venta

A whole host of reviews from the last few days:

Domingo's is a Tapas bar on the main street running through Northfields in London. I have an inherent distrust of places whose names are written in neon letters outside, and I should have listened to me.

The food wasn't nasty as such, merely a bit uninteresting. The chorizo in wine sauce managed to have that strange attribute (common to microwave curries) of being spicy without actually having any flavour. The other dishes were pleasant enough, but nothing I couldn't have made myself at home... The only exception being battered artichoke hearts (sorry

triskellian) which were well done, but... to be honest, I don't really think artichokes respond well to battering. You can see their point.

(The menu just said "artichokes valenciana" on it - should this have warned me there'd be batter involved ?)

Saturday night was Cathy's birthday, so we went along to Back to Basics, which is on Foley St, W1. And serves many, many fish. I had gilt head bream with hummus, an unlikely combination which seemed to convince the other people who ate it, but left me a bit unsure. Still, the fish was lovely, and the portions generous.

They also do bread with flavoured butter, which is to be highly recommended. They're slightly alarming colours, but fresh bread and red pepper butter is spectacularly nice.

And then we went to a bar, which pretended to be normal at first. Until trips made by various party members to the toilets revealed the following:

There was an attendant in the Gents', there to hand out towels and generally loom. Not that odd, but unexpected in your average bar.
In the Ladies' there was a couple of small video screens, which I intially took to be showing the bar outside. In fact, they were linked to cameras pointed at the sinks in the Gents'.
There were no corresponding screens in the Gents'.

Now is it just me, or is that bloody odd ? Relaying this to a couple of people, it seems this bar (Mash) used its cameras a selling-point when it first opened. Just.... eh?

The Oxford Gourmet Kitchen is a relatively new take-away in Oxford, as far as I know, so we thought it ought to be tried. Reasonably cheap, and very generous portions. It does an intermittent selection of oriental stuff... I ordered udon noodles with soup and seafood - completely forgetting that udon noodles are the fat, flaccid kind that I'm not fond of. They were surprisingly nice, though, and the seafood was really, really good for a cheap takeaway. Soup's a little on the insipid side though.

They do a mean crispy duck, too.

And once our reserves were worn down by aromatic duck, Andy made Jez and I watch LadyHawke. Which is one of those films were you are around 2.5 seconds into the title sequence, and every pixel is screaming at you "I'm a film that was made in the mid 80s"

I'm a bit undecided about the film. It's got an interesting cast - Rutger Hauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, and an almost unbearably young and precocious Matthew Broderick. And it has some nice moments. It has the capacity to either be a lot of fun, or downright awful; it hovered perilously between the two, and I'm not quite sure which side I'm coming down on.

And last night was supposed to be constructive, but I fell into a bottle of red wine early on, dragged Frances with me, and we never quite got round to doing anything. And we lounged about, and chatted, and it was all very pleasant.

I made one of those meals where you collect everything edible in the fridge, and wonder what to make out of it. The answer turned out to be a mushroom and cashew nut pilaf (surprisingly nice) and some braised vegetables in red wine sauce (moderately indifferent). And no, before anyone asks, the cashew nuts and red wine weren't really in the firdge at all. Nor was the rice.

However, I was reminded by

davefish last night that the worst reaction my cooking has ever received was a cry of "what is that thing, for the love of God someone please kill it", so I'm counting the cooking of something merely indifferent as an evolutionary step forward.

We also have...

A designated hero of the week. No clear victor this time - some people have done some difficult and brave things, but I'm not sure they've necessarily been heroic. So I've decided to count the small things, and nominate

failmaster for sending me something which really made me laugh.

Oh and you - yes, you - any more of that and I'll be creating the post of Designated Villain of the Week. You have been warned.

And finally...

It's that time of year again when the sun starts to make my hair go blondish, and I dye it some stupid colour in self-defence. So... suggestions, please, for an interesting colour which can be achieved on brown hair (see icon if you don't know what colour my hair is!) without recourse to bleach. Probably temporary, as it'd take forever and a bit to grow out.

I'm guessing it's going to be in the red-auburn-purple region, so any suggestions for particular dyes which work well would be welcome...