Suzi Edwards

1. Really fancy; RHR. No contest. Don't worry about table turning. Just go. 2. New English cuisine (don't know if that's the right phrasing - I mean what the best chefs are doing to reinterpret English food); St John Bread and Wine. Have an Eccles Cake with Lancashire Cheese. 3. Indian; I went to Mela last week and thought it was OK. Other people will make better Indian recs than me. 4. Ethnic (non-Indian); Hakkasan (Chinese) 5. West End after theater; The Ivy, just in case Rupert Everett is there ;-) 6. Lunch near Chelsea flower show; 7. South Bank or anyplace near Marriott County Hall Hotel (we will be staying there couresty of Marriott Rewards program so we'll have lots of money left over for food); Go back to RHR for lunch. Spend some of that money on a cab there 8. Outrageously good interior design. Hakkasan makes me feel like a Bond Girl. Not sure if that has anthing to do with the interior design though. Shopping? Borough Market (early on a Friday. Not on a Saturday like I did last week) Books for Cooks in Notting Hill. Have a good trip :-)

two of my best friends (a couple) are both perpetually late and the finickitiest of eaters. one won't eat fish, shellfish, mustard, anchovies, olives, blue cheese, celery, turnips and swede. the other avoids "foreign muck" (it's now easiest to say what this isn't rather than list the cuisines that fall into this category. at the last count he ate food from all of mainland europe (avoiding eastern europe and scandinavia) thailand and china) he also describes peas as "the food of the devil" and "the spawn of satan" and avoids them along with all pulses and beans. you can imagine what cooking for them is like. despite this they are great dining companions and very dear friends. i took them to royal hospital road as a big thank you for looking after me during a tough patch. the sight of one of them surrepticiously spooning the peas out of his chicken consomme into our other friend's soup is for me my favourite dinner moment ever.

either for me.

i quite like a tasting menu, especially if we could get them to pop a couple of the signature dishes on there. lunch or dinner works for me. i'll go with the flow.

jack and i are in :-)

you might want to think about st john bread and wine over st john. lots of people seem to prefer the newer one, and they team seem to be putting a bit more effort into the new venture at the moment. i'd personally avoid the ivy (and the point about not recognising the 'slebs there is a good one!) but if you want to go they do run a waiting list and seem pretty good at following up to those people on it.

you beat me to it :-)

this place got a good review in time out as well. i wonder if it didn't just have a really difficult first couple of weeks and is bedding in. is the lobster lasagne dish still on the menu?

then don't be ;-)

my best friend is arriving in new york on friday. she's thinking of going to balthazar. is it still hot? if not, where is? looking through the board has made me suggest wd-50 (where i also want to go). any other ideas? she's staying in tribeca, but will travel about.

*blush* i am really looking forward to this :-)

i ate at petrus with a group of friends on saturday night. we went for the "menu prestige" as this was what we'd had at our last "special" meal at rhr and we wanted to compare. all in all it was very enjoyable, although there was slightly too much food for a recuperating invalid ;-) and 4.5 hours at table was far, far too long. we started with some good cocktails in the blue bar and followed with a bottle of pol roger white foil while we nibbled on some fabulous rizzoni, great duck parfait with sauternes jelly and orange and stale anchovy and tomato toasts. and then we waited and waited. it was nearly an hour before anyone took our food order, my main complaint of the night.... an amuse of gazpacho with pineapple and watermelon set the stage; smiles all around the table at two mouthfuls of a tongue tingling soup that was at once familar yet subtly enhanced by the fruit. less sucessful for me was the starter of ducks liver "a la minute" with more fruit (mango i think) and brioche. i'm not a huge fan of foie gras and i felt that this starter was trying to deliver the texture, but without the flavour. everyone else enjoyed this though, so my critisism is down to personal tastes (and a slimy texture :-) next up was omlette arnold bennett which, with hindsight, was just too rich for this menu and wrong at this stage of the meal. i know it's one of his signature dishes, but it just didn't sit right for me. it was served with smoked haddock rather than lobster, but was overridingly cheesy, smokey and fishy. this was followed with turbot on a parsnip puree with sauce matalote which i had two bites of as the smoked fishiness of the omlette was still with me, and because one of my friends had inviegled his way into a dish of cumin flavoured frogs legs with a white onion soup that was the stand out dish of the night. i was very jealous that he had the little skillet in front of him and i had a plate. we drank a couple of bottles of puligny-montrachet (i know no more) with these. next up was lamb shank with faggot. i'm actually planning on reporting my mother to childline as she obviously cheated me massivly when i was a child. we had faggots when i was a lass. they were nothing like these meaty, melting bundles of umami. mmmmmmm. we drank the hochar from the "sommeliers choice" menu with the lamb. i chose this wine. it was ok but was overshadowed by the white. that said, we were all flagging by this point so i think a huge (expensive) red would have passed us by. i was almost asleep by now (it was about 12:30pm) but i was hoping to be revived by dessert. sadly i wasn't. rather oddly they served three different desserts, gave us no choice and decided among themselves who would get what. i was making apple tart tatin faces at the waiter, but sadly he misconstrued this and gave me a terrine of fruit. once i'd kicked him to death outside i stole someone else's but ended up having one or two spoonfuls. having had ramsey's apple tarte tatin i think wareing's suffered in comparison, and think he'd do well to rethink this dish. it tasted strongly of cheese (not necessarily a bad thing) although i was assured that it contained none. petite fours sort of passed me by, i was drinking my camomile tea and thinking about my bed. so, all in all an enjoyable evening with some great company and some great tastes. it's in no way as good as rhr and i don't think it's anywhere near 3 star food at this point. i'd question a lot of the hyperbole (both negative and positive) i've read about it...but that said it delivers some serious food in a relaxed atmosphere.

maybe i am being picky here....but how can you win best restaurant and not have the best chef? especially when you don't win best front of house or best "scene"? who won most fanciable male?

hurrah. it amazes me that otherwise great restaurants still allow people to smoke. i'm becoming a complete pedant over this.

the new tayeb in white chapel is very popular among a lot of egulleteers. i don't eat much indian food in town so i can't really offer anything else, sorry!

sounds like my perfect job. sigh.

london is up and running, we have our first meeting on tuesday week. i am also hoping there will be a burger club when i am in new york in november so i could be our first exchange student :-) btw, could you pm me the evaluation form please? i thinkit might help us refine our thoughts.

yes, yes, yes!!!!!! i would SO be up for this.

i've never eaten here...can't really work out why not either. will go onto my list now. can you give me an idea of the pricing? btw, forgive my ignorance, but what does "backward styled" mean?

of course. ignore my previous suggestions. go to st john. i kind of forget it's quirky.

fantastic! thanks for the suggestions. i made some cherry vanilla muffins. they have all gone :-) (turns out they were cherries, not blueberries)

try MVH in barnes, although it is a bit of trek from...well, anywhere really. apart from barnes. i have a funny feeling he used to be the chef at the birdcage, but i am ready to be corrected. there's a thread about it on here. i though it was really very, very good and you might find that the quirkiness of the decor is matched by some seriously good food. i've heard good things about les trois garcon (liverpool street way) but i think here the quirkiness is more about the decor than the food. oh, and i'd personally avoid sarastro if you like food at all.

hi there, i sucumbed to some serious impulse food buying while in Wholefoods on my trip to the US. I now have several tubs of dried raspberries and blueberries. I was planning to use them for muffins but was wondering if anyone has tried this, and if it does work, do you need to reconstitute them? my pack has no instructions....

you could try hakkasan. i'm not sure of the hours but they are certainly open at 6:00pm and it's a pretty short hop to waterloo from there.

not sure i understand what you mean by this...what's there not to believe about him giving it 5 stars? that's what he gave it before... i find myself in the odd position of hoping to god he's right as i am there in 2 weeks.