so much better together. What a great way to end our honeymoon. Because two becoming better as one is what marriage is all about, right?

Hemel-en-Aarde winemakers have their eyes on becoming the next big thing

2011-09-30T16:08:00.000Z

I wrote this entry after returning from Honeymoon, but the posting date coincides with when we were actually experiencing what's described here.

In most of the world's wine shops, you'll find South African varieties grouped under the label "New World". Rarely has a title been more inaccurate. Europeans made wine for the first time here in 1659, and South African vintages were in head-to-head battles with the French 150 years ago, when Constantia was the dessert wine of choice for the Victorians. There's no other country outside of the European/Mediterranean block with this kind of wine history.

But, as with so much in this country, apartheid stunted the wine industry's growth. With no export markets, the industry shrank. With no global competition, winemakers weren't prompted to the modernisation and innovation that characterises newcomers like Australia. So when South Africa re-joined the world markets in the late 1980s it came with a unique, yet bizarre wine industry: venerable history and vineyards, arrested development in wine making skills. One thing never changed. The Cape is a phenomenal place to grow grapes and make wine. Potential was writ large.

In 30 years, the South Africans have exploited that potential with gusto, while investment money, purchases and tourists from the Old World have poured in to help. Stellenbosch and Franschhoek are now words as familiar to most wine lovers as Burgundy and Bordeaux. But here's where the South Africans are acting very new world. They're expanding beyond the historic, established valleys, realising that almost every valley in the Cape offers combinations of soil and microclimate that could make a great wine.

A vivid example of this is the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley, the entrance to which lies just a few miles west of Hermanus. There are a few established winemakers here, Bouchard Finlayson probably being the best known. But most are small, little known outside of South Africa and ... in many cases ... new. Vines have had their feet in the soil for less than a decade, wineries are freshly crafted beauties of sleek modern design. Even the road through the valley is new. So new, in fact, that it's still graveled dirt for one bumpy stretch. This is a place to watch.

Creation embodies the young, bold spirit of the place. Arable fields just five years ago, this is now a high tech winery with beautiful marketing and dining facilities, built in a circle of lush gardens with sweeping views of a lake and mountains. The vineyards provide the full range of grapes, allowing them to produce everything from a light, sharp sauvignon blanc (notes of passion fruit and pineapple) to a syrah grenache mix with soft fruit, spice and wood. We didn't taste anything worth the expense of shipping home, but there were wines that I'd happily buy if they turned up on our local shelves. Our favourite white was the sauvignon semillion blend, better than the sauv blanc alone due to more complexity and roundness, the green notes of the second grape variety rounding out the fruit of the first. Of the reds, we liked their Bordeaux blend best, a classic mix of merlot, cabernet sauvignon and petit verdot that was full of black currant and blackberry notes, with a bit of smokey oak beneath. We suspected this one could be laid down and improved with age.

Suspected, because Creation let itself down on its staff. Pleasant enough, but entirely uncommunicative on any fine point of the wine. Our smiling server would pop over every 10 minutes to bring us a new glass and pour from a new bottle, but said little beyond "and this is our vigonier." When we tried to strike up a conversation to ask about details, she brought us a lovely coffee table book about the winery with tales of the founders (two couples who wanted to work together) and tasting notes.

Knowledge and conversation doesn't make the wine taste different, but it does help you to appreciate it and consider the nuances of what you're tasting. Which does, honestly, make the wine taste better. Case in point: La Vierge.

We went to this winery just after Creation. It is in a truly spectacular position just at a crest of a hill; the valley falls away before you to the sea, with mountains on each side, the bowl made by the sloping hillsides dotted with wine estates. They've built a glistening, high tech winery, through which you cross on a catwalk to get to their tasting room and restaurant, which has glass walls to take advantage of the remarkable view. Like Creation, the vines here are mostly new plantings, but unlike the winery deeper in the valley, La Vierge has its marketing tuned to perfection.

The woman running the tasting bar was knowledgeable, witty and conversant, not just telling us about what we were tasting, but joining in discussion about how the wines compared to others, what food you'd match them with, etc. All the names and labels are beautifully designed and relate closely to the location. Hemel-en-Aarde means "heaven in Earth", la vierge is French for "the virgin". Most of the wine names have something to do with the Adam and Eve story or other mythological explorations of love, temptation and desire. Original Sin was a sauvignon blanc tempered with 9% semillon, with tones of gooseberry and granny smith apple. Jezebelle a lightly wooded chardonnay that was nutty and lightly fruity. Nymphomane a lovely, fruity, balanced red with loads of tannins that would be worth laying down for two or three years to get a richer flavour. Again, we didn't taste anything so extraordinary we wanted to pay for shipping, but we'll be looking for British sources.

The Temptation restaurant here doesn't have its act quite so polished as the tasting operation. It's a stunningly beautiful room; basically just a lofty, open space with glass walls that let the view do all the work. It's a suitably foodie menu. I had springbok sausages followed by baked kingclip (both classically South African), he chose crayfish tails and chicken almondine, both came with a chardonnay, fig and honey sorbet between courses. All competently done and well presented. As you would expect, the menu has lots of suggested wine pairings, we went for the pinot noir, an excellent middle-of-the-road wine to match both the chicken and the fish. Service is cheerful and upbeat, but painfully slow. Our two course lunch took two hours, with the first food not hitting the table for an hour and it taking them half an hour to get us some drinks. This was probably because a bus tour had occupied three long tables at the front of the restaurant.

But bus tours don't just pop in; they book. Which means someone did not staff properly for the day. And the restaurant was still half empty. Lord knows how they cope with a full house. It was the only meal we ate away from Birkenhead, mostly because we didn't feel like the 40-minute drive home just to get lunch. A pleasant meal, overall, but one that could have been really memorable if served with a bit more speed.

Speaking of meals at Birkenhead, come back for the next entry, where I'll tell you why the hotel deserves to be known as a foodie destination all on its own.

Whales, flowers, giant mice and a great hotel kill desire to wander far from Hermanus

2011-09-29T11:37:00.000Z

I wrote this entry after returning from Honeymoon, but the posting date coincides with when we were actually experiencing what's described here.

And finally, south to the Cape. After the luxury of Mauritius and the adventure of the Sabi Sand, would this be a disappointing denouement? Happily not. Honeymoon Part III was distinct enough from its predecessors to deliver its own memorable delights.

We arrived in the glistening new Cape Town airport mid-afternoon and picked up our rental car. It was odd, after 10 days of being shepherded everywhere and waited on hand and foot, to suddenly be on our own, thinking for ourselves and reading our own maps. A good transition back to the "real world" that lay five days ahead, we thought.

Our objective was Hermanus, a coastal town 75 miles southeast of Cape Town. Getting there is a truly gorgeous drive. It takes about 30 minutes to get through the urban sprawl of Cape Town itself, then you're climbing towards Sir Lowry's Pass, with the whole Cape penninsula spreading away beneath you. Up and over, the views change dramatically. The landscape of fertile valley interspersed with dramatic hill and mountain stays the same, but now everything is agricultural. We pass mile after mile of orchards, vegetable fields, grape vines, with little more than the occasional farm shop or fruit packing plant to break the pastoral idyll. I get the same feeling that haunted me the first time I was here: It's California, before too many people mucked it up.

We reached Hermanus in 90 minutes and, despite having a car at our disposal, didn't wander more than about 15 miles from there until it was time to return to the airport. This is a place to slow down, linger and appreciate life. The town ... a cluster of low buildings, mostly galleries, tourist boutiques and restaurants ... sits on cliffs in the elbow of Walker Bay, famed as a wintering spot for the southern right whale. Spreading out from town on either side are neighbourhoods of gracious seaside villas landscaped with a dazzling array of exotic seaside flora; again, you'd think you were in California if it weren't for the abundant security around each house. (Every prosperous South African seems to have his own personal security detail; this place is a gold mine for ADT.)

There's a coastal path that runs along the bay, cutting up and down through black rock cliffs dotted with vivid flowers, sometimes falling straight into the sea, sometimes encircling pristine little beaches. Eventually, this path comes down onto Grotto Beach, a wide, flat stretch of white sand that runs for more than a mile. Last visit I spent a happy afternoon at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens but, honestly, this coastal path was just as impressive. Some 10% of all the world's flowering plants are found in South Africa; the Cape Peninsula alone has more indigenous plant species than all of Great Britain. I think I saw half of them on my hour long walk on the path between hotel and town; this could only have been improved with a naturalist to talk me through what I was seeing!

The whales have made this a major tourist site, but the sheer beauty of the place ensures its popularity. This is, according to a South African colleague of mine, the place to which every native of that country dreams of retiring, and many of the well heeled already have. The whole area reeks of money, with lovely architecture, wineries and an abundance of restaurants.

Birkenhead House started life as one of those luxurious beachfront homes, now expanded and converted to an elegant little hotel with just 11 rooms. These are arranged around a series of courtyards and public rooms stretching back from the sea. First, there's a white marble patio with an infinity pool and stunning views of Hermanus to the right and Grotto beach to the left. Staff magically switch out furniture as weather and time of day demand; sometimes there are thickly-cushioned sun loungers, sometimes dining tables. Behind that, through glass walls that bring the outdoors in, is the combined sitting room and dining room, open plan and with a large fireplace which proved most useful for keeping the chill nights at bay. Then a small courtyard with a burbling fountain filled with fish, then a much larger courtyard with a lap pool and lounging area ascending in tiers, sitting areas on one side that can be opened to the air or shut behind glass doors. Steps up to another lounge area, then another fountain-based courtyard, then finally an arched tunnel leading to the suburban street.

While I only managed to peek into four or five rooms, I have to assume that the footprint of the public spaces is at least 50 per cent greater than the rooms themselves. This is, quite simply, a great place to loiter. Augmented by a magnificent staff that got to know you quickly and anticipated every need. Why stray far when you can collapse into the overstuffed white couches with one eye on a good book and another on the whales outside, the lovely Marius appearing at your elbow a few minutes later to ask if you're ready for a G&T? Or you might linger over a multi-course meal on the sunny patio, or curl up for a nap on the round, tented sun loungers; or settle between fire and television in the pool-side lounge to watch rugby. If you're tempted to walk the coastal path to town, you simply need to pop into the Marine Hotel and ask them to call Birkenhead for you; a driver arrives in 10 minutes to whisk you back home.

Because Birkenhead started as a private house, rather than being purpose built as a hotel, there's a big difference in size and layout of various rooms. We were given a choice when we arrived: Room 11, a decadent space with a four-poster bed, a dark, sexy boudoir style and a big bathroom, or Room 2, a small double with gentle, white decor and a lovely but equally small bathroom. I chose No. 2. Why? It was the room with the view. No. 11, for all its opulence, had a small balcony screened by trellis work that looked over a suburban street. I could have been anywhere in middle America. No. 2, positioned on the front corner of the building, had sliding glass doors on each side, separated by just a small pillar at the corner, giving a panoramic view of sea, the coastal path and Hermanus itself. Our balcony hung over the patio and cliffs, the sea below and whales regularly visible without much effort. (In fact, I spotted my first on our first morning before I even got out of bed.) We got a peek into No 1, just across the landing from ours. Similar view, much bigger, additional balcony looking over internal courtyards. This is the room to which I dream of returning.

Birkenhead is a fabulous spot to base yourself for a holiday, with plenty of activities both nearby and within an hour's drive. I can easily imagine spending a week or more here, although my waistline couldn't tolerate it. (For more on Birkenhead as a culinary hot spot, stay tuned.) The simple pleasures of walking and whale watching could fill several days on their own.

The whales come to this area from June through November to give birth and mate, before returning to colder waters for the rest of the year to feed. Massive (15-16 meters long, on average), predictable and docile, their name comes from the fact that they were the "right" ones to hunt. Easy and profitable. With most hunting now banned, their population is healthy and Walker Bay is a top gathering spot. In three days, I don't think we ever had to wait more than 15 minutes to spot one, be it via the distinctive double spouting of their blowholes or impressive breaches. They're much more fun to watch than the Hawaiian humpback whales. While those just teased us with an arch of body and a fluke of tail before diving, the right whales seem to enjoy being on the surface, wallowing in the sunshine and slapping their fins on the water. Evidently, the sunnier and the calmer it is, the more the whales are likely to come close to shore and bask in the shallows. No wonder the poor things were easy fodder for hunters. Today, mostly protected and with life spans of 90-100 years, they're making a different contribution to the economy by pulling tourists from around the world. Hermanus even employs a whale crier, whose sole job is to keep a lookout and blow a horn whenever he spots the animals.

The whales aren't the only wildlife worth watching around here. This coast is rich with bird life, there are some colourful lizards basking on the rocks and it's not unusual to spot seals lounging on the rock promontories jutting into the surf. If you take a drive down to the Cape of Good Hope (about two hours, something we did the day we returned to the airport) you can see penguins, baboons and even wild ostrich. My favourite animal of this part of the trip, however, was far less showy. I didn't even know it existed.

Imagine my shock to be walking the coastal path, come around a corner and come face to face with a giant mouse sitting atop a wall, staring at me with a placid expression. I thought I'd stumbled into Narnia and come face to face with Reepicheep. Nope. It was a rock hyrax, also called a dassie. On closer look, they're more like oversized guinea pigs, and so adorable you want to pick them up for a cuddle. (They'd be a comfortable armful.) But they're skittish creatures who dash for the undergrowth quickly so, while abundant on this coast, you're likely to see them for just a moment before they run for cover.

After exploring the flora and fauna, the obvious sightseeing here is all about appreciating another kind of plant: grape vines. Of that, more in the next entry.

Sabi Sand offers remarkable density and variety of African game

2011-09-28T10:48:00.000Z

I wrote this entry after returning from Honeymoon, but the posting date coincides with when we were actually experiencing what's described here.

Safari, of course, is about the animals. Forget the luxurious lodge, the adventure in arriving, the dramatic landscapes. A safari's success is determined by the quality, quantity and variety of photos you carry home.

We were armed with unexceptional cameras; basic point-and shoots with a maximum 10x zoom, a Flip video and the still and video features on my iPad. And this, honestly, is all we needed. The Sabi Sand is so rich with wildlife, and the animals are all so used to game trucks settling beside them, that just a single drive will probably bring you within 20 yards of more African animals than you've seen in all of the zoos in your life, combined. Our photographic game bag, after deleting all the average stuff, is more than 600 files.

We saw "the Big 5" in the first hour of our first drive. Elephants loping along in family groups, from the grizzled old matriarch to adorable infants. Buffalo streaming to the water hole in a herd so big it stretched beyond the horizon. A rhino, placidly grazing in a grassy copse, not the least bit disturbed as a sleek leopard strolled by casually. (We, however, were stunned.). Best of all, a pride of lions, the male sitting majestic and aloof while several lionesses kept a close eye on a pack of gambolling cubs. We sat in between them, papa lounging elegantly just six feet to my right, three cubs chasing each other up and down a tree perhaps 20 feet to Piers' left.

I was so entranced I didn't even consider the fact that any of these gorgeous felines could take me down for dinner with a few swipes of their huge and lethal paws. The animals completely ignore the trucks, however. We were under strict instructions to keep hands inside and not stand up; evidently, as long as everyone stays in an even line, the animals just see the truck as another, single animal, too big to bother with.

In the lethal but beautiful stakes, it's hard to pick a favourite between the lions and the leopards, both of which we saw in multiples every day. The leopards have a lithe elegance that's hard to beat. One night, just before sunset, we watched a male in his prime stroll across a meadow towards our truck and circle it. We then followed him for about 20 minutes as he wandered through the brush and up the road. Even at a slow pace, his power was obvious. Muscles rippled beneath that exquisite skin, everything moved with elegance and a restrained power. It is surprising, actually, that lions are more associated with monarchy and power since, when you get close to those tawny beasts in the wild, it's hard to shake the feeling that they're just oversized house cats you want to scratch behind the ears and curl up with.

We only encountered the pride with the male and the cubs once. The rest of the trip we tracked a group of five lionesses. At rest, they were gorgeous and dozy. These animals have mastered the art of expending only the energy needed for the necessary jobs; otherwise, they lounge. I like their style. But the lounging is deceptive. This was a group of voracious hunters. One morning we encountered them finishing off the remains of the impala they'd taken down over night. The guide doubted they'd move again, as they'd finished off a buffalo the day before. And yet, by 8:30 we found them crouched beneath bushes next to our watering hole, watching as a herd of buffalo came to drink. Still, silent, rigid with concentration, they sat there for hours. After the large herd had drank their fill and left, a smaller bachelor herd arrived.

At 1:30, while we were sitting down to lunch just across the lake, they made their move. One lioness to taunt someone out of the herd. Others to circle around and behind. A dance of death. Because slowly, surely, by a step here and another there, they eventually coaxed one foolish buffalo out of the herd. And once he was separated, our guide told us, the game was over. There was still one hell of a fight ... one of my enduring images is one of those lionesses being head butted up into the air between the horns of the buffalo ... but eventually, the tawny huntresses got their claws and teeth into his neck and head and drew things to a close. It was the spectacle of our trip. It would be two or three days before the lions would have their fill and give up the carcass to the secondary predators like hyena and the vultures who were already gathering, by which point we had moved on.

There's far more than the Big 5 to see, however. Impala are abundant, roaming in small herds and quick to dash off. And why not? They are the McDonald's happy meals of the bush. We saw almost as many water buck, and a fair number of the more majestic kudu with their beautiful spiral horns. Herds of zebra were skittish, but even more attractive as they galloped away. The giraffe are fascinating as they graze their treetops and, when startled, lope off with such an odd gait due to their shape you have to wonder about the logic of Darwin's theories.

I find it a bit mysterious that buffalo are considered part of the Big 5 but hippo are excluded because, honestly, they're much more fun to watch. Fascinating in shape, adorable in youth and remarkably loud; the haunting bellows of the family in the water just outside our room woke us in the middle of the night. One of my favourite afternoon pastimes was to pour myself a G&T, settle on the deck and watch the hippos slow and stately interaction in the water below. Yet these giants can move at high speed when needed. We saw those voracious lionesses chase a hippo the afternoon after they'd taken down the buffalo and I couldn't believe how fast those stubby legs got the animal back to the lake. But not before she whirled around and faced off with the lions. Maybe this speed was what the Greeks had in mind when they first named them "water horses".

It's not just the big, showy zoo stars that grab your attention. The more drives you go on, and the more you get used to seeing the iconic creatures at your elbow, the more you turn your attention to smaller and more unusual things. Like the elusive honey badgers we tracked in circles around the scrub until they finally made a dash for their dens. Or the side striped jackals, who were far more attractive, and dog-like, than my jackal expectations, which had been entirely set by ancient Egyptian gods. There were monkeys in chattering social groups in big-canopied trees, crocodiles occasionally surfacing in our waterhole and warthogs who epitomised the concept of "so ugly it's kinda cute". Even the bugs were fascinating; a red dragonfly held my attention for ages as it hopped amongst lotus flowers in the lodge's water garden.

But when it comes to the small and unexpected, the guides told us that multiple Safari visitors often end up most intrigued by the birds. And this is no surprise, as the variety, colour and sound of these bush dwellers makes me understand the allure of bird watching. The fish eagles at our watering hole were just as majestic as their bald American cousins, and entertained us regularly by fishing their dinner out of the water as we watched. Burchell's starlings look like your bog standard blackbird until they wander into direct sunlight, where they turn a metallic blue. Vultures are quite a bit more majestic than their cartoon image, and come in many varieties. In fact, we saw one juvenile version ... evidently a highly unusual spotting for that part of Africa ... that looked far more like a hawk. Three Egyptian ducks put on an argumentative show, chasing each other in splashy circles, every time we came upon them at a small neighbouring waterhole. Flocks of guinea fowl often ran alongside our truck. But the most miraculous vision of all had to be the lilac breasted roller, which our guide told us has 14 distinct colours in its plumage. We watched it sitting on a branch for nearly 10 minutes, utterly fascinated. When an approaching truck frightened it away our disappointment was mixed with awe, as watching it in flight was like seeing a rainbow condensed and set in motion.

For most of the guests, this was a rare adventure. For a few ... usually those kitted out with the most impressive camera equipment ... safari was a regular holiday destination. And I can see why. The spectacle of the animal world, from the biggest elephant to the tiniest dragonfly, is a show that changes daily, and never ceases to amaze.

For luxury in the African bush, it's Chitwa Chitwa

2011-09-27T15:03:00.000Z

I wrote this entry after returning from Honeymoon, but the posting date coincides with when we were actually experiencing what's described here.

Camping has never been for me.

Don't get me wrong, I love the great outdoors. Looking at it, taking pleasant strolls through it, watching David Attenborough talk about it ... but I have no need to forgo pleasures like hot water and good linen to get close to it. In recent years there's been quite a trend for "glamping" ... tents, but with all the accoutrements of a luxury hotel. It's a movement that started in the African bush, and there's plenty of opportunity out here for upscale roughing it. But that is not, thank heavens, what we got at Chitwa Chitwa, where the only rough item in the place is probably the exfoliating scrubs in the spa.

Chitwa Chitwa was once a family home, the centre of a vast private game reserve. As times changed and safari tourism took off, the Brink family followed the pattern of many in this area, expanding their lodge with guest accommodation and building a pattern of activities around game drives. The Sabi Sand region is filled with lodges like this, most fairly small and working together to expose their guests to the animals criss-crossing this enormous, fence-free land.

While I have no real comparison, only seeing the other lodges from the outside, I suspect the Sabi Sand experience doesn't get much better than Chitwa, whether we're talking luxury, quality of the staff or the proximity to animals.

The lodge is actually more of a village; a cluster of thatched buildings spread around one side of the biggest watering hole in the area. That fact alone provides a game-watching advantage. We watched families of hippos, herds of buffalo and elephant, and even lions, from the comfort of our own deck. Each of the nine suites is its own detached building. All are different in size and decor, yet share features like private decks and plunge pools, king-sized beds under cathedral ceilings wreathed in mosquito netting and high-concept modern bathrooms, with all of the walls facing the watering hole of glass to make the whole suite a viewing platform. Ours was particularly enormous, as it's actually two bedroom suites, each leading off a comfortable sitting room with overstuffed couches and piles of coffee table books, sharing a deck big enough to host a cocktail party for everyone else in the lodge, if you were in the mood.

The decor here, and throughout the lodge, is a quirky mix of traditional African and modern art. Our suite had black walls, abstract paintings, rich upholstery (including a faux fur bedspread), rococo gilt mirrors, an enormous silver candelabra next to a cocktail tray crowded with crystal, polished spirals of kudu horns and a towering carved tribal figure. A strange, dark mixture, but it worked. Probably because during the day, the glass walls drenched everything with light and spectacle, and at night the staff let down the mosquito netting, transforming the bed into a giant, rose-petal strewn white tent. Given the odd sleeping patterns necessitated by the drive schedule, we spent more time in this room than in any other on honeymoon. It deserved and rewarded our attention. And that's probably one of my top tips for safari; you'll spend the middle of every day in your room, so make sure it's nice.

Of course, if the room hadn't been quite so beguiling, we might have spent a bit more time in the public areas. All of these continued with the modern African rococo style, distinguished in many places by skulls and bones of former occupants of the reserve, gilded and transformed into chandeliers or striking objets d'art.

At the centre of things is the main game lodge. Its primary room is a combination sitting room, bar and dining room, one area flowing into another, all continuing the place's oversized proportions. We gathered every night here for cocktails and conversation. The guests ... affluent, well educated and from a variety of countries with a range of fascinating jobs ... were an interesting bunch, bringing almost as much entertainment to the evenings as we'd had on the game drives. The night we ate in the dining room there were more than 20 of us at the table. Another night we ate as couples at lantern lit tables on the wide decks, and our third night our individual tables were arranged in a 3/4 circle around a bonfire in a wooden walled, roofless enclosure called a boma, set up behind the main lodge.

The bar and living area opens up onto a thatched, open sided veranda as wide as the building behind it. Clusters of thickly-cushioned couches and armchairs sit here, separated by yet another bar; this one used for morning and afternoon coffee and tea. Around the corner, also under a thatched overhang, is a check-in desk backed by some oversized tribal masks. Off here, there's a luxuriously appointed library with the only television in the place (necessary for some people checking rugby world cup results) and a shared computer with internet access thanks to a slow but steady satellite link.

Between all of that and the watering hole, there's a field of decking, part including an infinity pool that overlooks the watering hole, the rest just wide-open area for strolling, lounging and watching the animals. Across that, continuing along the arc of the watering hole, is the dining pavilion. Here, with gravel crunching under your feet, thatch cooling you above and white gauze curtains blowing in the breeze, you settle in for breakfast and lunch, indulging in delicious food and copious wine as the watering hole puts on its own show. (Of that, more in the next entry.)

A path of wooden decking runs from here, away from the water and up a gentle hill. There are gardens and ponds here, taking partial shade from a high stone wall and a few trees. A thatched cottage off to one side is the spa. At the top of the little incline is another large, thatched pavilion, holding a gift shop filled with tribal arts and crafts, and Chitwa Chitwa clothing on one side, and the business office on the other. There's a towering breezeway dividing them in the centre, dominated by a chandelier of elephant bones and framed by sculptures of cheetahs on each side. This is the portal through which we depart for game drives, and where Dino welcomes us back each evening with the signature cocktail of the day.

As night falls, the hippos bellow, strange things splash in the night and we stick close to Andreis as he escorts us from lodge to suite. We are in the lap of magnificently African luxury, but in one respect, this is no different from camping. We are visitors here. The land belongs to the big things prowling the darkness.

Game lodge routine brings structure to some extra-ordinary days

2011-09-26T17:32:00.000Z

I wrote this entry after returning from Honeymoon, but the posting date coincides with when we were actually experiencing what's described here.

And now, it's time for the excitement and adventure part of the trip.

It had already been a long day of air travel (four hours from Mauritius to Johannesburg, a two-hour layover in Joburg's sleepy local terminal, another 40-minute flight from Joburg) when we touched down at Kruger. The landing was an adventure in itself; don't look out the window if you're a nervous flyer. Nelspruit Airport sits on a flat plateau high above the town of Kruger. Beyond the end of the airstrip is what looks like some impressive cliffs down which an over-shooting plane could tumble. Our landing was smooth, however, despite the recent cool front and clouds heavy with rain. It wasn't the weather I'd been expecting.

The airport, however, left no doubt we were in the African bush. It looks like a big game lodge, thatched and cozy with just a single long atrium for arrivals, departures and a cafe. There was nobody to meet us on arrival so Piers went wandering to try to find our rep from Odie Air. Soon one of the locals offered to call her (Odie, it turns out, is a woman and a company) and we were told to sit tight, the plane was on its way. Not long after, our pilot James turned up, grabbed our luggage, took us back through security and onto the tarmac. His plane was a six-seat Cessna, and we were the only passengers.

If I'd been excited before, I was now at fever pitch. This was a real "Out of Africa" moment, leaving the airstrip in a tiny plane and flying so low as we headed into the bush. From this perspective you can see the web of game trails, criss-crossing the bush like a network of nerves, veins and arteries, with the occasional human road intersecting them. The landscape, which looks a dull brown on first glance, is actually a wonder of subtlety, with a rich variety of pale greens, tans, golds, browns and blacks. Our route took us over Kruger National Park, mostly a vast, flat expanse, with drama added by the odd river (mostly dry beds at this, the end of the dry season) or towering plateau. Nearing our game lodge, James pointed to the dirt airstrip running up a gentle hill between the leafless trees. He couldn't speak over the noise of the propeller, but I remembered his grin back at Kruger when he'd said "this is as tough of a bush landing as you get!"

We were on our way in, got close to the ground, then pulled up and circled again. I realised James was buzzing the runway to clear it of warthog and giraffe. Animals pushed back, we came in again for a landing that was gentler than many a jumbo jet on smooth tarmac. Just a stone's throw from the plane's stopping point sat one of the game lodge's trucks, and next to it our tracker, Rodney. Tall and slim, kitted out in classic bush khaki, with skin the tone of black velvet, a musical accent and a grace of movement shared with the local wildlife. He bundled us in the truck and drove us a scant 300 yards to the lodge entry, where the manager pressed glasses of champagne into our hands and told us it was time to move fast. Afternoon game drive was leaving now. Grab warm clothes and your camera, tell us what you want for sundowners (cocktails as the sun sets) and scramble aboard.

And thus began the pattern of game drives that would mark our days at Chitwa Chitwa.

5am wakeup call. Throw on clothes. Pile on the layers, as it could be bitterly cold at dawn. But bring the sun protection, as it will be blazing by 8am. Gather on the veranda for coffee before climbing into our game vehicles at 5:30. You're assigned a vehicle when you arrive, with tracker Rodney perched on a seat bolted to the front left corner, and our driver and guide Andreis behind the wheel. Three tiers of seats rise behind the driver, 10 guests at the maximum ... but we never had more than eight. (I sense this is one of the advantages of Chitwa, as vehicles from other lodges looked more crowded.) About half way through the morning drive, our team would find a spot safe from animals, pull over and set up morning coffee, with some baked treat from the kitchen to hold us over until breakfast.

We'd return to the lodge and a hearty breakfast around 9. After which a walking safari is usually available, but not an option on our days due to lions in the area. (Of them, more later.) The hours until the afternoon game drive featured much needed naps, lounging in our luxurious suite, watching the hippos and other wildlife interact at the watering hole and indulging in multiple-course al fresco lunches with matching South African wines poured by Dino, our ever-present bartender who kept us well hydrated, from that first 5am coffee to the last scotch before bed.

At 3:30 pm tribal drums would summon us back to the main lodge for afternoon tea or coffee before the next game drive. Off we'd wander into the late afternoon, taking in abundant views of game until the sun set and Rodney and Andreis pulled over to set up camp for sundowners. After cocktails, we'd drive back to the lodge with the assistance of Rodney's high beam spotlight, which often picked out nocturnal animals. Without the sun, the nights were bracingly cold; we quickly realised the heavy wool blankets in the trucks weren't just decorative. Above, a night sky free of light pollution glimmered, the long smudge of the Milky Way clearly visible while the Southern Cross proclaimed we were most definitely in a strange place.

We'd arrive back at the lodge about 7, now needing to be escorted to and from our rooms. Nobody walked alone after dark, a precaution that ... even if I hadn't seen the sense in it immediately ... would have become logical on our first morning when I could see clear, large feline paw prints in the sand outside our door. After an hour to freshen up and enjoy a cocktail from the all-inclusive mini bar, the drums would sound again and Andreis would materialise out of the darkness to take us to dinner. Up at the main lodge we'd talk with the guides, trackers and other guests, making a comfortable and conversant party of about 25. By 10:30, most people were letting guides take them back to their rooms, ready to slip under the impressive canopies of mosquito netting and get a good night's sleep before it all started again.

And that, quite simply, is what we did for three glorious days. But each day varied, distinguished by the variety of animals, the meals back at the lodge and the arrival and departure of fellow guests. Three nights and six game drives was enough for us to settle into a routine, and perhaps to reach a level of satisfaction, though we certainly never got bored. Next, it's time to talk wildlife.

Dolphins disappoint, but paragliding becomes a new favourite

2011-09-23T16:40:00.001Z

I wrote this entry after returning from Honeymoon, but the posting date coincides with when we were actually experiencing what's described here.

With a sufficient pile of reading material and the occasional dip in pool or ocean, supplemented by the odd cocktail, I could spend months on a beach. I am most certainly NOT one of those people who gets bored in the scenario; in fact, I'm hoping heaven exists, and provides me with an eternity of reading really good books in lovely surroundings without having to move around much.

My new husband is a far less slothful soul. He is also so pale that, even slathered with factor 30, spending more than half an hour in direct sunlight is dangerous. So we had a challenge. The week of beach lounging was definitely for me, but if he was to have as good a time as I was having, we needed to do more. Thus I reduced my novel consumption and agreed to spend some time on my feet.

Mauritius seems to have about a dozen tourist attractions across the island, all of which are advertised in the Air Mauritius in flight magazine and then pushed steadily to you by hotel concierges. In our case, it was a rep from Mauritours, our travel agent's local partner. Sadly, the rep was the only really bad experience we had on the whole trip. An unenthusiastic, ill-informed, disorganised and inarticulate English expat who looked badly rumpled and smelled worse, Roger certainly didn't fit in to our luxurious surroundings. His trips were good value for money, however. Averaging £60 per person, they provided transportation, access to activities and refreshment. Quite a deal when we were paying about that much each night for wine and cocktails.

We chose two tours: swimming with dolphins, and Ile aux Cerfs. Our big lesson: We should have pushed the rep for far more information. In both cases, our experiences didn't match his short descriptions (in one case worse, in one better) and we were unprepared for the day.

To get to the dolphins, we had to be ready for pick up in the lobby at 6:30. Too early for breakfast or any chance of coffee. We were picked up by a taxi driver who, unlike our airport transport, spoke little English and wasn't interested in attempting much conversation in any language. The rep had recommended this over another place where you could play with lion cubs because that one was so far away; we ended up driving past the lion place on the way to the dolphins. The drive was an hour and a half, crossing the whole island and stuck twice in urban traffic. Combining the drive out and the return, we spent more time in the back of the taxi than we did with the dolphins.

Arriving at a small public beach just below the posh holiday home enclave of Flic en Flac, the taxi driver motioned us towards three motorboats anchored in the shallows, without any more instruction. One of the captains decided we were with him and told us to wait. After about 20 minutes of aimless milling, about a dozen of us clambered aboard and headed out into the bay.

This is not, it turned out, the kind of swimming with dolphins that's offered in many tropical resorts, where the dolphins are either captive in a facility or tame and trained to come to a certain area. These are wild dolphins, who come and go at will and move fast. What Roger SHOULD have said is that you will probably see dolphins, and you'll get in the water, but you may not get that close. That expectation not set, this trip was a bit of a bust. Wild dolphins do frequent this bay, in numbers and varieties that change daily. Some days there are 200 bottle nose, who love people and come right up to the swimmers. On our day, there were about 30 spinners who are far more reticent. We would motor up to them and jump off the boat, only to have them disappear. I saw some dark shapes below, and could clearly hear their clicking communication, but the photos from the boat were our closest encounter. After 40 minutes of chasing the elusive beasts, we progressed on to a reef and had the option to snorkel. The reef didn't look as well-populated as ours at the hotel, and towels weren't provided on the boat (another critical piece of information Roger didn't provide), so I decided to stay on the boat and bake dry; the thought of an hour and a half in the back of the taxi in damp clothing didn't appeal.

The second trip was more of a success, though again bore no resemblance to Roger's description, which was basically ... you'll go to the very pretty Ile aux Cerfs (island of the deer), and lunch will be provided. This time, we were ready with towels, but left behind the waterproof camera we'd brought for the dolphins.

The trip should have been described as a day on a catamaran, with a wide mix of activities and a stop by the island at the end. After a 40-minute drive down the east coast of the island, stopping at three resorts to pick up others (and confirming that we were at by far the nicest place) we arrived in the fishing village of Trou d'Eau Douce, where a small harbour lies at the bottom of a steep hill. This is filled with catamarans and mock pirate ships and is, clearly, the key port for excursions on this side of the island. Ours was a medium-sized cat with a crew of three and about 25 passengers, though we could have held more.

We spent the first hour sailing further south down the coast, though it was such a still day we eventually had to add the motor. This offered the most beautiful views of Mauritius on the trip. As we sailed between the reef and the shore, with beaches, green coastal plain and mountains framing the view, we were treated to scenes on par with the best of the Caribbean, complete with crystal-clear waters and a dizzying array of blues. Eventually we turned into the mouth of the Grande Reviere Sud Est, waiting our turn for the next part of the excursion. The river gets very narrow very quickly, so the passengers on each boat need to transfer to smaller, flat bottomed craft to make their way up it. Once aboard that, you motor up the river, flanked by stone cliffs and jungle foliage. Monkeys play in the trees and exotic birds skim above you. After the driver navigates some boulder-studded shallows, you come to an impressive waterfall crashing through volcanic black boulders. It's a sight worth the effort to get there.

Back on the boat, the crew had the barbecue on the back corner smoking, the bar open and Mauritian pop music blaring. (The latter is a mix of reggae, Bollywood and urban funk. Fun and appropriate for the day, but I won't be looking for an iTunes download.) We then motored out to the reef and dropped anchor for a bit of snorkeling before lunch. The reef at the hotel was actually better, with richer coral and a colony of striking purple spiny sea urchins, but I spent about 40 minutes happily floating here before lunch. (Piers, not a snorkeling fan, stayed on the boat.) There followed a very competent meal of chicken, slaw and garlic bread, with the crew eager to refill your plate or top up a bottomless rum and coke.

The lunchtime lounge finished, we headed for the headline destination, the Ile aux Cerfs. Which is, technically, two islands. Tourists get dropped on the margin between the two, which at low tide is a stretch of beach between pine forests and at high tide a strip of water 10-feet wide that can be easily waded through. The south island is mostly the golf course of Le Touessrok, the north left to nature, and the strip in the middle provided with some sun loungers, a bar and restaurant and a cluster of huts selling local crafts and ice cream. It is, according to the guidebook, possible to walk around the whole island in a couple of hours and in so doing you can find completely deserted beaches. But we only had an hour here, so settled for getting an ice cream and sitting in some shade (Piers had begun to realise he'd overdone the sun by this point) to take in the stunning views.

The fact that we only had an hour, I must admit, was due to the fact that we'd taken a 40-minute detour via the paragliding platform on our way to shore. This turned out to be one of the top 10 experiences of honeymoon. Strapped into harness together, linked to a parachute behind and a speedboat in front, it's amazing just how smoothly you glide off the platform and sail up into the air. You're only aloft for about two minutes, but every second was astonishing. The views are exquisite, the sense of weightlessness intoxicating and the silence magical. Sadly, I have no pictures in the air because there's always a chance of taking a dip if you miss your landing (ours was perfect) and the staff don't want you blaming them for water-ruined camera equipment. So they stand on the platform with your camera and take pictures of you, instead. I had the underwater camera, of course, which could have done the job. But it was back at the hotel thanks to Roger's failure to mention most of the activities of the day. At £60 for the two of us it was a pricey two minutes, but we'd do it again in a heartbeat.

I'm glad we got out to see something of the island beyond our hotel, but in retrospect I would have skipped the dolphins. The experience didn't merit the six hours we spent away from the paradise that was our own hotel. But the Ile aux Cerfs expedition was definitely worth the effort. If you do it, just remember to bring your waterproof camera.

Melange of ethnic traditions makes Mauritian food a treat

2011-09-22T18:05:00.000Z

I wrote this entry after returning from Honeymoon, but the posting date coincides with when we were actually experiencing what's described here.

Sitting along a rich trade route gave Mauritius its political value and influenced its history. The location is also the source of its culinary traditions, a rich melange of western European, Indian and Asian.

We were caught by surprise by the range and quality of the food here. From bread and pastries as good as any in Paris (remember, this was a French colony for a long time), to delicately spiced curries to top quality sushi, centuries of world travelers left their mark on our dinner plates. We were so impressed, in fact, that we spent half a day on a cooking course with one of the hotel chefs.

The Constance Prince Maurice has two restaurants, one in two large, thatched pavilions beside pool and overlooking the lagoon, the other on floating pontoons back amongst the mangrove swamps of the lagoon itself. The latter is only open for dinner. The standard package at the hotel is half board, with a generous buffet breakfast and a three course dinner included each night. Lunch, snacks and drinks are an additional charge. (Cocktails and wine from a fine list each night, of course, adds on quite a bit to the final accounting at check out.)

Lunch was rarely necessary, of course, given the size of the breakfast and the fact it was served 'til mid morning. All the traditional English options were there ... eggs, bacon, sausages, roasted tomatoes ... plus a dizzying array of French pastries and a nod to the Northern Europeans with platters of cold meats and cheeses. There was a chef making crepes, and another carving up an array of tropical fruit. But so far, so traditional. The only truly Mauritian thing on the breakfast table was smoked marlin. Delicate and sliced so thin as to be almost transparent, this is an ingredient I'd use a lot if it were available in Europe. But I've never seen it before, and doubt I will again any time soon.

It was on the dinner menu that the exotic and the multi-national really came into play. Options always included both Mauritian-inspired and traditional European, and sometimes it was very hard to make a choice. More than one evening mixed things up. Starting, for example, with gnocchi in a saffron cream sauce before moving on to prawns in a spicy tomato creole sauce. Or putting the green mango salad up front before rolling into the steak with Hollandaise sauce.

Several evenings had a particular ethnic theme. On Asian night we mixed satay ... served with its own table-top barbecue to finish the cooking yourself ... curries, sushi and sashimi. The Mediterranean buffet night featured a range of classic Italian and Provencal dishes, with a bit of North African thrown in for good measure.

Like any good restaurant, however, what distinguished all these meals was the quality of the raw ingredients. Mauritius is one of the world's leading producers of hearts of palm, which showed up not only in salads but cooked into terrines and sauces, or included in the canapes served with cocktails in the bar before meal time. The tomatoes were the best I've had anywhere outside of Italy, like a concentrated version of the varieties you get anywhere else. Local pineapples and passion fruits were both a revelation, and the barman's signature passion fruit mojito was my favourite cocktail of the entire honeymoon. And though the meat was good, it was, unsurprisingly, the fish that stole the show. Local prawns are like little lobsters and don't need much beyond a few turns on a grill to bring out their flavour. Several types of oysters farmed from the lagoon, swordfish and tuna were excellent, particularly the albacore tuna, which was unlike any variety we knew. White with a slightly pink centre when served rare, it was a whole new ... and utterly delightful ... experience.

It took less than 48 hours of exposure to this cornucopia of delight for us to decide to sign up for the half-day cooking class with the hotel chef. Priced at £130 per person, it was cheaper than classes of similar quality back in London. And far more exotic!

We met the chef and our four classmates at 9:30, piled into one of the hotel vans and headed for the local market, which had one of the most impressive ranges of fruit and vegetables I've ever seen. But the first sense to kick in wasn't sight; it was smell. The air was intoxicating with a combination of thyme, coriander and the sharp, unmistakable tang of freshly harvested tomatoes just out of the field. Much was familiar, but at least 20 percent deserved the chef's explanation: breadfruit, jackfruit, white cucumber, mysterious varieties of eggplant, zucchini and gourd. I had anticipated Mauritian food being hot, but there were many more herbs than spices for sale here. And almost no meat, with the exception of a few stalls crammed with a wide range of dried fish. Interesting, but covered with flies. Not very appetising! Far more appealing were the local pineapples, usually not much bigger than your two fists clamped together, skinned and carved in showy spirals before being wrapped in cellophane and a ribbon. Turns out what I thought was exotic presentation on the Prince Maurice breakfast table was just the standard way of packing the fruit at the local market. Clearly, a people with style!

Back at the hotel, one of the restaurant pavilions had been reconfigured as an alfresco kitchen, with portable cookers and prepping stations for all of us arranged in a square, with the chef's demonstration table on one side. We learned how to make tuna tartare ... a European dish made exquisite with local fish ... and seafood vindaye. The latter was a stir-fry style main course of mixed fish with a mustard and vinegar base. An unusual combination, but one we'll definitely try again at home. The course also came with a Mauritian cookbook, which offers lots of inspiration. But I'm not sure where we'll find ingredients like batfish, manioc or green papaya. But the hunt will be fun.

Prince Maurice sets my new standard in luxury hotels

2011-09-21T19:54:00.001Z

I wrote this entry after returning from Honeymoon, but the posting date coincides with when we were actually experiencing what's described here.

It's official. From this point forward, all hotel entries on this blog will be compared against a new model of perfection. It is the Constance Prince Maurice on Mauritius' east coast, and it can claim most of the superlatives I have to offer. Best service. Best view from the room. Most remarkable bathroom. You get the idea. Honeymoon is supposed to be the holiday of your life, of course, and I can confirm that this hotel made for a blockbuster start.

One story captures the levels of care and attention that go into making the guests happy. One morning we were sitting on the wide deck beside the pool, eating our breakfast and gazing out over the beach and lagoon towards the line of surf where the Indian Ocean broke over the reef. I saw six snorkelers close to shore, kicking their way from the boat dock towards the large, D-shaped area of water roped off for swimming. Once inside of it, they started snorkeling back and forth in a regular line. What were they doing? Cleaning the sandy bottom to ensure that nothing disturbed a guest's tender feet.

These are the kinds of things you can do with what we were told was a 4-to-1 staff-to-guest ratio. That's not the first thing you notice, however. Upon introduction, all you can really grasp is just how beautiful the place is.

Mauritius offers no impressive architecture on the way from the airport. It's neither traditionally tropical, nor charming, but modern, functional and very basic. All of which makes the luxury of the Prince Maurice even more striking. On the main road just past a ramshackle village, you find a plinth of volcanic stones with the hotel's logo set in a metal plaque. Turn in, and follow the road for about a mile through sugar cane, tea and potato fields. At last, you'll come to a sturdy gatehouse flanking elaborate iron gates, staffed by guards in smart uniforms derived from the 19th century age of empire. Nobody without a reservation, or employment on site, gets through. It's another half mile of driving now, but here the agricultural fields have slipped away and we're into tropical gardens, with palms and piles of volcanic tufa screening the village of apartments of live-in staff to the right. Finally, the main building comes into view.

It's a large, open-sided thatched pavilion with towering peaked roofs. Staff in pristine white uniforms know who we are already (thanks to those efficient guards), welcome us warmly with cool towels presented on a silver tray, whisk our luggage away and escort us into the main pavilion. We walk up the stairs of the formal entry, over a short wooden bridge that spans the moat-like reflecting pool, and onto the glistening marble floors of the reception area. It's so quiet the only thing you notice is the gurgle of the fountains in the middle of the room (cream marble enlivened by yellow and red hibiscus floating in the water) and the call of birds. Ahead of us, the far edge of the pavilion frames a view of the infinity pool, bordered by other thatched buildings, and beyond that the lagoon, a far tropical shore, the reef and the ocean. Yet another staff member, this one a beautiful young woman who could easily pass as a southeast Asian princess, sits us down on a wicker couch to enjoy the view while a waiter turns up with fresh fruit juice. I am, officially, in heaven.

The first five minutes set the pattern for the whole place. Architecture: Thatched pavilions with open sides to let the breezes and the birds pass through. Decor: Colonial chic with lots of wicker, teak, Asian art and fresh flowers. Staff: Constantly attentive without being intrusive. Mood: Quiet tranquility.

In fact, one of the marvels of the place is how they create the mood. This isn't a small place; there are more than 70 rooms. Given the staff-t0-guest ratio, even if only half of them are "front of house", this means that with good occupancy rates there are easily 300 to 400 people wandering around. And yet, aside from meal times, we often felt we were some of only a handful of people there. Both the price and the honeymoon nature of the place contribute to this mood, of course. Almost everyone here is in couples, and interested in a quiet, romantic time with each other, alone. There are no loud packs of friends on holiday together, and almost no children. We did spot two families with progeny, amazingly. Who spends almost 300 euro a night on kids? (Honeymooners get a 40% discount.) The staff, highly aware that a loud child could destroy the whole ambiance of the place with the force of a tsunami, circled around them like a private entertainment detail, managing to shut them up the moment they uttered much more than a gurgle of happiness.

The standard rooms are billed as junior suites and are 70 square meters. The polished wooden floors, high ceilings and glass on three sides at the front (screened by wooden blinds for privacy), with french doors leading out to a large loggia with table, chairs, couch and gorgeous view, mimic the open air feel of the public spaces. Inside, in addition to the king sized bed, there's a sofa, coffee table (laid with champagne and sweets on our arrival), a desk and a large, flat-screen TV with internet access. (There's free wi-fi throughout the resort as well.) The view towards the lagoon and the mountains was the best part of our room, closely followed by the enormous and luxurious bathroom.

That had double sinks, his and her closets stocked with two dressing gowns per person (terry cloth for after bathing, cotton for relaxing), a large dressing area, separate rooms for shower and toilet, an enormous built-for-two tub complete with pillow for lounging and pot of lavender bath salts, and an oversized ottoman in the centre on which someone could sit to converse with the bather. We were delighted to spend many hours in our suite, and afternoon naps within it featured largely in our schedule. In fact, we were so immediately attached to the place that we ordered breakfast in the room on the first morning, which came with two waiters who brought not only food, but enough linen, china and silver to dress the table on our balcony as if we were in a top restaurant. Then they quietly disappeared, leaving us to enjoy our food and the view, swaddled in those cozy robes.

We didn't want to spend all our time indoors, of course. The beach called. The hotel features a long, completely private stretch of it. At the centre of things, overlooked by the pool and the main buildings, it's unoccupied except for a few dining tables in the sand. Want to have a formally served meal but not leave the beach? No problem. Relax under the umbrella and the staff will take care of you. On either side of this, stretching in front of the pavilions housing the accommodation, are large teak sun loungers with thick mattresses, arranged in pairs underneath big market umbrellas. Choose one, and a member of staff is there quickly with towels and bottles of cold water to help you make it your own. Lounge here long enough, and they may pop by with some ice cream or an offer to clean your sunglasses for you.

On one side of the pool are two restaurant pavilions and a bar, on the other side another bar. The latter had a small stage for entertainment, generally mellow jazz, plugged into a sound system that carried it around all the public areas. Further back, so to not squander the sea views, were several shops, the Air Mauritius office, the spa, a pitch and put green and a children's play area.

If you followed a raised walkway past our room for about a quarter mile, you walked into the lagoon, through mangrove swamps and to the hotel's floating restaurant. Four pavilions on pontoons, reached by bridges and lit by swaying lanterns, bobbed gently on the water as leaping fish added to the soundtrack of the night. We ate dinner here twice, and spent the rest of our time in the main restaurants.

A discussion of food, however, signals a transition to another entry. Mauritian dining, and our fabulous local cooking class, comes next.

Mauritius is eastern-influenced melting pot with potential and disparity

2011-09-18T20:27:00.000Z

I wrote this entry after returning from Honeymoon, but the posting date coincides with when we were actually experiencing what's described here.

I am fairly sure that I made it through my formal education never having heard of Mauritius, much less being able to identify it on a map.

I first encountered it in some history of piracy, no doubt. Its position in the Indian Ocean, between the southern tip of Africa and the Indian sub-continent, made it a perfect place to lay up while stalking trade routes. This is Captain Kidd territory. But it didn't come to prominence in my mind until we started discussing honeymoons. It is surely one of the Top 10 locations for European newlyweds who have the time and money for a long-haul trip.

And for good reason. The island, formed by a long-extinct volcano, has all the attributes of the stereotypical tropical paradise. Powdery white beaches bordered by swaying palms, hibiscus, bouganvilla and other exotic plants form the coastline. A reef rings much of the island, creating shallow lagoons glimmering turquoise and pale blue. Inland, the land rises to a central plateau dominated by sugar cane production, though fields of tea and all sorts of other vegetables intersperse. Like any volcanic territory, the earth is incredibly rich and well-drained; bananas, mangos and pineapple all grow wild by the roadsides to be harvested by locals as needed.

Pinnacles of black stone, their tips eroded into jagged, picturesque shapes, frame the horizon. Occupying the best coastal spots, as with most tropical paradises, are upscale resorts. Fantasies of thatched pavilions and infinity pools, staffed with graceful, smiling natives who provide unparalleled service. I'll get to that in a later entry.

But in this introduction to the island, it's important to say that dream world is just one small part of Mauritius, and not a representative one. We had excellent drivers on our one-hour transfers to and from the airport, and from them we got a good sense of what life is like beyond the resort gates.

The island is a true ethnic melting pot. It was uninhabited when discovered by Europeans, thus today's native population reflects the different peoples who came ... either as slaves, indentured servants or immigrants ... to work the cane fields. The faces are mostly African, Indian, Southeast Asian or a mixture thereof. It's a huge point of pride for the islanders how well everyone gets along. Most villages we drove through had a Catholic church, a mosque and, most impressively, a giddily-decorated, god-encrusted Hindu temple sitting cheek by jowl, and almost everyone will quickly use that as a proof point of community spirit.

Add to that the cultural overlay of colonialism: first Dutch, then French, then English. (Plus those pirates of every nation.) Today this is a part of the British Commonwealth and the official language is English. But, frankly, you'd never know that without a guidebook. In reality it's French that dominates here, and though everyone in the tourist trade pretends to understand your Anglo-Saxon words, a working knowledge of French will prevent a lot of misunderstandings.

This is no Shangri La, however. It's immediately obvious that this isn't a rich country. Once you're off the single main highway that cuts cross-island from southeast to northwest, the roads are winding, narrow and often bumpy. Look to the fields on either side and you'll see natives, many of them old women, hand harvesting with machetes and straw baskets. Villages are a haphazard hotch-potch of mouldering governmental buildings, tiny shops and snack bars, patches of waste land (some strewn with plants, others with rubbish) and brightly painted houses.

Many of these residences look surprisingly big for such humble villages, but this is because the Mauritians tend to live in multi-generational family groups; the average house may have 15 or 20 occupants. At least one of them is probably assigned middle-of-night water duties. Mauritius is suffering a drought, with global warming suspected to have interfered with the once-dependable annual rains. Thus while resorts fill their infinity pools with millions of gallons and sun-worshipping guests take multiple showers a day, the natives are limited to a couple of hours of running water daily, when they need to fill buckets to supply themselves for the other 22. They are philosophical about this, though. The hotels pay plenty for the water, the guests pay the hotels, it all puts money in the economy.

The villages are interesting to drive through, but offer little sightseeing. These are utilitarian places for living and putting food on the table, not Tuscan farm villages converted for picturesque exploring. In fact, you really don't see white (tourist) faces outside of the resorts and the official attractions. Indeed, one of our drivers confided to us that "whites" means rich people in Mauritian creole, even if they're Indian or Chinese. The average salary here is between £200 and £300 a month, roughly the same as most honeymooners are paying for a single night in their luxury suites. I suspect our view ... through a BMW window en route to and from manicured tourist spots ... was a typical tourist one. There's little trickle down effect to the "real" people from tourism, beyond the tips those in the industry take home. (And those, of course, can equal a month's salary in a few good days.)

Unlike many Caribbean islands, however, Mauritius isn't entirely dependent upon tourism. Those cane fields aren't just decorative; this is one of the world's major sugar producers. There's a thriving textile manufacturing industry, and the same geographical placement that made the island a hot spot in the days of sail is starting to come into play again as China and India continue their rise to prosperity. It feels like a place with great potential, yet it also, according to one driver, suffers the usual African problem of corrupt government. The rich and powerful are harnessing the country's resources for their own prosperity rather than for the general advance of the population.

In our limited exposure, we didn't hear or see anything to make that disparity a dangerous one. All the locals we talked to seemed happy, helpful, truly concerned that we were enjoying ourselves and inordinately proud of their homeland. Still, I left with a nagging concern for the future. There's clearly a lot of money pouring into this place, and tomorrow looks set to bring more. If that cascades down to help establish a comfortable middle class, then the potential here seems vast. If, however, all the profits stay in the hands of a few, then I have to believe that someday the Mauritians, despite their abundance of cheerful contentment, may lose patience and demand a bigger slice of the pie.

Honeymoon Overview: Balanced, idyllic and adventurous ... the trip of a lifetime

2011-09-16T19:05:00.000Z

This entry was written after returning from Honeymoon, but the post date is the day we left on the trip.

Any regular reader will know that I'm a compulsive travel planner. It's a trait I got from my mother. As soon as one trip concludes, I'm online researching the next. I am inevitably the organiser of holidays, whoever I'm traveling with. So it was completely out of character for me to follow the age old tradition of running the wedding show, but leaving the honeymoon to the groom.

I am delighted I did. Not only did he do a fabulous job, but I didn't have to lift a finger. I just let the wonder of every day wash over me, unconcerned about what was coming but sure it was going to be great.

For two weeks of primarily laid back relaxation, there's an enormous amount to report on. So we'll start with this summary entry before dipping in to a series of articles on the specifics. Hopefully, you'll enjoy it, while the writing will help me hang on to the sun, service and romance for a little longer.

The trip divided into three distinct phases. First, soul-reviving sun and sea in Mauritius. Second, stimulating outdoor adventure in the South African bush. Third, foodie delight on the coast near Cape Town. We had generally good weather throughout, though the second week was a bit cooler than expected (making the fleeces we both purchased at the game lodge our major souvenirs of the trip.)

Our home for the first week was the Constance Prince Maurice, on the east coast of the island. A retreat of almost shameful luxury, we were told the staff-to-guest ratio was four-to-one. And though there are more than 70 rooms, the place is so well designed, and the spaces so generous, we often felt we were two of just a handful of guests. The hotel sits on a long lagoon screened from the ocean by a coral reef, providing the advantages of a private snorkeling area, wide, shallow swimming beaches and multiple water views.

Like so many tropical islands, there's a melange of culture here that makes it a cultural experience as well as a beach holiday. French, English, Indian and Southeast Asian influences all blend here, influencing food, architecture and social traditions. It ticked all my beach holiday boxes.

The exotic beach holiday had excited me most in the planning stages, but in the reality of travel, it was safari that brought the trip's most extraordinary moments. Mauritius and the Cape held elements familiar from other holidays; safari was completely unique. From the moment our private bush pilot met us at Kruger airport, walked us out to his six-seat Cessna, flew us over a landscape that had The Lion King soundtrack pounding in my head and landed us on a dirt airstrip he had to buzz once first to drive away the giraffe and warthogs, I felt like I was in a film. I had been on safari before (see 5.10.09), but this experience was vastly superior.

We were at Chitwa Chitwa in the Sabi Sand, one of a network of private game reserves to the west of Kruger National Park. There are no fences for hundreds of miles here. Wildlife wanders free, is fiercely protected and accustomed to the safari vehicles that accompany them each day. We saw the Big 5 (lion, leopard, rhino, buffalo and elephant) daily, often from a distance of less than 10 feet. The experience was enhanced by a knowledgeable and friendly staff, the handful of other guests and a jaw dropping suite that resembled our own game lodge rather than a simple hotel room.

I feared anything after this would be a disappointment, but the radical change of scenery and the culinary delights awaiting us in Hermanus were magical in their own way. This part of the Cape is, I suspect, what California must have looked like before humanity paved it over. A narrow coastal strip bordered by rocky cliffs, boulders jutting into the pounding surf and beaches in picturesque coves. Seals basking on rocks, flowers cascading along paths, mountains framing the view inland. In between those mountains, lush green valleys carpeted with vineyards and orchards. You'd be hard pressed to design a landscape more perfect than this one.

The point of Hermanus isn't just scenery and wineries, however. (As if that weren't enough!) It's whales. Specifically, Southern Right Whales, who spend their summers basking along this coast, giving birth, rearing young and mating to produce the next generation. The bay on which Hermanus sits is so full of the animals that there's no need for whale watching excursions. Linger on any cliff path bench, stare out to sea and it's unlikely you'll spend more than five minutes before spotting one of these giants send up a plume of spray through its blowhole, lift its fin out of the water for a bit of sunshine or breach with a massive splash.

I doubt there's anyplace more luxurious from which to watch this spectacle than Birkenhead House. Essentially an extremely upscale B&B. What was originally a private home atop the cliffs is now an 11-bedroom hotel built around a series of courtyards with pools and fountains, with a glamorous sitting and dining room, looking out on a wide terrace with infinity pool hanging over the bay. The meals served in that dining room were the best of our trip, with fantastic wine pairings.

We had one of the two oceanfront bedrooms. Quite small, and therefore lacking some of the magnificent bed frames we saw in the other rooms, but I'm a sucker for a view and this one was hard to beat. I saw my first whale before I got out of bed in the morning. The sliding glass doors on two sides of the room opened up a wide vista of sea and coastline, and we were welcomed with flowers strewn across the bed and a bottle of champagne. I was happy.

I have never had a better trip. Magnificent locations, complete pampering, succulent food and wine, and all in the company of my adored (and adoring, he adds in the editing process) husband. Flowers and champagne showed up on all the hotel beds, in fact. That's part of the magic of honeymoon. I suppose that a few nights in Bognor Regis would have been just as wonderful, given the extraordinary celebration of sharing my life with the man of my dreams. But I'm glad I didn't have to test the theory. One of the reasons he is my perfect match: he orchestrated this magnificent holiday, designed to trip every pleasure trigger I have. I fear the travel reviews in this blog will now be setting a much loftier standard.

For more on our adventures, stay tuned over coming weeks as I go into detail on the hotels, the food and the sights.

Just as planned: Wedding is the party of a lifetime (with great music, too)

2011-09-15T19:00:00.000Z

This entry was written after returning from Honeymoon, but posted on the date the activity described concluded.

Throughout the wedding planning months, Piers and I were captivated by a game show called "Four Weddings", in which four brides each attend the others' ceremony and reception and rate it to name a winner. Every bride always believes hers is the best wedding, and is incredulous when someone else wins.

I know how they feel.

My wedding day was perfect. It fulfilled fantasies I'd been concocting since my Disney princess days. The ceremony was grand, the reception elegant, the groom looked like a prince, everyone had a great time, everything went to plan. Let me tell you about it...

From the bridal perspective, the day started with breakfast at the Lansdowne Club, where the reception would later be. We started hair and make up at 8:45 in order to be ready by 12:30. Beauty is hard work.

The highlight of the morning: my lovely husband-to-be getting Classic FM to do a long dedication to us, noting how we met through the station's dating web site, how we loved (but debated over) opera, and wishing us well. Fortunately, this happened before my make up started, so I could cry all I wanted over E lucevan le stelle.

By mid-day I was kitted out in my bridal finery. Something old: Mom's wedding dress. Better than anything I saw on the market, the 1962 lines were elegant, demure and sophisticated. Something new: Diamond and sapphire earrings I had made to match the coming wedding ring. Something borrowed: The Hannegan family pearls. Something blue (and borrowed): Hannah Wright's garter. The BT-branded taxis turned up on time and traffic was non-existent, leaving us to wait around the corner from the church for 20 minutes so we weren't too early. Meanwhile Piers, resplendent in his new morning suit and Favourbrook waistcoat, was having a pub lunch with the boys and his family at the Duke of Wellington.

We had spent a great deal of time planning the service and it was, I believe, as magical and otherworldly as we had hoped. Certainly that's been the feedback from guests who, even if they weren't church goers, appreciated the drama and the majesty of "high church" ceremony. The sunny day meant that the nave was filled with light, colours from the stained glass reflecting on floors and walls while the gold on the altar and the clerics' copes glistened. Father David's sermon was masterful, poking fun at us for choosing "Simple Gifts" as our hymn for a ceremony that was anything but simple, then using the lyrics ... "by turning, turning, you come round right" ... to talk about how humanity and completion is found in the love of others. Yes, I cried. Again.

As expected, the choir was the icing on the ceremonial cake, the eight voices, organ and two violins swelling in magnificence. I'm partial, I know, but I don't think I've ever heard them better. After the traditional American hymn Simple Gifts, the bridesmaids processed in to Brahms' Variations on a theme by Haydn, which is also the Northwestern University song. That brought another touch of joy, as memories of all those wonderful times of youth rose to join with this day. The processional to Wagner's wedding chorus from Lohengrin, sung, was a triumph. As expected, most people had no idea that familiar melody had words. The choir was suitably operatic and my dress and veil were old fashioned enough to transport everyone back a century or two.

About half the service was sung or played rather than spoken, and most of that to Mozart's Coronation Mass. We added on two movements of the Exsultate Jubilate for the signing of the register; it was a special, quiet moment when Piers and I stood together in the vestry, where we'd adjourned for the signing, to listen to the soprano hit those stirring notes. The second hymn, to honour the English side, and Piers' rugby passion (and it's also his school song), was of course Jerusalem. Now into the musical spirit of things, the congregation performed their audience participation on this one with vigour. And finally, out to Vivaldi's Gloria, certainly in the Top 10 list for the most joyful piece of music ever written. To paraphrase Shakespeare, if music be the food of love, we left the church very, very full.

To add to the whole dreamy, fairy tale aspect of things, a cluster of little girls from the local school had been waiting outside to see me when I emerged. I did, indeed, feel like a Disney princess at that moment. We'd hired a classic Routemaster double-decker bus, so loaded all the guests on board and made our way to the Lansdowne.

At the club, all my recent joys were trumped for a moment upon my first sight of the cake. I'd worked closely with my baker, Rachel Hill of Planet Cake, to create something that was architectural rather than floral, evocative of the late Georgian setting and reminiscent of Wedgwood. It was perfect. And it tasted good, too!

As every bride who went before me predicted, the rest of the day passed in a blur. The first half of the cocktail reception was taken up with formal photos, the second with bustling my generous train and getting the veil off. (I almost had a spectacular tumble backwards off the stairs in the ladies' lounge when someone came crashing through the door before me, but my bridesmaids caught me.) I was too busy to try the canapes ... mini burgers and cornets of coronation chicken to acknowledge the Anglo-American nature of the wedding, crab because the groom loves it ... and soon found myself next to Piers ready to cut the cake. That's certainly one of the great ironies of weddings. All those hours searching for a baker and planning the cake, all her work, all that money, and it's on display for just 90 minutes before it's cut and whisked away to the kitchen. Thank heavens for photos.

After Dad's speech, our guests moved into the ballroom. We had seven tables, in addition to ours, decorated with bunches of hydrangeas in the centre, a sprinkle of dried hydrangea petals across the table and the traditional Italian favour ... five sugared almonds (two shades of blue, and white) in an organza bag with blue ribbons ... by the wine glasses. Two-tone ribbon ties around each napkin and silver chairs with blue seat cushions completed my Wedgwood colour scheme.

We made our formal entrance as Mr. and Mrs. Bencard to Brindisi, the drinking song from La Traviata. Most people couldn't hear it over the applause, but we'd printed the lyrics in both English and Italian in the menu card ("let's drink for the ecstatic feeling love arouses"), so hopefully people noticed. We then sat down to a hearty meal of ham hock and rabbit terrine matched with a cotes de duras sauvignon blanc, followed by duck breast and caraway cabbage with a Cointreau jus, paired with a vega del castillo merlot. The bride and groom didn't linger over their food, however, as we wanted to mix and mingle amongst the dining tables to greet our guests.

We broke up the speeches and added time for both the bride and the matron of honour, with Piers and I giving our toasts just after the starter, and Anne Bruneel and Robin Bencard delivering the main attraction after the duck. Evening guests started to arrive at 7:30, as Robin was finishing up his speech. We then all adjourned to the gallery next to the ballroom, where slices of the wedding cake (three flavours: fruit, lemon and chocolate) were laid out with a cheese board, coffee and port, while the band finished their set up and the staff cleared some tables for dancing.

Our second musical extravagance, the Sinatra-style band, was another fine choice. Paul Young and his backing quartet delivered a mix of the great classics in the first two sets before swinging into some classic rock and roll in the third. We did our first dance to Just the Way You Look Tonight. Two dance lessons and some practice made for a serviceable performance, though I don't think we'll ever qualify for the ballroom circuit. As a special treat, Kaci Machacyk, one of the American extended family, sung Someone to Watch Over Me and My Funny Valentine, a real highlight of the night.

And then, suddenly, it was over. Midnight struck, people were saying goodbye and the last few guests were lingering in the ballroom as the Lansdowne staff struck the tables around us. We were exhausted, but happy. It was the best party I've ever thrown. As it should have been.

Pre-Wedding festivities returned me to my English tourist roots

2011-09-14T23:00:00.001Z

This entry was written after returning from Honeymoon, but posted on the date the activity described concluded.

It's all over. Wedding and glorious honeymoon, focus of more than nine months of planning, now complete and consigned to memory. You and I, dear reader, have a LOT to catch up on. Let's roll the clock all the way back to 8 September and start with the pre-wedding festivities.

The wedding was on a Thursday, and I decided to take the entire week before it off. I had a small but important group of family (and dear friends who deserve that title) coming in from the States, and I wanted to focus on them. After airport runs on Thursday night and Friday morning, we had a full house in Basingstoke, with Anne (matron of honour) and Mike Bruneel in the guest room and Dad on the couch.

Festivities kicked off Friday night at The Jolly Farmer at Cliddesden. (The Americans are justifiably impressed with the classic British pub, and a lot of them would feature in this week.) We've been searching for a proper "local" since moving to Hatch Warren and this, happily, fits the bill. A tiny place filled with locals, friendly ... if a bit daffy ... staff, big beer garden, good food. At a mile and half, still walkable. We had a great dinner, put down many pints and chatted with locals in the garden.

Saturday divided on gender lines. For the girls, it was off to Nirvana spa, where I treated my bridesmaids to a day of indulgence before the big event. This purpose-built spa just outside of Reading is one of the best in the area, and, when compared to similar spas at the luxury hotels, is much better value for money. It's most memorable for its series of pools, each with its own purpose and each in a room designed especially for it. There's the main relaxation pool, decorated on a Roman theme with columns and trompe l'oeil murals of temples and Italian countryside. A wall of arched windows looks out on the outdoor pool, also on the Roman theme and dominated by a little temple at its head. There's a more functional exercise pool, kept cooler and divided into lanes for energetic swimming. The jet pool has more than a dozen different jets that work on different parts of your body, all in deliciously hot water. Half an hour in here is like getting a full body massage. Sculptures of sea creatures and murals of tropical beaches put you in a Caribbean frame of mind.

Finally there's the zodiac-themed flotation pool. You need to pay extra for treatments in this one; it was part of our package. The water is filled with salt from the Dead Sea and the perfectly round pool has a gentle current. A limited number of people (there were six in our session) go in at a time. You float as if on a mattress, looking up at a ceiling decorated with stars copying the night sky. They say one session here is as restful as a full night's sleep. Elsewhere, there are treatment rooms for other services, a light and airy cafe and a relaxation room with heated, tiled loungers and a bubbling fountain at its centre, kitted out to look like a North African palace.

Meanwhile, the boys had been tramping around Stonehenge and discovering the smallest pub in England before returning home, so Mike could give Piers the BBQ lesson that came with the grill that was our gift from the American family. A magnificent dinner of smoked brisket followed.

Sunday was a day of pilgrimage. Anne and I had both been re-reading Jane Austen in the run up to the wedding, and a day dedicated to our literary heroine seemed appropriate. We started at Chawton Cottage, the house where Jane lived with her mother, sister and a family friend in her late 30s and early 40s, and where she did her most productive work. It's a charming red brick house in a quiet little village. The kind of place four people could live in comfortably, but certainly nothing grand. Jane's small writing table and chair is in the corner of the dining room. There, she spent every afternoon with a view of the centre of the village, writing some of the greatest works of English literature. We swooned.

Next it was off to Winchester Cathedral, where the great lady is buried. Even though she had started to gain recognition before her death, including an invitation to the Royal Library and a request to dedicate her next novel (it would be Emma) to the Prince Regent, who was a fan, her tombstone doesn't mention her writing. It's a brass memorial plaque nearby, established later by the Jane Austen Society, that tells the rest of the tale.

We adjourned to the Hotel du Vin for tea (funky, slightly Asian-boudoir decor, lovely garden, might be worth trying the restaurant for a nice night out in future) then took a meandering drive through the countryside before meeting the boys at The Mayfly. This was one of my favourite pubs long before moving to Hampshire. In fact, Mom used to insist on coming here to watercolour; the view of the Test River, bordered by reeds and meadows as it winds lazily along, is one of rich pastoral beauty. There was a chill in the air and potential for rain, however, so we sat in the conservatory and watched the twilight develop from there. Another long, peaceful evening, with good food and plenty of pints for those not driving.

The family decamped for Mayfair on Monday, so sightseeing moved into London. Dad was ready for a quieter day, and Piers was still working, so after getting Dad checked in to the Lansdowne and having my final pre-wedding meeting there, Anne, Mike and I set off on a walking tour of town. It was an exquisite day. As hoped when we picked our wedding day, the typical clement September had arrived with warm days and clear, blue skies. After a pub lunch in Shepherd's Market we set off on foot, wandering around Mayfair, Piccadilly and St. James before heading for Trafalgar Square and Covent Garden. I was trying to do my tour guiding best, peppering the walk with stories, giving a sense of how these areas had developed, doing some quick dips of high culture (the National Gallery's free entry means you can do a 10-minute glide through, pointing out the most famous stuff) and the modern world (the planet's largest Apple store, with free wi-fi for visitors; whip out that iPhone and send a message home).

On Tuesday we added Tricia Hannegan to the family group and kicked up the sightseeing pace. Another lunch at another pub in Shepherd's Market, then a stroll across Green Park to Buckingham Palace, for which we had tickets to the annual summer opening. The Palace deserves a whole entry to itself, of course, but with such a backlog of activity to catch you up on I'm afraid this is only a brief mention. It is certainly worth seeing, though it is my least favourite of the royal palaces. Windsor has far more variety and a better art collection, Hampton Court more history and architectural merit.

Built primarily to impress, designed in the late Regency and heavily remodeled in the early 20th century, the staterooms have an almost institutional feel to them. They're like grand hotel interiors, built on an oversized scale and coated with silly amounts of gold leaf. Still, there's no denying it's magnificent, and when you get past the most formal rooms (processional staircase, throne room, art gallery, ballroom) the drawing rooms along the back are exceptionally beautiful. In fact, the back of the palace overlooking the garden is by far its best side, architectural miles ahead of the unimaginative neo-Classical front most of the world knows.

The big draw this year was the wedding dress of the Duchess of Cambridge (formerly Kate Middleton), displayed with much pomp in the centre of the ballroom. With that comes films on its design and construction, display cases with accessories (how she stood all day in those shoes, I'll never know), and a model of the cake (beautiful, but I like mine better). There was also a fascinating little display on the family's Faberge collection, but the crowds made it impossible to see well without waiting for ages. This really should have been in the Queen's Gallery, where people interested in the art could have seen it without the throngs there for the dress.

Next, off to the London Eye. I've done this enough to be quite jaded, but it's always a delight seeing the interest of first time visitors. It really is a great way to get a sense of the spread of the city and how all the major sites you see in the tour books fit together on the ground. Management is quite clever about offering a variety of tickets; you can wander up on the day, buy the cheap ones and wait, or you can buy the queue-jumpers in advance and waltz right onto a pod. An expensive half hour (at £26 a ticket), but worth the money if you're on a tight schedule.

And we were, because we needed to be at the wedding rehearsal at 7. This was the first time the whole wedding party had been together, and the first meeting of the immediate members of the two families. So a rehearsal dinner after the session, to allow people to get to know each other, was essential.

We decamped to Madsen's (see 26.1.10). It seemed fitting that the private room at this Scandinavian restaurant provide the setting for the Danish-descended Bencards to celebrate. Guests could choose from a set menu of two choices for each course, all complemented with good wines and the requisite snaps for toasting. The two family groups mixed well and seemed to enjoy themselves, establishing solid foundations for the wedding to come.

The night before the wedding, the two families retreated to their separate corners. The Bencards hosted a dinner for their visiting Danish family. Elegant and sophisticated. The Americans went on a pub crawl with silly hats. Are you surprised? Joined by the last member of the team, like-a-niece Kaci Machacyk, we explored the upscale and charming drinking haunts of Mayfair.

We started at "I am the Only Running Footman". This used to be a wonderfully charming old place, with its Regency leaded windows, its cozy interior and its unique name (footmen used to gather here waiting for their employers to socialise in the fancy houses nearby). Sadly, it's been modernised in recent years, and is now all scrubbed light wood, pale colours and modern design touches. Horrified ... and feeling that the wealthy, suited locals were glaring at our illuminated hats ... I led us off to the Coach and Horses. Just a few hundred yards east on the other side of Berkley Square, this detached half-timbered building was built by history-loving arts and crafts movement backers to look old. The atmosphere here is much more pleasant and relaxing, much less of a poseur's spot.

We wound up the evening at The Grenadier, a classic popular with visitors and locals alike. (See 1.5.09). Charming and quiet, due to its location on a backstreet behind the Lanesborough hotel, yet surprisingly reasonable food prices for this part of town. And the cheerful Irish bartender didn't mind the hats at all. Or the fake mustaches that joined them later. Given that this was once the officer's mess for the Grenadier Guards, I suspect it's far from the worst behaviour they've seen here.

Where did August go? Someplace too busy to be writing about it.

2011-08-31T07:30:00.001Z

"Uneventful" and "maniacally busy" are two states that, in combination, spell trouble for a blog. And thus has flowed August. Nothing exciting or distinctive enough to merit a full entry, combined with a life currently driven by "to do" lists, in which I generally rush through the day, accumulate more stress as I fall further behind and collapse into sleep on the couch by 9:30. So much for the glamorous life.

This state of affairs is, of course, partially due to the demands of my upcoming wedding; a one-time only (thank heavens) flurry of event organisation on par with anything I've ever managed at work. Work itself is a dire death march on an unexpected project; I remind myself that the pain pays for all the lovely experiences I write about in this blog, and refrain from sharing any of the boring details. Estate management back in St. Louis? Not going well, but not enough time to do much about it. Another niggling point of stress, constantly irritating like an itch just out of reach, festering there until I can clear time to do something about it. I begin to think I should take up some calming meditation, but I don't know where I'd fit it in.

Of course, plenty has happened in the past month that I could have cobbled into an entry had I had some time at leisure to write. There were those riots. The odd experience of sitting in leafy Hampshire, watching our capital city looted and burned by thugs. When I moved to this country 16 years ago, one of its advantages was a greater sense of security thanks to far lower rates of crime. Those days seem gone.

There was my hen party, an excellent time but fairly dignified, as these things go. This was completely due to the good taste of my bridesmaids, long-time travel companions Hillary and Lisa, who managed to weave in just enough ribaldry to honour tradition without making anyone look silly or feel embarrassed. I could have done an entry on what we learned at our chocolate making workshop, or one on the nature of sisterhood and friendship ... though if I were still a reporter I'd be chasing the story of why a university-educated software salesman chooses to work hen parties in nothing but an apron. Is he forced into it financially? Embarrassed to do it? Or enjoying it and getting easy money. It is a conversation I never had with James, our "Butler in the Buff", though those were the questions I wanted to ask.

The fine points of wedding planning bring new experiences and discoveries every day. Hair trials. Make up trials. The search for a reasonably-priced nail salon in Mayfair. The connundrum of how little you can spend on flowers while still producing something classy enough for your venues, and that doesn't make things look under-dressed. (Just short of £2000 would appear to be the painful answer.) Tracking down Cheltenham Chairs (turns out that's the formal name for those spindle-backed, traditional English banqueting chairs) in silver with blue cushions. Dealing with the disappointments of last-minute drop outs and the frustrations of invited guests who just can't seem to give a firm reply. And on. And on. I now have a much better understanding of how the industry can support so many magazines, "how to" guides and agony aunt columns.

While I have no extremely noteworthy new restaurants to report on, it's not because we've been cooking every night. Roussillon texted its regulars with a two-for-the-price-of-one offer on the summer seven-course tasting menu, an offer we couldn't refuse since we were just down the road at our church for more wedding planning and needed someplace to eat. No need for additional commentary on that fine establishment, other than to say they're still performing at described levels and retain their rank as my top restaurant in London. More often, when we've had a night in town, we've usually headed to the dining room at Piers' club. Excellent food, less expensive than the equivalent public restaurants, and offering a chance to slip into the empty ballroom afterwards to practice our first dance for the wedding. Being a private club, of course, my tipping you off to how good the food at the Lansdowne is will do you little good, unless you're a member, can use a reciprocal membership, or can hit up a current member for an invitation. If you have any of those options, I'd encourage you to use them.

The Lansdowne's figuring so prominently in my life recently, that when we took one day off from the relentless push of the "to do" lists over the bank holiday weekend, I suggested a visit to Bowood, the Lansdowne family's country estate. It's rare these days to be able to see the matched sets of aristocratic seat and London townhouse, with so many torn down and some of those that exist being tricky to get into. Doing so gives you a more complete understanding of political, artistic and social life in the Georgian era. Something I may return to on a quiet winter weekend when, perhaps, life will be uneventful, but not so busy.

Ahead lies a week and a half more of uneventful and maniacal, and then all hell breaks loose. Family starts arriving from Thursday 8 September. The 10th through the 14th are a mix of sightseeing, celebration and final wedding preparation. The big day arrives on the 15th, then we're off to Mauritius and South Africa. Major events aplenty deserving coverage. But will I have time to write?

Watch this space...

Siegfried's high on adventure, but unconvincing in romance

2011-08-03T18:24:00.000Z

After a month of almost consistent rain and chill, the sun emerged in all its glory on Saturday. A day after the afternoon I'd planned sitting next to a pool. Instead, it was the same time I was due to spend four hours in a dark theatre taking in the third opera in the Ring Cycle. Which really leaves me wondering, is God a Wagner fan (sending good weather to bless the occasion) or a Wagner foe (offering sunshine as a clear signal I would have spent my time better outdoors)?

We shall never know for sure. We certainly have evidence, however, that the London critics are fans, at least as far as Longborough's production of Siegfried goes. And though I doubt I'll ever be in the first rank of Wagner fans, I'll concede it was enjoyable enough to be worth the sacrifice of a few peak tanning hours.

Siegfried is probably the most accessible of the four parts of Wagner's ring cycle, even though it's the one least likely to feature any music the average person has heard before. It's a an adventure with a dashing hero who forges a magic sword, slays a dragon and rescues an enchanted, sleeping maiden. Good triumphs over evil and there's a happy ending. Of course, it takes three acts and about four hours of performance time to get there, so the faint-hearted should probably just give Sleeping Beauty another spin in the DVD player.

Part of the length is due to the fact that this opera, though part of a larger cycle, could easily have been broken into three independent dramas. Act 1 is a coming of age story, as Siegfried confronts his evil guardian, discovers who he really is and establishes the foundation of his power. Act 2 could stand alone as a rip-roaring dragon quest. And Act 3 is both our princess quest, and a fascinating exploration of the fears of an independent woman ... the valkyrie Brunhilde ... who is terrified she's going to lose herself when she gives in to love. (I doubt Wagner intended the feminist interpretation, but these days it makes the last act unusually modern and relevant.)

The Longborough company delivered to the standards we've now come to expect, with innovative but low budget staging, fantastic singers and acting that connects directly to the audience. The last is particularly important in this former chicken shed turned opera house, where the most distant seat can still see facial expressions without artificial assistance. Particularly noteworthy was American tenor Daniel Brenna (pictured above), who played Siegfried as brash yet loveable, innocent yet dangerous ... the dumb jock whose skill gives him more power than his intelligence knows how to handle. It worked brilliantly for me in the first two acts, though was a problem in the last. How, I wondered, could the magnificent Brunhilde fall head over heels for this self-centred lug?

And here, Wagner's music doesn't help. He does drama and passion well, but when it comes to romance he leaves me cold. Siegfried and Brunhilde's discussion (I can't call anything that long a duet) as they are falling in love is bombastic and powerful, but in no way was I convinced these two people actually cared for each other. It's the same reaction I had at last year's performance of Die Walkure when Siegmund and Sieglinde (Siegfried's parents) were supposedly bonding for life. With apologies to my Wagner-loving fiance, I still argue that Wagner can't touch the Italians for putting true love on stage.

In many ways, now that I've seen half the wring cycle live and been exposed to the rest of it on TV, I think Wagner was born to early and working in the wrong medium. I can quite clearly imagine the man producing, writing and directing a 12-part operatic mini series on HBO, with the full-fantasy look of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings or the recent Game of Thrones.

You may think that's too niche to see the light of day, but the modern trend in Wagner is wildly avant-garde. We recently watched a production on Sky Arts that saw the vakyries sheathed in rubber, flying in and out on cherry pickers in front of a giant video screen flashing space images behind them. It made Longborough's sparse, industrial set look practically traditional. The Wagner community is up for risk, so why not?

Barbecoa brings proper American BBQ to London

2011-07-29T18:54:00.001Z

I've read that smell is actually the most powerful sense when it comes to triggering memories. It was a claim I could well believe last night, as I walked into the new restaurant Barbacoa and was plunged instantly back to my middle American roots. The unusually warm Thanksgiving when we smoked the turkey in the Weber kettle on the back deck; flipping hundreds of burgers with Craig Jackson at the alumni center BBQ the night before graduation; the first time I tasted Mike Bruneel's ribs; the team building dinner at Southfork Ranch soon after I moved to Texas. All that and more, triggered by that distinctive, blended aroma of meat, smoke and tomato-based sauce with hints of sugar and spice.

That intoxicating perfume is a rare one in Europe and, honestly, even in America once you get to the coasts. It's certainly a scent I've never picked up in London until now.

Barbecoa is a joint venture between British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and American BBQ guru Adam Perry Lang. The latter, much celebrated for bringing proper BBQ to New York City, has now gone trans-Atlantic and I'd guess the menu is mostly his. Pulled pork, baby back ribs, jalapeno cornbread, rubs, marinades, sauces, baked cheesecake. You could be anywhere in a meandering line from Texas through Memphis, St. Louis, Kansas City and Chicago. Look up from the menu though, and you're nowhere but London. And quite a posh bit of town at that. Barbecoa occupies a corner of the recently completed One New Change complex; its double-height glass walls looking straight onto the back of the newly cleaned St. Paul's cathedral. It's a stunning view and the designers have wisely decided not to compete with it, keeping the interiors modern, clean and understated.

The most interesting thing to look at here, once you get past the gorgeous view outside, is the massive kitchen around which the restaurant wraps. Food magazine-worthy displays of huge cuts of meat are almost as fascinating as the grills themselves ... vast tables of glowing coals with grills that can be raised or lowered by big metal wheels to get just the right temperature. (Should I ever win the lottery, I'm buying one of those.)

My meal mostly lived up to expectation. I started with the baby back ribs, which were just slightly overcooked and a bit too over-spiced, but certainly the best I've had in London. But the pulled pork was the stuff of final meal fantasies. Tender meat falling to shreds, slathered with a well balanced sauce, served in an American-sized mound beside the best jalapeno cornbread I've had since leaving Texas. Add some excellent slaw with the right combination of crunch, sweetness and tartness, and a pot of slow baked beans that had clearly been doctored, as is right and proper, with brown sugar and a few spices, and, frankly, I was transported back to the fourth of July. My only culinary complaint was a small and overly-fussy beer selection. I wanted a Bud ... yes, not great beer, but it's fantastic with BBQ ... and would have been delighted with a Sam Adams. But the selection was boutique, British and unknown to me. I stuck with the Malbec.

My companions didn't have quite the same experience, but then they didn't have smells and tastes triggering a lifetime of happy memories. The rib eye for two across the table was an exquisitely displayed fan of medium rare slices around a massive bone filled with rich marrow, which later gave our spaniel some intense hours of joy. Piers was probably least impressed, finding his pork belly to be just average in taste and rather small compared to the other main courses.

Had the service been better, Barbacoa would have vaulted instantly onto my Top 10 list. But here, sadly, the place leaves a lot to be desired. We had a table booked for 8:30. We arrived at 7:40 and settled into the bar, not expecting to be seated early but certainly thinking we'd get a decent table, on time. Instead, we finally sat down half an hour late in what's arguably one of the worst tables in the place, well away from both nice views (St. Paul's and the kitchen) and near the door. It then took a further 20 minutes to order. Starving, when told that starters would take 15 to 20 minutes, we opted for some bread. At £1 a slice this is a pricey extra, but it's served beautifully and features four distinctly different types. We would have enjoyed it more if it hadn't come at almost the same time as the starters, leaving us feeling that we'd wasted our money. Mains followed promptly, but then there was another long delay before being asked if we wanted dessert or coffee, taking orders (we only opted for the caffeine) and finally getting the bill. We didn't emerge until 11:30, meaning we didn't get home until 1am. Far too late for a school night, and well past expectations for an 8:30 table.

I have no doubt that I'll be back to Barbecoa. In fact, given that its front door is less than 200 yards from my London office, it will be hard to keep me away. But I'll be booking well in advance, for a table at 7:00.

The cook-on-demand birthday brings experimentation and very fine wine home

2011-07-25T08:15:00.006Z

Back in my agency days, when I had a small team who all worked in the same place, I instituted a bake-on-demand policy for birthdays. You give me any cake recipe or flavour combo you want, I'll produce it for lunchtime celebrations. It was great for team morale, and it gave me the excuse to try interesting recipes.

My days of baking as management strategy have long gone, but I adapted the concept yesterday for my fiance's birthday. One of his presents: Hand me your dream menu and I'll produce it.

This ran the risk of my being hoisted on my own culinary petard, as the boy loves French cuisine, I rarely cook it and a multiple-course extravaganza could have featured items that kept me in the kitchen for days. Fortunately, he opted for simpler fare, combining both Danish and English classics. As with the cakes, the process gave me a chance to experiment and, in this case, to firm up some options for our regular dinner party rotation.

We started with two types of canapes: potato pancakes and crawfish tails. The first is a recipe from Trina Hahnemann's Nordic cookbook, my tutorial for delivering the flavours of my partner's youth. I think I have this dish almost perfected now: Neat circles of shredded potato mixed with onion, nutmeg, egg and oatmeal, topped with roasted beetroot salad, creme fraiche with chives and a generous dollop of lumpfish caviar. My only criticism is portion control. Even when attempting to work small, these ended up starter- rather than canape-sized, opening a meal where I cooked ... and we ate ... far too much. Guess I was taking an Italian approach to a Northern European menu. Beside the pancakes were little spoons of crawfish tails in a bisque made by boiling down the discarded shells and bodies in beer, then adding butter and cream. I had only intended the bisque as a sauce so made just a tiny bit of it, but think it probably deserves to be a soup on its own, with the tails used as garnish.

From one set of circles to the next. His first course request was scallops with black pudding, probably one of the most common early round Masterchef dishes but one neither of us had ever tried. I was happy with the ease, look and taste of the recipe. Rings of granny smith apples cooked in butter and a bit of sugar until they start to soften on the bottom, then disks of black pudding quickly fried in the sweet apple juices, then the scallops fried in the thickening glaze in the pan. I didn't get the proportions right here, either, and went overboard on the black pudding, which should have been about a quarter rather than half an inch thick. I'd also have to work on the presentation before it gets on the dinner party rota. But onto that list it will go, if only because you can't buy just two inches of black pudding. I am left with a whole coil of the stuff; a magnificently rich and flavourful version from the queen's farm shop at Windsor, but a weight watching sin of enormous proportions. I wonder, does anyone know if it freezes well?

After two terribly elegant introductory courses, the man went for upscale comfort food: salmon burgers. Not complete child's play, as they rested upon home-made rye focaccia, but not particularly complicated either. Mince up salmon, add chopped spring onions and capers, bread crumbs, lemon juice, egg and some herbs. Shape into burgers. I elaborated on the recipe here (another from Hahnemann) by pressing the burgers in clingfilm, wrapping them tightly and putting them in the fridge for an hour, which I think helped keep the fairly delicate patties together. Those get fried for four minutes on each side, then placed on that rye base with a generous spread of dressing made from creme fraiche, mayo, lemon juice and chives, a pile of salad leaves and a tomatoes. (The last ingredient not for the birthday boy, of course, who's allergic to them.)

On the side I did what's evidently a classic Scandinavian slaw: thin strips of pointed cabbage, freshly-shelled peas and lots of dill, all raw, tossed with a honey lemon dressing. I've never cooked much with dill and am not a particular fan of the flavour, but it's a Danish staple and one of Piers' favourites, so I'm experimenting. This salad, I must concede, is a winner. I'm a firm believer that all burgers need chips (fries), however, so I left Trina's cookbook for an Epicurious take on an oven-baked sweet potato version. These need refinement. I overdid it on the herbs (you shake the potatoes in oil and herbs before dumping them into a roasting pan) and left them in the oven a bit too long, but they were tasty all the same.

We returned to England for his requested dessert: Summer pudding. Although a classic, and very easy, I'd never actually made it. I opted for Epicurious again ... probably my most-used recipe web site, archiving years of recipes from Gourmet and Bon Apetit ... and a raspberry and blueberry version of the dish. The bread shell didn't get quite as gooey and juice-soaked as I wanted, which taught me a lesson about putting some of the liquid in before the fruit filling, but I had reserved a jug of the juices and could amend this with an additional bath once I'd unmoulded the pudding.

On the wine front, we started with a bargain. Jean de Praisac's brut champagne is produced by industry giant Heidsieck for the Thresher chain. It usually retails for just under £15 but has the biscuity, round flavours of something far more expensive. In fact, having dug it out of the champagne rack without any memory of where it came from, we thought we'd popped something pricey; it was only my post-meal web search that revealed the bargain. The real expenditure came with the wine for the rest of the meal, though this, too, could be put in the bargain category.

One of the benefits of doing really fine meals at home is that you can splash out for wines you could never afford in a restaurant. By conservative estimate, last night's Meursault ... Patrick Javillier's "Les Tillets" 2008 ... would be about £100 on any London wine list. We picked it up in Berry's summer sale, at 25% off its regular retail price. Yes, still £29 a bottle, so not something you want to glug down without thinking. Nor is it something I can imagine paying £20 a glass for when dining out. But here, it was both an appropriate and magnificent splash. Robert Parker gives it a lofty 92 on his scale and says "the wine’s lush texture together with ample juicy freshness and intriguing finishing mineral nuances makes for immediate delight." I can tell you that it also makes for a wine with the lightness to complement fish, but the body to stand up against the strong secondary flavours of the black pudding and the sweet potato fries.

I am seriously contemplating heading up to the Berry's outlet at lunch to buy a case while it's still on sale to put back for special occasions. Although I am hoping that the next big celebration is not on a Sunday. With that much food and wine on a school night, this Monday morning I am not as bright as I might be. Bring on more coffee, please.

Potter and dancing dragons sweep me away to other worlds, and argue for the series novel

2011-07-17T14:15:00.006Z

It is fashionable amongst culturally literate types to bemoan the rise of the sequel and the series in popular entertainment. There's nothing original coming out of Hollywood any more, they moan, it's all about franchises with a number after the name.

It's a valid argument you can support with plenty of dire examples. But I'd counter that for every derivative, shortcut-taking series, there's an artfully crafted set where each new episode builds and improves upon the last. Indeed, our household library is dominated by series. From the classics of our childhood .... The Chronicles of Narnia for me, The Lord of the Rings for him ... through to the sequential adventures of Richard Sharpe, Didius Falco, Aubrey and Maturin, King Kelson or Brother Cadfael, there's something wonderfully compelling about set of characters and a fictional world that draws you in over multiple installments.

For lovers of those sorts of series, this was perhaps the biggest week in memory.

Fantasy writer (and fellow Medill School of Journalism graduate) George R.R. Martin has left his fans waiting six long years for the latest installment of his epic Song of Ice and Fire series. Often called "the American Tolkien", Martin developed a fascination for the English Wars of the Roses into a fantasy world with feudal families squabbling over a throne, augmented by a hefty dose of magic and mystery. Fans of the series ... and I'm a big one ... adore his complex plots, intense character development, Machiavellian political sensibilities and unabashed sexuality. In fact, I'd compare him to Russian writers more than Tolkien, as his vast numbers of characters and intricate, inter-related story lines remind me of the notes and family trees I sketched out in university to keep the details of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Sholokhov's Don series straight.

After multiple promised publication dates that didn't come to pass, Martin's fans were starting to think he'd never deliver the three books needed to finish the series. Then HBO turned the first novel, A Game of Thrones, into a mini-series that got rave reviews and brought even more fans to the franchise. Surely, Martin had to deliver now? Last Tuesday, he did. Thanks to the magic of technology I didn't even have to leave the house; I downloaded A Dance with Dragons onto my kindle a few hours after it officially came on the market. And I wasn't the only one: Random House reports selling 298,000 copies (including both print and digital) in the first publication day alone.

At more than 1,000 pages, and with a mid-week release, I couldn't give in to my usual instinct to read the latest installment of a beloved series from cover to cover immediately. So I'm pacing myself. (My Kindle informs me I'm 16% of the way through.) My initial impressions? Generally excellent. Plots are racing along with exciting twists and turns, old friends are returning with new nuances, mysteries continue to develop. I may have two early complaints. First: enough with the complexity, George. This is the time in a series to start bringing all those disparate plot lines together and start creeping towards a conclusion, not to introduce even more new things. At this point I'm willing to trust him that everything is for an ultimate purpose. Second: we're getting perilously dark. There's always been a streak of violence and realism in these books, but certain descriptions of violence in Dance make me wince as I read. Again, I trust they're for a purpose, but I hope the grit doesn't overwhelm the sweeping grandeur of the piece.

Despite those discomforts, this latest installment does everything I want a series book to do, namely bring me back into a familiar and fascinating world, and hang onto me so tightly that it's a trial to turn my attention back to reality.

Turn my attention to something else I did do this weekend, but it certainly wasn't reality. Because Martin's latest episode sat cheek by jowl with the release of the concluding Harry Potter film. I like A Song of Ice and Fire enormously, but I adore the Potter series. Like Narnia in my childhood, there's something that connects right to my soul. I'm not just reading a rippingly good plot, I am completely engaged in the characters. I honestly care about these people and what happens to them. (Which is why I suspect Martin will never have me in great, gasping sobs the way Rowling did as we peered into Severus Snape's dying memories.)

It seems like yesterday that I stood in the first-day-of-publication queue for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, took it home and read for a solid 18 hours ... broken by one short night's sleep ... until I reached a shuddering, massively satisfying conclusion. In fact, it was just over four years ago, as my blog entry of 22.7.07 shows. It hardly seems much further back when I was pouring over still shots from the soon to be released first film, marveling at how perfectly the design team seemed to have brought the world in my head to life on screen. That, amazingly, was a decade ago. And now, it's all over.

I'm delighted to report that this franchise goes out with a bang. The only complaint I could possibly make is that it's just not long enough. A lot of plot detail ends up on the cutting room floor but, let's face it, the majority of people watching the film know those things anyway. What you get as a consequence is a roller coaster ride of constant action that puts you on the edge of your seat and could easily entice you to sit through the whole thing again immediately. The actors all deliver in perfect character and those familiar sets become even more magnificent as they come under attack in the climactic final battle. And all the emotion is there, made all the more poignant by the fact that, with both books and films done, you really are saying goodbye this time. I didn't sob quite as traumatically at Snape's death, but sob I did.

My fiance is one of those rare beings left untouched by the Potter phenomenon, having seen just the first film and read none of the books. He indulgently accompanied me, and even from his distant perspective he admitted it was an entertaining two hours.

To any fan who's invested more than a decade in this world, however, it will be far more than entertainment. It's an emotional journey that brings you joy, fear, tears, breathless anxiety, wonder and, ultimately, deep contentment. Emotions that are all the more intense precisely because of that multiple-episode commitment. That, when they're done well, is the magic of a series. They work their way into your soul in a way that few single works, no matter how great, ever can.

Zuma is undisputed winner in London's Japanese restaurant stakes

2011-07-09T09:06:00.005Z

I have not been a good Weight Watcher this year. Stress, travel, eating away from home a lot ... all are enemies of the low fat, portion-controlled diet and regular exercise required for good health. This kind of balance is far easier to strike if you don't go out much. But let's face it, that's not me. (And it were, this would be a mighty boring blog.)

In fact, going out is on the rise now that Piers works up in London and, on days when we're both in town, staying up for dinner seems so much more logical than joining the commuting throng and rolling through the front door starving with a meal still to cook at 8pm. How to dine out a lot and stay Weight Watchers friendly? My latest attempt has been to refine my restaurant choices to Japanese. Low on saturated fats, heavy on fish, great on portion control; it's hard to do an unhealthy binge at a Japanese restaurant. (Although, as you will read below, it turns out it is possible.) Thus over the past three weeks I've been to Shogun, Itsu, Hiroba and Zuma. The last stood out as the finest restaurant of the four, but all had their own advantages.

Shogun has the best atmosphere of the four, especially if you're looking for someplace quiet and intimate. It's in an arched stone basement just off Grosvenor Square, and has fewer than 20 tables in the long, cozy space. There's a small sushi bar with five or six seats at it. A full suit of Japanese armor stands at the end of the room, and areas of the restaurant are divided off by screens of arrows; both a nod to the restaurant's martial name. About half the diners were Japanese, and the staff entirely so. Always a good sign. Sushi, sashimi and tempura were all delicious, though the menu was limited and resolutely traditional. I was disappointed in the lack of combination menus, as we were out for a splurge to celebrate new jobs and would happily have gone for some sort of chef's tasting menu. Though there are a few combos, they're pretty basic and not along gourmet lines, leaving us with a la carte choices.

Splurge we did, though not intentionally. Shogun was the most expensive of everything reviewed here, and it certainly didn't provide better value than anything else. We may try it again, however, as Piers swears that bagging one of the few seats at the sushi bar transforms the experience. (This was one of his regular haunts in the late '80s.) For value for money, however, I have to direct you to Hiroba.

This is, admittedly, one of my regular haunts, located as it is directly across the street from my PR agency and on the flight path between London office and Waterloo station. I go so often that it's long lost any sense of being special, which is why poor Hiroba has never made the blog before. I apologise. I should have mentioned it. Because it's a brilliant option in this part of town and the winner in the value for money stakes in the higher end sushi market.

Like Shogun, Hiroba is staffed and frequented by citizens of the Orient. But there's a less traditional slant here. There are two other Hirobas ... one in LA, and another in Seoul ... and I suspect that explains the profusion of more exotic, multiple-ingredient rolls you'll find on the conveyor belt. That belt snakes through the place and at least half the seats are at it, with three tables right next to it and about 10 tables along the walls. Unless you know exactly what you want, avoid the tables and go for the bar, where a profusion of choices will tempt you to build up a little mountain of plates. Though mostly sushi and sashimi, there are some main course options (mostly tempura and crispy beef) which waiters will heat up for you. The average plate is £3.50, which means you can have a very reasonable light dinner and even if you eat yourself silly you're probably not over the £50 mark (excluding alcohol). The only danger here, of course, is that I always enter intending to do the light, inexpensive dinner and walk out having consumed a feast.

It was the chain Yo! Sushi that introduced the conveyor belt concept to London and it dominates this style of Japanese, with Hiroba being a pleasant exception. Another is Itsu on Draycott Avenue in Chelsea. Yes, Itsu is a chain like Yo! and these days you can't swing a tuna in The City without hitting one. They're know for their quick, pre-packaged, high quality sushi boxes, and the St. Paul's branch provides my lunch most days I work from town. I love the place, but was rather surprised when friends suggested it for dinner. Turns out the branch in Chelsea, like its sister in Notting Hill, is a proper restaurant rather than a fast food place. Like Hiroba, the belt snakes through the restaurant, but here it's been cleverly designed so that it flows by far more tables for four. And thus Itsu Chelsea gets my nod for best sushi place to meet up with friends. It's a festive atmosphere, the sushi's good and the staff is quick to both to bring anything ordered off the menu, and to top up your drinks. A bit more expensive than Hiroba to pay for that Chelsea rent, but generally in the same ball park.

If I'm going to splurge, however, the chef's menu at Zuma is the clear winner. I loved this place when I went almost three years ago (see 26.9.08) but hadn't been back since, mostly because it's over by Harrods and I'm not actually in that part of town too often. After my second outing it's worth reminding myself that this is worth a special trip.

The tasting menu is £60 ... about what we spent at Shogun and a bit more than the other two ... for a five course extravaganza that balances exquisite flavors with beautiful presentation and a few show stopping dishes. You start with a nicely-balanced tuna tartare served in shot glasses on a mound of ice, decorated with fans of fried lotus root that provide a crisp accompaniment to the soft fish. Beside that is a plate of wafer thin sea bass sashimi, kicked up a notch with the addition of truffle oil. Taste buds suitably amused, out comes the "proper" sushi course, with three different plates showing off the skill of the guys behind the bar. Course three brings the cooked seafood, with some of the most succulent black cod I've ever tasted glistening under a sweet and sour marinade. That's served with langoustine tempura, a dish that makes the usual prawn version pale in comparison. The main courses climax with wagyu beef and miso soup. The beef is just one perfectly cooked thin steak, marinated, sliced thin and served on a hoba leaf (a type of magnolia, used to wrap steamed foods in Japan) for two people to split. As with the rest of the procession of food, there's enough here to be generous, but not so much to stuff you.

And then comes dessert. Generally not something associated with Japanese restaurants, but here Zuma breaks the mould. Out comes an impressive platter with three kinds of ice cream, two traditional cakes and a pile of exotic fruit. One of the cakes is a chocolate fondant and, much to my surprise, it was absolutely the best one I've ever had. I've tried fondants on their French home turf, and in many a top European establishment, but it's in this trendy Japanese place that I found the perfect balance of cakey outside, gooey interior and dark chocolate bite. This, of course, entirely defeated the Weight Watchers objective of eating at a Japanese restaurant, but locked my determination to get back to Zuma again soon. Not only is in the best Japanese I've had in London, but my second visit has firmly placed it in my top five restaurants across all cuisines in the capital.

Why Apple will rule the world (And I'm just fine with that)

2011-06-30T22:30:00.004Z

Linked by my malfunctioning iPhone, but poles apart in customer service, are the divergent tales of Tesco and Apple.

Last week I wrote of the woeful treatment I received at the hands of pile-em-high-sell-em-cheap retail giant Tesco. Perhaps no more than I deserved for buying from a brand with their reputation. My experience worsened through the weekend as my letter to their CEO first took several days for a reply, then got a holding note from a flunky before finally a confirmation another "customer service" hack that they couldn't do anything for me.

Time to throw myself on the mercy of Apple. I made an appointment at the genius bar of the new Covent Garden store. (The largest in the world. Amazing.) I showed up promptly. Explained that I'd been an Apple customer since my first 512k Mac in 1986. That this was the first time I had ever NOT purchased an Apple product direct from the store. Related my Tesco experience. And hoped.

The lovely genius did not disappoint. A quick check of the serial number confirmed that the phone was indeed just 37 days out of warranty. Not a problem. We'll fix you up with a new one. That shouldn't have happened. We value your continuing business and want you to be happy. Fifteen minutes and a friendly chat later, I had my new kit in hand and was not only a happy, but a delighted, customer. I immediately treated myself to a new case for the phone and resolved that it's time to loosen the purse strings and buy an iPad. That one cheerful piece of customer service, requiring them to take a slight loss by giving me what's now one of their oldest pieces of kit, will trigger more than £600 in additional sales and the good PR of me boring friends and readers with tales of Apple-inspired delight. A shame Tesco couldn't learn from this. (Nope, not even an offer of a free month of service ... a princely £45 ... to get me back on side!)

Of course, it's not just a quick replacement of faulty equipment that makes Apple special. It's the whole ethos of the company. A few days later I was lucky enough to be invited, thanks to our advertising agency Ogilvy, to an innovation forum for a select group of marketing bosses at Apple's London HQ. There we met with a parade of senior execs. All casual, approachable and brilliant; human representations of all that makes their technology special.

They specifically asked us not to blog or otherwise communicate widely on the details of what we learned. Apple keeps its cards close to its chest, a marketing strategy that's worked wonders for them. So, without divulging any confidences, what did I see that convinced me of Apple's world dominance?

1. They know what they do best, and stick to it. Did you realise that they only have 14 products? They build what they believe in ... usually stuff that's revolutionary ... and put everything behind it. Amazingly, they do very little market research and don't rely on focus groups. And yet they instinctively "get" the customer in a way I haven't seen in any other technology company. They are confident that they can anticipate what we need, before we need it, and give it to us.

2. They're not a technology company, they're a mobile lifestyle company. Apple has always gotten the fact that it's not about the technology, it's about what you do with it. And we all are on the move these days. Whether it's the iPhone or the iPad, it's all about connecting you to the whole world, from wherever you are, with minimum effort. How did we ever live without it?

3. They are in the right place at the right time. Between iPods, Phones and Pads, a frightening chunk of the world has an iTunes account. Which means Apple has your contact and credit details, plus access to all the apps and media you download. You think "you are what you eat"? You are what you consume all right, but it's all about the media that goes through your brain. Think about it. With a credit rating, an address and a view of what someone reads, listens to and watches, you can climb into their soul without ever meeting them. All of which means that Apple is positioned to be the greatest channel of targeted advertising that has ever existed. A lot of people have talked about this, but Apple has all the tools to do it. And the discretion to do it well.

I could go on. As I did, to anyone who would listen, after my mind expanding session on Hanover Street. And the best part? I got to tell my Tesco story to Apple's EMEA CEO, as part of a discussion about their channel strategy and the dangers of tainting the Apple brand with companies like Tesco that can't deliver the same combination of wisdom and service. Turns out working with Tesco was indeed a concern, and that Apple's still watching the relationship closely. I like to think Tesco will someday regret treating me so badly. Just as Apple will be glad they treated me so well. I have another genius bar appointment next Tuesday, after which the new iPad is on the shopping list.

Longborough opera returns with a luxury picnic and an odd but enjoyable "Cosi"

2011-06-28T07:14:00.003Z

By the time I left university, I believed I had mastered the art of the tailgate picnic. The coordinated line up of cars mustered early enough to pick a prime spot. The careful division of culinary responsibilities. The bright flags to help guests find you in the crowd and the decorations to make you look classy. I now realise, of course, that I was a rank amateur.

For the ultimate sports tailgate I must give a nod to my cousin, who sets up a pavilion before every USC game with his best mate (who actually kitted out a four-wheel drive specifically for the purpose) so elaborate it's been featured on the Food Channel. But for the elegance award, I have to hand it to the Brits.

It's country house opera season again, and the black tie picnic is at least as much a part of the event as the opera itself.

After our deep enjoyment of the Longborough Festival last year (see 27.710) we decided to become members, and are now counting on at least two weekends each summer spent ensconced in luxurious B&B at the Windy Ridge Estate while taking in opera next door. This year's first outing: Cosi Fan Tutti. Piers' brother and sister-in-law joined us. We did the food, while they brought wine and setting. Together, we arrived properly on the opera tailgating map.

We drove their four-wheel drive over in the late afternoon, parking it in a prime spot at the top of the field next to the croquet lawn, with a lovely view of the manor house, the opera house and the valley stretching beyond. Up went the tented pavilion, large enough to encompass the tailgate of the car within one side, and beneath it a table and four chairs. In the back of the car, a mini fridge was cooling down the white wine. Having claimed our spot, we abandoned it temporarily, strolling back through the arboretum to the manor house to change into formal wear.

An hour and a half later the boys were in dinner jackets, pulling corks and filling glasses while we girls lounged in our gowns and checked out the tented city of silks, velvet and bow ties that had grown around us. Our pre-opera starter menu centred around arancini di riso, a southern Italian classic. Balls of risotto, wrapped around a piece of mozzarella, then lightly rolled in bread crumbs and deep fried to a golden brown. Piers has recently discovered a delicious recipe for roasted red pepper relish, which works magnificently with a bit of cream cheese in a croustade cup. Add some caramelised onion houmous and a pot of taramasalata with a pile of fresh pitta bread, and we had the Mediterranean on our table. (Sadly, the cool, overcast, breezy afternoon was solidly English. English April.)

Half way through the opera comes a 90-minute dinner interval, during which the Bencard pavilion served cold roast beef, string beans with roasted tomatoes and a horseradish potato salad, all accompanied by a lovely French red wine. As the evening gathered in we did realise that we were lacking in lanterns, torches or some other suitably romantic form of illumination. We'll have to work on that. The American in me came to the fore at dessert, with brownies and cookies laced with dark and white chocolate and macadamia nuts. After that, it's perhaps no surprise that the platter of French cheeses never made it to the table. Had we emerged from the opera into a balmy evening, we might have lingered beneath our pavilion watching the stars blink over Gloucestershire while we nibbled. But the firm chill in the air dictated a quick strike of the picnic camp and a return to Windy Ridge's sitting room for a warming port.

And the opera? I have seen Cosi Fan Tutti before, in the magnificent spectacle of a box in a tiny baroque opera house in Prague (see 12.5.08), but with the surtitles in Czech I will admit to only grasping the basics of the plot. This time the English text provided details which I'm not sure actually helped my enjoyment. Cosi is neither Mozart's most engaging story, nor his best operatic score. The preposterous and rather depressing tale has an old cynic convincing two young men that all women are fickle, then setting out to entrap their lovers (a pair of sisters) into cheating on them by putting the boys in costume, sending them after the girl who is not their love and wooing persistently. Each sister eventually falls in love with the other's fiance, before all is revealed and they go back to their original pairings with an acknowledgement that such knocks are inevitable in relationships.

While Cosi doesn't have any of the instantly recognisable arias of Mozart's other operas, the repeated seduction attempts of the plot mean that it's pretty much two hours of achingly romantic songs of longing. Nothing to complain about there. We found the whole Longborough experience just as wonderful as last year, with spectacular singers and a stirring orchestra performing in an intimate space. (We were in a box hanging directly over the harpsichordist, a spectacle that provided an extra bit of entertainment.)

My only complaint is the director's odd decision to transpose the action to the 1950s. I don't mind seeing the classics staged in other time periods. It's a time-honoured way of demonstrating that the great works are eternal, and sometimes they work even better. Certainly the 1995 film version of Richard III set in a fascist 1930s England is the finest interpretation of that play I've ever seen. But I need a reason for my transpositions, and I didn't see one here. Was there anything particular about the '50s that made the tale of infidelity resonate? I didn't see it. Meanwhile, the short hair and conservative dress of the 50s made the "disguises" of our returning lovers difficult to swallow. If forced into the modern era, why not set things in the late '60s, with Vietnam as the military backdrop and hippies providing a convincing disguise for clean-cut soldiers?

Still, no harm done. The set design was pleasant if uninspiring, and the womens' costumes were attractive. I can't help thinking I liked the staging in Prague better, but knowing what was going on made for a superior overall opera experience. As, of course, did the luxury picnic. Next up is a return to Wagner in late July. Back to just the two of us, so the set up will no doubt be less grand. I'm still hoping, however, for that balmy evening under the Gloucestershire stars.

DON'T SHOP AT TESCO! A tale of poor customer service and lessons learned about heartless discounters

2011-06-22T19:33:00.000Z

A vocal minority of Brits see grocery and superstore owner Tesco as the anti-Christ of retail, a heartless leviathan who advocates animal abuse, ruins the income of farmers and destroys the local high street. I must admit I never thought too much about these things. Tesco was convenient. Cheap chicken and milk had their merits and the local shops in my village were so overpriced and limited in their offerings they deserved to go out of business.

My mind has changed. Tesco is, indeed, an evil enemy to customer service. I respect their pile-em-high, sell-em-cheap business strategy, but now realise the consequences. The new truth in marketing laws really should have them investigating replacing their tagline "every little helps" with "caveat emptor".

The source of my awakening is my 13-month old iPhone. Last May, after a lifetime of employer-provided mobile telephony, I decided it was time to get my own kit. Having never paid for a mobile before, I wanted no hassle. Thus I purchased the premium deal: biggest, most sophisticated phone matched with an unlimited use contract for two years. It was, the love of my life now informs me, a rotten deal, but I didn't care at the time. It was fast, spur-of-the-moment and easy. A small diversion from the weekly grocery shop and a big item knocked off my to do list.

Forward 13 months, during which time I have dutifully paid my £45 a month and forked over extra cash when traveling for outrageous roaming fees. Again, not bothered. The glory of the internet in my pocket, the complete connectivity to the whole planet at every moment of my day, made the cost inconsequential. Then, on Wednesday morning, I woke up to an iPhone with a black screen. Held under a bright light, the images are still there; the mechanism to light them up has busted. The device is still working, you just can't see much. Which makes it pretty useless. (I have temporarily switched to my work Blackberry for survival, which, for anything other than work email, is painfully awkward.)

Following instinct and 26 years of Apple ownership, my first stop was to the Apple store, where a charming, sincere and very helpful man couldn't give me an immediate appointment with a genius (Apple's customer support people), but took a look, told me what had probably gone wrong and discussed options with me. First step, clearly, was to go back to Tesco Mobile to see what they could do for me. If I was stuck, come back to Apple and go from there.

Well, I shall certainly be returning to Apple, because the Tesco Mobile people were poster children for poor customer service. (And in this country, that's saying a lot.) First, there was the spotty youth who greeted me with the information that he was new, didn't know anything and probably couldn't help me. Then there was the slightly less spotty youth, who ignored my explanation that I'd tried all rebooting, brightness checks, etc. and had even visited the Apple store. He did all of this anyway, telling me as he did that since it was a month past one year it was my problem. Although they might be able to send it away to be fixed for me. I'd have to pay, of course, and it would be several weeks without a phone. Maybe a manager could do something.

This is where I usually expect things to get fixed. Skip the teenagers, get to the mature people who are making a career out of their chosen businesses. People who usually are given some discretion by their corporate overlords to do what's necessary to please, and keep, a good customer. As in, customers for whom convenience and service is more important than cost. (Yes, I know, anyone who's shopped in a Tesco will see the flaw in my argument right here. "You're not in WAITROSE, Ferrara. You think they give a damn about you as a customer?)

So on to the department manager, a pinched, pale 30-something who I suspect looked at least five years older than she was. Clearly, working for Tesco does you no favours. (Nor does the manly, ill-fitting blue polyester suit she was forced to wear.) Her position was pretty much the same as the spotted youths. I was a month past warranty. I might have heard a "sorry", but it was the same kind of "sorry" delivered by train engineers when you're running late. They say it because the marketing department told them to. They don't really mean it. The pinched and pale manager offered no suggestions and gave no help. Not even an offer to try to send it away for repair. Nor an attempt to upsell me to a new phone at a slight discount. (Which, had they read me right and been nice to me, I might have done.)

I have learned my lesson. And, oddly, it's not "you get what you pay for", because I paid the premium rate and still suffered. It's "you get WHO you pay for". No matter what you buy and how much you spend, if you buy it from a bare bones discounter who's all about profits, and figures cheap prices eliminate the need for customer service, you will be treated badly. If you buy from a premium retailer, even if you got something at a whacking great discount, they'll take care of you; because their brand depends on that service. So, dear readers, please learn from my pain. DON'T SHOP AT TESCO.

And, dear John Lewis partnership, don't you think there's a market niche for Waitrose mobile?

Tosca doesn't win the Italo-Germanic opera war, but she provides a fine night out

2011-06-08T19:02:00.004Z

Note to self: When I next take the trouble to queue up for Royal Opera House tickets the day they go on sale, I really should check out who’s singing.

Had I done my research it is at least possible that I, making my purchase within three hours of the box office opening, might have gotten seats at one of the two performances of Tosca starring the dream trio of Angela Gheorghiu, Jonas Kaufmann and Bryn Terfel later this month. Unaware of those details, I opted for last night’s opening performance.

Of course, satisfaction was pretty much guaranteed, whoever was singing. This is one of my favourite operas, conducted by the wonderfully gifted Tony Pappano and staged in full splendour at one of the world’s greatest venues. While the tremendous trio would have given me bragging rights, Marcello Giordani made Mario’s famous arias stir my heart. Martina Serafin’s Tosca was passionate, brave and admirably fiesty, while Juha Uusitalo was a suitably despicable Scarpia. (Although I think the Finnish baritone actually underplayed the role. This is one of the most evil men in the operatic repertoire and I thought there could have been more menace in his delivery.)

I wish I could report the same satisfaction on my other half’s part, but the Wagner lover … as regular readers will know … is no fan of the Italian greats. At least he accompanied me happily, admitted there were some merits to the evening’s performance and had the foresight to get a nice bottle of white wine that carried us through both intermissions. During those breaks we continued our ongoing debate over the merits of Italian opera versus German, and though we’ll never agree, we did come to some conclusions about the source of our differences.

All operas balance music, production and plot. The great ones tend to have all three in abundance. But, inevitably, some elements are more dominant than others. In an honest moment of introspection (in the break just after Tosca had dispatched the heinous Scarpia with his own blade) I had to admit that plot comes first for me, followed by production, and then music. With these priorities, is it any wonder I love Tosca? A passionate tale of love, jealousy, betrayal and murder, filled with double crosses and grand gestures. It’s played out in a lavish baroque chapel, a palace interior and the castle rooftop from which Tosca leaps to her death. There are three really memorable arias, and a lot of good music that links the plot together. But this is primarily a bombastic melodrama set to a fine soundtrack.

Conversely, I now realise that Piers’ priority list is music first, by a long shot, then plot and production in a distant tie behind. He would be quite happy to lie in a darkened room and listen for three hours. In that situation, I’m afraid I’d be bored in 15 minutes. Call me a cretin, but music alone has never been enough stimulation for me.

Given these differing priorities, our preferences for German or Italian opera become clear. If I only had the soundtrack to listen to, I’d pick Wagner, too. His music provides consistently grand orchestration; a multi-layered symphonic work in which people happen to sing. But, simple creature that I am, I’m going for the big show.

While we continue on in our long running debate, the fact that we’re battling over such nuances is reassuring. Strip away the fine points and we arrive at the truth that we both love opera, and all the rituals of grand occasion that accompany it. Looks like that 98% compatability rating is still proving accurate.

Speaking of grand occasions … We popped into Clos Maggiore for their pre-theatre special before the main event. Just 50 yards down King Street from the northwest corner of Covent Garden market, this place is wonderfully located for the Opera, allowing you to go from paying your bill to sliding into your seat in less than 10 minutes.

The menu looks to Italy and Provence for inspiration, and offers a reasonably priced (£19.50 for two courses and half a bottle of wine) special before 6pm. Service is friendly and prompt, sensitive to the fact that everyone needs to dash for at 7pm.

Marketed as one of the most romantic restaurants in London, the highlight is the beautiful main dining area with a massive fireplace at the rear. It’s a small room, holding only eight tables, but a testimony to the decorative power of mirrors. Lined with them on three walls, which are then partially screened with columns and branches heavy with silk cherry blossoms, the space looks far bigger than its reality and is, indeed, a wonderfully romantic setting that sweeps your imagination to distant, southern holidays. Should you come here on a special date, however, specify that you want to be in the main room. There are few tables at the front of the ground floor, and another dining room upstairs. Both spaces are attractive but lack the special charm of that main room.

Does the food match the atmosphere? A good range of options, well presented and prepared. We both started with the ham hock and foie gras terrine, clearly a glamorous way to use up the leftover luxury from the a la carte menu. Excellent, but could have used double the accompanying fig jam to balance the richness of the meat. Shared taste reigned again for the main, as we both went for the pork chop. Fully satisfied, there was no need for pudding. A couple of coffees, served with a few chocolates, and we were good to go.

The drinks here are clearly where they’re making the profit margin on the value-priced set menu. Our gin and tonics before dinner and coffee after almost doubled the bill. Still, a good experience and a place I’d recommend before any opera … German or Italian.

Somerset weekend introduces me to a kinder, gentler sort of moor

2011-05-31T07:09:00.004Z

I have always loved the southwest of England. Cornwall offers great beaches and magnificent, cliff-dotted coastline. Devon delivers the wild vastness of Dartmoor (see 25 & 26.3.08) and Somerset the happy conjunction of a somewhat gentler moor with a beautiful coast. All three counties are loaded with picturesque villages, impressive stately homes and enough farmers to provide an impressive local larder of meats, vegetables and some tasty artisan cheeses. And all three battle stubbornly for the title of best maker of clotted cream; a fight I’m delighted to be caught in the middle of on whatever scone top it erupts.

Of the three counties, I must admit I know Somerset the least. I’ve seen many of its top tourist attractions, of course, but they have usually been pit stops en route to one of the other counties. This bank holiday, however, Somerset moved from drive through country to proper destination as we set off to meet Piers’ 98-year-old grandmother. (If they could link their clotted cream to longevity, they might win the argument.)

It was a delightful weekend and the addition of a day and a half (Monday’s bank holiday plus a half day off on Friday for both of us) made a break long enough, and remote enough from the day-to-day world, to provide some proper R&R.

Somerset is, undoubtedly, a good spot to do this. It’s easy on the eye, unhurried and deeply pastoral. I certainly wouldn’t come here seeking excitement or glamour, but for the glory of green country lanes, long views of hill and coast and the remarkable sounds of silence … but for the bleating of sheep … this place is hard to beat.

We spent most of our time, as do the majority of tourists to this region, walking in this varied and pleasing countryside. Our first objective was the mile-long walk up Dunkery Hill to the beacon mound on its top. This is the highest point in Exmoor. The path is a straight and fairly smooth one through unobstructed, heather-draped moor, thus not too onerous if you plod steadily along. The views are magnificent, with wild moorland in one direction, a gentle patchwork of farm fields and forest in another, and to the west a dramatic coastline, the vivid blue gash of the Severn estuary and beyond, the blue-grey hint of Wales. We did this on the first, sunniest and most clement of our days; a fortunate choice because the wind does carve a cutting path across those open hills.

I thought Exmoor’s nicest walks, however, were in its deep, wooded valleys. We had a splendid stroll down East Water, where a sunlit meadow is bordered by a babbling brook, surrounded on all sides by woodland dotted with banks of ferns and foxglove and piles of moss-covered rocks. Our finest hike was down the Doone Valley (properly known as Badgworthy Water), immortalised in the novel Lorna Doone. Another picturesque stream cascading over boulders glinting different colours in the dappled sunshine, bordered sometimes by fairytale forest, sometimes by steep fields grazed by sheep and sometimes by the stony, steep hillsides that characterised the bandit country of the novel.

There’s no lack of historic and cultural sightseeing here, either. The blockbuster sight is probably Dunster Castle, rearing dramatically above the picturesque village at the foot of its walls. Dunster village has a wide market street lined with hotels, restaurants and boutiques, in its centre a venerable, canopied market pavilion. The castle, now National Trust, was the ancestral home of the Luttrell family and is a classic example of the stately home as layer cake, with multiple generations and architectural styles stacking one upon the other. Though the foundations are medieval, most of what you see today was built from the Restoration through Victorian times. Don’t miss the magnificently detailed plasterwork in the dining room, the intricately carved grand staircase and the leather wall hangings gilded and painted with the story of Antony and Cleopatra. Outside, the Victorians and their successors turned the motte of the old castle and the slopes down to the river below into a series of gardens, heavy on woodland walks with foxgloves, ferns, hosta and hydrangea.

On the other corner of Exmoor, just outside Tiverton, you’ll find Knightshayes Court. This is another National Trust property, but a different sort of house all together. An example of Victorian-age new money splashing out on a house that screams “we’ve arrived”, it blends the neo-Gothic architecture that was all the rage with gracious room sizes and all the mod cons of the time. It is, in fact, a house of exactly the same artistic movement being celebrated at the V&A at the moment (see 20.5.11). Top sights include the wonderful main hall, kitted out for an Arthurian fantasy, the grand dining room decorated with wise and witty phrases around its ceiling and the billiards room. This is probably my favourite example of the kind in the country … comfortable, boldly masculine and overlooked by beautifully carved ceiling supports of animals portraying the seven deadly sins. The huggably adorable pig representing gluttony is, unsurprisingly, my favourite. They are all overlooked by an eighth support, the wise old owl who is supposed to tip the balance towards virtue. The gardens here are justifiably famous, with both formal beds and “rooms”, dramatic views and woodland walks through grand collections of rhododendron and azalea.

High marks on sightseeing, then, but I would probably not tip Exmoor as a gourmet destination. Perhaps it’s the hiking and outdoorsy nature of the place, which would incline tourists towards simple and hearty meals. Perhaps it’s the fact that people tend to stay in remote B&Bs down winding lanes and prefer to eat in rather than braving the narrow lanes at night. Or maybe the result of the famous cream teas, which fill the stomach and coat the taste buds of so many tourists in the late afternoon. Our own B&B hostess said there were few local restaurants that attempted much beyond pub grub, and our investigations didn’t turn up anyplace that looked tempting. Which is a shame, as this region produces top local produce and some of the best cheeses in Britain.

We stayed at a B&B that offered a four-course dinner as part of the package. Basic, hearty fare with the advantage of companionable drinks with the other guests in the drawing room before hand, and an easy stumble up the main stairs at the end of the evening. Allowing full enjoyment of a reasonably-priced wine list that was small, but offered good variety.

The B&B itself, Cutthorne Farm, was beautifully situated in an isolated position not too far from Dunkery Beacon. The house, with ancient foundations but now appearing mostly Victorian, nestles into a hillside, providing beautiful views over a valley to the front and a sloping field of sheep out the back windows. This quiet retreat is approached down a steep, fern-lined lane between hedgerows so high it’s like a green tunnel. The grounds offer lovely walks and there doesn’t seem to be another neighbour for miles. Most importantly, they allow dogs (for an extra £15 per night), which is critical for any walking holiday.

Our bedroom was of a decent size, dominated by a striking antique carved bed, though the real highlights of the accommodation were the fantastically long, deep bathtub and the wonderful countryside views out the big sash windows. The proprietors have been here since the ‘80s, know the local area well and are dedicated to providing a homey, individualised experience.

This hospitality, combined with the dramatic landscapes, the simple pleasures and the slow pace, link my Exmoor experience to other breaks in the southwest. It may be only 150 miles from London, but in so many ways it’s a whole planet away.

Chelsea's 2011 gardens won't be sending inspiration home with me, Bibendum's fish will

2011-05-27T19:07:00.004Z

I hadn't been to the Chelsea Flower Show in three years. Thanks to a combination of malaise about the gardens at the last one I attended (see 30.5.2008), disgruntlement at the vast crowds and a general preference for the Hampton Court Show later in the summer, I'd let Chelsea fall out of my diary. But this year a friend got tickets and invited me along, with a nice lunch in advance. How could I say no?

Things certainly started well, with probably the best weather of the week. While we all patiently put up with the grey skies, all those show gardens inevitably look their best under a blanket of blue. I was delighted to find that the crowds, though abundant, weren't as bad as they'd seemed in the past. Given that the show was sold out, I have to assume that means the organisers have combined keeping it open for two more days (it now stretches into the weekend) with letting fewer people in at a time.

If you like gardens, of course, it's hard to have a bad time at Chelsea. This year had the usual mix of show gardens, dazzling displays by various nurseries and vast, garden-related shopping opportunities. (While I lusted after a towering bronze and blown-glass agapanthus sculpture and a full outdoor kitchen with wood-fired pizza oven, both of which would have cost me something in the 10s of thousands, the only thing I actually purchased was a round of very large cups of Pimms.) But the main gardens didn't impress me.

Everyone seemed to be doing dry, southern-inspired gardens this year. Too much gravel, too many cacti and succulents, far too much yellow and orange. I'll give the designers points for creating gardens that took us away (another, filled with tropical greenery, reminded me of a the lobby of a Hawaiian hotel), but I missed the classic English touch. Of the major gardens only Bunny Guinness' herb garden, a detailed parterre of raised beds hemmed with willow hurdle, and the Leeds Council garden dominated by a water mill and its pond, did much to celebrate the great British Gardening tradition.

I like a balance at Chelsea of things I could try in my own garden, and crazy things that are just for this display. This year veered wildly in the latter direction. There was the Monaco garden, filled with Provencal plants, an infinity pool and a dining pavilion with a roof of lavender plants all in glorious bloom. Prince Albert was knocking about somewhere. Global warming is going to have to progress a long way before I put that behind my house. Same for the Australian garden, filled with a swathe of orange gravel to evoke thoughts of boomerangs and plants more appropriate for the outback than the Kentish Weald. The best-in-show winning garden was supposed to spark images of a sunken garden in Roman ruins in Libya, but a woman behind me commented that the water feature of a row of pipes sticking out of an orange wall reminded her of the open sewers of Delhi.

Then there was Diarmuid Gavin's "Flying Garden" dominated by an eye-shaped structure of stainless steel girders planted out with greenery, the whole thing hoisted regularly 82 feet off the ground by a construction crane. Yea, sure. Next to that was B&Q's equally improbable greenhouse in a glass stairwell, which was inspirational if you considered the gardening potential of high rise residential towers, but didn't really give me a sense of calm beauty. (Though the garden dining table that doubled as a giant goldfish bowl had potential.)

Each year the smaller gardens seem to get ever more popular, and sure enough this is where we met the biggest crowds. It's also where I felt the most inspiration. Whether it was the simple, moss-covered stone sink used as a water feature in the Korean garden, the use of carved phrases in another, or the special attention to planting combinations in all, it was here that I ... and a few thousand others ... chose to linger.

In the grand marquee (that's a giant tent for you Americans) I pursued my usual pattern of wandering. Stop near sweet pea stand, close eyes, breathe deeply. Move on to delphinium display, marvel at the wonderful range of blues. Visit Jekka's herbs, dream about ideal herb garden. Linger at one of the numerous displays from the Caribbean islands, talking to cheerful native women about past visits. Pause at David Austen roses, breathe deep again and get a bit teary-eyed at the romantic beauty of it all.

The big problem with Chelsea at the moment, of course, is that I am living in rental accommodation. There is no point getting enthusiastic about improving someone else's beds. What this year really did was sharpen my taste for getting that marital home, and making sure it's one with a great garden. Or, at least, potential to build one. I see no crane-hoisted garden rooms in my future, but some hurdle-bounded raised beds for herbs and vegetables ... Perfect.

The lunch before the show was almost as traditional a venue as the show itself. We met at Bibendum, which I have somehow managed to avoid despite it being a consistently dependable offering from the Conran stable, located in one of West London's most architecturally significant buildings, for the entirety of my life in the UK. I am really not sure how I missed it, because this is a lovely lunchtime choice. Elegant and upscale with a sense of occasion, yet with a set price menu (£30 for three courses on weekdays, £32.50 on weekends) that makes the luxury affordable. Pleasingly, the set menu has a wide range of choices, with at least six for each course. I wasn't even tempted to look at the a la carte.

The setting is magnificent, with towering ceilings, giant windows (two filled with cheerful stained glass depictions of the Michelin man and his wife) and plenty of art deco features. Its the kind of stage set restaurant that makes you expect Hercule Poirot to be at the next table. If he were, however, you wouldn't be able to eavesdrop on his latest investigation because tables are far enough apart to offer a sense of privacy. And while there's a pleasant hubbub, its all laid back enough to allow for proper conversation. Service is excellent; attentive when you need them, but happy to stand back and allow business conversation until you cast your eye to invite an invitation.

And the food? Up to expectations, though not perfect. I started with the seasonal, local asparagus with a scoop of some of the finest Hollandaise I've ever tasted. Although it hardly needed it. A serried row of perfectly matched spears, at least 8 inches long and the thickness of a pinkie, with a taste so pure and perfect you have to believe that the greatest chef, ultimately, may be the farmer who creates the raw materials. My main course was equally beautiful, though not so well balanced. A whole, roasted sea bass topped with grilled artichoke hearts and tomatoes was destroyed by too much butter. It was swimming in it. All that delicate, healthy fish and vegetable was destroyed by an imbalance of fat. I'm inspired to try it on my own at home, with a much lighter touch, and olive oil rather than butter, to get those artichokes working properly.

I should have followed my instinct and ordered the pistachio bavarois, which I was promised was light yet pungent, thus would have cut through the richness of the main. Foolishly, I let my inner choco-holic take over and went for the gateau opera. This generously sized layer cake with alternating stripes of vanilla sponge, chocolate mousse and chocolate fudge was delicious, but so heavy on the fudge to be more like a piece of candy than a well balanced pudding. It's rare that I leave any pudding on the plate, but this could easily have been 30 per cent smaller and still a crowd pleaser.

Given the great impression the venue made on me, and the value and variety of the set menu, I'd be happy to get back soon to see if I could order a more balanced set of choices. In this case, fortunately, a long walk through the flower show settled all those flavors.

Celebrity chef's Yew Tree Inn shows off modern Hampshire, while The Vyne connects to the old

2011-05-22T23:00:00.000Z

Today, the northern part of Hampshire ... my current home ... is just 45 minutes from central London on a fast train.

For most of history, however, it was deep countryside. Unconnected by main roads and free of big cities, the cosmopolitan cut and thrust of the capital might as well have been another country. Towns were deeply provincial and country estates were the centre of their own universe. It's a world compellingly pictured in the recent, popular TV series "Downton Abbey", filmed half an hour from here, at Highclere Castle.

The village of Highclere still paints a cozy, pastoral, back-of-beyond picture, but the reality is far more cosmopolitan. Rail connections to London, nearby roads that feed quickly to major motorways and the proximity to Newbury, home to Vodafone's world HQ, mean that villages like this one are flush with sophisticated and well-heeled corporate types who flit seamlessly between urban and rural life. Which makes it the perfect location for a London celebrity chef to buy the local and turn it into his vision of the perfect gastropub. Enter Marco Pierre White and the Yew Tree Inn.

An venerable old tile-roofed building on a leafy lane, it's accented with heavy doors, small leaded windows and low beams. The interior is divided into a succession of snug areas with a few tables in each, so there's really no sense of how many people are actually eating here. The decor signals this is more upscale than your standard pub, with tidy white walls hung with pen-and-ink sketches and watercolours, and crisp white linens on the tables. But it's all subtle enough to still evoke a laid-back, countryside mood.

The menu is English classics with a posh twist, as evidenced by the house cocktail: an English kir royale made from Sussex sparkling wine and locally produced blackcurrant liqueur. I started with asparagus ('tis the season) baked with a quail's egg. There was plenty of cheese and butter in that dish, combining for a luxurious treat. Probably not the wisest choice for the diet and, frankly, probably an insult to the asparagus, which was rather lost in the other ingredients. As good as this vegetable is in season, I probably would have enjoyed it just as much lightly steamed and unadorned. Reports from around the table were mixed on the other starters. The beetroot salad was visually stunning with light and sharp flavours but the chicken terrine was a bit dry and underwhelming.

On to the mains, for which all of the girls at the table opted for the hake on a bed of creamed leeks. Like the asparagus, the high-fat preparation neatly destroyed the healthy benefits of the fish. But in this case, it was worth every calorie. The perfectly judged trio of rich cream, mellow vegetable and succulent bacon worked beautifully together, providing a great complement to the elegantly simple fillet on top. The man had lamb, mostly because it's the one meat we rarely have at home. (I can't stand the stuff.) Prepared two ways ... confit leg and loin ... he reported complete satisfaction. Like the rest of the menu, puddings were big on traditional English, with possets, Eton mess and sticky toffee pudding heading the lineup. I went for the latter; not the best I've ever had, but certainly in the top third. Elsewhere the chocolate muffin was done a disservice by its name (it was really a dense chocolate cake) but got rave reviews, as did its accompaniment of mint chocolate chip ice cream. The more restrained at the table went for the plate of English cheeses, an admirable selection from the across the country.

The next day we walked off a few of those calories at a place that exemplifies Hampshire long before Vodafone, high speed trains and celebrity chefs: The Vyne. This National Trust property is only about 15 minutes outside of Basingstoke, but the way it's nestled down winding, wooded country lanes gives you a sense of how isolated it once was. It began as a rambling Tudor pile built by one of Henry VIII's early ministers, and successive owners have layered their own contemporary touches onto it over the years. It's not one of the country's blockbuster stately homes, but it's a lovely place that tells the story of an aristocratic country estate on a manageable scale.

Amongst the highlights are a wonderful neoclassical staircase cutting through the centre of the house, flowing and dividing in unusual ways to cut the core into all sorts of different views, nooks and crannies; a rare print room that captures the DIY decorating trend that was all the rage with proper ladies in the early 19th century; a library whose magnificent wooden bookshelves were re-made from carved pews pinched from the local church, now crowned with a set of marble busts of the world's great writers; and probably the loveliest Tudor-era chapel in any private home. This one has rare original stained glass of tremendous quality, particularly interesting in that it shows Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. The Vyne also claims a bit of fame thanks to local girl Jane Austen, who used to attend parties here. Evidently she didn't think much of the family, but did end up basing the character of Fanny Price on one of the wives, whose portrait you can see in a bedroom upstairs.

While old, unconnected Hampshire might not have had sophisticated gastropubs, there was plenty of elegance in places like The Vyne, which introduced the first classical portico ever used on a domestic building, and has a classical brick summer house that could have been a Roman senator's tomb. These days, Hampshire offers the best of both worlds. Escape from it all, or stay connected. Go modern, or touch history. No wonder it's such a popular county with people who want to strike a balance between the bright lights and offices of London, and the timeless appeal of the English countryside.

Shock and horror! French cuisine unseats the Italians as Roussillon trumps Locatelli for my favourite restaurant

2011-05-21T12:41:00.008Z

I never thought I'd see this day, but I have to admit the truth: Locanda Locatelli is past its glory days.

Readers of this blog will know that the Michelin-starred restaurant near Marble Arch has long been my favourite in London, a place where the best of Italian was kicked up another level to sheer perfection. French-inspired Roussillon in Pimlico (also owner of a precious star) has, however, appeared as another frequent favourite. In the past six weeks I've dined at both, and the proximity of experiences leads me to a startling conclusion. Roussillon has maintained its excellence while Locatelli is slipping.

The service at Locatelli's is still excellent, the wine list impressive and the generous basket of Italian breads and pizze left on your table to start things off utterly delicious. The food that followed, however, was less inspiring than usual. I started with the lobster linguini. The hand-made fresh pasta was exquisite, and perfectly al dente, but the tomato sauce was too delicate and the lobster scant. This is supposed to be a hearty dish and, even when done to Michelin star standards of presentation and size, should still pack a punch of flavour. While eating it, all I could think of was how much better I remembered the same dish being at Zilli Fish (see 3.7.08). On to grilled monkfish on a bed of seaweed and rocket with giant capers and walnut sauce. The dish would have been truly great with triple the sauce. As it was, the decorative squiggle made a subtle complement to three mouthfuls of the fish, but was never enough of to deliver on the promise of a sweet and sour contrast those first tastes made.

It was dessert where things really crashed and burned. I can never resist cannoli, either in a bakery or on a menu. This Sicilian staple is the most comforting of all my childhood comfort foods. So I thought I'd see what London's finest Italian restaurant did with them. Out came a dish with two tiny pastries, about the circumference of my pinkie and no more than an inch long. I respect the idea that fine dining means delicate, small portions, but this was verging on the comic. Perhaps excusable had they been the best cannoli ever, but they were deeply average, with unremarkable filling out of proportion with the shell, so the abiding taste was of slightly over-fried pastry. Deeply, deeply disappointing, and a pale shadow of the cannoli bought for a fraction of the price at good old Missouri Baking Company on last month's visit home.

Perhaps I ordered badly. Perhaps one should stay away from things that are inspired by hearty peasant food when dining at the highest levels. But I don't think so. Locatelli's magic in the past has always been that he took the Italian basics and transformed them into something better than any memory or home attempt, seemingly beyond normal human endeavor. That magic is clearly gone. Is it, perhaps, that Giorgio himself is looking after other ventures, such as his new place in Dubai? Certainly I haven't seen him in any of my past four visits, when he used to regularly have a wander through the dining room.

And, of course, Locatelli's is expensive. Heart-stoppingly, eye-poppingly, I've-just-shot-the-entertainment-budget-for-the-month expensive. Which is OK if you're getting an exquisite meal you're going to remember all year. But three courses, all with flaws, that could be done better elsewhere? I fear Signore Locatelli will not be seeing any more of my hard-earned cash any time soon.

The team at Roussillon, however, is in for a fair chance of getting a cut of this year's bonus, be it for a simple celebratory meal or a push-the-boat-out private dinner for the wedding party after our rehearsal. (The latter depends how generous we're feeling once the rest of the wedding expenses get locked down.) My recent visit was at least my fifth, and every experience has been of equal calibre. Whether it's the go-for-broke, seven course extravaganza of the chef's menu (see 26.3.11) or a more straightforward starter-main-dessert progression, whether having a conservative couple glasses of wine or letting the sommelier roll out an indulgent procession, every experience has been to the same quality. No matter what I've had here, it's been the best I can imagine that particular dish being, served with exquisite presentation and unusual twists.

My most recent visit was no exception. The amuse bouche brought a proper twist on peasant food; essence of ratatouille in a shot glass. Surely some sort of magic is needed to take all those dark, potent flavours ... tomato, aubergine, courgette, garlic ... concentrate and retain them, and turn them into a clear liquid. Witchcraft, without doubt. One to a first course of excellent scallops perfectly grilled to bring out that hint of sweetness as the edges caramelise, accompanied by little breaded and fried parcels of ham hock. My friend's bowl of new season asparagus, picked so young and tender they looked like an alien species, was a vivid, green shout of springtime on a plate.

I moved on to the suckling pig done three ways: loin, belly and crackling. Here we had some of the world's most hearty comfort foods, retaining all their kick-you-in-the-head flavours while being presented like a work of art. The loin lean and succulent, the crackling fatty and indulgent, the belly wonderfully matched with a sweet langoustine tail that proved the argument that these are better than lobster when sourced properly. Across the table, the waitress was grating black truffle on a glistening mound of risotto, the aroma almost as good as sharing the dish.

I ended with a chocolate fondant, properly gooey in the middle and rich with the finest quality cacao. As with Locatelli's dessert, it wasn't big enough. But this time not because it was laughably undersized, but because it was the kind of sweet that tastes so good you want to keep eating long after you're stuffed. Fortunately the chef's restraint saved me from myself, and a well-judged glass of Dalmore helped all those flavours settle into a warm, contented glow of digestion.

Perhaps, as with Locatelli's, I could have ordered badly ... but got lucky. Perhaps after a few more visits I will become jaded. Anything is possible. But for now, I will shock my friends (especially you, Didier ... try not to be too smug) and bow in admiration of French cuisine. At least for now, in my experience, Roussillon is the London restaurant most worthy of your time, attention and hard-earned cash.

Beauty takes centre stage as the V&A shows off a luscious bit of Victoriana

2011-05-20T23:15:00.006Z

Evening museum openings are a delight.

I first encountered this trend in Italy, where the Capitoline Museums stayed open on one weeknight to an amazing 11pm. The joy of extending the precious hours of a sightseeing day was intense. By the time London museums really caught on, I was working there, and the excitement was less about stretching a day's tourism and more about the ability to tack some culture onto a workday and keep the weekend free for other things.

Much to my irritation, most of the major museums have moved their open nights to Fridays. Clearly, if they're all doing it, their marketing departments must have research to say this is a good thing. For me, it's an irritation. I'm rarely in London on Fridays, and if I'm organising something to kick off the weekend it's probably going to be more social than the quiet contemplation of art.

This Friday, however, the planets came into alignment. I was already in town. Piers had other plans, leaving me on my own. The V&A called. I dropped my briefcase at the cloakroom, moved quickly through the buzzy, jazz- and cocktail-filled main hall to the almost-empty galleries beyond. The Friday strategy has definitely turned some grand spaces into upscale drinking venues, but I'm not sure it's done much to promote culture. So much to my benefit, frankly, as I had the objective of my visit ... "The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1850-1900" ... almost to myself.

I've always had a soft spot for this time period. There's William Morris with his lush floral patterns and medieval revivalism. Oscar Wilde spinning some of the finest wit to ever hit a page. Lawrence Alma-Tadema re-imagining the Roman world in sensuous paintings. Liberty's department store setting up in London to sell unique pieces of furniture and lush, oriental and Arabic-inspired fabrics. (It's no surprise they're a major sponsor of the show.) The aesthetic movement comes to life in a hotch potch of decorative items that might not immediately seem to fit together. The unifying factor is simple: it's all about beauty.

Grandfather of the movement William Morris is famous for stating: "have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." He and his colleagues were reacting, passionately, to the ugliness of the industrial revolution and the crass consumerism of the age. Thus their fascination with the foreign and the exotic. Whether evoking an idealised Roman or Medieval world, or depicting the charm of China or Arabia, they were always trying to get very far away from modern England. The irony, of course, was that all of their hand crafting (as opposed to the mass production bringing prices down elsewhere) was wildly expensive, meaning that many of the people embracing their style were precisely the robber barons driving the industry they so disliked.

The intellectual roots of the movement mean that the exhibit is, quite simply, beautiful. It seems less a worthy art show and more a wander through a particularly good day at Liberty's department store. There are lush portraits of pre-Raphaelite beauties, collections of blue and white pottery and the English versions, like those by de Morgan, that they inspired. There's lots of hand-painted furniture telling ancient, romantic tales. Greco-Roman inspiration runs throughout, but with a far looser, more opulent feel than the neo-classicism of the previous century. Peacocks and elaborate floral motifs adorn everything from fabric and furniture to jewelry and iron gates; solid colours and simplicity are not part of this trend.

I was most entranced by the costume display, including a brown velvet suit very close to the one Oscar Wilde wore in one of his most famous portraits. Seeing these clothes, overlooked by the detailed portraits of the people who wore such fashions and the furniture they surrounded themselves with, you got a keen sense of the people who drove this movement. Eccentric lovers of art and history, keen to embrace art, craft and design, wishing for the "good old days" but making lots of money from the modern world. Frankly, I like their style. Whether the people, and the lives they led, were as beautiful as what's portrayed here is doubtful. But it's a lovely, if almost soporific, thing to see. Soothing, gorgeous, rich. A great way to spend a quiet few hours.

Get moving, however, as The Cult of Beauty closes on 17 July.

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Other places to see the Aesthetic Movement
Reminded of past delights by this show, I offer some spectacular places to visit that bring this age to life:

Leighton House Museum - In Holland Park, London, Lord Leighton's studio and home is a temple to the art of this movement. Great collection of paintings, but the real show is the house itself, with its quirky exotic elements and lavish decoration. The two story central Arab Hall is a jaw dropper. No surprise that it's frequently used as a film set.

Standen - A National Trust-managed house in Sussex with amazing views and an interior that perfectly captures the whole movement. Particularly well known for its original William Morris wallpapers.

Whightwick Manor - Another NT property, similar to Standen in inspiration but heavier on the Medieval revival aspect of the time period. A great example of an industrial family (the owners ran a chemical and paint business) embracing the antithesis of their modern age in their personal lives. In Wolverhampton, outside of Birmingham.

An Ideal Husband - The 1999 film of the Oscar Wilde play captures the age perfectly. It's also one of the best Wilde adaptations on film, less known than others, I believe, because there's a dark and serious edge to the comedy.

In celebration of a fine genre, we explore my Top 10 pirate films of all time

2011-05-17T07:55:00.017Z

I am squirming in juvenile anticipation for tomorrow's release of "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides."

The tickets are in hand (for Thursday, rather than opening night, due to Piers' work schedule) and I am contemplating a piratical picnic dinner to take to the theatre. Cold jerked chicken, mango and prawn salad and rum punch? Yes, I know the second and third films were verging on the terrible, saved only by great actors, lavish sets and a fine seam of humour running throughout. But the first was, to my mind, the best pirate film ever made. And I, as regular readers know, am a girl who believes there are few things that give as much unadulterated, childish pleasure as a good swashbuckler.

Pirate films are, of course, ridiculously formulaic. There's our hero, a pirate ... but one with a noble soul. Often, he's an aristocrat or naval officer who's gone under cover to right some wrong. There's always a plucky girl, usually a governor's daughter but sometimes another member of the buccaneering community. While our hero pursues and eventually defeats an unremittingly evil bad guy with flamboyant taste in frock coats and hats, he's also sparring with the girl who never wants him at the start, but who always realises he's her dream man by the end. Spice this up with lavish costumes, sailing ships, palm-fringed islands and several fights that will always include people swinging to the rescue on ropes, curtains or chandeliers, and you have yourself a pirate flick.

There's a wide range of quality in that genre, however. There are a lot of pirate movies; more than 300 by some lists. Unless we're talking about one of the originals that created the genre ... Fairbanks' Black Pirate of 1924 or Flynn's Captain Blood of 1935 ... the pirate greats delight because they introduce some twist on the formula, often poking fun at it with wry wit. That's the angle that made Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl so great. For the other nine on my Top 10 list, read on.

2. Against All Flags (1952) - A mature and sexy Errol Flynn plays a naval officer who masquerades as one of the brethren to bust the crime racket in Madagascar. Like most of the best of the genre, this one has its roots in real history; Madagascar was the capital of pirate operations and a scourge on shipping from India until politics and the British navy moved the brotherhood to the Caribbean. A young Anthony Quinn makes a great baddie, but the special element here is Maureen O'Hara as Spitfire Stevens, a pirate's daughter who's meant for better things. O'Hara is the consummate feisty, independent heroine who can wield a sword and capture a heart.

3. The Sea Hawk (1940) - Here's a much younger Flynn, who's not technically a pirate if you're on England's side. We're in Elizabethan times and our hero Geoffrey Thorpe is one of those guys Queen Elizabeth calls a merchant adventurer, but the Spanish call pirates. These days, this film is most memorable for its rip-roaring soundtrack by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, which stands as one of the best scores of the 20th century. But worth watching as it's also one of the formative ancestors of all pirate films that would follow. There are plenty of political manipulations and betrayals for plot interest and Claude Raines for the bad guy, all of which compensates for the uninspiring black-and-white production values.

4. Swashbuckler (1976) - One of my favourites, despite a contemporary reception and review that caused it to sink quickly from general view. The 11-year-old Ellen thought it was one of the best movies she had EVER seen. Part of the run of bawdy historical epics like "The Three Musketeers" that hit the big screens at the time, this was an attempt to revive a genre that had been fairly dead since the late '50s. That it didn't work may have more to do with timing and the decade's cynicism than the quality of the film. James Earl Jones and Robert Shaw save noblewoman Geneviève Bujold from unfair imprisonment, then the trio takes off for Jamaica to save the island from a heartless governor. The quality cast also includes Beau Bridges and a young Anjelica Huston. Without question, the finest sword fighting scenes to hit the screen during my childhood, and a deeply pleasing ending that sees everyone get their just rewards.

5. Princess Bride (1987) - Stretching things a bit, perhaps, to put a film that takes place almost entirely on land in this genre, but as the dread pirate Roberts is the main character, it makes the cut. One of those films that works on two levels, delighting children with its obvious charms and adults with its more subtle wit. Mandy Patinkin steps off Broadway to do a sexy turn as swordsman Inigo Montoya (you killed my father, prepare to die...) but it's Cary Elwes who'll make your heart throb (and your head ponder why he didn't emerge from the '80s as a leading man).

6. The Black Swan (1942) - Terribly derivative of the Errol Flynn classics, even down to Maureen O'Hara as our plucky lead, but it's an enjoyable romp. Tyrone Power plays the rough pirate with the heart of gold, forced to go straight now that his old pirate boss Sir Henry Morgan is named Governor of Jamaica. (Yup, it really happened. Morgan's one of history's finest characters.) O'Hara, as the former governor's daughter, is engaged to a suitable nobleman, but of course is drawn instantly to Power's bad boy. Meanwhile, he has to foil a plot that's undermining Morgan's administration, and prove that the good guys aren't as good as they seem.

7. The Buccaneer (1958) - Most reviewers criticise its slow plot and bad direction (Anthony Quinn, believe it or not, under the guidance of Cecil B DeMille), but it wins my vote for being the only film I know of to explore one of the most fascinating stories in American history. The pirate and smuggler Jean Lafitte and his men came to the aid of the American Army in the War of 1812 and were the deciding factor in the U.S. victory over the Brits at the Battle of New Orleans. Yul Brynner plays Lafitte straight, serious and noble. He's far too worthy to bring any fun to the plot (ditto Charlton Heston as Andrew Jackson) and the script's a bit weak to carry the serious historical drama they were going for. But if you're interested in this rarely explored war and Lafitte's role in it, it's a must see.

8. Blackbeard's Ghost (1968) - I stumbled upon this film on television last year, having not seen it since I was a very small child, and was amazed by how funny it is. This is primarily thanks to Peter Ustinov, who was born to play the role of the meddlesome, flamboyant yet oddly sensitive ghost. It's classic old-style Disney, all innocence and silliness with a foolish plot (ghost helps reluctant athletics coach to win championship so evil property developers won't turn residents out of old ladies' home filled with piratical descendants), but it will make you laugh. Dean Jones, as the coach, will bring happy memories to any American who grew up in the '60s and '70s, and Suzanne Pleshette brings a touch of class. Pirates of the Caribbean fans will be interested in the sets. Released just a year after the ride opened at Disneyland, the film's clearly linked in look and feel to all that would eventually inspire the modern revival.

9. Treasure Island (1990) - No list of the greatest pirate films would be complete without Treasure Island. But which version? Most people would go for Disney's 1950 film, where Robert Newton arguably created the definitive Long John Silver. But for a complete piece of drama I choose this more modern effort, made for TV. Charlton Heston plays Long John Silver, seeming to have more fun here than he did with Andrew Jackson in The Buccaneer. A young Christian Bale is Jim Hawkins, and Oliver Reed makes a brief appearance as the pirate whose death in Hawkins' inn sets off the whole plot. Its on-location filming and great soundtrack by The Chieftains are both worthy of the big screen; one suspects that in an era where nobody had seen a commercial pirate success in more than 20 years, no producer would risk it.

10. Hook (1991) - It would have benefitted hugely from a tight edit that sped up the plot, but even with its flaws it has to be in my Top 10. The concept of Peter Pan (Robin Williams) growing up, forgetting his roots and having to rediscover them to save his children is inventive. Julia Roberts does a clever turn as Tinkerbell and the soundtrack is a classic. The main reason to see this, however, is Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook. He steals the show with his swagger, his one-liners and his flamboyant self pity, foiled beautifully by Bob Hoskins' Smee. A magnificent piece of casting that's stood the test of time.

Hook, The Princess Bride and, of course, the whole Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy are fairly easy to get on DVD. Surprisingly, despite the resurgent love of all things piratical, things get challenging pretty quickly after that, with many of these not available commercially at all. In researching this article I have seen that some of the older ones are available for download on file sharing sites, which may be worth exploration. If you're a pirate film fan and you haven't seen everything on this list ... get to work!
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Post Script 20 May '11 - The verdict? On Stranger Tides is a fun return to form for the franchise, much closer to the original than the muddled second and third attempts. Penelope Cruz makes a fine pirate wench, most of the old cast returns, Ian McShane is solid as Blackbeard and there are some delightful cameos. It's probably not good enough to rise above the pirate sub-genre to be considered a really good swashbuckler, but fans of buccaneers on film should enjoy. Whether or not it will unseat any of the above in my Top 10 will be left to time and additional viewings.

Farewell to a beloved dog

2011-05-16T08:27:00.004Z

It's taken me a week to write it. Mr. Darcy is dead.

My beloved cavalier King Charles spaniel. The first dog I'd ever purchased and raised on my own, my dog rather than a family pet. Companion of so many trips, living hot water bottle on countless nights, the adoring eyes that followed me for hours. Gone.

Admittedly, this wasn't a surprise. Darcy had just turned 13; that's 91 to you and me. He was blind, deaf and diabetic, kept going by twice-daily insulin injections, glucosamine tablets and what must me the world's most expensive dog food. (Anybody want to buy a case of Hills Science Diet, diabetic formula?) This adventurous little spaniel, whose head had hung eagerly out the car window through so many trips, had scaled back to a life of sleeping on the couch, with occasional forays to the back garden and the food bowl. The decline had been slow, so I hadn't noticed just how much he'd plummeted until my mother's 3-year-old Datchet arrived in the house and presented a stark comparison.

Last Monday morning, at 3:30, it was the younger dog who woke me with a sharp bark. Downstairs I found Darcy trembling with violent seizures, which went on for half an hour before he finally slipped into what we now know was a diabetic coma. I held the little guy to my chest and tried to make it better while Piers tracked down the 24-hour vet. By the time we arrived at their offices in Winchester, I knew ... and was ready for ... what was coming. Thus my work week started with heartbreak in an examining room, and ended with me picking up a lovingly-wrapped little packet of ashes from a crematorium in the Hampshire countryside.

It's not a story I could have imagined in June of 1999, when my mother and I went to visit a new litter of cavaliers. Much as I wanted one, I wasn't at home enough to take proper care of a dog. Nonsense, my mother briskly decided. You work close enough to your house to get home for lunch, and you make enough money to get a dog walker. You've lived by yourself long enough. You need a dog. I went into that meeting with my resolution strong. Despite the adorable appeal of cavalier puppies, I thought I'd make it through. The breeder put two puppies in my lap, and one in my mother's. That one looked over at me, got up, walked across laps, pushed his brother and sister onto the floor, curled up and looked up at me with a heart-melting gave. My only response at that point was "is there a cash machine nearby?". Mr. Darcy was coming home with me.

He was a stalwart road tripper from the beginning. We'd already booked a holiday to Ireland that month and the breeder couldn't keep him. So he came in a French market basket, hiding (and mostly sleeping) through pre-booked hotels and tourist attractions that didn't allow dogs. Over the years he wandered the moors of Devon and Somerset, the beaches of Norfolk, the highlands of Scotland, the hills of the Lake District, nearly every corner of the Cotswolds and the vineyard towns of the Mosel. (He almost made it to Italy, but he couldn't stand hot weather, so we spared him that one.)

Even as a youngster, however, Mr. Darcy was never the most energetic of canines. Though our destinations were often famous for their long walks, he usually trotted along grudgingly. His favourite bits were lounging by b&b fires and using his floppy ears and huge brown eyes to beg scraps from anyone susceptible to his charm. His record: the farmer's market in Stratford-on-Avon, where he managed to get free sausage from all five gourmet vendors hawking their wares that day. He appears to have been fondest of the venison, though duck scored high tail wagging as well. For me, the best parts of those trips were often just his quiet companionship. He used to sprawl across the front seat, head propped on the arm rest, staring at me adoringly for hours at a time. It is very hard to have bad day when something that beautiful and good loves you so completely.

With every joy of dog ownership, however, goes the pain of saying goodbye. It is one life's great tragedies that they live so much less time than we do. Who knows. Maybe it's all part of a master plan to teach us the lessons of love and loss before we graduate to humans. I once heard of a man who refused to own a dog, because he couldn't face the idea of losing it. No matter how much pain I felt last week, I'll never be able to understand that attitude. Yes, it hurt. Yes, I've cried a lot over the past seven days. But for 13 years I've had a faithful, constant companion who gave me nothing but love, and made my life better every time I paused to stroke his head. That's what dogs do. It justifies any pain that comes at the end.

Mr. Darcy, you were worth it all.

America and the burger: Part 2

2011-05-03T19:49:00.002Z

Guest blogger Piers Bencard returns

Are you back again? Surely not for more on America and it’s love of the burger? Oh, very well, if you insist. But please allow me one small digression (I’ll get to it later).

So having discussed two fast food joints, let me discuss two restaurant burgers and the digression of roast beef sandwiches.

The first burger under discussion is from O’Connells, an Irish pub beside the Italian ‘Hill’ district. We both had cheeseburgers which featured a two-inch high patty covered in cheese. Given the option of American or Swiss and being a true European (?) I made the wrong choice – Swiss is not the cheese for a burger, it doesn’t melt as well as American. We were asked how we wanted the burgers cooked ... my usual answer being medium rare ... and I was disappointed. The thickness of the burger would never have allowed a uniform medium rare. A word from our server could have pre-warned me, but no!

The toppings and sides with this burger were simple, unfortunately, a single slice of onion on a fairly standard sesame bun, some soggy and cooling crinkle cut fries and most weirdly a large pickle cut into quarters length-wise. All in all, a disappointment, but at least O'Connell's had a wide variety of beers on offer and a price tag to match the White Castle meal we had had the day before.

Much better, in my humble opinion, is their Roast Beef Sandwich: slices of thin cut roast beef served ‘Au Jus’, with a side dish of beef roasting juices which makes the sandwich even more unctuous, moist and lip smackingly tasty (Sorry, dear reader, normal language will hopefully resume after a short period back in Blighty). The bready element of the sandwich was made up of a roll that passes for what the Americans would call ‘French bread’ – longer than a sub, indeed as long as a baguette, but with the same texture and taste as a submarine roll.

As a direct comparison to the O’Connells burger, I offer Baxters, a restaurant with great views over the Lake of the Ozarks (photo above). It's about three to four hours' drive from St Louis and where we spent the middle of the week at a resort while I was introduced to Jefferson City, Missouri’s State Capital, and some of its residents.

We started with onion strings: very thin cuts of breaded onion, although the bread coating was almost tempura thin. The only bad thing that I could possibly say about these is that while they started out being crispy, the lower down that we got in pile of strings, the soggier they got. They were served with Ranch dressing: a light (liquid), slightly tart, seasoned, milky white condiment often made from packet mixes.

The server again asked how I wanted my burger cooked and this time it came out to order. The patty was thinner than the O’Connells burger, but we will forgive them that as the burger was moist and flavourful. This time I did not make the mistake of having Swiss and the other topping was more onion strings. Almost the best part of the burger was, however, the bun – it was brioche like. The bun maintained its shape, soaked up the juices from the burger and added a delicious buttery flavour.

Unable to leave this at just burgers, I'll offer a comparison O’Connell's roast beef sandwich. On my previous visit to St Louis, I was introduced to the Sportsman’s Park, a bar in Frontenac, a well-to-do suburb in St Louis County. There, after what I will admit were several beers, I had my first roast beef sandwich with ‘Au Jus’. This beef was served paper thin, thinner than O’Connells, and in small rolls, which fit into the hand superbly and probably more importantly into the bowl of the beef jus better as well.

Just to confirm that my tasting notes were not a drunken illusion (it’s my article and my excuse, so I’m sticking to it) , we returned this time as well. Indeed the sandwiches were as good as I recalled, even better as the buns has the same brioche-like consistency as the Baxter’s burger bun and this time I added the onion strings which were as good as Baxter’s if not better, having the same style of coating and being less oily further down the bowl we went – the lady had to have some as well, which we will forgive her, as it is her blog.

Overall in the burger stakes, the winner has to be Baxter’s, but I would certainly go for the Sportsman’s Park sandwiches over any of the burgers.