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.