Tom H.

Review of Icco Pizza

30 Oct 07, 16:17

Cheap Fun

This place was a legend in my first year of Uni. With self catered halls just up the road and pizzas in the £3.50 region, it was a total bargin.

Four years later, I'm happy to find the cheap buzz continues. Your only real worry is getting a seat.

For cheap eats this place comes highly recommended.

1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.

Review of Hamburger Union

29 Oct 07, 00:38

Silly Bread

This place has silly bread. It tastes fine, but is in a silly shape. It's clearly not just something that I have found, as it's explained on the menu as a handmade Portuguese bread, It tastes nice, but it looks silly, with little ears.

The bread isn't the only problem in the union, all the plates bowls and glasses are plastic. This made me feel like a child, and generally feels a bit cheap. It's cold in there too.

Having said this, the burger was good. It had an authentic American taste, probably derived from the phoney cheese on the burger. I really feel that noting replaces American cheese on a burger, it melts so satisfyingly and has the mild flavour which compliments a burger so well. The chips were fine.

All in all, it was ok, I wouldn't not go there again, but I won't be running to beat down the door.

1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.

Review of Smith and Sons

17 Oct 07, 23:31

Small, but well formed

If you find yourself surrounded by thronging crowds in Leicester Sq and need some traditional gentlemanly diversions, i reccomend a trip up Charring Cross Road to Smith and Sons.

Here you can find a plethora of pipes, tobaccos, snuffs and a small, but adequatly stocked humidor, and some wonderfully esoteric packaged tobaccos.

1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.

Review of Shervingtons

17 Oct 07, 23:07

A tabacco lover's dream.

Now I know that smoking isn't healthy, and is Not A Good Thing, but this is a great shop.

It really will supply all of your tobacco dreams, from the well stocked humidor to a pack of 20 Camel Lights. The gemtlemen who work here ignored me initially, but nowadays seem much happier, perhaps they were just having a bad day the first time.

Now i go in there all the time for interessting rolling tobacco for ciggies, i like the vanilla one the best, and also for pipe tobacco of wihich they have an excellent selection.

Also there are a number of non-smoking related impliments, such as badger hair brushes and proper shaving kits. Lovely.

1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.

Review of The Ultimate Burger

17 Oct 07, 16:33

A pretty big boast, for quite a large burger.

The 'Ultimate Burger', really, can it be, can it be the ultimate?

Ultimate burger is another in the growing list of burger venues springing up across the capital. Where it mostly differs, from the outside, is in the boastful name 'Ultimate'. Fine burgers, are indeed fine, and at a streach gourmet burgers may just be gourmet, but are ultimate's really ultimate.

I went for a mushroom and blue cheese topping for my burger, and it was quite good. The meat was meaty and beefy with a slight char on the outside and came cooked through as standard. The mushrooms too were quite nice. The salady bits were salsdy bits, all very as expected so far. Unfortunatly the overfidding flavour was that of a sweet tomato chutnety which in future i would scrape off. I ordered all this with a side of coleslaw and a diet coke from a glass bottle.

The whole thing was quite good, and I'll probably good again, it is just around the corner, but i couldn't help feeling it wasn't the ultimate.

Oh and the bench seat I was on was to squishy,and it was too low, made me feel like a child just peaking over the adults table.

0 out of 0 people found this review helpful.

Review of Monmouth Coffee House

17 Oct 07, 16:24

A whole new world, of coffe

Now I know that coffee comes from two different types of beans and that there were more types than just instant or 'proper' coffee as we call it in my house. And that Nescafe carefully selected and blended their beans in an effort, at least it seemed to me to produce brown muck, but basically I knew nothing about coffee.

In to the picture swims Monmouth coffee. The first one I visited was in fact in the west end, near to seven dials, but this branch on a corner in foodie mecca, Brough Market is just as lovely.

I always used to think that the high pressure continential way was the best, but Monmouth use a simple combination of fresh grinding and drip filtering to produce quite some of the nicest coffee I have ever tasted. There's a long and complex menu setting out the coffee's by region, and giving an explanation of the flovour, much like a wine list. All very interessting, but ignore that and go straight for the coffee of the day. Some days it'll suit your tastes better than others, but it'll always be a new experience. I love Monmouth coffee, the sweetness and richness of some of the African coffee's is quite the revalation, just don't go messing it up with milk and sugar now, you heathens!

1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.

Review of 54 Restaurant

17 Oct 07, 13:59

For the love of pork.

Pork belly has to be one of my altime favourite dishes, and generally speaking i can find something to love in even the most unsympathetically cook swine's belly, but this one really was something else.

Underneat a perfect layer of crackling lay soft and yealding meat, with all of the fat gently cooked out to leave some the moistest (is that even a word) and giving pieces of piggy flesh it has ever been my joy to sample. I'd go back again just for this dish. Loveley apples, nice gravy beautiful stiff by smooth mash and some nice and fresh cale rounded off a superb dish.

I had other food as well, a lovely rabbit terine with some yummy puy lentils cooked in garlic, and the bread was fried giving an excellent crunch for the soft terrine to sit on.

Dessert of cooked figs and cream and banana ice cream was so good one of my companions tucked in as heartily as I did. Other dishes around the table looked equally as lovely, but for me, the star of the meal was the pork, really, really, i can't say really enough really, great.

Oh, and mustn't forget the service, our lovely Canadian waitress was a delight!

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Review of Myeyes

16 Oct 07, 02:05

Excellent

I've always had the most professional service from this excellent little independant opticians.

Any problems I've had with my glasses have been fixed swiftly and the selection of frames is contempory and stylish. Highly recommended.

1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.

Review of Barclays Bank PLC

16 Oct 07, 02:03

Ah, that cashpoint

The cashpoint at this Barclays was the first i remember using with a full colour screen, and so will always ocupy a special place in my heart. Since that day I've used it a number of times, and each one with success. I noted on my last visit that the cashpoint is much improved with the addition of mobile phone top up.

0 out of 0 people found this review helpful.