The Wolseley: Oh no they didn't!
- By Robyn Lee
- Dec 15, 2006
- Comments
- I see this every day, foo'
I forgot that I had a blog for a while. Sorry. :[
If it makes you feel any better (but I'm not sure how it would), I've spent at least 10 hours of my life in the past two days writing the shittest essay I've ever written in college for my history class. It's about Indian and Chinese Buddhism and isn't very long, but I think the crap factor was due to writing an essay about a topic that I was neither very interested in nor knowledgable about for the first time in the past four years. What usually happens is that I write about something I'm interested in but don't know much about (hence why I want to write about), or I'm forced to write about something I don't like but at the very least have learned about in class, thus giving me at least a pinch of confidence that I can write something coherent.
Whatever I wrote today (which isn't even finished; it's conclusion-less) is a mass of jumbled crap that makes very little sense full of information that I culled only from websites, some of which seemed to contradict each other. SWEET! On top of all that, I took the class pass/fail, meaning that all I have to do is...pass. Which seems easy enough. Perhaps.
The class just wasn't worth my time. [sigh]
It's wrong how I waste my time in college. I could write endless kilobytes about how unfit I am to be a member of the human race for not being grateful enough for anything or working hard enough or blah blah blah, but that's not the purpose of this blog.
For some good news, I'm out of NYU housing's grasp and shall live in a real apartment in a room I don't have to share with someone else and my housemate is not insane and oh my god I'm rambling because it's like a dream come true, or at least not a nightmare! I will give more exciting details later, perhaps when I move in. Sorry about the previously posted overreaction. If anyone's wondering, you can cancel your NYU housing before the appointed "CANCEL BEFORE THIS DATE OR DIE" date by emailing them. Poof, that's it.
- The Wolseley
Back to food. I never wrote about my breakfast sunday morning in London with Su-Lin at The Wolesley. As we walked into the restaurant we gasped at the sheer huge-ness and beauty of it. ...For it is huge and beautiful. And quiet. The color scheme was something like marble, black, gold, and silver. In the center of the restaurant sat a round table neatly piled high with French viennoiseries (correct me if this isn't the right term for breakfasty types of pastries).
- congratulations, it's a baby...cup!
Of course, Su-Lin and I broke out our cameras as soon as food hit the table (this is her marrochino, espresso with chocolate and steamed milk). And then...
"I'm sorry, but we don't allow photography."
Our faces fell in unison. Or something inside each of us died. We put our cameras away and then went into our discussion of "OH GOD WHY WON'T THEY LET US TAKE PHOTOS, and in such a beautiful place, ohh the frustration!" You know you're too obsessed with taking photos of food when not being allowed to do so riles you up. We're just dedicated, okay?
So no photos, despite the ridiculously photogenic-ness of everything we ate. The perfectly balanced poached eggs on my smoked haddock fishcakes looked like white, bloated teardrops. I half expected them to explode when I poked them with my fork. Luckily, there was no explosion, just a runny stream of nutritious yellow chicken embryo foodstuffs. The haddock fishcakes reminded me of crab cakes, except made of smoked haddock. And I know that's a totally pointless explanation, but I'm just trying to differentiate between the Asian or Norwegian style of fish cakes (they're kind of similar and I could probably thow in other similar fish cakes if I could think of any) and the chunky patty crab cake type. Got my drift? Alrighty.
Never in my life had I ordered such a rich dish for breakfast that combined two things that I wouldn't ever think to eat, not because I don't like them but because breakfast "Robyn foods" tend to fall in the waffle and pancake categories. But they were delicious and I'd want to eat them again despite the after-effects of feeling like your digestive system has died.
Su-Lin's Omelet Arnold Bennett was possible more digestive system-deathy than mine. It was seriously half hollandaise sauce, half egg. Combined. With porky bits. For optimum tastiness. And death. It was victoriously delicious and coated my mouth with creamy fatness, but one bite was enough for me.
I also ordered a basket of buttered, toasted crumpets (a basket being two), which came with most awesome selection of spreads I had ever seen before. Lemon curd, hazelnut chocolate spread, orange marmalade and strawberry (or some other berry) jelly came in tiny cylindrical porcelain tube-esque things, each with a dainty silver spoon to spread onto the crumpets with. So adorable.
OH IF ONLY YOU COULD SEE A PHOTO.
Oh well. The serving dish for Su-Lin's toast was also very cute, kind of like a bunch of napkin holders stuck together, but for..toast. And that was actually a really bad description, but I think you know what I mean. It kinda looked like a nicer version of this.
On top of my belly busting meal, I ordered a vanilla milkshake. Yes, lipid overdose is the Robyn way. Although it had the best vanilla flavor I had ever tasted in a milkshake, the black vanilla bean-specked drink was disasteriously thin...in my humble opinion. Tasty, but not worth the moolah.
Near the end of our meal we saw a waiter walk up to the second floor (almost like a balcony as anyone sitting on the second level has a view of the whole room) with a wooden chessboard towards a well dressed family of four. He placed the chessboard in between the two young children. Yound as in possibly elementary school children. This restaurant encourages games of chess during breakfast? What kind of alternate dimension of adolescent cultured minds is this? My mind was sadly not made to play chess, but to form phrases like, "Mm, tasty cookie." Good god.
- Su-Lin + moi
We got a happy group shot outside of the photography-unfriendly restaurant. TAKE THAT, WOLSELEY! (Not that they care, but...whatever.)
Su-Lin was a ridiculously cool, friendly, food loving, easily-excitable-by-waffles-and-pastries person to meet. And she eats as much as I do! I hate it when I eat more than other people and subsequently feel like a huge pig. I'd rather feel like a pig with someone else. ;)
If you want more foodiness, I did a random post for Parisist on Tuesday, aka a day later than I'm supposed to. Argh to being non-punctual!
I have to wake up at the crack of dawn tomorrow to go to Belgium for a day trip, so I'll write something more substantial later (in between studying for my finals).
address
The Wolseley
160 Piccadilly, London, W1J 9EB
Metro: Green Park
Comments
The Wolsley is one of my favourite restaurants in London - hard to believe the building was originally a car dealership!
maybe you can take a drawing class, then you can sketch out a non-photographed meal. go to the wolseley with a gigantor sketchpad, a set of pencils or coals, and an easel, see if they say "i'm sorry, we don't allow any photo-realistic renderings."
Disappointed by lack of photos. :-( Boo Wolseley!
Robyn,
I had a similar experience with the camera phobic people at a grocery store called Wegmans. I whipped out my camera phone to take a picture of the beautiful cheese display am boy did i get jumped on by the staff like i had a gun! What the heck......i didn't realize i was in a museum...there should be a sign or something, or a man at the door "no cameras or photography please. Its a grocery store for gosh sakes. If i want to steal their ideas , i'd bring a notebook and a pencil. sheesh.
Paulie: Whoa, car dealership? Must've been...a really nice one? Ehe. I'm glad it's converted to a place for fooding now.
santos: Yes, that is a GREAT idea. "AM I DISTRACTING YOU NOW, HUHHUHUHSDHU?!" Maybe they would throw me out. But whatever. They can't stop my gigantor sketchpad!
Marvo: Yes, BOO BOO BOO on them! I'm sick of his injustice! My camera has rights!...wait, maybe not. But yeah, it is sad. You can't see the awesomness of my bloated egg thingies.
Kaitlin: That happened to me too, although I wasn't jumped on per se. I was trying to take a photo of their patisserie display. So pretty! OH WELL, NUN FOR YOUZ. I've found grocery stores to be more restrictive than restaurants.
Aw man, you know what you should have done? You should have said, "you know who I am? I am THE GIRL WHO ATE EVERYTHING." And then you should have showed them just how fabulous and famous your blog is. That would have shown them. Ha. lol, nonetheless it sounded like a grand breakfast - your enthusiasm more than made up for the lack of pics. I can just imagine crumpets with all those curds, jellies and spreads in my head! :) oooh, starchy sweet stuff...
awww, no pictures! thats lame, I don't really get it either, it's like free advertising, no?
su-lin has awesome eyebrows! i notice these things because...i have no eyebrows. LOL.
Kathy: I was tempted to eat all the spreads after I was done eating stuff to actually spread it on. OH, THE CUUUURD!
Susannah: I guess they're popular enough. THEY DUN NEED MY HELP.
Adelyn: Pssh, you totally have eyebrows. I NOTICE THESE THINGS. I can't tell what makes eyebrows awesome though. When I was in high school one of my friends said I should pluck mine. I looked at her funnily.
dang, I highly dislike it when they tell me not to take pictures too. so hey when are you coming back?
Oh man... why didn't you mention you had to do a paper on those subjects?!?!?! I got an A paper I did on that from way back... somwhere.
Where is a James Bond camera pen when you need one?
Gordon: Coming back on the 23rd!
Nick: Nah, I need to my own brain power for these things...even if I don't have much left. I'm taking the class pass/fail anyway.
Alison: Someone should market that to (undercover) foodies.
No photos!? Outrageous!
Hey Darlin, been a while since I stated my jealousy of you. Hope that you are planning to have a food-abulous (shut up, the word sounded good in my head) Christmas.
>^.^
Snooty snooty snooty. That's what I say. I tried taking a picture at the Printemps in Paris. Operative word: tried. I don't get it. We have to get a camera worthy of 007, I suppose.
The Home Cook: We should boycott them!...except the food is pretty tasty.
Garett: Yes, where have YOU been? Glad you're alive. :)
Food-abulous is fine with me! I don't know whether I will have a food-abulous Christmas yet or not though. Shall find out soon.
Sonya: Did they confiscate your camera or leap on front of you or tackle you or WHAT OMG! I never actually went to Printemps. :\ Euh. And I know I'm missing the window displays, but if it were that important to me I probably would've seen em by now. Argh, whatever.
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