I’m tapping out this blog post on the train back from London on my iPad. First of all I have to say, what a fantastic birthday!
We arrived in London just before 13:00 and headed to Soho for our lunch reservations at Gauthier (Alexis Gauthier’s Michelin-starred restaurant). We saw Gauthier on Masterchef a few weeks ago and his style of cooking is very interesting. He doesn’t use weighing scales or timers in his kitchen – everything is done by feel and texture. The short version is that his restaurant was great. It’s right by Shaftesbury Avenue and you have to ring a doorbell to get in. We were about 20 minutes late (thanks to some inconsiderate track jumper on the Bakerloo line) but this was no problem.
We started off the meal with a glass of Champagne which was delightful. The pricing structure was very reasonable and we decided to go a la carte. We had a four course meal for £45 a head (excluding wine) which is really good value for a Michelin starred restaurant in central London. I had the most divine garlic risotto to start followed by a couple of extremely succulent scallops. I then had the pleasure of enjoying a perfectly cooked pigeon rounded off by the most amazing (and I mean this honestly) pudding I have ever eaten. It was basically an incredibly posh Wagon Wheel. Somehow, Alexis Gauthier has figured out a way to put every imaginable chocolate/nutty delight onto a plate and make it work – fantastic!
The whole meal was accompanied by a (let’s face it, obligatory) delicious bottle of red wine. I can wholeheartedly recommend this restaurant – it most certainly won’t disappoint.
As has become the norm today, Fi presented me a present at 3 o’clock to tell me about my next activity. This time we were going to the Doctor Who exhibition at Kensington Olympia. Awesome! The weather has been unpredictable all day and we got caught short by the rain which meant that we arrived at 16:40 at the exhibition centre. In theory, the exhibition wasn’t taking anymore admissions and we should have been turned away but the staff were great and let us in which meant we had the whole exhibition to ourselves. It was really, really good. I got to go in the TARDIS for crying out loud!
After Doctor Who, we rounded off the day with cocktails at the OXO bar on the south bank of the Thames. We (again – oops) were late for our table reservation and so they had given it away. No matter, the rain had stopped and so I had my (rather potent) Vespa martini on the balcony overlooking St. Paul’s cathedral. We then walked to Gordon’s Wine Bar (one of my top 10 places to have a drink) before catching the train back to Bristol.
What an absolutely unforgettable day! I cannot thank Fi enough for her efforts. Something tells me that I’m going to have to pull out all the stops for her 30th in a couple of months time…