Pre-Christmas 2010 Round-Up

So, with the clocks about to go back to herald the coming of winter 2011, I'm almost done with my reviews from 2010. Pretty shambolic I know, but my excuses have been made, my day job remains away from food reviewing and I am still soldiering on.

December had already proved to be a fruitful month of eating, but the other half and I were informed by a mutual friend that she would be staying with us over the Christmas period. Never ones to turn a lady away on Christmas (I've heard you can get into the eternal good books for things like this, and we were happy to have her), we rolled out the sofa bed and started planning on where we'd go to eat. December was about to get a whole lot busier.

I will publish a set of specific reviews later on, but there were a few re-visits in there which I will summarise here. The journey began with a re-visit to Restaurant Michael Nadra. Certainly one of the stand-out west London restaurants and somewhere I'd enjoyed greatly on our summer visit there.

The quality remained fairly high. We didn't make a booking, so three of us were shunted in to a fairly late seating. Unfortunately this meant that quite a few of the dishes were off the menu since they had run out of them. Even so, I decided to run the beef gauntlet with some carpaccio followed by fillet steak whilst the other half went back to the tasting menu.

All things considered, Michael Nadra is still quite a draw for anyone in Chiswick. Whilst it's still not my favourite place in W4 (that honour goes to Le Vacherin), it's always worth a visit and considering its relatively low profile, I'd advise you pop in if you are in the area.

Christmas came and went with the usual family fun, I got off my crutches and began some fairly iffy rehabilitative physiotherapy, far too much was eaten around home tables and then we found ourselves back at Bar Boulud. It was fairly soon after we'd paid our first visit there so I shan't review in too much detail. Sufficed to say the afternoon tea (the main reason we went there: our friend wanted some and it was fairly affordable, along with decent quality) was still on song, but we decided to branch out into the burgers this time.

Without too much fawning, let me tell you that these were about as good as any burger I've eaten anywhere. I will be going into this in more detail soon, since this meal was later to felicitate a third visit to Bar Boulud within a year of us first going there, but it was pretty fantastic. For now, just look to your left...

Amongst all the excitement, we also happened upon a restaurant in Chinatown called New Fook Lam Moon. It was a fairly inconsequential visit there but we did try the marquee dish of the place: lobster noodles. As I wrote many months ago, these are quite fantastic if they come off, and whilst these weren't quite up to the standard of the Mandarin Kitchen, they were enjoyable: strong flavours complimented with perfectly cooked noodles. The dishes that came with them were negligible and forgettable, but the main event wasn't.

I also happened to pop in to Smiths of Smithfield - the restaurant empire within a building owned by Masterchef mainstay John Torode - for a spot of lunch with our friend one day between Christmas and new year too. Short and sweet enough to avoid a proper review, the pie and chips I ate was reasonably good, with not a lot else to say. I may go back there but the location is probably the biggest draw of the place. Perhaps breakfast after the market is the way to go?

So that more or less wrapped up 2010. There were just a couple of matters to see off before the year's end: what to do for new year and which should meal should we take our friend to for the main event of her trip?