Adventures with Kake

On Monday I despaired at the falling-down-ness of my house.

On Tuesday I did a big pile of work and very little else.

On Wednesday a plumber came to fix my house! Again! We don't appear to be leaking any more, though we still have no downstairs lighting circuit.

On Thursday I went to Hawksmoor for bob's birthday. It was pretty damn good. I shared a porterhouse with ewan — his first ever steak. I wish my first ever steak had been that good (though I seem to remember it was in the Star back when the food was as good as the beer, so it can't have been bad).

On Friday I played Guitar Hero and watched girly TV with Richard.

On Saturday I did a little bit of Discworld hacking then had a takeaway from Banzi which consisted almost entirely of breakfast foods (congee and banh mi, though the banh mi was actually a pre-emptive strike on tomorrow's breakfast). Oh Banzi, your food is tasty, why do you not have online ordering? I would abandon Royal Margin (except for pho) if you did.

On Sunday I had banh mi for breakfast! Then I did a big pile of work.

On Monday I went to Fulham to take some RGL photos. I also had a very nice vegan lunch at 222 Restaurant. Then I got the Tube all the way over to East Ham, where I had dinner at Chennai Dosa before heading on to choir in Leytonstone.

On Tuesday I went out for dinner with lozette, bellaphon, and MsMarmiteLover to Ganapati in Peckham. It was even better than the last time I went there.

On Wednesday I went down the Northern Line to take some more RGL photos. I went down to Tooting and had lunch at Sree Krishna, then worked my way back northwards, popping into the Jackdaw & Rook and the Nightingale on the way. Then I got a bus from Elephant and Castle over to Surrey Quays, and met claudacity, bob, flick, and drplokta at Whelan's for a drink before dinner at Royal Palace. Royal Palace is the place I went to a few weeks ago that has a Chinese-only menu; luckily, claudacity can read Chinese, so we managed to order a vast and delicious spread of dishes, all of which we polished off happily.

On Thursday I went to Camden for london.pm dim sum at Yum Cha. I then dragged Richard around on a mini pub crawl before getting the Tube down to London Bridge to meet bob and the other usual suspects for Mongolian food at the Horseshoe Inn.

On Friday and Saturday I did loads of work to make up for all the fun I had earlier in the week.

On Sunday I joined in the Discworld MUD Bugfix Sunday.

Here are some things I did last week. I don't normally lead such a decadent lifestyle; I'd given myself a week off work because I'd been working too hard and I needed one. (Links lead to my writeups and photos elsewhere.)

On Monday, I had lunch at Sedap, a new and pretty good Malaysian restaurant on Old Street. Then I wandered westwards (via a half in the Trader on Whitecross Street) to take some photos and check out some reported closures for RGL, ending up at the Queen's Head and Artichoke near Regent's Park, where I tried (and quite liked) the pork belly skewers (photo) from their tapas menu. Then I walked back along Drummond Street, buying some almond burfi at the Ambala Sweet Centre on the way, to meet some friends at the Bree Louise, where we sampled the milds they had on gravity and ate heretical pies (photo).

On Tuesday, I met a friend for lunch at Inn Noodle in Bayswater, which claims to be the UK's first pork-free Shanghainese restaurant; the dim sum were a little disappointing, though. Then I wandered around the area doing some more RGL research and photography, popping in to the Prince Bonaparte for a sit-down in the middle. Finally I got the Tube over to Hammersmith for dinner with bob at Tosa, a Japanese restaurant on King Street specialising in tasty grilled things on skewers. I took a lot of photos, and made a photoset of them on Flickr.

On Wednesday I went out for dinner with uon to Royal Palace (photo), an unassuming-looking Chinese restaurant near our house which turns out to have a secret Chinese menu with Sichuan and Northern Chinese specialities on it. I don't read Chinese, but the waitress helped me pick out a few dishes. I'll be going back next week to try a few more before I write the RGL review; I think she gave us the "safe" options, which is not a good basis for a review.

On Thursday I went to the bleak industrial wasteland of Park Royal with hoshuteki, and had lunch at Omnia, a small deli-cafe attached to a Middle Eastern bakery and wholesale business on a one-bus road lined with small-scale factories. Then we got the Tube back into town and had some wine and a few bar snacks at Terroirs, a surprisingly decent wine bar just off the Strand. I was very pleased with the boquerones (photo), less so with the duck scratchings (photo).

On Friday, I did my tax return!

On Saturday, I went out for dinner with secretlondon, lozette, and uon to Kyrgyz Kazakh House, a Central Asian restaurant concealed within a hotel on Camberwell Road. The food was OK, but it was the decor that truly amazed us (photo).

On Sunday, I rose from the dead rested.

(Let me know if this post is interesting, and I might do another one next week!)