A few months ago I debated the merits of buying this smashing pair of Prada sunglasses. I mention them because sunglasses rarely look good on me and these ones did. However it came at a price of course, and so whilst my foxy inner angel in fishnet stockings and slinky stilettos went “go, go, go”, my sensible inner angel in her matronly outfit then counterattacked by asking if I could actually afford them. ‘Sensible’ eventually won over, but months later I kept wishing I had succumbed to my inner yearnings.

Sitting at dinner at Inamo, I was again washed over with that wave of “I wish I had bought those damn sunglasses”. Playing with the table, I was being blinded by the kaleidoscope of ever changing patterns and colours that were flashing up at me from this new toy every two minutes.

To explain, Inamo is a restaurant with an interactive ordering system. The menu is displayed through the table and once you’ve decided what you want, you order through the table. There are also games, even a function to allow you to call for a taxi home, and you can also choose the patterns and colours of your table to design your own personal look. But we were being all too clever, we were. We had decided on the random select mode and our table therefore changed patterns and colours every two minutes. So really, I only had us to blame for being blinded, by of all things, a table.

Our shiny table on random shuffle

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The morning after the night before, I awoke afresh after having slept off the previous night’s dinner decadence at La Famiglia with a renewed sense of anticipation for the lunch to come. Still more sleep couldn’t hurt, and the hour ride to our destination with designated driver in tow would allow me some catch-up snooze time before our feast. As mentioned in Part 1, Sunday lunch was at The French Horn, a classic French restaurant in Sonning, famed far and wide for their spit-roast duck.

Duck roasted over a spit in the drawing room

The restaurant has the look of a classic French manor. French period furnishings dot the drawing room where, as we entered, four ducks were being roasted on a rotisserie in plain view at the fireplace. With aperitifs to start, we perched ourselves by the fireplace. Not only was it warming for the soul on this damp autumn afternoon, it was also a mouth-watering way to pre-empt our lunch, watching the act of cooking before the actual act of eating itself. With the ducks glistening as they turned on the rotisserie, it was a truly a feast for the eyes.

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The best way to approach a weekend of eating indulgence is to have a designated driver, someone who is preferably not you. The flexibility of being able to drink is the most obvious bonus, but when you’re rolling out of a restaurant after a meal it’s rather nice not to have to worry about how you’re going to make your way home. Then there’s the matter of when you’re heading out of town for Sunday lunch where, practically, a car is a definite must. In our case, lunch was at The French Horn in Sonning-On-Thames. Practicalities aside, it was also rather nice after having eaten yourself silly to be able to doze off in the car on the way back to town… but more on that later.

First up on the weekend were our Saturday night exploits at La Famiglia, a Tuscan restaurant. It bills itself ‘as a destination for the rich and famous’. Case in point: Jennifer Aniston’s flying visit to London back in June this year to meet up with her then (now?) beau John Mayer. During that trip she dined at La Famiglia and the event was captured all over the tabloid spreads. Enough said.

Located just off the Kings Road, La Famiglia also caters to the well-heeled of Chelsea, and on this particular Saturday night, every table was thus filled. The décor is rustic, predominantly white with splashes of blue, and softly lit. To create that family feel, there are abundant pictures of ‘the family’ lining the walls. The space is tight however, and the tables were small, and in our case too small to comfortably fit four. (No doubt Jen wasn’t forced to squeeze into her seat like this)! But it’s wonderfully seductive with a charming ambiance and a sense of time-honoured tradition that seems to draw you back time and time again.

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Roasted partridge with white truffle broth

I once entered into a humorous discussion with an American about English slang. And by that I mean slang used by British people for he really didn’t consider it correct to call such slang ‘English’. He was American after all, and from cowboy country – Texas to be exact, with a cowboy hat to show for it. Newly arrived in London, everything was quite astoundingly strange to him. For those of you who have ever had the experience of being an expatriate, the feelings of perplexity around the unfamiliarity of a new country might resound. But perhaps the most perplexing thing for him was the ‘language’. “Bob’s your uncle?? Now what is that suppose to mean?” he would say.

Hmm, I take his point. I too am an expatriate in London, but I do know what ‘Bob’s your uncle’ means. Jamie Oliver has used it often enough on his cooking shows, but I don’t know why it means what it does. But then, I’m hardly one to ask. Not having grown up in Britain, I’ve not been exposed to certain ‘English’ slang. Take for instance the idiom ‘pig’s ear’. Goodness knows I had no idea what an ear of a pig meant until it was revealed to me at an eating expedition to the gastropub, The Pig’s Ear, as rhyming slang for beer.

The Pig’s Ear had come to my attention on account of a similarly piggy friend of mine murmuring into my little piggy ear something about having recently dined there and thoroughly enjoying it. Browsing through Peter Prescott and Sir Terence Conran’s book, Eat London, I also happened to stumble across the write-up for The Pig’s Ear. They rate it as one of the best gastropubs in London. This meant only good things, which was why my friends, S and T, and I went in search of a little piggy adventure.

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Some say cookbooks are the new porn. I personally find them quite entertaining, if, and only if, there are lots of photos, and only if the photos are all of hot and steamy dishes. Visually stimulating, they can arouse my senses and heighten my desire for that nourishing-looking morsel on the page, immediately transporting me into a heavenly world of exquisite comfort eating.

As I scanned the menu at Champor-Champor, a fixed-price affair (2 courses, £25; 3 courses £29.50), I also wondered whether menu porn could be considered the new porn too. A good menu can be a titillating promise of the tasty things to come. It can occasionally be a tease too, making you want all that is offered when all the while you know it won’t be possible. On this menu, sandwiched in between the starters and the mains were the interestingly entitled inter-courses (with a £2.80 supplement). Porn anyone?

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Note: This write-up was based on a dinner I had before the fire earlier in 2009 which closed the restaurant for a number of months. The restaurant has since re-opened.

The mouth-watering chicken at Bar Shu

Walking down Frith Street to my destination of Bar Shu, a Sichuan (Szechuan) restaurant, I happened to notice Barrafina. But then Barrafina is rather hard to miss. With big glass windows, shiny white walls, plenty of elegantly dressed people perched high up on bar stools, it generally seems to sport an all round hip n’ happening crowd. It’s won many plaudits, but after the success the Hart brothers (Sam and Eddie) had with Fino, this was bound to be a sure thing. I would rather like to eat there, but one key factor has always held me back – their no bookings policy. Despite having shown my face at Barrafina on a couple of previous occasions, I was unable to secure a table without a very protracted wait and have invariably ended up leaving.

No doubt I would have enjoyed eating there tonight. So mark a no reservations policy as a major dislike in my world of dining out. But for those restaurants that do take reservations, just as irritating can be time restrictions, when you’re told after making a booking that they need the table back after two hours. It’s irritating because who would want the indignity of being rushed through a meal that you’re going to pay for?

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It’s mid-term and schools are out. There are no classroom lessons, but lessons from parent to child are taught on a daily basis. Some will be of the practical kind, like how to tie shoelaces, looking both ways before crossing the road or how to properly brush teeth. The kind of teachings about life that when we grow older, we simply take for granted.

Some of my life lessons I also learnt in my father’s kitchen. Like the one about always heating the pan first to the appropriate temperature to allow meat, etc, to brown. As a youngster, I knew not the science, but I knew it made food taste good, intensifying flavour by creating that little bit of extra crispiness on the surface of the food.

At a more technical level, browning occurs as a result of the moisture on the surface of the meat evaporating when it comes into contact with high heat. Consequently, a chemical reaction takes place whereby the proteins on the surface of the meat develop. It then leads to the caramelising effect which ‘browns’ the meat, adding not only flavour, but also a more appetising appeal with the added (brown) colour. ‘Browning’ is also known as the Maillard reaction, so named for the French scientist who first investigated the reaction. It is one of the reasons why when we partake in our beloved BBQs we always make sure the heat is high so that we get that wonderful outer layer of flavour and crispiness on our steaks and sausages. It is also the heat that creates that mouth-watering aroma of smoking, sizzling meat which makes the wait for the cooking food sometimes unbearable.

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When you’ve recently travelled back from Sydney to London on a 24 hour flight and had to suffer the injustice of an 11 hour time difference, presumably you could be forgiven for ignoring your friends. For a week or so after I arrived back in London, I hibernated in my flat and barely saw daylight other than to ward off hunger pains with the occasional visit to the shops. However there came a point when the explanations I gave for my absenteeism such as “I’ve been so jetlagged,” or “I’ve not slept,” were no longer acceptable excuses from not partaking in the social norms of reality.

Eventually the call to order arrived, a message through my hotmail account asking if I was still alive. And so it was that I awoke with a jolt, literally and figuratively as my stomach also stirred with grumbles for a satiable fill of my favourite pastime, a good meal out with friends.

So it was on a crisp autumnal evening that I walked down Conduit Street to my destination, Via Condotti, an Italian ristorante named after Rome’s most famous shopping strip (Via Condotti) and itself located within the reaches of some of London’s finest shops. As I approached the restaurant, I was met with a beguiling entrance which laid claim to a charming dining room lit with warm soft hues, peach and magnolia walls and light wood floors. White linen tables and leather backed chairs had been arranged comfortably throughout.

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