This Week Has Mostly Been...

Another busy week flies by and another weekend is on the horizon ... welcome all to the best day of the week - FRIDAY! One of my post-holiday resolutions was to make the most of my free weekday time and to be open to new experiences. Despite the continued artic temperatures, I actually feel I've done a pretty good job at fulfilling this since I've been back. So what's been on the cards this week? Without further ado, This Week The Mice Have Mostly Been...

Fooling ourselves that Summer has arrived with a night at ME London's Radio Rooftop Bar! You may recall we tried ME London's steak restaurant, STK, back in December, and weren't overly impressed (see our not so glowing review here). Despite our less than brilliant dinner, we thought we'd give the hotel another go, especially now the rooftop bar has opened and at least as far as the calendar's concerned, it's spring... so off I skipped for round two at ME with my good pal Nikki!

Image via www.baggagemagazine.com

Image via www.weheart.co.uk

We decided to try out the more recent Cucina Asellina restaurant serving up plates of rustic Italian deliciousness! Billed as an authentic quality Italian but at Pizza Express prices, we thought we'd investigate further...

Image via www.theartofbespoke.com

The decor is minimalistic and modern pretty similar to STK but a little less tacky Vegas style. It could perhaps be a bit cosier but it's definitely an upgrade on atmosphere. We had a glass of celebratory Friday Laurent Perrier at the bar whilst we waited for our table. 

After gossipping for a solid 45 minutes we realised no one had come to get us and we were starving. We had a quick word with a waiter, and seconds later, like magic, two glasses of complimentary Prosecco were brought over and we were whisked away to our table! Given that I was at the tail end of a pretty bad red wine hangover, made even worse by just a few hours sleep and a day of back to back meetings with no snack time, to say I was suitably famished by now would be a bit of an understatement... I snatched up the menu and blurted out my order of tuna tartar followed by a prosciutto and truffle pizza in a mad woman fashion! Nikki managed to be a little more civil and politely opted for beef carpaccio and king prawn strozepetti. Using the sound logic that nothing cures a red wine hangover like a little more red wine, we ordered a bottle of Malbec and sat back to wait for the food to arrive.. 

Once again my hunger slightly trumped my blog responsibilities and I forgot to take pictures of the starters when they arrived but I'm happy to report that every tiny scrap was demolished in seconds and both were delicious!

By the time the main courses arrived, thankfully my barbaric hunger had been momentarily satisfied so I was able to eat like a polite normal person and snap a picture before getting stuck in...

Obligatory photography over it was time to tear into my pizza and I can confirm that it was absolutely delish! No scrimping where the topping was concerned and the truffle combined with the cheese and ham was dangerously moreish! Nikki's pasta cooked al dente was also bursting with flavour and I must admit that there may have been a little food envy...! 

We decided to skip dessert and head up to the rooftop pronto. We settled our £100 bill - not quite Pizza Express prices but for a starter, main course, a couple of glasses of champagne, a bottle of wine and superb service I don't think that's too shabby do you? 

We finished the night off with a few cocktails kicking back under the heaters overlooking the beautiful skyline of London - perfect. When the wind got the better of us we nipped inside (there is an outside and inside section to the Radio Rooftop bar you see) and finished off our drinks listening to the super fun mix of music accompanied by some top notch people watching! Still a little on the Vegas side that being white, white and more white but there's no doubt that this will be a perfect summer time spot for post-work drinkies!

Treating our tired skin to a dose of NUDE's all-in-one Perfect Cleansing Oil followed by the luxurious ProGenius treatment oil. I was first introduced to the natural skincare brand, NUDE a few years ago by my good friend Mo who bought me the gorgeous Intense Moisture Mask for my birthday. Ever since I've been a bit of a fan. 

The purple packaging is simple, clean and minimal and the products mirror that (bar the purple element... now that would be weird)! The cleansing oil is seriously great at shifting the day's make-up and the treatment oil is a complete blissful indulgence. I particularly love the treatment oil pipette which somehow makes the whole process of applying this product super fun! The combination of the two seriously leaves your face feeling silky soft and intensely moisturised. The perfect pair...

Reminiscing and feeling nostalgic about the 80s. We're not talking rubik's cubes, walkmans, pacman or slap bracelets we're talking TV ads! OK watching back I admit that technically the acting, script, music and quality are all a little dubious but there is something magical about each and every one of them! The storytelling is simple but second to none giving the viewer no option but to fall for the product being advertised hook, line and sinker! Here's the 3BM rundown of our top 80s gems...

Have A Break - Have A Kit Kat...

Pandas on rollerskates. Yes, rollerskating pandas! Brilliant! A patient photographer waiting at the zoo for the elusive pandas to emerge from their cave. After a while, he decides it's time for a break turns his back and unpacks his Kit Kat. Bam! Leaping, shimmying and rollerskating pandas. Break over, Kit Kat demolished, the photographer turns round to an empty zoo enclosure, the poor man only missed the whole darn thing... Did we mention the rollerskating pandas?!

The Red Car and the Blue Car had a race...

Next up, that legendary Milky Way ad... Our reminiscing does seem to be taking a pretty chocolately route... I guess that pretty much shows where the baby Mice's priorities lay (and let's be honest things haven't changed too drastically...). We can clearly remember singing this in the playground with all our friends those dastardly Mars ad executives...



Umbongo, Umbongo They Drink It In the Congo....
And on the subject of adverts that you were a bit of a loser if you didn't know the words to (or was it the other way round...) who remembers the Umbongo song?! No wonder we were all such hyperactive kids, all we ever did was eat chocolate bars and drink e-numbers...

Shoes Fit for a Princess - Clark's Magic Steps
The first moment we really remember our love of shoes kicking in was when we discovered Clarks Magic Steps. The heady combination of the diamond embedded in the front, the plastic bubble on the bottom of the shoe encasing a golden key and that advert where the girl is transformed into a magical princess... We begged and begged for a pair of 'princess shoes' pretty much on the basis of the Clarks ad alone. After what seemed like an eternity, Mummy Mouse eventually relented and promptly whisked us off to St Albans High Street to put our feet in the whizzy electric foot measurer and pick out our brand new shoes. The pure unadultered elation! But the heartbreak when we were told that no we couldn't have the mary-jane ones that the girl in the advert had, we had to have t-bars as the backs of our feet were too narrow... stupid feet, we still loved those shoes anyway and wore them til they fell apart. 

(We searched and searched for the advert on YouTube but couldn't find the ad on it's own. Whizz forward to 1:55 for the Magic Steps bit or watch the whole lot to be whisked right back to 4:00pm in the late eighties and a spot of post-school Sooty & Sweep...)

Ahhhh! We're feeling super nostalgic now, what we'd give to hop in a time machine and barrel back to 1988 for a weekend full of penny sweets, buying stickers for our sticker books, Wackaday, Noel's House Party and Sylvanian families...

Those were the days (note all three of us are wearing our matching white Magic Steps T-bars which Mummy Mouse had just returned to sparkly whiteness with a dab of Jiff on a J-cloth...)!

Happy Weekend!

Lots of love
x
The Mice

Dinner at ME London's new Steak Restaurant: An m-i-STK

We often get asked why we only ever write good things about restaurants and bars that we've been to. A few people are sceptical that this may be because we're being given free things, or being paid to big up these places. Others have asked if it's because we're a bit eager to please and don't want to offend people.

Let us assure you right now that we will never say that we like somewhere unless we genuinely do.

We usually don't write bad things about restaurants and bars because when we have a disappointing meal or a round of so-so cocktails, we scrub the culprit behind the rubbishness from the 3BM Little Black Book, vow never to go there again, and rather than dwelling on it and blogging about it, we hit up the next spot on our must-visit list in search of somewhere a little bit awesome to share with you and each other instead. The blog is first and foremost a place for us girls to write about the things that we love, not somewhere for us to moan or whinge or write nasty things.

Having said that, just before Christmas, for the first time since we started the blog, we had a restaurant experience so rubbish that we felt it was our duty to write a less than glowing review about somewhere we certainly don't love...

I'd been in London less than 24 hours and the London Mice had organised a welcome home, Christmassy Saturday evening out including lots of lovely food, plenty of cocktails and surprise tickets for a festive film screening.

However, this was one of those nights when things just weren't working in our favour from the very beginning.

All three of us were feeling either nauseous (noro-virus hangover) or had a sore throat/cold (laryngitis hangover). Not a great start.

I mentioned in passing that I'd watched the Christmas film that we were supposed to be seeing a couple of days before. Surprise festive film screening scrapped.

And at 4pm we got a call to say that John Salt, the restaurant that we'd booked for dinner, didn't have enough staff cover and that they'd have to cancel our booking. Dinner plans down the drain.

Cut to the three of us in Selfridges simultaneously trying to finish our last minute present shopping, snap up a couple of bargains in the sale and ring around restaurants trying to find somewhere to feed us on the Saturday night before Christmas.

After being told that everywhere that we could think of was fully booked, suddenly inspiration struck and we decided to try a steak restaurant all three of us had recently read a lot about in the press, the newly opened STK. Quick call - bingo - table available at 9pm! Things were finally starting to go our way, or so we thought...

At around 8:30pm, all shopped out and laden down with yellow bags, we pulled up outside brand new hotel, ME London, slap bang in the middle of theatreland, the home of STK. Maybe the fact that it's a hotel restaurant and in a tourist-central spot should have set alarm bells ringing or perhaps they should have started when we first read that the restaurant's USP is that it's a female-friendly steakhouse...nevertheless, in we bundled, hungry, thirsty and ready for an evening of sister catch-up.

Getting our priorities straight, we settled straight into the bar area and ordered a round of cocktails. A couple of sips in, we decided we wouldn't be ordering any more cocktails. Our drinks weren't spectacularly awful, but they were sickly sweet, artificial and generally not the sort of cocktail you'd expect a decent London bar to shake up.

Putting the cocktails behind us, we moved through to the restaurant, a large monochrome space all white leather, perspex and black marble. Sleek and shiny but just a little bit nineties nightclub. We've heard that the Miami STK is a Kardashian fav and we could definitely imagine Kim & Kanye tucked in the corner discussing potential baby names beginning with K...

Having not seen each other since September, we were far too busy babbling away to pay too much attention to the menu.  After we'd asked the waitress for just a couple more minutes five times, we hastily ordered a bottle of Malbec, a couple of starters to share and three steaks before getting round to the serious business of sister photos...

Our meal started well with a baby loaf of brioche bread served up with a scrummy basil oil.

Next up, tuna sashimi so good that it was gone before I'd managed to get my camera out. Tuna devoured, out came three baby Wagyu burgers. These babies were little mouthfuls of juicy, truffly deliciousness, the out and out star of the meal and the point at which we should have called for the bill and left...

Because next came the steaks. We'd ordered three New York Strip steaks, one to be cooked medium-rare and the other two rare. What arrived were three medium-well steaks overcooked to a very unappealing grey and a wellington boot chewiness. Admittedly, we should have sent these back but excited to see each other, we were chattering away and hadn't really realised quite how bad our meals were until we'd all chewed on hearty forkfuls. Sides of broccolini and new potatoes were fine but nothing to shout about. While the lobster mac and cheese had us divided, Mini and I liked it, Middle hated it.

Deciding that we should give STK the opportunity to salvage the meal, we flicked through the dessert menu. We'd read a review earlier in the day which had raved about the Fairground dessert so we ordered one of these to share.

Six miniature fairground themed desserts arrived in a stainless steel big wheel serving plate. From candyfloss to baby toffee apples and donuts to cones of popcorn. I'm not quite sure what we were expecting, but this mish mash of sickly sweet treats wasn't enough to pull the meal back. In fact after a couple of nibbles we pushed the whole tacky, car crash of a dessert aside. At this point Mini Mouse commented that she was pleased that we'd ordered dessert, because until that point she'd been happy to ignore the bad steaks, the poor service (verging on rude) and the club music that had gradually been ramping up since we'd arrived until we had to shout to hear each other. 

The final straw? The bill. When we finally managed to flag the waitress down to to ask to pay, we discovered that the meal had come in at a whopping £234.56. Yes we'd ordered 3 courses and yes we'd have cocktails and a bottle of wine but just over £78 each seems pretty excessive for a steakhouse that can't cook steak. 

"Not your Daddy's steakhouse" is the STK tagline, well they at least got that bit right, a week later Daddy Mouse cooked up four Rib-eyes at home that would have made the STK NY Strips blush. Lesson learnt! From now on we'll be steering well-clear of 'girl-friendly' and eating our meat in big, rugged, manly places that actually know how to handle a big slab of bloody meat...

STK? Save your cash girls and head to Hawksmoor instead.