Eating out in Crystal Palace

The Triangle is in the centre of Crystal Palace. It consists of three roads and is populated with shops and restaurants. There is a wide variety of food nationalities here so there's plenty of choice. Today however we headed to an establishment which, I guess, can be described as providing English food. Westow House is a pub at the top of Anerley Hill. I've not visited it often in the past but today it was our venue for lunch.



I had the the Hereford beef burger. Very good quality. The chips were freshly made (from real potatoes!) rather than deep fried from frozen. The difference is noticable.

The food was not cheap but I am not used to London prices. And whilst the portions were a bit smaller than I would have liked, the quality was superb. Westow House is definitely on my recommended list.



Afterwards we headed off to the Sparrowhawk, still on the Triangle, and paid London prices for cider. It is a pub/wine bar/cocktail bar cross. It seemed to be popular with young mothers.

Eating at the margins of acceptability

At the O2 Arena in London yesterday for the Kylie concert and first we had to eat. Alas, not a happy experience. We had to go well into the building before finding a restaurant that did not have a long queue. We found the Water Margin and it was offering all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet for £14.50. In the end we could not eat all we could eat. The food was overcooked, tasteless and drowning in oil. Even at London prices, I think it was too pricey for what we got.

O2 Arena for a Kylie Concert

Okay, so I'm a Kylie Minogue fan and she was in concert yesterday at the O2 Arena, the former "Dome" that was so heavily slated as a gigantic white elephant during the Millennium celebrations. It's life as a concert hall seems a better use. Last night was not the first time I had been to the O2 for a concert and indeed, not the first time I have seen Kylie there.







I understand there were 18,000 people there to see the concert. And then she arrived:

Dunston Staiths and Cone Artwork

The Jetty Project is an Arts & Humanities Research Council funded project led by Newcastle and Manchester Universities. It has created a temporary large-scale architectural artwork, “The Cone”, on the wooden structure of Dunston Staiths in Gateshead, a landmark Scheduled Monument and Grade II structure on the south bank of the River Tyne. The Staiths are the biggest wooden structure in Europe and are undergoing restoration. I was able to visit the Staiths to look at the restoration work last week though at the moment they are not open to the public. I filmed the above video whilst on the visit. Photos will follow in a later post.

If you visited the Gateshead National Garden Festival in 1990, you may recall walking along the Staiths which formed a significant feature of the show. Restoration has had to take place because of vandalism. A significant section of the Staiths was lost to arson a few years ago.

The Staiths are part of the coal mining heritage of the North East of England. They were built in the 1890s to load coal from the North Durham coalfield onto colliers to export from the Tyne.

Whickham Flower Show

Whickham in Gateshead (North East England) is the next town down the road from our village of Sunniside where we live. On Saturday the Whickham Summer Flower Show was held in St Marys Centre. Alas, as one of the councillors for the area and as the Council was one of the sponsors of the event, I did not enter any of the competitions. Nevertheless, I did visit the show and took a stack of photos and video. The video is not yet edited but here are some of my photos. You can see more on this link.

The Rose and Crown at Slaley

When we went to the Slaley Show earlier this month, we decided to have a look around the village at lunchtime for somewhere to eat. We discovered the Rose and Crown pub on the main road. It seems that it is the only community owned pub in the North East. A new chef had just started and if what we had for lunch was anything to go by, he was off to a flying start. Good quality food and very welcoming service.

Pizza at the Marquis of Granby

We don't eat out much when we're not away from home (see my self-sufficiency blog to find out how we produce most of our own food) but when we got back from holiday earlier this month we decided to eat out rather than eat in. We had heard that the Marquis of Granby pub, on the A692 between Streetgate and Lobley Hill (and therefore within walking distance of home), was under new management and had revamped the kitchen and menu and installed a pizza oven. We paid it a visit last week.

We were very satisfied with the meal and the service. The chances are we'll make a return visit at some point.