Flying | Eating | Sleeping

Hotel Albergo, Beirut

As Beirut is being rebuilt and re-establishing itself as a playground for the wealthy of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, giant hotels are sprouting up along the Corniche, exemplified by the high-rise Four Seasons that opened in 2010.  The two big exceptions to this trend are Le Gray and the Hotel Albergo, further inland.

With Le Gray fully booked, we chose the Albergo.  Most of the hotel experience was fantastic.  A driver met us at the airport and safely steered us through the insane, there is no other way to describe it, traffic of the city.  For some reason we were upgraded at check-in to the honeymoon suite, which was absolutely beautiful - a huge sitting area, bedroom and a bathroom that was bigger than some flats I've lived in.

The Albergo occupies a refurbished town-house of about ten narrow floors.  The ground floor houses a discrete reception desk, lounge bar and a formal restaurant which we didn't use.

Above all of the bedrooms, the jewel in the hotel's crown is the rooftop complex which offers a less formal lounge and beautiful terrace.  A fantastic Lebanese breakfast is served to guests up here, while drinks and food are available all day.  Curiously, with the exception of breakfast, all the food offered in both the formal restaurant and roof terrace is, at least nominally, Italian.  This isn't to say the meals we ate there weren't excellent, but having no Arabic offering seems a little strange.

The terrace is a wonderful place to spend a couple of hours with a book and a few drinks.  There's also a pool, but it's extremely small and I didn't really fancy walking, dripping wet, back to my room through the cocktail lounge.

So, a beautiful building, great room and excellent staff... But we won't be back.  The entire Albergo experience is ruined by their insistence on using plasticised mattress protecting sheets each time they make the bed.  The result is that you're either too hot to sleep or wake up dripping in sweat.  It's a decision that I fail to comprehend - this is an seriously expensive hotel and they're employing devices that I last came across on a rowing camp in rural France.  The bed itself was a great four-post affair with a comfortable mattress; spoiled by ten pounds worth of over-active housekeeping.

The decision making process behind this choice baffles me.  Somebody has spent many millions of pounds restoring a building and filling it with with beautiful furniture and charming staff, then suddenly become gripped with worry about the cost of replacing mattresses should somebody wet the bed?Extraordinary.

Photos of the room and roof follow.

Qatar Airways Business Class: London - Doha - Shanghai and return

The review I wrote last year of a Qatar Airways trip from London to Melbourne was highly complimentary and still sees a lot of traffic from Google.  Sadly, a repeat experience with Qatar several months later failed to match the expectations that were set en-route to Australia.  It’s not that the flights were at all unpleasant, but there definitely seems to have been a drop in standards, particularly in regard to catering - the variety, quality and quantity of food on offer has dropped through the floor.  I’m not sure if this is a conscious policy, or if I was previously spoiled because the Melbourne flight is afforded preferential treatment thanks to it’s extremely long duration.

My biggest complaint about this trip is the, apparent, assumption that no substantial meal needs to be served on an overnight flight.  This might be the case if there’s a decent offering in the lounge before take-off, but otherwise, something should be offered to those that are boarding the aircraft after a twenty hour day.

Before going into specifics, it should be said that the seats on the 777 aircraft are still excellent, and the staff were all courteous and professional.

London Gatwick to Doha
For various reasons, I took an outbound flight from Gatwick rather than Heathrow and have to say that the Qatar Airways staff there were fantastic.  Business class passengers were greeted at check-in and all escorted from the lounge to the aircraft.  On the other hand, the Servisair lounge used by Qatar at Gatwick is horrendous - noisy, cramped and packed with people.  Since I flew, No. 1 Traveller have opened an alternative lounge at Gatwick’s North Terminal and I hope that Qatar is now sending its customers there.

After takeoff, drinks were served, accompanied by a delicious date filled with cream cheese (above).

The Arabic mezze, as a starter option (above), was still excellent, but the first sign that things had changed in relation to the food offering came with the main course - a fish stew that was both tasteless and small (below).

Just before landing, a rather curious selection of snacks was served as “afternoon tea” (below); a slightly odd decision given that it was approaching midnight.  Sadly, the treat of scones and clotted cream was ruined because the cream had, inexplicably, been heated along with the scones, so arrived as a running liquid mess.

Doha to Shanghai

I slept for most of this leg, but it’s safe to say that this was the best of the four flights.  The seafood noodles served after takeoff were excellent, I was starting to hope that the catering on the previous flight was down to localised problems with the supplier at Gatwick.  Before landing, the stewardess noticed that I wasn’t enjoying the omelette I had ordered for breakfast, so happily brought me a plate of fruit salad.

Shanghai to Doha
As at Gatwick, the lounge available to Qatar airways passengers in Shanghai is grim.  There was no food on offer and the alcohol selection was limited to beer and a bottle labelled “RED FRENCH TABLE WINE”. Yum.

Having, by then, been awake for almost 21 hours and eaten lunch ten hours previously, I was desperate to do some serious damage to the food offering on the place.  Sadly, the most substantial item of the evening snack menu that was offered was a lobster caesar salad - a few leaves and two 4mm thick slices of lobster.  The salad was followed by two small slices of pineapple as dessert.  Not really what I had in mind.

Before dinner, the stewardess asked everyone when they would like to be woken for breakfast, suggesting that most passengers liked to have breakfast 90 minutes before landing, but that it could be as late as 45 minutes ahead of touchdown if we wanted more sleep.  Both myself and the guy in the neighbouring seat asked to sleep for as long as possible, so were more than a little confused when we found ourselves being woken almost three hours out of Doha, barely four hours after the last meal was cleared away.

Doha Premium Terminal
The separate terminal offered for business and first class passengers connecting through Doha is heavily promoted by Qatar, but very tight connections on all my previous flights with them meant that this was the first time I’d really had a chance to spend any time there. Given the relentless hype Qatar spout about the facility, I found the whole experience really frustrating.

Somebody has taken the decision that nobody will help themselves to drinks and be served food whenever possible, but hasn’t bothered to provide enough staff or adequate facilities to accomplish this.  The result is a series of farcical situations where distraught staff try to serve one customer while attempting to stop others helping themselves.  Most ludicrously, one man attending a single, small, Nespresso coffee machine was attempting to, slowly, brew coffee for a line of customers, while fighting off the dozens trying to help themselves to soft drinks from the fridge behind him.  This arrangement might have been charming when the airline was half the size it is today, but it needs to be swept away now.  The drinks situation is exacerbated because everything is served in tiny glassware - very strange when the airline, commendably, uses adult-sized glassware on aircraft.

On top of the strange service protocols, the lounge also suffers from some very poor quality food and a desperate shortage of bathrooms.  Not the premium experience Qatar promote an a million miles from the flagship lounges of airlines like Cathay Pacific, QANTAS, BA and even Finnair. 

Doha to London Heathrow
Any thoughts that poor catering were down to local issues in Gatwick and Shanghai were dispelled on this final leg.  The breakfast featured a startling combination of tinned peaches and unpeeled kiwi fruit.  Lunch, featuring a chicken kebab (below) was better but, again, very small. 

Overall, nobody would argue that these were uncomfortable flights, but after such a great experience with Qatar earlier in the year, it was a very disappointing trip.  

#meateasy, New Cross, London

Cast your mind back a year or two, back to the moment when a friend who “wouldn’t normally forward such things” sent you the YouTube clip of Susan Boyle’s first audition for Britain’s Got Talent.  Do you recall how that brief moment of wonder and shared human joy rapidly turned into sweaty nausea as you realised how easy it had been for the combined PR might of Simon Cowell and Max Clifford to manipulate not only you, but large swathes of the global population?

That feeling, the feeling of been duped by a slick publicity machine, is what swept over me as I, finally, bit into a #meateasy chilli cheeseburger.

Unless you have been living in a cave, or “outside London” as it’s known in the media, you will have heard about #meateasy - the pop-up burger restaurant above a disused New Cross pub that’s only open for a few months and seems to have most food bloggers and journalists in raptures.  Restaurant reviewers in newspapers beseech us to stampede down the East London Line before the place closes in March and be thankful for the chance to wait several hours for a burger.

The food itself is passable.  The burger was very good.  It was a very good hamburger, is there much more to say?  If you press me, I’ll say that it was well cooked, although perhaps assembled in a slipshod fashion, with all of the jalapenos crowded in one eye-wateringly fiery bite. The onion rings are, as has been said by a variety of bloggers, the best I’ve ever tasted.  That is to say, they are the best cheap vegetable coated in greasy batter I’ve ever tasted.  Well done.  The buffalo wings were gruesome - slimy and fatty with none of the lovely crisp blackened skin I’ve seen posted in early reviews; they were clearly rushed through the cooking process.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about the process of obtaining the food.  I’m sure New Cross is lovely, up and coming, the “next Hoxton” and all the rest of it, but it is still three trains from my office and five trains from my home.  In short, it’s out of the way.  I’ll be generous and say it’s half an hour from central London, less from Canary Wharf.

Upon arriving, you are issued with a numbered ticket which entitles you to order three items of food when summoned by the, admittedly charming, staff who roam the packed room shouting out numbers at, seemingly, random intervals.  While waiting you buy drinks from the bar, try to find standing space in the crowded room, then lie in wait, ready to pounce upon a table as soon as the current occupants look ready to leave.  If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to perch on a sofa with a few friends and share a table with some strangers.  It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, comfortable.  Two hours, and several drinks, after we arrived, I ordered and the food was delivered shortly after that.  In the intervening period, there was an awkward moment when a friend and the stranger opposite who shared his name, were mixed up, prompting the stranger’s torn-faced date to whine about people touching and stealing food.  Great fun.

Is it possible to separate enjoyment of the food from the environment it’s consumed in?  I lean towards no - even if this had been truly excellent food, I’m not sure how enjoyable it would have been when eaten perched on one corner of a stool, hemmed in on all four sides by a selection of London’s louder conversationalists.  Bizzarely, I’m left with the impression that it’s the discomfort that many of the patrons are actually craving.  It’s almost as if people feel somehow allowed to, or at least less guilty about, eating junk food if they’ve had to suffer before consuming it.  I can think of far better ways to soothe guilt about gluttony.

At this point, fans of #meateasy will argue that the food is terribly reasonably priced and such a bargain is worth waiting for; the Ryanair defence.  The problem is, while the food is cheap enough, I defy anybody to spend less than two hours trying to obtain it - two hours in which you’ll buy a round or two of drinks.  All told, my visit set me back almost £45, most of it on booze.  Now, you’ll call me cynical, but I don’t think this is accidental.

Just as a YouTube clip featuring an oddly-shaped Scottish woman hood-winked millions of people into buying an album of poor cover versions, so mouth-watering photos of oozing hamburgers have been used to lure people towards New Cross and a lucratively packed bar. I don’t grudge #meateasy their success, indeed, I have enormous respect for anyone who can plan and execute such a stunt, including Mr Cowell.  I just feel slightly dirty when I allow myself to buy into the hysteria.

Of course, mention must be made of the phalanx of bloggers and journalists who enabled #meateasy to pull this off.  To them, I might just point out that writing up an invite-only preview event is not reviewing a restaurant.

Still desperate to munch down a very good cheeseburger?  May I suggest that you head to either BobBobRicard  or Hawksmoor?  I’m pretty sure that you’ll be able to order a cheeseburger, a couple of glasses of Pol Roger or a decent martini for less than you’ll spend at #meateasy.  As an added bonus, both BobBobRicard and Hawksmoor, revolutionaries that they are, will allow you to reserve a table, dine at a time which is convenient to you and provide comfortable seating.  If you really feel that you have to suffer before you’re allowed such artery-clogging delights, then I prescribe two laps of Hyde Park - the whole running/eating project will still consume less of your time than an evening in New Cross.

Catching up in one fell swoop

I thought I was on top of work a month ago. Wrong.

I'm more certain that things are under control now and even managed to (finally) see friends for lunch at Hawksmoor this weekend (the post is on its way).

There are are a few things from the end of 2010 that I had meant to write posts on but, looking back at my scrawled notes, have decided that some of them just aren't interesting enough to warrant the effort.  So, for a variety of reasons, the following haven't made the cut (unless somebody is really itching to hear about one of them):

• Abdel Wahib, Beirut (it was good, we ate there twice, but it was five months ago and I can't remember too many details)
• The Thistle Hotel Inverness (it was a hideous filthy dive that we walked out of after ten minutes, I'd rather spend what time I have writing about fun things)
• The Boat Hotel, Boat of Garten (which seemed gorgeous an hour after The Thistle and served decent food, but which I took no notes about and would be inventing most of anything I wrote four months on)
• easyJet vs. FlyBe between London and Inverness (because, really, what is there to say, except, perhaps, that the FlyBe crew were more enthusiastic and efficient).
• Intercontinental Hotel, Shanghai Puxi (blah, blah, giant gleaming hotel with every convenience and no charm)
• British Airways World Traveller Plus between London Heathrow and New York JFK (as I wasn't in the new cabin so nothing had changed)
• The New York Helmsley Hotel (since, location and relative price aside, it doesn't have a single redeeming quality)
• The Weary, Cumbria (which seemed fine, but everything that was going in amongst the work and snow of December seems like something of a blur).

Conversely, the following 2010 posts will be coming along, interspersed with more recent events:

• Hotel Albergo, Beirut (because it was an unusual experience)
• MEA Business Class (which was akin to stepping back at least two decades)
• British Airways Club Europe from Larnaca to London (since things seem to have improved)
• Boath House Hotel, Nairn (because it was incredible)
• Qatar Airways Business Class to Shanghai (my last post on Qatar still picks up a lot of traffic from Google but this flight was very different, in an unpleasant way).

Apologies again for the radio silence and many thanks to those who are still checking-in from time to time.