Happy New Year, my lovely readers!!
Mr S and I had a great Christmas, a quiet one spent with our families. Between us we have eight nieces and nephews (though seven are on Mr S’s side!!) and so Christmas Day and Boxing Day was filled with children playing with their new toys, wrapping paper everywhere and delicious Turkey dinners. Our parents get on really well so we were lucky to combine our family Christmas’s at the house of Dr and Mrs Silver Senior. My sister spent Christmas day with her boyfriend’s family so we had our Boxing Day celebration over at her flat. Mr S was of course delighted to have two turkey lunches, plenty of stuffing and a ton of brussel sprouts. Presents were kept fairly minimal as the emphasis was on gifts for the kids but I bought Mr S some new clothes (as he is quite the male fashion blogger now) and he bought me another new coat!
Anyway, rather than blog about my Christmas I decided to focus on my glam new year instead!
My lovely friend Theresa has just gone through a bad break up and I insisted she come to London from Bristol so we could see New Year in together. She’s off travelling at the end of January and I can’t wait to hear all about her adventures.
After many bad experiences at New Year, I’m a firm believer in keeping it as simple as possible. So along with Theresa I invited a few friends to come to dinner locally and then back to mine for some champers before midnight.
I’ve mentioned before that living in Victoria there’s a wealth of restaurants right on my doorstep, to save hassle with taxis we wanted somewhere in walking distance, which would be fun and not ridiculously expensive. Mango Tree is an old favourite of mine and I’ve visited the Thai restaurant many times.
The lovely Amelia and Polly, along with their husbands both called James, joined us for our feast. We sat with girls on one side and boys on the other so that we could talk about shopping and they could talk about football!! For New Year’s Eve Mango Tree offered a set menu either vegetarian or meat served as a sharing feast…for a little variety we decided to order both for the table.
For once I’m not actually going to dwell too much on the food as it was all rather poor.
We were first presented with the array of starters, I didn’t try everything but I have to say what I did try really wasn’t good. For example, the beef skewers were over cooked and chewy, spring rolls were tasteless and the prawns in very heavy batter and greasy!
Main courses were a mixture of curries and stirfries…
Once again, nearly everything tasted bad, even the rice was squidgy and overcooked. Actually that was the general theme…the chicken was also horribly chewy and the only thing I really enjoyed was black cod but the portion was tiny and it was between seven of us.It was incredibly disappointing and I really think the standards have gone downhill, a real shame as it was previously my favourite Thai restaurant. To be honest, I kind of gave up on the food and concentrated more on the wine, which was lovely.
One bonus was they gave us a little package with party poppers and blowers which was a really lovely touch.
But even the chocolate brownie dessert was disappointing. I honestly don’t know why everything was so bad, you’d think with a set menu and only certain dishes coming from the kitchen it would be better. I’m actually not a fan of set menus for special occasion dining. Day’s such as Valentine’s are just an excuse for the restaurant to serve an overpriced menu, but we’d struggled to find somewhere else. Next time I’ll do my best to avoid the set menu trap.
Though the food was disappointing, we still had lots of fun and headed back to mine for some more bubbly.
We’d been given a magnum of Laurent Perrier for our wedding, and having friends over was the ideal opportunity to drink that bad boy…
Our friends Jess and Ben hadn’t come for dinner but joined us for drinks afterwards…
I’d bought some comedy moustaches and a few other bits and pieces that we could get silly with…
And as the clock approached midnight it was time to go and watch the fireworks.
I love being in London for New Year…
And those fireworks are some of the best I’ve ever seen…
Despite the poor food, it was a fantastic night…we drank far too many glasses of champagne, had so much fun dressing up and dancing on the sofas.
I had an amazing 2014, I got married, had an incredible honeymoon and I started my beloved blog. 2015 has a lot to live up to, but I know it’s going to be a fantastic year.
Mango Tree
46 Grosvenor Place
London
SW1X 7EQ
020 7823 1888
