Dinner with Ali

Posted on 2007/05/24 23:38:13 (May 2007).

[Tuesday 22nd May]
Tonight Chie and I went out for dinner with Ali (my PhD supervisor) and his neice Zena, who I've met before a couple of times, including here. I'd initially planned to go to the Boisdale - a Scottish restaurant (!) but alas it was fully booked so we had to resort to plan B

So instead we went to a Japanese restaurant called Atami. My verdict of this place was very much in the "it was OK I suppose" category. It is hard to describe exactly what was wrong with it, but the menu was a bit, well, scatty, and after ordering some bits of sushi and tempura we'd sort of ran out of things we were interested in. Plus it was clearly one of those Japanese restaurants mostly frequented by people in suits on expenses accounts. So a little bit soulless - or maybe that was just down to it being a Tuesday night.

So we decided to go for a second dinner elsewhere. Thinking that we probably didn't want a full meal, I thought tapas might be a good idea, so we got a taxi over to an old favourite of mine - Navarro's, just of Goodge Street. Unfortunately there was no room at the inn here either. Not really our lucky day. It baffles me why so many places were full on an otherwise inignificant Tuesday.

Ali then suggested this Moroccan place called Ayoush on Wigmore Street. This place looked really busy too - but they managed to squeeze us in, in a sort of cave in the basement. There was some kind of Arabic dance music club night thing going on in there, and it was very lively - people dancing inbetween tables and stuff. Despite this the food was actually still pretty good, and although it made it a little difficult to talk, the atmosphere was quite fun I suppose.

It's a great reminder of what a superb variety of cuisines you can eat in London (as long as you don't mind being turned away from a few places - or booking well in advance!). I wonder how many other people in the world started off this evening with Japanese food, and then ended up with Moroccan?

Anyway, great to see Ali again, must do this sort of thing more often now we're back in London!

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