Afternoon Tea at Les Deux Salons

I decided to try the Afternoon Tea at Les Deux Salons because it is one of my favourite restaurants, and because they give afternoon tea a fair amount of prominence on their website and outside the restaurant.

The ambience at LDS is wonderful – they really make the most of the building and it is always a delight to be there. The welcome is always friendly – it’s just a very nice place to be.

Afternoon Tea, however, is a mixed bag. I’ll start with the good points:

The sandwiches: these were fresh and delicious, and although they mostly stuck to the classic fillings, my friend was pleasantly surprised to find mustard mayo on the salmon one, which we both thought was a great innovation.

The pastries: LDS is, of course, a French restaurant, so the pastries and tarts were absolutely spot-on. We were served delicate hazelnut and lemon meringue tarts and an apple pastry all of which were light, the right side of sweet and gorgeous to look at.

The mousses: pistachio mousse layered on a dark chocolate ganache was a dream, as was the light trifle: jellied fruits topped with sherry cream. Wonderful!

Now, I’m afraid, we must address the bad:

The tea: The quality of the tea was good, however, it was poorly served. Our tea was poured for us as soon as it reached the table – and of course it was very weak and unpalatable. Clearly they haven’t trained their staff to know that tea needs to steep.

The scones: We were very excited about the scones because they LOOKED perfect. Large, craggy and dusted with icing sugar. However, they were STALE. They crumbled under the knife, and even washed down with tea we didn’t feel like finishing them.

The cakes: I suspect that LDS just doesn’t have kitchen staff that are comfortable with cake. Like the scones, the two cakes we were served were stale, hard and unpleasant – most likely due to overbaking by cooks more used to pastry.

All in all, I would give LDS a 2.5/5 for its afternoon tea. However, I must state that this is an excellent restaurant – go there for lunch or dinner, but skip the dessert.

Afternoon tea at the Athenaeum Hotel, Mayfair

Food: 5/5

Service: 5/5

Ambience: 5/5

At a glance: generous, friendly, special

I have been to the Athenaeum for tea before, in 2009, and I remember being very impressed. So, it was some trepidation that I decided to return – always worrying that in the intervening two years they would somehow have lowered their standards. Happily not so!

One of the things I love best about the Athenaeum is that they staff are attentive, but not pushy. You can stroll into the foyer and take a seat without being asked why you are there, and everyone greets you with a genuine smile.

We took the Honey Tea, which at £39 is the deluxe package – I would recommend it over the standard tea if you like honey, alcohol and chocolate, but otherwise the Evergreen Tea is splendid.

The first step, of course, was to choose the tea. I had Margaret Hope Darjeeling which had a beautiful, floral, honeyed flavour and complemented the rest of the goodies perfectly. 

Next, came the “honey sandwiches”. The tea comes with honey roasted ham sandwiches and seeded rolls filled with goat’s cheese and onion caramelised in honey. However, they very kindly substituted half the ham ones for chicken because my friend doesn’t eat pork. She pronounced them the best chicken sandwiches she has ever had!

The finger sandwiches were generous in size and the seeded rolls substantial, but after the honey sandwiches, they bring you a platter of the standard afternoon tea sandwiches (cucumber, egg and cress, ham and two kinds of salmon) to choose from. The cucumber sandwiches were particularly impressive as they were served on pesto bread – a delicious combination which I shall consider when making my own afternoon teas. 

The sandwiches were followed by hot crumpets and warm scones (plain, but flavoured with orange blossom) served with bowls of jam, honey and clotted cream as well as butter. My only criticism would be that the jam was rather runny and slid of the scones, but otherwise it was all lovely – the crumpets were toasted to perfection, hot and crispy.

At this point, I was quite satisfied and what we’d had already qualified as a substantial tea. But. Next came the cakes! We were brought a glass of honey-infused Champagne each and a large platter of cakes. I was worried the bubbly would be oversweet, but it was merely floral, with a taste and odour of rose petal. The cakes were magnificent: chocolate millefeuille, honey cake, elderflower jelly, lavender macarons, chocolate and honeycomb marquis, honey cheesecake. I managed to try the millefeuille, jelly and macaron and then our waitress came back and offered to pack up our leftovers, which was very welcome.

I would definitely rank the Athenaeum as one of my top two afternoon tea experiences. It’s perfect for a group of friends or a low-key “occasion” treat as the atmosphere is relaxed, but the food is traditional, generous and served expertly. You can also call in advance for a birthday plate and they will pipe a message in chocolate.  I recommend going for one of the later sittings (after 4.30) as they allow you to linger as long as you please. 

Film Review: Black Swan

Rating: 3/5

It may have won a clutch of awards, and may be on track to scoop a few more, but Black Swan is decidedly more camp classic than cinematic art, a film hyped way beyond its stature.

Where the film lets itself down is in the details. From my very brief flirtation with ballet at the age of five, I know that dancers are not permitted to wear jewellery or have their hair down while rehearsing and that huge tattoos are highly unlikely to be seen gracing the shoulders of principal ballerinas. They might also have enlisted a foot-double for Portman – I’ve seen ballet dancer’s feet and they look as though they have been mauled by dogs!

That the film’s central performance has been showered with awards baffles me entirely. Apart from the fact that she is very good at portraying ‘cold’ and ‘unresponsive’ Natalie Portman’s acting leaves the audience with no sense of character whatsoever. This works to her advantage in a film like Closer, but seems to be a disadvantage in Black Swan. If the whole film rests on Nina, then her characterlessness makes the entire film insubstantial. She also seems to have trouble speaking, as if she doesn’t know what to do with her tongue, and this can be very distracting.

Aronofsky's strategy for avoiding film cliche's related to madness, is to avoid subtlety altogether. This is jarring for the viewer, accustomed to more regular representations, but not necessarily a bad thing. The film is best where it is most ludicrous, which is also where it is violent. The scenes that stick in the brain involve blood, smashed fingers, broken bones and mutilation - the gruesome, gory side always reined in enough not to disgust. The sexual content seems set up to have the same effect, but fails.

Mila Kunis, while very good, is almost annoyingly stereotypical in her role as the ‘bad Californian girl’ who likes sex and cheeseburgers, takes drugs, and wears a lot of black. I feel sorry for her: one feels she could have done so much more with the role if the director weren’t so hell-bent on abandoning subtlety in favour of caricature.

Much has been made of Winona’s Ryder’s ‘supporting role’ and while the moment when she plunges a nail file into her face is one of the film’s most startling moments, she really has little more than a cameo. Far more substantial, and chilling, is Barbara Hershey as the chilling, obsessive stage mother who keeps her adult daughter in a little girl’s room, confined to an apartment where there is no privacy.

The ending, I felt, was lazy. In fact, the final scene is such a mirror of the ending of The Wrestler that I was almost annoyed.

And yet…and yet…for all its cartoonish excess, the film is enjoyable. I laughed out loud (something I rarely do) in several places, and jumped in others. I feel the hype around the film may have drawn in the wrong audience – I derived much the same pleasure from Black Swan (aged 30) that I did from Scream (aged 16) and I somehow feel the two should be watched in the same spirit, by fun-loving people looking for a few laughs and a few thrills.

Pub Food at the Sir Richard Steele, NW3

Address:  97 Haverstock Hill NW3 4RL

Cost: £9.95 for a full roast

Rating: 4/5

At the point of ordering a pub roast, the diner has usually already resigned him- or herself to something cheap and substandard swimming in watered-down Bisto and is hoping only that the portions won’t be too stingy. And so, it’s always good to discover a pub that bucks against the stereotype and produces a meal generous enough and edible enough to make one wish they served desserts.

I usually take my occasional Sunday roasts at the Crown and Two Chairmen in Soho, but since happily discovering it during a wander up Haverstock Hill I have been installing myself at the Sir Richard Steele for drinks and knitting on Sunday afternoons. The atmosphere is friendly and relaxed; young trendies mix with families and Old Men. The music is usually rather good, too.

The pub usually serves Thai food, which is yummy, though the portions are more lunch-sized than dinner-worthy. For post-drinking hunger I’d advise nipping next door to Oliver’s chip shop or two doors down to the local Chinese takeaway.

My previous Sunday jaunt involved many pints and several portions of chunky chips. Yesterday, we decided to do it properly and order a roast.

The menu offers beef, chicken and nut, which disappointed one of my friends who was hoping for pork. I do wish pubs would stop trying to convince their customers that roast chicken is part of the tradition – any real food lover will insist on beef, pork or lamb, surely?

I ordered the nut roast, which was excellent – very moist with a variety of different nuts, plus puy lentils. The portions were generous, too and I definitely appreciated the homemade Yorkshire pudding, and decent gravy. The vegetables sat carefully on the delicate line between too crunchy and overcooked and there were plenty of them: carrots, parsnips, Brussels sprouts and savoy cabbage. Washed down with a pint of Rum Cask Cider, it was a very satisfactory meal, though not quite enough to turn my allegiance from Soho.  

Film Review: Burlesque (2010)

Rating: 3/5

Burlesque is not the sort of movie I generally expect to enjoy. The whole point of shooting it seems to have been to provide Christina Aguilera with a movie vehicle, and her music is not generally to my taste.

And yet…I did enjoy it. The exuberance and spectacle of the musical numbers carries the audience along; the story is so light you can’t really be annoyed by it; the characters are so familiar they don’t interest anyone and the upside of that is they don’t annoy anyone, either.

Christina Aguilera may be the *star* but it’s Cher who gives the only thing resembling an acting performance as club spiky club owner Tess. In fact, it’s also Cher who has the most memorable song and dance number – the club opener, Welcome to Burlesque.

Aguilera is the weak link in the film: the woman cannot act, and neither can her love interest, Cam Gigandet. Their scenes together are especially painful: Gigandet grimaces through his lines and whenever Aguilera feels the scene requires more than simply delivering her lines, she alternates between pouting, pushing her sizeable bosom at the camera or swinging her backside. It’s excruciating…but somehow manages to be hilariously campy more than anything else. How the crew members kept straight faces is beyond me.

At Burlesque, the audience learns, every dancer needs a  gay friend she can rely on to pick up the pieces when things get rough. Cher has promiscuous Sean, played by Stanley Tucci, the club’s dresser who can’t remember the names of the men he goes home with, presumably because all his sensitivity and mental energy  is spent on providing Tess with unlimited support and sharp quips. Ali initially thinks Jack (Cam Gigandet) will perform the same role for her. But, lo! He turns out to be straight so instead of using him for free accommodation she starts paying rent and falls in love with him. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this portrayal of gay men or male/female friendships. But this is not a movie to which one goes looking for truth or profundity.  

Other familiar faces making brief contributions are Peter Gallagher (suitable seedy as Tess’s loser ex, Vince) and Alan Cumming who has little more than a cameo as the club’s doorman. He also has a routine, a filthy homage to Cabaret’s Two Ladies. Kristen Bell is also fun as Ali’s ubiquitous bitchy rival.

As a musical fan, I enjoyed all the song and dance, especially towards the start of the film. Aguilera also acted in a music production role on the film and her influence is to the detriment of the movie’s second half – once Ali becomes the club’s star, fun, rousing numbers and dance routines give way to songs which bear far to much resemblance to hits like Dirrty and Candy Man. This seemed a bit foolish to me, since she presumably took on the movie role in an attempt to show some breadth of talent. Also, whoever thought it was a good idea to put the word ‘burlesque’ into the title of every single song needs a sound beating.

As for the script…while admittedly cheesy it has at least been written by someone with above average literacy. I rather liked the line ‘Liberated perhaps. Libated, definitely.’

In short, a guilty pleasure, to be enjoyed with popcorn, marshmallows and low expectations.  The sort of film you don’t buy on DVD, but watch whenever it comes on TV.

Music review: Christmas Concert at Cathédrale Saint-Pierre, Geneva (25 December 2010)

• Saint-Pierre-Fusterie Orchestra
• Jean-Claude Picard, conductor
• Zéphyrin Rey-Bellet, cello

Programme

1. Beethoven – Overture to Coriolanus
2. Tchaikovsky – Variations on a rococo theme op. 33
3. Cherubini – Symphony in D major

I have a real issue with people who open concerts with Beethoven. They seem not to realise the power of his sounds!! Beethoven’s music is so impressive, it sticks so firmly in one’s mind and ears, that I feel I always need at least an interval before I can take in any other music. In this case, the Overture to Coriolanus was so intensely superb, so rousing, so moving that by the time I’d ‘come down’ from the experience, the orchestra was already into the second movement of the Tchaikovsky variations, which were so pretty that I was immediately sad to have missed the first one.

The Cherubini more or less washed over me: it had a few interesting crescendos but nothing thrilling when compared all that went before it. It was just ‘ok’ and I could easily have left, happy, after the variations.
Four stars for the orchestra, three for the programme planning, five for the Beethoven, four for Tchaikovsky, three for Cherubini…a 3.8 overall.

Film Review: Another Year

4/5

I finally got round to seeing the latest Mike Leigh film – after more than a month of dillying and dallying and people letting me down and the weather being too cold for me to consider leaving the house.

I thought it an unusually gentle film for Leigh – in tone, it falls somewhere between the (almost) light-hearted Happy-Go-Lucky and his other, heavier films. The film centres on a year in the lives of Tom and Gerri, a sixty-something couple who seem vaguely if not ostentatiously, well-off. Something in the mood of the film made me think of Dylan Thomas’s ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ simply because Tom and Gerri seem to be doing the opposite, advancing gently and happily towards old age. At one point, sitting in bed, Tom observes to Gerri that ‘We’ll be part of History, soon,’ and it is not said sadly or regretfully, but rather contentedly, a statement of something that should be.

All of the cringeworthy observation and tragedy of this film is centres on Mary, Gerri’s colleague and co-worker for twenty years. Mary is divorced, now single, lives in rented accommodation, likes to drink a bit more than she should and wears her emotional need on her sleeve. She is desperate for change, for a man, for love and excitement, but the men she likes never look her way and the changes she makes quickly turn to disasters. Played brilliantly by Lesley Manville, who slurs and jerks and weeps her way through the film rather brilliantly, Mary is not simply grotesque, but makes uncomfortable watching throughout.

David Cox (Guardian, 9 November 2010) seems to think the portrayal of Mary is rather sexist – a ‘witch-hunt’ in fact, for ‘the mature single woman…deviant, desperate and pathetic.’ I disagree because Mary has a male counterpart in the film in the shape of Tom and Gerri’s long-time friend, Ken. Single, overweight, alcoholic, surpassed in his job by younger men, left out of office social events and living far away from his remaining (and partnered) friends, Ken is truly isolated and is portrayed as being as much of a disaster area as Mary.

The key difference between the two lies not in how the other characters react to them but in how they see themselves. Ken, bewildered by the way the world has changed around him, has no illusions about himself and makes advances to Mary because he recognises her as being in a similar situation. Mary, on the other hand, fails to see herself as she is and this leads to many of her problems. Failing to realise her alcohol problem, she buys a car and drives drunk all over London. Failing to realise that his good humour with her is polite friendliness, she tries to get closer to Tom and Gerri’s son, Joe, by suggesting they go for a drink. However, it’s worth pointing out that the ‘crime’ which leads to the damaging of her friendship with Gerri is not, as Cox suggests, her daring to desire a younger man, but her inability to face up to the reality of the situation: that he is not interested.

Cox’s argument unravels further when he refers to ‘leftover women…expected to provide tireless but unrecompensed support for people who matter more than them, as babysitters, carers or shoulders to cry on,’ because Mary, more so than her male counterpart, Ken, receives support from Tom and Gerri on a regular basis. She is invited to their home for meals regularly, sometimes stays over, and meets Gerri for after work drinks. I think it is naïve of Cox to suggest that Mary represents all single mature women – after all she’s someone you can ‘smell the crazy’ on from across the room – but if that were the case I’d say the character demonstrates that lonely women can count on a lot more support and nurturing from their friends than men in a similar situation.

A special mention must also go to the scenes set in Derby, which somehow captured it perfectly – even the oddly-shaped mirror in Ronnie’s house was exactly the kind my dad’s parents had in their house in Ripley and the curtains (probably dating from the 1960s) brought back memories of visiting them in the 1980s and wondering why everything had to be so brown. Superb!

Restaurant Review: Joe Allen, Covent Garden

Venue: Joe Allen
Food: 4/5
Wine: 5/5
Service: 5/5
Atmosphere: 5/5

Recommended for: Anyone who enjoys people watching, low lighting, underground dining and friendly buzz while enjoying excellent food.
Hidden away along a rather unprepossessing stretch of Exeter St, lies one of Covent Garden’s most enticing restaurants. The entrance looks like that of a small nightclub or even a Prohibition-era speakeasy, down a small flight of dark stairs into a vibrant bar and dining area. The walls are crammed with theatrical posters and the dark wood interior creates an old-fashioned glamour which I personally can’t resist.

The menu at Joe Allen looks fairly small compared to that of other restaurants, but it is so tantalising that choosing your meal from such a box of delights can be taxing. It took my friend about half an hour to choose what she wanted from the splendid array before us. Our friendly, smiling waitress, though visibly amused, handled the first-timer with aplomb, though she had to return a few times before taking my friend’s order and then again to inform me that said friend had tarried so long the dish I’d ordered was off the menu.

One of the best things about Joe Allen is its excellent and reasonably priced wine list where an entire bottle of wine is hardly more expensive than a main course. We opted for a bottle of Muscadet – a delicious, delicate wine which managed to be wonderfully warming without being in the least soporific.

To start, there was octopus and artichoke salad – tasty and zesty, the octopus springy yet not rubbery and the artichoke well-seasoned but not too oily. I soon forgot it had been my second choice and tucked in, happily.

After a suitable interval we tried chicken with sweet potato and chilli puree and lemon sole which came topped with crunchy grilled asparagus and warm, juicy cherry tomatoes. The fish was well-seasoned and pulled away from the bones nicely – and the accompaniment was a perfectly judged combination of sweet and fresh and sharp flavours. I can’t speak for the chicken, but my friend pronounced it ‘delicious’.

Dessert was a slice of Jack Daniels chocolate cake, so moist it was almost like cheesecake in consistency, and drizzled with both white and dark chocolate sauces. Utterly decadent! The coffee, too, was of an excellent standard – strong without a taste of bitterness.

Our eating done it was time to collect coats and venture back out into London’s snowy streets. Well, it was either that or order another bottle of wine and settle in for the night!