Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

It was a big we had been waiting for, for 15 months.

Why? Because I bought tickets in March last year, for a July gig. Normal enough. But a few months later, Blink cancelled their tour saying they needed another year to finish their album. So here we were a year later, finally on our way to see them.

As a bonus, You Me At Six had been replaced by All-American Rejects, who’s lead singer may or may not have been heavily intoxicated while performing. Blink-182 themselves were excellent and only played five of the twenty odd songs they did from their new album. Stick with the classics, that’s what we’re all there for 😀 .

Plus, they seemed very happy to be here. “We come for your women. And your Nando’s,” commented Tom DeLonge.

It’s not often that I get kicked out of a restaurant.

But when you’re taking advantage of the early bird special and you then proceed to sit there for several hours, eventually they start moaning about having other bookings. You could blame me for turning up 7 minutes late, but I could tell from the waiter’s eyes that they were really saying “your mother is getting a little too lairy after that half a bottle of wine, sir.”

We were out celebrating my dad’s birthday and enjoyed a night of great conversation about how you won’t be around forever, so it’s important to spend your life’s savings before you die, while having picked the restaurant specifically because it represented a good compromise between great food and not having to pay Blackhouse prices.

I was very interested to try the pigeon available on the starters menu, but was somewhat worried I wouldn’t like it. Therefore, I did the only sensible thing to do – I made Elina get the pigeon and tried some of hers. Turns out, a pigeon is pretty delicious.

Of course, normally in these situations you would offer to pay, but having recently left my job, and having had our conversation earlier about making the most of your savings before your time is up, I thought it only fair to let me dad pick up the bill.

You can tell Sous le Nez is an authenticate French restaurant because they say everything in perfect English, but then add the word “monsieur” onto the end. So it’s a great to enjoy French food, particularly as if you actually go to France, you just get Greek food.

Last weekend, I joined my parents for dinner at Escobar, which bills itself as “Mexian restaurant and live music venue at the heart of Leeds.”

Despite only three or four of their twenty tables being occupied when I turned up, they seemed somewhat startled that I had turned up, but a quick double check against my booking seemed to pacify the situation. “We’re short staffed tonight” the waiter explained.

The menu was reasonable, it offered a good selection of fajita and fajita style products, though not much else. I decided to go for a burrito, which was enjoyable and more than I could eat (you should now have playing in your head the phrase “wow, this burrito is delicious, but it is filling.” 😉 ).

Not a bad place to eat, but I’m not in any hurry to go back.

With everything that you need to cook still packed away in boxes, myself and Elina headed up to AM Kitchen & Bar to grab some dinner. It’s one of the few restaurants in Leeds I hadn’t eaten at yet, so I was looking forward to trying it.

It’s tastefully decorated with what I presume is Indian style furniture (I haven’t been to India, so I can only guess), though the window displays were all of various different vodkas. Perhaps there is something I’m missing, but I’m not quite sure what the connection was there.

The food itself was great, probably slightly more authentic than Cafe Guru and equally as good. I really enjoyed my chicken dopiaza, though I was a little disappointed with Elina’s lamb pasanda. They also had excellent chocolate mints, so I might just order a bowl of those next time.

Last week, we headed over to San Carlos for Michael’s birthday. Overall conclusion – poor quality restaurant, good quality company.

The restaurant itself was very disappointing – I had the steak, which just wasn’t that nice, it was cooked OKish, but wasn’t even warm by the time it made it to the table. The sides didn’t arrive with the meals either – they were just placed randomly on the table and we had to re-arrange them.

After all that, we were still a side missing and they had Tom’s main order completely wrong. I tried to grab a waiter to ask about the extra side, but that took rather a long time as no one came to check if our food was OK and they seemed to be rather rushed around.

Finally, we decided to order profiteroles for dessert, and thinking there would be plenty for the £5.10 we were paying for them, we decided to split them. When they arrived however, we found only three on the plate.

Unfortunately, I can only conclude that this was one of the most disappointing restaurant experiences I have had in Leeds city centre.

That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the evening however – the turn out was good and it was great to catch up with some people I hadn’t seen for quite a well, as well as finally meet the parents who have apparently heard a lot about me – all good stuff they assure me… 😀 Big thanks to them for part funding the meal too!

Last weekend I headed over to Thai Edge for lunch with Si and Sarann. On Sundays they do a buffet, so you’re forced to have that – but being a buffet they have everything, so it’s not particularly restrictive.

It was good food and a nice selection. Though I think having spent so many years going to Spice Quarter and Red Hot World Buffet, I think my view of what the average buffet has to offer is in all other circumstances going to leave me disappointed.

They did have a chocolate foundation though there seemed to be an emphasis on taking fruit and dipping it in the chocolate – I just put my bowl under the foundation as that seemed like the only effective way to get a sufficient quantity to feed my habit. It was a bit disappointing though, as the chocolate itself tasted of the cooking variety.

All in all, it was OK, but I think I would prefer to go when they are serving their regular menu.

We recently moved the Chris Worfolk Foundation office to a different business centre in Leeds city centre. Given that we are in serviced offices, you would imagine that this would be a simple process. After all, all those adverts talk about getting a new office overnight so what could be simpler?

Of course, it actually isn’t that simple.

Firstly, when we tried to cancel our existing contract with Forsyth, we were told we couldn’t, as we had to give at least two months written notice and it was too close to the deadline to do this – that means that we had to sign a new agreement with them, otherwise we would go onto what was referred to as their rack rate, which had never been mentioned before, but was apparently very, very expensive.

Instead, they proposed that we simply re-sign a three month agreement, at an additional cost of £22 per month because rent is higher for short term contracts. Interesting, I say rent, but it isn’t actually rent as part of the agreement is that you’re not actually a tenant, you’re a “service user” so allow them to get round a lot of the laws set up to protect tenants.

They also insisted on a higher deposit, which meant we had to make an additional deposit payment of £69.60.

They also charge a “minimum flat fee” of £60 per workstation (we have two in the office) for redecorating the office into it’s original state, even though as part of the agreement, you have to return it to them in the originate state, or they charge you extra for this.

So, when you add up the maths, it comes out like this:

• Extra three months enforced office rent: £914.40
• Extra business service fees incurred for those months: £215.94
• Extra business rates incurred for those months: £57
• Standard repair bills for a pristine office: £120

That makes a total cost of £1,307.34. Of course, this wasn’t a huge surprise to us, as it’s all detailed in the agreement that we signed when we took on the office. What is more of a surprise is just how much it all adds up when you actually do the figures.

On top of that, when we got the office the door lock wasn’t working properly. I spoke to the centre manager and sent numerous emails over the course of the year to get it fixed and every time I was promised it would be, but it never was.

As a result of the problem, the door handle ended up breaking and still nothing was done about it. Yet once we had moved out, we were then given an extra bill for £120 to fix the door we had apparently broken (this is on top of the repair bills, which don’t actually repair anything).

That makes a total cost of £1,427.34. A bill the charity certainly did not need!

Last week, I went to see All Time Low. I was probably the only person there old enough to buy alcohol, who wasn’t there chaperoning their child. I was worried every time the security guy walked past that we was going to say “excuse me sir, you’re clearly not a fan of this band.” Unfortunately, I have to go see pop punk bands like All Time Low because all of the bands I used to like have stopped touring after all their other fans grew up and matured.

I didn’t get there until they were half way through their set, but that actually worked quite well as I just got to hear their good songs :D.

Recently, I headed over to the West Yorkshire Playhouse, where my sister currently works, to have dinner with my parents and one of my grandmothers.

They have a restaurant in there, though they don’t offer table service, it’s more of a cafe slash restaurant, and to be fair to them, that is what they sell it as. The food was, however, rather disappointing. It was well cooked but it wasn’t very warm, probably a result of the excessively long wait in line to be served.

I could have understood this slightly more if they were busy, but with accelerated dining experience being my area it was obvious what they were doing wrong and how with a few simple changes they could quickly clear such problems up.

While my experiences had been positive enough to make it worth joining Virgin Active’s gym in The Light (previously Esporta), subsequence experiences have been disappointing.

First off, it was busy on an evening. This is contradictory to what Jen from the membership department told me, who said the pool was quite on an evening. Of course, she is from membership and so is going to say this, but you expect a little bit of truth, even if it is heavily moderated.

Secondly, the changing rooms where just dirty. Discarded towels lying around, a few chocolate bar wrappers on the floor and the floor was in need of a good mop. Their second hot tub was also still out of order and has been since last year. They still have one, so it’s not critical I guess, but still it has been two weeks now. The hair dryers are also quite underpowered.

Add this to the fact that the water makes Elina feel sick I think I’m settled that The Marriot is the gym for me. I wouldn’t say I had a bad experience at Virgin Active, because it’s been fine and the staff have been friendly. But The Marriot is a definite winner for me.