Lunch at Dandelion and Burdock with Sarah and Jenny.
What can I say? I wish there was one in Harrogate. Excellent service, wonderful food and amazingly good prices.
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Another night in Eastleigh. Running out of places to try (it’s not that large), the menu for The Great Moghul seems ok.
Disappointingly once inside, the takeaway menu is greatly reduced. I go for some mushroom pakora and a vegetable pathia (since the alternative is a korma).
While I wait, this poster entertains me.
Back at the hotel, I sense a gastronomic voyage of sadness awaits me.
Mushroom pakora (all 4 of them) are frozen mushrooms in breadcrumbs. Something I suspect sprung from farmfoods rather than the centre of Mumbai.
The pathia isn’t much better. It seems to be sauce only. Any lentils and vegetables which once inhabited the container have fled to a better life.
I seek solace in the free rice. This, however, has been coated in ghee to improve it’s appearance.
The chapatis, thankfully, are quite good, so I finally consume something acceptable.
Tags: eastleigh, indian restaurant, the great moghul, vegetarian
A glorious morning in Paris with the temperature expected to make in into the high 20’s. We grab some pastries from a patisserie and stop off for a coffee. It’s just over thirty minutes from Opera to Montmartre.
From there it’s a walk to the left bank, stopping off for some lunch on the way. Therese has a decent salad, myself an omelette. We’re also provided with two glasses of fairly awful white wine, masquerading as a Chablis.
Over to the left bank where there’s a little rain. Oh well, another excuse to stop off for a glass of wine … this time somewhat better.
Returning towards Opera, there’s a brief shower. Tourists seek shelter.
That night our destination is Macéo. We’d come across it the previous night but decided to hold off after that large lunch. Prior to that, of course, we find a little bar nearby and have a glass of wine whilst watching a man’s hair being cut. (I remember that, nearly)
Anyway. Back to Macéo. Unhelpfully there’s no opening hours signed. Other people, like us, occasionally wander by and try to decide whether to go in. After a couple of passes, the door is opened and we’re straight in. Table for two? No problem. Is the menu ‘au vert’ fully vege … ‘yes, it’s a vegetarian menu’ the waiter quickly replies.
We’re in there. Wonderful service with the balanced well in what I can only describe as informalised silver service. The waiter even manages to recommend a red 20 euro less than I was planning to spend.
Here’s the menu … and the restaurant.
I had the soup and Therese the beetroot. 1-0 to me.
Followed by the Cassoulet for me, polenta for Therese. 1-1
Finally ice cream for me, cheese for Therese. A draw.
Overall – it’s excellent Oh, yes, and we have a champagne aperitif.
Next door is Willi’s wine bar. We were here three years ago … Interestingly we had a bottle of wine then too.
Fuzzily we wander back to the hotel. Therese has a glass of wine, I go all out with a Martini.
Typing this now (some time later), it’s apparent we had a lot of alcohol that day. That can only mean trouble tomorrow.
Tags: france, maceo, monmartre, paris, vegetarian, willis wine bar, wine
Late afternoon we depart the hotel, looking for somewhere to eat for the evening. There’s a few choices bordering around Rue de Richelieu and Rue du 4 Septembre. including one we decide to return to tomorrow. We plump for Le Mesturet since it makes a point of having a couple of specifically vegetarian dishes. Service is excellent and staff very friendly.
it’s only a small nightcap then back to the hotel for sleep.
Tags: le mesturet, paris, vegetarian
Another full day in New York. Slightly fuzzy from the previous night’s Gibsons, we eat at a diner off Broadway, taking in copious amounts of fruit juice.
Therese is keen to go far uptown. We stop at Union Street station, taking in the market first.
The choice of fruit and vegetables is fantastic. A shame, then, that American’s seems on the whole to focus on eggs, bacon, steak and fried chicken.
It’s a long trip on the number 6 uptown. Off at 125th Street. East Harlem.
The streets here are conspicuously different from mid and down town. Apparently it was only recently that anything above 125th Street has been supported by the NYC town hall.
Litter on the streets, gangs of men and women hanging around and signals being given and received on corners (thanks to “The Wire” for the inside knowledge there). There’s also a phenomenal amount of hairdressers. Not sure what the deal is in there. We walk past at least ten in the first fifteen or so blocks.
Most strangely of all, there’s two white people in a sea of brown, yellow and black. That’ll be us then. We move quickly South on Lexington. Although not usually one to miss a musical pun I don’t even notice when we go across 110th Street. Sorry Bobby.
Things improve by around 98th Street. At this point I can actually take the camera from the bag.
Left, looking downtown to money. Right looking back on Harlem.
We turn West around 86th Street to Central Park. Mainly full of well of white men and women jogging and younger folk enjoying the sunny weather. The Harlem locals don’t seem to be around here.
There’s a jazz band on who are pretty good. I’m not sure why but there’s also statues of Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott.
We then pass down, through Times Square and walk down 5th Avenue, open today for a market.
Hungry, we make for 1st and 6th. It’s supposed to be rife with vegetarian restaurants in the East Village. It is. We eat at “counter”. Excellent food. Note the view from the restaurant.
Refreshed, we catch the metro to Grand Central Station.
Back to the hotel we recover from a long day’s walking and return to the East Village. This time it’s Indian food. We run a gauntlet of establishments offering three course meals for $10 of “finest quality” and land at Haveli on 2nd Avenue.
Yes, it costs more than $10, so we know the food will be better than the local average. It is (except for Therese’s over creamy matter paneer).
Tags: america 2010, central park, counter, grand central station, harlem, haveli, indian, midtown, new york, spanish harlem, times square, uptown, vegetarian, vegeterian new york
Eight hours of fun.
Yes, we did book vegetarian. No we don’t eat fish. Yes, the contact centre had our details and we booked in May. No, we don’t want another bag of pretzels.
Almost there. We probably had an hour’s sleep at best on the flight. Thanks to the multiple runways at Dulles, we land almost in parallel with another plane.
A huge wait at Border control … around an hour. The guard says it’s normally worse than this … and he’s serious. No photo’s of that, obviously. I like rubber gloves outside my trousers.
Bus and metro and we’re in the deliciously named “Foggy Bottom” , our home for the next 3 day.
Tags: foggy bottom., lufthansa, pretzels, vegetarian, washington
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