A TASTE OF LONDON

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Being the seasoned travelers we have become, we realize that our planned itinerary will often change as the vacation unfolds. Today was a perfect example. The plan was to tour the Globe Theatre, then the Beefeaters’ distillery. We opted to skip the Globe (mainly because it is just a reproduction and we have already walked by it earlier). This change allowed a little more tie in the morning, to sleep in and get ready for the rest of the day, which was still pretty backed.

We took the tube to the Oval station. When you come out of the underground you are steps from the Oval Cricket Stadium, as large as many of our baseball stadiums (We just happened to watch a bit of cricket on the tele last night). It was a short walk to the distillery. This is an actual neighborhood were regular people live and several social housing buildings. I guess in the States we would call them “projects” but these appeared to actually; be livable and in good shape.

TRAVEL TIP: Book your tour on line well in advance, they sell out all most every day and today was no exception.

The tour consists of two parts. The first is a self-guided tour of a museum devoted to the history of spirits (specifically gin) and the cocktail. It was very interesting, especially to see the correlation with the growth of Jazz in this country as a result of prohibition in the US. After the self-guided tour of the distillery. You don’t really get to walk through it for sanitary reasons (that gin needs to be pure) but you can see all of the stills and they have a great hands-on display of the various spices that go into gin. I thought it was just juniper berries, but it is actually much more complicated. There are up to 13 spices added to gin, some unique to Beefeaters. I don’t remember them all, but some examples are Bulgarian Coriander, dried Spanish orange and lemon peels, licorice, Oiris (which is dried Iris root) and several others. All of the Beefeaters in the world is made in this one distillery, over 35,000,000 bottles in 2015 alone. There are two types that can be purchased on the market: The Original Beefeaters London Dry Gin, and Beefeaters 24 (a few more spices are added to this). There is one gin that is only sold to bars and restaurants, and then there is the Garden Gin (has tea in it in addition to the traditional spices) and finally the Burroughs’s Reserves (named after the founder of Beefeaters who was actually a pharmacist by trade) which is rested on French oak for 45 days. There are two versions of this a light and a dark, many was it rested in French oak from white wine or red wine. I purchased a bottle of the dark. This gin is not meant to be mixed with anything, it was in fact intended as a gin that could be had with dinner, or drank in the same manner as scotch. We will have our first sip on my 55^th birthday this March. The tour of coursed ended with a Gin & Tonic.

After the tour, we hopped back on the tube and headed back to Covent Gardens for lunch at Rock & Sole Plaice. At last fish n chips. We picked this establishment because it is supposedly the oldest chippery in England. The only use fresh seasonal fish. Today’s offering was sole, cod, haddock, plaice (whatever that is) and a few others I don’t remember. They also have a few other items on the menu but it is mainly all about fish n chips. We also ordered a cheese and onion pasty (probably not the best place to order one, but we needed to check it off the list). Jerry had sole for his fish, and I went for the traditional god. The batter was very good as was the tartar sauce (yes also did a bit of malt vinegar) the chips were, eh. Basically, steak fries and not crispy enough. The fish was worth the stop.

After lunch, we headed to the National Gallery. Unlike the British Museum, this is your traditional art museum. It was also free to get in, but we did contribute 10 pounds. There was a large section devoted to Impressionists, Monet, Degas, and of course my favorite Van Gough. They also had classics from Rembrandt Renoir, Van Dyke, Titian and the like. Art museums are much easier to get through, since you just can admire the painting and not spend a great deal of time reading about the history of a mummy or antiquity or entire ancient culture (not that I don’t love that as well, its art is just easier on your brain). We spent about 90 minutes here. We arrived at 4 so only had two hours before closing, but we made the most of it. Started with the impressionists, were we spent the majority of our time and then on to the more classical and Renaissance. Renaissance is not really one of my favorite periods for art, better than Gothic as I can only look at so many pictures of Christ on a cross or the Virgin Mary. Renaissance is a lot of portrait and still life, most of the people, unless it is a monarchy or the painter himself you have never heard of, or at least I have not.

The highlight of the museum was Van Gough’s Sunflowers, in all there were about 8 Van Gough’s but this was the center piece.

After the National Gallery, we walked back to the Hotel. The crowds are really beginning to pick up as everyone is making their way into London for the New Year’s Eve celebration. We first stopped at Tesco to restock our win-thirty supply, then by the restaurant for this evening to check on proper attire, then through Covent Garden and finally back to the hotel to rest have some wine and get ready for dinner.

Tonight’s dinner was at J Sheekey on St. Martins Court in Covent Garden. This is a narrow side street lined with mostly restaurants, pubs and small shops. J Sheekey specializes in fish, they don’t even have meat on the menu, but do have a few meat-eaters choices available. The restaurant has been around since the late 1800. The interiors are the traditional hard wood panels and provide a warm and inviting atmosphere. We were greeted warmly by the hostess who took our courts and promptly showed us to our table. The table was in a cozy corner allowing us to see the rest of the room we were in. The restaurant was very large and contained several dining rooms.

The meal got off to a good start with the best Martini I have had on the trip. Jerry had a nice glass of Sparkling from Kent. Unfortunately, from there it went downhill. First the table across from us was a family of four Americans or should I say Texans, they were nice people, but I am not sure why they came to a place noted for fish, when only one of them had fish (and that was fish n chips) and the daughters were a bit to Gossip Girl for my taste. Not that I was eavesdropping, but it was pretty hard not to catch parts of their conversation. That aside, that wasn’t really the issue with the restaurant. I expect that a restaurant that specializes in seafood would in fact know how to prepare seafood. The appetizer proved me wrong Jerry had a Parsnip soup with a walnut cream, it was very tasty, could have a bit more pepper and salt, but it was very tasty. I ordered the scallops on the half hell. They were beautifully presented but the moment I cut into them I knew they had not been properly cleaned. The beard (the part that holds the scallop to the shell) had not been removed, this made it nearly impossible to cut. But far worse than that was they had not been cleaned, my first bit was full of sand. Lucky it was me and not Jerry, he would have gone through the roof, he cannot stand dirt in his food (well who really wants a mouth full of sand with each bite). I got the attention of the server and politely stated that they scallops had not been property cleaned (fare to much watching Gordon Ramsey), she immediately got her manager, whom had a bit of a macho attitude, and I explained to him the situation. He took them away and had another prepared. When the second attempt arrived, it was not a beautifully presented, but I could live with that, (ok, don’t be shocked) but when I cut into the scallop again the beard had not been removed and not only could I not cut through it when I took a bite it just turned to mush in my mouth and yes there was (here it comes) SAND. Calling the manager back again, attitude growing every minute, I let Jerry handle the complaint for fear I might be a bit hostile. Jerry simply said this was not acceptable and merely rubbish the manager pushed back but finally just said what would you like instead. I ended up with an Asian prepare raw salmon with a nice wasabi and soy sauce. This was prepared nicely and cooked property (it was raw how could it not be cooked properly). Finally getting paced the appetizers, we moved on to the entrées. Jerry had a Dover Sole with Béarnaise (he had to ask for more Béarnaise as they brought about two teaspoons the first time) and I had a Fillet of Halibut in a leek and coriander sauce. Both of the fish dishes were very good, but they were barely room temperature. Not wanting to end up being thrown out, we just let it slide and ate our meal. With our entrées, we had a side of heritage carrots and mashed potatoes (the carrots were the only hot item we got). At least the wine did not disappointed, have a lovely bottle of Sancerre. We opted out of dessert and finished up our wine. A different manager, with even more attitude, did come buy and offer us complimentary cocktails to end our meal, so I had another Martini and Jerry had another glass of champagne. So, while the food was ok, it could have been exceptional they just totally fell apart on the execution and at the prices they really need to get their act together otherwise they may want to change their name from J Sheeky to J Shakey)

DAY TRIP TO BRUSSELS ON FRIDAY.

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Photos

Cod
Pasty in the background

Sunflowers
Van Gough

Self Portrait
Rembrandt