EPIC, pain, nice breakfast and feast

I am Very Tired today after a very heavy weekend, which has made me realise how far short of hardcore I actually fall. I've taken Friday and Monday off, as the weekend began with a Thursday night Thanksgiving meal at the astonishingly inept Bodean's. We went there last year as well, and after a memorable meal involving a two hour delay on our table, tin foil in the soup, absolutely no available waiters, no apple cobbler (leading to one very sad American man), we recieved a big discount off the bill and left slightly less annoyed than we would have been otherwise. This year, I gave in to my fear of being left out of anything, no matter how little I may actually wish to go, and for some reason agreed to pay the evil crones at Bodean's another £30 for mediocre, microwaved food, bad house wine, unbelievably appalling organisation (another two hour wait for our table in spite of having paid a deposit of around £100), more missing apple cobbler (poor, poor American Adam), a charge of £1.40 per portion of cake that we'd bought as it was our friend's birthday and as a final touch, such slow service that Fish and I missed the last train home. To anyone reading this - avoid it. Pay more, go elsewhere, make your own Thanksgiving dinner if you too happen to have an American friend who flies over once a year. Or simply wait for Christmas. On the good side, I've now got a few ham bones with which to make stock, and from there potentially some yellow split pea soup.

Anyway, to continue with my weekend of epically drunken proportions, the next day I met my lovely friend Adam for lunch at a great little Turkish restaurant in St Christopher's Square, which after googling I've just discovered is a secret chain (alas) - Sofra, where we had two very nice bottles of wine and then wandered off, very late, to our evening things. I missed the 'Suprise!' bit of my surprise celebration drinks, while he missed meeting his work friends at the event he'd organised. Still, it was yummy, and worth it (lamb and hummous...mmm...). Several drinks down (the surprise drinks were in a rum bar), and I found myself in some roof gardens, which were pretty. Adam had returned....then it's hazy, but there were burritos. It was a great night actually, until I woke up when Fish got back from his Friday night gig at 7am (he is more hardcore than me) and realised I was about to die. Fast forward to that evening when the Thanksgiving group (more Fish's friends than mine, for the most part and I'm always slightly nervous around them, however they are really fun so once I do manage to relax it's usually worth it!), and Fish and I were both feeling pretty horrendous. It's now Sunday, and we got back at 6.30am this morning. Suffice it to say, I'm too old for this. The club night was called EPIC, and though it was pretty, it also felt mostly like an excuse for taking drugs. I'm uncomfortable with the drugs world. The effects might be lovely, but I hate the language, all the secrecy and the self-conscious, faintly icky 'waiting' for it to kick in. It always feels to me like a tacit admittance that it's not possible to survive the night while straight. Of course alcohol is exactly the same, it just often feels more sociable and less pretentious. Maybe that's not the case if you're a teetotaller though! Anyway, by the end of last night it looked like there'd been some sort of natural disaster. Everything was quite quiet apart from the thumping bass and all around Alexandra Palace were casualities, head in hands. It was sort of cool actually. I wandered through it at 6am, feeling like an explorer on a new, strange planet, floating a bit ( ;) ) and with a great sense of pride at being a survivor!

I do realise, looking at the above outings, that I have a rather lovely life, even if I'm living miles beyond my means, there's never going to be a better time to do that. :) Last weekend we had a George R.R. Martin feast, in honour of his Game of Thrones series - if you like fantasy at all and haven't read them.... well, then, you are silly and I suspect your fantasy-loving credentials, so please correct this immediately - he's a beautiful writer who loves food. After being made hungry by his books for six years, I came across this beautiful, beautiful website. Immediately, we had to have a feast. I'll do a proper blog about it with pictures, but it was absolutely delicious. Quails drowned in butter got my vote, though the duck with orange, chilli and honey sauce was a strong contender, as were Lucy's brilliant Elizabethan Smallcakes. Mmm....

Finally, looking back at my last entry, I'm rather ashamed. Fish and I are now much better, as is our wont (though he's not able to sleep after his weekend of clubbing and so is currently staring red eyed at Assassin's Creed. He's punching out very bad Minstrels at the moment - it's an odd game), however we talked a bit and I'm withholding judgement. He's pretty nice really, I suppose, even if we do keep having rows about the electric bills. The current plan is to look at buying houses in about a year, so we're being adults and everything. However, I feel much meaner about my dad, and might need to go back and edit that a bit, except that it feels like cheating. One of the things I've learned, writing over the years, is that you can almost never tell which bits of your writing you will look back on and shudder at and which bits suddenly stand out as natural, honest and elegant. It's as though my voice wheels through various pretensions before settling down and ringing true for a moment, but I can't do that on purpose. Meh.

Now, I'm both running out of battery on this lap top and pretty near falling asleep, so will leave you with a delicious, really simple breakfast that I had for my last Work At Home day (love this editorial perk!), that's also a great hangover cure, if, hypothetically speaking, you knew you were working at home so had lots of wine when you went out for dinner the night before...

Peri peri eggs

You'll need:

• Two very fresh duck eggs (just try to buy them from anywhere other than a supermarket. Come to Finsbury park and visit the Eggman in Nags Head market on the Saturday. You'll never go back to Tesco. Unless you want eggs some other time than a Saturday. *sigh. Hen eggs will do fine, they're just less creamy)
• Two slices of Tiger bread (or other yummy, firm bread with some taste to it)
• Mature cheddar cheese, enough slices to cover both bits of bread
• Extra hot peri peri sauce
• Worcestershire sauce
• Smoked paprika
• Salt & Pepper

How to make your eggs

• Preheat your grill to about 180 degrees. Pop in your two slices of bread in a grill pan/baking tray/whatever's to hand
• Boil the kettle and pour boiling water into a saucepan big enough to take two poaching eggs. Add a touch of vinegar if the eggs aren't that fresh and bring to just below simmer
• By then one side of the bread should be brown. Turn it over and layer with the cheese. Put back under the grill
• Crack your eggs separately into two small container of some kind (whatever is to hand - it's just to give you more control as you put them into the water).
• Very gently slip one egg then the other into the water. If it's not bubbling, they shouldn't spread too much. Leave them alone for a couple of minutes.
• Meanwhile, check your cheese - it's probably melted. On top of the cheese, spoon peri peri sauce (spread with a knife for more even coverage), then add several drops of Worcestershire sauce. Put them back under the grill (if they are already looking very done then turn the grill down
• Once your eggs are cooked to your liking (about 2 and a half minutes usually leaves the whites done while the yolks will be beautifully liquid), take out the cheese on toast and put on a plate, remove the eggs with a slotted spoon and place on top
• Season to your taste with salt and pepper (remember both the peri peri and the cheese are already quite salty), and sprinkle on some smoked paprika. You might want some extra peri peri sauce to dip the bread into.
• Eat immediately and feel the (hypothetical) hangover recede...

How to be Jane Eyre

I've just got back from an editorial outing to Jane Eyre (yes, really - we're stretching 'relevance training' to its limits, and boldly leaving the office where no team has before) and now have a beer in hand as I've successfully resisted the pub, so a beer is thoroughly earned. In the RUN is a spicy tomato sauce of the 'let's cook something really innovative! Oops, I've ended up with tomatoes, onions and sausages again...' type. It's nice having the house to myself. As ever, Fish and I continue to get on each others' nerves a fair amount, so some space is a good thing.

The problem is, oh gloriously empty blog, that recently my dad (who has Parkinson's) has taken a step (a wobbly one) for the worse. I love him very much, however there's no denying that the Parkinson's sufferer can be difficult to be around. It's a sneaky, non-committal kind of disease which so far dodges any specific set of symptoms. Rather like a particularly evil fairground, or an inventive-yet-unskilled one night stander, it's a different, crappy ride for everyone. Dad's 'executive planning' appears to be affected, leading to difficulties in performing tasks which require thought and planning. Sadly, this is the case for most very useful tasks, which makes this particular symptom a bit of a bugger, particularly for one of the most intelligent, reliable men I know. Suddenly, my mum is having to take on responsibilities which she outsourced to Dad around 30 years ago, and no longer has that much of an idea how to do. This has led to a fair amount of resentment, of the 'I'd be shouting right now in the middle of this restaurant if you weren't ill, but since you are, I'll wait until we're alone and shout at you for not organizing the booking of the table and lying about it' type. Mum, let it be placed on record, is doing amazingly, but it can't be easy and she's not to be blamed for letting her anger show on occasion. To put it bluntly, home is no longer the idyllic refuge I now realise it once was. I am aware of how lucky I am for the almost absurdly idyllic childhood enjoyed by my brother and I, but sadly this doesn't seem to stop my resentment that it's over! Soon, it is clear, my brother and I will need to grow up properly and start looking after Dad along with Mum. This is hardly the end of the world - they are both pretty wonderful people, even a Parkinsonian Dad beats 90% of the world's population hands down, however it has made me start thinking about my choices, and my relationship. So, now we're comfortably back at the beginning of this original diversion, which was of course, ME. And my feelings. Hello again. :) So, I've been suddenly looking at Fish, in all his weird, cute, funny, frustrating, delicious, infuriating, distant, mood-swinging, selfish glory, and as you can probably tell by the order of those adjectives, I've been worrying. It's one thing to have a relationship based on staying together while you are making each other happy, but rather a different thing when you need support; unqualified, unresentful and loving, even when you're being a bit of a bitch. A man who sulks if he's not wearing the right shoes to cross grass, or if you buy the wrong type of soil is fine, just so long as a) you can cope without smacking him with your beautiful RUN pan and b) you're not looking for support during those times when his carefully controlled world isn't as he would like it. Oh, and c) that you have enough energy to dance round the various limits which allow a Fish to survive the rough and tumble of an illogical world. So, I'm worrying. Sadly, one of Fish's limits is a failure to understand the idea of offering unqualified, hypothetical support. For him, everything has limitations because otherwise he might make a promise he can't keep. The upside here is that he'll never promise anything he doesn't commit to (unless he's drunk), the downside is a complete inability to say the right things to halt someone needing reassurance as they slowly slide down the slope marked, 'Fuuuuuck, this is going nowhere....' Anyway, I'm going to make an effort to not pre-judge him, but to see what happens when I do need him, and if he's there. The problem is, one doesn't always want to ask, and a lack of empathy when his own feelings are in any way involved means that I always have to. Meh. We'll see how it goes. Let's give it a month, and on the 10th of November (when it's about time for my monthly blog post anyway) I'll attempt to reappear and look at this again.

Jane Eyre, of course, wouldn't expect anything, and so would receive everything. Jane Eyre would never dare to ask for help, but would deal with it in such a way that she seems ever more intriguing and delicious, until Rochester is begging to be involved. Over the last 15 years I have come to the sad, yet accurate conclusion that I will never be Jane Eyre.

Junk Food

After about four years of increasing food snobbery I appear to be having a small regression, foodwise. Yesterday, I bought (whisper it) frankfurters from (even quieter) Tesco's. They were amazing. I miss them again even thinking about them. I bought a can of Tesco Tuscan bean soup, chopped up the frankfurters and microwaved the hell out of the whole lot. Afterwards I felt replete, filled with meat flavoured water. Yum. To make matters worse, on the way home last night (I'd been out cocktailing with one of my friends who's just got engaged - she won't read this but yay Helen!), I stopped into Akdeniz (awesome, ever-open Finsbury park place) and bought a cuppasoup. Admittedly, was a Tom Yum cuppasoup, so potentially a little classier, but I had it for lunch today and upon checking the ingredients found them reassuringly heavy on MSG. In an attempt to make up for this, I've currently got a vegetarian (plus a bit of chicken since surely that doesn't really count as meat...) curry simmering on the stove (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1364/spicy-root-and-lentil-casserole, sort of, but with extra cumin seeds, fresh chilli, mango chutney, tomato paste, coconut cream, cardamom pods, coriander seeds and East End jalfrezi powder - I sometimes suspect that my general success in cooking is really just a result of an excess of ingredients. Half of them cancel each other out but some of them are bound to hit the mark). Not only is this Made From Scratch but it's simmering evenly and softly on my unreliable, always a bit too hot gas hob, courtesy of my mother's birthday present to me - an amazing RUN pan. It's big, black and beautiful, and I've spent a bit too long polishing it with vegetable oil (I was working at home today and avoiding a particularly repellent bit of work - there are so many more options for distraction at home, it's dangerous). So, posh pan, good ingredients - what more can you ask? Well, my redemption continues - I have no real idea what one of the vegetables in here is! My cousin and I bought it from the Vegetable Shop of Joy (I've ranted http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1364/spicy-root-and-lentil-casseroleabout it before, but please visit it on Seven Sister's Road, is called Frank's + something in Turkish). It's something like an Enoch, but not. Edin, maybe? Anyway, it's white inside and very starchy when you peel it - as slippery as soap on the inside. On the outside it looks a bit like a wizened coconut, with a hairy yet peelable skin. Ah - some googling reveals that it might be an Edo. Anyway, I've just tried a piece and can reveal that it tastes like a very sticky potato - it's actually quite nice, and will definitely use in curry again. To go with my Edo (or whatever it's called), I have celeriac, lentils and carrots, so is a pleasingly unconventional curry. For interesting descriptions of weird vegetables - take a look at this article: http://www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/features/2186.html. Just remembered my pan goes in the oven as well as on the hob!! *Runs off to switch oven on and put it in there, just because I CAN.


It occurs to me, looking back in this blog, that I totally missed the riots. I spent a blog being upset about feeling left out, but didn't feel the urge to document something as depressing, timely and revealing as the riots. Oh well. Clearly this just isn't the kind of blog that covers important world events, and it would be a shame to confuse my profile now. I will just say that I'm planning on volunteering, but still trying to figure out where a slightly confused English student who's irredeemably middle class can best be useful, rather than irritating.

Something rather strange and sad happened to me today. Since my promotion kicked in, I now have an enforced work at home day each week. In theory, this is a time to read manuscripts away from all the distractions my colleagues (who are both lovely and chatty) present. When it's as hot as today, it seems in practice to consist of my staring out of the window and wishing I were in France. The upshot of this (and a ridiculous amount of 'ooh, there's my fridge, I should eat some more cheese') is that I went out in Finsbury Park not wearing enough clothes. As a young(ish) woman in Finsbury park, generally a short skirt means that all your vegetables from the shop are free, but also that all the men in scary restaurant A will cheer when you go past, all the men pouring out of potentially BNP pub B will go silent and stare at you until you feel like you might as well be completely naked and at least four vans will beep. Honestly, if you're feeling unattractive, and you're under 40, come and give it a go - you'll leave with a smile, but potentially also mere metres ahead of a sexually frustrated throng.

Anyway, so I went to try out an intriguing Tagine place that I've lived next to for three years and never quite gone to (was ok - but very pre-made indeed, and suspect he microwaved it in the Tagine pot to reheat), sat outside, and carried on reading my manuscript (god bless the kindle and the boyfriend who bought it for me). About ten minutes later, a man appeared on the other side of the restaurant railing. He was white, about 50-60, oddly twitchy and something about him was just a bit off. He hailed me with the words, 'Are you...ENGLISH?' I admitted that yes, I was, and he launched into a story beginning with his brain damage after a piece of grain found its way into his eye (he was a builder). I couldn't hear all of it because of the traffic (I explained he couldn't join me owing to the manuscript/work/because I'm a bit worried you'd pull a knife and somehow you seem like you have a basement I'd never want to visit, so he was shouting over lorries), however the upshot was he wanted to learn to read. He asked if I could help him and I said no. I said no because he was a bit scary, and because some lady on a bus had given him an organisation to google. But after he slumped away, I felt awful. Yes, he was a bit weird, but he could have been telling the truth and isn't it horrible that I felt so unable to even consider giving him the help he wanted? A few years ago, I might have done it, but now all I could see was basement/knife/he keeps using my name in every sentence (oddly disconcerting when said in a very gentle way over lorries). So, well, I don't know what I should have done. Wouldn't have hurt me to sit with him over coffee in a public place for goodness sake.

I felt a bit better because he came back and asked a lot of involved (and extremely strange) questions about my Kindle, which allowed me to put him more safely in the "definitely strange, potentially mad" box which is so comforting to all us normal people. The thing is, after he'd gone for the second time, I realised (I think) what was going on - he was lonely. As simple and horrible as that - he was reduced to creating conversations out of nothing for some human contact. I get a bit wittery after a day of working at home alone - I dread to think what would happen after a month. London is a lonely, mad place for those without friends.

One Who Estivates

Hello all (quite literally, since I don't have anyone specific actually reading this and I suppose am therefore just addressing everyone, or simply my own arse). Anyway, I'm currently feeling an odd twitchiness that comes from feeling angry at a close friend of mine. I can't decide if this anger is fair or not, since it comes from a general weakness I have towards friend-ownershipitus - this is a disease that means you have a strongly negative reaction to your friends becoming friends with each other. I feel like my quite networky friend is stalking a couple who are friends of mine in an attempt to pull them into a smug-foursome. This, I believe, is my own paranoia. However, she has justified her texting her and inviting them to the cinema by saying that her boyfriend likes them, which has had the unfortunate effect of me feeling quite sad that her boyfriend apparently feels no similar desire to see me and my boyfriend, but instead would like to skip over us to the friends he met through me, like some sort of evil social rabbit. *ahem.

Really sorry.

Feel a bit better though - ranting does help, even when I know that I'm going to look back on this and probably delete it because this kind of childish 'that's MY toy' doesn't really have a place in the adult world (or at least it's the fashion to disguise it more successfully). Still, feel quite outraged - I don't like feeling that two sets of people I have introduced find each other more interesting than me, and tbh am not sure most people would like it. What do people do? I'm aware I can't just stick myself in the middle and do a Gandalf ('you SHALL NOT pass!'), at least not without a magic stick, but just can't get over the feeling of 'go away!! get your own friends and do your whole networky icky thing with them - these people matter!' *sigh. What I probably need to do is grow up. It's not like they didn't invite me, I just wasn't the reason that the plan was made - they went over my head. Think what I might have to do is actually chat to some nice neutral third party and figure out where on the crazy scale I have ended up...

Oh dear. I am going to roast a pork leg for Fish and I this evening and am being slow about putting it on, owing to the above poisonous rant of idiocy. He has therefore come in with a small song to hurry me up and is currently hanging onto my ankles while peering sadly over the screen of this laptop. It's pretty cute, tbh - had better go and I'll blog more cheerful things (poker, yummy sausage and stuffing, Robin Ince (though he's always grumpy), iberico ham and Comptoir Gascon) upon my return.

glastonbury, stock, pork ribs, France and the elegance of the hedgehog

Mmmm. It is good to be at home. I have chicken stock simmering on the stove and thus a ghostly generational chorus of approving Jewish mothers hovering behind me, holding their breaths over every skim. Waiting to go in under the grill are some bbq pork ribs, which the Jewish mothers are kindly ignoring. Fish is beside me, coding away, listening to tech metal and occasionally muttering something derogatory about Coldplay. All of these things - my joy in being home, the cooking bonanza and Fish's Coldplay angst are a result of having spent last week in a tent, exposed to the elements and the new teenage obsession with laughing gas. Yes - we went to Glastonbury.

Fish has been once before, whereas I've always avoided it owing to my disinterest in most popular music (not in a deliberate snobby way, but more owing to an extremely limited memory and sense of timing), hatred of large crowds, relative poverty and fear of not being able to go to bed when I want to. However, I caved in this time as it seemed as though I should experience it once in my life at least, it's fallow next year and it seems unlikely that our group of friends is going to remain so cohesive for much longer. Anyway, turns out that I love it! Everyone was incredibly happy (and not entirely because of chemicals), the mud was an absolute pain but also bought out the best in English stoicism and mad dog determination to be outside and I definitely approve of being allowed to have your first drink before 11am. Also of Beardyman being awesome at 1.30 in the afternoon and of spending Sunday in the park having music played to you while drinking Pimms. Ooh, and of exploding spiders with acrobats on.

Pork is smelling nice now, and stock has been mostly skimmed. All is right with the world. Also, this wine is excellent. Remember, for future reference, Languedoc Rough 2008 is soft, velvety, warm, slightly spicy, not particularly dynamic but soothing and thoroughly delicious.

What else has happened? I've been temporarily promoted, which is nice, and I've just finished The Elegance of the Hedgehog - a translation from the French that feels like a much more charming Chocolat with philosophical pretensions and the occasional thoroughly beautifully phrased sentence. It further fuelled my longstanding desire to move to France and spend my days shelling garden peas, admiring wine and wearing elegant hats. Only the knowledge of how impossible it is for French life to live up to my imaginings stops me. Well, that, my innate laziness (a force that should never be underestimated as it realistically makes most of my decisions), Fish's dislike of all French things, particularly their brand of philosophy (he tends to suddenly become very Austrian at such moments), lack of money or viable alternative career...and the Euro. Don't really have any strong feelings about the Euro, tbh, but I felt I needed an ending.

I've just finished reading Lionel Shriver's 'So Much For That'. Getting older, and working in publishing has made me far less likely to fall in love with an author and track down their other books. I'm not sure exactly why, perhaps firstly because the older I am the more I'm aware that I've got plenty of time to do that so somehow end up doing something else, something easier, and maybe secondly simply because when you have to read an absolute minimum of four manuscripts a week, it doesn't leave you as much time or energy to develop other obsessions. However, Lionel Shriver has been an exception, ever since I picked up 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' and became fixated by her bald, beautiful prose and her almost unhealthy revelling in the darker, shameful side of people.

So Much For That is an exhausting book (if less spiritually annihilating than the lethal 'Double Fault'). Watching Shep (her unusually good hearted and morally straight forward hero) dealing with the slow death of his wife through cancer was hard enough, but much more difficult was her beginning every chapter charting the painful dribbling away of Shep's bank balance, his 'Afterlife' money until the fantastic, uplifting ending. In spite of their eventual escape to Pemba (pause to google it and see if it's as good as it sounded... ). Have ended it incredibly glad that I live in England. Let's be honest, our country is just better. Although having now accidentally watched ten minutes of 'The Only Way Is Essex' I am suddenly concerned that we don't have long left as a nation, and that maybe that's a good thing. Either way, I must remember that the NHS is a wonderful, wonderful thing.

In other news, I went last night to see The Emperor and Gallilean, which is an Ibsen play that's never been performed. In its original state, it is seven and a half hours long, which is the ostensible reason for this unusual neglect. However, having now seen it in its new incarnation of a mere four hours, I conclude that it's never been performed because it is (whisper it for fear of enraging the critics) not very good. It was a very strange, unwieldy thing. Great production, absolutely amazing set (if somewhat overdone at times and given to making leaden parallels with modern times), really good actors, however none of these things managed to distract the audience from realising that Ibsen had some managed to take seven and a half hours to say: 1) paganism and Christianity are both religions and so actually a bit similar if you think about it, and 2) Killing people is always wrong, even if you pretend it's because of God(s). Could maybe see that when it was written, these were more shocking ideas, but still struggle with him needing quite so long to hammer them in. Was a bit like being beaten over the head with a blunt, patronising, anti-religious relic. Not that that has happened to me, but I'm guessing.

Fish is back. As keeps happening recently, we are very sweet to each other from a distance and then end up annoyed with each other within moments of being in the same room. *sigh. Relationships are tricky.

poverty, restaurants and reviews

I am poorer than usual at the moment. The combination of Christmas drinking, misunderstanding of the bonus taxation system, stressful (and ultimately unsuccessful, thus requiring cheering up with tuna steak and oysters) interviewing and 10 days in Israel (really must write out some notes on that) led me to begin 2011 with angry red negative figures. However, I've continued to happily ignore that and instead to go out to dinner lots to distract from my horizontal career. I therefore thought I'd try out a review. I've been devouring the works of the grumbling gourmet and Marina O'Loughlin (sp? But anyway, she is, apart from Keith Watson's reviews, the only reason to ever pick up a Metro again) for ages, and there is something extremely satisfying about reading about restaurants. If it's the same for writing about them, maybe I can cut down on money spent by living every good meal twice...


The Cadogan Arms

Fisher and I decided to go out for a meal to check that we still had something to talk about, so looked on toptable and found a deal for 20 percent off food. I'm very glad we did that, as the meal was a little overpriced anyway, and without the 20 percent off, I think we'd both have felt somewhat hard done by. However, before moving on to gripe about prices or imperfect cooking (and I know, once again the trials of the Western world, but hush - food is a serious issue, as demonstrated by all of those people who are pretty keen on getting hold of some), I'd like to mention the glorious bread. It arrived and we were starving so attacked at once and oh my god - it was the kind of bread that melts in your mouth a little. Cloudy, warm and herby. In spite of everything I've said below, maybe come here officially to 'eat', get them to bring the bread, then run away clutching it. Unfair, perhaps, but not everyone can blow £90ish on a meal for two. Apparently, it's baked there, so maybe an alternative is to make friends with one of the kitchen staff - I'd recommend the quite hot, appealingly new, incredibly polite and faintly clueless one.

Starters were baked Isle of Man king scallops in their shells with prawns, creamed cep sauce and chive mash for me (£9.50) and devilled duck hearts on toast with a fried duck egg for Fisher (£8)



The scallops were lovely - if not exactly numerous - big, juicy and sweet, but there was quite a lot more (lovely, smooth and buttery) mash than scallops and sauce - after thoroughly enjoying the first few mouthfuls, I essentially then had a large shell filled with potato to get through. Still - very yummy, if a bit steeply priced.



However, the duck hearts were just completely fabulous. Go here just to have them - they were outstandingly delicious. I've never had duck hearts before and they turn out to be juicy, faintly sweet and in this case perfectly balanced by a mysteriously spicy sauce (one of those perfectly judged sauces that hits you slowly with the spice at the end of the mouthful). The creamy duck egg added the final touch and I was just sad that I wasn't allowed to steal more without possibly ending my relationship.

For the mains, I had roast whole Yorkshire partridge, bread sauce, smoked English bacon, Hunter’s potato, braised red cabbage and juniper jus (£18.50), and he had rib-eye steak with Béarnaise sauce, hand cut chips and bone marrow jus (£22.50)



After the smug boyfriend's definite win with the duck hearts, I was hoping for something to crush him with and the partridge delivered, if not a crushing blow, definitely a superior wallop. It was beautifully cooked (though I do like it very rare, so might be too bloody for some). The good meat was lifted to excellent by the stunning juniper jus, which was a perfectly balanced concoction of 5 spice, star anise, wine and junipers and cut the meat with the culinary expertise of a sleek, Japanese butterfly sword. I remain certain that bread sauce, even at its best - and this was excellent - is essentially a slightly lumpy white thing tasting mostly of bay leaves. If I'm wrong, do tell me. Once again, only quibble was the price - this was very good, but at £18.50 I think I'd normally expect something more complex. Still, the victory was mine.



Now the steak was really, really yummy, but as Fisher says, 'a steak's a steak, and that was my misteak.' I'm slightly less sure on this one - I thought it was a fantastic piece of meat, and even though the bone marrow jus wasn't as lip-smackingly gumptious as it could have been, for steak that beautifully cooked then £22.50 is not overwhelmingly expensive. However, the problem with the Cadogan Arms is that it sells itself as a sort of Gourmet Tavern, so you don't come here expecting to pay central London fairly posh restaurant prices. I think that if we'd been in some extremely luxurious setting, with shining tablecloths and little dancing waiters and everything else that comes with a really lovely restaurant atmosphere, the prices really wouldn't have seemed like so much of an issue. However, when you're in a cosy, wooden walled cavern of a place with an outsized boar's head on the side and the hobbits wouldn't seem out of place, £22.50 for an extremely capable steak with lovely meat somehow feels less ok - essentially, they hadn't hypnotised us enough into believing the experience justified the cost.

Final note on the food - the deserts were definitely uninspiring (not even any photos were taken) - my treacle sponge was sharply sweet with no depth to the flavour. It was very odd - it smelled fantastically but left your mouth casting about with the faintest tinge of tin. Fish (as in all restaurants) had the sorbet. The mandarin and blood orange scoops were very nice, but the lemon sorbet had a distinctly chemical aftertaste that was very unpleasant. I'd suggest giving these a miss.

Wine: Can't remember what it was, but we paid about £25 and it was a good red, juicy and punchy with darker undertones. Not sure it was worth that much money, however. Tasted more like a £15/16 wine. However, it may be a product of a generally low budget that I expect any wine over £20 pounds to leave me speechless for at least a moment!

In conclusion, not bad - go there for the duck hearts and the pheasant if you're feeling flush, but get a deal and prepare to pay more than the surroundings seem to suggest. There's also an offer to eat, drink and play pool for only £10 - and the general level of cooking would suggest to me that this is an Amazing deal. Oh, and we decided that we do still have some things to talk about, even if they are mainly poor steak puns.