Beth and I went for lunch with the boys yesterday in celebration of GBBF (gay boy best friend) Richard's birthday.
We went to Roast in Borough Market where we dined on potted salt beef, scotch eggs, oysters, guinea fowl, partridge, pork belly, Goosnargh chicken, potatoes cooked in beef dripping, kale with garlic, spinach with pine nuts, English cheeses, damson Queen of puddings, chocolate banoffee pudding, apple and blackberry crumble, whisky and gin cocktails, champagne, English sparkling wine, bottles of Bordeaux, Sauternes, maraschino liqueur, port and sloe gin. It was seriously decadent!
Being an intelligent bunch - consisting of a psychiatrist, an operations manager, a lawyer, a journalist and a government policy adviser - the conversation flowed with the wine and led on to discussions about the X Factor, licking dogs, spotting the fellow gays in the restaurant, how St Paul's Cathedral looks like a big breast (we could see it from our table), how one of our set of parents are currently hob-nobbing with the lesbian sex shop owners down their local golf club, Dynasty, Dollywood, Lip Service, our individual voting records (why do I have so many friends who vote Tory when I am a die hard Labourite?), the Spending Review, siblings, the benefits of Valium on a flight, men visiting the club buffet after coming out of the dark room at XXL (urrrgh!), school days, how drinks and mixers are so much better served in the US (always crushed ice, never cubed), Oxford vs Cambridge university and can men and women ever really be friends, a la When Harry met Sally.
The answer to that last question is yes, if both the male and female in question are gay. Both Beth and I have GBBFs as do many of our Sapphic sisters. You see, in this situation the GBBFs don't need to deal with all that unrequited love which often occurs with fag hags and us gay girls don't have to deal with our heterosexual male 'dikey likeys' having secret lascivious thoughts about us. It can really fuck up a friendship if you subsequently find out that someone is harbouring romantic feelings and has some misguided belief that you would reciprocate and change sexuality if they just tried it on. It doesn't work like that, being gay is not a choice!
After lunch and two drinks in a pub by the Millennium Bridge, the lightweight boys went home, whilst Beth and I carried on down to the Retro Bar for a chaser and then on to the vigil against hate crime in Trafalgar Square. We heard the inspiring Stuart Milk speak (nephew of Harvey) and cried when they read out the names of LGBT people who have died as the result of hate crime in the past ten years. A sobering end to a not so sober day.
Showing posts with label Borough market. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Borough market. Show all posts
Sunday, 24 October 2010
Sunday, 29 June 2008
A culinary landscape
I've been celebrating my new found freedom this week, whilst I take a sabbatical between jobs. This offers the opportunity to take advantage of London's rich culinary landscape by partaking of some of my favourite meals out as well as sampling some new restaurants.
I began the week with one of my personal indulgences, which unfortunately Beth doesn't share - dim sum. I always head for the Imperial China in Lisle Street. It's a traditional place, and not quite as glaringly contemporary and trendy as some recent additions to the area but it suits me none the less. You enter over a little wooden bridge spanning a small pond and then indulge yourself in a heady world of succulent steamed char sui buns and a perfectly crisp Vietnamese spring rolls. To me it's perfection.
The next day, my mum and I headed down to the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill and then decided to have lunch at the Rosendale in West Dulwich, voted London's best gastro pub last year. The lunch menu was sufficiently creative and we feasted on a shared platter of barbecued meat and prawns on skewers. The quality was great and washed down with half a Leffe, it certainly hit the spot.
Later in the week Beth had a day off work, and so we ventured into town again. This time our destination was Ottolenghi in Islington, somewhere I had desperately wanted to visit, so much so that I was willing to haul my cookies into North London for the pleasure! Did it live up to expectations? Well the answer is..I don't know! But one thing is certain, the service is crap. We waited ten minutes to be seated in a half filled restaurant, despite there being an abundance of staff. Our anxious looks were ignored, whilst "supposedly" more trendy and affluent North Londoners' needs were swiftly catered for. Eventually we saw them clearing a small table for us, to then see it being nabbed under our noses by someone already seated at the communal table. No apologies, nothing. Were they aware that we were going to probably spend a nice sum of money, plus splash out for a bottle of lunchtime vino? No idea, but somehow I just think our faces didn't fit.
How did it end? We headed down to the safety of South London. Borough Market to be exact. We feasted on chargrilled burgers in Black and Blue and experienced swift, friendly service throughout. And yes the place was full of suits, but it didn't matter, everyone was treated as an equal. As they say "it's grim up North!"
I began the week with one of my personal indulgences, which unfortunately Beth doesn't share - dim sum. I always head for the Imperial China in Lisle Street. It's a traditional place, and not quite as glaringly contemporary and trendy as some recent additions to the area but it suits me none the less. You enter over a little wooden bridge spanning a small pond and then indulge yourself in a heady world of succulent steamed char sui buns and a perfectly crisp Vietnamese spring rolls. To me it's perfection.
The next day, my mum and I headed down to the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill and then decided to have lunch at the Rosendale in West Dulwich, voted London's best gastro pub last year. The lunch menu was sufficiently creative and we feasted on a shared platter of barbecued meat and prawns on skewers. The quality was great and washed down with half a Leffe, it certainly hit the spot.
Later in the week Beth had a day off work, and so we ventured into town again. This time our destination was Ottolenghi in Islington, somewhere I had desperately wanted to visit, so much so that I was willing to haul my cookies into North London for the pleasure! Did it live up to expectations? Well the answer is..I don't know! But one thing is certain, the service is crap. We waited ten minutes to be seated in a half filled restaurant, despite there being an abundance of staff. Our anxious looks were ignored, whilst "supposedly" more trendy and affluent North Londoners' needs were swiftly catered for. Eventually we saw them clearing a small table for us, to then see it being nabbed under our noses by someone already seated at the communal table. No apologies, nothing. Were they aware that we were going to probably spend a nice sum of money, plus splash out for a bottle of lunchtime vino? No idea, but somehow I just think our faces didn't fit.
How did it end? We headed down to the safety of South London. Borough Market to be exact. We feasted on chargrilled burgers in Black and Blue and experienced swift, friendly service throughout. And yes the place was full of suits, but it didn't matter, everyone was treated as an equal. As they say "it's grim up North!"
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