Bleeding Heart Tavern: Another Day, Another Dinner

This time, we find ourselves off Holborn, deep in lawyer-land, at the Bleeding Heart. Of the several properties they own, a friend and I ended up at the Tavern, a place whose proud boast is that it's motto in the 18th century was "drunk for a penny and dead drunk for two pence". Well with an reputation like that to support, why wouldn't you go there? So we did.

Despite being subterranean, the atmosphere was welcoming and brightly lit. And despite being billed as a French restaurant the menu is actually unrelentingly British. I had prawns and avocado to start (and you have to have been brought up in the UK in the 60s & 70s to know what a cliche that is) with fish pie to follow.

Fish pie was great. Large portion, big chunks of fish, hot, tasty and colourful: weapons grade comfort food, in short. Prawns and avocado was exactly as per that description, the prawns though being covered in something a notch above what would have been, 35 years ago, at least, a tasteless and oddly hued cream concoction. Frankly, though, unless you want to try it for the kitsch value, pick something else. It all seemed good. (And no, they didn't charge extra for the bloody bread in this place. A-men.)

My one regret was that I couldn't manage pudding. That apple and rhubarb crumble was calling out to me, but alas I was too stuffed to hear by that stage.

About 40 quid for two people including a couple of drinks. Good food, good value, good choice. Definitely one for the winter.

Frontline Club & Restaurant

Thanks to "I" for pointing me towards frontline, a media club just off Praed Street and a couple of minutes walk from Paddington station. In addition to a members room, the club has a ground-floor restaurant open to non-members.

The space they have created is light, open and modern with high ceilings and exposed brickwork over stripped hardwood floors. In addition to being the restaurant, it also serves as a venue to show iconic photojournalist shots from the past 50 years. These include St. Paul's standing alone through a circle of smoke during the blitz, that classic Eisenstaedt shot of a sailor kissing a girl in Time Square on VJ day and British Soldiers in Belfast in 1971. (More recent shots are also exhibited on the staircase to the bathrooms, taking us right up to date with pictures of the US forces in Iraq.)

Menu is classic British food but brought up to date both in terms of presentation and execution. I started with pea and ham soup which was served hot and steaming in a large, deep bowl. (No nouveau cuisine-sized portions served here. It felt more like dining in the US than a well regarded restaurant in London.) For main course I went for the pork chop served with pan haggerty (aka potatoes dauphinoise) and pork scratchings. Again, good sized portion and well cooked, though the pork was a bit bland I'd have to say the overall dish was good. Others in our party of 7 had duck breast ("excellent") and stuffed pumpkin ("very good"). Puddings covered things like sticky toffee, Queen Mab's (creamy set mousse), ice creams and an excellent cheese plate from Neal's Yard. Alas, I was well past full by that stage so can't opine on any of it but my colleagues all gave them good marks.

Price? About 450 quid including drinks (excellent wine list, too). Not bad for a party our size eating out in central London. And you can also feel good that profits from the restaurant help support the charitable effors of the Frontline Forum.

Gripes? a) they charged for the bread they brought out, albeit at 50 pence a portion. Why?? b) the waitress didn't mention the specials at all, one of which I heard about from a server at an adjoining table and I would have chosen for my main course (skate). Apart from that, everything was handled well.

Verdict: would definitely go back, and if you are in the area it's a great choice either for business or for "personal eating" (there must be a better phrase than that but my brain is still fogged by jet-lag and the after effects of the wine we managed to sink last night!) It is open all day and quite frankly it's worth visiting just for the photos, let alone the well done, well-priced food.

Room With A View

The vista in question being of one of the twin towers fronting the Paddington station terminus. I seem to have had some luck when checking-in and got a top floor room with a small balcony area outside. The picture above shows the principal view.

Room rate? North of $600 per night ... and that's by no means the most expensive hotel round here, not by a long chalk. We booked way-late and ended up with very few options. Good job the air fares were cheap because in terms of accommodation this is fast becoming a seriously pricey option. (Just to set the context, around the corner in W2, an 800 sq foot flat is listed for a little over $1m, and this is in Bayswater for heaven's sake! As BAR pointed out last week, in a more desireable area like Chelsea you can easily pay double that.)

Gutted ... But Still Hopeful

Blitzen' Benz

I was hoping here to be celebrating the first British Formula 1 world champion since Damon Hill clinched it in 1996, but alas it was not to be - at least, not yet.

Lewis Hamilton had a shot at clinching the championship in the penultimate race, in Shanghai, early this morning. Alas, he slid off trying to make the last corner before reaching the pit-lane. He'd stayed out too long on worn tyres and that, combined with very slippery conditions, meant his hopes were dashed as his car ended up stuck in the gravel trap.

He still leads the points total for the year and so nevertheless goes into the last race in a strong position, but it would have been a fitting end to a quite remarkable year to see him wrap it up with one race still to go.

Fingers crossed that in Brazil in two weeks time he can still lift the driver's title for himself and Mercedes McLaren, thereby becoming not just the youngest champion ever but also the only driver to come out on top in his first year in F1. And if you get the chance and want to see what the fuss is all about, just watch his final qualifying lap for Shanghai. A quite astonishing performance, seemingly effortless but yet completely focused. It's no exaggeration to say that Hamilton is the first modern-era driver I've seen who could realistically be compared with Ayrton Senna.

Off Again

Travelling back to Europe again, this time to London for a couple of days of senior staff meetings followed by prospect visits in London and Cambridge.

Flying United this time, partly to try and keep at Premier Executive level and partly because they had the best prices (less than $900 return).

Looking forward to being home again for a while, especially as it requires staying in London.

Given the barely-credible level of house prices in the more desirable areas then I may never be able to afford to live there again, but at least I can enjoy visiting at someone else's expense.

All Hands, No Deck

Yeah, well, I suppose it was inevitable. Once we'd had the necessary work done to repair the deck on one side of the house following our termite problem already discussed, it was always on the cards that it would serve merely to show just how awful the rest of the decking on the house was. And lo, it came to pass.

For the price of a high end, very-nicely-loaded-thank-you BMW 3 series, we are now having the remainder replaced too. Yes, yes, I get all the arguments about how it preserves the value of the house and makes it more appealing when you sell, but then to my way of thinking so too would parking that same BMW in the driveway and throwing it in the with sale. Such logic, alas, doesn't seem to be universally appreciated so a new deck it is then, dear.

Caution? More like a bloody great wealth warning!

The Winner Is ...

Fancy a dance around your handbag, luv?

"I" wins again! Nice one.

Patter Of Tiny Paws

Bachi The Dog

Actually, not so tiny.

Yup, we have a new addition to the family: he's about 6 months old and came from a rescue facility south east from us in California's central valley. Judging by the size of those paws then he has some growing yet to do so we're not exactly sure how big he will get, just that he'll get, well, bigger. Meanwhile, he has enough puppy-energy on tap to power the entire neighbourhood if only you could find a way to harness it. Shadow, the other dog, is having to deal with both that energy surplus and indeed the whole "rebellious youngster in the house" thing. While he's happy to play along some of the time you can see him reach the limit of his tolerance, quickly followed by a bit of the old alpha dog dominance kicking-in as he takes back control and puts Bachi back into his proper - i.e. lowly - ranking in the pack hierarchy! Doubtless, they will figure it all out between them over time but meanwhile it makes for the odd incident of scrapping dogs in the house. Probably good to keep the decent china out of the way for a while, then!

Don't Try This At Home

It's been one of those days where the sky falls around your ears without any warning clap of thunder or gathering of clouds to give you advanced notice of what's about to happen.

A senior level manager at a large electronics company that's a customer of ours found a case study on our web site that related to his group, and promptly went ballistic. Turns out, though, that we created this piece based on information contained within an academic white paper that they had agreed to allow to be published. However, we didn't get their permission to release that same basic information as the basis for a marketing piece about the customer concerned, and that's what caused this to go pear-shaped.

It's one thing to have theoretical right on your side - the paper is public, therefore the data is public after all - but the mistake we made was to then take that state of affairs and infer from it that we could reuse the information in anyway we wanted without the customer raising a red flag. Demerit points to marketing for taking a unilateral decision on this one, but it's also on my head to ensure that such things are done properly and done right. Mea culpa.

We'll get through it, but creating additional rods for our collective backs isn't what we need at this point in the year. Somehow, it's the self-inflicted wounds that sting the most!

Told You So ...

It's official: eBay's purchase of Skype was a bust. Well, if not exactly a bust, the fact that they have written off some $1.4 billion makes it a half-bust at least (isn't a half-bust, a breast?) Additionally, the CEO, Zennstrom, gets the boot and they apparently negotiated a one-third pay out of the incentives part of the deal, but declined to reveal whether or not that was justified by the obviously-disappointing results.

What were they thinking? Indeed, was any thinking involved? Since when does anyone with half a brain believe the financial projections of a start-up for crissakes? Oh, except VCs, of course, who if they stopped believing the insanely-optimistic projections of those pitching to them would suddenly realise how close to the edge they were in fact standing.

Upshot? Don't expect Mystic (not) Meg over at eBay to be doing any Web 2.0 acquisitions in order to grab "eyeballs" any time soon! And someone, somewhere inside eBay will be looking for a job for even daring to think this made sense.