It’s great when you switch from The Metropolitan Line to the Northbound Jubilee Line at Wembley Park and there’s a Stanmore train just arriving.
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If you live in London and you haven’t eaten out at Yautcha then you haven’t lived! If you haven’t been to a London-based Michelin Star restaurant before then this is the one that you should try first. And if you think it’s going to be extortionately expensive then think again! (You can eat for and drink here for under £20 per person, which makes it excellent for a holiday/birthday/anniversary-celebratory treat!) And if you like all-day Chinese-style dim-sum with a gourmet twist then Yauatcha is the place to go.
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Apologies in advance to any veggies or folks who don’t eat certain types of food; but quite apart from the delectable dim-sum assortments and green teas served by the “extremely fit” (so I’m told, whatever that means) male and female wait staff; the thing to make sure you have (if you can eat it) are the baked venison puffs and jasmine tea smoked ribs. These are an example of what makes dining in London one of the best things in the world! (Ask for a table in the middle on the bottom floor and don’t be put of by the arrogance of the 1 hour 45 minute sit-down time limit.)
If I’m taking the tube to Ealing Broadway I have to change from Picc Line to District at Ealing Common. It’s only one stop, but it’s tremendously frustrating when train after train after train Westbound is a Picc Line going back the way I came from instead of a District one. And when a District Line does eventually arrive it’s always going soooo slow.
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Anyway, some music to accompany the above pic. Click on the green button below to load the tune and then click play. It’s a really nice easy-listening song called “Aaja Sajna” (which means “Come On Darling” by a London-born Asian (South Asian) singer called “Ajay“, who has worked with people like Apache Indian, Gregory Isaacs, Jamiroquai and The Brand New Heavies to name but a few.
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Interestingly the lyrics to the song are a mix of Hindi and Punjabi, but the chorus line is really easy to sing along to. If you don’t speak Hindi or Punjabi but you’ve always wanted to sing an Indian song (go on, I know you’ve always wanted to) then why not sing out during the chorus lines? I have provided an “Englishified”-phonetic rendition to help make it easy to sing along to below:
Ah Jah Sajerna – Bull ow
Ah Jah Sajerna – Book caro
Ah Jah Sajerna – Meh ball or
Ah Jah Sajerna – Gee nay lugger da
We don’t do ads here, and gosh I wouldn’t think twice at refusing to get these pages drawn into being a tick in mega-corporation PR plan, but plain old-fashioned intrigue got the better of me and I thought it only fair to make a brief comment here in return for attending a free “bloggers” screening of a Fox Searchlight film called “Juno” (which was apparently scripted by a “blogger”) at the Fox office in Soho last night. What they call a “screening room” is in fact a little cinema in their office, how good is that? I couldn’t hang around for the after-party so took-off soon after the curtains went down, but wrote my review on my mobile phone on the tube home:
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It was an interesting film. Definitely a “different” story. About an edgy American home-town high-school girl called Juno who is pregnant. The story follows the trials and tribs of her life throughout her pregnancy and preparations for giving the baby to affluent young couple who agree to adopt the baby. Primarily a comedy, the film does quite well at pulling off a highly-stylised humour in a very North American fashion, but also deals effectively with the “serious” emotional bits too. (There are a few Kleenex moments in there). The music plays an important role throughout the film: it’s mostly progressive “folksy”, mostly acoustic-alternative stuff that works well with the screenplay. In fact the music is probably one of the few things about this production that attempts to “iconify” it, the others being the character Juno herself (acted by Ellen Page) and her parents who I thought delivered the most credible performance in a film riddled with in-credible scenarios. (Remember it’s a comedy – for subject matter that would otherwise not be in real life). And as comedies go, I would say that it’s at the better end of the scale. Although I did notice a lot of the audience laughing out loud to jokes when all I could do was muster a smile. But smile I did. Overall prognosis: good film, I would reccommend it. Definitely doesn’t try to be a blockbuster, and probably not “iconic” enough a movie to make you want to watch it over and over again, except for a few really hilarious moments. In short: I probably would recommending adding it to your DVD-by-post rental queue and I would definitely sit down to watch or record it if it was showing on FilmFour at some point in the future.
Other bloggers at the preview who have reported:
Hydragenic
Buzz Attitude
Annie Mole
Ham at London Daily Photo
