Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

Never being one to conform, Josh decided to throw a house party, but not at his house where you would expect, but rather on Call Lane.

He was joined by Rebecca who was also throwing a house party of her own at the time but decided to leave that to come into town as well.

So we hit SoBe, which is apparently short for South Beach and despite the fact that you can see it from the window of my apartment, I’ve never actually been to. Or heard of. But apparently it has just renamed, and I had heard of its old name.

It was an OK place, your standard small trendy bar in the Call Lane area type place, drinks were what you would expect in the area and service was surprisingly snappy for a busy Saturday night bar – if only that could be said for so many of the other bars in the area.

Having filled up on steak we decided to wander over to Oracle on the south bank for some drinks. Unfortunately, Oracle was already closed by 11pm, which is a pretty poor effort.

So instead we headed up to Call Lane and ended up in Call Lane Social.

I saw ended up, of the ten people that came out for the meal, only four of us ended up in there – myself, Norm, Jonni and Tom. After the first round, Jonni and Tom disappeared too, meaning that of the ten people left at the end of the night were the only two people in the entire group that actually have 9 to 5 jobs! But the important thing is, we showed those kids how it’s done :D.

Call Lane Social was pretty disappointing, their drinks range was OK, but nothing to shout about and service took absolutely ages and it wasn’t even that busy.

On Norm’s (almost) actual birthday we headed down to River Plate for a good piece of steak.

Having already pre-decided, Norm went for the 1kg steak! It covered an entire dinner plate and to be honest, I think we all had our doubts as to whether it could physically be eaten by one man – never the less, Norm stepped up to the challenge and defeated it.

I decided a smaller steak would be a good call – especially as I was having half a rack of ribs to start with! Plus having only eaten what could be considered two meals in itself, I still had some room for dessert.

Overall, however, I was somewhat disappointed with River Plate. It was excellent, but it didn’t live up to my expectations given previous experiences. The judge’s verdicts are in, and Blackhouse is officially the best steak restaurant in Leeds.

Recently, Jason recommended I check out a series called Human Planet, which first aired earlier this year. The series looked at how humans have adapted to live in every environment on Earth, and it was incredibly interesting – so you’ll imagine how shocked I was when I found out it hard first aired on BBC One ;).

Some of the stuff just seems impossible – one guy can free dive without coming up for air for over five minutes. As the show suggested, I tried to hold my breath along with him, but even before he had got half way down I was gasping for air, let alone the time it takes for him to walk around down there and spear the fish.

Other highlights included hunters in Africa who would just walk up to lions and take their meat, then get out of there before the lions realised what was going on, and tribes in Brazil who build their houses at the very tops of trees in the rain forest. Long range photos of uncontacted tribes in the rainforest were also pretty breathtaking.

You could also tell when they were showing you mother nature at it’s biggest and best, as occasionally they would be describing an event, and then zoom out into orbit – and you could still see it!

Great series, well worth checking out. You can find out more information on the BBC website.

While mentioning I had just written up a negative review of Trio recently, Norm suggested that I was too negative and just hated everything. As such, I wanted to write a short piece recommending a few of my favourite restaurants in Leeds, to point out a few places that I would highly recommend eating.

Blackhouse, one of the best steak restaurants in Leeds, nice atmosphere if a little noisy, but that is mainly due to the live pianist they normally put on. The steaks are fantastic.

River Plate, another fantastic steak restaurant, this one Argintinan. A bit on the pricey side, but arguably the best steak you will get in Leeds.

Chaophraya, despite mixed reviews from some of my friends, I have to recommend Chaophraya as the best Thai restaurant in town. I’ve always enjoyed amazing food and good service there.

Sam’s Chop House, if you’re ever in the mood for a bit of traditional English, if such a thing actually existed, you can’t go wrong with this place.

Cattle Grid, another great steak restaurant, perhaps not quite Blackhouse or River Plate, but what it only slightly lacks in quality, it definitely makes up for in portion size. Try the ribs, they’re amazing.

Las Iguanas, two for one cocktails and fantastic Latin tapas make for an excellent combination, and according to our waiter at their South Bank branch, Leeds is the best one in the country – staff even get sent up here to train.

Also, honourable mentions to The Restaurant, which despite it’s steep prices and odd name, win lots of points for greeting me with “good evening, sir” as well as having great food, and Oranaise, which I wouldn’t describe as the best Moroccan restaurant in Leeds, but is certainly the friendliest.

Last week, we headed over to Trio for a bit of a work social. Despite making it clear that partners were invited, but not welcome, it somehow quickly turned into a bit of a couples-fest and as a possible first for Buzz, actually ended up with an equal gender balance.

The drinks were good. Their Rekorderlig was a bit of a rip-off, they had a “special offer” of bottles for £2.50, but it wasn’t the kind of bottle you would expect if you got a bottle of Kopparberg, it was a small beer style bottle.

Far more importantly, however, we were there for the two for one cocktails.

These started well, they had a menu but the first bartender we got was willing to mix up anything and I was soon sipping on an apricot martini. The second bartender we got was far more disappointing, however, despite working at a cocktail bar, he had never even heard of a sloppy joe, let alone being willing to mix one. Service was at least reasonably speedy, however.

The restaurant was far more of a disappointment. Despite charging almost £20 for a fillet steak, it couldn’t even compete with the likes of Brooklyn Bar or The Restaurant, let alone Blackhouse or Cattle Grid, all of which are cheaper, despite being in the city centre!

All in all, a good place to go for cocktails, but I can’t recommend eating there.

Recently, a new steak restaurant named Cattle Grid opened inside Waterloo House at the back of the Corn Exchange in Leeds. They have a number of restaurants in London, and I believe this is their first outside the capitol.

So, last week, myself, Norm, George and James headed down for a reunion of the steak based man date club, to try it out.

It’s good. Very good. I had the ribs. They were immense!

I haven’t had a steak yet as I couldn’t fit one in for dessert, but I’m looking forward to it as from the judgements of everyone else, they stack up well against the competition. The ribs were excellent though, almost as good as the ones I had in Edinburgh, which were the best ribs I ever had – so we’re talking very good!

Already looking forward to our next visit. Bring on the steak…

On Sunday, my sister was in town so we headed down to Fazenda for a family meal.

Fazenda is a Brazilian meat restaurant where you get a plate and help yourself to the salad bar, then they just come round with big slabs of meat and carve a slice off onto your plate. There are lots of different ones including beef, pork and chicken and you have a traffic light card with you turn to green when you want meat and red when you don’t.

Sounds good, but to be honest, I wasn’t overly impressed.

The food itself was good quality but as it’s all from large cuts you have to take it as you get it, whereas obviously when eating at a steak restaurant you can have it cooked to your liking. Also, the traffic light cards seem somewhat redundant as they just tend to ask you every time they come round.

Not that I didn’t enjoy it, it was excellent, but I wouldn’t say it was as good as say Blackhouse, and is similarly priced.

I’ve now had my iPad 2 for around two months. There are probably two words I would use to describe it – magical and revolution.

I would also agree that it sports an unbelievable price tag. It’s a lot of money, especially considering the other tablets which are coming out now. But these tablets are rubbish. It’s like comparing a £150 netbook to my £1,200 MacBook Pro and it’s the same situation – there are really two distinct classes of devices and because they have come out in reasonably similar time frames we find the iPad incredibly expensive. It is expensive, I will say that, but it’s such, such good value for money.

I really can’t think of a device which has changed the way I use technology in such a short period of time.

Comparable events I guess would be when I first began using computers, arguably you can never really top that. And when I first got my iPhone, that was a revolution as I was upgrading from my much loved, but a little featuring lacking k800i so for the first time had mobile internet access, allowing my to surf the web, use Google Maps, Twitter, Facebook and hundreds of other web services on the move.

But equally, the iPad 2 has simply changed the way I use technology. I don’t cart my laptop around any more, I don’t even bring it to work. It acts as a desktop mostly now, sitting on my desk hucked up to my wide screen monitor, and I use my iPad whenever I’m on the move.

I will switch from my laptop to my iPad to check Twitter because the experience is so much better. I no longer have to make a choice between browsing the web and reading emails or relaxing on the sofa, because it’s no longer a hassle to bring my internet device with me. I probably do more web browsing on my iPad than any other device now.

I don’t watch TV on anything other than my iPad now. Beyond the few times when I have it on in the background or we’re collectively watching a film, any time I’m watching TV by myself I will watch it on my iPad. Same for anything I stream off my media server.

It’s the first thing I look at in the morning when I’m checking what today’s weather forecast is and it’s the last thing I look at at night as I do a final check of my emails before getting some sleep. A job traditionally given over to my phone.

I buy most of my books on it via Kindle or iBooks, and do a lot of my reading on there as well. If I have a PDF to read, I’ll send it over to my iPad using Dropbox and read it on there, rather than reading it on my monitor, or printing it.

Finally, sometimes I just sit and gaze at its awesomeness. I mean, the thing is 8.8mm thick! That’s thinner than my iPhone 4, the world’s thinnest smartphone! It’s actually thinner than the tablets used in Star Trek – that means it’s thinner than the futurist Gene Roddenberry imagined tablets would be 300 years in the future. That’s really, really thin!

The point of that last paragraph is that it feels like a real advancement in technology, like the first time you browsed the internet or used a touchscreen.

The batter is a revolution too. It’s quoted as ten hours and you actually do get ten hours, and that is actual active using time – if you just leave it on standby, it will run for about a month.

The change here is that you no longer really need to think about it. Gone are the days when you would turn on a device and wonder if it had enough battery life to do what you wanted. With the iPad, you just turn it on and use it, and there is always enough battery life. You just charge it up, once or twice a week and it doesn’t matter if you leave the house with only 30% battery life because that is three hours of usage still!

In short, the iPad is amazing.

Recently, I felt the need to speak out in support of Sony Ericsson. It’s a big decision – Elina’s recent choice to purchase on of their devices mean she is now barred from ever returning to her home nation. However, given so many of our blog posts are moaning about technology has let us down, I thought I would offer a word of encouragement.

This is my Sony Ericsson k800i. It’s battered, every corner is chipped off, the infrared censor has come off the side completely and now there is a little creator where it used to be, the quick keys have been totally scrubbed of paint and you have to ram the joystick as hard as you can every now and then to get it working again.

But it still works, and this phone is now five years old.

I’m not sure I have anything other piece of technology that is equally as old and equally as used. It’s still my alarm every morning despite the fact I have since upgraded my phone three times and am now sporting my very, very much loved iPhone 4.

Phones, computers, laptops and many other gadgets have come and gone and it’s not like I buy cheap. My MacBook Pro is now starting to feel it’s age despite its £1,200 price tag and not yet having reached its second birthday.

As such, it really is a credit to Sony Ericsson that they can build a phone that can put up with the punishment I give it and still be in usable order after such a long period.