Highlight of the day - at the risk of sounding like an obese alcoholic, a glass of white wine and a some NEW DELICIOUS Double Chocolate Digestives (I mean, it's a crime not to try new things), at the end of a looooong day at work.
Lowlight of the day - First world problem I know, but, semi-skimmed milk shortage at work meant that I had to compromise. I've always drunk semi and for me, skimmed is like water and whole is like cream. For my cereal, I thought I was being really clever by mixing some skimmed and whole by pouring a splash of both on. Should that work? It tasted like runny cream to me. It did, however, lead to much hilarity with two of the people I sit with at work as I was talking about 'semi', which their dirty minds turned into semi-hard-ons, only exacerbated by the introduction of '(w)hole' to the equation! Innuendo galore!
Not too much to report today, so, I thought I'd tell you about a weird experience I had a couple of weeks ago. I've been to a bar on Frith Street called Sofa King Cool (read it out loud if you haven't got the pun). It's got luminous sign, but looks like it could be anything (particularly a sofa shop), but it's an underground basement bar. It's supposed to be a lesbian bar. However, the clientele is so small that when I went with a gay friend, it was a gay bar and when I went with a straight friend, it was a mixed bar (i.e. we were the only people there). Both times, the staff were lovely and the decor's pretty cool - it's a bit futuristic with lots of neon - something like walking into a Kylie Minogue video. Anyway, I walked past it about 3 weeks ago and a menu had popped up outside! The food sounded delicious and, even though I thought the atmosphere and neon might be a bit odd for a restaurant, I told my friend we should try it.
Last week, we took the plunge, however, it was sofa king weird. We were walking up and down Old Compton Street (we couldn't remember which street it was on, but knew the neon sign stood out when you looked down the road) and we couldn't see it. We finally decided it was definitely Frith Street and as we walked down, we spotted it! It had changed its name to the Ultra Lounge. The bouncer/manager/stray Australian invited us in. I asked if it was Sofa King Cool. Straight away, she was really quick to say it wasn't, how it had changed its management and was COMPLETELY different. I told her I'd walked past a week previously! It's pretty quick to change completely. The same menu was outside...I asked and she said it was the same food!! Completely different, but with the same decor and menu?? She was very cagey about it all and seemed a bit taken aback when I said that I knew it was Sofa King Cool one week ago with the same menu, but anyway, she was still friendly and we went in.
In fairness, they had toned down the lighting to make it more restaurant-y. The waitress was really friendly, but someone about it oozed 'we are brand new and we don't know what we're doing yet'. The food was really tasty and very good value. For £20, you got three courses and a complimentary passion fruit shooter. I had tempura prawns, tuna steak burger, which was very flavoursome, and chocolate gateaux. I enjoyed it all very much. The only slight problem (bar the identity crisis) was the WINE. I am NOT a wine snob at all, but we ordered house white and they brought us an £18 bottle of GALLO wine. If they were going to try and palm us off on cheap wine, I honestly wouldn't be able to tell the difference, but they should at least be sneaky enough to choose a bottle that isn't a famous cheap brand. I mean, they are usually on 3 for £10 in the off-license! To make matters worse, when we wanted a second bottle, we very Britishly said that we weren't overly keen on the first bottle and ordered the next one up (not that we're cheapskates!) which was £20. To our disbelief (although we were wetting ourselves laughing by now) she brought out a different Gallo! We asked if she could just tell us which bottles she had that weren't Gallo. She came back a couple of minutes later and said they'd had a rush on (which usually I wouldn't believe, but there were about 4 tables seated there which is a rush by their standards) and the ONLY wine they had left was Gallo. I think this probably means that had we ordered the most expensive wine on the menu, they would've just brought out a Gallo bottle. We got cocktails instead which were lovely(they were on offer). It was a very strange evening, but the food and cocktails were really lovely and very reasonable. The staff are also really nice on the whole, I'd just recommend that you don't get the Gallo and for some reason, don't mention Sofa King Cool.
Lowlight of the day - First world problem I know, but, semi-skimmed milk shortage at work meant that I had to compromise. I've always drunk semi and for me, skimmed is like water and whole is like cream. For my cereal, I thought I was being really clever by mixing some skimmed and whole by pouring a splash of both on. Should that work? It tasted like runny cream to me. It did, however, lead to much hilarity with two of the people I sit with at work as I was talking about 'semi', which their dirty minds turned into semi-hard-ons, only exacerbated by the introduction of '(w)hole' to the equation! Innuendo galore!
Not too much to report today, so, I thought I'd tell you about a weird experience I had a couple of weeks ago. I've been to a bar on Frith Street called Sofa King Cool (read it out loud if you haven't got the pun). It's got luminous sign, but looks like it could be anything (particularly a sofa shop), but it's an underground basement bar. It's supposed to be a lesbian bar. However, the clientele is so small that when I went with a gay friend, it was a gay bar and when I went with a straight friend, it was a mixed bar (i.e. we were the only people there). Both times, the staff were lovely and the decor's pretty cool - it's a bit futuristic with lots of neon - something like walking into a Kylie Minogue video. Anyway, I walked past it about 3 weeks ago and a menu had popped up outside! The food sounded delicious and, even though I thought the atmosphere and neon might be a bit odd for a restaurant, I told my friend we should try it.
Last week, we took the plunge, however, it was sofa king weird. We were walking up and down Old Compton Street (we couldn't remember which street it was on, but knew the neon sign stood out when you looked down the road) and we couldn't see it. We finally decided it was definitely Frith Street and as we walked down, we spotted it! It had changed its name to the Ultra Lounge. The bouncer/manager/stray Australian invited us in. I asked if it was Sofa King Cool. Straight away, she was really quick to say it wasn't, how it had changed its management and was COMPLETELY different. I told her I'd walked past a week previously! It's pretty quick to change completely. The same menu was outside...I asked and she said it was the same food!! Completely different, but with the same decor and menu?? She was very cagey about it all and seemed a bit taken aback when I said that I knew it was Sofa King Cool one week ago with the same menu, but anyway, she was still friendly and we went in.
In fairness, they had toned down the lighting to make it more restaurant-y. The waitress was really friendly, but someone about it oozed 'we are brand new and we don't know what we're doing yet'. The food was really tasty and very good value. For £20, you got three courses and a complimentary passion fruit shooter. I had tempura prawns, tuna steak burger, which was very flavoursome, and chocolate gateaux. I enjoyed it all very much. The only slight problem (bar the identity crisis) was the WINE. I am NOT a wine snob at all, but we ordered house white and they brought us an £18 bottle of GALLO wine. If they were going to try and palm us off on cheap wine, I honestly wouldn't be able to tell the difference, but they should at least be sneaky enough to choose a bottle that isn't a famous cheap brand. I mean, they are usually on 3 for £10 in the off-license! To make matters worse, when we wanted a second bottle, we very Britishly said that we weren't overly keen on the first bottle and ordered the next one up (not that we're cheapskates!) which was £20. To our disbelief (although we were wetting ourselves laughing by now) she brought out a different Gallo! We asked if she could just tell us which bottles she had that weren't Gallo. She came back a couple of minutes later and said they'd had a rush on (which usually I wouldn't believe, but there were about 4 tables seated there which is a rush by their standards) and the ONLY wine they had left was Gallo. I think this probably means that had we ordered the most expensive wine on the menu, they would've just brought out a Gallo bottle. We got cocktails instead which were lovely(they were on offer). It was a very strange evening, but the food and cocktails were really lovely and very reasonable. The staff are also really nice on the whole, I'd just recommend that you don't get the Gallo and for some reason, don't mention Sofa King Cool.
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