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Nice Bar Snacks: Veuve Clicquot Bar at Harrods

Veuve Clicquot Champagne Bar
Harrods
87-135 Brompton Road
London SW1X 7XL

Date of Last Visit: Thursday, July 9th, 2009

The Victims: Jen, Feathers

The Damage: About £15 each. But the snacks were free!

The Background: We dropped into Harrods for the sales the other night. Crazy sales. Really unbelievable. If only I were rich. And thin. I'd be wearing half-off Valentino right now.

We needed a little break at one point, so we dropped into the Veuve Clicquot bar and ordered a glass of champagne each. Pricey at £14.50 for the gold, and £15 something for the rose. But when our complimentary snacks arrived, we felt a lot better. Some nice crispy cracker bread, studded with sesame seeds and poppy seeds. And some delicious tangy yogurty cream to scoop it all up with. A nice surprise. And just enough to tide us over for the rest of our shopping.

The Verdict: A nice little oasis, but pricey for the champers. Next time, I'll see if I can snag the snacks by just purchasing a £9 glass of wine.

The Question: Where are your favorite complimentary bar snacks?

1707 at Fortnum & Mason

 

1707
181 Piccadilly
London, W1A 1ER

Date of Last Visit: Saturday, January 17, 2009

The Victim: Me

The Damage: £20? Maybe a little less.

The Background: I've had 1707 on my list since Fortnum & Mason refurbed in 2007. Yes, sometimes I take a while to get around to things. Unlike my London blogging colleagues Dos Hermanos, who continuously amaze me with how quickly they get to new places.

Let me just point out that the Web site for 1707 says this under "Dress Code":

We kindly request that both sexes lean more towards elegance.

Let's just say that I am pretty sure I was wearing jeans that Saturday. And not the trendy kind. More of the "I'm going to do five loads of laundry and get some shopping done" variety.

The Entrance: I find 1707 in the basement of Fortnum and Mason. It's small but has a nice crowd in it for 3 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon. I am given the last seat at the end of the bar and eventually start chatting with two gentleman who have escaped from their wives who are upstairs shopping.

The Wine: I chose the Alsace flight because one of the random things I know about my maternal grandfather is that that side of the family comes from Germany, near Alsace. I am not disappointed in my selection although I would say that the wines were maybe a bit too dessert-wine-like for me on a Saturday afternoon. My flight was served in a fun metal glass holder--lest you think that I drank three 250 ml glasses, each glass was 125 ml. The things I do for you! And my blog.

Alsace Riesling, Domaine Bruno Sorg 2006
Alsace Gewürztraminer, Domaine Bruno Sorg 2006
Alsace Pinot Gris, Domaine Bruno Sorg 2006

The Bar Snack: Everyone is getting into the salted dried broad beans these days, aren't they?

The Verdict: I'd come back here.

Paxton & Whitfield

Paxton & Whitfield
93 Jermyn Street
SW1Y 6JE

Date of Last Visit: Saturday, January 17th, 2009

The Victim: Me

The Damage: £20

The Background: Bryan and Stacey have invited me over for dinner. As the non-cook in the group, I've been assigned the cheese plate. I have to stop at Fortnum & Mason for some foodie gifts, so Paxton & Whitfield, famed London cheesemonger, it is. And I am glad.

The Entrance: Cheese, cheese, and more cheese! I like that at Paxton & Whitfield, the cheese is all out in front of you in nice big wheels. OK, it's like this at Neal's Yard too. But at Paxton & Whitfield, it all just seems so much closer.

The Selection: I put myself in the hands of the cheese monger. I ask for an all English plate. Something creamy, something blue, something different. £20, I've got three cheeses: a smoked cheddar (which ends upbeing my favorite), a stilton, and of course something that I've completely forgotten. Not because it was unmemorable, but because my memory is as holey as swiss cheese.

The Verdict: Pricey, but worth it.

Tea at The Berkeley

The Berkeley Hotel
Wilton Place
SW1X 7RL
Tel: 0207 201 1619

Date of Last Visit: Wednesday, August 20, 2008

The Victim: Jen

The Damage: Unknown. Jen paid! (Well, actually, Uncle Bob paid. Thanks Uncle Bob!)

The Background: A few years ago, I took Julie,  my Mom, and her friend Mary for tea at The Ritz and wrote about it on my blog. (My how my writing has improved over time.) With Jen in London for a bit, I thought it would be nice to take her for tea too...little did I know that we'd be upgraded to first class on our flight to Madrid and enjoy high tea somewhere over the Atlantic. So Jen got to have tea twice!

I've read about the Pret-a Portea at The Berkeley on a bunch of other London food and restaurant blogs...American-London-Blogger Life in a Nutshell perhaps captures it best because she includes photos of the cakes PLUS photos of the fashion behind the cakes. The idea is that the cakes look like the most recent fashion collections.

The Food: We start with one glass of champagne each. This turns into two. We switch to tea before we can say yes to glass number three. (Wisely so.) There are little sandwiches in quarters with their crusts cut off. Little savory canapes (none of which match what's listed on the menu, but no bother). And lots of little pastries. Little is the very operative word here. But just like Taco Bell, they offered free refills.

I'm not quite sure how Jen has made it this far in life without having a traditional French macaroon. (As good Catholics, we grew up on the Jewish kind.) So right before heading to The Berkley, I took her to Harrods where we bought a six-pack at Laduree.

So it was nice that soon afterwords, we were treated to another macaroon, a little one...

The Verdict: I thought tea at The Berkeley was well-presented. I wasn't so keen on the room though. We had tea in the bar, more or less. The guys next to us were having hamburgers. At The Ritz, everyone around us was having tea, which made things a bit more convivial.

The Botanist

The Botanist
7 Sloane Square
SW1W 8EE
Tel: 020 7730 0077

Date of Last Visit: Friday, August 10, 2008

The Victims: Al, Darsh, John, Rutton

The Damage: £62 each

The Background: Rutton says I don't write enough about the restaurants I visit in London. He wants more details. But see...I have a short attention span. So I assume everyone else does too. And I'm not Giles...I can't get away with 1,374 words. Michael Winner's latest comes in at a reasonable 812. A.A. Gill weighs in at a hefty 1,454. Jay Rayner is a very tight and right 777.  Fay Maschler, 886.

Besides not having that many words, I don't have all that much time, what with having a day job and all that. But I will endeavour, as best as I can, to tell you more about The Botanist than I have about other places I have been in the past.

The Entrance: The Botanist is full of Sloaney Ponies. I feel brunette. I feel short. I feel like I should be wearing something, anything, in gold lame. Just a little sparkle. I retire in navy blue to a corner table...an empty corner table with two chairs. There's a gentleman sitting in an awkwardly positioned chair in front of my table, a chair with a foot stool. I ask him if it's okay if I sit at this table...is it free? Yes, he tells me, yes.

Well then of course Rutton arrives and takes the other chair and all of a sudden the table ISN'T free because this gentleman's friends have arrived and now they have nowhere to sit. I hear him tell his friends that he had saved this table and that he was here first and I think "THAT IS SO NOT WHAT YOU TOLD ME. YOU SAID IT WAS FINE."

I am not an idiot. I turn to him. I smile sweetly and I say, "Why don't you and your friends take this table? You were here first." I can stand. And I have better things to do than to fight with a soon-to-be-out-of-work-investment-banker. (If he's not out of work already.)

Arrgh. Can't we all be brothers?

The Service: We were seven and now we're five and we didn't call ahead to tell them that and you can tell they are peeved. In a polite sort of way. They squeeze us all into a table for four. Three of us on the banquet. I sit in between Al and Rutton and we try not to elbow each other through the course of our meal.

But our server is lovely. Attentive and kind and friendly and professional. They have a good egg in that one.

The Food: I start with the chicken and foie gras terrine and they've managed to make it very summery, for a terrine of foie gras. It's lovely, really. Darsh's crab and avocado cocktail looks even more summery and light than mine. He says it is.

After polishing off two bottles of Spanish Abarino (not on my own), my halibut arrives. It's nice, but a tad on the salty side. Really, it's just okay. The duck looks great. As does the suckling pig.

The Loos: Neat and clean. As I leave the ladies, I run into a guy in blue spandex with a yellow cape. I'm not kidding.

The Dessert: One of the tangiest and best slices of lemon tart I've ever had. Served with a good scoop of raspberry sorbet.

The Ambiance: LOUD. Really really loud. Just a few  cushions would help. Really. A happening bar. I would come here later in the evening just to hang out. But I would wear my four inch platforms and get blond highlights and lose 10 15 kilos first. Just to fit in, you know.

The Verdict: Nice. Really. Lively.

Michelin: Foliage

Foliage
The Mandarin Oriental
66 Knightsbridge London
SW1X 7LA
Tel: 020 7201 3723

Date of Last Visit: Wednesday, June 11

The Victim: Douglas of Intoxicating Prose and winner of my Guest Blogger contest

The Damage: £275, if you must know!

The Background: Douglas won my Guest Blogger contest back in April with his review of Galvin at Windows. The prize was dinner with me, so the date has finally arrived and I've chosen Foliage partially influenced by its Michelin-ness and its great review over on Cheese & Biscuits.

Douglas is already in the bar when I arrive, sipping pink Moet and holding a present for me! It's a bottle of txacoli, my new favorite wine. The evening is off to a good start--I like a man who can quaff pink champagne--and we haven't even eaten anything. Except the bar snacks, which aren't as nice as those at Claridge's.

The Entrance: I can't forget I'm in a hotel restaurant. I have a fondness for hotel bars, but there's just something about the decor of hotel restaurants...all that beige. We are shown our table--by a window--with what would be a great view of the park at sunset if not for all the construction out back. The staff are sweet about the awful mess and apologise in a funny and good way and we settle in to watch the sun set over the work-in-progress.

The Food: I could walk you through everything we ate, word-by-word. But that would assume I had taken notes, which I didn't. (Douglas wisely asked for a copy of the menu before we left.) But I DID take photos of everything for a change, so perhaps a few photos will speak a thousand words. Douglas and I made quite the pair as we whipped out our blogging equipment as each course arrived, I with my Canon, he with his LG camera phone (5 Megapixels, no less!) It reminded me that I should really organize a London food bloggers meet-up at some point. Dining out with like-minded souls is a good thing. What the other diners thought of us with all our snapping, we don't know. I'll come back to the food in a sec, but let me talk about the service first.

The Service: When we were first shown to our table, they seemed to kinda forget about us. No menus, no "Hello," no nothing. And it's not like we could enjoy the view while we were sitting there. Very odd. They recovered splendidly after this, but it was a slip up, for sure.

Our main waiter was a young Spaniard, and he was very enthusiastic in his service. Part of me wanted to ask how old he was because he just looked so youthful and fresh-skinned. Well done to him, once he got us started. The sommelier (German? Austrian?) seemed quite personable, which I liked. No stuffiness. Poor guy though...I didn't really see any table take advantage of his services all night, and with a half-full room....I would have been bored to tears.

Back to The Food: I caught photos of everything except the little snacks that arrived once the staff remembered that we were sitting there. Hummous with lime and twisty little bread sticks. I am forgetting the other dip, but hopefully Douglas can shed some light.

Now, off we go...

Firstly, a lovely chilled melon soup. Douglas displayed his great manners by eating his soup away from him, which is very very proper. (You should also pass the salt and pepper together, you know.)

Then a trio of scallops...I wanted to lick the plate clean.

And two preparations of foie gras, one lovelier than the other...and I must apologize but the photos are going to get darker and darker in a bit. The sun was setting...

The ubiquitous sea bass. This was probably my least favorte dish. Hmmm.

A bit of steak done to a perfect medium rare...lovely...

The first dessert...and I completely forget what this tasted like so obviously forgettable...

But this was very American (which is a compliment, skeptics!) in its peanut-butteriness and chocolate...

And then some olive oil chocolates with balsamic vinegar, which I thought were really interesting and different and delicious.

And then, four hours later, it was all over.

The Verdict: I would love to eat this way every night. But that would mean running a marathon on a weekly basis, which ain't gonna happen. But yes, a nice treat.

Japanese: Matsuri St. James

Matsuri
15 Bury Street
SW1Y 6AL
Tel: 020 7839 1101

Date of Last Visit: June 6th, 2008

The Victims: Craig, Leanne, Mikaela

The Damage: Unknown. Craig paid!

The Background: Craig is back in the U.K.! Craig was my dining companion during the summer of 2004, when he was in London for work. He discovered Kurumaya for me back then, still once of the nicest little sushi places. We also checked out Sweeting's together, which I'd really like to get back to one of these days. And just a few weeks ago, we explored Sakura and Abeno Too.

He's invited me out for sushi (of course) with his wife and daughter and he's done his homework and we find ourselves at Matsuri St. James. (You may remember Guest Blogger Jon from Oishii Oishii who reviewed Matsuri Holborn the other month.)

The Entrance: The staff is very happy to see me. There's a lot of bowing and they take my coat and show me to the bar. I chat with the bartender and a businessman who is waiting for his Japanese guests. (Good sign, right?) The bartender tells us funny stories about people missing the entrance to Quaglino's right up the street.

Craig has booked the sushi bar downstairs. Most of Matsuri seems to be made up of teppanyaki-style seating, with the exception of the sushi bar in the corner.

The Food: We proceed with the ordering. I know I only have to vaguely mention soft shell crab for Craig to say yes and they arrive and they are gorgeous. There are many rolls and some vegetable tempura and some sashimi--the scallops are particularly lovable. We are all very very happy. But we forget to take any pictures, so Craig takes a photo of the tuna roll the guy next to us is eating.

The Verdict: I like it here. I'd go back.

Dim Sum at Harrods: Xin

Xin
Harrods Food Hall
87-135 Brompton Road
SW1X 7XL

Date of Last Visit: Monday, May 6

The Victim: Me

The Damage: £20?

The Background: I've left Aunt Ursula and Uncle George in Paris and have returned to London for some retail therapy at the tail-end of the bank holiday weekend. I stop into Harrods to look at everything. My wallet remains intact.

I am hungry though, very much so. So I drop into the food court to have some dumplings at Xin. The best part about the meal was the tea, which blossomed as I drank it. The dumplings, however, were gloopy and forgettable.

The Verdict: I'll be going back to Harrods, for sure. But I'll steer clear of Xin.

Lebanese: Ishbilia

Ishbilia
9 William Street
SW1X 9HL
Tel: 020 7235 7788

Date of Last Visit: Sunday, March 30, 2008

The Victims: Limster, Zuriga

The Damage: £20 each.

The Background: I hang out on the Chowhound boards. Other cities tend to have Chowdowns, or get-togethers of fellow Chowhound'ers. I thought it would be fun to organize a London Chowdown. Howler, one of the main players on the board always speaks highly of Ishbilia, so I thought it would be worth a try.

The Entrance: I've tried to get into Ishbilia before on a Sunday, and I've been denied. So I book way in advance and we get the table for 12. I arrive at 12, and I am the only person there. It's funny, in a sweet way. The server brings me a complimentary coffee while I'm waiting, which is really nice of him.

The Food: Zuriga and Limster arrive and we dig in. Firstly, they bring us a huge plate of veggies which you can see in the main photo. They also bring us some excellent pita bread, hot from the oven and all puffed up. We order an eggplant dish--it's like babaganoush, but it's not--and some broad beans called foul muqala, seasoned with coriander leaves, garlic, olive oil and lemon juice. Fantastic.

We also ordered some kibbeh nayeh (raw minced lamb with herbs and onions), a chicken shwarma (pictured) and a fantastic lentil dish. I honestly cannot believe how much I liked the kibbeh nayeh. If I had closed my eyes, I wouldn't have guessed that I was eating raw lamb. It was fantastic.

This was all followed by mint tea and an assortment of Lebanese pastries. I've pretty much died and gone to heaven.

The Verdict: I'm in love. I think this is going into my Top 10.

*****Don't Forget: Submit Your Guest Blog and Get Your Chance to Win Dinner with Me*****

Sweets: Laduree

Laduree, Harrods
87/135 Brompton Road
SW1X 7XL
Tel: 203 155 0111

Firstly, you never saw this picture. Because I wasn't allowed to take it. Secondly, if I should pass from this world, I want nothing but Laduree macaroons served at my wake.

Well, maybe I should pick a happier thought...

When I find the gentleman I'm going to spend the rest of my life with--applications are being accepted, by the way. Finicky eaters need not apply-- everyone at the wedding will get a little box of Laduree macaroons. Surely the most delicious things ever. Along with the Yauatcha ones, of course.