A few more stray thoughts
and random observations on London.
We Indians have our
collective nanny i.e. our Government allegedly headed by Dr. Manmohan Singh,
whose integrity and honesty is without question. All that our nanny does is all
for our good, such as for example, messing up our investment climate and allowing
the Rupee to slide to Rs 54 to a Dollar, and, waffling about FDI in retail,
and, changing taxes retrospectively and banning dance bars. All this is good.
But this post is about London not India.
Well, in the UK the nanny
likes to tell people what is good and bad for them. Apparently people drink too
much in the UK. So they have formulated a huge awareness campaign telling
people, sorry educating people, how much they should drink. It has been decided
that a man should ideally not drink more than 3-4 units of alcohol per day. To
help you know how much is a unit; the nanny has sort of dictated that all
alcohol glasses should have marks showing how many units of alcohol the glass
contains. A pint of Guinness contains 2.3 units. So I should not drink more
than 2, better still 1 pint and a ½ pint is ideal. Ridiculous! If you are 18
you should have control of your life. No nanny required.
Harrods is a most astounding
store. Originally it was a very British store, which was bought by Mohamed Al
Fayed in 1985 and sold by him in 2010 to the Qatari Sovereign Fund. The store
is huge and literally has everything inside. People believe the store is
expensive, but I do not think so. The Queen and me have lots of free time in
London and spend a lot of it buying cooking equipment, be it knives, pans and
other gadgets. We do a lot of comparative shopping, wandering thru the
`Kitchen’ sections of not only Harrods but Divertimenti, Selfridges, John Lewis
and smaller independent stores making notes of prices. More often than not
Harrods has the widest range, most knowledgeable salesmen and prices that are
the same if not a tad lower than other stores. The bigger difference is that
Harrods will normally not stock a cheaper brand, so you will not find an Antler
suitcase at Harrods but will certainly find Samsonites and Rimowa. These
suitcases cost a lot of money, but that does not make the store expensive.
Anyway, the point I wanted to make before going out on a limb defending Harrods
is that the brand is so strong that I often see people wanting to be
photographed under the Harrods sign.
London is known for its
theatre. The Musicals are very popular and people make it a point to see one
when they are in London. It is a very different experience seeing a play in
London. The theatres are quite imposing, the quality of acting, music and dance
is high and in case it’s a musical you have a live orchestra playing in the
theatre. Its big budget, it’s expensive and it’s great fun. We went to see `The
Sunshine Boys’ a Neil Simon play that stars Danny DeVito. A movie version with
Walter Matthau and George Burns is something old timers may recall. The theatre
is located in the famous Savoy Hotel. The play was absolutely top class. This
runs for only 12 weeks so if you are in London till the middle of July, do make
an effort and see this play.
To continue on the theatre thyme,
we went to yet another play another comedy `What The Butler Saw’ starring the
hilarious Omid Djalili. This play is a farce. Not as good as Sunshine Boys.
After a most disappointing
stretch of gastronomy in Dublin, we needed some charging up. What better place
to do this than at the very nice Pierre Koffmann Restaurant at the Berkeley. A
reservation was made at 8 pm to allow for any flight delays as we would be
arriving from Dublin just a few hours before dinner. Once our telephone number
was noted by the receptionist, obviously the restaurant computer threw up all
our details. I have written about this in an earlier blog. Our reservation was
made and we looked forward to some good food.
This was our third visit
here. The restaurant was very full. We had a great meal once again. We got an
Amuse Bouche of a hot Vichyssoise, which is unusual. The bread basket has the
most amazing Garlic Brioche which as flaky on the outside and wonderfully soft inside.
For starters HRH the Queen
had the special for the day, a Lobster Ravioli and I had the Provencal Fish
Soup with Garlic Aioli. The Lobster Ravioli was fantastic, one large Ravioli
absolutely stuffed full of beautifully cooked Lobster. My soup was also
excellent, fragrant and tasty, yum yum. For mains HRH the Queen had Tete De
Veau with Sauce Gribiche. This is a sort of Terrine made with the head of a
calf with crisp fried brains. Sauce Gribice is a Mayonnaise based sauce with
chopped boiled egg, Capers, Parsley, and Cornichons. It’s a classic French dish
and this one was well done. I had Pied De Cochon Tante Claire which is an
invention of Pierre Koffmann. Excellent.
To finish I had a Lemon Tart, once again good. An excellent meal and along
with Le Gavroche this is one of our favourite restaurants in the world.
Provencal Fish Soup with Garlic Aioli |
Lobster Ravioli |
The amazing Pied De Cochon Tante Claire |
Tete De Veau with Sauce Gribiche |
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