Rustico Stockwell: probably amongst the best restaurant pizza.

14th December 2014
This was a celebratory lunch for my daughter, who may be defecting from Stockwell to come back to near her roots in north London. As she is almost faultless in her choice of restaurants (except they are sometimes a bit on the pricey side, and are sometime not used to older clients), I guessed I had little to worry about and came out thinking that I had had one of my best pizza experiences.
The restaurant is well reviewed elsewhere, and has a website, somewhat overstated, on http://www.rusticolondon.com/ . It is not obvious from the street, and you have to know the address, as you would not see it in passing. Wedged between two convenience stores, it looks as if it is only just being built.

Who would have guessed? It is quite small inside, and I would not consider turning up there, especially at a weekend, without a prior confirmed booking.

The front of house is staffed by someone who looks as if she could have been a retiree from the pages of Vogue, and the small team of informal staff wait on the few tables (see the gallery in the website above). It has been made to look rustic in a contrived fashion.

For starter, I had baked aubergine.

It was excellent, and tasted of cheese, tomato and aubergine, and was very hot, a 9 on the scale.

I then had the Cappriciosa pizza, topped with a mix of meats, vegetables and sausage.

This is not your average round pizza, but is as you see, on the proposed rustic wooden platter.

Suffice it to say, that it was excellent in all respects, being hot, tasty, fresh authentic tasting and sufficient in quantity that desert was not needed. A 9 on the CHOF scale also. Other pizzas sampled by our party were judged to be excellent.

I would unreservedly recommend Rustico for pizza. I cannot comment on other aspects of the menu. 

Cafe Mona Lisa, Whetstone: local cafe with restaurant potential

12 Dec 2014
The Cafe Mona Lisa has been around for years, and is a cafe by day, and restaurant by night, but does close fairly early. No web site of its own, but other information here:http://www.allinlondon.co.uk/directory/1150/74382.php
I have been going here also for years, and originally it had no license, and you could bring your own, but now they have a license, and sell average wine at average prices.
I have only been there for dinner, but my wife and her friend are regulars for lunch and speak highly of it. They are known to the staff, so we are treated well when we go there.
The menu is driven by the specials board, which changes daily, and there is plenty of choice. The layout is fairly cafe open plan, and whilst not on full view, you can see your food prepared. This is not high level restaurant food preparation, and I guess I have never been interested enough to keep a close eye on proceedings.
For starter I chose the chicken soup which I presume was home made. It came with baguette and butter, but was unremarkable.
For main course, I had the special roast leg of veal with accompaniments.

As you can see, this is a fairly substantial portion, although the meat was a little fatty and bland, which is a characteristic of some roasts of veal if the animal is young. I guess I should should have thought about that before ordering, as it was hot at 8.1 and otherwise faultless. I think I will probably go for one of the pasta dishes next time, because there will be a next time.

The place has a friendly atmosphere, and gets busy. It closes quite early, so it is probably advisable to book. 

This is an honest place, seemingly offering what its customers want: straightforward food at straightforward prices. We will almost certainly be going there again, but the next time I will choose carefully. The prices are reasonable, with a main course costing between £8 to £12, and mostly will no need for accompaniments. There is also a set austerity menu, limited in choice but worth a punt.

Il Tocco d'Artista, Ballards Lane, North Finchley. Hit and miss local Italian

16th October 2014
Italian eateries abound, and are of variable quality, but usually are idiot-proof.
I was invited to share lunch with an old friend, who thought highly of the place. I have been there before for dinner, which was ok, and some friends went there for dinner and were mightily disappointed. The key attraction on this occasion was their bargain lunch at £6.95 for any pizza/pasta and a drink, which could be a glass of wine. For that sort of money it was almost risk free.

The place was busy for a Thursday lunchtime and although we had not booked, we arrived early enough for a table. I guess a casual caller coming later might have been disappointed. To keep things simple I ordered a pizza (which would have been priced nearer to £9 not at lunchtime, and a cup of coffee.

To be honest, as this was a chatting lunch, the speed of service was not an issue, and I don't remember how fast or slow it came. I cannot remember the exact name of this ham pepperoni and onion pizza, and there is no online presence to extract the information from. Suffice it to say, it was huge, hot (8.5) and tasty. A bargain lunch for £6.95. 

Whilst I might not go there again in the evening, you can do a lot worse for a cheap and tasty lunch. I will be lunching there again.

Soho House: Cutting edge urban pretention

30th September.
I have a colleague who has a life membership of Soho house. She used to be in the advertising business, and is now a marketing consultant, and uses her 'all houses' membership to gather meetings for her co-workers in central London. When I told my family where I was going, they were very impressed. I was too ashamed to admit I did not realise just how cool a venue this could be. For anyone who did not know, Soho House is a fairly exclusive private members club which specialises in media types. When I go there I am usually the oldest person there.
The building in Soho is a non-descript frontage, leading into a warren of stairs and off-shoot rooms with tables and seatees. There you will see the cool creatives of London being cool with each other. I have the same name as a lower echelon film director, and so may be the looks I get are from people trying to work out whether it is me or him. It is me.
Be careful where you put your hands: walls and doors have a slightly sticky feeling, and one cannot believe that it is because of lack of cleaning.
There is a limited selection of fashionable food available in Soho House. I ended up having lunch after a meeting, and ordered the cheeseburger, which was thought to be a good choice.

I wish I could use glamorous terms to describe it, but my memory is that whilst it tasted home made, it was ok at best and only a 7.6 on the CHOF. I guess the people who eat there are using the food as fuel only. I guess you do not join the club for its food. (that is if you can get in, which I understand is quite difficult, so I should regard myself as having been one of the select few).

Rossi's Cafe, Westcliff : a time honoured institution, but cannot make coffee.

27th September 2014
You don't go to Rossi's cafe on the Western Esplanade of Southend on Sea looking for gourmet food. This is a seaside cafe, and most visitors love it for being this. It has changed so little over the 35 years I have been visiting, and the prices are still unbelievably low. I have the same dish every time I go there, not because it is the only one I like, but it is because I cannot find steak and kidney pie like this anywhere else. There is no web site, and the TripAdvisor reports are mixed as people go there looking for different things. The bottom line is if you want a cheap and cheerful cheap lunch in Westcliffe (they do not open for food in the evenings) then this is a place to try. I have heard stories that the family are connected to Francis Rossi of Status Quo. Their ice cream is ubiquitous in the area and rightly so. We sat outside watching the frustrated traffic trying to find parking spaces on the seafront. It used to be until April 2013, there was a Saturday night cruise of modified cars up and down the seafront, but that has gone now. Not picturesque, but part of the show.
This is what you get when you order Rossi steak and kidney pie with chips.

The vegetables are not really up to much having come from a communal boiling pot presumably. The other thing that fascinates me, and I have no inside knowledge of this, is whether the pie top and the contents of the dish are only ever introduced to each other at the point of serving.

The pie is hot, very hot, usually scoring 9+ on the CHOF scale. There contents are definitely steak and kidney, and probably more kidney than most pies. Chips are seaside chips. This is a good meal at a very reasonable price, and hot with it. The one thing I have never had at Rossi's is a decent cup of coffee. What is available is a dash of strong coffee into milk, and then heated with steam. The locals love it, and I have known one local who when given a proper cup of coffee ask why it was not milky. It's a take it or leave it affair, so there is no point arguing.

The other big deal with Rossi's is the ice-cream. On a warm day, which this was, there is a long queue for take away ice cream. Legendary in the area. You must try Rossi Ice Cream. Not like the upmarket Gelupo or similar, but better than average honest sea side ice cream

The Labworth, Canvey Island: at least there is one good reason to go there

25th September 2014
I have looked at maps of Essex for year, and when you are in Westcliff (often) or Southend-on-Sea (also often), it makes you wonder what goes on in Canvey Island. There is a petrol industry presence, and you can learn all you need to know about Canvey at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvey_Island . There is a famous Dutch house there, but despite several attempts, we could not locate it. Nevertheless, it is worth a visit, jut to go to the Labworth, the number 1 restaurant in Canvey. The restaurant is housed in a renovated grade II listed building, which I believe is based on the appearance of the bridge of the Queen Mary.

A comprehensive web site is on http://www.thelabworth.com/home/4576695922 and I would recommend looking at the video to appreciate the location. We went there for Lunch, but it is also open for dinner. It is a strange site to behold, and  Midweek, at the end of September, we found the place pretty packed, and presumed that there had to be a good reason for this.
For a little more than pub prices, you get good food. This is my steak and ale pie (after my trip to Iceland, I cannot stop calling this dish steak and whale pie).

It ticked all the boxes, being hot (8.9 on CHOF scale) , good quality and sufficient quantity. This is a good place, and the locals know about it.

There are good views of the Thames estuary, more atmospheric than breathtaking and afterwards it is only a short walk from the Canvey mural depicting the floods.

So, I would recommend this place without hesitation. A jewel in the somewhat tarnished crown of Canvey Island.

Indian Rasoi, East Finchley : not your average Indian Food

7th September 2014
Another somewhat late piece, and if you look at TripAdvisor, you might think that something has happened since our visit, but this relates to our visit.
We went for Sunday lunch, and knowing that the place could get very busy in the evening needing a very early booking strategy, I booked this about a month in advance. In the event, and with several changes of numbers, I need not have worried, as the place was very quiet on Sunday lunch: this was unexpected, but may be because it is quite pricey, and does not have the bargain Sunday Buffet.
Indian Rasoi has been a bit of an institution in East Finchley for several years, and when I have been there in the past, it needed booking way in advance. The place specialises in South Indian cuisine, and contains many unfamiliar dishes and tastes. It is not your average Indian. It looks somewhat upmarket and the staff are quite smart. We had no problem with the staff, but there are comments on TripAdvisor about a variety of problems, which we did not encounter.
There is a somewhat self-indulgent web site on http://www.indian-rasoi.co.uk/menus.html which also has a menu. They also do a takeaway business, but this is above average prices. One of the big catches is that there is no alcohol (at the time or writing and on the date of the visit). According to TripAdvisor they have 'lost' their license, but for the life of me I cannot remember whether it was there before. There is no facility apparent for your own alcohol. This might be a bit of a negative for some people, but at least it keeps the bill down.
For starter I  had Kakori Kebab (menu says A delicacy from Mogul kitchen, minced lamb marinated with cardamom (sic), mace, cashew nuts paste, raw papaya & rose petals and grilled on live charcoal. This is a bit like Sheek Kebab.

This was hot (scoring an 8.4 on the CHOF scale) and a big portion. As you can see it is attractively presented, and accompanied by a spicy sauce.

For main course I had Murgh Makhani which the menu says is all time favourite tandoori roasted chicken tikka cooked in kasoori methi flavoured, tomato gravy

with oodles of butter and cream.

There was also a side order of aubergine

These were very rich, tasty and significant helpings. We did not need any more food. Again a CHOF of 8.4

My considered opinion was that this was something better than the ordinary Indian Restaurant, as dishes are unusual and tasty. Unlike other reviewers who have said the food tastes all the same, this was not my experience. I would definitely go there again. The final bill is a bit above Indian average, but because of the lack of alcohol, can be a pleasant surprise.

It has to be said that the restaurant is small, therefore it is best to book. The parking is not easy but we found places in the back streets. 

Boca di Lupo : hot ticket tapas style Italian in central London

3rd September 2014.
I had had my eye on this place for a while, because it was spoken of highly, and the last time I tried to get in, it was full. The web site at http://boccadilupo.com/ gives you a flavour of the place, but the booking button mainly functions for pre and post theatre dining, as it is very close to theatre land, being just off Shaftesbury Avenue. They are pretty hot on booking tables, and if you phone you can get one if you give them enough notice. So was it worth the fuss?
The menu which you can read on the web site is a mix of some classic and more regional dishes, but the cooks do not not limit themselves to one region or style. The interesting thing is that you can order small or large portions, and if you are into sharing, then you can order a tapas like meal of small dishes all of which are freshly cooked. If you want, you can sit at a counter, and watch the cooks at work. However, I prefer sitting at a table, and sometimes I just do not want to know about the preparation. So there is no typical starter main division, and the sequence in which it comes, unless you make it clear, could be random depending on the cooks and the workload. We went on a Wednesday night at 7.30 and it was packed.

Wanting to get an overview, we ordered a selection of small dishes, covering several taste options.

Calamari

Pasta in meat sauce

pasta with clams

King Prawns

Everything we had was well cooked, and hot enough being an 8 or 9 on the scale. Excellent stuff. For two good eaters, about 6 of the small dishes is necessary.

We also had a bottle of mid priced wine. I cannot remember what it was but it was definitely about the average, the the restaurant boasts its wine list as being first rate, and it probably was.

Altogether a very positive experience with a good upmarket atmosphere. Recommended.

Bautinn, Akureyri, Iceland: a whale of a time

14th August.
Sometimes when you are cruising, it is just simply a nice idea to not go back for lunch, and to try some local stuff. I know it means paying for a meal when it was already included, but it is a break from the on-board style and company, and gives you a chance to have something completely different, as the food may never adapt to local supplies.
We broke away from an organised tour in Akureyri to sample the delights of the town. The local church/cathedral was on the list but it was closed for an hour or so for a funeral, so we decided to have lunch and go back. Our good intention was that the big breakfast would mean that a small lunch would suffice.

We chose Bautinn http://www.bautinn.is/ because it was convenient, with no other recommendation or thought and that it had a menu we could understand and a price that was manageable. However, looking at the menu suggested that there were things here that we might never get anywhere else:

Guillemot was not to my taste, but when did I last eat Grilled Whale, and when would I get it again?

So decision made. It works out about £24.

So this is what you get alongside your soup and salad. Two kinds of sauce, but I am not a great one for cowberries with my whale, and I am not certain what Cowberries are.

It looks like a hunk of red meat off the grill, a bit like a chunky rib chop. Tastewise, it was like game - venison like. It was also hot enough scoring an 8.5 on the CHOF scale. It was a heavy meat, and you would have not guessed it came from a sea creature: it did not have the salty/fishy taste of the sea. I asked and was told that this was minke which some campaigners would prefer you do not eat.

http://uk.whales.org/campaigns/visiting-iceland-please-do-not-eat-locals but if you eat one animal.....

This may be a tourist curiosity, but what the heck. It is worth the experience, but game is not something that I would eat every week.

M.S Marco Polo: 3* ship with 4* food

9th to 21st August
This report covers a voyage from Tilbury to Iceland. The Marco Polo is a well known cruise ship that is favoured by the Brits. It is geared up to them and despite the fact that none of the catering or restaurant staff hale from this country, the food is geared up to middle class middle English tastes. One thing that is somewhat out of place is that, unlike other cruise lines I have been with where the restaurant and bar staff are Philippine, on this ship, at the time of the voyage, much of the crew, restaurant staff, stewards and entertainers were Ukrainian or Rumanian. Even the ship's doctor was seemingly from Ukraine. Now to the best to my recollection, there is no culture of commercial hospitality in Ukraine, and even in the post-Soviet environment, there is still a bit of 'take it or leave it because we are not here to please you'. The staff is showing a different culture, and I guess when Putin has got bored, we may all be going on our package holidays to the Crimean Riviera.
You get three full meals a day with afternoon tea and bar snacks in the late evening. There is no midnight buffet.
Essentially you either eat in silver service restaurants or buffet style, but the food is pretty much the same. We ate most of the time in the full service for dinner, and occasionally used buffet for lunch and most breakfasts. The buffet food was fine, but never scored over a 7 for hotness. The full service restaurants that served up food by Ukrainian waiters, plated out was surprisingly successful, most hot food scoring an 8, and never having to send anything back for being too cold.

The buffet special on noodle night

Buffet meal

Aubergines making love

 Whilst my pictures are meat heavy, there were always fish options.
I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food. The quantities at each course did not seem great, but by the time you had had several courses, and a full day of eating, there was no issue of insufficiency. For the cost that is charged on Marco Polo, whilst not in the same league as Saga or Viking, the food is pretty good, and I would have no problem about using this ship again (from a food  and hotness of food viewpoint)

Maya's world buffet and bar, Southend: an interesting buffet venue with the usual limitations

29th July 2014
Somewhat belatedly, I am catching up with my eating, and am gratified by the number of hits this blog has had, even if they are bots.
We had clocked Maya's some time ago. It is in the row of restaurants on the London Road, close to the top of the High Street in Southend. Somewhat unusually, it is upstairs with the entrance round a corner in College Way, unashamedly proposing that this could be cheap grub for students at the Ivy League university round the corner. There is a helpful web site at http://www.mayasrestaurant.co.uk/ with their own pictures that give a good flavour of the place. It is a fixed price of £12.95 during the week for dinner, and somewhat cheaper at lunchtime and a bit more expensive at the weekend. The price is fair and does not include drink which is realistically priced. The idea is that it offers a geographically diverse choice of popular dishes, and you can mix and match even on the same plate. So you can have pizza and curry or sushi and tacos. You get the idea. It is a good place for kids as there is bound to be something for everyone, but probably not a good idea to let them help themselves. This is not smart or pretty dining, and plates of food do not have significant visual appeal. As with most buffets, it pays to keep an eye on what is coming to an end or being replaced as the new dishes tend to be hotter and fresher (obviously).

Tureens showing various degrees of emptiness

Starter plate

There is a station where you can have mixtures of vegetables and meats stir fried with spices. Rather like a Mongolian barbecue but with less variety. The cook did not look happy in his work

What you get off the stir fry: this is hot

round 2 with chicken tikka masala and Thai red curry

The above is representative, and does not show you the sushi station and the taco station. The variety is interesting and the food is plentiful, fairly well cooked and of reasonable quality. It has the usual buffet problems of food never being more than CHOF 7 and unless you are very disciplined, you may be up and down to the buffet so often that there are gaps in conversation. The desert bar was interesting for not only having the standard stuff that you might get at a Chinese buffet, but also having profiteroles and a chocolate fountain. High risk especially with children around.

Would I go again? Probably. It is not as good as East a few hundred meters away which is almost exclusively Oriental, but for an evening meal it is a very good price for as much or as little as you want of what you want. Service is up to you.

Akropolis, Station Road, Westcliff on Sea. Competent Cypriot Food

28th July
Probably to save any confusion between the culture of North and South Cyprus, the Akropolis plants is origins clearly in its name. If you were expecting Greek food, this is slightly off target, but if you want Cypriot Taverna, this is the place.
The menu is very standard. What picks this place out is the balladeer that is there nightly. On a wet Monday night in July, the place was very busy. We had wanted to try the place for many years, but were rarely there at night time, but today was our chance.
We somewhat boringly chose the Meze. This was exactly what you would expect. There was a series of cold dishes and dips followed by meat fish and sausage. There are absolutely no surprises.

The brownish balls on the left are scampi

Haloumi, ham and spicy sausages

kleftico and stifado

All the hot food was hot, scoring 8 or more on the scale. The quality and the taste were excellent. My only criticism was that the meal was somewhat thrown at us to their timetable. There was a big party in that night which may have consumed most of their interest, but on a wet Monday, were were not going anywhere, so it was a pity that they could not have made the meal a bit more leisurely. Entirely competent, and hot, but not exciting enough to make us regular customers. Better places nearer home. Meze cost £19.95 per person min two persons.

Victoria Inn, Burnham on Crouch: Safe bet for a pub lunch in Burnham

28th July 2014
If you ever fancy a day trip to Burnham, don't go on a Monday. They obviously get very busy weekend and need Monday to recover. One of the more popular restaurants in the town has now closed but Victoria Inn seems to be a good place for people who like drinking beer and eating pub lunch.

The menu is quite simple. It lacks some of the pub classics such as Ploughman's and plates of salad, savouries and sandwiches. But it has plenty of other stuff such as pie and chips, baked potatoes, sausages and so on. Whilst there is web-based information about the drink there is nothing to read about the pub food.  To keep it simple I chose sausage baguette.

You get quite a lot of hot sausage for your money. You can probably tell that it is not one of the rustic sausages but is more of a smooth variety. It was perfectly hot and tasty scoring and nine on the scale. They threw in a few chips as well, which was unexpected. I fancied a coffee after the meal. The best they could manage was a cup of instant. Shame on them.

My wife's baked potato was judged to be good.

The food was hot and could not be faulted, but lacked any originality or flair. Fair value.

Sukanya, Station Road, Denham: I wish it was nearer home

8th July.
I had a business group meeting in Harefield, and this place was suggested for a post-meeting get together. On a wet Tuesday night in July, we were in a pretty empty place. There are quite a few restaurants in Denham, which may get lunchtime business from the business parks nearby. There are actually two Thai restaurants in the immediate area (forgot to say it is Thai) and I don't know why this one was suggested in favour of the other, but I am glad it was.
It is not an inspiring place,and was so dimly lit, that it might have been closed. There were only a couple of other tables occupied, one of which was the staff. There is little to learn about the place from the internet, and the best information comes from TripAdvisor, and seem accurate enough http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g616258-d4093645-Reviews-Sukanya_Thai_Restaurant-Denham_Buckinghamshire_England.html  .There is nothing unusual about the menu and it is pretty standard stuff.
I was with a colleague who did not have any particular needs, and so to keep things simple we went for the set menu A, at just under £20 each (very fair price I thought). You can either have soup or a plate of hot starter, which is what we went for:

Again, pretty standard stuff with the prawns in batter, spring roll, prawn toast, but also some ribs that cannot be seen and some chicken thighs. Hot  and tasty with suitable sauces.

The main selection was also fairly standard stuff with a green chicken curry, beef, vegetables, prawn and fragrant rice. This was also big quantity, tasty, and all the dishes were hot scoring about 8.8 on the CHOF scale. Service was a little slow, but that did not matter. The staff were very pleasant, and were it not for the fact that this is an inconvenient location for north London, I would definitely go there again. Recommended. The set meal for two, including coffee was about £20 which was extremely reasonable, and a bit less than average.

Durum, Finchley Central. Consistently pleases

5th July 2014
One of the problems with this sort of blog is that there are some places I tend to go to repeatedly, and if there is nothing new to say, then I don't say anything. That is why there has been fewer entries recently. However, one point I have made is the fear of disappointment returning to really good places. A routine Saturday night meal out took us back to Durum in Finchley, which I have mentioned before. The web site has changed: it used to have a somewhat persistent music track. Now on http://durumrestaurant.co.uk/ . The web site is less informative and tells us nothing about the food, but there is now a branch in Golders Green. The pictures on the web site pretty much tell the story except the queues for takeaway kebab on Saturday nights.
Nothing much changes here except the prices. It is very busy early on Saturday night, but I booked the same day. If you go after 8.30 pm, you would probably get in without booking.
On this occasion I had the beyti kebab which is kofte in a spicy sauce on a bed of flatbread.

This was just sooooo good. It was very hot: a 10/10 on the CHOF scale, and very tasty,being in a piquant tomato sauce. It was a big helping, and I probably should not have ordered the portion of chips (also a 10 on the scale) which I shared with my wife but I did not know about the bread base. We had shared a cold mixed meze starter, which was also probably too much, and we left feeling very full. Prices have crept up a little here, and this cost £10.50 I think. 

Definitely going back again.

Meze Mangal, Lewisham, The Turkish Restaurant of South East London: upper crust Turkish

8th June
A premature Fathers' day outing with my family to this location because it suited the majority, and this was definitely not North London. This Turkish Restaurant, very popular with the locals, describes itself as comparable to many places in Green Lanes (if you live in N London, or Cyprus, you know what that means). The ratings are very high, and my daughter has eaten there before, and so it seemed a pretty reasonable sort of choice. There is lots of information on http://www.mezemangal.co.uk/ . I think it would be difficult to get to by public transport without a significant walk, but there is parking at the frontage of the restaurant and in the sides streets out of business hours.
The menu is fairly conventional and it is a large place used to parties/families en masse. The place seemed a bit vacuous just after opening time on a Sunday, but I guess it is very popular and fills up. I would not want to go there without booking. They also do take-away.

For Starter, as we were a family group, with one vegetarian, we had a plate of mixed cold meze starters. This photo was taken a bit late, and shows it part consumed.

Suffice it to say that there were good quantities of the usual tasty stuff. For main course I chose the Adana Kofte:

This was hot and scored a 8.8 on the CHOF scale, and was pretty big portion. I would say that the kofte meat was a little on the underseasoned side (which of course is better than the other way) and some kofte I have had elsewhere is more pungent. This reminded me more of the sort of kofte that you might get in a Cypriot Restaurant. However, there was no fault, and it was tasty and fresh with a salad accompaniment.

The web site shows the menu and I am guessing that we will go there again. I may choose the Beyti next time.

Service was friendly and flexible and our family was made most welcome. The pricing is possibly a bit higher that the North London counterparts. A main course costs £12.50, and I guess this is a couple of pounds more than a typical counterpart in North London. However, this is quality food. I would definitely go there again.

Royal Carribbean Independence of the Seas: The case of the missing Kidney and the food must have been hot at some point?

17-25th May
As an experiment, we deserted our usual smaller cruise ships, and went for a short holiday on the second biggest cruise liner in the world. You can get an idea of the size on
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=independence+of+the+seas+2014&es_sm=119&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=Tu2NU7L5KMu_POzNgJgI&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1920&bih=869#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=PRGLG-9_0q-K2M%253A%3BW6wx4vd5kOMM1M%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.royalcaribbeanblog.com%252Fsites%252Fdefault%252Ffiles%252Ffriday-photos%252FIndependence%252520of%252520the%252520Seas%2525203-2014%252520415-rcb.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.royalcaribbeanblog.com%252F2014%252F05%252F03%252Ffriday-photos-saturday%3B1024%3B695

When it is full, which it was on this occasion, it is carrying about 3800 passengers plus crew. You can imagine the logistics of trying to feed that many people about three times a day. It is a slick production line with a very American slant. The way the pricing of some cruise ships work is that the basic price is quite good, but you have to pay a bit extra if you want to go to some specialty restaurants, and in the case of the IotS, the drink is pricey, with a cheap bottle of wine costing over $30 including 15% service. Wine by the glass is about $10. Whilst these prices may seem expensive to UK eyes, this is seen to be the norm for US customers. Drink on board some of the UK favoured cruise lines is more in line with pub/restaurant prices. Expensive bottles don't bear thinking about.
So, if you don't want to pay extra (and what you get by paying extra does not really seem worth while unless you have a very special occasion), there is no problem. There are four levels of breakfast service ranging from coffee shop type outlet, to buffet, scrum buffet and silver service. At best there are three types of lunch: pizza cafe/sandwich, served and appalling scrum buffet. There are three dining rooms open for dinner. There is either the traditional two sitting multipassenger fixed table, or a much sought after choose your own time with potentially tables for two. So on paper it sounds ok.

We had chosen what is called 'my time' dining where we had designated time for dinner well in advance. For some bizarre reason the restaurants are named after Shakespearean tragedies and we found ourselves placed in the King Lear restaurant. What we did not bargain for us having to queue for a table and at 8 o'clock, which was a popular time for my time dining, we often had to join the queue about 20 deep. It looked a bit more scary than it actually was and  once the staff came to know us as a couple wanting a table for two in a particular area they usually plucked us out of the queue and positioned us in our desired area fairly quickly.  There was one particular evening after a very popular show in the theatre, when the queue promised to be particularly long. By queueing before the main crowd came out I managed to get our table and the staff left us to our own devices. One disappointing element was the formal nights, and I think it was not reasonable to make people queue up in their formal dress. I guess if we had opted for a fixed table at a fixed time, none of this would have happened. The choice of food in King Lear was excellent, and we were mostly pushed to make up our minds. There was always a fish, vegetarian and hunk of meat option. Whilst portion sizes are not huge, because there is so much food served in the day, the meal sizes are more than adequate, and if you wanted something in addition, the staff did not make it a problem. Staff in the restaurants were universally excellent: I could find no fault.
Here are some examples of dinner served in the King Lear.

The departure meal of soup, a big hunk of American steak, and Bailey's Creme Brûlée.

On another night there was a traditional (not for the ship or the crew, but for the largely British guests) steak and kidney pie. I found no kidney in mine, but there was no point in sending it back, so I put it down to 'lost in translation' and regarded it as steak and mushroom pie. 

I have to say that we what are delighted by and large with the food in the King Lear restaurant. However hot seem to be an alien concept, with food rarely scoring over 7 the CHOF scale. We mentioned this to the staff, and for one night, there was a marginal improvement, mainly because the plates were scorching hot. As the food was plated out somewhere in the bowels of the ship, transported to deck 5, we just accepted that this was simply going to be a lost cause. I think that because few people complain the thing is just accepted, that the food is never going to be hot.

One of the tricky aspects of IotS is the Windjammer cafe and Jade. This is the big open self service buffet that operates at breakfast, lunch, tea and probably dinner (but we never used it for that). It is huge and for days in port and early breakfasts, it was the only choice. It is a very slick operation, geared up to dealing with feeding huge numbers of people in the minimum possible time. In fact it makes the point of reminding the customers that they should vacate their tables as quickly as possible to allow the next guests to take their place. This is not exactly what you want to hear when you're eating. Coupled with the huge number of people is a huge choice and although there is a bit of a scrum in getting served you will succeed eventually.  Somewhat perversely for breakfast it seems to be the place where you could get freshly cooked eggs, but not necessarily what you wanted, more what the cook was prepared to do, and whether you were prepared to wait. If you have not done this kind of eating before, there are huge numbers of people, some of whom are old or disabled, milling about trying to fill their plates as high as they can. I was amazed at the quantity of food that some people seem to be prepared to eat. I guess others were somewhat amazed at the permutations of food that I was prepared to eat

This was lunch on the first day. A combination of hot-dog paella southern fried chicken and lamb stew. What you can't see is that this is served on a plastic plate and the drinks to which you help yourself come in plastic glasses.

This was breakfast served on a day with a particularly early start somewhere about 7 o'clock. They did not seem to be any time too early for the restaurant to not be full. One could only assume that there were significant number of insomniacs on the ship or people we never went to bed at night. Another issue is that one had to learn one's way around the various containers of food and the layout of the restaurants and it was only towards the end of the first week that one was able to assemble a logical mix of food for any particular meal. You will notice on the place of birth the somewhat small portion of scrambled egg. Scrambled egg is notoriously difficult to find any decent state on any buffet. I guessed right at this particular type of scrambled egg was both overcooked and cold. No meal in the Windjammer restaurant scored a CHOF of greater than seven. We got to the point was waiting for the servers to put fresh tureens of food in place. Even that didn't help and food was not hot even at the point of service. The unlikely solution was to come at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon when tea was starting and find that there was a full meal in place which had been so long in the serving bays that it had heated up. The Windjammer restaurant was clearly the refuge of those who felt uncomfortable in the mainstream restaurants. From all appearances it was difficult to work out how some of these people had gathered together the money to pay for the cruise (based on their appearance). Fine dining it wasn't.

Another weird mix once we had worked out that the Jade side of the restaurant served Asian specialities. The curries were actually very hot but not in temperature.

So the question was whether the quality, variety and quantity of meals outweighed the downside of food that was not hot enough. Despite trying to raise the issue with staff, we failed to make any noticeable impression. However overall the eating was a good experience given the shortcomings.