The year in review: 2013 is my kind of uneventful; lots of good stuff, no crises

In my blog entry on the first day of this year,  I said that all I wanted out of 2013 was for it to be uneventful.  No deaths, major illnesses, job changes, property sales, house moves or any other significant life events.  I'm delighted to report success.  We just settled in to our home, enjoyed our friends and had some lovely holidays. 

The biggest life news was the arrival of baby Bruno.  Official Kennel Club name Captain Brunelleschi.  An adorable, very smart but very energetic cavalier King Charles spaniel who’s chewed a lot of things he should not have.  We love him anyway.  Brother Datchet tolerates him, though insists on stealing any chew toy he’s given.  (Exacerbating the tendency to chew illicit items.)

On the job front, my employer and role hasn’t changed but my boss has, making things more fun and relevant than they’ve been in a while.  I try never to write about anything so mundane as work on this blog, but I do have every intent of doing more blogging on marketing topics in the New Year.  Those of you who are interested can follow me at http://ferraraoncomms.blogspot.co.uk.

Even an uneventful year for us is filled with travel, of course.  We discovered Malta for a long weekend around Valentine’s Day, where I got a much-needed shot of sun and sea.  Easter brought our Franco-Italian road trip, with wine tasting through Burgundy and my husband’s introduction to Tuscany.  

Summer holiday saw Piers suffering a family-, baseball-, country music-, bbq-drenched July 4^th in St. Louis before recovering with sophisticated culture in Chicago.  (Where I got to catch up with my  Northwestern University friends and introduce them to Piers.)  My annual girls’ trip with Lisa and Hillary found us exploring Iceland.  In November, Piers joined me at the end of a business trip in Barcelona for fine food and fantastic architecture.  All trips covered, as ever, in earlier entries on this blog.

Banishing the adjective “new” from our home has been a priority of the year.  My proudest accomplishment is transforming the garden from a featureless strip of new-laid turf to a terraced space with cascading water feature, herbaceous borders, raised brick herb beds and latticed pergolas in just one season.  Now, the plants just need to grow.  Inside, picture framing, wallpaper and curtains are making certain rooms … particularly our bedroom, the dining room and my office … feel “finished”.

Life in England continues to offer a moving feast of culture.   Our opera schedule took in The Mikado at the ENO; Parsifal broadcast from the Met; Don Carlo and Carmen live at the Royal Opera House and The Sicilian Vespers broadcast from there; and La Boheme at Longborough Festival Opera (where we became patrons this year).  I went a bit more populist with The Book of Mormon and Wicked in London’s West End.  The V&A’s blockbuster movie costume exhibition wasn’t as good as expected and the Manet show at the Royal Academy left me cold, but the National Portrait Gallery’s show on Prince Henry Stuart impressed and the British Museum’s Pompeii exhibit was the show of the year.  The Highclere battle proms and Chelsea Flower Show were English summer classics made better by our unusually warm and sunny summer.  Again, you can read all about these in past entries.

And when it comes to proper feasting … we cooked up a storm this year, giving seven formal dinner parties, a handful of casual summer barbecues and one large holiday blow-out.  We were endlessly inspired by dining out, of course.  In addition to all those lovely meals while travelling, highlights at home included the Michelin-starred glories of The Ledbury, Gordon Ramsay’s Hospital Road Restaurant and L’Ortolan.  But we’re almost as excited about the fact that our local, the Four Horseshoes, has a new chef who's showing some magnificent potential.

All the culture, travel, socialising and fine dining is great, but it’s all icing atop the simple cake of cooking dinner in our own kitchen and then settling onto our couch with the dogs for a quiet night of TV.  And, of course, the fact that we have no health news worth reporting.  We are blessed.

We hope you are, too.  Best wishes for the holiday season and for the year ahead.  I hope you'll continue to drop by the blog in 2014, when I'll be introducing a few changes to liven things up.

A blessedly stereotypical Christmas with friends, family, fine food and a bit of panto

With two weeks off work, we briefly considered going somewhere for Christmas.  But, frankly, with some big trips in our sights for next year, we couldn't afford more travel over the holidays.  So "staycation" it was, with a focus on all the holiday traditions.

The house decked out in holiday cheer.  Christmas baking filling the kitchen with scents of cinnamon, nutmeg and clove.  I swore I'd learn how to make French macaron and by Christmas Eve I'd produced a passable set (the pistachio were best) to bring to my sister-in-law for Christmas lunch.

Up to St. Mary's Bourne Street … looking fabulous after several months under renovation … for the traditional glory of the candlelit carol service followed by Haydn's St. Nicholas Mass.  The kyrie alone is worth the drive.  The next day, back to London again for Christmas lunch at the Putney Bencards, complete with roast goose and impressively flaming pudding.

After all that to-ing and fro-ing to town we were delighted to spend Boxing Day at home.  But no rest for the wicked.  Or the hungry.  Our friend Hillary's parents were visiting from the States and we had them down for a pull-out-all-the-stops gourmet lunch in our recently-wallpapered, Christmas tree-bedecked dining room.

To nibble while the chef slaved in the kitchen:  shot glasses of spiced pumpkin soup, a platter of high-end charcuterie and foie gras spread on rounds of gingerbread.  First course was supposed to be salmon soufflé.  Clearly, we need to work on that one, as what we served was closer to a salmon frittata.  On to individual venison wellington parcels.  If you're in the "you can never have too much puff pastry" camp, this is the preparation for you.  With Piers' go-to fondant potatoes, spinach and a decorative frill of asparagus tops.  I claim pudding as the triumph of the meal.  (Then again, that was the course I was in charge of!)  Individual lemon tarts topped with Cointreau and cranberry compote.  And then a cheese course of decadent French choices procured last week at La Fromagerie off Marylebone High Street.

No offence to the traditional holiday menu, but that was a celebratory meal!

Christmas week wrapped with extended family and that most English of holiday activities:  Pantomime.    I've been to two productions in the past, including a Cinderella written by the incomparable Stephen Fry, and they've left me mildly amused but mostly puzzled.  Up until this week I thought you had to be raised in the panto tradition to really enjoy it.  Happily, Aladdin at the Theatre Royal Windsor proved me wrong.

Part of this was the quality of the production.  Though I'd never heard of any of the "stars" who made guest appearances, the comics were funny, the dancers energetic and the singing good.  The inclusion of recognisable pop songs and choreographed numbers gave the show a West End musical feel.  But what probably made the biggest difference was going with kids.

This was our Christmas outing with La Famille Demeneix.  We managed to get in plenty of adult conversation with Cora and Didier and enjoy time with the kids.  The youngest, just 5, is my godson and one of the highlights of my holiday season was assembling, then watching him open, his combined birthday and Christmas present.

Odd as it sounds for an American, I feel it's my job to keep him English.  He's never lived in the UK, and dad is French, so I figure his national identity needs a little help.  Every year I try to find something that waves a flag for home.  This year's theme was "knights in shining armour".  We started with a storybook I wrote him about Sir Sacha (that's him) and the multi-coloured dragon.  Which went with a crusader knight's costume, a large stuffed dragon, a wooden sword, shield and crossbow.  I don't know who was more excited, Sacha or me.

An hour later, sitting between him and his sister, watching them giggle in delight and yell "he's behind you!" … I got a dose of unrefined Christmas joy.  The best parts of Christmas put you in touch with your inner child.  It's much easier to reach her with real children to help.

ROH's Carmen is worth battling through a beastly night

Opera Review:  Carmen at the Royal Opera House
Restaurant Review:  The Amphitheatre Restaurant at the Royal Opera House

The storm that ripped across southern England brought torrential rains and gusts of wind up to 100 mph. Trees and power lines were down, low lying areas were flooded and there was chaos on the rail lines.  "We advise against travel unless it's an emergency" ran the headline atop Southwest Trains' website.

Yet there we were, battling through the foul night to get to Basingstoke station and then to fight our way to London.  Why?  We had tickets to Carmen at the Royal Opera House.  I'd fight through wind, rain and flood for most ROH performances, if only to prevent the loss of a very expensive ticket.  But for Carmen, I'd amplify my effort.

This is probably the easiest of the grand operas; a fast-paced, exciting tale of lust, betrayal, criminal gangs and murder with a string of recognisable melodies and some gypsy dancers and bull fighters thrown in for visual interest.  I'd seen it many times on television, but never live.  There was no way, short of a complete collapse of the rail system, that I was going to miss this opportunity.  Thus, despite more than two hours of delayed travel in each direction, we made it.

It was worth the effort.

I suspect it's probably difficult for any professional to put on a bad Carmen; the material is just too good.  But this one hummed along, and presented the eponymous character in the most overtly sexual and devious way I've ever seen it played.

Grand opera is all written by men, but if any of the greatest hits had been written by a woman, it would have been this one.  Maybe Bizet had some special insight.  Because Carmen … especially as presented to us in this version … is actually the story of the stupidity of men, and of every woman's greatest fear: her perfectly normal, promising, lovely husband/brother/son gets sucked in and destroyed by a tawdry sexual predator.  Our hero, Don Jose, has to be the dumbest lug in all opera, throwing away a promising career and a perfectly lovely girlfriend for the promise of some really gritty sex.  Carmen, inevitably, gets tired of him and moves on.  He, in his desolation, murders her.

This close to Christmas, we got the second string cast, but they delivered the goods.  Christine Rice's Carmen is sexual in the extreme.  (I'm not sure I'd take my pre-teen daughter to this one.)  As she's seducing Jose, she hoists her skirts up, slides a rose across her nether regions and tosses it to the crumbling idiot.  How tacky! We scream to ourselves.  Don't be taken in! We groan.  But we watch with resignation as all the men on stage follow Carmen around in a blind, lusty lather.  Younghon Lee's Don Jose is the tragic focus of her interest for a while.  This young tenor's acting still needs work, but his voice is lovely.

The staging has all the traditional fun you'd expect, with flamenco-dancing gypsies, a donkey and Escamilo's sexy bullfighter coming in on a black stallion.

We see the tragedy approaching, of course, and know how it's going to end.  There's a sense of triumph when this Jose stabs this Carmen; she's a tawdry life-wrecker and deserves to die.  It's just a shame that the lovely but spineless Don Jose is going to hang for dispatching her.

After forming my own opinions, I checked out the review from The Guardian, which says the staging is tired and old fashioned and the portrayal of Carmen as home wrecker disappointingly outdated.  The revisionist staging, you see, has Carmen as an independent spirit, trapped by the male hierarchy embodied by the hopelessly traditional Don Jose.  Oh, please.  (Then again, I always come out as Sandy rather than Rizzo when I do that "which Grease character are you" quiz.)  I don't need modern or innovative when it comes to classic opera.  I like big, showy and traditional, and that's what the ROH delivered.

I thought they missed an opportunity with the food, however.  We booked into their formal restaurant, on the top level less than 100 yards from our seats.  This is not a deal, at £40 - £50 for three nice-but-average courses before you start on the drinks.  But it's incredibly convenient.

We were less than 5 minutes from our seats.  Even with the crazy delays, we managed to get starters and mains in before the production started and enjoyed dessert and coffee at the interval.  No fighting across a rainy, wind-swept Covent Garden from a pre-theatre restaurant, no scrambling for space in the crowds at the interval.  All terribly civilised, with staff who cater to your every need (a special chutney whipped up at short notice for the tomato-allergic Piers) and run things like clockwork to get you to your seat at the last minute.  This is the operatic equivalent of the premium airport lounge.

I wish the food were more more memorable.  Beetroot cured salmon with creme fraiche and pickle.  Fine.  Bream fillet with truffle butter.  Very good.  Cheese platter.  Perfectly presentable.  But nothing remarkable and, given what we were there to see, nothing Spanish.  The bars were serving tapas, but the restaurant had nothing topical.  Shame.

Still, on such a beastly night, it was worth the money to stay dry and be pampered.

Tolkien proves a surprising social leveller, but he might be surprised at Jackson's edits

Film Review:  The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Before I met my husband, my opinion on online gaming and its players was fairly negative.  An enormous waste of time, indulged in by socially inept geeks who chose to isolate themselves from the real world to click buttons and tug joysticks in constant repetition of silly tasks.  Given that the love of my life spends at least six hours a week in the virtual Middle Earth of Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO), and easily doubles or triples that if his diary allows, I've had to revise my opinion.

Gaming … at least this game … clearly develops multi-tasking skills.  It requires complex project management and long term thinking. (Piers, like most of his online compatriots, runs multiple characters who each perform certain tasks to help each other out.) If you love the novels, it's a magnificent way to immerse yourself in the universe.  The developers have taken enormous care with the sets and the plot details; I enjoy taking regular peeks over Piers' shoulder though I have no desire to start killing orcs.

And it turns out that it doesn't isolate you from other people at all.  As I learned last night, it has a democratising way of bringing unlikely people together in a way I can't imagine any other hobby would.

LOTRO is what's known as a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, in which a large number of real people, all over the world, are taking on characters and playing together in a virtual world.  This is no niche:  revenues for the genre are predicted to hit $8 billion next year, and the top games cost as much to make as films.  Piers (who, thankfully, paid a one-time-for-life fee when LOTRO launched and is therefore not contributing to that revenue projection) wanders Middle Earth with a fellowship called the Rangers of Artherdain (for the Tolkein aficionados out there, Artherdain was one of the kingdoms of the North).  They are people who, like him, run multiple characters and all work together to pursue their quests, while chatting in an open IM stream.  Piers had been playing with, and talking to, these people for four years.  But had never met them face-to-face.  Until last night.  When we met up at the Odeon Leicester Square to see second film of Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy.

I thought I might have some wild tales to tell.  But, a wee bit disappointingly, they were all normal.  Nobody dressed as a dwarf, insisted on speaking Elvish or carried a wizard's staff.  All were capable of carrying on conversations that did not involve Middle Earth.  All had productive lives and jobs.  What was glaringly obvious, however, is just how different those lives and jobs were.

In the corporate world we talk a lot about diversity.  But life conspires against that.  Work throws us together.  Our jobs set our incomes.  Our incomes tend to set where we live.  All meaning that, even without active choice, we usually spend our lives with others of the same professional and economic background as ourselves.  And with that comes similar hobbies, cultural tastes, etc.  LOTRO brought these guys together without any socio-economic reference point.  Bringing me to one of the most diverse dinner tables I've ever sat at.

Joining us was a French-born grade school teacher living in Brussels, an Asian IT student, a landscape labourer and a grave digger.  (Seriously.)  I can't think of another situation that could have brought these people together.  And yet, there we were, chatting happily.  I can't say that the conversation would have easily stretched for too many hours, and things were always livelier when they returned to their shared passion of all things Tolkien.  But it was a good night, and were I a sociologist it would have triggered thoughts of a fascinating social study.

What of the film?


Peter Jackson, I fear, has gotten a bit carried away with himself.  The unquestioned king of Tolkien interpretation perhaps needed a bit of questioning.  It's definitely enjoyable.  A feast for the eyes filled with rich characterisation, and rip-roaring adventure.  The acting is fabulous, particularly from Martin Freeman's noble-but-amusing Bilbo, Stephen Fry's cringe-worthy Master of Laketown and Aidan Turner's unnaturally sexy dwarf Kili.

But, unlike the first instalment, I found myself getting slightly bored and distracted several times, wondering how much more of the film we had left.  This inevitably happened during action scenes.  Four minutes of beautifully coordinated fight scenes, river rafting in barrels or crazy escapes from a terrifying dragon is edge-of-the-seat stuff.  Seven gets tedious.  I got the feeling Jackson was having so much fun he just couldn't bring himself to trim.  He should have.  And saved the extended versions for the director's cut.

He takes far more liberties here than he has in any of the other films thus far, something we knew had to be coming when he announced he was turning the slim volume of The Hobbit into three films.  This is where opinion starts to divide, especially amongst those like the LOTRO community who know Tolkein's universe in depth.  ("The subtitles in that scene between Thranduil and Legolas didn't translate the Elvish properly, did they?" is real quote from our group's post-film discussion.)

As a humble fan who's only read the books twice, I understand Jackson's moves.

There's a lot of back story here about the rise of Sauron (the primary bad guy in The Lord of the Rings) that wasn't in The Hobbit, but makes perfect sense if you look forward to a time when people are going to be sitting down to watch six films in order.  Jackson's elaborations turn The Hobbit into more of a prequel than the almost stand-alone children's book it was.

The primary objections are to the invention of a new female Elvish character … Tauriel, the captain of the Elvish guard … and the inclusion of the Elf Legolas (Orlando Bloom's character), with a love triangle involving them and Kili.  Tolkien fanatics, particularly men, are left sputtering in amazement.  Unlike Jackson's other elaborations, this has nothing to do with deepening Tolkien's original intent.  How could he!  True.  But if you're a woman, it makes perfect sense.

And for this I'll forgive Jackson his over-long action scenes.  Because he's given me a brave, sexy, intelligent female character I can care about.  And some romance to balance all the adventure.  Personally, I'm looking forward to film three to see what happens to Tauriel far more than to see the dragon slaying and battles that are to come.

From wicked witches to Icelandic chefs, it's a week about confounding expectations

Restaurant review:  Texture (London), Reunion Bar (London)
Theatre review:  Wicked

Christmas merriment, part two.  We start with Agnar Sverrisson's Michelin-starred Texture.

Scandinavian cuisine continues its uber-trendiness, with Copenhagen's Noma retaining its lustre as the world's most desired restaurant table and the third UK TV chef in a year (this time, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall) about to do a cooking series from there.  Married to the half-Dane, I've been ahead of this curve, discovering gourmet delights in Copenhagen three years ago, attending family meals at Madsen's Scandi Kitchen (now sadly closed) and attempting some of my husband's favourite Danish dishes.  Despite the trendiness, London doesn't have that many Scandinavian restaurants.  Texture is, with its star, its elegant location on Portman Square and its TV-regular chef, undoubtably the poshest of them.

Given my personal ties to the cuisine I'd always wanted to try the place.  Christmas lunching with one of our design agencies provided the opportunity.

It is all that you'd expect from Michelin-starred dining.  Exquisite tastes, beautifully presented, in an elegant yet modern dining room with impeccable service.  What it was not was particularly distinctive, or noticeably Scandinavian.  Had you escorted me to the table blindfolded, I wouldn't have picked up the national flavour and wouldn't have found much to differentiate it from many other fine dining establishments doing modern European food from the classical tradition.  Except perhaps a lighter touch on sauces and ingredients that makes it easier to eat while watching the calories.  Sverrisson states in his menu that he does his best to avoid saturated fats in his starters and mains.  All I noted as obviously Scandinavian, besides that light touch, was wafer-thin rye bread served as crisps, an abundance of dill and assurance that the cod was from Iceland.

While it might not be distinctive, their £26.90 three-course set menu is a deal.  I started with a wonderfully delicate venison tartare, followed by that Icelandic cod done with Jerusalem artichoke and black truffle.  Dessert was the most inventive: white chocolate mousse and ice cream paired with dill and cucumber (pictured above).  The surprising accompaniment prevented the chocolate from being too sweet and brought a welcome freshness to the dish.

Far less delicate, and more rib-sticking, was an impressive array of canapés served as a pre-theatre dinner at the Reunion Bar at the Grosvenor Hotel, Victoria.  This is one of those grand Edwardian places that are architectural monuments to Empire.  Walk into the lobby and you'll feel like organising India or taking over a small African country.  Walk up the processional staircase to the bar and you'll find a space with modern decor and amusing nods to grandeur.  We partied in an area with throne-like chairs and a grand canopy above us.

Fabulous service kept our champagne glasses constantly topped up and fresh nibbles appearing every few minutes.  Ironically, we probably ate and drank more in 90 minutes here than we would have at a "proper" dinner.  Certainly the mini Cornish pasties and the tempura prawns didn't do the diet any favours.  Petite rolls of rare roast beef around a sliver of fresh horseradish and a slice of heart of palm were suitably light, however, and worth trying at home.

The cocktail-party dining preceded the case study production team's outing to see the long-running Wicked.  I knew very little about the plot other than that it's a prequel to the Wizard of Oz that presents a surprising, alternative story to the assumptions you will have had from watching the original film.  Knowing any more than that, frankly, would spoil your enjoyment.  Because the story is marvellously clever.   The music is almost incidental, and other than one tune (Defying Gravity), not memorable.  It's really more of a play, and the lessons it teaches about not believing appearances, or official spin, are fabulous.  It would be an excellent outing with pre-teens; must keep in mind for the godson.
musical

Thus ends this year's holiday party season.  At least the work-related, expenses-fuelled season.  The personal weeks ahead will be quieter and less profligate.

The local shines, Loubet repeats, but it's the Mormons who make the week

Restaurant Reviews:  The Four Horseshoes (Sherfield-on-Loddon); Bistrot Bruno Loubet (London)

I had just settled into my seat on the London-bound train when I heard two girls arguing behind me.  They took the facing seats.  One had been crying.  A mousy, brown, frizzy-headed, blotchy complexioned young Englishwoman who hunched into herself and radiated low self esteem.  The other was a glossy-haired, bright-eyed, conservatively turned-out American girl who looked like she was channelling June Cleaver.

"You can't quit," the American girl pleaded.  "You can't leave me on my own.  Just come back to the
flat and we'll talk about it."  The English girl hunched further into herself and sniffled.

From the name tag at  the American's breastbone I realised these two were Mormon missionaries.  A bit of conversation confirmed my suspicions.  The American is the innocent abroad, a bit frightened but mostly enraptured by how different England is from her native Utah.  The English girl is the daughter of local Mormons, sent out on her mission much closer to home but not happy about it.

Soon, the American has the local president on her iPhone speaker, and they're both trying to convince the huddled one to face up to her responsibilities.  She may want to quit, the president says, but if she does it she needs to do so in an organised fashion, not just run away.

I was entranced by this little drama, and suddenly wondered:  Is someone going to start singing?  Maybe I'm in a flashmob, and they're filming a promo for Book of Mormon!  Surely life couldn't imitate art that much, could it?  Evidently so, as the girls got off at the next stop to return home.  I wish them well.

That little drama was actually the highlight of what was already quite an eventful week, the first of two packed with holiday festivity.  Other people worry about their caloric and alcohol intake over the holidays, my danger zone is always the last two working weeks of December, when agency lunches and department Christmas parties mean a fortnight of wedging work in-between the food and drink.  Maybe the Mormons should have been trying to convert me rather than arguing with themselves.  God knows, I'm hitting that deadly sin of gluttony hard at the moment.

The best meal of the week was with two colleagues at my local pub, The Four Horseshoes.  This was the copywriters' lunch.  The advent of a new chef has sent it from the worst of three pubs in our village to what I'd confidently say is the best gastropub in or around Basingstoke.  I've eaten there twice now and have been stunned by what's coming out of the kitchen.  Gourmet stuff at humble pub prices.  This week I started with a beautifully assembled beetroot and goat's cheese salad before going hard core with an obviously made-from-scratch venison pie.  And then on to the test of all fine pubs:  sticky toffee pudding.  Passed with flying colours.  Sadly, the atmosphere is almost the inverse of the food.  Though a charming old exterior, someone went cheap and cheerful in the past and it currently has the interior ambiance of a bus station cafe.  If the new management starts renovating the place to match the food, they'll be a force to be reckoned with.

The fact that this meal was as good as, if not better than, Friday's gourmet outing at Bistrot Bruno Loubet tells you I'm serious.  Loubet's place was nothing to sneeze at, however, repeating the quality I found there earlier this year.  The ingredients were certainly more gourmet and the wine list infinitely better.  This was the graphic designers' lunch.  I started with a terrine of Jerusalem artichoke and Corsican sheep's cheese with black olive oil.  It didn't quite live up to the interesting description, as that exotic-sounding cheese was really just like a drained ricotta turned a dark grey by the oil.  But the duck breast with a mulled wine sauce that followed, with its little side of a pastilla (a sweet and savoury pastry of North African origin) of confit duck leg and cranberries, was as delicious as it was seasonally festive.  The walnut, prune and armagnac tart looked good, but the flavours didn't differentiate themselves and, honestly, The Horseshoes' pudding would have taken this one in a fair fight.

Earlier in the week I'd had yet another delicious meal at the Lansdowne Club, where I provided access through my membership for the UK marketing ladies' dinner.  Here we combined the gourmet ambiance of Loubet with the value-for-money of The Horseshoes.  The beauty of a private club:  a holiday three-course menu for £20.  Of course, thanks to restaurant manager Erik's excellent help with the wine list, we spent almost double on wine what we did on food.  No surprises there.

The only place I easily resisted the gluttony challenge was an atmoshere-light party barn in The City called Gilt.  It was the UK marketing team Christmas party and, frankly, after years of recessionary bans on official gatherings, just being together was miraculous.  The official £20 per person kicked in by the company only stretched to platters of deep fried whatnots, easily resisted.  Because, after all, this had been planned by the team of recent graduates and they were saving the bulk of the cash for alcohol.  They show great potential.

Corporate largess was a bit more enjoyable at back-to-back meetings at the BT Tower.  Thursday
morning we got bacon butties and hearty mugs of coffee while we contemplated updates to the corporate visual identity.  Not distracted by the view, as it was so foggy we seemed to be floating in total isolation.  The next lunchtime, after yet another marketing session, we were treated to mulled wine, hand-crafted mince pies and views that stretched for miles in all directions.  Still grey, but definitely feeling a lot like Christmas.

One more week of partying left to go before I can even think of reformation.  Mormon or otherwise.

It's a tale of two turkeys at our holiday open house

Two years ago, as a new bride, I insisted on doing the full Thanksgiving feast.  Like most middle class  "foodies" in this country, we ordered a premium bird direct from a farm.  In our case, the celebrity chef endorsed Kelly Bronze.

The damned thing cost £70.  Yes, it was delicious.  But it got me wondering.  How much is really in the rearing, and how much is in the preparation?  Was I … a marketeer … simply paying out money for marketing?

I've been waiting for an excuse to experiment.  Our annual holiday open house was it.  We decided to lay on a Thanksgiving buffet, given how late the American holiday was this year.  Leftover turkey sandwiches with slices of cold stuffing and cranberry jelly.  Three kinds of home made bread (the unsung heroes of my table, I thought):  four-seed, sun-dried tomato and pumpernickel.  Pumpkin pie and chocolate pecan pie.  Turkey-shaped sugar cookies at a decorate-it-yourself bar for the kiddies.  Which worked a treat to entertain but did cause some nasty sugar-induced tantrums later in the day.  Sorry, parents.

But about that turkey.  No hand-reared, free-range, rare breeds here.  Just two frozen, plebeian birds from Sainsbury's … £17 each … subjected to gourmet preparation.

We brined both for 16 hours in a salt, herb, spice and onion bath.  Rinsed and dried, their paths diverged.  One with a French-inspired recipe, one TexMex.  We called them Pierre and Pedro.

Pierre got the oven roasting.  Propped upright on our beer-can roaster, but the can was filled with white wine rather than beer.  Next, I soaked a tea towel in a combo of melted butter and white wine and draped it over the bird.  The rest of the soaking liquid, plus 3 cups of chicken stock, went into the roasting pan.  I basted every half hour, and should have pulled the liquid-soaked tea towel off when the bird's thigh meat reached 140c.  The now-naked skin needed to crisp and brown as the bird came up its last 40 degrees.  (I hadn't anticipated how quickly our fan oven would cook the bird … less than two hours for a 4 kilo turkey … so didn't have enough time for crisping.  Lesson learned!)

Meanwhile, Pedro got the barbecue.  I slathered him with olive oil and mesquite seasoning and put him on the Weber, coals pushed to the side and a bath of beer (emptied from Pierre's can) and stock beneath him.  Similar basting every half hour.  Despite the different cooking methods, Pedro took almost exactly as long to cook as Pierre.  His skin was a luscious brown, as opposed to Pierre's pasty, teacloth-shrouded white.  Pedro, you could have carved at the table.  But Pierre tasted a bit better.

The oven/butter/beer can-with-white wine method, unsurprisingly, turned out really moist meat.  Pedro had an interesting smokey flavour, but he was also obviously dryer.  I'd do the oven method again exactly as described … except for pulling the cloth off sooner.  The barbecue still needs some experimenting, probably with fewer coals.

But the real question:  Did all that effort bring the £17 frozen bird up to the £70 gourmet model?  Not quite.  From what we remember (it was two years ago, after all), the pricey free range bird had a rich flavour the frozen boys didn't quite match.

Was that flavour difference worth £53?

Sorry, no.  I think I proved my point with Pierre and Pedro.  There's a lot of marketing in those English turkey prices.  Buy cheap and focus on your cooking technique, and you can close to a reasonable gap.

It's a reverse Thanksgiving as I shop, then eat. Without turkey.

Restaurant Review:  L'Ortolan (Reading)

There's much debate stateside this year about shops being open on Thanksgiving.  A travesty, clearly.
 But it's not a holiday in England, though I always take the day off.  With no cooking to do, but a day to indulge, shopping made perfect sense on this side of the pond.

Off to the Winchester Christmas market, where two questions dominated.
1)  While sitting in traffic waiting to get into town, even though it was mid-morning on a Thursday:  Why didn't I take the train?
2)  Once parked up and wandering the streets:  Why don't a shop here more?

Winchester is just half an hour south of us.  It has a venerable history, from capital of Anglo-Saxon England to gracious Georgian market town.  The architecture reflects that, offering up a town centre with a good mix of Medieval through Georgian, with one over-exuberant Victorian Gothic town hall and only a few modern incursions.  There's an exquisite cathedral that houses the bones of those ancient Anglo-Saxon kings and, more significant for some, Jane Austen.  In the cathedral close you'll find one of the best German-style Christmas markets in the south of England.

There are traditional wooden toys (my godson is getting a fabulous sword, shield and crossbow combo), holiday wreaths and potpourri, woollens and lots of jewellery.  Local artisans turn out with stained and blown glass, pottery, paintings and photography.  A handful of stands sell imported culinary delicacies, others garden knick knacks and home decor.  All from classic wooden chalet huts around an ice skating rink.  In the corners, of course, are stands offering mulled wine, and at the far end you'll find a food court with sausages, meat pies, crepes and other goodies.

But Winchester's shopping appeal spreads beyond the official market.  There are market traders in other main streets of town, and the regular shops are worth a look.  All the main chains are here, but they're joined by a larger-than-average collection of eclectic independent boutiques.

Several Christmas objectives accomplished, I headed home to dress for dinner.  My Thanksgiving cooking was still to come (of that, see the next entry); for the night itself we'd be in the hands of Alan Murchison.  Back to L'Ortolan, Reading's only Michelin-starred restaurant and just a dangerous 11 miles from our house.  It's become our default special occasion restaurant and we tend to get here once or twice a year.  We usually opt for the tasting menu with the wine flight; we're never disappointed.

So what was for a Michelin-starred Thanksgiving dinner?  Venison.  With a beetroot and blackberry puree, with chocolate sauce.  Preceded by two fish courses and one meat:  a magnificent light and bright starter of Devon crab with papaya, lemon grass jelly and tempura soft shell crab; classic duck liver parfait with gingerbread and less classic pineapple chutney; stone bass with smoked pomme puree and ceps.  On the dessert side, an unremarkable but effective palate cleanser of citrus mousse, setting the taste buds up for salted chocolate mousse and coconut sorbet.  Who needs turkey and pumpkin pie?  

Equally exciting was our brush with celebrity.  Masterchef: The Professionals is on the BBC now and one of the favourites is a sous chef at L'Ortolan.  Barcelona-born David Balastegui Gonzalez has made it to the semi-finals with confidence, creativity and some striking dishes.  Though the competition has ended, we don't know the results.  We must wait for the plot to unfurl on TV.  But we do know that David is still in the kitchen at L'Ortolan.  On Thanksgiving night, working the pastry section and clearly visible through the glass wall that offers diners a peek into the kitchen.  So not only was that chocolate delicious, it was served up by a television star.  Or, at least, by someone enjoying his 15 minutes of fame.

A quirky addition to a long list of things for which to be thankful this year.

Tapas goes modern, trendy and foie gras-based in our top Barcelona dining spots

Restaurant Review:  Five to try in Barcelona

A second long weekend eating in Barcelona only confirmed my initial impressions of last year:  This is the best culinary city in Europe.

Piers and I started the eating and drinking part of our visit as all tourists must:  at the Boqueria market.  As I suspected, we walked around in a state of delightful speculation.  What would you do with this?
I've never seen that!  Imagine the dinner party we could have centred around those…  Oh, for a kitchen.  Without one, we had to put ourselves in the hands of local chefs.  We didn't have a bad meal, though some were more noteworthy than others.  In order of our favourite on down:

Estel de Gracia - Tucked in the warren of small streets called the Gracia, this place is far off the beaten tourist track in spirit, if not in walking time.  On a Saturday night, we were the only foreigners I overheard and there were no menus in English.  There were large groups of happy locals clearly having a great time.  The vibe is modern, chic, pared back without being austere.  The staff doesn't have much English but is clearly happy to give it a try; probably because their star ("estel" in Catalan) is rising fast on Trip Advisor.  The little place is currently ranked 99th out of 4621 in Barcelona.  We appreciated their modern, gourmet take on tapas.  Foie gras croquetas?  Trust me, that's a novelty that deserves repetition.  The creativity extended to the mains, when I had a whisper-thin pizza topped with burrata (a fresh Italian soft cheese), red onions and seafood.  Lovely house wines at a reasonable price and a manager who, seeing we were serious about our food, ended our evening with free glasses of some unusual Spanish desert wines and wrote down details of what we drank that evening.  Unusually for us, one of our cheapest meals was also our favourite.

Celler de la Ribera - We were hoping to get in to the neighbouring Cal Pep but that famous spot was heaving and we hadn't booked.  We were cold and wet, this menu looked interesting and there was a warm indoor spot to sit down.  Sold.  Like the restaurant above, this place was playing with new trends and fusion with other cultures.  Cal Pep is unabashedly traditional; in the Celler our tapas included pan fried foie gras over strips of gingerbread and a trio of meatballs served in a specially-designed three-part dish.  A bright, modern feel to the place and quick preparation and service once we got a server's attention.  (That bit took a while.)  At least 20% pricier than Estel de Gracia, but we recognised we were paying a premium for being on the main tourist flight path between the harbour and the gothic quarter.  With advance planning, I'd still book at Cal Pep.  But as an alternative in the area, it was good.

Monvinic - Last year I raved about this upscale, wine-focused restaurant, and it was top of my list of things I wanted to share with Piers while in Barcelona.  Excellent food, beautifully designed space, huge wine list filled with interesting Spanish choices.  Our server's English was excellent and, as I did with our waiter last year, we put ourselves in her hands, allowing her to pick aperitifs and then the right glass to accompany each of our three courses.  Dining here is a high-end wine tasting with food.  The food is seasonal and gourmet.  We both indulged in the seasonal wild mushrooms we saw at the market; him on toast topped with a fried egg, me with a simple fricassee.   But it all adds up.  7-12 euro a glass for wine, 18-30 euro per course … you do the maths.  The mushrooms were tasty, but worth 20 euro for a small bowl?  We loved it, but we had such wonderful food at less expensive restaurants that we questioned whether the wine experience was worth the premium.

El Cochinillo Loco - This small tavern is in the arcade enclosing the Boqueria market, has outdoor tables with heaters and, most critically, had a free table during a busy Friday lunch time.  Traditional tapas, served in too-large portions.  Tapas is supposed to be little plates for grazing, after all.  My attempt to get Piers to try octopus saw me having to polish off a mound of the little guys.  Chewy and laden with garlic, they were OK but I've had better.  Tuna croquetas, a platter of jamon, decent but not-hot-enough squid, excellent grilled fresh chorizo, a bottle of Rueda.  All average, but with a premium price because of location.  I suspect we mis-ordered; looking at our fellow diners and checking TripAdvisor afterwards, their speciality appears to be seafood platters.  If tired and in need of a place to slump near the market, I'd give them another try.

Before Piers arrived, I added a couple others to the list with colleagues after work.  Both fit in the mid-rank above.

7 Portes - I was underwhelmed, and surprised to be so.  This is one of Barcelona's great establishments and had been tipped by a Spanish colleague as the best spot in town.  My perception:  It's an attractive (late-19th c bistro style) tourist warehouse dishing out paella to the masses.  Good paella, undoubtably.  Rice perfectly al dente, rich umami flavours, seafood and meat added at the right time to keep them tender.  But equal to what I'd expect in any good coastal Spanish place.  And a surprisingly spare wine list for someplace that clearly gets plenty of expense account traffic.  (It was laden with fellow IT execs when we were there.)  Good for business group meals, but it didn't occur to me to return once my holiday time started.

Roca de la Vila - I might have returned here had I been able to find it!  Recommended by our hotel, a taxi whisked us there and back and I didn't have the name of the place until a colleague sent me a copy of the receipt for my expense report once we were home.  A cozy spot with the feel of a taverna in a fishing village, had there been straw-wrapped chianti bottles on the table I would have thought I was in Italy.  The streets around were quiet and had an almost industrial feel, however … not a picturesque neighbourhood.  An excellent array of tapas followed by some superior salt cod showed a sure hand with the classics.

Gaudi's Palau Guell is the unsung hero of Barcelona's heritage sights

Sure as you'll eat a lot of tapas, when in Barcelona you'll see long queues tailing back from the doors of Gaudi's La Segrada Familia, La Pedrera and Casa Batllo.  Puzzlingly, you won't find them at Palau Guell, another Gaudi-designed building that, to my taste, is the best of all his domestic architecture.

The Guell Palace is just off the Rambla, a short walk from the Boqueria Market.  If anything, it's closer to the main tourist flight path, and therefore more convenient, than the the more famous buildings.  There are other reasons it should be higher on the tourist hit list.

It was his first significant, complete house design, created in his mid-30s.  You can see both the young genius, and the roots of the style that would stretch through his whole career.  It's the grandest and most complete of his domestic buildings open to the public. La Pedrera is an apartment building with only one middle-class dwelling restored and open (described in my entry last year), and Batllo is a house that had apartments on upper floors (not part of your tour).  Guell is an urban palace, all of its floors and rooms devoted to the life of one family, and all recently restored and laid open for you to wander about.

It's wonderful from the very beginning, when you're greeted by sinuous ironwork on the doors and come into a a ground floor that's essentially a big, integrated port cochere.  Carriages came in one side, and out the other.  Between them an impressive dark marble staircase ascending to the formal door.  (Pictured above.)  Behind that, a turning space and a circular ramp descending to basement stables, beautiful in their own right for their unusual brick columns.

The tour, which comes with an excellent audio guide, takes you from bottom to top.  First, the

processional entry that brought guests to the exquisite entertainment rooms.  Gaudi's naturalistic, modernist style is evident in tendrils of ironwork wrapping around light standards, early appearances of his catenary arches and the strange curves of wood and stone.  But there's more traditional Arts and Crafts style here in glazed tiles, faux Medieval carving, stained glass and impressive Arabic-style ceilings.  The most impressive room here is the central hall, at least three times higher than it was wide, creeping heavenward with those distinctive arches.  Gaudi punched holes in the dome to let light through, used a lot of gold, built in an organ and inset a gold-encrusted chapel on one side behind folding doors.  Party space, concert hall and heaven-looking church, all in one.

Then you get to clamber up to the family rooms, where the vine-and-leaf inspired decor around the arches of the master suite turns the rooms into an outdoor bower.  Though the house is mostly empty of furniture, the recent restoration places photos in many rooms showing what they were like when occupied.  Revealing an interesting truth about Gaudi.  Stripped down to the bare architecture, his rooms are exquisite.  Filled with late Victorian furniture, rugs, pot plants and ephemera, they're just too much.  I doubt any other architect has been done such a big favour by having his work emptied of its original furnishings.

Any good Gaudi building leads you to the roof.  The man was obsessed with bizarre chimney pots, after all, and the Guell Palace offers a riot of colour on a Disney scale.  More than anything else in the house, the roof points towards the dramatic departure from the norm that the rest of his work would take.  The finials of La Segrada Familia, still under construction today, are here at Palau Guell … finished 140 years ago.

I returned to that wonderful church, this time introducing it to Piers.  Interesting to see that things had changed just since my visit last year, with scaffolding removed from the main entry wall.  Last year, we visited on a gloomy, grey day.  This year, sun was pouring through the windows and the whole place showed off Gaudi's passion for using light as a design element.  We booked an hour long guided tour, which was well worth the extra money.

We also got to Casa Batllo, completing my triple crown of Gaudi domestic architecture.  In last year's coverage of my visit to La Pedrera, I speculated that the interiors down the street at Batllo might be more impressive.  And they were.

It's the colour scheme that blows you away here.  Gaudi wanted the whole place to feel like you were

living under water, so everything is done in shades of blue, white and green, and those trademark sinuous lines are now seaweed and waves.  The main sitting room with its undulating window frame overlooking the busy boulevard below is remarkable.  The roof is another blockbuster; along with crazy chimney pots you get a tiled roofline designed to look like a dragon.

The more I see of Gaudi, the more I love him.  I'm not sure I could live in his buildings full time, but if I get to choose my architect in heaven, he's designing my beach house.

From Desigual psychedelia to gracious art nouveau, I'm surrounded by Spanish style

If you only get to take one business trip a year, then four days working in Barcelona, rolling into a long weekend of fun, is hard to beat.  

I'm just returned from the annual outing to Gartner Symposium.  Once, it provided delightful blog entries from the south of France.  Then the closure of the Cannes convention centre moved activities to Spain.  And though I enjoyed those French trips, I have much more exploration left to do in Spain before I miss the cote d'azur.

The work part of the week saw me back at the Barcelona Princess.  Last year I found the place striking but hard to love.  My room was cold, both in temperature and decor.  Though on the seaward side of the building, I wasn't high enough to see much more than the sprawling convention centre.  This year by some fluke of luck I got upgraded to the Desigual Loft.  This Spanish design company is known for its vivid colours and starburst designs.  Think Moorish meets '60s psychedelia.  They've  taken over two floors of the hotel, which converge on a two-story lounge and a rooftop pool, and lavished their designs all over.  It's quirky, festive and totally un-corporate.  It brought the otherwise austere and angular rooms to life.  Add to that the fact that my room looked over the city, the mountains and had a clear view of La Segrada Familia, and it was warm enough to take a couple of quick dips in that pool between work commitments, and I became a very happy customer.

Work complete, I moved up the street for some fun.  Literally. The Diagonal is the very long avenue that cuts across Barcelona from sea to mountains.  On Thursday afternoon I moved 2 kilometres up the road, saving 100 euro a night and dropping a century back in time.

We were exploiting another of our club's reciprocal memberships, this time at the Circulo Ecuestre.  This club, originally founded by keen horsemen, occupies a gracious Modernist (Spanish Art Nouveau) mansion in the heart of the fashionable Eixample district, formerly the home of a wealthy family.  The old house holds lounges, restaurants and function rooms; hotel rooms are in a more modern building next door.

While not as shocking as Gaudi, the building had the audacious curves and naturalistic forms typical of the city's most famous son, and all the furnishings and art were in keeping with the time period.  In a city so defined by its architecture, I was delighted to be staying somewhere so evocative.  It was a bit odd, however.

This is a club, after all, not a hotel.  And, according to the girl at the front desk, the Circulo Ecuestre is heavily a business club that gets little usage in the evenings or on weekends.  Thus Thursday night found me entirely on my own on the palatial ground floor, choosing from five empty lounges radiating off the spectacular great hall as I considered where to nurse my Campari and soda. I finally chose the room at the front and centre and sank into a wingback to watch traffic flow up and down the Diagonal through the big oval window.  When I wandered to the restaurant I was at one of three occupied tables.  On Friday night, Piers and I again had the ground floor to ourselves, and on Saturday they'd closed it off completely.  But were having a private party in the conservatory that also served as a breakfast room.

There weren't many staff around.  On both nights we had to hunt for someone to get us a drink, and the front desk was only manned at peak hours.  Though a doorman was there 24/7 to let residential guests through.  Not many guests, either.  I'd guess there were perhaps 12 rooms; we never saw more than six other people at breakfast.  After the mob at the trade show, I found the slightly strange isolation soothing. 

It was Piers' first visit to Barcelona, and only my second, so we did the standard tourist itinerary.  Gaudi buildings (of which more next), the city bus tour (hop-on, hop-off, excellent value), the Boqueria market (where I resisted a repeat of the poor numerical skills that found me buying £120 worth of morels), a meander through the Gothic quarter, a bit of shopping (Vincon is the coolest home store ever).  And food.  Lots of food.  Of that, more to come.

A pleasant wander through Australia and a new restaurant with issues: Our Friday night out at the Royal Academy

Restaurant Review:  The Keeper's House (London)Art Exhibit:  Australia (The Royal Academy)

The Royal Academy has taken the unprecedented step (at least in my memory) of doing a retrospective show on the art of an entire country.  Given the number of Australians in London, they must have known there was a built-in audience.  I'd guess 75% of the viewers were from Down Under.  Including our friend Guy, who suggested the outing.

For an old traditionalist like me, it's a show of two halves.  The first is both interesting and lovely, and

there's a good story to tell.  Europeans coming to a strange land.  Overcome by its grandeur, but too bound by their European traditions of green fields and blue skies to really paint what they saw.  Then along come the Australian impressionists, living to the same ideals as their colleagues in Paris and painting reality.  The result is the best room in the show, with dramatic canvases showing you the beauty, danger and loneliness combined in those big landscapes.  Running alongside, but not influencing, is the abstract Aboriginal tradition, highly naturalistic and seeming to grow out of the land itself.

And then we get the modern stuff.  Handfuls of it are palatable.  The Aboriginal stuff here is by far the best.  The rest?  Far too much odd concept stuff.  It certainly makes you think.  Piles of abstract forms made of white wool.  A giant neon cartoon of a suburban house.  Beautifully executed little silver sculptures of plants and trees which are, for some reason I didn't quite grasp, growing out of silver sardine tins whose lids had been rolled down to reveal vivid relief sculptures of various acts of sexual stimulation.  Hmmmm.  Methinks there was a good reason the rooms in the second part had far fewer people, Australian or otherwise, than in the first.

They must have been rushing for dinner.

The Keeper's House is a new restaurant in the corner of the Royal Academy complex, carved from the basement of this Georgian building.  They've been going less than a month and, frankly, it shows.  Good food was belittled by disorganised service and a quirky dining room.

First, the rooms.  Georgian cellars, hung with green baize walls, adorned with Victorian plaster casts of classical and Renaissance relief sculpture.  Modern white tables and chairs.  Pleasant enough, if not particularly inviting.  Two issues.  First, the acoustics are dreadful.  We started dinner at 9, the room was already half empty, and there was still an almighty din.  Certainly not a spot for a quiet, romantic dinner.  And then there's the temperature.  Evidently the Royal Academy dictates it, in order to preserve the casts.  It's freezing.  I was sitting in a steady draft hitting the back of my neck and only survived by fashioning a scarf out of a large linen napkin.  At London fine dining prices, you shouldn't be endangering your health in a drafty old basement.  Ditch the casts and turn up the heat, folks.

The jolly but confused service signalled trouble from arrival, when our table for three had been recorded as one for two so they had to regroup.  Once seated, it took far too long to get most things.  The bread didn't arrive until three minutes before our starters, our second bottle of wine took so long to appear that we had empty glasses through most of the main course and they comped us in apology.

The food is good but not worth putting up with this level of incompetence.  Especially as, like most museum venues, you're paying for the privilege of dining in such close proximity to the art.  You'll spend £40 on your three courses before you touch a drink, and the servings aren't generous.  Although they are very pretty.  It's all very arty and high concept … perhaps to mirror the goings-on upstairs.

I started with scallops in squid juice with lemon charcoal, served on a plate designed to mimic a sea shell.  Interesting flavours, attractive presentation, but the scallops were small, slightly overcooked and creeping toward cold.  (Maybe it was just the chill in the room.)  Please, don't start getting arty until you get the basics right.  My main of roasted rabbit loin also seemed just slightly overcooked. The accompanying pink fir potatoes, trompette mushrooms and sour onion were tasty, but that last vegetable had been stewed down to a stringy dark mass that, while it tasted great, didn't look particularly nice.  The best thing was undoubtably the dessert.  Bitter chocolate, caramel and ovaltine (malt).  For top distinction it just narrowly beat out our server's magnificent moustache, waxed up in curls above his beard to give him the distinct air of a pre-Raphaelite artist.  He might not have been quick, but he was charming and matched the venue.

The irony of all this is that the place is run by Oliver Payton, a man who … when not commanding his growing restaurant empire … is one of the harshest judges on the TV cookery programme Great British Menu.  He sits there in judgement of some of the UK's finest chefs, who are trying to win the right to cook a course at a national banquet.  He was there last night, looking stressed.  And so he should have.  Peyton's own restaurant has so far to go his stint on the show seems hypocritical.

At the moment, the Keeper's House proves a great truth:  It is far easier to criticise than to do it yourself.

Mi scusi, Signore Verdi … but you can be boring, too

Global, live broadcasts are transforming opera.  The give hundreds of thousands a chance to see what only a few thousand can see live.  That's good for the bottom line, and for high culture in general.  For the audience, it allows experimentation.

I'm happy to drive 15 minutes to my local Odeon, spend £16 and sit by myself to see an opera on which I'd never consider making the effort to find a viewing companion, travel to London and shell out £70 at the Royal Opera House.  Which is how I ended up snoozing through large portions of Les Vepres Siciliennes last night.

When marketing material contains the words "rare opportunity" and "seldom performed"… when London's Royal Opera house has never staged it before … there's probably a reason.  In this case, it's a long and convoluted plot with no memorable music.  The Royal Opera House made a magnificent attempt.  I certainly got my money's worth out of stage sets and interesting interpretations.  But I won't make any effort to see this one again.

The plot, in a nutshell:  It's the Middle Ages, and heartless French invaders are oppressing the noble Sicilian people.  (I liked that part.)  There's a Sicilian countess whose brother was executed by the French in a rebellion.  She carries his rotting head around in a bag while working for vengeance, pulling it out occasionally for dramatic effect to rally the cause.  (Very  Sicilian.)  She's in love with a bastard peasant, able to stomach the social difference because he's vowed to kill their mutual enemy, the despicable French governor.  Who, it turns out, raped our hero's mother 20 years before and is thus his father.  (The duet where this is revealed is one of the better parts of the opera.  One wonders if George Lucas an earlier rare performance.  "Luke, I am your father.")  Our hero is then deeply conflicted, there's an aborted revolution, the countess gets thrown in prison, things look grim, there's forgiveness and a wedding, but the celebrations end up triggering a massacre as the Sicilians finally take back their island.  It all ends in blood.

It's a plot with potential.  But abundant side stories and the meandering pace make long sections feel tedious, and the music is dull.  I can sit through Wagner operas for 4+ hours because the boring bits are interspersed with some of the most stirring and exquisite music ever written.  Verdi has written plenty of magnificent stuff, but you'll find none of it in this opera.

Director Stefan Herheim has made the brilliant move of transporting the story to the time in which it was written, the mid-19th century.  It's a more familiar age, and heaving with revolution, so the transposition works.  The sets extend the stalls of the theatre onto the stage, where a white-tie-and-tailcoat crowd watches the scenes unfurl below.  It's a stunning spectacle.  Herheim also takes the ballet that would have been a major, but stand-alone, part of the action and weaves it through the whole plot.  In the prologue we see our hero's violent conception … his mother is a ballet dancer … and the ballerinas literally dance through the whole story, getting more menacing as the action progresses.

Fascinating, beautiful to watch and enlivened by explanation, this was a perfect opera to take in on the big screen.  If you see it coming to a stage near you, however, you might want to think twice.

It's not just food. It's art, magic and civilisation. The Ledbury lives up to its reputation.

Even people who don't follow the ins and outs of the world's great restaurants may know The Ledbury.  At the height of the London riots in August 2011, a band of hoodie-clad, bat-wielding teenagers smashed into this, one of the world's most famous ... and accordingly expensive ... restaurants.  They demanded wallets and jewellery off the diners.  The kitchen staff famously defended their customers with rolling pins and carving knives, getting everyone into the wine cellars to wait in safety while things calmed down.

Already a gastronomic hot spot, The Ledbury's reputation has only grown since that crazy night, as the food crafted by those heroic chefs not only earns two Michelin stars, but the accolade of 13th best restaurant in the world.  Only Heston Blumenthal's Dinner flies the flag any higher for Britain on the list.  (And only one other British restaurant, Blumenthal's Fat Duck, makes the top 50.)  So The Ledbury is very special indeed.

It's hard to put your finger on what differentiates one restaurant from another when you get into the Michelin two and three star category.  You can count on inventive interpretations of classic dishes, exquisitely prepared, served with flare.  Indeed, each bite was a wonder, and each course stood memorably on its own, even though there were nine of them.  Yes, nine.  With the matching wine flight.  Indulgence on a profligate level.  Perfectly acceptable, we thought, to celebrate the visit of our friend Lisa's mother to London this past week.  Eileen Traeger radiates the vibrant energy and cheerful dynamism of a woman a third of her age, and if any of that could rub off on us, it would be a magical evening indeed.

We could only survive nine courses, of course, because each one was tiny.  Perhaps four bites.  This, more than most tasting menus I've had, lived up to the name.  An exploration of a broad variety of seasonal wonder, doled out in little tastes.  Variety without overwhelming.  And it's a menu that deserves full description.

We started with marinated langoustine with creme fraiche, frozen citrus and herbs.  It was the frozen element that surprised here, elevating a classic pairing into something really interesting.  Washed down with champagne, of course.  Next came one of the most memorable courses, beetroot baked in clay with smoked eel and dried olives.  The clay baking had retained all the moisture and the flavour of the vegetable.   The eel, present as both a strip of smoked meat and flavouring in the milky sauce, was an unexpected pairing success.  Equally unexpected was a delicious Tuscan rosé to drink with it.  I am usually not a fan, feeling that too many of these pink wines are unexceptional bi-products churned out to grab the summer party market; neither a good white or a memorable light red.  This 2012 rosato from Rocca di Montegrossi, however, was a worthy stand out.

Next came flame grilled mackerel with pickled cucumber, celtic mustard and shiso.  I had to look up the last ingredient when we got home.  It's a type of Asian mint, and I can't say I picked up either its flavour, or the mustard, nor any idea what made the mustard celtic.  I can tell you, however, that the mackerel was surprisingly delicate, avoiding the oily, fishy kick it sometimes delivers, and the tiny cylinder of mackerel pate wrapped in pickled cucumber was both delicious, and a testament to the dexterity of the chef who produced the miniature wonder.  A bright and citrusy gruner veltliner complemented this one.  On to what the table agreed was the disappointment of the meal when it came to the menu description vs. the reality.  Poached cepes with 2-year-old comté, crispy kale and a broth of grilled onions.  Delicious, but no matter how special those mushrooms or their preparation, the poaching had them tasting a lot like the ones that come out of a tin.  The kale was the star of the course; or maybe the South African chenin blanc.

Another fish course had us thankful that we all (a) like seafood and (b) like the white wines that inevitably pair with them.  Cornish turbot.  Ancient Roman writers tell us turbot was amongst the most prized delicacies in that gourmet culture.  I'd had some perfectly good turbot but had never grasped the magic 'til this meal.  This was some of the best fish I've ever had.  Firm, moist, delicate yet full of flavour.  Served with truffle puree and cockles alongside a grilled leek.  Stunning.  With a New Zealand chardonnay to add to the magic.

On to the best dish of the meal.  The dish that I may remember for the rest of my life.  The dish that makes me weep for 14 million jews and 1.6 billion muslims who will never be able to taste perfection.  Jowl of pork with carrots, walnuts and chanterelles.  If you like pork, think back to the best bit of it you've ever had.  Now concentrate the flavours by 10.  Then imagine the meat is so tender it dissolves in your mouth like spun sugar.  Add the accompaniments to bring sweetness, earthiness and crunch, extending and rounding the essence of that noble pig.  It was a dish so beautiful it left us all speechless.  Chewing thoughtfully, gazing at each other in wide-eyed shock.    I can hardly remember the characteristics of the wine (2009 Lagren, Berger Gei, Ignaz Niedrist, Alto Adige, Italy) except to tell you that it was a beautiful match.  Given that it stood beside the best pork dish I've ever eaten, it must have been deeply worthy.

Australian chef Brett Graham works magic at The Ledbury

The roast breast of pigeon with quince, red vegetables and leaves that followed was good, but I was still thinking about the pig. The bird was good, but similar to others I'd had elsewhere.  The standout in this course was the wine.  2010 Les Terrasses, Velles Vinyes, Alvaro Palacios, Priorat, Spain.  The kind of big, bold, fruity, knock-you-upside-the-head-with-flavour red my husband calls an "Ellen wine".

Fact is, even with the tiny plates we were getting very full by this point.  And while the food was coming in tastes, the wines were pouring in  full-glass gluggs.  We were reaching our limits.  

The pre-desert was a necessary citric palate cleanser with a bit of creaminess ... I'm afraid it's not described on the take home menu and that's all I can remember.  It set us up for the climax, one calculated to please the mostly female table:  Banana and chocolate malt tartlet.  Delicate tart crust with that malty undertone, filled with the darkest of dark chocolates, which might have been too much if not balanced by the caramel sweetness of the bananas.  And the raisin sweetness of the Australian Pedro Ximenez in the dessert wine glass.

A magnificent and hugely memorable meal, with multiple stand-out courses.  Extract the beets, turbot, pork and chocolate tart and you'd have pretty much the perfect meal.  The rest was just layering nuance on top of perfection.

Add to all of this one of the most beautiful dining rooms I can remember.  All done in variations of black and white, with sumptuous black velvet curtains draping massive arched windows, and different black-and-white patterned fabrics making each upholstered seat back different.  The china is all clearly designed for the decor, with unusually shaped, obviously hand-made plates in black, grey or white, with interesting glazes and speckles.  It all added to the visual impact of food as art.

I like to think, had I been confronted by criminals storming the place, I would have been brave enough to fight back.  Inspired by the fact that The Ledbury represents food as an apogee of Western Culture, worth fighting to preserve.  By about course seven, however, I fear I'd slipped into such soporific ecstasy I doubt I would have been capable of much movement if confronted by a revolutionary. 

Reykjavik's worth a detour, but I'm glad we didn't stay there

And finally, to the capital.

It might be the capital city of a European nation, but it feels more like a fishing village on the Northwest  coast of America.  It's charming, the views over the bay are striking and residents enliven the place by painting buildings in festive colours.  But I found that once I was in "civilisation" I was far more aware of how grey, oppressive and chilly the weather was ... whereas out in the country it just added to the dramatic backdrop.  If I returned I might stay here a night to explore a bit further, but I'd want to spend the bulk of my time in the great outdoors.

The tourist heart of Reykjavic is a few streets surrounding the main harbour and running up a hill above it.  The harbour is, unsurprisingly, full of signs for puffin and whale watching tours.  Most striking to my eye is the modern sculpture a few hundred yards down the tourist promenade that evokes the spirit of an early Viking ship.

There are government buildings, a theatre and a grand hotel, mostly in a late 19th century style.  The main shopping district ... just a couple of streets, really ... offers you a mix of cute cafes, shops selling traditional woollen goods, plenty of outdoor clothing/sporting goods purveyors, a few trendy clothing boutiques and a surprising number of silversmiths.

The most obvious thing to visit is the cathedral, looming prominently above a town where most

buildings are just two or three stories.  There are exceptions to every rule, and this building challenges the one that says brutalist concrete buildings are ugly.  This one is striking, with its concrete poured in thin spires pointing heavenwards.  Inside you'll find a clean, elegant nave of gothic arches and bright, modernist stained glass.  Outside, a far more traditional statue of Leif Ericson looking towards the American continent he visited long before Columbus got credit for discovering it.

But the visit that almost every tourist in Reykjavik makes, with good reason, is to the Baejarins Beztu Pylsur hot dog stand.  Now that I'm married to a half-Dane and have family in Copenhagen, I recognise the Icelandic hot dog thing as a carry-over from their Danish days.  The Danes are obsessed with this version of street food and you'll find a stand about every 200 yards in the capital.  Baejarins Beztu was the only stand I spotted in Reykjavik, but it's in every guidebook.  The queues testify to that!  The dog was very similar to the Danish variety.  Soft meat with a pleasing bite to the casing, served with both raw and those magnificent crunchy fried onions.  But the Icelanders do a trio of sauces ... sweet mustard, mayo and a tomato-based ... and their buns are much softer.  I have to give them the slight edge in the Scandi dog wars.  Given the relative expense of the country, a hot dog and a soda for £3 is also the best bargain you're going to get here.

After our brief wander around town, it was back to the airport for our late afternoon flight home.  Keflavic has come a long way since its early days.  Many Americans of my generation will know and remember it from the '80s, when Iceland Air offered the cheapest way to get to Europe, but you had to touch down in Iceland for a few hours.  Then, is was a tiny, bleak terminal building with a shed selling sweaters and Royal Copenhagen porcelain.  Now, it's a gleaming, modernist terminal with a high-end duty free mall ringing a restaurant and bar area with tables, chairs and leather armchairs to sink into.  Very civilised.

And that's a great metaphor for Iceland overall.  Civilisation carved out of dramatic, wild nature.  It's a truly unique place, and I hope I get back.

In closing, a few random travel tips.

• Do consider using a specialist.  We had a few problems with Discover the World, but we could have avoided those had we been a bit more diligent about chasing them and reviewing their work.  Overall, however, I think we got a much better experience going with people who knew the place, with a package price that was a bit better than we could have done on our own.
• Pack some lightweight clothes.  It seems counter-intuitive.  But the geothermal heating is so good that once you're inside, it's generally toasty.  The layered look is essential; make that last layer a thin one.
• From a London perspective, it's not as expensive as you'd think.  Lots of people are warned off Iceland because of the cost, but I found it not so different from home.  Dinner, if consumed a la carte, would have been about £40.  The wine list started at £25.  It cost just under £60 to refill tank of our rented 4WD (It was 3/4 empty.)  Not cheap, certainly.  But I didn't have the sticker shock here that we had in Copenhagen.
• If you stay in accommodation outside of Reykjavik with a kitchen, buy your groceries on the way through the capital.  Your chances of finding shops once you're beyond it are slim.
• I expected the woollens, but not the hand-crafted silver jewellery.  If that's your thing, be ready to shop.
• Iceland lets everyone shop duty free, even members of the European union.  Rather than avoiding it as an expensive location, it actually makes Reykjavik a credible Christmas shopping spot.