Worst travel experiences: Dining out in London

It's about time we owned up to some of the really bad travel experiences as well as waxing lyrical over the really good ones. Once you start travelling, it is amazing just how many of both extremes of experience come your way. The bad experiences stick in your memory, and are just as much a part of the retelling long after the holiday - often to be laughed off, even if it wasn't at all funny at the time.

One of the most prominent bad experiences in my mind relates to dining out at a certain Chinese restaurant along Brompton Road, Kensington (London) between the V&A and Harrods. I googled it prior to writing this post and was amazed to find it still operating (we visited in 2002). It got excellent reviews, and by any standards has an outstanding menu. 

We visited at lunchtime, and not for dinner, so the restaurant was quite empty apart from a table occupied by staff from the diplomatic missions nearby. 

Well, I believe that the food we ate that day was excellent. I can't remember, of course, because such a highlight of this dining experience was completely overshadowed by the service - and in particular the attitude - of the staff. I cannot begin to relate how appalling the service was. It appears that the source of this poor service was none other than the fact that brought with us one of those nasty, filthy objects known as "children".

We only had one child at this stage, and she is a well-seasoned diner in fine restaurants. The Bookworm has good table manners, is polite, eats practically anything put in front of her and I don't think she'd ever had a tantrum in a restaurant. She's not perfect by any stretch, but you could take her anywhere - even when she was a tiny baby. You still can.

Well, didn't we suffer because of her presence! The disdain was palpable. The staff couldn't get rid of us quickly enough. We were made to feel as if we were most unwelcome, and we'd better leave ASAP. I'm just sorry that I put up with the attitude and paid the bill. Next time - if there is a next time - I won't be doing either.

travel catering - plastic knife

Before our last trip, we bought a Zyliss plastic lettuce knife to possibly take with us. As commited one-baggers, we were only taking cabin luggage. We wondered whether one of these knives would be ok to take with us. We figured that it wouldn't show up really obviously on an xray scanner, but if our bags were manually searched then it would easily be noticed. It was cheap enough that if it was confiscated, we wouldn't be too upset. However, in the end we decided it was best to leave it at home. Didn't want our holiday spoiled just for wanting to take a plastic knife.

I still do wonder though, whether it would be acceptable. We did take plastic picnic cutlery with us. In that, there were of course, knives. What's the difference between a plastic picnic cutlery knife, and one of these? I don't know.

The points for it were that it was reasonably light, and definitely not metal. Despite being plastic, its serrated blade was really quite good at cutting. Before we decided not to take it, I actually prepared a whole meal using it once. (I think it was a mince meal though, and didn't need any raw meat cut in preparation!) The vegies were much more roughly cut than I would normally have, but it did work well enough for vacation cuisine!

I'm still not sure about it, but present it here in case the idea is of use to you.

The cheese incident...

OK, so I mentioned a cheese incident in the last post. Let's just state from the outset that I love cheese. I am especially partial to Brie - and triple cream if at all possible, though any sort will be just fine. Our trip to Tahiti was the first time I'd set foot on (notionally) French soil since going to New Caledonia as a teenager. We got it into our heads that it would be nice to track down some real French cheese. So we took ourselves off for a walk and about 20 minutes later came across a little shopping centre with a handful of shops which included a supermarket-and-variety store all in one called Carrefour.

It was a teensy bit run down - a kind of slow, nonchalant carelessness about it. What it did have, however, was a HUGE cheese section which stretched for metres and metres down the centre of the store. Mmmmm! Cheese heaven. I had so much choice! And it was ALL imported from France! It was impossible to know where to start. Yvette left me to it - she couldn't cope with the overload! - and went in search of fresh fruit. I read labels, tried to do quick exchange rates in my head (didn't work, but it made me feel better) and bought a wedge of the creamiest, sloppiest authentic Brie.

We took it back to the hotel and relished the fantastic flavour as we sloooowly nibbled our little cheesy treasure. We wrapped the remainder for the next day, and popped it into the bar fridge. When it came to the next afternoon, we sought out our cheese and found that housekeeping had removed it from the fridge and disposed of it. QUELLE HORREUR!!! I had a fit there and then! How could they do that! Barbarians!

I most certainly went, with my pleasantest smile and determination, to the concierge and lodged a complaint - which needed resolving immediately as we were preparing to leave for the airport. The concierge was most understanding, and said he'd see what he could do. I went back to our room frustrated and despondent at being robbed of my little pleasure.

A while later, there was a knock on the door. Before us stood one of the hotel staff, bearing an apology and a plate from the kitchen with a HUGE quantity of Brie and several bread rolls. Would that suffice? Certainly it would - and it did! Thank you. It turned out to be a much finer cheese than the one we'd lost, so we enjoyed Brie rolls at the airport at midnight.

There was so much Brie we couldn't possibly eat it all without actually becoming ill, so we wrapped it up and took it onto the flight with us. We did eat more on the way to Sydney, but were still left with a sizeable wedge as we approached those friendly souls at Customs and Quarantine. Australia has some of the strictest quarantine laws in the world, but we thought we'd give it a go.

We declared it (of course - stupid not to! Getting caught was NOT something we wanted to do over a wedge of cheese, no matter how good!). The woman who served us was most apologetic about having to confiscate the cheese - but completely understood that we might want to keep it. Who knows? They might have let us keep it (delusional, aren't we?)... We were OK with letting it go - it was obvious we had to - we'd had rather a lot already.

When we finally did get to Paris, we sourced a fromagerie and stocked up on more Brie. You might have to do what the Romans do in Rome, but in France you HAVE to eat their cheese! And they go ever so nicely with fresh baguettes...

Self-catering: How do we do it?

OK, so one of the best parts of the travel experience is surely the experience of food. In a previous post, we mentioned kids and restaurant behaviour. We love to take our kids to restaurants so they can experience dining out, as well as experience the local cuisine. But it can be expensive, and add to the general unsettledness that kids feel when away from home. We have found that self-catering in our hotel room is possible, though it calls for a LOT of creative thinking!

To prepare for the self-catering experience, here's what we take with us:

• 4 x plastic plates
• 4 x plastic bowls
• 4 x plastic cups
• 6 sets of disposable picnic cutlery
• 1 x flexible cutting mat (ours is actually a Tupperware freebie giveaway cutting mat)
• 1 x washing up brush
• concentrated washing up liquid (less than 100ml, to comply with LAG regulations)
• a universal sink plug
• 1 x quick dry face washer to use as a teatowel

Naturally, we have weighed everything - and we never buy expensive items. We had two bowls cracked through careless baggage handlers when we used to do checked luggage, so it all has to be cheap. We went with disposable picnic cutlery because we really didn't know if it would be confiscated at customs: it wasn't (and we went through baggage screening in Sydney, Hong Kong, Paris, Lisbon and London).

Here's some things we have done. Firstly, find a supermarket, general store, or similar near to your hotel. For example, in Seville, we found a small shopping centre about 5 minutes walk from our hotel. In Paris, we used small stores such as boulangeries, greengrocers and cafes. Even in Tahiti, where we stayed at a very plush hotel, we walked about 20 minutes to the local Carrefour supermarket (where the cheese counter was breathtakingly huge, and stocked full of French cheeses. Mmmm...!).

These sorts of stores are the self-catering key to success. Secondly, scope out your hotel room for possible equipment bonuses. Sometimes they have fridges. OK, so these aren't always very cold, but they open up the possibilities. A few have had microwaves - but they are a rarity. Many have tea and coffee facilities, including either a kettle or a coffee machine. The equipment provided will dictate the limits of your catering options. 

KETTLE

One of the key appliances will be a kettle. There's a lot you can do with boiling water. For someone like me, the main thing is a decent cup of tea. If the hotel lacks tea-making facilities, I buy my own tea at the supermarket. In Portugal, we purchased a cheap kettle at a supermarket for the whole journey, then 'donated' it to our last hotel room. There are all sorts of substances in packages that you can turn into meals (or partial meals) simply by adding boiling water. These include soups, noodles and rice dishes.

When in America, we had to make do with the ubiquitous filter coffee machines. We had to run boiling water through them quite a few times to reduce the coffee taste! And I did wonder whether you could actually cook on the hotplate that sits underneath the coffee pot - though that's probably a safety hazard!

We boil fresh water each night and pour it into our 1 litre collapsible water bottles to cool down in preparation for use the next day. Boiling the water is a safety precaution against picking up some bugs or diseases, though obviously in some destinations you would need to do more than that to get safe drinking water.

KNIVES

In addition to a kettle, when we finally arrive at our longest land-based section of the holiday, we buy some cutting knives. We got a packet of two perfectly adequate vegetable/fruit knives in a Lisbon supermarket for only 0.50 eurocents. We use these for cutting fruit, vegetables, cheese, bread rolls - anything at all, really. Buy some knives - they are incredibly useful. Obviously we can't take them on planes any more...

PLASTIC WRAP

We also usually buy the cheapest roll of plastic food wrap, so we can contain any partly used food - half tomatoes, cheese etc. An alternative to this is ziplock bags that can be washed out when used, ready for re-use.

FOOD

Food ideas we have used successfully:

• Barbeque chickens (either hot or cold)
• Fresh bread rolls / baguettes / sliced bread
• Salad vegetables, such as tomato, lettuce - things which may not need refrigeration for a day or two if we don't have a fridge
• Some just-add-water rice or noodles
• Fresh fruit
• UHT milk, which doesn't need refrigeration. We spent two weeks in New England and Quebec surviving on powdered milk. By the time we got to our last week in New York we were positively craving fresh milk. Our walk to the supermarket each afternoon for a litre or two was a delicious treat.
• fruit juice in resealable cartons or boxes
• cheese (it doesn't always need refrigeration. The fromagerie we visited in Paris had hundreds of cheeses, NONE of which were refrigerated)
• tinned beans (a cheap alternative source of protein, instead of meat) with ring-pull lid - or you will need to buy a tin opener
• breakfast cereal

Sometimes we have purchased items such as yoghurt, fresh milk or ice-cream late in the afternoon - on the way back to the hotel - with the intention of eating it that night for dinner. In Paris, we were fortunate to have a cafe across the street from our hotel, where we were able to buy fresh croissants each morning for breakfast. Be sure to take advantage of opportunities like that!

PACKAGING

Take note of the packaging that your food comes in. Sometimes it can be transformed into something very useful, such as a storage container. We bought some cherries which came in a plastic box with a flip-top lid: and the box became a perfect holiday food storage container after we washed it up.

Obviously, once in the hotel room it can be a bit tricky to prepare all this food. The little writing tables sometimes provided are not designed to be as spacious as your kitchen! If chairs are provided in the room, we usually insist that the kids sit at the table to eat. This helps to contain the mess. Having them eat from plates delicately poised on their laps, or sitting on one of the beds is, to us, just asking for trouble. And trouble is what we try to avoid.

Washing up is done in the bathroom sink. Some hotels provide huge benchtops in their bathrooms. Make the most of these. Some provide little more than the sink itself. Either way, if your kids are old enough, they might need to pitch in to help clean up because there probably won't be room to neatly stack the washing up. Taking a universal sink plug is a good idea. Once we had a hotel room with a plug that didn't seal the hole very well, and found washing up frustrating to say the least. We also use some of the boiling water from the kettle to ensure that the water is hot enough to remove greasy food residue and to prevent bacterial growth on the plates.

Self-catering: Why do we do it?

There are five basic reasons why we self-cater when travelling with kids. 

1. It is affordable. Restaurants are not usually cheap, and this is compounded when you have to rely on them for most meals. Breakfasts in hotels - even budget, chain hotels - can be quite expensive, though admittedly the convenience they offer is sometimes unbeatable.


2. It gives your kids a sense of the "familiar", and it can keep fussy eaters happy. If you ever hear “But I don’t like any of this stuff”, you'll know what we mean. In a new country where the food is different, you’re bound to get this with most kids. Give them something they know, and they’ll be much easier to keep happy. That said, we do like to make the effort to eat the local cuisine wherever possible.
   
   Recently we kept the kids happy by choosing an Italian/Portuguese restaurant in Portugal. The kids enjoyed a pizza, and we got to try the delicious local Portuguese food. We also figure that when the kids are older (or when we are older and travelling without them), that will be a better time to sample local delicacies.


3. It is great when the kids are tired. Dining out with tired, grumpy kids is not fun. In any way, or for anyone. Preparing your own food in you hotel room, at a time convenient to you, takes effort but is actually quite liberating. You can feed them and get them into bed quickly, and not share their little meltdown with the rest of the known world.


4. It makes dining out less of a chore and more of a treat. We have had many wonderful experiences dining out with our kids. They have (almost) always been made to feel welcome in restaurants. Indeed, some have gone out of their way to make them welcome - provided activities, waiters playing silly games with them, modifying menu items etc. But this is partly because they are not having to endure that environment every night. They can't always be "on show" or "on their best behaviour". But sometimes they can be. We do eat out when travelling - about every third night, or maybe a big lunch.
   
   Almost every restaurant we have dined in has welcomed our kids - and we have to thank self-catering for that, because it becomes a treat, not a chore. I would like to (but won't) name-and-shame a certain restaurant along Brompton Road, South Kensington (between the V&A Museum and Harrod's) for the appalling way we were treated simply because we had a child in tow (and only one extremely well-behaved child, too, not both of them). But in the main, self-catering gives dining out a better chance of being a pleasure.


5. Self-catering allows you to monitor your kids' diets a bit more. Before we took up self-catering, our eldest once lived off hot chips for three weeks. We shouldn't have let her. Self-catering means we don't give them that option every meal.
   

I don't know whether hotels really approve of self-catering, but I don't really care either. We make sure never to leave a mess, though there's usually a tell-tale food smell. We could just have easily brought a pizza back to our room, so how are they to know the difference - apart from the stuff that's in the bin... 

We do it to make life a bit easier all round: easier on the kids, on our sanity, and on our pockets.