curry vegas

my friend carrie, who lives in portland, was brave enough to introduce me to yet another of her london friends - neil. neil and i must lead insanely busy lives, because it took us a week to find a night we were both available! :-) the plan was to check out old street and shoreditch, which are technically where i live...i've just never gone out and explored!

we met up at old street tube exit 7 (there are 8 exits and i've recently learned that #7 is the closest exit to my pad) and then we walked to hoxton square, where we went to a trendy-looking bar called bluu. trying to heed my own rule, i ordered the only beer on draft i had never heard of:



not bad, kinda thick, i could only drink one, so i switched to peroni after that. :-)

two pints, 8 pm, and we were craving curry. we decided to head to brick lane, which i was told had dozens of curry places. in fact, the street we were on ONLY had curry places complete with aggressive doormen who would try to get you to come inside. also, every place had some sort of claim "best chef 2008", etc. and bunches of neon lights.

neon lights. exactly how i'd picture india, really. hence we dubbed brick lane "curry vegas".

we selected our restaurant based on the offer for free drinks with dinner. i don't usually drink with curry but if it's free...

food was decent, free wine was crap although what do you expect??? we ended the evening at a brick lane bar, even trendier than the hoxton square one, where we decided we were definitely the oldest, least hip people there. :-)