Not Your Mother's Curry: The Cinnamon Club

Walk past 30 Great Smith Street and you'd almost miss it - the building itself is inconspicuous.  No sign hangs outside announcing its presence; in fact, there is no signage of any sort that would suggest that this is indeed the home of The Cinnamon Club, formerly the Old Westminster Library.  As you timidly approach the stairs to the restaurant, the only assurance you have that you're in the right place is the smiling hostess waiting to take your name and coats.

Having had a great meal with Tom, Cristy and Alison at The Cinnamon Club a couple months ago, I decided to book a table for my parents' visit as well.  Though this restaurant seems more appropriate for business lunches and dinners rather than romantic meals out, the chic ambiance (created by the skylights and shelves of books that still remain on the top floor) create a terrific dining experience.

If you're looking for traditional Indian cuisine, The Cinnamon Club will be too "fusion" for you - however, the flavors never fail to excite (and at times, perplex), which is precisely why it's made it on my list of favorite restaurants to dine at in London.

As I booked through Toptable, we ordered from the set menu (currently priced at £19 for two courses, £22 for three) and were served a Cinnamon Bellini upon arrival, which was delightfully spicy.

To start, I ordered the paneer with yogurt and pomegranate sauce.  Now, when I mentioned "exciting" and "perplexing" flavors above, the presence of pomegranate seeds in the yogurt sauce is a prime example: eaten with the spicy paneer (which had the consistency of firm tofu), the sudden bursts of sweetness and sourness confused my palate, but not necessarily in a bad way.

I wish I had taken a photo of my mom's main course because it certainly did not look as appetizing as mine.  To put it bluntly, she ordered the "venison kebab", not knowing that "kebab" in this country refers to a kofta-style kebab, rather than chunks of meat on a skewer and, well, when her "kebabs" arrived on a bed of unidentifiable gloop, it resembled what could only be described as two stages of that thing your dog does when you take it out for a walk.  While delicious, I couldn't help but gag as the plate was so visually unappealing.  It was so unfortunate for her, as our dishes were delicious: mine (pictured above) was mackerel served with a coriander-infused sauce.

Dessert was an absolutely sublime warm dark chocolate cake with toffee sauce, topped with caramelized bananas and ginger-infused ice cream.  We finished with espresso and a selection of sweets.

A word must be said about the service at The Cinnamon Club, as it's impeccable.  The staff is attentive without being intrusive (which seems to be a difficult balance to strike for many restaurants) and upon learning about my mom's dissatisfaction with her dish (which I politely expressed, despite her protestations), they charged us only for two courses rather than three although she had (mostly) finished the meal (with my dad's help), which was a very kind gesture, in my opinion. 

So if you're in the neighborhood, or have an excuse to dine out, I'd swing by The Cinnamon Club.  Don't bring your meeting notes - just your appetite.

Bargain Hunting: Portobello Road

My parents' imminent arrival today caused John and I to have a re-think about the current furnishings in our flat (read: panic).  Suddenly, everything looked wrong - from the color of the couch to the number of pillows on our window seat.  Yes, that window seat; the window seat everyone heard me gushing about when we first moved in (I was completely sold on the flat as soon as I spied that lovely view into the garden and claimed it as mine).  Yet, the lack of inspiring pillows didn't exactly make the adorable reading nook call out to me every morning and night as I expected it to.

Utterly convinced we needed a "throw" for our couch, John suggested we prowl Portobello Road market and the Notting Hill area for some ideas.  Passing a small stand selling the ubiquitous embroidered prints above, I saw a great deal on for pillowcases: £3 each for the simple ones above (far L and far R) or £4 each for the quilted variety (3rd from L and 3rd from R), plus £1 extra for an actual pillow.  Great deal, no?  And what a change, as you can see above!  I'll be perched up there more often now - probably blogging.

Janet Evanovich: Short, Sweet & Trashy, Just The Way I Like 'Em

It took an English PhD candidate from Worcestershire (Chloe) to introduce me to some of the trashiest - and funniest - reading out there.  But before I tell you why I love Janet Evanovich's books, I've got to tell you a story.

The summer after I turned 13, my mom thought it would be a brilliant idea to supplement my junior high education (remember, this is the summer before I entered 7th grade) with a course at our local community college (that's a two-year "university" for continuing students, mature students, and non-traditional students, for all you Brits out there).  My mother was an advocate of summer home schooling, although she'd never call it that.  Yes, while other kids enjoyed the sun and played in the sprinkler in their backyards, sucking on different flavoured popsicles, my brother and I spent our summers in front of the screen door of our deck at the kitchen table, with our heads propped up with one hand and sweat beading on our foreheads - doing math problems.  Or writing essays (which my mother would grade harshly, by the way).  And not just any math problems - timed ones.  Yes, she'd put the egg timer on and we'd have approximately 15 minutes to finish an entire booklet of arithmetic.  Every summer, before we entered into a new grade, she'd hand us a thick booklet of math problems for the grade above.  "But what's the point if I'm ahead?" I whined.  "I'll be bored."  "That's exactly the point," my mother snapped.  "You'll whizz through what the other kids are doing."  (For the record, by the time we got to high school, she had lost all control on us and I ended up scoring a big fat 1 (the lowest grade is 0) on the AP Calculus exam and a C- in my college Calculus class.)  To hone any semblance of writing skills I could have possibly possessed at that age, she insisted I produce one, formulaic, three paragraph essay arguing the finer points of topics she came up herself, such as, "Should the death penalty be abolished?  Explain." at the top of my notebook in red ink and she graded from a scale of A-F (if it was a C or below, I had to re-do - listen, I couldn't even make this up if I tried).  And you wonder why I have anxiety issues ...

But I digress.

So my mother marched me to the office of the Dean of Admissions at Pierce College that summer and requested that I be enrolled in an English 101 course.  The Dean peered over her desk at my purple-rimmed glasses, spotty face, and braces.  She smiled and said sweetly, "Name an author you enjoy reading."  "Um ..." I stuttered, trying to think.  "Well, I really enjoy Agatha Christie ... and ... um ... Mary Higgins Clark."  She sniffed condescendingly:  "Well, Mary Higgins Clark is really airport literature.  I'm not sure you'd be ready for a class here.  She'll have to take an entrance exam, you know," she said to my mother, who only nodded excitedly.  Great.  Another fantastic way to spend my summer vacation.  In a sweaty room with overachieving high school "Running Start" students who rolled their eyes at me and some over enthusiastic 40-year-olds with two kids looking for a fresh start in life.  So I sat there and filled in bubbles for about an hour and a half, then dutifully stood by as the administrator scanned my answers through a machine.  10 minutes later, we were called back into the Dean's office.  "Well," she said, huffily.  "It seems as though your daughter is qualified to take our English 200 course."  My mother smiled.  "But," she continued.  "I'm not sure she'd be ready for the subject material - we do have to deal with some ... ahem, adult themes."  My mother shrugged.  She was willing to overlook this despite not allowing me to watch MTV at home. 

Anyway, that summer came and went and I actually had a great time in that class with a hearing impaired professor to whom I penned my own version of Oedipus Rex (and she promptly displayed on her office door), as I found it completely silly at the time.  I had my first introduction to some of the greatest poets and prose writers that I would continue to study later in high school and college. 

But that's a long way of explaining what the term "airport literature" reminds me of today - the Dean's upturned snootiness in response to my pubescent innocence (think she had expected me to cite Horace and Shakespeare instead).  And Janet Evanovich's writing fits my definition of airport literature - that is, books you can kick back and relax with, giggle over and allow to lazily float in and out of your brain without any effort at all.  Hers was the book Chloe grabbed off her shelf when I complained my brain was being mashed into oblivion by our frequent graduate seminars - not Webster, not Marlowe, but Evanovich - mastermind of a sassy, spunky, and sexy character named Stephanie Plum. 

I'm not ashamed.

Because I'd rather read about Stephanie's New Jersey bounty-hunting adventures and tangled web of love interests (not to mention pages that are chock-full of totally un-PC references, like Lula's terrible "black"-speak, for example and other casual racism that I let slide because I'm enjoying myself so much) than dissect Foucault on a plane, personally.  And yes, the covers are embarrassing and scream, "I'M READING ABSOLUTE CRAP", but hey, I like to display them loudly and proudly.  Yes, I'm reading absolute crap, but I don't care what you think (okay, I do care, a little bit). 

I don't want to give away too much about the books, so next time you're in a W. H. Smith at Heathrow or a similar airport bookstore, pick up one of books in the Stephanie Plum series and settle yourself in for the long flight.  It's more than airport literature - it's comfort literature.

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"Thank You SO Much!"

 

In general, I don't think we say 'thank you' enough to each other.  And 'in general,' I mean on both sides of the pond.  And by "to each other" I mean complete strangers (ok, not complete strangers, but say, someone who gave you great service at a store or restaurant).  But we Americans tend to be quite embarrasingly effusive in giving thanks (when we do) and/or letting someone know we appreciate them.  It's not that people in Britain are not as grateful in receiving random acts of kindness as Americans, they're just not as OTT about it.  For example, I'm pretty sure when I was working those boring summer jobs in a department store that shall remain unnamed (Mervyn's California), I had one or two people say, "Hey, just wanted to tell ya, you're doing a GREAT JOB!" without a hint of sarcasm.  In the US (in a small town), this is normal.  In the UK, whether it's a small town or not, it's totally not normal - it's cringeworthy.

A few months ago, a cashier at my bank branch in Covent Garden was so rude to me, she reduced me to tears (I needed a specific document for my UK visa application and she refused to release it to me).  Already in a panic about the short time limit I had, she made the situation ten times worse with her bad attitude and meanness (I'll also never forget her super bad perm and teased hairdo, or the thick gloopy coats of mascara that made her lashes look like tarantala's legs - NEVER).  I walked out of the branch crying, racking my brain for what to do next.  That's when I remembered there was another branch just down the road.  Taking a deep breath, I decided to try that one instead. 

The line there was long, but at the end of it, I was greeted by a nice no-bad-hair-or-eyelashes lady who first, apologized for my wait, then asked how she could help.  When I told her what I needed, she quickly replied, "Not a problem at all, we've been getting a lot of these requests lately."  Without me asking, she printed out the documents on headed paper and stamped each page as the grumbling line behind me got grumpier and more impatient.  Although I thanked her for her help, it didn't seem adequate.  Especially since I just witnessed someone being nasty to her right as I was leaving.

So naturally, I popped into Hotel Chocolat to buy her some chocolates.  I brought them straight back to her and said, "I just wanted to thank you for helping me, as you have no idea what it meant to me today.  I wanted to give you something to make your day helping grumpy people a bit more bearable."  She looked initially embarrassed and shocked, but smiled and said, "Thank you, that's very nice of you."  And I scurried out of there quickly. 

I'm usually faced with the same embarrassment here when I say, "Thank you SO much," to someone who's just given me extremely helpful directions, gone out of their way to be nice, or done something else I've really appreciated.  Natalie makes fun of me and says I'm too enthusiastic (so does John, for that matter).  But I'm insistent that the person I'm thanking really knows, like, really really knows what a difference they've made.

So I urge you to thank someone today whose actions you truly appreciated - not in a OTT, saccharine, way (or if that's your style, then that's cool - rock it) - but in your own, personal way.  Because giving thanks should never be underestimated.

(Thank you for reading!)

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Le Mercury, Islington

About once a month (though we've been slacking lately), Natalie, Karen, Lucy and I go out for a post-work dinner.  We try to make it on a Monday so as to dissuade the Monday Blues, however, since I've started rehearsing with the Royal Orchestral Society on Monday evenings, that's put a spanner in the works, as Brits say. 

Nevertheless, we were able to have a lovely evening out at the chic candle-lit favorite of Natalie's, Le Mercury (and do check out their website as it's really very sweet!), on Upper Street near Angel.  With a similar ethos to the Little Bay chains, that is, affordable (read: cheap) modern European food in a trendy, fun setting, Le Mercury did not fail to deliver on its promise of cheap and tasty dishes.  Starters are at a set price of £3.95 and include delights such as Fois Gras & Duck Ballotine with Poached Dates & Toast.  I shared the Ravioli de la Mer with Natalie, which wasn't actually big enough for sharing, as I embarrasingly learned, but wonderfully presented served on a bed of well-seasoned spinach.  Mains are all £7.95 and I ordered the Poitrine de Porc (Slow Roasted Honeyed Pork Belly with Confit Celeriac & Granny Smith Apple), which is kind of like my "test" dish, as I order it at every new restaurant I try (where it's offered) but was equally impressed with Karen's Sauteed Potato Dumplings with Baby Artichokes and Parmesan Foam, which were plump and al-dente.  To finish, I had the Sticky Toffee Pudding with Chantilly Cream (people need to start recognizing the fact that chantilly cream DOES NOT trump an ice cold scoop of vanilla ice cream - I know this is the American in me speaking because we think a scoop of ice cream goes with everything).  One mistake restaurants often make with this dessert is dry, stale cake, but this pudding was perfectly warm and moist on the inside.  Two thumbs up from me.

So if we're comparing cheap eats, then I'm going to go ahead and say I prefer Le Mercury for the quality of food.  Little Bay's fares begin to taste a little ... samey, after a while.  But what can you expect for prices that low (Little Bay's starters are priced at £2.25, mains at £5.25, desserts at £2.25 before 7 pm, after 7, the prices go up by nearly a pound, if that).  But if we're going for character and decor, I'd vote Little Bay, despite Le Mercury's chic interior.  Little Bay Kilburn boasts tables you climb to (literally), colorful cushions and a real, pulsing, dynamic restaurant environment which makes the dining experience exciting and fun.

Why not try both, next time you're in town?

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I Get My Chocolate Fix From Hotel Chocolat

One thing I definitely think the US could improve on is luxury chocolate.  After all, this is a country that produces Hershey's (big yuck).  But hey, why do you need nice chocolate when you've got stuff like Krispy Kremes, Jamba Juice, and See's Candies?  And of course, there's Godiva and Lindt.  So nope, no need for any more chocolate stores. 

However, I'm so over Godiva.  And I was over Lindt a long time ago.  That's why I was thrilled when Hotel Chocolat opened a branch - right next to my office.  It's perfect for last minute gifts (ahem, like today, when I was on my way to meet Udita and realized I had nothing to give her as a mini-"I-miss-you-congratulations-on-almost-finishing-your-thesis-good-luck-at-your-impending-job-interview" gift) and the prices are reasonable.  And in searching for a non-traditional chocolate surprise for John this past Easter, I came across this adorable White Chocolate Eggs & Soldiers box, which we ate for breakfast in place of real eggs and soldiers.

When I next have an excuse to pop in, you'll find me crouched over their many shelves and leaving with the distinctive white bag dangling from my arm.  And maybe - just maybe - it's for you.

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Dim Sum Brunch at Golden Dragon, Chinatown

I had a case of the green-eyed monster last week when Shannon told me she had gone on a dim-sum making course, courtesy of her partner, Mark.  "It was soooo delicious," she recounted, describing all the tasty dumpling she learned how to make, while I silently salivated beside her desk.  "That's ... great," I managed.  "You'll have to teach me," I squeaked, before running off. 

My family knows how much I love dim sum: whether we're in Vancouver or Hong Kong, they always make sure dim sum (or as we say in Cantonese, "yum cha") is on the cards, otherwise, I get a bit fidgety.  And my grandma tells the same story every time we sit down to the table.  "Jaime ah," she says in Chinese.  "Remember when you were very little, very little, and we ordered ma lai goh [a steamed sponge cake] for you?  Do you remember what happened?"  "Yes, Po Po," I answer patiently.  She covers her mouth as she laughs.  "You poor thing, you really choked on it!"  To put it mildly, I was traumatized.  The thing was too dry and I couldn't get it down my throat.  All I remember was coughing really hard and my mother anxiously slapping me on the back as I hacked up a piece of dry cake.  Then some tears.

So we don't order that anymore.

What I do order faithfully, every time we go out for dim sum, are the Chinese meatballs (which you can see below), my grandfather's favorite dish.  I used to like them when he was still around but since he's passed away, I eat them not only out of personal preference but also in his memory.

So I was pretty happy when my friend Cherry suggested we meet for dim sum today in Chinatown.  Despite feeling ill, I knew the food would be like chicken soup for the soul - both nourishing and comforting. 

Cherry is my go-to-girl for all things delicious in London (and especially for Chinese food).   You see, we kind of met randomly.  And by random, I mean I sat next to her on a 13-hour flight from Hong Kong to London roughly two years ago.  Within minutes of speaking to each other, I opened my beloved Tupperware container lovingly filled with four cocktail buns from my favorite bakery in Happy Valley and offered her one.  She, in turn, let me pick from her bag full of candy as we laughed about the astonishingly crappy food being offered on our Virgin flight (which included chicken so tough and dry, I nearly recreated my ma lai goh scene from my yesteryears).  Needless to say, what began as a torturous flight passed quickly as we chatted and we traded numbers at the baggage carousel. 

For the next couple of days, we exchanged emails and texts, both of us missing Hong Kong desperately and severely jet lagged.  She showed me where I could watch the latest Cantonese soaps online and I watched them when I couldn't sleep.  We met up a few times in Chinatown for food and she even introduced me to a restaurant on my (then) doorstep, Little Bay.

Today we met up at Golden Dragon, before she leaves for Hong Kong on Tuesday, where she's gotten her first job at a private clinic as a physiotherapist.  Now, I know what you've just done.  You've clicked on the link to Golden Dragon and thought, 'I'm not going there, people say it's got terrible service!'  Okay, let me let you in on a little secret.  Chinese people don't do "service."  Okay?  They give you the food, that's it.  Expect sour faces, barking at you, and no smiling.  Not. Ever.  Go to Claridges if you want that.  Go to Wong Kei for some good old fashioned abuse (personally, I like to sit and watch in amusement as guests try to get a waiter's attention, who seems to be daydreaming by the smoked duck in the window:  "Excuse me, excuse me sir ... um ... I don't think he can - oh - excuse me?  Excuse me, sir?  Can I have some - oh fuck it.")

But I digress.

The food is pretty decent.  And on a Sunday, it was packed full of other Chinese families (Cantonese speaking too!) having dim sum.  So that was reassuring.  The har gao wrapper was just ever so too sticky, but otherwise nice and thin and the filling was delicious.  Similarly, the siu mai was just as good.  I usually order the char siu buns (as shown above), but today opted for the custard filled ones instead and those did not disappoint either.  My grandfather's meatballs passed the test and the fried vermicelli with salted pork Cherry ordered was also delectable, albeit a tad salty. 

So I'd recommend Golden Dragon, if you're looking for some decent dim sum in the heart of Chinatown that won't rip your paycheck to shreds (this is not Yauatcha, as our bill came to £21 for two people, versus the £80 John and I usually spend at the Michelin-starred eatery).  But please - don't go for the service.  It simply doesn't exist.