LONDON DAY FOUR

Day four in London, Friday, started with yet another day of trying to figure out how to get ready when there’s hardly enough floor space in our room for both of us to be moving at the same time. On the positive side, the cave-ish nature of our room guarantees a good night’s sleep, which is essential when you are running around as much as we have been during the day.

The big event for the day was our reservation at Gordon Ramsey’s flagship restaurant of the same name. The restaurant has three Michelin stars, and we’d decided to find out what all the fuss was about Michelin starred restaurants…figured we’d start big!

But since our reservation wasn’t until 2:15, we decided to sleep in a bit, then visit the National Gallery. It was a nice visit, and fun to see paintings we had heretofore only seen photos of. I was a big fan on a Da Vinci sketch they have, and Chris was a big fan of Casper Frederich’s (sp?) painting “A Winter Scene” or something like that—a nice landscape revealing a man sitting behind a rock in prayer and meditation, having tossed aside a crutch. Of course, since the National Gallery sits on Trafalgar Square, we got to see that famous spot—we’re pretty sure all the trash cans that aren’t in Underground stations are all there—the place is rimmed with them!

The downside of planning to head to lunch right from the restaurant was that it meant I had to dress for the event—which included an ill-chosen pair of black heels. I should know better, having similarly worn the shoes for what turned out to be a painful evening in New York. My feet actually held out well for a few hours, till, of course, twenty minutes till we headed to lunch. Let’s just say it wasn’t a fun walk to, on, then from the Underground.

Gordon Ramsey’s is located in Chelsey, and not particularly close to an Underground stop. Of course, we could have guessed but certainly learned from the waiters asking nearly every party if they wanted a taxi ordered at the end of their meal, most people who eat there probably don’t take the Tube to get there!

We arrived early, which was quite a feat considering my ginger steps by this point (and having dragged Chris into every shoe store we passed) and were invited to sit in the lounge (the restaurant is small—13 tables, and the bar only functions to stock the waitstaff (so no option of “sitting at the bar”). The nice thing was they first brought us nuts, then some tasty snacks of lettuce, crisps (potato chips) and cracker/bread and two yummy dips. All the staff were gracious and though I am sure we reeked of tourists from a mile away, they did not seem to treat us any differently than any other guests were treated (we suspected at least a couple others were, like us, food tourists).

We had already planned to do the three course menu of the day, and in the end, I ordered a seafood paella first course, fish second course, and banana parfait with caramel ice cream for dessert. Chris chose a liver/foie gras/marrow spread on a crouton (toast more than what we might call a crouton in the US) first course, pork second course, and rice pudding dessert. In addition, they brought us an amuse bouche (I guess that’s what it was) of a duck confit ravioli in pumpkin soup. It was quite yummy and has restored my faith in duck confit (they were serving it everywhere on our honeymoon then when we were in California, and is often wasn’t very well done).

We both enjoyed the food, and of course the service was very good. Was is most interesting, I think, is the difference between dining style between the US and England (and, as we suspect we shall see, France). Whereas waitstaff in the US are assigned certain tables (certainly good staff will care for whatever immediate needs any table has) at Ramsey’s (as at other places we’ve visited here) there wasn’t really one identifiable waiter for our table. All the staff at one time or another, I think, visited our table, and though about half of them had specific jobs, the others just all seemed to be working together as well, all as quite a team. I don’t know why that is, but I am now very interested to learn more about how different dining and service styles developed in various places. I was impressed that when we sat, we were asked who was in charge of the table (which tells them who to give the menu with the prices to), rather than merely assuming it was Chris.

The restaurant itself, as I said, was quite small (13 tables). All one room, and such simplicity of decoration as to border on being under-decorated. The walls were cream colored, featured mirror panels, and some gold-type accents (I think, mostly it was quite plain). The one room was certainly no larger than the whole of the main floor of our house, maybe just 2/3 of it.

The food, over all, was good. I must say, though, that we prefer Volt—and we tried to control for familiarity/hometown pride. The food was good, but not astounding (the sauces, perhaps, were the most worked parts of the meal, but we, admittedly, are not familiar enough with sauces to be able to judge them well). My first two dishes, to my tastes, were under-salted. Now I suspect that itself reveals my poor palate, but that’s how I experienced it. Dessert was good, and they brought (as to each table) two additional dessert dishes: first—strawberry ice cream balls encased in white chocolate and presented in a dish with dry ice sending its “steam” flowing over top, and then truffles encased in white chocolate then painted with a metallic-type coloring and then seven of these ball speared onto ends of individual wires connect at its base (giving it the look of a tree).

All in all, it was a really awesome meal, and our even attempting to look at it with a critical eye is rather audacious, but brought on by having had a few nice meals and, yes, watching some TV shows like Top Chef and even Gordon Ramsey’s won shows!

After the meal, I was anxious to get back and change into any outfit that didn’t require me to wear heels! We did that, then, since our other big excitement was the arrival of our good friend, groomsman and Chris’ college friend—Brad Oberle—decided to spend the few hours we had till meeting him at 9 to check out spots we’d heard of but hadn’t visited. This included Notting Hill, High Street (including a Whole Foods), and Victoria Station. Aside from providing me my first taste of a Cornish pasty, Victoria Station—a big Underground/National Rail station also provided us with one of the creepiest panoramas of the trip thus far—a couple hundred people all standing, staring forward and above them in the same direction. You see, unfortunately about half the trains were cancelled due to a signaling problem. But it was just a creepy thing to see. Eventually we tired of people watching and headed back to wait for Brad.

Sure enough, 9 pm came and it was awesome to see Brad coming around the corner. Brad has been working in Zurich for a few months now, having received his PhD (in botany/evolutionary biology) and gotten a research position there. After saying many excited greetings, we headed to find a nice local pub, where we hung out for a couple hours and caught up about all manner of things. To our surprise the place closed at 11:30, so we made plans to meet again at 8:30 in the morning (Brad’s hostel is only a few blocks from our hotel) to do some sightseeing.