England - Fat Duck, football, friends and family

Upon arrival into the UK, and for the first time since we left Sydney in winter, we had to put on pants and pull out our jumpers and jackets for what they call "summer".......enough said.

"the fat duck" Restaurant
This 4 hr experience is a once in a lifetime opportunity that we both feel so privileged to have enjoyed. For any food buffs or lovers of wine, this 14 course degustation is for you. Each dish has a story that takes you on a journey of some sort. Its is too difficult to cover all the dishes although we have uploaded shots of many of them so you can see the expertise and detail but unfortunately, not taste.

A few Highlight dishes included an aperitif of pressurized alcoholic drink mixer (gin & tonic for example) dropped in liquid nitrogen and served as a solid ball with a sprinkle of green tea powder and a fragrant spray in the air. The ball just evaporates in your mouth and cleans the palette thoroughly.

"Sounds of the sea" was served with headphones coming out of a sea shell and you ate your meal while listening to the ocean. With the crunch of sand, aerated white foam, 3 diff types of fish, 3 diff types of seaweed and some sea jellybeans, this dish was truly creative and delicious.

All desserts were incredible but I was particularly impressed with "Picnic in the Park" which had a delicious little shortbread cheesecake with macerated strawberries and cinnamon, crushed pistachios covered in a paper think picnic blanket of white chocolate which actually had the red and white checker pattern normally seen on a traditional picnic blanket.......amazing.

We were also served a solid gold watch that when dipped into a bowl of hot water, disolved and turned into a mock turtle soup!

Others included confit of salmon coated in licorice jelly, fois gras to die for and a lamb main with some tounge cubes and vegetables that was so succulent you could cut it like butter.


No doubt you are all hungry just reading this so we shall move on to other topics.

From London we headed north to Manchester for a football feast, hang out with Simone's cousins and meet up with some old friends. We booked into the Mint Hotel under a Gay Pride Package special which was rather humerous but excellent value for a swish hotel.

We would like to give a shout out to Richard's cousin and godfather Ron who fabricated some work trip to get all the way up to Manchester and join us for both games of football.

Liverpool 3 - Bolton 1 - some amazing goals and fantastic atmosphere at the "kop".

And for the main event we witnessed Manchester Utd's destruction of Arsenal 8-2 with some of the best goals you will ever see and a Wayne Rooney hat trick. We were all blessed to see 14 goals in 2 games of English football which is unheard of.

Simone officially owns a cute little UTD jersey and knows many of the chants we learned at the Bishops Blaze pub after the game.
The rest of our time up north was spent with family and friends and it was great just to have a break and spend time talking, eating and drinking nice wines.

The UK was a week of Glorious food, Gay pride parades, footy, family and friends and despite the crappy weather we loved every minute of it!

Next stop is Canada for a wedding in the small town of Banff in the Rocky Mtns and then back to NY for some big city action and US Open men's semi finals.

Apologies for the lengthy blog.
You stay classy Sydney

Rich & Simone