Dining Street Restaurant and Bar

Thankfully one does not have to look far for a breakfast and a beer in Heathrow Airport Terminal 4. The dining street restaurant is essentially a limited menu diner-style restaurant with accompanying bar. The place is decorated with London’s stret signs and is relatively popular at most reasonable meal times. The staff are adiquately friendly and competant and as is to be expected the bar itself doesn’t have a very wide selection of drinks and given the nature of airport bars, is the common sighting for half pint drinkers, holidays couples after an early beer and the odd alcoholic. In the restaurant the menus are worn down and tarnished, the food is slap up and of a low quality but the prices are cranked up, almost painfully and unfairly since there is very limited other choice for a breakfast.

Overall rather a balaced feel to the Dining Street Restaurant and Bar, one can hardly give a high mark to any airport based bar given the limited amountof time one spends in them, however one could do worse that this place - 5/10

The Black Bull

The local watering hole in this quiet village appears to fondly be the Black Bull for a handful of residents and in a couple of visits over the course of one weekend I notice a stark contrast in the hospitality on offer. At Friday afternoon we sit in the clttered beer garden with reasonabley priced pints of lager. The bar lady remembers our orders from the previous round and we st on the pews inside the small but comfortable pub as she pours them before returning out to the bigger crowd. A day later and it is Saturday evening and the eight strong group of us enter the pub just shy of eleven for a night cap. The landlord in this instance does not take kindly to our presence so late in the evening and dispite our friendly engagements, retorts that we should down our drinks and get out. The landlord seemed to be taking the power trip of running one of the only pubs in the village a little too far and dispite finding the restof the pub very agreeable, I am supported by the spectacle I witnessed that very evening when I report the utter rudeness of the proprieter.

Overall the Black bull, like the other pubs in Buntingford did not exactly have open arms for a late night group of drinkers, dispite the fact that we were uncallous and respectable, a real shame to let down a pub which clearly has a long standing and respected character itself - 6/10

The Jolly Sailor

Even the quietest village needs to have a venue that can pull in the heavy drinkers and party goers on a Saturday night and the Jolly sailor is just one such venue. Looking like an innocent country pub from a distance, the lower ceiling bar area turns busy pretty early on with young drinkers and and dance floor glazed in seedy disco lighting to popular tunes in the vicinty of the Garage genre. The bar man offers us cut price shots of a mystery spirit and pouring some ten shots or so out, we are amazed at the hospitality. Outside the booming pub in the makeshift garden our troop begins to polish off the shots which are a stomach churning flavour of chilli vodka. The drink quickly took its victims and in wretched hatred I am encouraged to offer a low scorefor this venue, we were in a word, poisoned.

Overall the Jolly Sailor seems to have a darker side behind the late night partying interior that it offers to the mad-for-it locals, perhaps the landlord just doesn’t like outsiders - 6/10

Miracles Cafe and Bar

Strictly more of a restaurant or diner than a bar, but this venue does serve up alcohol as beer or wine with a small bar and some folks drift in more for a drink than food so I am firmly posting to the bar section of Barblog. Miracles is pretty overrun by the inhabitants of Hadley Wood and Cockfosters on any given day. The quality food comes out in magnum sized portions and despite the service feeling very rushed and the cahirs frightfully uncomfortable, Miracles is definitely worth heading to for a social meet in Cockfosters. With good transport links nearby to Cockfosters station I will most certainly be returning.

Overall Miracles Cafe and Bar gets a higher than average 6/10

The Beachcomb Bar

The Beachcomb bar serves the indoor pool on the Ventura cruise liner and offers up a selection of drinks with a team of very slow and careless bar persons. The kids are also attracted to this pool which means continually being hit by waves of thrashing water as you wait to be served cocktail of the day. The crude stool seating at the bar actually makes this bar one of worst on the vessel but with close proximity to the late night buffet it is essential to drop by and add a couple of beers to the holiday tab.

Overall a very unimpressive 2/10

The Terrace Bar

Sometimes the back of the boat is the best place to sit and sunbathe; the churning waters and foam spray of the trail of a ship as large as Ventura in the deep blue waters of the Atlantic pave off into the distance and the sight is spectacular. Having a bar then that sits beside the small pool at the back of the boat is pretty important, it is justa crying shame that the bar stools point into the bar which faces forward on the ship rather than at the spectular view behind. The bar serves up the usual limited drinks menu, where cocktail of the day spring up most frequently.

Overall the Terrace bar does not seem to be open quite as often as the other bars on this enormous cruise liner but I am glad that I did not have to walk too far in my sandals for a mojito - 6/10

The Tamarind Club

The Tamarind club is really a club for middle aged folk looking to sit back in big red lounge seats and watch various lounge acts perform before them. The acts themselves seem to attract a fairly big audience which at times can congest parts of the Prominade deck, especially during formal nights. We found the service at the bar to be fairly fast but with the venue so busy there were few seats. The cocktails however were badly made and over-soured and much to our amusement the bar man could not correctly identify the names of variosu fruits including lemons and limes (definitely the sign of a poor barman)

Overall the Tamarind club is a good addition to the night life on this boat but the bar staff could really do with some firm lessons in cocktail making - 5/10

Palazzo Casino

The Palazzo casino and hotel is a monster palace of a skyscraper looking rather at home among the other casino dominating the skyline of the las vegas strip. Inside the white halls have a roman feel about them and in the bright spaces gamblers throw away ten of thousands of dollars every second in the name of greed. This particular casino doesn’t really seem to have more or less character than any of the others, it is quite clear that before the Wynn casino came along this casino was pulling the wealthier punters but that has all now changed with the advent of billion dollar casinos next door.

Overall the Palazzo is nice to have a walk around but no different from the dozens of other mega casinos in the area - 6/10

Oliver St John Gogarty

A mess of trinkets and irish memorbelia fill the walls and ceiling of this circular bar, close to the heart of dublin’s tourist hotspot - Temple Bar. The service is fairly fast although with stools at the bar itself getting served can be something of an excercise in carefully carrying a pint of guiness. The pub also seems to serve up a hearty looking set of pies.

Overall St John Gogarty was easily one of the better pubs in dublin, well worth a look in if you are in the area, could perhaps do with mroe seating - 7/10

New China Teppanyaki Bar and Restaurant

This venue was my first experience in Teppanyaki, the venue consists of a series of outdoor tables and inside half of the venue has been expensively converted into a stainless steel kitchen where the chef prepares and cooks our fodo in front of us. The bar is situated at the back of the room and has a reasonable selection of drinks which keep flowing throughout the evening. We watch the show before us in awe for the first half hour or so before we realise that not all the food cooked in front of us is for us. The terriaki meet that comes out is too rich and other meats are over garnished with garlic, chilli or salt in some pretty careless combinations. The showpiece of catching egg in the mouths of the hungry diners leaves us darting around the room like hungry birds and after chopping the best part of a gross of eggs on the hot plate and then messing up the restaurant with egg all about the place, I am tired, hungry and dis-interested.

Overall this wont be a restaurant or bar I will return to. The food was just not up to scratch and despite being mildly enteraining at the outset - the circus act wears thin - 5/10