WE'RE OFF!

WEELLLLLL .... we're off - well, nearly. The taxi is coming in approximately 1 hour! The whole morning, as indeed the last few days, has been spent running around doing all kinds of chores and errands related to going away: buying gifts and souvenirs for friends and relatives (Tau Sar Peah galore together with belacan etc - if I could take it they'd ask for Char Kuey Teow too, probably).

I've been sorting out the dry cleaning and foreign currency, and also eating ... eating and eating, as kind friends wish us a "Bon Voyage".

HOWEVER this will not be the last post that you see, as I intend to blog a LOT about the trip, seeing as last time we were abroad I had only just about started to do so - there will be a lot to report from London, where I shall be (hopefully) attending the very first Malaysian Pasar Malam at Trafalgar Square tomorrow night - talk about hitting the ground running. That's assuming I'm not too jetlagged of course. I've tried to stave off "Ai yo can't be bothered lah" by arranging to meet No1 Son at Waterloo Station on Friday afternoon. Gulp. It will however be nice to see him again after almost a year, probably the longest we've ever been apart.

After a few days in Surrey we will be heading north to take No2 Son to uni, then back down to London - thinking of a couple of days in Rome as I have never been there and watching "Rome" and "Spartacus" has whetted my appetite for a bit of the Coliseum.

At the end of November, we will be heading across to US so lots to write about then too. What an epic trip. I dread the airport security checks and queues at Immigration and the cold (urgghhh!!!) and the jetlag but, as my father always says, these are rich men's problems. Quite right too.

Until the next post, Arrivederci!

New Year's Resolution

I know, I know - I've been terrible not writing more regularly. Henceforth my new year resolution is to keep it as up to date as possible. And I've decided I shall be writing about practically every outlet I eat at, and it will be a real review, warts and all.

So for a start, I decided to write a place I ate at during a recent trip to London, where there is a new breed of restaurants being spawned by so-called celebrity chefs which is getting very popular amongst the middle-class and yuppies, and of course I had to try one, so we took some friends to The Devonshire in Chiswick, West London, a pub restaurant owned by the inimitable Gordon Ramsay, one of the most, shall we say, “colourful” chefs on TV.

The decor was simple and classy, but not really anything special, and the menu was small and slightly pretentious, listing items like foie gras, lentils, pheasant and duck. I chose a “Salmon, Lobster and Crayfish Pie”, with visions of large chunks of béarnaise-sauce coated seafood covered with a thin layer of creamy mash. The reality was rather different: the tiny dish (not much bigger than a small bowl of noodles) was ¾ mash and ¼ mushy almost tinned salmon, and I could not find any trace of crayfish, let alone lobster, anywhere. It tasted OK, but was a trifle bland and boring.

At £14, you still had to order vegetables and potatoes separately, at £3 a pop. The total bill for five, inclusive of two bottles of wine but without dessert, came to £200 – almost RM1100. Bearing in mind it was only a pub – I shudder to think what a meal would have cost in one of his restaurants – was it worth it?

Definitely not. Most of it went to pay for the name, and of course the privilege of saying that I’d been to a Gordon Ramsay outlet. Next time round, I think I’ll give such places a miss.

When I emailed them to complaint the response was relatively quick and tried to be reassuring, "Rest assured we take your comments seriously" - but that was basically it. "We hope it hasn't put you off coming back". Actually, I think it has.