tsg20

Two more visits to TVH this week - one drink on Sunday, and then a rather longer session last night, with my sister and her boyfriend (visiting from London) along for the ride. Last night's visit was the best time we've had there yet; we got through 14 cocktails between the 4 of us, tried a couple of others, and finished off with shots. Somewhat miraculously we all felt OK today, if a little tired. It didn't feel like it was going to go so well when we arrived at around 1840, because the bar was full, so we had to take a table - but thankfully after 5 minutes a load of people left and we were able to take their places. This definitely made a huge difference to the evening - I've still yet to experience the table service, but I can't imagine it's anywhere near as fun as chatting to the bartenders and seeing the drinks being made. In particular, after our first drinks we all went with what Kyle suggested, most of which wasn't on the menu. I kicked off with a Blue Ridge Manhattan, which was great, although possibly a little strong for a session drink. After that was my personal highlight: an Old Fashioned made with Van Winkle Family Reserve. Easily the best Old Fashioned I've had yet; whole depths of flavours I hadn't appreciated before. My sister's boyfriend had a Thomas Handy Old Fashioned at the same time, which was also excellent, although the additional strength was a little much for me following on from the Manhattan. I finished with a 19th St Special, a suggestion of Kyle's from the Death and Company menu. Throughout the evening Kyle took the time to discuss the drinks with us, give advice on drinks and recipes, let us sample other drinks he was making, and finished off the evening with a shot of rye each. I think it's fair to say that we all felt that it was the best cocktail experience we'd ever had.

I had a fantastic lunch here last week - I still think this is probably my favourite Michelin starred restaurant in London, although I have to confess that I haven't been to any of the other 2* places. The set lunch always seems like very good value, too, at £24.50 for 2 courses. What was particularly interesting to me was that they actually made a serious error (the first time I've seen them do this) - they simply brought the wrong main course for me (not even another dish off the menu, just something involving some of the ingredients that should have been in what in ordered). What impressed me was how they dealt with it; they came back under 10 minutes later with 2 of my main course, so that my wife could have some too rather than sit and watch me eat, and then didn't charge for my lunch at all. Perhaps this is standard at this level - I guess I've never seen a similar error at a 2/3* restaurant - but I felt they made up for their mistake extremely well. The food was all excellent, too - I even enjoyed the mandarin/rhubarb mixture mentioned above. The bread was also notable; this time they had a Guinness rye bread that I hadn't had before, and it was so good I had to have 3 slices. Definitely some of the best bread I've had in a London restaurant (probably only Roussillon comes close).

I was briefly in London last week and took advantage of the opportunity of having several of Paul's brownies, but now I'm on the other side of the world again. Does anyone have a clue how he makes them so moist and gloopy? I'd like to try making something like them at home, but I don't have a clue where to start!

We had some absolutely fantastic drinks from Joaquin last night, including several that will have me drinking more tequila in future. For me the highlight was the Fresa Brava; I had no idea that combination of fruit and heat was possible in a cocktail. Truly remarkable.

Incidentally, my Old-Fashioneds have improved a lot since the posts above: the 2-1 syrup and fresher bitters made quite a difference, and I suspect practice is helping, too. More on-topic: presumably Joaquin of D & C will be there all evening 11th-13th? I think we're going to try to make it in one of those nights for some pre-Valentine's day food and drinks. Will the Juliet and Romeo be available before the 14th? It sounds right up my street...

The bitters are a few months old, so that probably didn't help. I used sugar syrup made from white sugar, 1-1 by vol with water, and no orange at all. So, rather different from what you're suggesting! What does the "2x1" refer to?

That's very interesting! I guess it may well turn out to be a drink that I never have quite the same again - which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, as I'm not sure that a repetition could live up to my memory, in any case. All of the variants you've described sound excellent, in any case. I just had my first go at making an old fashioned at home - only mildly successful, as I don't think the Angostura bitters were quite up to the job (either that, or my technique was lacking).

I'm not completely sure, to be honest; several kinds of orange bitters.

We finally made it to the Violet Hour last night. I've been looking forward to it since this thread started, but a combination of busyness in the week/fear of queues on the weekend/general not going to bars due to dislike of smoke had meant that we hadn't got round to it. Anyway, we went along a little before 7, got seats at the bar, and had a fantastic couple of hours. It's pretty rare for me to go somewhere with as high expectations as I had and not feel some disappointment, but this was one of those occasions; I think we'll be coming back a lot in the next few months. I'm not very good at describing drinks, but I feel I have to say something about my second drink. I asked for something which would show off the house-made bitters, and was offered an Old Fashioned; not a drink I've thought much about in the past. It was one of the best cocktails, if not the best, I've ever had. The whole experience - the feel of the bar itself, the friendly and informative staff, the drinks - all perfect.

Probably a stupid question - but does anyone know if the Violet Hour will be open on NYE?

Thank you for all your kind comments - I was somewhat nervous posting our comments, as I hadn't seen any criticism of the service at Alinea anywhere. I hope that we did catch them on an off night, and I hope that we go back and have a better experience - I guess the difficulty is that right now it feels like there would be a danger of throwing good money after bad, though! I suspect (or again, hope) in time it will be the memory of the food that sticks with me more than the service.

Here's a review of our recent (October 6) meal at Alinea, mostly written by my wife, but with some additions from me. For anyone that doesn't want to read the whole saga, here's the summary: food was amazing, several dishes were top tier and stood up well to top UK restaurants (I'm thinking Fat Duck and Gordon Ramsay RHR specifically). However, the service let the food down in ways I couldn't have even imagined. Foodwise, I'd say it deserves either 2 or 3 European Michelin stars (I don't have a lot of faith in the NY system, to be honest), but service was worse that the average 1-star place abroad. We'd been eagerly anticipating this meal for close to two years—we've been living in London and couldn't squeeze in a visit when we were over on vacations. I'm a vegetarian and love the many options that tasting menus offer up, my husband is an omnivore. We're experienced with fine dining, having eaten at many Michelin-starred restaurants in London (just to give some background on who we are!) Warning bells went off for me early on. We sat down, didn't have to order since we'd both requested the 'Tour' menu in advance. We discussed the options of wine pairings with the manager in our room, who assured us it wouldn't be a problem that I tend to drink more/more quickly than my husband, who really only wanted a taste of each wine. He said it would be monitored, my glass could be topped up and we'd only be charged what we drank. This sounded like a great system, so we both went for it. Our first drink, a variation of a Kir Royale, arrived about 10 minutes later. We sipped our drinks, trying to mask our growling stomachs. We'd only eaten a light lunch since our reservation was at 6:15 and we planned on really enjoying all the food. At 6:45 we had not so much as an amuse to curb our hunger. I said that if we got to 7:00 without food,I'd probably be looking at paying for our drink and leaving. First food came at 6:55. Overall, the food ranged from very good to outstanding (some dishes, such as the black truffle explosion, were as good as anything I've ever eaten), but the service was a severe disappointment. Servers would bring the dish and give a cursory description of its contents before leaving, on occasion doing no more than listing the main ingredients, or in some cases (such as the lamb cubism dish) being unable to list them all even when we asked what something was. Later on in the meal, we were able to hear the same dishes being presented to other customers, and it was clear that the level of description varied wildly from server to server; sometimes they would make discuss the provenance of the beef at length, at others they would simply state that it was wagyu beef. I appreciate that not everyone wants a lengthy discussion of the dish they're being served, but in a restaurant where you don't see a menu before dining I feel that it can make a considerable difference to one's enjoyment of a dish to have some idea of what exactly one is eating. In addition, one server was actively hostile; she seemed to resent having to be there, and in particular to resent having to pick up cutlery that hadn't been left on the plate (which is not always easy with some of the unusual plates being used); on one occasion she suggested that we could leave our knives on our plates when we were finished “if we wanted to.” This could perhaps have been a joke, but I was unable to detect any humorous intent. Although it’s hard to explain in writing, we were left feeling like scolded children, which seemed distinctly odd. This is of course my subjective opinion, but I have never had such an impression of hostility from a server in a serious restaurant. However, even without explanations or help from our servers, we were able to enjoy many of the courses. The tomato plate, including sherry vinegar, cheese and even freeze-dried tomato ice cream was playful and delicious and felt very seasonal. I enjoyed the bite of eggplant with olive cream inside, and my husband enjoyed his version which included dried baby sardine. The “old standard” of the “hot potato, cold potato” was amazing and we both were thrilled with this dish. The deep-fried ice cream with smoldering leaves was good both times we ate it (see below). The one concern I had with the food was that it sometimes felt like the kitchen was trying too hard to make the vegetarian option mimic the meat dish—for example in a corn and maple dish, my husband had salmon roe and I had…more corn. I wouldn’t have minded if our dishes were different at all, especially if that gave the kitchen the opportunity to try something different. The last wine we were served was not to the taste of either of us, so we called the sommelier over to explain that neither of us wished to drink it, and to ask if there was any possibility of an alternative. To his credit, after a discussion he took it way and came back with something else; but he proceeded to tell us that it was the “only other thing he had open”. Why do this? It gave the impression that all he was prepared to do was to hunt around for ends of bottles, whereas had he simply presented us with something else we would have been impressed at his flexibility. Finally, at the end of the meal the floor/room manager asked us how we had enjoyed the meal, and we mentioned that one of the servers had done a very good job of describing the last two or three dishes. We were told that he was the new guy, which led to questions about why we thought he was the best server we’d had that evening. We mentioned that some of the servers had been rather perfunctory in their descriptions. At this point he became extremely defensive; he asked us if we were in the industry, as he'd seen us making notes on some of the dishes. We replied (truthfully!) that we were just ordinary diners with poor memories, who liked to be able to look back on meals they'd enjoyed and remember what they'd eaten. At this point he launched into a somewhat extraordinary complaint about people coming in and demanding to know the details of how everything had been cooked, while their food was sitting there going cold, and how absurd it was for us to think that we could mimic the extraordinary cooking that was being done in their kitchen just by asking a few questions. We tried to point out that we hadn't actually asked any questions of the servers, but felt that they could have volunteered more, and that moreover we'd heard him describing some of the dishes at much greater length than our servers had (for example, he gave quite a lot of detail on the wagyu beef to one couple near us). We also were extraordinarily generous in our interactions with this man—I can honestly say that the interaction was started with a compliment, only went into complaints when he asked specific questions, and consistently talked about how great the food is. Once again, he was not prepared to listen, or at least gave the impression of not being prepared to listen. Some other disappointments: the table next to us, doing the half-tour, got 15 dishes, so we were a little disappointed to only get 23. That table were also offered an additional selection of bread at the end of their savory courses, and we weren't, plus they had other savory courses that we didn’t get and didn’t know not to look forward to-- a dish involving what looked like mushy peas looked great and was not part of our meal. It did seem strange that we wouldn’t get everything on the smaller menu plus more, but probably should have read the menus online to check whether that would be the case. The end of the meal was also very disappointing; the final dish was the pumpkin fried ice cream with burning leaves, but they failed to set our leaves on fire! It was only when a different server came to take the dish away and asked us what we thought of the effect that it became clear what had happened; they were very apologetic and brought one, this time alight, but it seemed to be an extraordinary lapse - how could the first server not have noticed this? It was also only at this point that we realized that we'd had our last dish (we were anticipating at least 24), which made for a rather flat ending to the meal. What is most frustrating to me is that several of the dishes have really stuck with me, and I'd love to eat them again; but a lot of the difficulties mentioned above made the whole meal add up to a disappointment. I really feel that some changes to the service would have made the whole meal one of the best I've ever had, and we'd have made an immediate reservation to return as soon as we could afford to; but in comparison to, say, The Fat Duck, where the service was a delight, Alinea simply didn't perform.

yes (or rather my fiancee did) - the fat duck did a particularly good job of the vegetarian food, actually, coming up with similar tastes/textures to the meat dishes (for example, substituting a large cep for foie gras, which was something i hadn't ever thought of, but worked remarkably well). Arpege is certainly very tempting, but almost ever review I've seen has made the prices seem terrifying, except for one I've saw recently that made it sound like lunch is more affordable - is there anywhere that has an actual list of their prices? I guess I should give them a ring.

Does anyone have any more experience of eating as a vegetarian in medium to high end Paris restaurants? We're going to be in Paris for lunch in a couple of weeks, and want to go somewhere good for lunch - we had been weighing up trying for a table at Arpege, but after eating at the Fat Duck and Gordon Ramsey in the last week we're feeling a little poor! In London our experience has been that anywhere with at least 1* will happily deal with vegetarians given advance notice - does the same apply in Paris?

There's also my favourite shop in the entire world, postcard teas: http://www.postcardteas.co.uk/ No good for gluten-free food (or loos, for that matter - they're a shop, not a cafe), but very good for tea (most of Tea Smith's are from them, I believe) and great for cake, too.

So, I'd like to get a nice birthday cake for my girlfriend. I've left matters a little late - it's for next Saturday, so it can't be anywhere that needs ordering way in advance. Any suggestions? Ones that won't totally break the bank would be very welcome!

Just wanted to revive this and see if people had any current thoughts - we're getting married in the US in a couple of months but are UK residents, so have no feeling for what might or might not be a bargain in the US.

Ouch: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/st...2022574,00.html

Does anyone have any particular recommendations from the wine list? I'm finally getting around to visiting Arbutus for what will hopefully be a boozy lunch tomorrow, and it seems like an ideal opportunity to be a little more adventurous with the wine list.

Walked past this place today and was somewhat intrigued - has anyone been more recently? And does anyone know anything about their Monday night wine tastings?

Rather less complimentary review from Time Out: http://www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/reviews/9226.html

Looks like a bit of a price hike, too - earlier this year it was 70 quid a la carte, 90 tasting, and now they're 85 and 110. Set lunch still 40 quid though.

So, what are the best gastropubs in London these days? I keep on going back to the Anchor & Hope, but are there others out there which are as good? For example (stolen from the other thread) here's this year's Time Out picks: Best Gastropub: Marquess Tavern, 32 Canonbury St, N1 2TB Charles Lamb, 16 Elia Street Inn at Kew Gardens, 292 Sandycombe Road Phoenix, 14 Palace Street The Queen’s Pub and Dining Room, 26 Broadway Parade We dropped into the Marquess the other day, and it looked like a nice pub, with a good-looking (if expensive) menu - but how's the food? I'm reluctant to check any of these out without some recommendations, as I fear I'll just regret not paying another visit to the A&H.

They definitely cater for vegetarians, for what it's worth - they made my partner a full tasting menu, in fact.

Has anyone seen any Israeli couscous lately? Following this thread: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=46944 I've tried Sainsbury's in Islington and Waitrose in Gloucester Rd, but with no luck...