London, England We spent a lovely afternoon visiting friends in Highgate and were treated to a delicious luncheon. I would normally call that meal lunch, but this was of such a refined character that it moved up the scale to merit luncheon status.
As the sunlight was fading in the west, we hopped on a bus and grabbed the front row seats upstairs. A few shots of the passing landscape follow. A moving and lurching bus is not quite conducive to thoughtful photography, however.
And then we hit Oxford Circus and Regent Street. It was hard to reconcile the date on the calendar with the mob scene in this area. More than a month before Christmas, but the hordes looked desperate for that last important gift. Granted, the day was pleasant, it was Saturday, and all the holiday lights were up. Still, judging from the crowds pouring in and out of every store, the merchants can expect a very happy holiday this year!
Don’s Food Corner
Yet again we were effectively locked out of the corner pub that we enjoyed so much when we were here in March. Today it was packed with beer imbibers watching a soccer match on big screen TV’s.
We retreated to a nearby restaurant that featured fish-and-chips on the menu. We should have taken a clue when we noticed that it was almost empty. But it was quiet.
We both ordered fish-and-chips, hoping they would come up to the standards of yesterday’s sampling. They did not. As is sometimes the case, the batter was thick (and over-fried) and the fish was thin (and over-dry). What a difference from yesterday. I swear that if I had a scale that the over-fried batter would have weighed out heavier than the fish. Grade: D. It got a passing grade only because there was actual fish in there and the restaurant was quiet. We also had some over-fried onion rings as well.
Since we have spent a lot of time in the UK we know that there are superb fish-and-chips to be found. But if someone came to London for a one-week dream trip and only had this as their tasting of this British standard, they would go back to Ohio (or wherever) and wonder what all the fuss was about, claiming that TGI Fridays does it better. And that would be correct. It’s like our recent trip to Italy. If visitors had only had some of the disappointing meals we had there, they would go back home and say that Olive Garden is better. And they would be right about that as well.
We have two more days to find more of the standard that we enjoyed yesterday.
Thinking of you two, I recently had fish and chips at Fraunces Tavern. It was like the one you described, maybe worse because I sent it back and order tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich which is pretty hard to ruin. I gave it a B-