Posts Tagged ‘food’

Ah the days of being a student. 2 for 1 meals at the pub for lunch every day.

The Deer Park running such an offer during January we decided to head down yesterday to grab some dinner as you can’t beat Deer Park food for as cheap as it used to be at the student pubs. Good times.

Continuing our tour of a different restaurant each week which is still going strong now well into it’s second week 😉 , we headed over to Frankie & Benny’s for this week’s exciting Sunday night meal.

Unable to find anything new and interesting on the menu to try I decided to settle in for a nice mixed grill featuring a mere 23oz of meat. Rich also joined me with the choice though it turns out that 23oz isn’t actually that much meat and we both managed to work our way through it.

It was quite a nice restaurant, the staff were very friendly and the waitress even volunteered to take a group photo of us which I thought was more than tip worthy but apparently, I wasn’t allowed to leave one :o. Still, as was pointed out, we don’t get tipped at work so it’s personal preference I guess.

All in all, it was a good night even if I did eat a little too much lol. Roll on Mexican next week…

With the all-new Crusader pub quiz being a massive disappointment we headed over to Nando’s at Kirkstall for a dinner. This week’s event featured a guest appearance by Liz who I (and indeed everyone else) haven’t seen for ages and so a catch-up was long overdue.

I tried the pitta which wasn’t too bad, though unfortunately didn’t come with any chicken brain. Afterwards we headed to the pub next door which insisted on pumping out dance music but was at least bearable for a drink.

I was rather suprised when I got an email on Monday from Gijsbert inviting me to his wedding – on Friday! Apparently he and his girlfriend Weili, who have been living together for a while now anyway had decided to marry and wanted to do it soon so decided to keep it fairly small.

The ceremony took place at the Town Hall which is quite a nice venue even if they do struggle to find an ambient temperature between rooms but all the staff were helpful and professional so it made for a nice ceremony.

Afterwards we headed back to Gijsbert’s appartment for a quick stop before heading out to dinner at Oriental City, an excellent though hidden away Chinese restaurant in town. I managed to eat my way through quite a large array of dishes, they just seemed to have a line of people bringing more food to the table, not that any of us were complaining, the duck and the still intact sea bass being particular highlights.

Yesterday was the usual Tuesday night A-Soc social once again at The Library as the union is closed until next week. They finally had food back on this week so I took the chance to order one of Scream’s rather tasty mixed grills to which they didn’t have any steak for :o. I mean, what is a mixed grill without the steak? They ended up doing me double chicken and double gammon though so I’m not complaining.

Attendance was good, Nicola is back in civilization if only for a few days and The Gijs put in a guest appearance too. As ever, a successful night in the end.

We dropped by Tesco on Boxing Day to pick up some bread. It was rather busy because while apparently the whole of Leeds was at Tesco on Christmas Eve, they can’t go a whole day with the supermarket closed and so need to get straight back in there the day after.

Turns out though that there isn’t much point visiting Tesco on Boxing Day because they don’t really stock food anymore…

As you probably noticed, yesterday was Christmas Day.

I quite enjoyed it to be honest. For the first time in, well, possibly ever, I didn’t have to get up that early. When I did I headed round to my parents for Christmas dinner which was excellent as always. I spent a few hours with the family which is perfect in terms of a managable amount of time and then headed off back home in the evening for Christmas dinner at my house.

Norm wasn’t working after all so had very kindly agreed to cook the dinner which made things even easier as I pretty much just rolled up, did a bit of tidying and that’s about it. In the end there were six of us which is a good number in terms of being able to cater easily enough while still having a good group there. So all in all, a good day.

Massively disappointing is all I can really say about Casa Mia.

When we initially approached them to host our Winter Solstice meal they were very enthusiastic and said they loved to get student groups down there. However things turned sour a few days before the event when they started getting arsey with us and started demanding Norm’s credit cards so they could bill if we didn’t turn up with the exact number of people.

When we got down there they were alright though not overly friendly and they can’t add up apparently. They gave us 15 menus for the 16 of us, a mistake which they refused to correct, which is odd that they would get it wrong given they were so insistent we bring that number of people.

The food was alright, I rather enjoyed by rib eye steak but the portions were small and all I got was a steak with chips, nothing else which is cheap given you get a bit of salad with your £5 pub steak. I will admit the ribs were nice though.

Finally as we settled up the bill they tried overcharging us which we quickly shot down. All in all, I don’t think we’ll be ever going back there.

Afterwards we headed on to Courtyard (though the freshers went home because they just can’t keep up :p ) for a few drinks which was really good. It’s not the cheapest place but not out of line for the city centre and they have a quiet atmosphere and very comfortable seating so I stand by it as an excellent choice.

Friday saw the long awaited session of One Life on “Human needs” presented by Dr. Gijsbert Stoet.

While we were missing quite a few regulars we never the less had a large turn-out as expected. The food went down a storm as the photo gallery shows with many people going back for second and even third helpings!

Gijsbert’s talk was good and importantly included Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which everyone loves (because it’s awesome, obviously). All in all, a very successful week for One Life.

So, apparently Nando’s do chicken brain now. It worked out quite well with me having my new camera as we could get good photos.

Our resident neuroscientist Rosie says she can’t say for sure if it was indeed a brain but it sure looks like one and having spent hours researching it she assures me it definitely isn’t a liver or kidney and Oli points out that the reason it doesn’t quite look like you would expect is that it would shrink during the cooking process.

Nando’s remained defiant it wasn’t a brain although the manager admitted it was in the end (after saying, well if you wish to believe it’s a brain to which I of course replied “yes, yes I do”) so who can say. The important thing is Kate got a voucher because that’s really what you want after finding a brain in your chicken 😀 .