Happy New Year!

Some of you may know, I celebrated my 28th birthday on Tuesday…I don’t feel old, even though Ian always kindly reminds me how much closer I am getting to 30. I do feel like life goes by quickly. As I look back, so much has happened last year and there are so much to be thankful for.

I spent the day as usual. Slept in, checked my emails, went to our usual Moorish cafe for lunch and did a bit of cleaning around the apartment.

For the ’surprise’ this year, Ian took me to a really fancy restaurant called Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s. It was a gastronomic treat as Gordon Ramsay is one of only three chefs in the UK to hold three Michelin stars and he has been awarded a total of 12 Michelin stars for his various restaurants. Some of you may have heard of him from his TV series such as The F Word, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and Hell’s Kitchens. I was keen to see what the fuss was about.

The art deco foyer was stunning and dining room was romantic with all the soft furnishings. Once seated, we sampled the lovely canapé of truffle mousse and smoked salmon with cream cheese as we made our choices from the a la carte menu. The sommelier brought over a wine ‘book’ and he helpfully chose a nice white for us. Pre-starter was pumpkin veloute which was creamy, rich and buttery with a hint of truffle oil. Mmm…a very good start.

For entreé Ian’s cannelloni of Cromer crab and herb wrapped in smoked salmon, roasted pumpkin purée was sweet and really lovely. My ravioli of Dorset blue lobster and salmon poached in a lemongrass bisque, basil vinaigrette was wonderfully delicious, it was the best dish I’ve eaten this year.

For main Ian’s pork belly, roasted potatoes, carrots, parsnips and glazed apple looked fantastic; the pork was juicy and tender, although the crackling was too hard apparently so Ian is still biased towards Aria’s and Quay’s back in Sydney I had the pan-fried Mediterranean stonebass, Cromer crab and celeriac cannelloni, summer vegetable blanquette, lemon thyme velouté; the stonebass was alright, skin crispy, cannelloni was refreshingly sweet and the sauce was nice.

After a bit of a break, we sampled pre-dessert which was a tiny shot glass filled with layers of cream fraîche, orange, mascarpone, light lemongrass jelly.  For those who may not know, Ian hates orange with a vengeance.  Even the waiter was sorry when he saw what Ian did to his pre-dessert and asked if he wanted something else.   Ian waited patiently for his dessert which was poached pear, chocolate fondant and bitter chocolate parfait. I had the cinnamon crème brûlée, red wine sorbet and pistachio sablé with passionfruit sauce. Both were really delicious in their own right.

To finish off we were given petit fours which was dark chocolate truffles and marzipan balls with ice cream filling coated in crushed buttery toffee that literally burst in your mouth when you bite into it.

Service throughout had been as friendly, charming and efficient as you would expect in any of London’s best restaurants, the whole dining experience had been fabulous and memorable.

Time to go to the gym I think…

 

Ushering in 2008 London style

Our festivities continued through the holiday season and New Year’s Eve (NYE) was no exception. Although we were out of London during Christmas, we decided to experience one NYE in London. After all, it may be embarrassing if someone asks you what it’s like and you have no idea even after having lived in a place for a few years (not that we’ve been in London for even a year yet).

Instead of roughing it out in the cold and crowding with everyone along the river, we decided to splurge for a 5 course NYE dinner at Skylon Restaurant at the Royal Festival Hall right next to the London Eye. Of course, it’s not something we’re likely to ever do again given the price tag, but we thought doing it once would be fine.

The restaurant itself was very nice and also fully booked. There was also a live band that seemed to only have a repertoire or pre-1980 songs, but they were quite good, if a bit loud. We were singing along to the likes of ABBA, Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis all night. The Royal Festival Hall itself was having a dance party of sorts, so the area was filled with people. But it was still quite comfortable because only people with special “Royal Festival Hall” passes were allowed in the general area for security reasons. The food was nice, but nothing to write home about. We were pretty full afterwards though, so I guess we can’t complain they didn’t feed us.

What we didn’t realise was that while the restaurant was right by the London Eye and on the Thames river, we couldn’t really see much of the fireworks from the restaurant due to logistics. So at about 11:30pm, the staff came around and suggested we get our coats and head on outside to get a good view of the show. Here’s a photo of the crowd waiting for the countdown…

And thanks to the BBC and YouTube, here is a video of the fireworks.

Quite spectacular in hindsight. If we hadn’t seen the BBC’s coverage, we wouldn’t have realised that it was actually a good show. From where we were standing, we just saw a lot of flashing stuff through all the smoke. I guess that’s what you get if you are too close to where the fireworks are being launched from. Still, I don’t think it is as good as Sydney’s…but I’ll always be biased about anything that I compare to home. Sydney also has the advantage of having the prettiest harbour in the world as a canvas.

We left the restaurant at 1:30am and decided to walk to Embankment tube station as it was a direct line back to our area. Unfortunately, we didn’t realise they closed it because of the anticipated unmanageable congestion from people trying to get home. So we thought we’d walk to Westminster tube station, which is the next stop. That too was closed for the same reason. We were told that the closest open tube station was actually Victoria…roughly a 20 minute walk away.

As with all NYE celebrations in most countries, there is an aftermath and lots of cleaning to be done by the council. On our walk between Embankment and Westminster tube stations, we took a picture.

To Westminster council’s credit, they cleaned it up pretty quickly and efficiently.

When we got to Victoria station, the crowd was HUGE. There was a mass horde of people waiting at the entrance to the station because they couldn’t get in. So we decided against attempting to take public transport and thought that since we were so full anyway, we would walk it off all the way back home in the cold. Actually, it was about 5 degrees, so not too bad.

……….2 hours later we were still only at South Kensington tube and gave up trying to walk back. We knew for a fact that South Kensington was at least a half hour walk back home and that was at normal pace. We had slowed down to “granny pace” by then due to fatigue. So we decided to head for the station and thankfully the crowd wasn’t that bad.

We eventually got back at around 4am. Luckily for us, we didn’t have any plans for the 1st until dinner…and it was a really late one at that. All things taken into account, it was a fun NYE and a real experience.