Suzi Edwards

i think i'm being a bit thick here. can you explain?

i love this idea. anything that can redevelop the "dining experience" (TM charlie trotter) is good in my book. i wonder if i want to completely replace the waiter/ess thing though. strikes me that you operating costs will be higher if you have all chefs in the place. this comment is based completely on a possibly completely misguided belief that chefs earn more money than waiter/esses. also, does actually being able to create the food necessarily mean you'll be comfortable interacting with guests about it...when i think about some of the chefs that i have met i think it's not the most sociable of professions. hastens to add, not you chef. and then i think about really great waiter/esses and wonder if they'd be any better at what they do if they cooked the food.

And the compliment goes right back at ya, Lady T. I had a lovely time and you sure know how to pick a bottle of wine. I enjoyed Rushmore you know. But I have to tell you about a happening so weird I think the kitchen gods must have been smiling at me on Saturday. I was thinking about food and memory, how certain things transport us and also about comfort food. Why we want certain things at certain times. And as I was loitering in my local Starbucks I got to thinking about what American comfort food is. Specifically how it could be translated into fine dining. So I was thinking about elevating tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich..how I'd do it. And then it was there on the menu. Calling out to me like a kitten stuck down a well. And you know, it was really good. The soup was slightly creamier than I would have made it, but you can't fault a grilled cheese sandwich made with Maytag Blue. I think Sue has pretty much summed up the Rushmore thing for me, apart from one tiny detail. Our amuses. A mini egg mayonnaise with a chorizo dressing. I thought it made a nice change from the mainly fish based ones I've been served and it was a quirky start to the meal.

I think some pubs are spit and sawdust, but i think you might find that the ones who called themselves gastropubs have generally got rid of the fruit machine in the corner. Your description of gastro here is what I'd call a restaurant.

i would recommend green zebra over spring at the moment....the atmosphere is similar but green zebra is a wee bit buzzier. the service is ever so slightly better at spring, but the small plates format edges it for me. we had a table of four and ordered 11 dishes, the kitchen sent out a couple of extras and we had a dessert and cheese. i came away feeling like i really, really know what the kitchen can do. not a single dud dish, but they are victims of there own sucess in that things that would be great anywhere else just keep getting bested by other dishes. like there was this aged gruyere souffle that was just perfect. cheesy light as air perfect. but then you try the carrots with truffles that they brought at the same time and you start plotting to stab the rest of your dining companions to death so you don't have to share it.

lalitha posted this in the thread about concept restaurants. i think it deserves a thread of its own. i'm thinking about london specifically, but is this true? what are our ratios of interesting to mediocre places like, compared say to the us or france? do we find ourselves suggesting the same places to people over and over again? why is this? what makes a restaurant interesting?

i just noticed an advert in the chicago reader (free chicago paper) that, i think, takes the groping concept slightly further...it becomes a dating experience. i'm going to see if i can find out a bit more....

penny drops. i read about that on here, didn't i? *seethes with jealousy*

lorks, thank you, but i'd really rather just be treated like everyone else! it's really sweet of you to offer though. how do you know the guys there?

isn't that four words? can you tell it's friday night and i have *nothing* to do?

not yet, it's going to be my last big meal here.

i got over to thyme earlier this week. it's a completely lovely patio once the sun goes down, although the art is a bit questionable. i didn't think the food was anything to write home about either, but they could get away with a lot, lot less with a setting like this. it is a perfect date place. unlike cafe bolero which i went to the week before. i took my friend who was over from london and having been to pasteur the night before (which also has a small patio although we didn't sit there) she demanded to know if i knew any restaurants that we're actually within walking distance of either where we were staying or where we work. she makes a strong arguement.... again we sat outside (no sign of the sexy barman..i need to have words with nero w) but this place is less romantic and more like being on holiday. i tried goat for the first ever time (deeply delicious) and would definitly go back if it wasn't so far from my adopted 'hood. i'll remember gossiping and sipping mojitos here for a long, long time.

I hate chewing gum. I specifically hate people chewing gum noisily. It makes me curl up my toes, clench my fists and start counting to ten. It makes me curse Juicy Fruit's name. I makes me want to track down the living relatives of the Wrigley family andforce them to step into discarded gum while wearing their best shoes. Now hold that thought. It will become relevant shortly. One of the pleasures of eating along is being able to concentrate on the food. To lose yourself in the moment. An equal pleasure is being able to earwig on conversations without the person you're actually dining with thinking you're terribly rude. I do, however have some issues with the human equivalent of noisily chewing gum shouting through my meal at Sarah Stegner's Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton last night. I would like to recreate the effect of the nonstop drone of their voice throughout the rest of my report. The room here is very traditional, big chandeliers and lots of wood. Not a lot of natural light. It's an accurate reproduction of highend French dining rooms. I was lead to a good table (yay) overlooking Janet Jackson's nipple shield was so wrong it was just her advertising herself the rest of the dining room. It's not irritating at all at first, is it? I decided on their short tasting menu, negotiated briefly about my "no red meat" requirement with the waiter (does anyone else here think that veal counts as white meat?) and kicked off with a glass of champagne. My amuse swiftly followed, a small pearl of he was a simpleton chicken liver pate. This was spot on, a perfect, classic pate with a nice depth of flavour and served with toast points and a red wine reduction. My early expecations and thoughts about the room had been matched by the food. Next up was ricotta gnocci served with a red pepper coulis. I think my expectations were out of whack here as I was expecting gnudi, not gnocci and so the lumpen quality of the dumplings depressed me slightly. The sauce was no better, slightly creamy but lacking a depth of red pepper flavour. Michael Moore, is that his name? The one who did that movie? Is that his name? Isn't that incredible? The dish had the air of canteen food about it. Luckily next up was he would weasel out of it wouldn't he? lobster with heart of palm salad, jicama and mango. This was a delight, with lots of different textures and a variety of sweet flavours working harmoniously on the plate. This was a perfect summer dish that made me wish I was lady who lunches so I could have it every day. My mother says that she had pictures of her in her bathing costume and my father wouldn't talk to her. I replaced the beef tenderloin with some striped wild bass served with tomatoes, patty pans, truffle "and a lot of other stuff, there's a lot going on here" (quotation taken from the waiter, not my 90 year old friend) that was more autumal in flavour, the truffle really accentuating the flavour of the bass. It was one of those dishes that was fine, but really no more than the sum of its parts. Even though they were pretty good parts. I saw a business woman parking today. Her skirt was up to here. There was cheese for me next, a really good selection of European and American. I couldn't resist some Brillat Saverin which was as ripe as it gets. Not sure that the soggy toast that it was served with added too much to the experience though but I felt more European at this point of the meal than I;ve felt for the rest of my trip. It was the orgasm that was the problem. He didn't know what it meant. Finally, dessert, a cold lemon souffle with a citrus lavender syrup served with creme fraiche and a lemon tuille. Again, it was very summery but the lime chunks in the syrup gave it some guts and made it a resfeshing way to end the meal. My friend had left at this point, so I enjoyed this and my tea in relative peace. I left thinking this couldn't possibly be the best restaurant in Chicago. The food wa uneven and the service passionless. But in truth it's not my sort of place. It's perfect for business dinners and trying to impress people. It's for *ducks to avoid flack* older people who want classically prepared food with nothing to challenge them. I was about 30 years too young to be eating there. I also left thinking that Trio has probably ruined my expectations about almost every other meal I'm ever going to have.

thanks for posting this scott. looks like you had a pretty reasonable taster of the indian stuff on offer, although i hear the kebabs are the real reason to go to the new tayyeb. i especially enjoyed your description of the eccles cake. i'd never thought of it before, but i guess it really would be totally alien to anyone from outside of the uk. possibly even the north of the uk. did you try popping a bit of cheese and a bit of cake in your mouth together? it's a really traditional north of england cake. here's some information about eccles cakes

there's a nice piece in the "insider's guide to london newsletter" (from the evening standard, requires paid for membership) about the best kebabs in london. new tayyeb makes the list. has anyone been here recently?

think also it's probably not my sort of place. It is very, very "french" but felt like a bit of a facsimile of a parisian 3 star to me. which i can get much closer to home.... i was also the youngest person in there by about 400 years

you make a strong arguement. it is more like a traditional biscuit than a twix though. and the biscuit never tastes *slightly* stale, a phenomenon i have noticed with twixs. i do not like the rest of the range. especially not the bounty one. definitly not a taste of paradise.

Now that's middle class! is it? sounds more nouveau riche to me

i think you made a good choice there. spring was phenomenal too.... i really honestly spotted only one mistake at le lan. my pho wasn't quite hot enough. i think food is often served here at a slightly lower temp than in the uk, so i wasn't unhappy to ask them to make it hotter. and it wasn't cold, i just like to get third degree tongue burns from soup. given the pedigree of the place, it think it's a good bet that it won't need too long to settle. and you really, really don't want to miss the elan that the waiting staff have. they are obviosuly *loving* it there. unlike, say, the staff at the ritz carlton last night....

that's ok, you are among friends here. i have recently had to go cold turkey over those new "bisc&twix" biscuits. it's possible to eat four in a sitting you know.

if you fancy a gastropub there's also the drapers arms. the upstiars dining room is very pretty and they have an outdoor terrace.

there is a new place called exmouth grill opened in...exmouth market...but i haven't got there yet (obviously) perhaps you can save me a trip :-) there's also a new lebanese deli/restaurant on upper street. upper upper street i believe, at the H&I end. perhaps jack can jump in here... if you fancy something quite laid back, i liked medcalfe, once again in exmouth market. it's a sort of a light st john but it's a bar that does good food rather than a restaurant. there's also zetter in clerkenwell...which i liked a lot and with it being a hotel restaurant i am guessing it will be open on a sunday. would be a great place for a laid back funky foodie lunch. did i just write that? please hold on while i beat myself round the head. if you want higher end i'd go for morgan m. i've really enjoyed my two trips there. it's quite smart though

i didn't realise that at all gary. right, am off to conduct a straw poll and see who had heard of it.

does the place that used to be called birdcage (is it now archipelago? or maybe empire?) count? lots of weird food...it's kind of conceptual.

I think it's about people believing that greater choice is the same as better food. I had an interesting situation recently, I took a friend to Trio. On the way there we started chatting about best ever meals and amazing food experiences. He said that he didn't have a "best meal ever" because since he walked the Appalachian Trail eating freeze dried food for 6 months, he viewed food as fuel. He was as openmouthed at my reverence of food as I was at his willingness to eat brown sludge. As it was, we both ended up having a great meal. He'd never eaten anything like the food before and loved the experience. I loved watching him get excited by something he'd previously not seen as important.