o2 Priority freebie haul: no. 1 - 2015 diary.

RRP: £6.99

Bar review: ORIOLE BAR (Farringdon)

My favourite TV show of all time, Sex and the City, has a lot to answer for. Of the four lead females, the one I recognise myself in the most is definitely Carrie Bradshaw (played by Sarah Jessica Parker with considerable wit and flair). Carrie doesn’t take break-ups well, tends to fall hard in love with men who are no good for her, and is a writer. (Admittedly, I write for a blog, she writes for a state-wide newspaper, but still).

Furthermore, it was only because Carrie loved Cosmopolitans so much that I began drinking Cosmopolitans, and if I am ever in a cocktail bar, that’s my go-to drink. At Oriole bar, ordering a Cosmo would be failing to make the most of your opulent surroundings. The bar offers weird and wonderful concoctions featuring the most out there ingredients, including egg yolk, tobacco liquor and, er… dust.

The menu, which is divided by parts of the world (which inspired the various cocktails), is in itself, longer than most children’s books. I’m not being funny, but at 8pm when you just wanna get drunk with your girlfriends so you can trash-talk the clown men in your life (couldfillabook.jpg), who’s got time to read a whole MSc project-length??

That’s not to say that the drinks, and the food, sparse in quality as it was, wasn’t well presented.  Looks-wise, it certainly turned my head:-

That being said, the ostentatious presentation comes at a cost in terms of practicality. As the night progressed and I lost control of my motor neurones, I tipped over my awkwardly-shaped glass. Thankfully this was at the end and only ice cube spilt, but some of them went on the poor lady sat next to me. Hardly ideal.

The barfood was equally impractical. The chorizo, photographed below, whilst delicious, was I wolfed it up in about three bites. I've been curious about what exactly quinoa is since I saw Gone Girl  two months ago and Ben Affleck was mocked for thinking it was kind of fish. Turns out that what it actually is is some bland-ass flavourless pseudo-cereal concoction. Boring, and the pittance of salsa sauce put on it hardly merited the £7.50 price. That's £2.50 per fritter. Would you pay £2.50 for something you can barely see?!

Overall, I found Oriole too pretentious, and if I’m complaining about something being too pretentious, you know you’ve got problems. I guess I’m just too direct a person. I love cocktails, but I like to have two or three different alcoholic ingredients, a few mixers, and boom. And I’d rather my mixer didn’t include something that could give me an allergy!

Oriole bar is more of a status symbol than it is a viable drinking hole. People would bring guests here just to show that they can; that they can afford to throw away £14 on a cocktail with about 3 alcohol units in, tops.

I’d rather have Cosmopolitan, thanks.

Grade: C

Meals of the Week.

Lancashire hotpot and greens. £3.30

9/10

Cheese potato skins and banoffee pie. £1.50 + £1.50.

9/10

Pasta and lasagne from the Farmer's Market, Russell Square. £5.

9/10

Meals I've had at work this week

 

Risotto and peas. £3.00

I have no idea what that awful food colouring was for. 3/10.

 

 

Macaroni & cheese with herbs and bread. £3.00

8/10. Loved the cheese sauce!

BAR REVIEW: Bar Américain (Soho)

Tying in with the 1920s, prohibition era of the bar, Bar Américain is one of those ‘you have to know it’s there to go there’ places, tucked in neatly behind Brassiere Zedel and with no discernible clues from the outside that it exists at all. Sights of women in flapper dresses and men in black and white suits suggests this is a popular go-to place for hosting Great Gatsby-style parties.

The cocktails taste delicious, and are very intricately crafted, thus almost justifying the extortionate rates. My personal favourite is the Chrysler, which will get you drunk and satisfy the tastebuds – a truly rare commodity amongst cocktails these days (the cocktails in Slug and Lettuce taste nice but have barely any alcohol, whereas cocktails that are overloaded with booze end up tasting like horrible, cough medicinesque concoctions). The waiters are very attentive and bring you a small amount of popcorn to chomp on whilst you’re enjoying your drinks.

The lighting in Bar Américain is dark, too dark for my liking, and the décor a little out there for me. The seating was certainly extremely comfortable – plush, American-style furniture. All in all, it’s one of the more elegant places I’ve gotten inebriated in, but also by far the most expensive. Just so you know what I’m talking about, a cocktail you can drink in about 5 minutes clocks in at £12 (cheaper options are the classic cocktails for £9, but why shell out for something you’ve tasted before if you’re here for the adventure?). Don’t act like I never told you.

Grade: B

RESTAURANT REVIEW: Lal Qila (Goodge Street)

I had a cheeky peruse of TripAdvisor after I went to Lal Qila and prior to beginning my review. I was absolutely gobsmacked to see it was ranked 52nd of all the restaurants in London. Punters must have gone to a different restaurant to me.

Alarm bells rang as soon as I asked if the waiters could hang my coat up for me (a rather sophisticated, pricey little number from Monsoon that I have seen other restaurant staff in the past treat with the care such a fancy thing deserves). Imagine my surprise (and chagrin) to learn that they didn’t have pegs to hang coats up on! What’s the point in having such lavish interiors (as Lal Qila certainly did), if you don’t even have a basic necessity such as coat hangers?

With my mac slung over the back of my chair, we turned to ordering drinks. I distinctly remember ordering a beer, because that's my modus operandi at restaurants, but the waiters seemed to decide to ignore me entirely, and serve me a Coca Cola, under the guise that that was what I asked for. I know damn well what I asked for, and that definitely wasn’t it. When I asked for the correct drink to be presented to me, the waiter went about a bout of trying to re-write history, and convince me that that was what I ordered. Nah mate.

Now, to the food. To its credit, it definitely wasn’t the worst Indian restaurant I’ve ever been to – that would be Tandoori Nights *shudder*. But it sure as hell wasn’t close to coming to the best. I had a mellow cheese-infused dish, which was inoffensive but also unexciting. The rice was soft but tasteless and the Na’an bread utterly uninspiring. All in all, Bland with a capital B.

I have pored over the TripAdvisor page and it definitely links the same address of the Lal Qila I went to. Perhaps the 52nd best restaurant in London had to be accessed by walking into a wardrobe in the place I went to, Narnia-style. Because the place I went to definitely wasn’t it.

Grade: D