Loving this. I may have a fight on my hands this afternoon when the Florida 9 come for dinner and discuss the plan. I'm sure with copious amounts of vodka they will come round to my way of thinking. 😉 So far half of them want to do HHN, half of them want to do MVMCP, and the the other half want to do both 🤪 (3 halves, make mine a pint) nobody wants to do Busch or Seaworld. 😡 oh well, at least we have plenty of time to shop on non park days. 👍

Brilliant video. Hope you get to use this talent in your day job.

Congratulations to your wife on the new job, sounds like a good excuse for a whole new wardrobe so the malls could be hit hard

Well I bet there's never a dull moment in your house Harry 👍
Great news on the job front, always a tough decision wether to stay or jump ship and leave your hubby's trip report up the spout!

I don’t envy you that negotiation it’s tough enough with two of us could always have 2 groups I guess!

Don’t worry the new wardrobe has already been mentioned glad you liked the video, actually very easy to do and good fun, nothing that creative at work I’m afraid

Annoyingly I’d been the one saying she should move for a while so I only have myself to blame on that front We both now need to get into holiday mode

All packed, my folks have arrived and we'll be out for the traditional pre-holiday meal in a couple of hours before our flight tomorrow. Going to the Ivy Brasserie.

Expect a first update late tonight or early tomorrow morning

Looking forward to it. Have a good flight.

Brilliant video. Looking forward to reading along.

That video is pure genius, I laughed sooo much
Have a great holiday!

Knackered this morning, need to tidy up some work then can relax finally it's been a long year already Thanks for following

Glad you enjoyed, if there's one thing guraranteed here it's more nonsense like that

I feel I was miscast slightly but hey, if it works then Good to have you along for the trip.

Pre-Travel Dinner - The Ivy Brasserie

We headed to Cobham with my parents for a pre-travel day family meal. The Ivy Brasserie is a high-end brasserie style chain spun off from the famous Ivy restaurant in central London. It does mainly British and European classics at prices that are steep-ish but not disastrous for this part of the country bearing in mind quality is typically excellent and a big range of prices on the menu.


Now our one gripe in the past with this place had been the bar. They have all the kit but often don’t seem to know how to use it or get the order wrong (DM once ordered tea and received the same margarita 3 times before she got the right drink), take forever etc. This being the Tuesday after Easter it was a lot less busy than usual but anyway, DW and I played it safe with a Jamesons and Diet Coke (DW) and a Diet Coke (me/driver). No photos of these.

DM went with a rhubarb G&T which was on the pricey side (£11!) which caused some angst but it was delicious, never really tried rhubarb but the flavour worked well with some Chambord raspberry liqueur and Fever Tree ginger ale in there. A lot of ice, it was almost a slushie.


DF ordered a classic G&T. This was cheaper but came with more ceremony, pouring from a little jug. This restaurant LOVES pouring things out of little jugs by the way I reckon the servers retire at 30 with repetitive strain injury.


3 of us had starters, only DW passing. Mine was a fairly light option, tomato soup (Roasted Roma tomato soup – 5.50 Pine nuts, soft vegan “cheese”, Provençale olives and basil). This came with the bits exposed and then the soup was poured over the top of it. She was too quick with the pouring to get the before and after shot but like I said, these people can pour.


The soup was great, very interesting stuff in (the cheese tasted like mild feta) it but the tomato itself was delicious. DW pounced on this as soon as it arrived and would have nicked the whole bowl if I hadn’t intervened (er you didn’t want a starter dear!). Anyway this was good. DF’s order was a family favourite here, the crispy duck salad.

Crispy duck salad – 8.50 Warm crispy duck with five spice dressing, toasted cashews, watermelon, beansprouts, sesame seeds, coriander and ginger

This is generally delicious with the duck going really well with an unusual variety of other Asian flavours and the watermelon/salad element keeping it light as an appetiser. Unfortunately something wasn’t quite right on it tonight, the duck was overly crispy to the point of losing it’s meaty texture and DF (despite having this dish before) didn’t complain to us about it until he was on the last bites. So it was too late to send it back, I tried it and they had cremated the duck a little bit but hey ho.

DM meantime chose Tempura prawns with salt and pepper squid – 8.75 Crunchy fried prawns with salt and pepper squid, wasabi miso sauce and Sriracha.


We’ve had this before (TBH there’s not much on this menu we haven’t tried between us) and it was great as ever. The crunch on their calamari and the prawns comes out perfect every time and the sauce it comes with is gorgeous, a spicy umami-ish mayonnaise is how I’d describe it. We all had at least one piece of this, it’s a little too much deep fried stuff for one as a starter and DM did struggle to finish it.

Between starters and mains the sun set leading to my first panicked attempts to change the settings on my phone to deal with some poor lighting - he says preparing for some poorly lit photos. Anyway main courses and like Cardi B and Nicki Minaj I have beef.

I said I like it like that

This was the Minute steak – 15.95 Grilled thinly-beaten steak with peppercorn sauce, onions, thick cut chips and watercress. They asked if I wanted it pink or medium which I wasn’t expecting a choice (went for pink). This was great, I never order minute steak but I seen someone else have this and it looked good, really good piece of beef not a cheap cut like you assume you’ll get with this (I suppose it was £16!). The sauce arrived on top of the meat in a surprising departure from protocol. It came with thick-cut, romantically lit chips.


Everything on my main was good. Just to prove DW was here she ordered Sirloin Steak, only the third most expensive thing on the menu, she wasn’t feeling 100%. This was ordered rare and with a side of mash plus she added their (amazing) red wine and rosemary jus which comes with an additional pouring ceremony.


I didn’t sample it but there’s a chunk still in the fridge that might disappear if she stays in bed any longer She liked it anyway, meat here is always good quality and you could pour that jus on mcnuggets and they would taste like a restaurant dish - note I haven’t tried this... yet.

DF was starting to cotton on to the food photography and piecing together from DW (despite my evasive answers) that I was going to share the photos in some sort of blog. Bearing in mind how hard it was to remotely share a folder of photos with my folks I’m fairly sure he’ll never find this (but just in case, love you dad - I’m impressed )

Anyway he ordered Steak Tartare – 19.50 Hand-chopped beef striploin with a Tabasco mustard dressing, cornichons, shallot, parsley, egg yolk and thick cut chips. This came with another portion of the chips pictured earlier and he added a side of spinach (also shown is DW’s mash). It is a lot of steak tartare on the main course portion!



He’s known for ordering the thing on the menu with an egg on it and this was no exception. There was some scepticism when he chose it that he knew what it was and at least two people tried to talk him out of it but in the end it went down well and we were spared a Mr Bean style steak tartare performance. I didn’t try this but think I have had it once before, it’s ok if you like that sort of thing - prefer a nice carpaccio myself.

Final main was DM’s crab linguine. She liked this, nice sauce and a big portion which defeated her after the heavy starter. The crab came in a variety of forms including some that was still attached to claws to her surprise (not sure she was too please with that bit but no cracking was required, they were more like claw tips). Pouring was involved if memory serves me right.

Onto desserts and only DF and I had room.


I went for a classic creme brulee.


This is great, a wide pan but very shallow brulee so you get a lot of caramel to the cream and it’s not overwhelmingly big. Most importantly no extra ingredients like white chocolate, fruit in it etc. which is a no no for me.

DF had the Cappuccino Cake (Cappuccino cake – 7.25 Warm chocolate cake, milk mousse and coffee sauce). This is delicious, the mousse looks huge but is very light and the cake is not too heavy. He really liked it and polished it off rapidly following the final pouring ceremony of the evening.


My folks insisted on paying so I didn’t see the bill. Like I said it isn't cheap by any means but you can pay more than this for worse in the area and I tend to recommend this place

Next updates will be travel day stuff after we’ve arrived. Hope you join us for the trip