Review – U2 at Wembley

I’m not a big fan of stadium gigs and unless you’re in the first few rows you could be forgiven that for thinking that you were watching a DVD of the band on the big screens while body doubles prance around on the stage. If that was true I’m sure somebody would have blown the whistle by now but the sheer enormity of Wembley reduced the band to distant figures from where we were, but having said that the video screens did do a great job of providing video of the band and multimedia content through the show and had a neat trick of extending downwards in a honeycomb fashion almost to stage level. In addition to that the immense stage, the excellent lighting effects and the constant twinkling of camera flashes gave the stadium an almost magical quality.

It’s advertised as being a 360 degree tour and while the stage is circular in shape there’s definitely a “front” and a “back”, and we were more facing the back, but the band members did stroll around to our side enough to feel like were weren’t bein ignored and the drum kit did turn around a couple of times to face our way.  I’d rather have been around the “front” though.

The set itself was excellent with the first few songs being new ones but then the classics started coming out with “Beautiful Day” ,”New Year’s Day” and “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” drawing the casual U2 fans in and then on to true classics like “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” and “Pride (In the name of love)”. If you’ve ever liked any of those songs then hearing them sung with tens of thousands of voices joining in with the choruses would certainly move you and I found the hairs on my arms standing up on end. Great stuff.

Two hours seemed to go by in no time and when it was all over I almost had to pinch myself to remind myself that I’d seen a truly legendary band play legendary songs in such a great setting. An unforgettable evening.

Pub review: The Paternoster

Pater Noster, as good Latin students will tell you, means Our Father and comes from the Lord’s Prayer. It’s also the name of a type of lift, now rarely used in this country for health and safety reasons, which probably obtained it’s name from the occupants being driven to prayer in the hope of a safe transit. Most recently it’s the name of a very good pub near St Pauls, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Paternoster is tucked round behind Paternoster square and is only a few yards from both St Pauls station and the cathedral itself and as I was in the area checking out the City of London Festival events I popped in for a drink in between times. It’s a nice, airy place with traditional dark wooden panelling much in evidence but with two sides of the building being open to the light it’s far from gloomy. It was a late Friday lunchtime so I’d managed to miss most of the usual Friday rush and although there were plenty of folks still in there it didn’t feel crowded so I, and mate Paul, propped ourselves up against the bar and chatted with Rach.

It has a much better selection of wines than a number of the other local pubs I’ve been in and an equally wide selection of spirits, though you’ll have to forgive me the schoolboy chuckle when I spooted Knob Creek peeping out at me from the shelves (left). On the beer side they have the usual Youngs beers and a selection of bottled beers with the more interesting ones being the draft “Waggle Dance”, which has honey in it, and bottles of Wells & Youngs double-chocolate stout in the fridge next to the Banana Bread beer. We weren’t around for long enough to sample the food and they do have the standard pub fair of Fish and Chips, Sausage and Mash, hot and cold sandwiches, burgers and pies plus a range of more interesting dishes such as Welsh Rarebit, a couple of Goat’s Cheese dishes, BBQ baby porks ribs and potted shrimps.

Manager Rachel previously spent some time in Bristol before she was tempted back home to Oz for a while but then she returned to the UK and took over the reins at the Paternoster for pub chain Youngs late last year. She recently put on their first, and very successful, quiz night a couple of weeks ago with over 60 people participating and on the back of that she’s planning to book another one in mid-July, in addition to the live bands that they host peridodically in the evening.

As I said to Rachel I could quite happily turn up there at opening time one day and spend the whole day working my way through the selection of interesting wines and beers that are on offer, though my liver may not thank me for it. It’s a very nice spot with a buzzing, but gentle, ambience about it that makes it good for taking parties of people or just a lunchtime drink. Check their website (below) for updates on events and their special offers.

The Paternoster
http://www.thepaternoster.com/
http://twitter.com/PaternosterSq
2/4 Queen’s Head Passage
Paternoster Square
London, EC4M 7DZ

Food review: Farm Collective, Farringdon

The Farm Collective is in Farringdon on the corner of the appropriately named Cowcross Street where it joins Smithfield Market. Without going all Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on you I’m someone who likes to know where my food comes from (and I don’t mean ASDA) as I can’t stand bland and in my mind flavour, not quantity, is king which means making sure animals are looked after properly and that produce is properly grown and handled.

Having been to some decent restaurants in my time, and plenty of bad ones, I like to think that I know good food when I taste it and here, not a 5-minute train ride from my office, was a place that was saying “lets not forget that all of our produce tastes like food should; full or flavour, rich in goodness. Our food had credentials and it tastes brilliant.”. A frequent claim, but is it really true?

Having found the Farm Collective, a little tricky given the numbering scheme in Cowcross Street, I found it hard  to settle on a choice because they did seem to have all of the kinds of things I like and I eventually chose to go for the sausage and mash, seeing as I’ve probably tasted sausages from every end of the spectrum, both good and bad, so it’d make a good benchmark. 

Farm Collective is primarily a take-away although there’s a bench outside to sit on and a bar at the back with stools should you rather stay to eat, which in this instance I did. Taking a seat at the bar I tucked in and I have to say that I wasn’t disappointed. I’ve found that lesser sausages can have a variety of flavours and aftertastes that have nothing to do with meat but with these I got exactly what I wanted and happily devoured both the sausages and the creamy mashed potatos and began to reflect on what food can be, without turning into some kind of pretentious food luvvie or using phrases like “bursting with flavour“. The move in the food world, egged on by TV chefs, seems to be for food with a conscience and one of the pleasures in eating somewhere like the Farm Collective is that you know that your food wasn’t produced by the lowest cost provider but by people who genuinely care about what they produce.

I asked Craig, co-founder of the Farm Colletive with Dom, where my sausages had come from so he pointed me in the direction of Plantation Pigs where MD Hugh Norris has this to say about his pigs:
“Pigs are fascinating. Their curious shape, those improbably tough rubbery snouts perfectly designed for digging, their inquisitive and playful behaviour and not least their ridiculous attempts at sprinting. I am captivated by these marvellous animals.”
Doesn’t sound like someone in it for a quick buck or a slogan produced by a marketing focus group. I think I’m liking him already…
“We breed all our own pigs. We use ginger- and black-haired animals that can withstand the heat of a summer’s day and cold winter nights. Sows must be good mothers to rear their litters with the minimum of intervention from our stockmen. The breeds we use confer great qualities on the pork making it succulent and tasty. Its flavour will enhance both complex and simple dishes to provide a delicious, satisfying meal. Our pigs live outside in the fields. In summer they bathe in mud wallows to protect themselves from the sun. In winter we provide deep beds of clean straw for them to bury themselves in to keep warm. Plenty of fresh air and exercise helps to keep our pigs healthy and reduces the need for medication.”

So for £6.00, the price of a half-decent pub meal, I’d got something that was satisfying not just my lunchtime hunger but also going some way to supporting decent British farmers producing decent and tasty products.

I’m sold. I’ll be going back and working my way around the menu, although I’m going to have to try and fight off the sausage and mash temptation for sure. For the early risers they sell a variety of breakfast items and for those not into the hot food they have sandwiches and salads with ingredients as carefully sourced as my sausages. And they do deliveries too…

The Farm Collective
http://www.farmcollective.com/
91 Cowcross Street,
EC1M 6BH

Plantation Pigs
http://www.plantationpigs.co.uk

Wagamamas, Mansion House

On Wednesday afternoon I found myself with 45 minutes to spare between my last meeting of the afternoon and the beginning  of a meeting that was bound to go on most of the evening and involve alcohol. My mission, therefore, was to find something to eat that would be reasonably swift, that would also be pretty decent quality and go a long way to fending off my hangover-in-waiting. Once you rule out fast-food places, bars that do food on the side and restaurants that serve at a leisurely pace then the list can be fairly shortin the City, particularly when down near Cannon Street, so I eventually plumped for Wagamamas round the back of Mansion House station as a safe option.

Now unless you’ve been hiding out in an MP’s moat for the last few years you’ll know that Wagamamas started from a single restaurant in Bloomsbury many, many years ago and is now an immensely successful global chain of noodle bars which serve up 12 tons of noodles to the hungry masses each week and have various branches across the City. I’ve been to Wagamamas numerous times in the past and in several different countries but hadn’t set foot in one for a couple of years so I was wondering if things were as I remembered.

The Mansion House branch is tucked away in a little side street just behind Cannon Street and I got there as the clock approached 4.30 which is relevant for only one reason. It was delightfully empty. Having been there once before in the conventional lunchtime scrum this time there was only a tourist couple for me to share the entire place with and the waiter wisely put me some distance from them. After ordering I got down to reading the London Lite while waiting for my food to arrive with the main dish of ebi raisukaree arriving a minute or two before the side order of duck gyoza. Ebi raisukaree is a great rice dish as I’m not a particular fan of rice as such but this has enough sauce and spice to go with the tiger-prawns to keep the whole thing interesting. The duck gyoza looked a little powdery on the pastry side but lacked nothing in flavour, particularly with the gorgeous spicy hoi sin sauce they come with. I was out of there in plenty of time to wander over Southwark Bridge to my meeting came away happy with the whole experience. It’s not the style of food I’d eat every week but I need to remember to go there as a bit of a change from my normal routines. All in all it met all of my expectations for a quick and tasty meal and best of all….. hangover averted!

What I ate:
duck gyoza : five deep-fried duck and leek dumplings, served with a spicy cherry hoi sin sauce

ebi raisukaree: stir-fried black tiger prawns in a coconut and lime curry sauce with ginger, galangal, chillies, coriander, green and red peppers, red and spring onions and mangetout. served on sticky white rice and garnished with sliced red chillies and a wedge of lime

What it cost: Under £15 with no charge for tap water.

Wagamamas
4 Great St Thomas Apostle
off Garlick Hill
London
EC4V 2BH
phone : +44 (0) 207 248 5766
www.wagamamas.com