French simplicity adds a new twist to London's restaurant scene

Traditionally, French cuisine in London goes hand-in-hand with formality.  White table cloths, stiff waiters, stiffer prices.  Even brasserie-inspired spots like Mon Plaisir in Covent Garden or La Brasserie on Brompton road have a showy style and a serious approach that says "you are eating the finest cuisine in the world, approach with respect."

In my experience, only one spot avoided this trap:  La Bouchee on Old Brompton Road.  (Near the Lycee Francais, long a favourite of the French expat community.)  A new trend in gastropub-style French spots is following La Bouchee, offering short menus of traditional classics, well-prepared and pleasantly plated, on scrubbed wooden tables in casual, simple rooms.

Proof point No. 1:  Antidote.  It's a bare-bones wine bar down a quiet lane just off Carnaby Street.  Fully staffed by French expats and introduced to me by the new French account executive at one of my agencies, it has an authenticity that reminds me of cozy spots we discovered on holiday in Burgundy.

The menu is seasonal and heavy on imported, regional French ingredients.  I started with scallops with chestnuts and confit chicken wing; the nuts were a surprising but excellent match with the shellfish.  On to Gascony black pork with apricots and soft polenta.  The pork was a bit fatty for my taste ... I suspect it should have been slow cooked longer to render it out ... but the combo of sharp, sweet fruit with smooth, buttery starch was well-judged.  Dessert was a dark chocolate mousse in decidedly un-gourmet proportions; so rich I left half of one of the two hefty quenelles.

They're quite proud of their wine list here, which is heavy on organics and small vineyards.  We let the wine waiter recommend something interesting and ended up with one of those classic French bottles that pairs well with the food but isn't very palatable on its own.  (We should have known what we were in for when the wine list said:  "This wine will not leave you indifferent.")  The white Julien Courtois "Originel", from Solonge in the Loire Valley was 80% menu pineau, 20% romorantin, and so musky with farmyard scents we had to ask the waiter if it was corked.  Had he tasted it?  Yes, and it was as it should be.  I thought he was pulling one over on us until I tasted it with the pork.  Excellent.  But I wouldn't do it again.  I want wine that's more than a condiment.

Prices are £6 to £8 for starters and £13 to £18 for mains, which is cheaper than the more traditional French menus though certainly not a steal.  A quirky, quality spot in a part of town that's increasingly dominated by chains.

Proof point No. 2:  The Green Man & French Horn on St. Martins Lane.  Like Antidote, this is a one-of-a-kind spot in a high traffic tourist area awash with chain restaurants.  It shares the casual feel, organics-heavy wine list and the authentic French approach.  (Though the angle here is that it's all specifically about the Loire Valley.)  In fact, they're so close in style you could be forgiven for thinking they share ownership.  No.  The Man & Horn does have a sister restaurant, but it's nearby Terroirs, the experiment in French tapas we visited in April.

If you're eating, rather than just out for a good by-the-glass wine list with some nibbles, this is a more fulfilling experience than Terroirs.  Though probably a bit more expensive, and less congenial, than Antidote.  While both cram as many tables as they can into a small space, The Man & Horn squishes the most.  Five of us were around a table that would have been a bit cramped even for four, jammed against a wall and across from the stairs to the wine cellar.

The food here has a narrow edge on Antidote, however.  My Jerusalem artichoke soup managed to be both delicate and full flavoured, while the pork rillette brought grins of deep satisfaction to the boys at the table.  No wine experimentation with this lunch:  we went for a pleasingly floral Sancerre that worked beautifully with both the starters and an amazing poached pear, which sat on a pool of salted carmel and had been injected with cream in the cavity left when it had been cored which didn't reveal itself until you plunged your spoon in.  A neat trick.  In between, there was a rich and hearty red (the label of which escaped my notice), partridge for some and beef for others.  Like sister restaurant Terroirs, this place has a deeply-local French wine list with a lot of options by the glass or carafe.

Both Antidote and The Green Man & French Horn are welcome additions to the restaurant scene in London.  We have plenty of haut cuisine, and plenty of spots that feel like affluent Parisian bistros.  But not the kind of homely places I'd enjoyed in the countryside.  These deliver on that simpler ethos, though when you emerge you'll have a trudge back to the tube rather than a saunter along some lovely canal.  C'est la vie.

'Tis the season to be merry. Exceptionally.

The Christmas open house and official house warming party is finished.

We met the majority of our house decorating deadlines.  The holiday decorations are up, most of the pictures are hung, we have about half the curtains.  (The rest are promised before Christmas itself.)  The dog has a holiday outfit.  We baked a ham.  We baked a cake.  We mulled wine.  Boy, did we mull wine.

As our special Christmas gift to you, here's the recipe for Piers' glogg.  That's Danish mulled wine.  Ever been to a fraternity party?  This is like that innocent tasting, fast-acting punch that put you on the dance floor in one, the couch in two and under a table in three.  Except done with holiday spices and served in cozy mugs.

1 bottle red wine
1 bottle port
1/2 bottle Danish snapps (akvavit)
100 millileters kirsch
200g raisins
100g flaked almonds
3 cardamom pods
3 cinnamon sticks
1 tbs cloves
lemon peel
sugar to taste

Macerate the fruit in the red wine and port for several hours first.  Then mix the rest and put over slow heat for at least an hour.  This burns off the harshest of the alcohol and leaves something that's sweet, mellow ... and toxic.  Enjoy.

You may not be able to go home again, but your stuff can follow you

A life in nine boxes and six pieces of furniture.

The chandelier in its original setting, circa 1965

After nearly two years of sorting my mother's estate, that's all that was left.  Collected from a storage unit in Kirkwood, shipped slowly trans-Atlantic, held up for three weeks by zealous customs officers in Felixstowe, driven cross country and finally unloaded by a couple of brawny lads in less than half an hour.

Finally, alone with my stuff and a packing knife, I started unwrapping the past, and was confronted with the folly of memory.  For little was as I recalled.

In the cold light of a new house, pieces of furniture that I remembered as beautiful and imposing were underwhelming.  The grandfather clock is a lot smaller than I thought (a grandmother, really), and the wood on that chest of drawers is in horrible shape.  The upholstery on great aunt Lucille's French chairs is badly stained.  I'd never noticed any of this in St. Louis.  Could I have bought better quality stuff at antique shops over here for less than the cost of the shipping?  Quite possibly.

The chandelier moves to my childhood home.

With more silver than we can already use at the average dinner party, all the badly tarnished plate in those boxes left me wondering why I bothered keeping them.  How about my original Macintosh ... the first ever, 512k, 1985.  My dog Windsor's collar and tags ... the only thing on this precariously emotional day that actually sparked tears; I had forgotten I'd kept them.  And that pile of high school yearbooks?  (In my defence, I'm not just IN the yearbooks ... I edited them.)  All these items are here more because I couldn't bear to throw them away than because I wanted to keep them.

But there are a few treasures that justified the shipment.  The bronze Buddha family legend says came from one of my grandfather's patients who'd "liberated" it during the Boxer Rebellion.  (Must get that to the Antiques Roadshow someday.)  Also on the bronze front, the original sculpture of my mother's last golden retriever, heads captured at six, nine and 12 months.  The oil painting of the autumnal riverbank in its outrageously Baroque gold frame.  And best value for money: the chandelier.

The chandelier in place in the Bencard dining room.

Doing a cold calculation, I figure the exercise paid for itself on this one item, as buying anything equivalent would have cost more than the cost of the whole shipment.  The elegant, classic, six-armed crystal piece has hung in my grandparent's house in Bellerive Acres, then my family home in Chesterfield, and now England.  So many Christmas dinners under it, and more to come.  A financial deal, but more than that, memory, tradition and continuity.

Because those are really why we save things.  These weren't boxes of stuff, they were boxes of memory.  A collection of things that tie me to the past, and that childhood home to which I can never return.

First trip to Annecy sharpens my taste buds for the French Alps

Way back when I was lamenting the departure of my friends Cora and Didier from the UK (and the cost of their 2-Michelin starred farewell dinner), I couldn't have predicted all the fun I'd have visiting them in Luxembourg in the years to come.  Many blog entries attest to what followed.  Now, they've moved to France, and I'm ready for fun.  I still miss my friends being right up the road, but as long as they keep moving to fantastic weekend destinations, I'll cope.

My new part of the world to explore:  Annecy.

It's a picturesque French town on the northern tip of an eponymous Alpine lake, with all the scenery you'd expect.  Deep, crystal clear waters.  Bike paths, promenades, gardens and marinas around the lake.  A ring of craggy mountains.  Alpine chalets, meadows and church steeples.  And, because it's just over 20 miles from Geneva, tasteful suburban villages (we were in one of these) populated by prosperous white collar commuters who can't face the extortionate property prices in Switzerland.

With its water sports, walking, sumptuous scenery and fairly dependable summer weather, Lake Annecy is a well-known holiday destination in warmer months.  But I can't imagine a better introduction to any Alpine setting than at Christmas time.  The mountains were snow covered, the town decked in tasteful Christmas decorations.  It was the first weekend of their Christmas market, and vendors were just setting up their traditional wooden chalets with tempting displays of jewellery, crafts, gingerbread, candles, mulled wine and luxury food items.

The Old Town spreads for about half a mile around where the river, Le Thiou, runs into the lake.  The castle of the Counts of Geneva (this was once their base, and a much more significant spot than Geneva itself) sits on a hill.  A warren of four or five particularly charming streets winds beneath it.  The architecture mixes everything from Medieval to 19th century in a tasteful melange that makes most views postcard-worthy.  Especially when you catch a snowy mountain peak in the background.  And unlike the English high street, the shops here tend to still be individually owned.  There are plenty of galleries and unusual boutiques, like the store selling highly-scented, hand-made soaps created by a corporate exec who cashed in and retired to a gentler form of life.

Walk more than 10 minutes, however, and you're into humourless, brutal concrete architecture of the 20th century.  We wandered down this way as it's where the city had set up the Christmas skating rink and the food court.  You can forget architecture when you're watching happy children while sipping mulled wine and eating a fried foie gras sandwich.  Yes, foie gras as street food.  Only in France.

But beyond the Christmas season, once you've wandered the Old Town the appeal is very obviously the lake.  19th-century gardens radiate back from the town hall into the lake, offering stunning views.  There are bicycle and walking paths all the way around.  Our brisk trudge along icy gravel, looking out at misty views, was beautiful despite the chill, but I can imagine going for hours in nice weather.

In addition to sightseeing potential, Cora and Didier have also kept up the culinary standards in their latest move.  Native cuisine is hearty mountain fare, dominated by the happy cows that munch all that Alpine meadow grass.  Thus steaks, fondue and raclette all feature prominently on menus.

Our most delightful meal was in a tiny, family run spot in Cora and Didier's village.  They didn't even have a sign, and from the outside it looked like just another house.  Limiting it pretty much to locals who are all on a first name basis with the owner/cook and her assistant, who specialise in fondues and cheese-laden pizzas made fresh in the wood-fired oven in the centre of the dining room.  I'm confident we'll be back, though I must remember to ask them to halve the cheese if I get pizza again.  (My husband and Didier, meanwhile, devoured a sizeable vat of bubbling fondue between them with ease.)  God help any lactose-intolerant visitor to this region.

Our most elegant meal was in the Brasserie St. Maurice in the Old Town.  Its ground floor is deceptive, looking like little more than a humble bar, but head upstairs for white tablecloths, cozy stone walls, mirrors and elegant cuisine.  Our best view, Le Bistrot du Port, occupying a purpose-built modern building with a boathouse feel right on the water.  Great atmosphere and unusually large portion sizes make this a fine spot for big, boisterous family gatherings.

Not a bad start for a weekend visit.  Now that we've had our appetiser, we're eager for the next course.  Getting inside the castle.  A long bike ride along the lake.  The grand Imperial Palace hotel and casino.  Maybe even a little local wine tasting and a visit to a cheese producer or two.  Cora, get researching that, will you?  We'll be back at Easter time.

It's an uneventful, but blessedly sunny, visit to LA

Los Angeles offers enough activity for a doorstop-sized guidebook.  Little of which interested me this trip.

My priorities were family and shopping, with four half-days of work woven in to extend my time on the ground.  I did nothing that was new, and little that would be of interest to the average tourist.  So, rather than proper blog entries, here's a roundup of some random, brief observations.

• I had forgotten just how football dominated Thanksgiving is.  Celebrating the holiday for years overseas, for me it's a sophisticated dinner party with dear friends, built around a discussion of how good our lives are.  Back in the country of my birth, it was about people drifting back and forth from the buffet at the golf club, bolting down food in between long stretches of sport on a jumbo-screen TV.  Yuk.  The highlight was heading to the cinema for the fabulous Argo that evening.  I'll take my adapted holiday on foreign soil.

• Sport might have made my holiday tedious, but it's turning my nephews into good little lads.  Their father, who was sports-mad himself, believes that athletic endeavour keeps kids on the straight and narrow, teaches responsibility and teamwork, and gives them a sense of goal and purpose.  His philosophy seems to be working, and American life offers enough options to involve them seven days a week.  Though I worry they'll end up one-dimensional. I was reading the 7-year-old a fabulous, interactive iPad version of The Wind in the Willows, but he still had to play football on his own iPad at the same time.  I guess the multi-tasking is good, but it sure is a different world from my own childhood.

• You don't have to get up at the crack of dawn for Black Friday deals.  Wandering to South Coast Plaza by noon was sufficient, and was the first of multiple days of shopping that topped up my wardrobe and started the fulfilment of the Christmas list.  Nothing exotic for me.  Macy's, Old Navy, Wal Mart and Trader Joe's accomplished all I needed.  Rather amazed at how Asian the mall now is.  I'm not talking Californians of Asian descent, but throngs of Chinese-speaking 20-somethings wielding shopping bags from the most expensive brands.  Welcome to the new economy.

• We only headed in to downtown LA once, to Little Tokyo for sushi.  It's an odd place, not particularly picturesque and just one street over from one of the most crowded skid rows I've ever seen.  I wouldn't have wanted to be here without a local; too easy to stray into danger.  It's an L-shaped outdoor mall lined with restaurants and shops, with a Japanese-style tower in the middle and a public karaoke stage at the centre.  It wasn't the best sushi I've ever had, but by far the biggest rolls.

• The Palos Verdes peninsula remains one of the most beautiful places in the States.  Winding streets, lined with palms, bougainvillea and other exotic flowers, wandering past ever more exquisite houses.  There are faux French chateau, cutting edge modern architecture and, most often, a Mediterranean palace style that resembles the set of some Errol Flynn pirate flick.  If family holidays had been less stressful, I might have noticed this as a child and wanted to live there.

This visit was trouble free, however, thus allowed me to appreciate all that tropical beauty as I headed back to LAX.  One day, it was hot and sunny.  48 hours later, I was pulling on snow boots in the French Alps.  That's the kind of November it's been.

Bocelli's a pleasant night out, but he's best as background music

We were lucky enough to get a last minute invitation to Andrea Bocelli's London performance at the 02 last night, thus finding ourselves in the rather odd world of opera cross-over.

We do, of course, attend more "proper" opera than the vast majority of the population, so the classical tenor's repertoire is familiar.  Classical music in a venue better suited for rock concerts is not.  While the space gives plenty of fans a chance to dip into a live performance, and certainly makes Signore Bocelli a load of cash, it's probably not the best format to show off his talents.

Bocelli's voice is sweet and generally pure, though rarely very strong.  Serious opera fans have criticised him for years and, while I'm not nearly as negative as that gang, hearing an ad for Rolando Villazon's new album the next morning reminded me of the vast difference between the essentially "easy listening" Bocelli and proper operatic stars.

In fact, I think Bocelli is at his best with his European pop stuff, like Vivere, Con te Partiro or Besame Mucho.  Certainly, I suspect that's what most of the audience knows.  Thus I found it a bit puzzling that his programme avoided much of that.  The first third was resolutely operatic, difficult and unfamiliar.  There's a reason most of us can't hum anything from Gounod's Romeo and Juliet or Puccini's Manon Lescaut.  It's not what I'd put on the menu for casual opera goers, and I don't think the audience really engaged in this part.  Engagement also wasn't helped by Bocelli's personal style, which is about standing statue-still, singing without much inflection and never engaging the audience in conversation 'til the very end.  (Yes, I know he's blind.  So's Stevie Wonder.  Lack of sight does not prevent movement and charisma.)  It said a lot that the most memorable performance of the first half was his guest soprano's performance of Tosca's vissi d'arte.

Things picked up in the second half, when he rolled into the tenor's classic 19th century folk song repertoire.  O sole mio, funiculi funicula, Grenada, etc.  Bocelli was clearly more comfortable on this territory, and the audience knew the tunes ... everyone started to have more fun.  The high notes, both literal and figurative, came in the encores, when he finally sang a couple of his familiar Italian pop tunes before ending with the inevitable nessun dorma.

It was a pleasant night.  It validated my choice of my Bocelli playlist as a great dinner party soundtrack.  But when the highlight of my evening was seeing the joy and confidence of my colleague's daughter, who helped to produce the show, more than seeing the performer, I know that I'll keep my ticket buying in the opera house in future.

We plough on through our restaurant list, but more dining in our luxury flat is what I'd do next time

Americans in Europe often end up on "ABC trips".  Keen to see all they can and afraid they'll never be back, they jam-pack every day with sightseeing, leading to the sighing fatigue of "another bloody cathedral".

Barcelona could suffer from ABR syndrome.  Another bloody restaurant.

On too many evenings, we were still full from lunch and had no need for another big meal.  Yet our desire to work through our tipped restaurant list won out over our lack of hunger.  So out we went, and more stuffed we became.  But we had a grand old time.

Our most off-the-beaten-track foray was to Bilbao, a resolutely local spot in the Gracia district, about a 15-minute stroll from our hotel.  Two brightly lit rooms, simple wooden tables and cafe chairs, a random smattering of local art on the wall; the place has the look of a neighbourhood spot that's been here for decades.  And, in fact, I'm pretty sure that's what it was.  We were the only English speakers present and, though they had English menus, nobody spoke the lingo.  (Fortunately, Hillary's Spanish is excellent.)

The highlight here was the starter.  A prawn salad where the chilled, cooked shellfish was tossed with endive, small marinated mushrooms, carrots, broad beans and golden raisins, then dressed simply with oil and vinegar.  It sounds like nothing special but was a masterful combination, one so good all three of us were deconstructing it in hopes of reproduction.  Of the mains, I won the lottery with a fillet steak that was about as perfect as they come.  A brown, hot exterior crusted with sea salt, a rare interior tender as a baby's kiss.  Served with the inevitable fried green pimientos.  Hillary had lamb, which she reported was average but not a patch on my steak, and Lisa made the mistake of ordering salt cod.  

Mistake, becaue she was thinking of a lovely cod fillet.  Salt cod, much beloved by the Spanish, is slabs of fish that have been preserved by burying them in salt 'til they're essentially fossilised.  You can re-hydrate them with water or milk, and then cook a variety of dishes.  Pre-refrigeration, this is how most Europeans got fish, and the Spaniards have never lost the taste for it.  But the texture is different frm fresh and unless you soak multiple times with changes of liquid, it's inevitably very salty.  If you're expecting fresh fish then, like Lisa, you'll probably be unimpressed.  (Her dish came out cold the first time around, which also didn't help.)

A trendier choice was Alba Granados, one of a string of fashionable spots clustered along a street heaving with prosperous looking young professionals in the Eixample district.  With its wooden floors, white linens and open kitchen behind a glass wall at the back, it felt like New York.  But the menu was all Spanish.  Here, salt cod worked beautifully in a starter of cod puffs; other starters were  green beans and rolled cod with tomato and olive.  Mains:  chorizo and prawns, squid in a cream sauce and tuna.  None were anything exraordinaty, but all very good.  The desserts were the least impressive part of the meal.  Lisa had a chocolate fondue with fruit for dipping (it looked impressive due to the artfully arranged dish, but it's a dead simple dish), I some sort of chocolate brownie thing and Hillary, expecting a cheese platter, got cheesecake.  The most memorable thing about the meal was the wine:  Mauro Valladolid from Castilla & Leon.

Back before meeting up with the girls I did a business dinner at La Gavina, on the port.  With starched white tablecloths, a great view, modern art and foreign waitresses, it was more "international business" than local colour.  My extraordinary steak had the trademark salt crust and fried pimientos, but my dessert of a combination of pastries could have been served in any business class restaurant around the world.  Unsurprisingly, the business setting was matched by business prices and this, though unmemorable, was my most expensive of the trip.

I mentioned in the last entry that on another visit I'd probably do most of my evening meals at home, assuming I was in an apartment rather than a hotel.

This is an interesting choice for European travel and is becoming more common, as almost every major city now seems to have a market of good apartments let on a per-night basis to tourists.  Depending on number of people, this can be cheaper than an equivalent quality hotel.  (That was not the case for us, coming out at around £120 per person per night, but would have been so had our trio been the quartet the place could have slept.)  But whether or not it is, it will always give you more room, plus kitchen and dining facilities that can cut down on dining costs.

We stayed in a two bedroom apartment attached to the Murmuri hotel.  This was undoubtably on the high end, with a generously sized sitting room, dining area, double room, twin bedded room, two bathrooms, galley kitchen and balcony big enough to eat on.  We found a bottle of cava and chocolate covered strawberries waiting for us, thanks to Hillary's membership in the "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" club through which she booked, and a Nespresso machine in the kitchen with enough capsules to get us through morning one and a store nearby to provide extras.

This is the first time I've stayed in an apartment with a hotel affiliation and it adds a welcome bit of pampering.  Like a regular hotel, you get toiletries, cleaning and a helpful front desk, but you're in a quieter apartment building off a side street around the corner from the lobby entrance.  It's a set-up I'll look for in other hotels in the future.

From traditional Cal Pep to cutting edge Monvinic, the food's the thing in Barcelona

Walk under the main arch at Barcelona's Boqueria Market, and you're confronted with serried rows of colourful vegetables of a perfection worthy of a Chelsea Flower Show display.  They're overhung by rows of dried peppers of bewildering variety.  Baskets of exotic mushroom types just harvested from the forest floor sit beside piles of their carefully dried cousins.  Nearby, a fruit vendor's rainbow display offers 15 types of freshly-pressed juice for a euro a glass.

Push on to the meat, where all things porcine take centre stage and vendors smiling out at you from between ranks of cured legs can advise on varieties of ham like a good wine merchant knows his grapes.  Not to be outdone, fat chickens sit next to hanging game birds still in their autumn plumage, just down from a counter selling a dozen different varieties of foie gras.  Prime slabs of beef glisten with a red so healthy you know you could mince any of into a tartare and eat in on the spot.  At the centre of the market, aisles converge in a round circus of fish vendors.  Whole tunas crown the stands, so fresh they're practically flapping their tails.  Name your thickness and the machete-wielding old woman will send you home happy.  Swimming down the mountains of ice below are shoals of every fish you know, and plenty you don't, eyes still gleaming with the memory of life.

Now on to seasoning.  Best quality Spanish saffron glinting like gold from its little plastic boxes.  Whole nutmeg.  Cinammon sticks.  A whole stand devoted to different flavours of sea salt.  Then there's the freshly baked bread, the pastries, the chocolate vendors, the olive oil merchants.  And if it's all too exhausting you can rest and revive at tapas bars sprinkled throughout.

Any gastronaut dropped into this heavenly larder will have one overriding thought:  I want to cook!  And if you don't have access to a kitchen, then it's:  I want to eat!  It's no wonder that people who know Barcelona best say the culture is fine, but it's the food that puts the place on the map.  Start with raw ingredients of this quality, add the creativity and exuberance we felt throughout the city, and magic will happen.

We didn't have a bad meal.  Nor did we have a truly expensive one.  Even at our most prolific, indulging in pre-nosh cava, multiple courses and unrestrained choices from the wine list, our average bill was £50 per person.  (Which, for us, is saying a lot.)

For value for money and a truly local tapas experience, the winner was Cal Pep, at which I got to double dip thanks to both a work dinner and Saturday lunch with the girls.  There's a bar out front serving drinks and little plates, then a low door in the back you'd never know was there opens into a stone-walled, cave-like den with just six to 10 tables, depending on their configuration, below a wine selection on a balcony accessed by ladder.  There are no menus.  Most people are speaking Spanish.  Sit down and eat what you're given, coming in a procession until you beg for mercy or reach dessert.

Here's a typical run.  Start with fried anchovies.  And the bottle of crianza that keeps getting replaced with a fresh one by nuestro amigo Juan.  (Who recognised me from earlier in the week and gave us a table on Saturday, even though we hadn't booked and sailed blithely by all those other folks who were waiting in the bar.)  Then some tuna tartare and croquettes de pollo just out of the fryer.  Back to more fish with a plate of clams, both traditionally shaped and razor, in butter, lemon juice and chopped herbs.  A bit of veg on the side?  A heaping plate of green pimientos, lightly battered and deep fried lest you start feeling healthy.  Next the fried calamari and prawns.  Ready for some beef?  Succulent cubes, browned, crisped and studded with sea salt on the outside but still rare within, surrounded by more pimientos and grilled mushrooms.  Just to clear the palate, some creme caramel before Juan brings big snifters of Spanish brandy to help everything settle.  Lunches don't get much more memorable than that.

Although, oddly, our other top meal was also a mid-day extravaganza.  If Cal Pep is the local's old favourite, Monvinic takes that idea and mixes it up with the hip sensibilities of today's Barcelona.  If Cal Pep is the in place passed along by the locals, Monvinic is the one tipped by international  style magazines.

You pick up the fashionable vibe as soon as you walk in and are greeted by a long gallery: brown cow-hide panelled banquettes with small tables down one side, glass enclosed wine library with funky decanting-bottle light fixtures on the other.  Up a few stairs to a clean, modern space with wooden floors, glass walls and long, communal tables, looking out onto a modern garden of architectural plants, gravel and sculpture.  It's so damned hip all three of us missed the bathrooms the first time past, as they lie behind a flashing band of light I took for modern art, not realising it pointed me to the place I was supposed to wave my hand to make the apparently seamless wooden wall slide back.  The modernity continues at the table, where the wine list comes not as the usual leather-bound tome but as a custom-programmed tablet with search capabilities by varieties, regions and growers, maps, pictures of the makers and wine labels.

All this, of course, would just be so much gimmick if the food and wine weren't up to snuff.  The plates were indeed delicious; tapas, but taken up a gourmet notch.  Pata negra, that finest of jamon iberico made from spoiled pigs who've never tasted anything but naturally foraged black acorns.  Exquisite salt cod.  Venison pate.  Spinach croquetas.  (Quoth Hillary:  It's deep fried creamed spinach.  What's not to like?)  Poached figs with a gorgeous little dollop of something half way between ice and clotted cream.  But, to be honest, my note taking on the food paled in comparison to the attention we paid to the wines.

There's an enormous by-the-glass menu here and the servers know their stuff.  We used the wine list to select round one, got advice on round two and from the third (of six) let our waiter ... whose excellent English came from years in Houston between leaving his native Mexico and ending here ... prescribe the right matches for our food and our individual taste buds.  Thus our tasting list, helpfully printed and presented to each diner with your receipt when you leave, ran to 10 different labels.

We discovered that the Catalans make their sparkling wine with both chardonnay and a local cousin called xarel-lo, which gives the wine a more rounded, biscuity and champagne-like feel than the usual cava.  Hillary loved the mouth-puckering dryness of a white Rioja made with the malvasia grape from Bodegas Abel Mendoza.  I was happier with more xerel-lo, this time still, from Can Rafols dels Caus.  We were all pretty keen on the Crianza from R. Lopez de Heredia.  And, really, we should have taken more notes.  Because I can't tell you much about the rest of the list other than that we loved it all, and it was all so damned local we'll never see it again.

When I go back to Barcelona, I will each lunches out, and cruise the Boqueria for light dinner options to have back at a rented apartment.  With wine picks from Monvinic.  But not this trip.  Operating on the "so many restaurants, so little time" philosophy, and armed with file folders of pre-trip research by Hillary and Lisa, there were dinner picks to be made as well.  So we kept eating.  And drinking.  Carpe diem and all that.

Next entry ... the rest of the restaurant hit parade.

Beyond Gaudi: Gothic quarter and shopping reign

If you've had enough of the architecture of Antoni Gaudi, where next in Barcelona?

The obvious choice is the Gothic Quarter, or Barri Gotic, a warren of old streets dotted with medieval architecture spreading around the cathedral.  Don't expect an architectural gem frozen in one time period like Bruges, or Venice.  The 18th and 19th century buildings have spread even here, and there are as many modern boutiques as historic tourist spots.  Overall, the area isn't as picturesque as you'd expect from the tourist guides.  Many walls are covered with graffiti, most of the stores were shuttered when we were there (Saturday morning) and the "street performers" have the unwashed, drug-wasted look of the homeless.  It's certainly a place to hold your belongings tight.  But you'll have plenty of photo opportunities as you spot an ornate bridge spanning a cobbled street, a tiny street chapel tucked between houses, a carved St. George on his dragon above the studded wooden door of a crenellated gateway or ornate tile murals framing ancient stone fountain basins.

Geese in the cathedral's tropical cloister

The star sight is the cathedral.  It's a classic, early gothic, cruciform-shaped building, most notable for its ornate side chapels.  Several, as with most Spanish cathedrals, show off the towering gilt altars that were the fashionable destination for so much pillaged American gold.  Beneath the raised main altar is the Romanesque crypt of the city's patron saint, Eulalia.  In the centre of the nave, standing almost like a building-within-a-building, is the early 16th-century choir.  It was home to the Order of the Golden Fleece, a club for the Habsburg elite; the rich wood carving and painted stalls boast of the glory of long-dead members.  A glass door shuts this off from the main body of the church, but don't let that discourage you.  If a guard is sitting there, she'll take a couple of euros off you and let you wander around.  We were seemingly the only tourists to figure this out, thus had a private viewing.  You can also pay a bit extra to go up on the roof, where the view isn't as dramatic as from the Sagrada Familia, but the vision of the Gothic Quarter's roofs framed by the ornate filagree of the cathedral's roofline is picturesque.

The most distinctive feature of the cathedral, however, is its cloister, where the typical square of pointed-arched, covered walkways looks over a most a-typical tropical garden housing a flock of 13 geese.  There are multiple theories as to the origin of this tradition.  Whatever the truth, today they're as much a tourist attraction as the ravens at the Tower of London or the ducks at Memphis' Peabody Hotel.

Shoe shopping in El Born

Wandering southeast, the Gothic Quarter runs into El Born, where the streets wind with equal charm, the architecture is just as interesting (if less flamboyantly Medieval), but natives outnumber tourists and we're back to a cool and fashionable vibe.  This is where we found our pick of the tapas bars (entry to come) and the most interesting shops.  You'll discover boutiques of quirky housewares and unusual gifts, workshops of local designers and craftspeople, the Picasso museum (we were out of time, but it looked fabulous), vintage shops and mini-markets of craft tents in small squares.  Given another day, we would have been back here.

Two other shopping experiences worthy of note are back on the more beaten tourist track.

Vincon is, without doubt, the coolest home decorating store I've ever browsed.  It fuses practicality (magnificent kitchen section, a whole candle department with stuff to buy and supplies to make your own, great storage solutions) with high design (swirling bookshelves to maximise space while turning books into art, leather chairs as sculpture, chandeliers as art installations) and quirky touches (tapas menu placemats or a porcelain rhino head for your wall?).  It's in a late-19th century mansion on the Gracia, and worth going just to ogle the interiors that have been preserved on the first floor.

The other is the Boqueria Market, which is absolutely the finest food market I've ever wandered through.  If you love food as much as I do, this should probably be your first stop.  Before Gaudi, before the Middle Ages.  If you want to know why this town is such a culinary capital, start here.  Which is a great place to start my next entry, as it's time to dig into the restaurant scene.

Gaudi's the king of Barcelona tourism

Top tip for Barcelona:  There's more than one rambla in town.

The most famous is a broad, tree-lined avenue packed with tourists that leads from the Christopher Columbus monument at the harbour to the Placa de Catalunya.  But "rambla" is Catalan for a type of avenue, generally tree-lined, with a park for promenading in the centre and streets on either side.  And there are plenty of them in this city fond of strolling.  It's a valuable thing to know when your taxi drops you off at 108 on the touristy Rambla when you actually need the Rambla de Catalunya.

That's a 40-minute walk, which gave me plenty of time to observe that the bones beneath Barcelona's hip, modern vibe are mostly 19th and early 20th century.  That's when the industrial revolution, mining and other factors conspired to make this a very wealthy city.  It still feels it today.  A regular grid pattern of long, straight avenues between gracious architecture, surrounded by mountains and facing the sea.

The poster child for that modernity mixed with 19th century affluence is Antoni Gaudi.  His is the name and the artistic influence you can't escape.  Nor should you.  His buildings are fantastical, fairy tale-like dreams, seeming to have grown out of the Earth rather than come from the hands of anything as pedestrian as builder or architect.

His work is all over the city, but by staying in the Eixample district, just off the posh shopping street of Passeig de Gracia, we were within an easy stroll of three of his blockbusters: Casa Mila, Casa Batllo and the Sagrada Familia.  If you only have time for one, do the last, as the other two are arguably more impressive (and much cheaper) seen from the street than inside.  But it's the interior of the last that needs to be seen to be believed.

It's as if you've walked into a stage set from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films; if Rivendell had a cathedral, it would look like this.  Magical, otherworldly, gleaming white, gold and gem tones.  All sinuous curves and organic materials, based on medieval forms but inspired by sophisticated modern geometry, it's unlike anything I've ever seen.  Take just one example:  The dome above the altar is a parabolic one, covered with glass tiles laid on a base of polished copper and white wood, rising more like a rounded cone than the traditional shape, to a clear window.  The vortex of golden light swirling down into the cathedral is jaw dropping in its intensity.

Go when the church opens (9am in winter) to get ahead of the crowds; it was getting uncomfortable as we left.  Plan on at least two hours and take your time.  In addition to that marvellous interior there's the fecund, stone foliage covered East front that tells the story of Jesus' birth; the brutal, cubist West front laying out the Passion of Christ under a canopy of giant bones; and a cloister that will eventually circle the whole church rather than being off on one side.  We paid to take the lift up one of the towers, where you get an excellent look at the vivid mosaics and the colourful finials of giant fruit and grains that are topping various spires, along with a magnificent view of the whole spread of the city, its surrounding mountains and the sea.  (If heights bother you, take the lift down rather than walking the stairs, which spiral down those honeycomb-like towers around a dark, nerve-jarring cavity.)  You'll also want to pay extra for the audio guide, which provides context and details that add to the wonder of the place.  You'll now be nearing 20 euro laid out, and you haven't even been in the gift shop; another reason to leave enough time to linger.

Casa Mila, also known as La Pedrera (the quarry) is in the same price bracket for admission and audio guide, and well over 20 if you stop for a coffee in the elegant upper-ground floor cafe that overlooks the Gracia boulevard.  There's much less to see here, and I must say we felt a bit ripped off, but entry does give you the chance to compare Gaudi's domestic work to the church.  Everyone heads for the roof here, with its strange chimneys and undulating lines.  But for my money the inner courtyard was the thing to see, with its tropical vegetation, curving staircase and delicate frescos.  If an apartment building could spontaneously generate from the jungle floor, you'd get this.  There's an interesting museum up in the attics, which are architecturally significant in themselves with their rising and falling brick arches.  The justification for the big ticket price, however, is the apartment that's been restored to give a picture of what living in a Gaudi building was like.

It's interesting to see how the curving lines and figure eight of the floor plan (the building has two light wells) works with domestic architecture, and fascinating to realise that even in a relatively small family home a big chunk of floorspace went to "below stairs" servant's rooms.  But the place didn't feel complete; I suspect there should have been more furniture, rugs, wallpaper and other decorative objects in the real thing.  And I was disappointed that the restored apartment was up on the fourth floor, presumably the least expensive during the building's active use.  Why not restore the first floor rooms of the Mila family, who built the place?  I suspect the answer is that the owners, local bank Caixa Catalunya, kept the best rooms for themselves, and that the way to really see the interiors is to get invited to their corporate hospitality.

I'm left to wonder if the interiors down the street at Casa Batllo would have been more interesting, but we ran out of time.  So our best views there were at 1 in the morning, appreciating the tasteful lighting on the building's blue and green accents while the crowds on the Gracia hummed around us.  

Modern Barcelona is a dream for business exhibitions

Considering that it has founding myths going back to Hannibal, was a thriving Roman port and has a historic district called the Gothic quarter, it's ironic that my top impression of Barcelona is ... modernity.

Hip and trendy, elegant and cool, its dominant architectures are 19th century or modern tower.  It's full of cutting-edge interior design that makes bold statements, but doesn't take itself too seriously.  Its people, too, seem effortlessly chic, scrupulously tailored and well buffed.  You certainly don't get the impression that you're in a country at the heart of the Euro crisis, with 25% unemployment.  And, in a sense, you're not.  Because Catalonia is a district that's always been distinct from the rest of Spain, whether in political reality or the native belief.  There's a separate language, different culinary traditions and, exemplified by local boy Antoni Gaudi, an indigenous style.

It's a magnificent place to visit, and I can't believe I didn't make it sooner.  (I spent 24-hours there on a business trip in the mid-'90s, but that barely counts.)

I've just returned from six days in this capital of cool, half work and half play.  First, overviews of both halves before I settle in to the serious business of architecture and dining, which are the city's tourism crown jewels.

The view from the desk in my room,
enlivened by a trendy lamp

I started out about two miles north of the city centre, where a new, purpose-built convention centre sits on a featureless strip of Mediterranean coast with a power plant looming on the horizon.  Gartner IT Expo moved here when Cannes' palais des festivals shut down for a major renovation, and I suspect it's not going back.  Because while this facility might lack the stunning views of the croisette and the convenience of tripping down its stairs right into a historic district, from a trade show perspective it's a vast improvement.  A gorgeous facility with plenty of space, light and connectivity.  Much closer to the airport than that beautiful but pricey trek from Nice to Cannes.  Plus a convention centre staff that was a good deal less surly than the Cannes team, and far better canapés at the show floor cocktail parties.  (warm croquetas, jamon iberico and stuffed olives vs. stale vol-au-vent and cold mini pizzas.) Hotel options are also much better.  Rather than trying to do business in one of the grand Victorian palaces or wedge your team into small places built for tourism, you're in purpose-built business hotels.

We set up at the Barcelona Princess, just across from the exhibition centre.  High marks for free, fast WiFi in both rooms and public areas, a desk with a good view and plenty of conveniently-placed power outlets for recharging kit.  Bonus points for all the natural light from one whole wall of windows and an innovative use of space.  My room was in the sharp, triangular corner of the building, made most of by placing the bathroom there, with a triangular stone shower room with a rectangular window cut at eye level to look out over the urban scene.  Points off for heating.  Stone, tile, wood and glass come together for a sleek, high-design look, but they're cold materials.  If you're going to dominate your space with them, you need to compensate with artificial heat.  Which the Princess did not.  Even kicking the in-room heat up to 30 degrees (that's 86 in American), undressing to use that shower was a bracing experience.

The only real drawback is that you are in a district without a lot of character.  It's a 10-minute, 10 euro plus taxi ride to get anywhere distinctive.  Which doesn't seem like a lot, but when you've been on your feet all day and have just wrapped 12 solid hours of corporate dynamism, the idea of room service and watching a film on your iPad competes favourably with grabbing the local colour.  We stayed in the first night and went out the other two.

No wild nights, however.  They eat late in Barcelona, which suits the trade show schedule. Although, interestingly, I think international business is changing things.  On my first and only business trip in the '90s our 11pm dinner start was a concession to American visitors, and natives were regularly out until 2.  This trip, starting dinner around 10 and wrapping just after midnight seemed the norm for visitors and natives alike.

By the time we got back to the hotel, with its austere and rather basic bar, everyone headed to bed.  Unlike Cannes, where I am convinced the long tradition of British tourism inspired the French to build bigger hotel bars and keep them open to the wee hours, milking convention-goers out of their cash one 12 euro glass of beer at a time.  Whatever the reason, despite the late dining hours I got a lot more sleep at a Spanish-hosted trade show than a French one.  Leaving me much fresher for the long weekend to follow.

Pre-Raphaelite show is too big, too clever for its own good

The Tate had managed to put me in a vile mood before I ever set foot inside their new exhibit.

Such was the popularity of this much-acclaimed show that we had to kill 90 minutes between buying our tickets and getting in.  So we wandered the galleries of what was once one of London's great museums.  Established to tell the story of British art, the original chronological hang is now a trendy hotch potch of rooms organised around themes.  Some work.  Some leave you scratching your head.  None fulfil the mission of a national artistic retrospective.

Inexplicably, about half the galleries seemed full of modern art.  Why, when the sister museum downriver is dedicated to the 20th century and beyond, do we have so much overspill here?  Finally, in an attempt to lure new visitors, museum management was staging a family day which turned the galleries into playgrounds of screaming tots.  I'm a passionate advocate of getting kids into museums early, and there are scores of ways to do this while having fun and educating.  (It is, after all, what my mother did for a decade at The Saint Louis Art Museum.)  But I saw no evidence of that here.

So it is possible that my mood pre-disposed me to be unimpressed.  But here's my verdict on Pre-Raphaelites:  Victorian Avant-Garde.  It's big.  (More than 200 items on display.)  It's pretty.  (You'd happily hang the great majority of this stuff in your guest bedroom.)  But it's not new, it doesn't make you think much and it sure as hell isn't avant-garde.

Let's start with my last point first.  Everything about the pre-Raphaelites looks backwards, from their name, to their origins in the German Nazarene group to their delight in medieval subject matter.  We even get William Morris thrown into the mix, who was all about rejecting the industrial revolution and going back to an idealised world of Gothic craftsmen.  These guys were the textbook definition of reactionaries (look it up).  And while the curators make a fine academic argument that reactionary philosophies, if extreme enough, are radical in themselves, it was a pedantic distraction for me.  Forget the re-positioning attempt.  This is beautiful, calming stuff.  Just come wander through it and appreciate.

Another big issue was how familiar most of this stuff is.  Many of the show's blockbusters live in the Tate anyway: John Everett Millais' Ophelia drowning in her stream and Mariana in her blue dress stretching from her letters; John William Waterhouse's Lady of Shallot.  Many of the rest you've seen reproduced on everything from tea towels to notecards to posters since your were a kid.  As a movement they've turned up in other places recently, arguably done better: the excellent Cult of Beauty show last spring at the V&A; the BBC's 2009 miniseries Desperate Romantics.

Finally, a fair handful of this stuff crosses the line from pretty to insipid.  (Or "twee", to use a marvellous British phrase.)  That's particularly true with the religious pictures like Holman Hunt's The Light of The World or Millais' The Carpenter's Shop, which offer a chocolate box Christianity you're apt to put in a children's bible, but not to linger over.

Where this show works best is when the paintings are telling stories, or magnifying the beauty of women or landscapes.  Therefore of the seven exhibition sections ... Origins and Manifesto, History, Nature, Salvation, Beauty, Paradise, Mythologies ... it's the second, third, fifth and last that get some magic going.  Indeed, here's a show where bigger wasn't necessarily better; I suspect I would have been far more impressed had I been presented with only those works.

Then, you could spend a lot more time and perhaps drop your jaw a bit at Burne Jones' Perseus series (one's pictured up top), with all the magic and drama of fantasy novel cover but done in paints so vivid, and at a size so grand, you feel you could step through the frame and into the scene.  Or at Holman Hunt's high drama Lady of Shallot, captured at the exact moment enchantment blows her world apart.

You'd linger over all the Shakespearean scenes, playing games with yourself to see if you could name the play before reading the label, then considering whether that's the way you'd seen the scene in your head.  You'd puzzle for quite a while over the multiple depictions of Keats' poem Isabella, where the eponymous heroine imortalises her slain lover by putting his detached head in a pot and growing basil over it.  (You'll never see pesto the same way again.)  If you're a woman, you'd stand in front Rossetti's Lillith and think it's no surprise the man's gone down in history as the Casanova of the art world; a man has to be a master of sensuality to paint women like that.

And if you're like me, you'd gawp for ages at John Brett's Val d'Aosta.  Here was the surprise of the show.  An artist I'd never heard of, a painting I didn't know existed ... and it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.  He has taken nature and improved on it with a hyper-realism that gives every tree and rock detail, yet taken together creates a world too beautiful to be this side of heaven.

There is plenty to love about this show, if you look at the right parts.  My advice?  Forget the typical exhibition approach, where you're ready to learn and looking for a unifying narrative.  Approach it instead like a shopping trip.  Wander through the galleries in an acquisitive frame of mind.  Unconcerned about taking in everything, but rather open to the bits and pieces that want to come home with you.  Linger over those and forget the rest.

With grapes and bronze, artists bring the world together

In between the two starry dinners of the last entry came the Caviste game night and wine tasting.

Wine is a highly personal thing, with an almost infinite variety of choice. The ideal is to have a trusted vendor who combines knowledge of their stock with an understanding of your tastes, thus being able to match you with interesting options. We undoubtably have this at Berry's warehouse shop, where we've bought most of our decent stuff since moving to Basingstoke. But Berry's is unashamedly a French specialist. I've always felt we were missing new world options there, and though they offer great deals on fine wines you almost feel embarrassed buying too much that's under a tenner. Enter, quite possibly, Caviste.

This little store within a store is effectively the wine counter at Newlyn's farm shop, so we've bought bottles sporadically from them over the past couple of years. But it's thanks to their union with Newlyn's cooking school ... first at the Spanish tapas night, and last Thursday night over game ... I'm getting the idea they may become our go-to consultants and providers in the future.

Mark Bedford, who ran the tapas tasting, was on hand again but this time for a more formal matching of food and beverage.

We started with a cremant de Bourgogne from Domaine Deliance which, in common with most of its Burgundian cousins, is a head-to-head competitor to really good champagnes for about half the price.  An excellent consideration for holiday tippling at £14.95 a bottle.

On to dinner, prepared by head chef Hannah who's appeared in these pages before as chief instructor at the cooking school.  First course, a game bird terrine with dense layers of partridge, pheasant and grouse bound together in minced pork with pistachio and cranberry, bound tightly in prosciutto.  Vegetarians need not apply.  We tried two whites with this, first a South African chenin blanc (AA Badenhorst Secateurs 2011), then the Domaine Cheveau Pouilly-Fuisse Trois Terrois 2010.  The first was a great deal at £9.95, with a depth and richness you don't normally get in bottles under a tenner.  But the second ... at just under double the price ... was a knockout, with rich fruits to stand up to strong flavours cut with a minerality that kept things clean and not too heavy.  Six bottles joined the Bencard cellar, for very special dinners.

Second course a venison stew draped over Hannah's silky, creamy mash.  The pungent flavours needed a bold wine for balance.  Mark's first option won a smile with its Sicilian origin, but the high tannins made the Gran Feudo Paradiso Rosso 2010 too astringent for me.  That contrast, possibly, made the New Zealand Pinot Noir that followed all the better.  A magnificent glass exploding with berries, big, bold, smooth; just the kind of thing I'm always going for.  The equivalent of a really fine, old Burgundy, Mark pointed out, but at half the price.  (£17.95)  So six of those came home, too.

With all the week's food and drink I needed some exercise.  Sadly, the most I got was walking around the Bronze exhibit at the Royal Academy.  But if brain waves trigger any caloric use, it was the equivalent of a big workout.

This is the first exhibition catalogue I've bought in more than a decade, because the show was so fantastic I wanted to bring it home with me to live over.  It's only on 'til the 9th of December, but if you can fit it into this busy season you really should.  It's one of the finest exhibits to hit London in years.

The concept is unique.  Rather than focusing on one artist, time period or movement, the RA picks a medium:  bronze.  Something that most cultures have worked in.  A material that has infinite variety and an almost spooky ability to convey movement and life.  It wasn't much of a stretch to imagine most of the beings in this exhibit giving a good stretch and climbing off their plinths for a party when the punters go home.

And what an eclectic group that would be.  Renaissance Christian saints, greek youths, Roman senators, Hindu gods and American cowboys, joined by a whole zoo of lions, elephants, horses, dogs and one particularly impressive Roman ram.  Familiar icons of Western civilisation are here.  In fact, any fan of Florence will feel in such familiar surroundings you'll swear you can feel the sun on your shoulders and the taste of pistachio gelato on your tongue.  There's Ghiberti's St. Stephen, liberated from his niche on Orsanmichele; Giambologna's Mercury and his quirky turkey from the Bargello; il Porcellino, the magnificent wild boar whose snout you've stroked before shopping the central market; the Medici Riccardi horse and Cellini's Perseus and Medusa, which you've probably lounged beneath while shaking off tourist exhaustion in the Loggia dei Lanzi.  And that's just the tip of the classical iceberg.  This is one of those exhibitions where, at every turn, you see something familiar and famous.

But it's the unfamiliar that's perhaps most memorable.  A 19th century Japanese incense burner held aloft by three almost-life-sized demons of terrifying but compelling fury.  One of Remington's famous slices of the wild west, with four cowboys and their horses galloping toward you at full tilt.  An elegant and streamlined horse pulling a cart with an intricately engraved gold and bronze disk from prehistoric Denmark, more than 3,400 years old!  A 17th century Dutch pug, so lifelike you instinctively stand back to prevent the spray of drool you might get when he shakes his noble jowls.  The beguiling dignity of the heads of African nobles of the Benin tribe.  A hindu god and goddess, their multiple limbs entwined in a sensuous dance and their bodies polished to a golden sheen.

Taken together, this is a testimony to man's ability to create beauty.  Through thousands of years, over multiple continents, in radically different cultures, artists have taken the same base metal and made magic.  Drink it in.  And then, maybe, kick back with some nice wine.  The story of the grape isn't so different.

It's a starry week as L'Ortolan delivers once again, and Murano changes my mind

I knew the week was going to be a Weight Watchers disaster when I brought up my diary on Monday morning. Here's what I saw.

Wednesday: Lunch with Martin (at Michelin-starred L'Ortolan)
Thursday: Game dinner/wine tasting at Newlyn's
Friday: Dinner for Lisa's Mom (at Michelin-starred Murano)
Saturday: Penny's birthday party (expect heavy drinking)
Sunday: Medill Dinner (Bumpkin, South Ken)

Oh, dear. Dangerous. But a great deal of fun. Let's start with the starry spots for this entry. 

It was my third time at L'Ortolan, but my first on a business outing. I already knew the food was good, but now I can add that the venue is quiet enough to have undistracted conversations, it offers broad tables for spreading out documents and has a staff ready to work around the ebbs and flows of your business conversation. And who'll tuck you away in the conservatory with more coffee when your meeting goes on so long they need to start setting the place up for dinner. Additional kudos to the sommelier and head waiter who recognised me and treated me as a returning regular. (Either they have remarkable memories, or we made a very big impression at last month's anniversary dinner.)

The food on this third outing was consistent in quality of taste and presentation, but completely different once again in specific dishes. No resting on laurels here, rather a consistent rotation of food influenced by the seasons. Lunch is always the most cost-effective way to try a Michelin-starred place, and this is even more true outside of London. The five course tasting menu at L'Ortolan is £38, with no difference in quality from dinner. (But perhaps slightly smaller portions.)

We started with a plate elevating the humble beetroot to art: slices of red and white root, cubes of solid red accenting scorched, smoky goat cheese. On to a duck bon bon. A meatball of confit leg, rolled in strands of something delicate and crispy, fried and served on a bed of celeriac remoulade, with a couple slices of fir-smoked duck on the side. Absolutely exquisite. I could eat that for lunch daily! The fish course was a delicate morsel of plaice served with a finger-sized cannelloni stuffed with brown shrimp and chicken, brought together on the plate with ribbons of zucchini on a bed of very light red sauce. Finally onto a dish that heralded the oncoming winter: oxtail filled with mushroom mousse with a turnip puree. Hearty, substantial flavours made delicate by its small serving size. Just a few bites to satisfy.

And, of course, to leave room for pudding. Billed as a dark chocolate mousse, I would have described it as a lighter chocolate truffle rolled in dark chocolate shavings. Better, to my mind. Served with a sheet of salt caramel jelly draped enticingly over a scattering of toasted hazelnuts. Perfect. And, because my colleague Martin and I are as serious about our food as about our corporate copywriting, we had to order an extra dessert. Because we were both keen to experience squash ice cream. More delicate than pumpkin (which is, of course, very familiar to the American palate), served on gingery biscuit with hints of cinnamon and nutmeg. This would be an exquisite gourmet twist on Thanksgiving tradition.

 That amazing meal would satisfy most people as their special meal out for months. Thus it was with just a hint of embarrassment that I crossed the threshold at Angela Hartnett's Murano 50 hours later. Don't blame me, blame Lisa. Her mother was visiting from Minnesota and we were giving her the star treatment. Readers may remember that Piers and I dined here for his birthday in July and, though we were impressed, I questioned whether the Michelin star and the price was worth it. Was Murano that much better then less-famous Italian spots in London? Then, the answer was no. This week, it was a definitive yes. 

Perhaps it was that dinner there is superior to lunch. Perhaps we got lucky at Como Lario our first time around, since our return visit in September was decidedly average. Perhaps it was the fact that the maitre d' not only remembered us from July, but remembered Piers' tomato allergy. And perhaps it was that our hostess Lisa, one half of that dangerous duo of Northwestern Girl wine expertise, teamed up with the sommelier to keep a steady flow of unique and memorable bottles coming with each course. Whatever the reason, the combination jumped Murano into the pantheon of one of the best Italian meals I've had in London. Or maybe anywhere.

One of the innovations of Hartnett's place is that, though the menu is organised roughly into starters, pastas, fish courses, etc., you can have anything you want, in any sequence. The kitchen simply adjusts the size to match your order. We went for five courses at £85. Knowing two of those would be dessert and cheese, the five of us set to work choosing our trio of savouries.

I started with slow-cooked aubergine (eggplant) with tomato, mozzarella and basil, one of those dishes that shows off how, when you have the best ingredients, you don't have to muck them up with complexity. On to quail agnolotti (a type of ravioli typical of the Piedmont region) with white onion puree, rosemary jus and black truffle. Delicate pasta, rich meat, the foresty flavour of the fungus. Wow. Building up to monkfish on a potato puree with smoked bone marrow and glazed chicken wing, demonstrating that particular fish as worthy of 

appearing on the meat menu as on the watery one.

There were many shared forks and eyes rolling in ecstasy around the table, though I can happily report that none of the samples I had of other dishes made me wish I'd ordered differently. (Although Piers' astonishing pork belly, pictured, came close.) There's the standard of a perfect meal, I'd say, when everyone has tastes of each others' plate, agrees it's all good, yet each individual is convinced she or he made the best choice.

Dessert was a heavenly pistachio souffle that managed to be light and airy while capturing a strong essence of the nut's flavour, spiked by the dark chocolate sauce poured down a hole poked in the souffle's centre. And then the cheese cart. Heavily French with a few Italian and English choices, notable for my favourite pouligny-St.-Pierre (a pyramid-shaped, crumbly goat's cheese) and a baked vacherin they brought out of the kitchen and served in steaming tea spoons.

The wine list here is a weighty, hard-backed tome, difficult to navigate without the sommelier because it's skewed towards tiny organic, bio-dynamic vineyards that supply the restaurant direct. Everything we tasted was a wonderful discovery, but this isn't stuff you're likely to find on offer in your local shop. The most memorable bottles were Sicilian and French. The first a frappato, a little known blending grape used exclusively in the 2010 from the Occhipinti vineyard. The light colour belied a deep, complex wine loaded with soft fruits. The second, from La Terrasse d'Elise, was the 2009 Le Pradel. Another red, this one spicier and moving to a port-like flavour, perfect with the diversity of the cheese course.

Most people don't eat this well in a lifetime, and I've done it twice in a week. Yes, life is good.

Not the usual grand tour, we wrapped things up in the Low Countries

Our European wanderings ended in Belgium and the Netherlands.  This might seem a surprising choice, but we were thinking value for money.  We'd splashed out on Eurail tickets, and there are few places on the continent where so many major sights are packed in such a small area.  

Wednesday, July 10, 1986

Amsterdam.  We bought a museum card that lasts for all of 1986.  It's a good deal.  $7.50 for a student (my ID still works) and $20 for mom.  It gets you into all the museums in the country.

We started with the Rijksmuseum Van Gogh.  He's not my top artist, but the museum is impressive.  Over half of all his paintings are here, kept and passed down by his brother.  The museum is now run by a nephew.  The museum is a big, modern cube with lots of natural light.  Paintings are arranged chronologically, and there's plenty of room to back up and appreciate things from afar.

Back to the main Rijksmuseum with room after room of old masters, Dutch history and furniture.  I was particularly captivated by the magnificent ship's models.  Then to Dam Square.  Into the main church there, which has a magnificent pulpit and organ, but is plain otherwise.  For the first time in this trip we encountered the horrible scourge of Protestantism, stripping away all beauty.  The royal palace on the square is a dingy place with bums asleep under its stairs.

In fact, the whole town is grubby.  When we checked into the hotel the bell hop asked if we wanted to know where the Red Light district was.  Why in the world would a middle-aged mother and her daughter want to go look at that?  There's so much culture here, but it sits side by side with legal prostitution and drugs, making it a more tawdry and dangerous place than anywhere else we've seen.

In another square there is a flower market with such color and variety, and amazingly cheap flower bulbs.  We found delicious broodjes (Dutch sandwiches) and pastries to eat in Rembrandt Square, then we walked to his house.  It's not what I expected, in that it's not furnished, but rather a gallery with a collection of his drawings.  I was more impressed by the Hinlopen Huis museum, a magnificent 17th century town house on the Keizersgracht canal.  It gives a sense of how the wealthy lived.  Its marble stairs and foyer are gorgeous, and there's one blue room that's especially beautiful.

Afterwards we rented a canal bike, a paddle boat you can use on the canals.  They're $7 an hour and you can get everywhere.  It's a very tranquil way to explore, and good exercise.

July 11
We took an early train to to Delft.  What peace there is here!  We explored the Het Prinsenhof, an old palace of the House of Orange.

And here the diary ends.  I know we loitered in the china shops in Delft and went home with tiles; they eventually ended up set into the shower in the master suite at my mother's house.  We spent a couple more days in the Netherlands.  We went to The Hague and toured the government buildings there.  I remember Ghent, where we went primarily to see the altarpiece by van Eyck but discovered the magnificent Castle of the Counts.  We spent another day in Bruges, beguiled by its charming canals and grand medieval architecture.  I remember gawping at all the most famous Flemish art in the Groeninge Museum and seeing Michaelangelo's only work outside of Italy, a perfect madonna and child, in the Church of Our Lady.  I don't know if it would have made the diary, but what I remember most is tasting Belgian chocolate for the first time:  White and dark striped sea shells, sold in paper cones by a little old man off a canal-side cart.

We moved on to Brussels, where I recall the Grand Place, tasting French fries with mustard/mayo sauce for the first time, and springing for a proper dinner in a fancy restaurant since we were nearing the end of our trip.   I remember few sights in Brussels, but do remember leaving my grandmother's umbrella in that restaurant after hauling it all over Europe with me.

And I remember the luggage getting heavier and heavier.  Clearly, these were the days before weight limits.  Bavarian carvings, German beer steins, Austrian clothing, swiss watches, Italian jewellery, Delft tiles, big bags of tulip bulbs and stacks of guidebooks.  I can still recall running for a train in Amsterdam, carrying all those bags, and my heart almost bursting with the effort.

We ended our trip back in Luxembourg, from where we needed to get our Iceland Air flight.  We stayed in what's now the Sofitel, and what was then a newly-opened luxury hotel offering introductory deals to travel agents.  We were exhausted and the room was gorgeous.  We never left it.  After more than a month in Europe, mostly sightseeing at an aggressive pace, I didn't need to see anything else.  Luxembourg would be left for another time.  I never would have guessed that, more than 20 years later, it would be come the familiar home of dear friends.

There were so many reasons not to take this trip.  We didn't have the money.  The world was a dangerous place.  A month was excessive.  ANY international travel was wildly extravagant, and I should have been getting straight to work after getting my degree.  My mother's sister and brother in law, playing pater familias, expressed the gravest disapproval.  Mom didn't care.  She wanted me to have a proper "Grand Tour" and she wanted to come.  She was convinced that such travel would have an enduring effect on the rest of my life.

You know, I think she was right.

McDonalds in Milan? I still had a lot to learn in 1986.

I like to think I was born with good taste and culinary sophistication.  But diaries don't lie.  When in Italy my 20-year-old self sought out American food, eschewed rare meat and had never heard of insalata caprese.  There's no doubt, however, that this was a turning point in my life.  I mention food more in this part of the diary than in any other, and it's clear from these brief entries that I was open to new things and starting to learn.  Some fertile seeds were planted in these days.

July 4, 1986
I'm homesick.  It's strange to be in a foreign place on this big holiday, with nobody celebrating and it just being a normal day.  But it's important in its own way.  We were meeting the Bozzis, old Italian friends who lived in St. Louis for two years before returning to their native Milan.  (This was the family with whom I spent the summer when I first visited Europe in 1979.)

Mrs. Bozzi met us at Milan central station.  She looks exactly the same.  Slim, sporty, elegant, maybe a dusting of grey at the sides that wasn't there before.  We went to their Milano apartment which, like so much in this city, is ugly and unremarkable on the outside but gorgeous inside.  Lots of space, towering ceilings, heavy antique furniture, big pastoral paintings.

We headed out for a cappuccino, which Mrs. Bozzi explained was a morning drink.  No Italian would use milk in their coffee after lunch.  Then on to San Ambrogio.  It's Mrs. Bozzi's parish church, and she's in charge of their fund raising.  Thus she pulled strings and got us into the crypt, currently closed for restoration.  They're stringing the bones of three skeletal saints back together.  These preserved skeletons in their glass coffins are one of my clearest memories from my first trip to Italy, so macabre and alien.

Next on to Sforza Castle, which is a huge place.  There's lots there as you tour through the castle rooms, including a wine arbor room by Leonardo.  There's religious sculpture, armour and an unfinished Michaelangelo pieta that's very famous, but which I didn't find that thrilling.  I've never really warmed to unfinished art, though it is interesting to see a work in process.  Nearby we wandered through the Brera, a small museum with a famous collection.  It's not really geared for foreign tourists, as all the labels are in Italian.  The biggie here is Raphael's wedding of the virgin and Mantegna's Dead Christ.

We walked to La Scala.  After all those wide, straight Northern Streets I admit to being annoyed with the narrow, crowded ones.  The combo of heat and hunger made me and mom grouchy, so we stumbled into a burger joint in the Galleria.  I must give fast food joints at home more credit.  Hamburgers here suck.  But it was a needed energy boost to get us to the Duomo.

This is the most magnificent Gothic church in Europe.  Still, after I have seen so many others.  At about 4:30 we left the city and headed up to San Vito, the Bozzi's country place.  Nothing has changed but the faces.  It's still an idyllic place, though the view was hazed in today.

Elena is the same.  Over-energized, studying hard, gorgeous.  We swam and caught up.  Eventually we headed off with the family and some of their friends to the Varese Golf Club for an excellent dinner of pasta followed by some of the finest fillet mignon I've ever seen.  Only problem was that it was almost raw.  Evidently that's the way they do it here.  Mom and I sent ours back for more cooking.  They came out still too rare for us but we felt we had to be polite and eat them.

July 5
I was sad earlier in the trip that we couldn't get to Isola Bella, but we got there today.  It was just mom and me, and it was very foggy again.  I had an odd sense of deja vu; it's been eight years but not a thing has changed, and I remembered all of it as if it were yesterday.  I'd loved it so much then, and I loved it now.

The fading opulence perhaps didn't impress me quite so much, as I've seen so many other historic palaces since.  But it was the first palace I ever saw, so will be special.  Mom loved the gardens.  Later, back at San Vito, we went to mass and then had a simple supper of spaghetti carbonara on the terrace overlooking the valley below.

July 6
So, this is how rich people live.  We went to a tennis tournament at one of the other villas.  Each of the villas in the area is like San Vito, big estates owned by families with multiple generations and friends staying there.  The villas put together tennis teams and play each other at different courts throughout the summer, with buffets and drinks afterwards.  I wandered around formal gardens with Roman statuary, just like places we paid to get in ... but people live here.  The buffet table was groaning with delicacies, rice salads, quiches, marinated vegetables and fruit tortes.

July 7
It's finally clear.  We can see all the way to the mountains.  What a great day to go to Sacro Monte for the views.  There's a village at the top.  It's a place of pilgrimage.  There's a small Baroque church at the peak with a glass encased black marble madonna.  There's a chapel going up the hill for each of the mysteries, with life-sized wood carvings of the events.  It's all beautiful, but in disgraceful shape.

We headed back to Milano where lunch was a tomato salad with really soft mozzarella called insalata caprese.  I'd love to try this at home; I wonder if we can get this kind of cheese?  And then back onto the train, our time in Italy over all too quickly.

We have our own little cabin this time with a sink, luggage compartments and a steward to bring us food and make up the beds.  Despite being so comfortable I had trouble getting to sleep.  I was too fascinated looking in the illuminated windows of houes as we road through Switzerland.  Eventually, though, I slept soundly as we went over St. Gottard's Pass and back through Lucerne.