Martini of the Week 11: The Orient Bar at the Pera Palace Hotel, Istanbul

Agent Triple P likes Istanbul and it is always a pleasure to return there, as we did last month.  After Canada we think it is the country that we have visited most often. True, Istanbul is hopelessly over-crowded (nearly 14 million people or nearly 20% of the population of Turkey) and can be horribly noisy but the location for this week's (yes, we know we never actually post one a week) Martini, the Pera Palace Hotel, perched overlooking the Golden Horn, is quieter than some places that Triple P has stayed in the city.

The Pera Palace was built in 1892 specifically for travelers on the Orient Express arriving from Paris.  It was the first European hotel in Turkey and the first building, other than Ottoman palaces, to have electric lighting.  It also had the first electric lift in the city which is stil operating today.  It was closed in 2006 for an extensive renovation and reopened about  a year ago. 

Ravioli

They have done an excellent job on it although, sadly, as is often the case these days, the site of the restaurant has been moved from its original grand room to something more contemporary and characterless downstairs.  Nevertheless the food at the new restaurant  is excellent even if the decor is a bit at odds with the more traditional look of the rest of the hotel.  Triple P had splendid ravioli followed by guinea fowl for lunch one day.

Triple P and his companion, B, were sat in the Orient Bar; a great favourite of Ernest Hemingway.  Other famous guests include Ian Fleming, Great Garbo, Jackie Kennedy, Alfred Hitchcock and Sarah Bernhardt.  Famously, of course, Agatha Christie stayed at the hotel and penned Murder on the Orient Express there.  You can even stay in her old room and the restaurant has been re-named Agatha's.

The Orient bar today (or, rather, last month)

The decor of the refurbished bar is a bit relentlessly purple for Triple P's taste but, fortunately, there are enough original elements remaining to still provide a vintage experience.  When we last visited the bar was more yellow and traditional although it was looking a little tired, but the updating has been done well we think. 

 Orient bar about six years ago

In its heyday

The service was truly excellent and the only negative was the slushy jazz/funk muzak.  We are not suggesting that they should have gone twenties retro (or even Richard Rodney Bennett) but something more appropriate to the surroundings would have been nice.

Orient Bar terrace

On the evening Triple P and B were there it had been 27 degrees centigrade and so most people chose to sit out on the new terrace.  This was very nice and, indeed we sat there another night but Triple P wanted to experience the bar proper.  The lighting was engagingly dim and curtains blocked out the bright evening sunlight very effectively, making it seem later than it actually was.

B who was in a particularly expansive mood had a glass of the local (from the Marmara region), and trendily labelled ,Arcadia Suavignon Blanc-Sauvignon Gris.  She drank this in two gulps, justifying herself with a trying day, so we ordered a bottle.  Not as assertive as a New World Sauvignon and, indeed, it showed quite a lot of grapefruit taste.  Not in an English white grapefruit sort of way but in a fruitier red grapefruit sort of way.  Fortunately the grassiness of the Sauvignon Blanc took away what could have been a sweetly cloying aftertaste.  Wine is expensive in Turkey, due to UK-style high taxes, but this was certainly better value than the imported wines.  A normal bottle of French Champagne, for example was over £200 a bottle. 

At this point B berated Triple P for writing wine notes rather than paying her the attention she undoubtedly deserved in her white silk with cerise flowers cocktail dress.  This was certainly a better outfit than the following morning's effort which consisted of some, admittedly fetching, olive green shorts with white trim and a Freddie Mercury teeshirt.  Oh well, it was only for going down to the spa, we suppose.  Still, the elegant public spaces of the hotel suggest something more formal should be worn at all times.

Anyway, Triple P's Martini was gratifyingly cold and made with Absolut vodka.  It only had two olives, rather then rather increasingly prevalent three or even four and B kindly removed the second one.

We finished the evening with a very restorative (Triple P had had to get up at 4.15am to catch his early morning flight from London) cup of truly delicious Turkish tea.  Happily it wasn't full of sugar, as it often is.   Because of his fatigue Triple P retired early (around nine pm) whilst B gave him a demonstration of how harem girls serviced their virtually immobile masters in a series of gyrations which, she claimed, were the origins of belly dancing.

Most diverting!

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Big Breakfast of the Week 11: Brasserie Roux at the Sofitel St James

The Sofitel St James is a convenient location for Triple P: close to the Canadian and South African High Commissions, the Institute of Directors, Quebec Government House, the Commonwealth Secretariat and other places where Agent Triple P can be regularly found.  So it is quite often that Triple P finds himself there for breakfast.  Now breakfast at a boutique five star hotel like this should be a pleasurable experience but, we have to say, that we have been regularly disappointed at the Sofitel.

The interior designed by Pierre Yves-Rochon

Breakfast is either a buffet or, as Triple P prefers, a la carte.  The problem is the indifferent service from grumpy Eastern European waiters.  Eastern European women have been a great boost to the restaurant trade in the UK: friendly, nice looking and efficient.  Their male equivalents. however, seem to resent the fact that they aren't making a packet as plumbers or carpenters.  The staff in the Brasserie Roux consistently let down what could otherwise be a good restaurant.

 

The red grapefruit juice which Triple P requested was nice and cold, although perhaps a little on the small side.  This didn't matter as they offered us a refill (although whether we would have had to pay for that wasn't clear).  The teas, served in one of those trendy iron teapots, was curious as, on opening the lid, Triple P found neither a tea bag nor leaves.   This meant that there was no way of adjusting the strength of the brew.  As for the breakfast itself at least this time they got TripleP's order correct.  In the past they have omitted items because, like increasing numbers of waiters and waitresses in London, they don't write orders down.

The breakfast itself was not as hot as it should have been although the sausage was truly excellent.  It did come with some very good wholewheat toast.  The all inclusive price was £23.50 which is on the high side for London but did include drinks and toast so that makes it rather better value than it first appears.  An automatic 12.5% service charge was included which given the service was offhand (perhaps they are just trying to be Parisian) was a bit much.

So it loses marks for the poor quality tea, the lukewarm eggs, the rather unattractive dining room and the service.

All in all a disappointing 5/10.

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Martini of the Week 10: Saigon, Saigon Bar, The Caravelle Hotel, Ho Chi Minh City

During our visit to Asia a couple of months ago we stopped off in Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon, as most of the locals still seem to call it. Triple P was staying at another historic hotel there, the Caravelle, but historic for a different reason. Built in 1959 this was the headquarters, during the Vietnam War of the press corps with ABC, NBC and CBS all having their Saigon bureaux there.

Caravelle Hotel in May 1975 shortly after the fall of Saigon

Caravelle Hotel 2011

It was from the Saigon, Saigon bar on the top floor of the Caravelle (then the tallest building in the city) that the press corps watched the North Vietnamese army roll into the city. The hotel is now owned by the Vietnamese Government but if you are imagining some sort of Soviet Intourist look forget it. It is a quite splendid five star hotel that employs some of the prettiest girls Triple P saw in Vietnam and that is saying something!

Caravelle hotel staff wearing the traditional ao dai

The Saigon, Saigon bar is a great place to have a quiet lunch and a Bia Saigon overlooking all the manic traffic below.  In the evening, however, it becomes one of the places to be in HCMC crowded with a mixture of locals, hotel guests and American Vietnam War veterans.

Served by waitresses in fetching off the shoulder red tops it is one of the most characterful bars we have ever visited and must be on any must-visit bars around the world list. It's certainly more attractive than the nearby Rex rooftop bar which has equally strong Vietnam War credentials. They also have a great Cuban band playing from 10.30 on most nights.

Triple P's companion did not join him in HCMC as he was only there one night.  He arrived quite late so took a substantial snack to accompany our Martini.  The Saigon, Saigon Vodka Martini was large and cold (although not quite as cold as Agent Triple P likes).  It was made with standard Smirnoff and had too many olives, however.  Still, one of the better efforts we had in Asia. 

All in all we rate it 6/10

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Big Breakfast of the Week 10: Le Beaulieu Restaurant, Metropole Hotel Hanoi

It looks like Agent Triple P is going to be off on his travels again later this month so it's probably time for a another foreign big breakfast review.

Le Beaulieu in the Metropole Hotel in Hanoi is a restaurant with a long heritage. The restaurant has been in its current location ever since the hotel opened in 1901. The hotel has recently been sensitively renovated keeping all of its colonial style whilst bringing the facilities up to a level that Triple P has rarely seen elsewhere.

Outside the restaurant is a pavement cafe: very French!

Normally we don't like hotel restaurants that have to serve breakfast lunch and dinner but Le Beaulieu doesn't have the canteen elements of many modern multi-purpose hotel restaurants and for breakfast the setting is exquisite with a cool and relaxing atmosphere. Less formal breakfast is available in the nearby L'Orangerie.

 

As usual, Agent Triple P likes to start breakfast with tea and grapefruit juice. This always throws waiters around the world who expect everyone to have coffee and orange juice, annoyingly! The grapefruit juice was, unusually, white but none the worse for that. The tea was nicely served but suffered from French style (UHT we suspect) milk.

Our companion's breakfast illustrates how she stays so slim and gorgeous!  The grapefruit segements were massive!  The usual selection of Asian, continental and cooked breakfasts were available.  The selection was quite good without being exceptional.  The sausages were slightly unusual in taste but were excellent.  The bacon was streaky but not cooked into carbonised sticks like most international hotels.  This is sort of the worst of both worlds.  Streaky bacon in the UK is largely used for covering a turkey to prevent it burning.  No self respecting English person would actually eat it!  Back bacon is proper bacon which is cooked so that it is still soft not crispy.   The baked beans didn't have that weird spicy taste you often get in Asia and the tomatoes, mushrooms and hash browns were just perfect.

 

Eggs were cooked fresh by a helpful young lady and were particularly good.  All in all one of the nicer hotel restaurants Agent Triple P has had breakfast in of late. A pretty good selection and excellent service let down by the strange milk and dubious bacon.

Still, gets a good 7/10

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Martini of the Week 8: Woobar, W Hotel Taipei

Triple P's companion had already drunk most of it before we took our picture!

The W in Taipei is one of those self-consciously "cool" hotels run by some of the major companies (in this case Starwood) in an effort to be seen as hip and trendy.  This means that things like the labels in the lift need some deciphering.  For example, during my short stay, we decided that "wet" written by a floor button meant the bar.  Indeed it was the right floor but it actually meant the pool.  You get the idea.  Horrendous.

When Triple P was there it had only be open a few weeks and, like most newly opened hotels some things weren't right.  The main problem Triple P had was trying to get anyone in the bar to understand what a Vodka Martini was.  The waitress didn't even understand the word "Martini" on its own.  She had to go and get a colleague to help.  Not really good enough for a five star hotel that is touting itself as the best in the city.

The view from the bar

 

The bar itself overlooked the pool and was rather too high ceilinged to be intimate.  It also blended in to a shop and a lobby so it was a bit like sitting in a corridor and the nasty plastic tables made it feel like a sixties company canteen.  Cosy it wasn't.

 

When Triple P's Martini came it was in a chilled (but not cold) glass with no less than four olives.  Given it was a rather small glass to start with putting in four olives definitely made a small drink appear much bigger than it actually was.  It was made with Stolichnaya but tasted rather weak to Triple P.  Not brilliant so we can only give it 5/10

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French Cooking...in Hanoi

One of our regular followers, the delightful CJ, recently remarked on one of our posts that she was not that familiar with French cooking. This, we have to say, took Agent Triple P somewhat by surprise, as French cuisine has been a part of his life for as long as he can remember.  His main influences being his father, his family holidays and the only French cookbook you really need; Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961) by Julia Child, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, which was actually designed to teach Americans about French cooking.

Rocamadour

Agent Triple P’s father was an enthusiastic amateur cook but several of his friends were professional chefs. This interest in cooking was passed on to Triple P at a very young age and he was soon recruited as sous chef at home. When he was small, all of the family holidays were taken in France. A friend of Triple P’s father owned a house in the south of France and we used to go there for three or four weeks every summer. There were no autoroutes down to that part of France (Languedoc-Roussillon) in those days so our journey down there was a leisurely three to four day tour of interesting local restaurants and hotels. It was during these overnight stays in places such as Poitiers, Figeac, Sarlat, Limoges, Rocamadour, Cahors and Castelnaudary that Triple P was first made aware of the regional nature of French food. It was also where we had our first grenouilles, cassoulet, escargot, cheval, ris de veau  and many of the other foods that made many of our school friends recoil in horror when we told them about them later.

Much of the glamour of French cuisine in the nineteen sixties was because of the appalling state of food at home in England. Since then food in Britain has undergone a revolution that has left us with one of the great restaurant and food cultures in the world. If you eat out in Paris you will largely be confined to French food and wine. If you eat out in London you will be faced with a bewildering selection of cuisines from around the world. When Triple P was small, however, his father had to source many ingredients from specialist shops in Soho in London; ingredients that are now easily available in every supermarket. Classic French cooking in Britain is now seen as rather a retro taste. Primarily it has suffered because of the perceived heaviness and unhealthy nature of much of the ingredients: alcohol, butter, cream etc.  French restaurants have become less popular over the years just as the almost total dominance of French wine in the nineteen sixties has been reduced by the presence of wine from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, America and, latterly, Chile and Argentina. Less and less people would take a bottle of French wine to a dinner party these days and very few would cook a traditional French recipe.

Answering CJ’s question would take a blog in itself and probably several years but we shall endeavour to discuss French dishes as we encounter them in the future.

The very French Metropole Hotel, Hanoi

 

It is, therefore, nice to be able to occasionally indulge in some classic French cuisine and where better than where Triple P is at present, in the capital of the old French colony of Indochina. Triple P is enjoying the colonial splendour of the Metropole Hotel in Hanoi. Built in 1901, the year before the French shifted the capital of Indochina from Saigon (where we will be travelling later in the week) to Hanoi. The Metropole is one of the great hotels of the world and, indeed, Triple P has not enjoyed a hotel so much for some time. No doubt the added presence of his particular friend S, from Vancouver (currently ensconced in the spa) has something to do with this.

Into the bath, you dirty girl!

S had arrived at the hotel at about 20.30 after a rather gruelling 26 hour voyage from Vancouver via Hong Kong. Surprisingly perky on arrival (the advantage of First Class travel) we immediately dunked her into our splendidly colonial bath for a good scrub (the hotel thoughtfully supply rose petals for the bath which were received with considerable delight).

As it was now 10.30pm we slipped down to Le Club bar and were then shown to the delightful L’Orangerie pavilion at the rear of the bar where rather more substantial food than bar snacks were available. It is something of a coincidence that the last French restaurant we ate in was also called L’Orangerie!

We had already decided to go for typical French items, if available, purely for the purpose of this post although other options, including oriental (Vietnamese food is superb), were available.

Triple P decided to start with that prototypical opener, soupe à l’oignon. Onion soup is an ancient dish going back at least to Greek and Roman times but the modern French recipe, made with caramelised onions, dates to the eighteenth century, if not earlier (the first bouillon appeared in the seventeenth century). Oddly, Escoffier, who essentially codified, in that particularly Gallic way, French food did not include it in his Guide Culinaire (1903); possibly, because he considered it far to much of a peasant’s dish. By 1913, however, the current version with bread and Gruyere was included in Edmond Richardin’s L'Arte du Bien Manger. Elizabeth David, who did much to bring proper French cooking to the rest of the world through her book French Country Cooking (1951) could not abide soupe à l’oignon with its "sodden bread, strings of cheese and half-cooked onion floating about". The biggest challenge is eating it decorously, as the pieces of onion, sodden bread and part melted cheese all conspire to escape the spoon at every opportunity. This was an excellent, piping hot example and the only criticism we had of it was its sheer size. Fortunately, S passed on a first course, other than a green salad, and was able to assist Triple P in disposing of it, although we got some odd looks from a couple on a neighbouring table at our actions in mutually licking off the inevitable spills from each other’s chins.  We can only plead the effects of long absence...

For our main course we both had the coq au vin.  Cooking meat slowly in wine in order to tenderise it is another ancient technique but, again, carried with it the stigma of poor peoples' cooking.  Cocks, unlike hens, were kept alive longer and so their meat tended to be tougher; hence the need for tenderising.  Nowadays, of course normal high quality chicken is used.  Unlike soupe à l’oignon, coq au vin is a comparatively recent dish first beinbg mentioned just before the First World War.  Coq au vin was the very first dish that Triple P cooked on his own and the mixture of chicken slow cooked in red wine, button mushrooms, shallots and lardons of bacon has been a favourite ever since.  The Hotel Metropole version, which was very popular with Noel Coward, who stayed at the hotel, dispenses with the mushrooms. 

 

We had cheese afterwards but S stole most of Triple P's.  It was eaten, as is the French way (S is half French), with a knife and fork, of course.

So, a most enjoyable meal in lovely surroundings.   We will have more on Triple P's adventures at the Metropole hotel shortly: including some Italian food, some history, a beauty queen, big breakfasts and the inevitable Martini!

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Big Breakfast of the Week 7: Oscar Restaurant at the Charlotte Street Hotel

The Charlotte Street Hotel is a good place for a breakfast meeting if you need to be the Tottenham Court Road end of Oxford Street.  It's also a good place for afternoon tea and the bar is always busy.  Agent Triple P used to go there regularly as his office used to be very nearby, so it was nice to be back there again the other week.

Although the building is old it didn't open as a hotel until 2000 and is a small boutique five star establishment with just 52 rooms.  It was designed by Kit Kemp and features work by contemporary British artists.

Oscars Restaurant

We have to say that although we like the atmosphere of the place the service in the restaurant and bar is rather average.  The cooked breakfast at £20.00 is supposed to consist of eggs, a Cumberland sausage, sweet cured bacon, plum tomoatoes, grilled field mushrooms, black pudding and bubble and squeak.  Included in the price are freshly squeezed juices, toast and preserves and tea or coffee, which is not a bad price for a West End hotel.

However, we found our breakfast tasty but on the small side.  One egg, one mushroom and no sign of the black pudding.  Our companion passed on black pudding and we suspect they got confused.  You are a five star hotel you shoudln't get these things wrong.  We asked for baked beans instead of bubble and squeak (a disgustuing mixture of fried cabbage and potoes, for our foreign readers) and were charged an eye watering £4.00 for two tablespoons of beans.  Worse than that, and we have to reiterate that it was tasty, was that the tea was lukewarm by the time it arrived which rather wrecked the fact that it was proper leaf tea.

So all in all good potential but let down by the service (as ever) so we can only give it 6/10.

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Big Breakfast of the Week 6: Roux at the Landau, The Langham Hotel, London

Ah, a proper breakfast in a proper venue!  Triple P was entertained at The Langham hotel a couple of weeks ago and had a quite splendid breakfast.  A particularly good sausage, bacon, eggs, tomato and mushroom with very good wholewheat toast, fresh red grapefruit juice and leaf tea.  The service was exceptionally good and the Landau restaurant, with its large windows facing on to Regent Street, is a nice airy venue.

Roux at the Landau restaurant

Triple P likes The Langham, one of his favourite hotels in London, handily located close to Oxford Circus.  He enjoys the splendid Artesian bar where they do one of the best Vodka Martinis in London and the Palm Court there was really the original venue for the  hotel afternoon tea.

The Langham Hotel after its opening

Opening in June 1865 with a gala lunch in the presence of the Prince of Wales, The Langham was really the first purpose built Grand Hotel in Europe. It cost £300,000 to build but the original backers went bust and it was sold for less than half that in 1870.  From then on, however, the hotel was a success and guests included Mark Twain, Napoleon III, Antonín Dvořák, Arturo Toscanini, Noel Coward, Emperor Haile Selassie and Wallis Simpson, to name but a few. 

The Langham in 1899

In 1889 Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde met the magazine publisher Joseph Stoddart at the Langham.  As a result they wrote the Sign of Four and The Picture of Dorian Gray, respectivley, for Stoddart's magazine Lippinscott's Monthly.  Indeed, Conan Doyle set part of The Sign of Four in the Langham.

Bomb damage at the Langham in World War 2

The hotel struggled during the depression and in World War 2 was used by the army but was damaged by bombs and had to close.  After the war the BBC, who had declined to buy the property in the thirties and built Broadcasting House across the street instead, started to rent it and bought it outright in 1965.  It housed the BBC record library and also contained recording studios (The Goon Show was recorded there). 

The proposed Norman Foster BBC Radio Centre on the site of The Langham

The BBC applied to get it demolished in 1980 and have it replaced by a Norman Foster building; The BBC Radio Centre.  This would have replced The Langham with a hideous glass faced construction. Fortunately, their application was turned down and in 1986 it was bought by the Ladbroke group who owned the Hilton name outside the US.  They spent £100 on refurbishing it, opening it as the Langham Hilton in 1991.  Agent Triple P visited it for lunch a week after opening and stayed there a couple of times with his particular friend SA.  They had a particularly good Vodka bar there and if you ordered a Vodka they didn't have they would offer you a free alternative. 

The Langham today

In 1998 it was sold again to a Hong Kong based group who called themselves The Langham Group and now have a number of properties across the world.  Another £80 million of renovation took place between 2004 and 2009 to bring it up to its now splendid state, which we have recently enjoyed with B on one of her London visits.

The Langham in Goldeneye

It has appeared in several films and the exterior stood in for the Hotel Europa in St Petersburg in the James Bond film Goldeneye (1995).

So, this was one of the highest quality breakfasts that Triple P has had lately, although lacking somewhat in the additional items that Triple P likes to see.  However, the service is so good and the ambience so welcoming that  it easily gets a 9/10.

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