Blankets At Carluccio’s In St. Pancras Station
Carluccio’s in St. Pancras Station has started issuing customers with blankets.
Blankets At Carluccio’s In St. Pancras Station
I’m not sure, but I’ve used that restaurant for some years now and I’ve never seen the blankets before. A few customers outside had the blankets wrapped snuggly over their laps and around their legs.
Has this winter been that bad? Or are we all getting soft and feel the cold more?
I did find the blankets mentioned in Trip Advisor for March 20th this year.
Mothering Sunday At Carluccio’s
I got to Carluccio’s in Canary Wharf for a late breakfast.
There were obviously a few parties celebrating Mothering Sunday, but surprisingly, there were several singletons of both sexes. There certainly appeared to be more than usual, but then I was half-an-hour or so earlier.
You’d have thought that on this day, where mothers and their partners and children tend to celebrate, that dining alone wouldn’t have been so common.
I know that as a widower, who has lost his mother and contact with his two daughters-in-law, I am a bit short in the mother stakes. But my family has always been like that, with no woman having given birth on my father’s side with the coeliac gene, since 1820, that I can find.
Still those genes, when linked to my mother’s Huguenot ones gave me a strong survival instinct and I like to think an active and fertile mind.
The Minestone Soup Is Back!
Carluccio’s amazing minestrone soup has returned as a special for this week. It used to be on the menu and I think the last time I had it, was the day Ipswich played at Brighton.
So there are no prizes for guessing, what I will be eating for lunch this week.
There are rumours that it might go back on the main menu. So let’s do a bit of research.
Feel free to vote.
Eating Off The Menu
On Saturday in Manchester, I noticed that Carluccio’s were serving vitello tonnato as a starter. Now it is one of my favourites.
So today, when I ate with my son in their restaurant near Oxford Circus, he negotiated a large portion for me, to eat as a main course. It went down a treat.
Coeliacs like me, often find that what is on the menu can be easily modified by the removal of an ingredient, from a dish with gluten to one that is totally gluten-free.
A part of Carluccio’s gluten-free menu is created by taking the standard dishes and removing something like bread and it is a technique used in quite a few restaurants.
But some restaurants aren’t so flexible, when it is obvious to those with rudimentary cooking skills like me, that simple changes can make a meal gluten-free.
These will not get my custom!
I’ve talked here with respect to coeliac disease, but it equally well applies to other dietary and other preferences.
I also remember a few years back, when I spoke on the radio to a well-known celebrity chef about his attitude to providing gluten-free food. He said, that providing you need it, when you book the table, no good restaurant should ever refuse to provide something suitable.
He said, that if they do, then they are not a good restaurant! And they are not worthy of your custom!
Have Carluccio’s Cracked Wi-Fi?
In Manchester yesterday, I had a breakfast-cum-lunch in Carluccio’s in Manchester Piccadilly station.
It was the first of their caffes, where I found that wi-fi had been installed. As it was a station that supposedly had Network Rail’s wi-fi, I gave it a go and found that I could collect to Carluccio’s network.
And very good it was too! It was also pretty hassle-free, in that there was no login or registration process. Which is as it should be!
I hope that they don’t find their hot-spot gets used as a free download for masses of data, but there is nothing worse than going into a pub or restaurant and finding that getting a Wi-fi connection is a complete hassle.
But then, all I ever want to do is check e-mails, read a few web pages or use the machine locally. I don’t listen to music, play games or watch videos or live action on a small device.
Clocks At Carluccio’s
Every Carluccio cafe seems to have a large clock.
C would have approved, as she didn’t have a watch to wear. Even if someone had given her one, she wouldn’t have worn it.
Is This Going To Be My Worse New Year’s Eve Ever?
I don’t know, but let’s face it the weather doesn’t get any better as the day rumbles on. When I went to Otto’s Pizzadrome, it wasn’t raining, but when I left God was sending every bit of water, she could in our direction. As I got the bus home, intrepid tourists from Asia were braving the rain on a tour bus.
Intrepid Tourists
I can never understand people using tour buses in London, as you get almost as good a view from some of the regular buses, like the 38 with its New Buses for London and the 9 and 15, with its fifty year old Routemasters. And of course you never get wet! Surely someone must have written a book about touring London by Oyster on buses, trains, trams etc.
When I went out an hour or so ago to get a few bits at the littleWaitrose at Highbury Corner, it was still raining madly and I got wet in the short walk to the shop.
So I did the lazy thing and got the first bus I found, which was a 43 going past Carluccio’s at Upper Street, but in the wrong way to get home.
I just had a coffee there and then sneaked down the side of the building to the Essex Road to get a 38 bus home. It was a bit of a detour and it cost me the price of a coffee, but at least I got home in a dryish state.
I doubt, I’ll venture out again, unless it really does stop raining. I have a fish pie, if I need something substantial, but otherwise, I’ve some eggs, bread and a small tin of beans. And of course, plenty of beer and Aspall’s cyder.
So does this look like it’s going to be my worst New Year’s Eve?
I think not! Unless of course, a Jumbo Jet should land on my house or some other serious disaster happens!
I had some pretty bad ones as a child, as my parents didn’t really do New Year, although I did have a couple of good ones in my late teens serving in The Merryhills at Oakwood. The least said about one evening there, the better!
C generally wasn’t in to New Year either, except when we used to go hunting as a family on New Year’s Day. We also had some good ones when we managed to get away to places like Majorca or Venice, but for the last twenty years or so with horses, they usually came first. And a couple of those in particular were pretty grim, as it never stopped raining, and there were masses of horses to muck out and feed.
So on a scale of one to ten, I suspect tonight will be about five, whilst I’ve had a few very low scores in my time.
I hope, I haven’t spoken too soon.
Not The Best Shopping Trip!
I tried to do a bit of personal shopping today. I need a couple of pairs of decent cord trousers and I want to get one of thse new-fangled tablet computers to see if I can blog on the move.
The only pair of trousers I tried on, were a pair in Armani with a button fly. And I hate button flies!
I’m also still no nearer to finding a tablet computer for my requirements.
In the end, I gave up and had a coffee and a snack in Carluccio’s before buying my supper in Marks and Spencer and coming home.
An Excellent Gluten-Free Snack
I do like polenta cake, but Carluccio’s one seems to be difficult to find, although they do happen to have a chocolate and coconut one. But I’ve never liked coconut and especially those biscuits called Nice, which I think are Nasty. Today though the waitress offered me a cioccolato fondente from the gluten free menu.
An Excellent Gluten-Free Snack
I shall be having one again.
It’s Friday So It’s Fish!
I tend to have fish on Friday, although I come from a family where there was quite a bit of anti-Roman Catholic feeling. My mother was from a Huguenot line and after what had happened in France in the eighteenth century, you could understand her family’s feelings. With my father it was a bit mixed, but he didn’t like the way the Pope Pius XII had not condemned the Nazis. If it’s one thing my father was, it was an anti-fascist. But then he’d been at the Battle of Cable Street.
But still we generally had fish on Fridays! A friend has said that her family did too, as that was the day the fish-man called. I know we had a fish-man, who brought fresh fish and perhaps he came on Friday.
I don’t always follow the tradition and C generally didn’t. But recently, I’ve found a few nice fish recipes and tend to cook one of them on a Friday.
Today was no exception and I cooked a variation of the Lindsey Bareham recipe of fish with peas and beans, that I often use.
I started by setting the oven to warm up to 200 °C, with a plate warming in the top oven. I also set some water to boil for the vegetables.
Warming Up The Cooker
Meanwhile, I prepared the fish, by taking it out of the packet and putting it in my expensive porcelain dish from a pound shop.
Fish Ready For Cooking
I generally do two pieces of fish, in case a hungry and beautiful woman should turn up, whilst I’m cooking. The only preparation I do is to put a tablespoon of Carluccio’s lemon-flavoured olive oil over each piece of fish. I always used to use a real lemon, but then I often forgot to buy one.
I also prepare the vegetables. The potatoes tonight were a pack of Waitrose’s ready-to-microwave ones, the beans were a pack of yesterday’s runner beans on special offer and the peas were frozen ones from the freezer.
The Peas and Beans Ready To Cook
The only tricky preparation was to cut the beans in half.
After the fish went in the oven, I put the beans in the boiling water and started the potatoes in the microwave. After a couple of minutes, the peas were added to the beans and by the time they’d cooked so had the potatoes. I then just gave the fish another minute or so until it was cooked and placed it on top of the green vegetables.
Fish With Potatoes, Peas And Beans
It really must be one of the simplest ways to cook fish and vegetables. Even I can get it right every time!
The washing-up isn’t too onerous.
Easy Washing Up
There’s nothing that’s actually too dirty and can’t be washed in the sink.
The Anonymous Widower 