Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Four seasons in one day - Crowded House
I went down to London again last Saturday. Again! Yup, me second trip to London in one week! I had a list of things hich I planned to do when I get down there. One of the things which I plan to always do when in London is to eat the roast duck rice!!!!!!
I can still remember the first time when we were taken to Wong Kei to eat the roast duck rice. Mind you, Wong Kei is renowned for its rude waiters - tourists (non-chinese) actually go there just to see how rude the waiters can get - and they get a kick out of it! Sigh... tourists!
I digress - we fell in love wif the duck rice! It was simply brilliant! It has to do wif the duck they have here in the UK!!! It may sound gross to some of you but according to me mate, Stephan, what makes it special is the layer of fat in between the skin and the meat!!! :-P~
We were so crazy about duck rice that we even tried once to go to the nearby park and catch one of the ducks there to cook!!!!!! But that's another story... (and for you animal activists out there, no, we failed miserably in our mission and returned empty handed!!!).
So it was high on me priority list when I got down to London last Tuesday. But it was a "so close but yet so far" situation! Just when I got to London's Chinatown - and could smell the roast duck, literally - me mate called me up and asked me to wait for him!!!! When he finally came, he was't interested in eating at Chinatown! So I gave it a miss (altho the next day after he left, I had roast duck rice for lunch and for dinner!!!!!).
Back to last Saturday - I met up wif some mates who came down to London for a holiday. Some were from M'sia while a family was from Birmingham. We went for dinner at this place in Bayswater called "Four Seasons" (see pic on the right - pic obtained wihtout permission from someone's blog! ;-P But she din place any restrictions...).
Four Seasons is reputed to have the best roast duck in town - and the long queues outside the restaurant all day long is a strong proof of that!
We actually dared to go there without making any reservations - and had to wait outside in the cold winter for quite a long while. But we were entertaining each other and were being entertained by the chef behind the front window wif his skills at cutting up and deboning the many roast ducks!
When we got in, I have to say that the wait was well worth it! The roast duck there was better than any roast duck I have tried in Chinatown! Excellent! Highly recommended!
Oh, it was oso the first time since I got here that I ate toufu, kai lan (whoa... excellent!) and char siew! :-)
Still, while the food was top class, being wif me mates is more important. One of them brought over a big bag of stuffs for me from M'sia (which inter alia includes my trusty reliable Oxford dictionary and me gore-tex Timberland shoes). He oso took the initiative to bring over around 15 packs of instant noodles - Mee Goreng Indomie, Maggi kari, etc. That was nice of him!
And there was me mate from Birmingham. It has been sooooooooo long since I last saw him. It was really good to see him again - this time wif his family, his wife and his 2 kids! The girl is 5 while the boy is 2. I immediately hit it off wif his daughter - she had this heavy English accent which reminded me so much of how Hollie used to speak! And there was the way of how her eyes would sparkle mischieviously that was so like Hollie! We were soon walking hand in hand along Queensway (methinks the parents were just glad to have sumone else keep an eye on her!).
Unfortunately, due to the long wait outside the restaurant, I couldn't spend much time wif them after dinner. The tube lines were a madness that nite too due to the closure of major parts of District Lines and the entire Circle Line.
Well, I do plan to see them again soon. Hopefully, I will.
I can still remember the first time when we were taken to Wong Kei to eat the roast duck rice. Mind you, Wong Kei is renowned for its rude waiters - tourists (non-chinese) actually go there just to see how rude the waiters can get - and they get a kick out of it! Sigh... tourists!
I digress - we fell in love wif the duck rice! It was simply brilliant! It has to do wif the duck they have here in the UK!!! It may sound gross to some of you but according to me mate, Stephan, what makes it special is the layer of fat in between the skin and the meat!!! :-P~
We were so crazy about duck rice that we even tried once to go to the nearby park and catch one of the ducks there to cook!!!!!! But that's another story... (and for you animal activists out there, no, we failed miserably in our mission and returned empty handed!!!).
So it was high on me priority list when I got down to London last Tuesday. But it was a "so close but yet so far" situation! Just when I got to London's Chinatown - and could smell the roast duck, literally - me mate called me up and asked me to wait for him!!!! When he finally came, he was't interested in eating at Chinatown! So I gave it a miss (altho the next day after he left, I had roast duck rice for lunch and for dinner!!!!!).
Back to last Saturday - I met up wif some mates who came down to London for a holiday. Some were from M'sia while a family was from Birmingham. We went for dinner at this place in Bayswater called "Four Seasons" (see pic on the right - pic obtained wihtout permission from someone's blog! ;-P But she din place any restrictions...).Four Seasons is reputed to have the best roast duck in town - and the long queues outside the restaurant all day long is a strong proof of that!
We actually dared to go there without making any reservations - and had to wait outside in the cold winter for quite a long while. But we were entertaining each other and were being entertained by the chef behind the front window wif his skills at cutting up and deboning the many roast ducks!
When we got in, I have to say that the wait was well worth it! The roast duck there was better than any roast duck I have tried in Chinatown! Excellent! Highly recommended!
Oh, it was oso the first time since I got here that I ate toufu, kai lan (whoa... excellent!) and char siew! :-)
Still, while the food was top class, being wif me mates is more important. One of them brought over a big bag of stuffs for me from M'sia (which inter alia includes my trusty reliable Oxford dictionary and me gore-tex Timberland shoes). He oso took the initiative to bring over around 15 packs of instant noodles - Mee Goreng Indomie, Maggi kari, etc. That was nice of him!
And there was me mate from Birmingham. It has been sooooooooo long since I last saw him. It was really good to see him again - this time wif his family, his wife and his 2 kids! The girl is 5 while the boy is 2. I immediately hit it off wif his daughter - she had this heavy English accent which reminded me so much of how Hollie used to speak! And there was the way of how her eyes would sparkle mischieviously that was so like Hollie! We were soon walking hand in hand along Queensway (methinks the parents were just glad to have sumone else keep an eye on her!).
Unfortunately, due to the long wait outside the restaurant, I couldn't spend much time wif them after dinner. The tube lines were a madness that nite too due to the closure of major parts of District Lines and the entire Circle Line.
Well, I do plan to see them again soon. Hopefully, I will.
# posted by imissw : 12:44:00 am
