Sean the Fake Foodie

A few weekends ago

I experienced the most outrageous food weekend of my life so far.  The story starts a month or so ago when Rebecca and I decided that we really didn’t want anything material for our anniversary (even if we now have a new map of old London hanging from our wall, but that is  a different discussion). We decided that instead we were going to go out for a nice meal together and enjoy our anniversary that way. So, we did our research and found that we could go out to a two Michelin starred restaurant for lunch and it was decently reasonably priced.  Also, because we were sensible we decided to go for Saturday lunch so that I didn’t have to worry about trains and Rebecca didn’t have to worry about work. We booked to go to L’Atellier de Joel  Rubichon in central London. It had a neat counter experience where the chefs all prepared the food for you in the middle where you could see it all going on. As the day approaches, our friends birthday approaches as well and her fiancée says that he has been able to book the chefs table at Gordon Ramsey’s Maze if we would like to come out. Sounds like a blast, but the only drawback is that it is on the Friday night before our dinner. All well and good I don’t think about it until the Friday this is all planned for.

Table at Maze 

Come Friday, the inevitable happens. While I get in to London on time with no train delays, Rebecca is caught at work. Thankfully, so are Steph, Greg and Carla. So, only the one non lawyer gets out on time. (There can’t be any correlation to that at all, pure luck…) But we push the reservation back and all is still good. First out the door are Steph and Greg who end up at the restaurant about 30 minutes late and right on time for the delayed reservation. Next out is Carla, about 5 minutes behind and finally, a panicking Rebecca petrified she’s ruined everything and sprinting 25 minutes after Carla. Thankfully, Carla and I waited in the lawyer’s lobby for Rebecca and we travelled up together. On a side note, I would say it worked out pretty decently for me waiting anyways as I ended up seeing about 75% of the people I know that work for the firm as they left for the weekend and I got to say hello to them as I waited. At the restaurant, we arrive and have a drink before we are seated. When Greg told me that it would be the chefs table, I assumed that would mean like a vip table or something like that. Yes, it was a vip table, but unlike what I was expecting, it was actually in the kitchen. So as we walked through the restaurant and into the kitchen at 8pm I was a bit shocked. The meal itself was great, each new course was brought up to us by the chef that made it and paired with a wine by the sommelier. They then explained it to us and let us ask them questions. We generally stuck to questions about what being a chef was like (apparently working 10 am to 1 am five days a week is the norm… ewww) or why they made something the way they did. I, even in a classy establishment, still managed to throw class out the window when one of the male chefs apologized to the female sommelier for finishing too quickly. Sorry, my mind is literally hardwired to make crude remarks. Another highlight was when the three girls ended up being put to the test and had to plate the meal that we were eating for one of our courses. I’m proud to say Rebecca came in second and I got to learn that she really isn’t as bad as she makes out to be in the kitchen. She may just be playing so that she doesn’t have to cook.  At the end of the 9^th course and subsequently 12^th class of wine (I had a chunk of Rebecca’s wine) the clock was striking 1 in the morning and we were all extremely stuffed. I knew it was bad when I watch Rebecca look longingly at some of the chocolate truffle still on the table at the end of desert that she did not have the ability to eat.  We grabbed the bill (had a minor heart attack at its sight) and went home to bed.

Rebecca Showing off her Cooking abilities

Rebecca and I at l'Atellier

Saturday rolled around and we crawled out of bed at 11 in the morning and got to start the process all over again. This time we knew exactly what we were getting into. A little worse for wear we made our way to the restaurant, almost on time as well. Arriving at L’Atellier de Joel Rubichon we were told that our seats weren’t ready yet, but we could go to the lounge for a drink while we waited. There is nothing like nice cocktail to help through the grogginess of too much wine the night before. Once our seats were available we made our way back down to our seats for lunch. This time, even though the chefs were all on display like the night before, the experience was completely different. At L’Atellier, the chefs were all quietly preparing their food. No drama at all. It was still really cool to see the skills of the chefs out there in the open, but like I said, it was so very different to the experience of being in the kitchen. It was almost like the chefs were either on best behavior or they were just unchallenged because it was such a relaxed atmosphere. The best way to describe it for me was that it was almost like a fish tank as a centerpiece. Yes it’s there, but if you’re not watching intently you wouldn’t notice. Whereas, at Maze, it was more like a pit fight centerpiece, even if you weren’t watching it you knew things were happening. The other thing I would have said was that while the food at Maze was great, the food at L’Atellier was spectacular. That is likely why one has only one Michelin star and the other has two. But three courses later (each pair with another wine) I’m at the point where I don’t know if I only want to eat at fancy food places again or if I don’t want to see another scrap of food again. Either way, I know that I don’t think I will ever eat that well over the course of 24 hours again in my life.

Project Hannah

First, let me write a disclaimer – read to the end before you get mad at me. (I really mean this, Rebecca got mad at me after 1/2 and didn't read the end until I forced her too)

So this story all started in September, September 7^th to be precise. It was Rebecca and Sarah’s birthday dinner at Jamie’s Italian in Canary Wharf and good times were being had by all. We decided that the wharf would be a good place to meet as all the different parties were either just about to move house or down from Scotland. Hannah was running late because of work and had just arrived when we started talking about plans for the weekend. Sarah and Garret were going to come visit me and Rebecca in Stowmarket for our last weekend there and Hannah was going to be moving into her new apartment she found with a nice Christian couple with a new kid while Luke move to Exeter for Navy stuff, or so I thought. The discussion started about if she really wanted to live with a newborn. Nothing against newborns, but with a job as a corporate lawyer that extra wrinkle may be a bit much. (This was the conversation being had, I meanwhile was either in my own world or talking to someone else) talks continued on and I really didn’t pay much heed to it. This was mainly because for the first time in the history of my job in Stowmarket, I was getting a call every 15 minutes about work. As the night draws to a close we say our goodbyes as we need to catch a train back to Stowmarket and my lovely wife turns and the following conversation occurs

 “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

“Of course princess” (wonder what I’m okay with – am I moving Hannah in?)

Sarah popped in with “This will be so much better for Hannah.” (Her boxes can’t be that heavy…)

“Yeah, living with us will be so much better than with a new baby” (Wait, come again, living with us… time for some tactful info gathering)

“So what’s she going to do with the original place?” (Good question, highlights that this may not be thought through)

“Well, there isn’t any contract or anything so she can just cancel and spend this week with Luke’s parents.” (Hmm, well, looks like this is happening… alrighty then)

Now, I should preface this with, I would never say no to anyone if they asked for a place to live, let alone a family member that wasn’t happy about their situation. The other thing I would like to say was that I didn’t know Hannah. I mean, I knew she was Rebecca’s sister, but really I couldn’t tell you anything about her other than some superficial information and that she was instrumental in actually making sure that a wedding happened in Vancouver for Rebecca and I. For that alone I will always feel indebted to her. Luke I had talked to a bit, but the only significant association I had with Luke was that  when we were in Vancouver just days before my wedding, while out at a local brewpub, he decreed all Canadian beer to be shit and only English ale was worthy of consumption. So my impression of him wasn’t that great. So you can understand how I might have some hesitance, which I’m sure Hannah and Luke would have or really anyone would have moving in with me. I can be a bit much.

Six months have now passed since then and last night Hannah left to move to Singapore and I can now easily say that I will actually really miss having her about. Many nights would have Rebecca stuck at work and left me and Hannah stuck having to actually talk to each other. At first, I will be the first to tell you that it was a bit awkward.  I mean, technically I’ve known this person for almost 11 years, but really, I didn’t know anything about them. It was made easier that both she and I don’t seem to have any issues telling people about the stupid stuff that we do. I mean, I write a blog about it. If my memory isn’t too bad, I believe that was what we first started talking about when Rebecca wasn’t around, especially stories involving Rebecca (it was our common link after all)

Living with Hannah made me learn a lot of things. It’s made me learn that apparently the last two cookies of a baked batch are “the polite cookies” and Hannah will not eat them even if you try and force feed them to her. (I even thought about smashing them up and stirring them into a drink of hers to trick her into eating them). I learnt that her and I have both ended up in our, I’ll say chosen loosely, careers not because of any motivation on our parts. I learnt to feel pity for Rebecca and Hannah’s mom, because there is no way anyone should be forced to reckon with the amount of cheese those two consume. Best of all, I learnt the other side of the stories from Rebecca’s childhood. Here, my darling wife was telling me that she would save up her snacks before a long road trip and benevolently give them to Hannah and Nathan, when in fact I've been told that no, she would be lauding them over the two of them and it was simply acts of pure cruelty against them why Rebecca held on to the extra goodies.

As for Luke, I learnt that while an early rising dictator, at least he’s a benevolent one. He likes bread sauce, so his taste buds must have some kind of defect so I can forgive the beer thing. That and he like’s red pants a bit much, but hey, I really can’t judge that at all can I? 

Who could that dapper young man on the right be?

In the end, I can easily say that even if I may not have been truly paying attention to what I was agreeing to, it was one of the better decisions that I've made since moving to London. I can even say that after she left us with a Bonsai tree… I can’t believe she just skipped cactus step for us altogether. Still need to figure out a way to sneak it back with Luke. Oh well, that will be another adventure for another day.

A Very White Christmas

So this year was a year in which my family tried a new thing. We’ve decided that every two years, we are going to try and meet up and have Christmas together. I think it is a good idea. It assures us that we will meet up and be together at least once every two years. Which if you knew my family wouldn’t be that much of a shocker if it was only that often. But that is a different story, for a different day. So this year, the most logical place for the inaugural version of this would have to be with the ones of us who has just bought their first house together. We spent our Christmas in the wonderful Montreal at my sister and her husband’s place. This will have been now the third time I’ll have visited Montreal and for some reason, I still haven’t figured out to visit in non-winter months.
 

Now before we go, Rebecca and I joked with my sister that we would just bring all of our warmest cloths and say to hell with any semblance of caring what we looked like, but my sister was adamant that the weather wasn’t that bad and there wasn’t even snow on the ground. We really should have gone with our first thought. In the waning days before we before the flight we got a message from my sister that we could stop the snow dance anytime now, as the snow had come in full force. Hmm, warning. Whatever, we are committed at this point and really snow isn’t the end of the world. Next, knowing that we were going to have to fly out of Heathrow airport on the Saturday before Christmas, we figured that it would be chaotic, so we would have to go early. Look at us, organized to a t. Well, maybe I should write, look at Rebecca, organized to a T. That’s more accurate. Upon after arriving at the airport we got our first of three shocks. The airport wasn’t busy at all. I mean it was still Heathrow so it had people in it, but nowhere near manic. So we leisurely found our check in desk and got in line. In the line only a few people in front of us was shock number two, our friend Reuters. He was on his way to Toronto to meet up with his wife who was already there. So we chatted and found out that he was literally going to be on a plane an hour ahead of us going to the same first destination: Newark airport (You might want to take note of that airport). But as he was ahead of us and needed to be at his flight soon we said goodbye and went to our check in counter.

We get to our check in counter and that’s when we get shock number three. It’s there that the agent tells us that we are only going to have our bags checked to Newark and not Montreal. Wait, why? Oh because your flight to Montreal is out of LaGuardia. Now let’s go back a bit and go to when we originally booked our tickets. Here we were faced with two options. One, fly through O’Hare with only an hour and a ½ or fly through New York with 3 ½ hours. That’s an easy choice, Chicago is a nightmare of an airport and 3 ½ hours is much more then 1 ½ hours. That’ll teach me. Those fine print details are important. Who knew? So we are switching airports, better do some research on how to get from one airport to the other. There has to be a train or a bus, or something direct between them. Apparently not true, especially if you are on a time crunch.  So we found our boarding area and waited. First, the airplane was late. This meant that we didn’t even board the plane until an hour after we were supposed to leave. Next, for the first time in my life, I witnessed the plane take over an hour to board. What had happened was there was a school trip on our flight and each of the students had a backpack and a full sized suitcase as their carry on. We’ve all seen it done, and hell I know a bunch of people who regularly do it. But when you have 50-60 people doing it, shockingly you end up with an airplane full of people standing around with loads of carry-ons in their hands looking bewildered. This led to announcements 4 or five times telling people they needed to sit down as the plane was supposed to have already left. Not the most helpful thing that I’ve seen.

Waiting for our plane to take off - a common theme

Thankfully we make up some time in the air and get to Newark okay. Our bags are even pretty quick at getting delivered off the carousel. So we go out customs (through a minor detour because my lovely wife is too honest and filled ticked the box that said she was carrying fruit/food/vegetables/meat because she had a chocolate bar in her carry on) and to a cab. We got ourselves a good one. It took us a few minutes to open the truck as it was messed up, he enjoyed travelling numerous miles with his turn signal on and to top it all off, he had to stop for gas and left the meter running during this time, even after we said we were late for a flight. On the plus side, we made our flight anyways. Trusty Air Canada came through and didn’t let us down. Our flight was easily 2 hours late.

Landing in Montreal we were hit with a terrible discovery. Apparently, in 5 layers, we weren’t wearing enough clothes and were frozen. With a terrible smile my sister coyly told us that the cold had just come in that day. I honestly thought about turning around right there and going back to the UK. I don’t do cold and if I’m bad, Rebecca gets cold at the thought of being in a cold place. It was good however; we saw the new house and promptly crashed for the night. The next few days was a trickling in of everybody and getting to see everyone again and eating. Dear god, eating. Apparently my sister has really taken heart this marrying into a Slovenian family. She may have baked enough to feed a family of 15 for the time we were there. I’m not complaining as it was all quite tasty, but it was just interesting. Christmas eve even had some elements of Rebecca’s tradition. Since she has had roast beef and Yorkshire puddings every Christmas eve since she can remember, we got to make that for everybody. I don’t really want to get into the events of the cooking, but we will just say that in the end everyone ended up enjoying the meal. Sure there was some smoke, cursing and mild panic, but that just adds to the enjoyment. Think of it like dinner and a show.

Cooking dinner - I think the smoke had dissapated by this point

 

The day that Christmas actually arrived I may have started the day a little rough. Apparently, I forgot to tell Rebecca that in our house, stockings were allowed to be opened as soon as you got up. So me and Rebecca getting up last like we always did, didn’t let Rebecca get her picture of the stockings all hung from the chimney with care. My bad. By the time we got down, KJ, Marya and Paul had already obliterated theirs and Mom was patiently sitting with hers waiting to be last.

Since KJ asked for mostly gifts of cash for clothing this Christmas, the next day brought about Boxing day shopping! Better yet we got to go to Carrefour Laval, the largest shopping mall in Quebec. This wasn’t the best plan we’ve had, but seeing as the weather was supposed to take a turn for the worse. It was a better plan then waiting a few days. Originally, it started as KJ would go to the mall, then me and Rebecca thought that as we needed to pick up a new computer for her we would take advantage of the exchange rate. Then the parents decided that they would come along as well to get out of the house So off we go to the supermall. Before the mall is even in sight, we run into the traffic for it. It ends up taking us over 45 minutes just to get to the parking lot. Then from there another who knows how long to find parking. Then to top things off, the supermall doesn’t even have a technology store. No Best buy or anything. We find out that the nearest one is about a 15 minute walk away and thinking that the mess of driving was bad enough once we would make the hike. We are just full of terrible ideas. Two people living in England should never be out in the cold when it is near -25C with wind chill. As for a 15 minute walk that had been quoted, not a chance. The only reason it would be 15 minutes is because you were so cold that you ran it. We took the other approach as walked and slowly turned into popsicles. It did work out well in the end as we did get a good deal on a computer for Rebecca and with the savings bought her an Ipad as well. In the end we decided that there was no way that we were walking back and called in the vehicular support. Even in the utter chaos of the shopping place, I would still give the day a resounding success. Especially considering what happened the next day. The next day we awoke to the sight of a nice looking snow storm. By the afternoon, we were looking at a nice snow storm and by the evening, you guessed it, a nice looking snow storm. All in all, Montreal was hit with 45ish inches of snow in about 12 hours. According to the news it was record levels. Oh joy… Better yet, Paul had to go out for the day and so by the time he was supposed to be coming home you wouldn’t have been able to get an ATV in the driveway let alone his civic. Top that off, my dad decided to start shoveling it for him and seriously, I can’t be upstaged by my dad. That just looks bad, me sitting on my ass and him shoveling 4 feet of snow. In the end it was all good thought because Paul had just assumed we wouldn’t have done anything. Ha, show’s him. I’m only a jackass some of the time.

Montreal's absured level of snow

 

Continuing into our trip we met up with Steph and Greg, two friends from London in Montreal who we hadn’t had a chance to see in quite a while. It’s kind of a sad indictment if the only way Rebecca and some of her work friends can meet up is to be on a different continent. We then went and explored the old port of Montreal. It was nice, but I will admit, when Marya showed us where the fireworks and the celebrations would be for new years and that at night it would be colder than the -25 ish it already was, Rebecca and I were shockingly not as interested in seeing it anymore. It’s funny how that can happen. caccent I read tire, as in wheel. Not what I’m going for. “tire” is pull in French (and to the alchy ‘s, no we aren’t talking about taking swigs from bottles). You boil maple syrup until it is quite thick and then pour a strip onto fresh snow. Then as it freezes, you roll it up onto a Popsicle stick. It’s a sugary, sticky, delicious mess and a Quebec tradition. We also went to the Biodome and the Stade Olympic. Come on, you think we are going to be in a town for more than 8 hours and Rebecca isn’t going to have us do all of the touristy things possible? It was good fun thought, other than the constant fear Rebecca was going to try and get her hands on a penguin and bolt for the door. If it’s a fat, cuddly animal that waddle’s Rebecca’s all over it. Add in a Disney movie, we’re done. Alas in the end we had ended up having to go back to London.

Rebecca looking coy as she attempts to steal a penguin.

The sugary, sticky mess - Tire

 

 The trip back home was less eventful than the trip over, but barely. We still originally had to do our transfer across New York, but at least this time we were prepared for it. This was all for naught thought. When we got to the airport we checked in (to both our flights) and started our way through security and customs. In the 30 minutes that took, trusty Air Canada struck again. Our first flight had been delayed by almost two hours and we were now no longer going to be able to make our connection. To Air Canada’s credit, they acknowledged this and put us on a different plane. They were even able to put us on a plane direct to Newark. Sure we were now many hours early, but really who’s going to complain about that.  As we board our plane, things are going smoothly. We sit and things are taking too long. Just as Rebecca and I look at each other to say something the captain comes on and announces that they had an odd smell when they turned on the AC, so they would have maintenance come check it before they took off. 15 minutes later… Well, the mechanics are here and they know what the issue is. We should be ready to depart in 30 minutes. 45 minutes later… well, it seems to be a bigger problem than we thought. Everybody is going to have to disembark while we find a new plane. We sit and wait until we get a new plane and around 4 hours after our original plane to London was supposed to depart, we begin boarding again. All boarded up again we begin to wait for movement. Again, we are sitting and thinking that this is taking too long. This time, as I’m saying to Rebecca, this is taking too long the captain comes on and says, sorry we just have a small thing that we would like to have maintenance look at before we can go. SHIT! I’ve heard this story before and I really don’t like the ending. 15 minutes later… mechanics are here now and we should be ready shortly. Sure.. and I’m just going to prep my stuff to get off another plane, for no reason thought. I trust you… 30 minutes later… Thank you for your patience, we are now ready to depart. Try as they might we still ended up in London late, but only an hour or two, even if they left many hours late. It’s impressive if you think about it. How much faster the plane can go when not economizing fuel. Oh well, we made it home and had an excellent, albeit frigid time in Montreal with the family.