2009-09-18 – Hanging out at Heathrow

We are now drinking humungous café lattes at a café at Level 2 of Terminal 5 at London Heathrow. This follows a very lovely dinner at Plane Food, Gordon Ramsay's airport restaurant here. Say all you want about Ramsay; his food is, for the most part, pretty fucking good.

When we ordered, we had a slightly difficult time due to the waitress not being particularly proficient in English. She was otherwise very nice, but seriously, when you're working in an international airport with all kinds of people coming in and out, you should at the very least be able to figure out other people's accents and the such. And if you really have that much trouble understanding Ms. Penguin's standard midwestern American accent, then you're really in trouble. I guess she was just ending her shift, because at the end, we were served by a cute (Ms. Penguin's opinion) and very friendly Indian waiter...

Anyway, both penguins had the lentil soup as a starter. It was a lovely puréed lentil soup, with al dente chick peas and carrots, garnished with fresh coriander. The spices were wonderful – cumin, curry, onion, maybe some garlic... it was simply delicious. A perfect soup for autumn weather. Grade: :-)+



Ms. Penguin had roast cod with polenta chips, peas, and homemade ketchup as her main course; it was a sort of posh fish and chips variety. The polenta chips were interesting; they were infused with black onion seeds and otherwise nicely spiced. The ketchup was absolutely spicy delightful, with the right amount of fresh coriander to boost all the flavors. The fish was perfectly prepared. Yum! Grade: :-)+



Mr. Penguin had poached hake with spinach, cauliflowers, and a curry sauce. Very delicious, but the fish was unfortunately a bit overcooked. Grade: :-). If the fish had been perfectly cooked, he would definitely had given it a :-) +



The wine of the evening was a DeWetshof Chardonnay 2008 – of course we chose South African!
Color: pale gold with hints of green
Nose: grass, starfruit
Palate: very refreshing for being a chardonnay, but it was a young chardonnay. Flavor of grapefruit, with some bitterness of grapefruit zest. Aftertaste of grass. It was a brilliant match to the lentil soup, and it would be excellent with spicy food in general.
Grade: :-)+

Otherwise, getting into Heathrow was annoying; too many people and too poor control. Mr. Penguin got the pleasure of getting felt up by one of the security guards (probably due to his good youthful blond looks, according to himself :-) And Ms. Penguin is suffering miserably with perfume allergies, at it seems every other person here is marinated in it...