Conor’s Bandon Blog

House MD is one of those TV series I should hate. It stars Hugh Laurie with a put-on American accent as Gregory House, head of diagnostics at a Princeton hospital.

It has exactly the same plot every week. Person comes in with confusing symptoms, starts heading towards death, team keeps trying to figure out what is wrong, use wrong treatment, make patient worse, finally just in the nick if time, they figure it out and patient is saved. There is always one rule:

But it’s compelling viewing and is built around the fact that House is a complete misanthrope. He hates everyone equally but does it with such witty invective that you love him.

He suffers terrible pain from a serious surgery on his leg and is addicted to Vocidon (yes, I spelled wrong to stop spammers). This led to a great series of episodes where he made the mistake of pissing off a cop who then tried to do him for a variety of crimes to punish him for taking excess painkillers on the job.

The episode we watched last night had him in a wheelchair for a week as a bet so that he could get his old parking space back which had been given to a real wheelchair user. His argument was that he suffered more walking further with a cane than she did in a motorised wheelchair. 

As we are very bold people and may (or may not) have got our hands on bittorrented copies of all three series, we generally watch a couple at a time.

Fabulous TV! 

Catherine spotted these Kettyle products in Dunnes the other day and bought the rib-eye. Unlike most steak sold in Irish Supermarkets, this one is totally vacpacked.

I’ve read Hugh F-W complain about supermarket vacuum packs as they are usually full of blood too so that the meat does not dry mature properly. I found it interesting that this was entirely a dry vac-packing.

It comes in a very nice disply package with tons of info about the long ageing process (but not how long!) and how to cook it. The company itself is based in Fermanagh.

The meat looked fantastic, dark ruby not “still with a pulse” like most Dunnes meat of previous years. It was riddling with marbling and was a perfect size for one.

I cooked it pretty rare and it was lovely. Dryer than I expected given the marbling but very tasty. A huge step beyond standard Dunnes stuff. 

I’m just thrilled that Dunnes are trying something a bit different from the usual sirloin/fillet that you get in every supermarket in the country. Very few people (including myself) have any clue about cuts of meat any more. Do all the great cuts that we ignore just go into mince now? I find a good rump steak to be far preferable to the ubiquitous sirloin.  

Keep an eye (pun intended) out for this great product. The one I had was €5.33 for a decent cut of meat. 

We’re Hairy Baby fanatics in this house. I treasure my “Are you the farmer” t-shirt (only Withnail fans get it!) and my “People’s Front of Judea” one. Not only are they funny, the quality of the tees is excellent.

Catherine spotted that they now do hoodies where you can customise some of the text on them. We couldn’t resist this for my sister’s birthday: 

It goes perfectly with her Hairy Baby “Community games Skipping Champion” t-shirt!

As I said, we love these guys.  

Our eldest was badgering us yesterday that we never eat in “proper restaurants” so we scooted into town with the plan to either go to Captain America’s (a first for all of us) or Wagamama nxt door (which I’d eaten in last year).

We arrived up and made the snap decision to go for Wagamama. It was before 5pm on a Saturday and was almost empty. We got a full bench to ourselves and sorted out the kids seating arrangements. There was a baby seat for baba.

Crayons and play sheets were provided immediately and the waiter gave us the kids menus and stayed until we picked the kids food. Chicken and Noodles all round. The food arrived in less than five minutes. These are people who know how to deal with kids!

I was thrilled that the three eldest and dug into food which they would not normally touch. They loved the soy based sauce and the only bit they really didn’t like was the salad leaves.

The highlight for them was the kid’s chopsticks. 

Only tiny drawback on the kid-front was that the baby seats are too low and babba whacked her head off the edge of the table twice.

The kids all got an apple-orange juice mix which was clearly freshly squeezed. I had a similar one with addition of passion fruit and it was gorgeous.

Catherine went for Chilli Chicken Men and liked it overall apart from the huge chunks of courgette and the undercooked peppers.

I had  classic Yaki Soba which is very like Singapore Chow Mein which I’ve always loved. Nice and spicy, lots of chicken and shrimp. My kind of chinese food.

Catherine had a Japanese Iki beer which she loved. I tasted it and thought it was fab too. Later that night I was in Boqueria and drank nothing else. Try it out.

Ice-cream for the kiddies rounded it off nicely

Loos were all separate lockable cubicles which is pefect for multiple bringing kids too.

I really can’t say anything seriously negative about this place. The food is not incredible by any means but it is simple, tasty and is much more preferable to filling yourself to the gills with stodge before drinks. I can see why Wagamama is a global phenomenon. 

€83 for two adults and four kids is pretty good value too.