My book now available to buy!

My book is now available on Blurb!

I made this very simple photo book at the end of last year and have some copies at home, but I couldn't use the publish to the world service offered by the site as I live outside of the USA. This morning I had an email from them saying that the service was available to everyone, so with great glee I popped over and got myself organized. And here it is!

It's a small book of 10x8 inches and is available in hard or soft cover, there are 48 pages of lovely photographs shot in three locations in North Morocco last spring.

Please have a look and let me know what you think of it.

Blue.

Capturing the blues...

By Sarah Franklin

Book Preview

My little battery farm.....

My little battery farm....., originally uploaded by multum in parvo.

Just waiting for Easter.

Lost views and relist

Etsy very carelessly reset most of it's customers view statistics over the weekend. I know I'm not exactly up there with the big boys, but I was fairly pleased with my modest traffic. I've decided to relist some of the items which are languishing at the bottom of my items for sale and have started off with this rather nice black and white matted print of rowing boats in Essaouira. It's been sitting on my shelf for some time now and really like to be shot of it!

Here's a screen shot of it having it's moment of fame on the front page!

If you want to look closer, click here.....

New Printer and chaos.

After much deliberation about whether I should buy a new printer, I finally did the deed. I've been looking into it for quite a while and had decided on the Epson R2400 which is sort of the upgrade of my old and trusty Epson Stylus Photo 1270 which I've had for about 6 or 7 years. I wanted a machine that would still do A3+ and wanted full bleed and archival inks and this fitted the bill. Full of resolve, we headed off to Calumet, my new favourite photo shop and were immediately persuaded to look at the HP Photosmart Pro B9180 which does everything the Epson does plus some extra stuff which I liked. The print samples were stunning. The printer can take a really wide range of paper and media going from tissue paper up to canvas which the Epson didn't. As I will want to use thick fine art papers and photo rags, this was just what I wanted. It was a bit cheaper too.

Yesterday we also bought an iPhone each and that's what we concentrated on getting sorted last night so this morning the full horror of the work involved in getting the new printer installed finally hit. It's much bigger than the old Epson and I'll need to access the back for the hand fed papers, which meant that the position of the old printer wasn't suitable as it was against a wall and the daft layout of my work station didn't really give many options for repositioning. Peter then had the great idea of putting the beast onto our redundant but much love tv trolley and having it based in teh living room next door. I must explain that we're not exactly the soft furnishing and pretty living room types, pretty much every corner of the flat looks rather like a design studio with books, pictures, computers and assorted other junk all over the place. Therefore, unconventional as it may seem, having a chunky metal trolley with a huge printer in the living room isn't such a weird thing in our lives. Peter's gone out to get a longer USB cable and a new powered hub for me which gives him a quick escape and a chance for a coffee and a quick read of the papers before Maplins opens leaving me to tidy my disgusting dusty desk, with it's rats nest of cables, and generally have a bit of a sort out which has made quite a difference really. He'll be back soon and then we can really get the show on the road.

I can't wait to make some really lovely prints and hopefully my new Spyder2 will help with the colour management and calibration as I've not been too satisfied with my colours for a while now. A new slate.

Many miles - My little Smarty hits 16,000

Ha! Now set up for Mobile Blogging!

In the past I've had a great time sending pictures to both my LJ and Flickr accounts on may phones with no trouble until suddenly, quite a while ago my phone (Sony Ericcson 850i) suddenly decided not to let me send any emails, telling me I had the 'wrong Yahoo login'. This really irritated me and I tried everything I possibly could to find out what on earth that meant and had no luck. I know it's not exactly the end of the world not to be able to email pictures, but I really liked the fact that I could just do it! Today I set up the system here at Blogger and it worked first time.

It's all rather ironic really as I'll be replacing my phone any day now, most likely with an iPhone which of course has a famously crappy camera. I've deliberated for ages and driven everyone mad with my procrastinations about why I should or shouldn't get a particular phone and I've sort of had enough of scouring the websites to find any useful information and I think I'll just have to live with a naff camera for the next 18 months. It's not as if I never have any other camera with me, theres often a hefty D300 around my neck or my slightly chunky, battered and temperamental Fuji Finepix F10 in my handbag. I might even keep my K850i on a pay as you go system just to email pictures, or is that a really sad thing to do?

So, it seems that mobile blogging is back for me!

More Through the Viewfinder

As mentioned in a previous post, I've been trying to work out the magic of Through the Viewfinder photography and haven't really been doing very well. I wondered if there was any way to cheat at it - there seem to be ways to cheat at most types of photography so I set about Google. Flickr came up with the goods in a wonderful group called Noise and Dust where people have photographed their viewfinder with a blank view so you just get the border and any dust, flares, vignetting etc. All you have to do next is mess around with blend layers in Photoshop and you get a fabulous image like the one above. I shot a pretty ordinary bowl of slightly sad looking fruit on my D300 and then applied the viewfinder from an Asco Panda camera from the group mentioned above and I think the result is wonderful. I've done a few more using pictures I shot yesterday, some corks and a bunch of daffodils and then tried some existing pictures of food - apples, tomatoes, red onions and some lovely pears which all lend themselves very well to the technique and could feasibly have been shot using the 'real' method. Just before I went to bed last night I applied the same technique to a sign on the North Pier in Blackpool which was also very successful.

What I would like to do to continue this so it's not so much of a cheat, is to use the same process, but shoot the viewfinder of my Rolliecord see this post as I think I'd be more comfortable using my own camera, it's also a much cleaner look and I love the cross hairs. I'll try to do that tomorrow morning or certainly over the weekend.

Photographer Photographed.

., originally uploaded by multum in parvo.

I had a great couple of days in London, mostly photographing street art of one sort of another. I haven't seen anything new and inspiring in Manchester for absolutely ages and had rather lost interest in this subject. Even if Manchester seems to be drying up, London is in good shape as usual especially in the old favourite haunts of Spitalfields and Brick Lane and it's environs.

This picture is in the borders den underneath the Royal Festival Hall where I have previously only been at weekends and you would have to have a death wish to venture in there when it's full of skaters. It was a pleasant surprise to find it totally deserted apart from quite a few people with cameras all taking advantage of the quiet time.

I love the sharp focus on the rough, silver painted concrete and the girl in the middle distance taking a close up of some graffiti on the column and the tour group in the background against the really blown out sky.

Through the Viewfinder

I discovered Through The Viewfinder (TTV) photography last spring on Flickr and thought it was a really beautiful way of creating images. I have an old Rolleicord which I thought would be perfect as it has a ground glass viewfinder which has a really lovely look, it's quite speckled with quite heavy centre hotspot, but it's very subtle and I love the cross hairs. I constructed a ridiculous contraption from foam which sits ontop of the Rolleis viewfinder which supports my digital camera at the top. When I was using it last year I was using my happy snappy - a Fuji Finepix F10 which seemed to work quite well as it's nice and light with a good macro setting. But I've recently fallen out of love with that camera, I find it very irritating as it keeps resetting itself randomly which I find very annoying to have to reset everything. So I decided to attach the Rollei to the tripod in my new studio set up at home and have a bash with the D300. I did work as the photos here show, but it's still very hard work even when I don't have to hold the Rollei which is very heavy (this is why I could only use the happy snappy previously as I was shooting without a tripod and there's no way I could have juggled heavy metal Rolleicord, long foam contraption and relatively cumbersome Nikon D70 - as well as dealing with a long zoom lens!). So it was quite a releif to be free of the weight. But it was still very awkward, but I'm fairly pleased with the results although I do need to find some bigger subjects as the focal distance on the Rollei is massive and the smallish things I was using do rather receed into the distance and look tiny! Later on I had a go with Peter's Lumix, which I think may be the final solution as it's really small and light, has a great lens, zoom and macro and it's 10mpx and can shoot in RAW too. When I next have a go at TTV I shall definitely use the Lumix and I mustn't be dissuaded from trying again as I am determined to crack this. TTV images seem to sell really well on Etsy where I am determined to find a really good look for my shop and have a few really good lines which I can churn out and sell hundreds of beautiful cards, prints and postcards.

First shots in my home studio

Today was momentous as we set up our brand new set of lights and had an experiment with some still life subjects. The lights are a pretty straightforward constant lighting system as we thought that leaping straight into a flash setup might be asking for trouble, if we graduate to that in the future, these lights will still be useful.

The lights themselves were a real struggle to put together and I think that we'll have to find somewhere for them to live with their shades on as it will waste far too much time to have to put them together each time.

I shot quite a few pics using my wide angle and then my 50mm, both on and off the tripod. I'm quite pleased with the results and have uploaded this selection to iStock to see if they get accepted....fingers crossed.

I'll need to come up with a list of subjects to shoot to make the most of my time as it's a fiddly process.

The kit came with a white cat basket which apparently is the bees knees for shooting, I have yet to set that up, but it looks like it might be interesting.

Photoshop Dramas.

I've been trying to revitalize my rather ignored and abandoned Etsy shop which I started full of good intentions last year. I sold a few cards and sets of cards but then sort of lost interest and when I saw that everything had expired I was shamed into starting again. I spent quite a lot of time thinking about what to do and looking at lots of other shops. I've always found the sticking a photo onto card stock at bit of a hit and miss affair although they always look nice so I decided to buy some pre-scored cards ready for my Epson printer. I tried some cheap and cheerful ones from WH Smiths which were okay, but not great, then some which looked better from PC World which are so crappy that I threw them away after one try (nice envelopes though!). I decided that I would have to go upmarket and ended up with a seriously classy stack of black boxes on my desk from Crane Paper, their Museo Art Cards are absolutely stunning, 100% cotton rag acid free, double sided loveliness. The only problem was that I could not get the buggers to print. Whatever I tried, the formatting was wrong, the layout didn't fit, it was all bad. I entered in to lengthy corespondence with the company who were staggeringly helpful sending me advice, figures, templates made specially for me (I'd already tried the ones available on their website). Finally it worked! The cards are stunning and I was gearing myself up to go into production.

You'll notice that I said "was gearing up" this is because Photoshop CS2 suddenly and totally out of the blue started to quit every time I selected Print with Preview. This is my chosen way to print and I don't really feel secure enough with the templates to risk wasting rather pricey cards by printing in the regular way. I've tried re-making the templates from scratch which worked for a while then it started to Quit again. I've tried saving the document as a jpg, but the same thing happens. I've tried doing the regular Print and then selecting Preview, but nothing shows up, I've tried viewing as a PDF but nothing shows up and I've even saved the document as a PDF, but when I open it up, there's nothing there. I am not happy. This weekend was going to be for a serious card making session.

I suppose I'll try uninstalling and reinstalling CS2 if I've still got the disc as I can't remember where I got it from. If that doesn't work I don't know what I'll do.

New year, new blog!

Hello world! My name is Sarah and this is my brand new blog. It's a photo blog actually, my other blogging needs are satisfied elsewhere.

This is where I'll be keeping track of my photographic goings on during 2008 (and beyond, hopefully). I've got lots of photos online already, at my lovely website, eyeshoot and on the wonderful Flickr and those will remain, but I feel I need a new space for a new year and a new approach.

I'll be leaving my current job in the Spring and obviously need to earn my keep and I have decided to attempt to do so via my collection of cameras. I reckon that I'll be needing a sounding board, a place to wibble about new equipment and new techniques, a promotional space and I would, of course like people to get in touch and tell me what they think!

So that's what will be going on here.

El Bulli, Roses, Spain.

This was, as you can imagine, a totally epic experience. We flew from Liverpool to Barcelona,stayed one night in Barcelona and then travelled the following evening in a rather nice chauffeur driven Mercedes for about 2 hours (the car waited to take us back to Barcelona when we had finished) up the cost to the town of Roses to collect our friends, J&M who had flown in from London earlier that day. From there we drove up and up and round and round some stunningly precipitous roads with amazing views with anticipation building like you wouldn't imagine. Eventually we arrived at our Mecca. El Bulli is a pretty low lying stone building with traditional influences, but it is unmistakably something modern and special. It nestles in a tiny bay backed by pine trees and mountains with the sea lapping at its front.

We were first shown the kitchen which was more like a laboratory than any kitchen I have ever seen, it was silent with dozens of white coated chefs, men and women busily creating their little mysteries. Ferran Adria was there, and M managed to pose for a photo with him - another celebrity portrait for her collection! We were in there for a while and it helped to fuel the anticipation to a fever pitch, we were desperate to get started.

We were led outside to a very pretty 'patio' area overlooking the sea for the first of our many starter dishes. . We started off in style with a ‘welcome aperitif’ which was a cocktail made with Caipirinha, lemon juice and liquid nitrogen! The nitrogen was poured into the mixing bowl with the liquor and juice and stirred and stirred until everything was frozen to a silken slush and then decanted into cut limes.
After this all twenty of these dishes were totally outstanding. The highlights for me were the Spherical Olives which aren’t olives at all, but an incredibly thin membrane of olive coloured something which explodes in the mouth with a gush of olive and garlicky deliciousness. The Knots of Yoghurt were truly bizarre and wonderful; they really were knots of yoghurt with a kind of outer skin which bursts in the mouth with a rush of mozzarella flavoured liquid with a basil leaf.

It was a shame when we were taken inside, as it was pretty perfect outside, but I suppose a more formal atmosphere was necessary for the next session. We proceeded to have thirteen dishes which were followed by ‘Morphings’ which were a stream of puddings.

The food was not surprisingly, sublime, even the things I didn’t like (monkfish livers, oysters, lamb brains, warm walnuts) were all things that I don’t like anyway, but I chose to try (with the exception of the walnuts which were really odd). The predominately vegetarian dishes were by far the best – who’d have thought that El Bulli would turn out to be a vegetarian restaurant! We were very surprised that there was no meat at all, although M had an alternate dish to the lamb’s brains which was a chicken wing confection which she proclaimed “delicious”. The fish was excellent – mackerel, crab, prawn, mussel, monkfish liver and oyster (so I was told!). I don’t know where snails fit it, but they were fabulous too.

Puddings were great fun and the highlight of these was the Milkshake which came in a closed and sealed polystyrene box. Inside was an aerated, frozen vanilla flavoured foam and next to the box was a small plastic bag containing what looked like earth. The earth was in fact caramelized cinnamon which was for sprinkling onto the milkshake! The result was bizarre, rich, light and delicious. We scraped our boxes clean. After all the puds we had a totally unbelievable pudding wine – Olivares 2001 by Bodegas Oliveras @ Jumilla, it was dark, dark red and tasted of intense blackcurrents.

I feel I should mention the wines - J chose the wine from an epic wine list, wine is his forte, so to say that he was content to choose is the understatement of the year, he selected for us a stunning range of Spanish wines. Our first was Chivite Collection 125 Aniversario 2001 by Julian Chivite @ Navarra – we had two bottles of this, followed by Finca Dofi 1994 by Alvaro Palacios @ Priorat and Pagos Viejos 1998 by Artadi-Cosecheros Alaveses from Rioja.

Overall the verdict was that it fulfilled our inflated expectations, we had a ball and didn’t regret the hassle, expense and the general performance of getting there!

J&M who have eaten in comparable restaurants several times said that this was without a doubt the best of the Molecular Cookery type establishments, beating the Fat Duck hands down and even beating Marc Veyrat, although he has the advantage of cooking red meat to die for apparently. His restaurant is next on our wish list.

We felt very lucky indeed to be there at all as it is the most oversubscribed restaurant in the world with 500,000 people chasing just 8,000 places and of course, incredibly grateful to our friends J&M who asked us to share the experience with them!

What did it cost?
Return flights to Barcelona
Two days car parking at Liverpool Airport
Two nights in a Barcelona Hotel
Chauffeur driven Mercedes for 4 hours driving and 5 hours waiting for us.
Supper for the previous night (also fantastic in a totally different way, report on that later)
El Bulli itself – food and wine.

Answer
Worth every penny!

I’ll list here the few things (from the outside starters part of the meal) which escaped my camera:
Carrot ribbons – verbena, ginger and liquorice.
Black olives “oreo” with bitter cream.
Mango disc and black olive.

I haven’t posted all of the pictures here as there are far too many, but you will find them here on my Flickr page. Enjoy!

The Fat Duck, Bray

This meal was part two of our ‘eating the best’ challenge. We were with the same friends who miraculously managed to score a table at El Bulli, the Holy Grail for lovers of fine food everywhere.

We arrived in Bray with perfect timing, just as our friends arrived from Central London, so we were off to a good start. The restaurant is seriously subtle from the outside, just the fabulous logo on a hanging sign. The inside is low ceilinged with beams and really bad abstract paintings in yellows, blues and greens. The place was packed, not bad for a Thursday night.

There were some pretty ordinary but tasty green olives on the table and then no sign of any food for an hour, by which time we had polished off one bottle of stunning Chardonnay and were frankly getting a bit peckish - a bit of bread would have been nice. We questioned the lack of food and were fobbed off with a lame excuse along the lines of "We were waiting for you to choose your wine" which really doesn't make sense as we were all having the tasting menu which is set, apart from a few substitutions and we had ordered and drunk our first bottle. The boys wanted to add one of the A la Carte dishes to their experience, so after a bit of negotiation with the very helpful staff, it was included for them. Perhaps this little deviation from the Fat Duck norm is what really slowed the process down?

Eventually the food started to arrive (we were onto our second bottle of wine by then), the first series of dishes were the appetisers:

The starters

NITRO-GREEN TEA AND LIME MOUSSE


Little frozen nuggets which we were told to eat in one mouthful, lovely silky texture on the outside and runny on the inside. The lime was by far the dominant flavour. No way near as impressive as the El Bulli nitrogen performance.

OYSTER, PASSION FRUIT JELLY


I am no fan of oysters, but this was delicious. Or rather the passion fruit jelly was delicious. The oyster was like oyster.

HORSERADISH CREAM, LAVENDER POMMERY GRAIN MUSTARD ICE CREAM RED CABBAGE GAZPACHO


This was stunning; the mustard made a delicious and beautifully textured ice cream and the gazpacho was a revelation.

JELLY OF QUAIL, LANGOUSTINE CREAM, PARFAIT OF FOIE GRAS


I think that this was my favourite dish on the entire menu. Which is odd as I have only very recently come to eat foie gras and I have a bit of a problem with savoury jellies – it’s a texture thing. The delicate little quenelle of foie gras was delicious, it was sitting on a pale and creamy langoustine cream which broke into dark brown and vibrant green once you dug in to the bowl. Visually stunning and delicious

Then came the main courses

SNAIL PORRIDGE - Jabugo Ham, shaved fennel


The infamous Snail Porridge……I saw this being made on BBC2’s Full on Food a couple of weeks ago, and it looked much nicer than this one did. The snails were much bigger and plumper and were sitting proudly on top of the porridge (perhaps bigger and plumper snails aren’t such a good thing?). Despite this, the porridge was delicious, really herby and I must say that the snails didn’t really taste of much at all. Somewhat overrated. (recipe here, if you feel so inclined!)

ROAST FOIE GRAS - Almond fluid gel, cherry and chamomile


Delicious – I seem to be developing a bit of a taste for Foie Gras! The almonds on this dish were fabulous, really fresh, waxy and crunchy. Almonds were used quite often in the El Bulli meal too – must be a seasonal thing.

SARDINE ON TOAST SORBET - Ballotine of mackerel ‘invertebrate’, marinated daikon


This is the one dish I didn’t have – I can’t stand sardines. The others liked it though.

Substitute dish – FENNEL VELOUTE


Fabulously delicate creamy soup which had an oyster lurking in the depths. Very nice indeed. Much nicer than sardines!

SALMON POACHED WITH LIQUORICE - Asparagus, pink grapefruit, "Manni" olive oil


The salmon was perfectly cooked, very rare and as soft as butter. The liquorice was a jelly-like wrapping around the salmon, dark and glossy and tasting of liquorice root, rather than liquorice sweets. I wasn’t too keen on that. The pink grapefruit complemented it perfectly, and you can never go wrong with asparagus.

POACHED BREAST OF ANJOU PIGEON PANCETTA - Pastilla of its leg, pistachio, cocoa and quatre épices


This was very gamy, very strong, especially the leg. The tiny little leg. The last time I had pastilla (shredded pigeon layered with filo pastry, pistachio nuts and icing sugar and cinnamon), we were in a palace in Marrakech sitting in an outrageous room scattered with rose petals. So it had a lot to beat! This little samosa shaped pastilla didn’t do too badly, a bit more pigeon and a little less deep fried pastry would have been a better ratio. The overall effect of the dish was very very rich and tasty.

Lasagne of Langoustine, with Pig's Trotter and Truffles.


This is the course which the boys wanted from the a la carte menu, the girls paused for breath while they inhaled this rather interesting little offering. Actually I did have a taste and it was beautiful, really melt in the mouth tender, sweet and powerful. Strange and interesting but still tasty.

WHITE CHOCOLATE AND CAVIAR


Delicious chocolate and salty caviar which worked rather well. But then sweet and salt always do.

MRS MARSHALL’S MARGARET CORNET


Fabulously whimsical and very pretty, the crystallised rose petals were divine.

PINE SHERBET FOUNTAIN


Very witty– the dipper was a vanilla pod. It bought back lots of warm fluffy childhood memories.

MANGO AND D0UGLAS FIR PUREE - Bavarois of lychee and mango, blackcurrant sorbet


I have no recollection of the bavarois at all, but recall the sorbet as being about as perfect as a blackcurrant sorbet can be. A big bowl of it would have been nice! Or perhaps some in another Mrs Marshall's Margaret Cornet would be more appropriate.

CARROT AND ORANGE TUILE


A really intense burst of orange, a bit like the Middle Eastern apricot leather but much thinner and crisper.

SMOKED BACON AND EGG ICE CREAM - Pain perdu, tea jelly


Out of all the very strange things I have eaten in the last two weeks, I think this was the strangest, and it was just wrong. Weird for the sake of being weird and slightly disturbing. Mind you, the tea jelly was fantastic.

PARSNIP CONFLAKES WITH PARSNIP MILK


Fabulous packaging, very amusing. The little white flakes were intensely parsnippy and I quite liked them as a gimmick, but I couldn’t face the parsnip milk. The others said it was tasty.

The verdict

A really enjoyable meal, Heston Blumenthal can certainly cook (and in the tiniest kitchen I have ever seen, even by domestic standards). Many of the combinations did seem to be gratuitously odd, but most of them worked with aplomb, some didn’t i.e Bacon and Egg Ice Cream but perhaps that was just me. The service was excellent (apart from my long awaited bread being put on the side plate to my right – the waitress said she was new…..) and the dishes we didn’t fancy were substituted with good grace, M changed four of hers and they smiled graciously even at that! The sommelier (I was reliably informed, that he knew his stuff) and he recommended one bottle out of the four which we greedily enjoyed as well as the glasses of Tokaji with our puddings.

How did it compare to El Bulli? I liked the fact that the main courses here were more substantial so that you could taste a bit more of some of the lovely ingredients (for example the salmon and the second foie gras dish). The packaged puddings were very clever, but so was the El Bulli milkshake, this also tasted divine, much more delicious than sherbet and parsnip cornflakes could ever taste. The sheer cleverness of El Bulli is unbeatable; many of the dishes there left us with smiles on our faces whereas The Fat Duck seems to take itself a bit too seriously. Perhaps the Spanish/British character difference. Bray is one hell of a lot easier to get to than Roses, but that’s neither here nor there really – I’d rather fly to Spain than drive down the M6 and M40 after work.

This makes it sounds like I didn’t really enjoy the Best Restaurant in the World and that would be misleading – it was great. I have been unbelievably lucky to eat at both of these restaurants within two weeks of each other and deciding between them is pretty hard, but I think that for me El Bulli must come out on top.

We will go back to The Fat Duck as I would love to choose from the A la Carte menu, in fact we could go any time we like – because we can, it is only three hours drive away. Chances are that we will never go to El Bulli again; it took four years to get there this time……a true one in a lifetime experience.

If you click on any of the photos, you'll go straight through to my Flickr site where the pictures can be viewed bigger with some more comments. Enjoy and please let me know what you think!

High Street, Bray, Berkshire, SL6 2AQ

Okay, I feel I should write about my recent lunch at Rick Stein's The Seafood Restaurant in Padstow

The restaurant is at the edge of the village (but still in it) just in front of the harbour - there is a car park between them, but hype and expectation filters it out! The main room is not too large, nice and light with fantastic mirrors on the walls and a really interesting selection of paintings. Anyway, enough of the interior design and on to the food.

There were six of us, as Peter had very generously invited his Devon-Relatives to dine with us, which didn't score him many brownie points with me it has to be said. So, the food - it's a really good menu with masses of interesting choices, all fish.

fish & shellfish soup with rouille & parmesan £11.50
This came in a big white tureen as two others had it as well. The flavour was pretty strong, I could taste the crabs in the stock which almost makes it meaty. The rouille was delicious, quite hot and lovely and garlicky, the croutes were a good size and crispy enough so they didn't go soggy too fast (I hate wet bread, I'm not one of nature's dunkers) the parmesan was a bit mean between three of us.....and for the money.

Skate with black butter & capers £25
I had never had skate before, no particular reason, I just always thought it seemed a bit odd. But it was delicious, the flesh comes away from the cartilaginous wing really easily and was really soft and quite dense and there was plenty of it. The black butter sauce smelled totally delicious and reminded me of freshly baked biscuits for some reason. The capers were the little tiny ones, which explode with flavour and offset the sweet butteryness really well. Veg came in little dishes - potatoes, which I didn't bother with and courgettes; again I thought this was a bit mean and some more green veg would have been very welcome.
Peter had monkfish vindaloo!!

hot chocolate fondant with a melting soft centre with vanilla ice cream £8.50
When this pudding is done well, it's the nearest thing to pudding heaven. Two of us were in heaven that afternoon. It was just right with a really thin sponge outer casing and masses of really smooth, dark chocolate sauce just ready to ooze out over the vanilla ice-cream. I didn't share any at all ;-)

Overall Impression
Fish soup - good but have had better, and hotter.
Skate - interesting and enjoyable, I'll have it again.
Pud - divine!

It's a fiercely expensive restaurant, (a recent lunch at Claridges was £450 for four of us with a bottle of champagne, a bottle of £60 wine and pudding wine) The total here for six was £350 with one (cheap) bottle of wine (chosen by Peter's mean brother!) and one glass of champagne (me, of course!). So I felt that we got much more for our dosh at Claridges, and it was more of an experience in the whole with the fantastic and friendly service and the busy buzz of a London Hotel. Stein's had no buzz, because the season had not started, the service was spot on but very impersonal so it's hard to define why it didn't feel perfect. Also the man himself wasn't there, and I imagine that the atmosphere is very different when he is! Don't get me wrong, I had a great time, really enjoyed it, I'm just pondering about the value of expensive 'destination' restaurants.


(this review has been posted in October 2007, as I thought that a visit to one of the UK's premier restaurants should be noted here.....I was in Padstow again recently and the prices are still astronomical with the average main course at £28 and the place was packed out. We ate at Rick Stein's Cafe in the back streets of the town and it was charming, excellent and very friendly service. Still not cheap, but worth every pound!)