The Shed Restaurant in Notting Hill Gate For Fresh Farm Food, A Fun Venue, And Fun Surroudings

 

Delightful Decor

Amusing decor. Brick walls and wooden tables. I supposed the name suggests a cow shed and I sat opposite a picture of a cow. 

Sizes of Tables and Suitability For Groups

The tables are various sizes and shapes, round, oval or oblong. Sizes range from two-seater small round to a giant oval for a group of six or maybe more. There's no private room for small groups, but you could hire the whole restaurant for a big party.

The restaurant has a small front but stretches back and has a mirror at both ends which makes it seem even larger.

Fresh flowers are on the tables and it is a romantic and original place for a date night for a courting couple or a married couple wanting somewhere new and entertaining. It would also be a good place to bring a friend from overseas to show them that British food can be original, fresh and excellent.

Music was playing when I arrived, and I sat near it to avoid hearing a baby or toddler at the other end. By the time the restaurant filled up I did not notice the music, no trouble talking to my companion or the waiter, although my husband considered asking them to turn the volume down. 

Original fresh food. A real chef. The food comes from their farm, according to what is ripe for picking. The menu changes every day, sometimes twice a day.

Make Sure To See The Set Menu

At lunch time and evening there is a set menu which makes a massive saving. I was offered the a la carte menu. I asked if there was any special of the day and was not given the set menu. But my husband who was parking the car, and invested in a three hour higher priced parking, had found the set menu on the website. The main courses were around thirty pounds, a la carte, but so was the set menu of three courses. For two people, a great saving, or could have ensured we tried all three courses, not just one.

The set menu offered two choices of the starters and main dishes, so, although one was vegetarian, and we are not vegetarian, we had one of each and shared both. No choice of dessert, but we were happy to both have the same.

Our walk back through Notting Hill passing dinky little houses with colourful doors was entertaining. 

We had no time to visit Portobello market, which no doubt saved money and clutter in our home. But if you plan on doing this, ensure you order and eat fast or buy extra time on a parking meter. If you are coming by public transport, a bus stop is outside the door, and the underground railway station is around the corner, so check your options. 

Amusing Toilets

You must see the toilets which are highly amusing. The two cubicles are decorated differently with colourful wallpaper, and cartoons on the toilet lid and seat.

The manager was Italian Giovanni (Italian for John) who speaks perfect English, with a slight almost imperceptible accent, told us that the restaurant is owned by three brothers and they have six restaurants all over London and elsewhere. With a changing menu, you could visit it many times. Or try another of their restaurants for a change of venue. 

Where Next?

Also in the area, 

Portobello Market

The Museum of Brands.

Useful Websites

https://www.theshed-restaurant.com/

https://www.theshed-restaurant.com/private

Filing Photos By Dates - why label, keep or use old photos?

Problem
How to find photos you took years ago, or at an unknown date?

Places And Useful Labels
In my photos system, I have a section called places. This can be very handy. I used to leave my photos unlabelled. Now I tag them with every tag I can think of.

Eiffel Tower, Paris, France

It's obvious that the Eiffel Tower is the Eiffel Tower, is in Paris, and that Paris is in France. However, if I have a moment, I will label it, with all three pointers. The reason is that, a week or year later, if I am writing about Paris and want a symbol, I can find one quickly.

When you have several photos it is handy to have as much detail in labelling as possible. For example, I might have two dozen photos of a famous building, or even my own garden or balcony. I can see if one picture is a sunset or a daytime or nighttime photo. I can see if it is lawn (green grass), or a rose, or even a tree.

A Rose

Cut Red Rose on table.

But these labels will be handy hours, days or weeks later if I am looking for a picture of a rose, contrasting drought or weeds with green grass, or comparing the pine trees of England with the palm trees of Singapore.

I could label my rose as flower, or rose, or red rose, or red rose in vase or flower container, or red rose on table, to contrast with pink rose in garden.

Pink rose growing in garden in London, England.

 I have to search only one file and everything is in date order, the date of the email. In photo storage, the photos are stored when they were taken.

Downloading Photos
So If I download a free photo from Wikipedia, which was taken at the Notting Hill Gate Carnival in 2017, I would have to recall that it was taken in 2017 in order to find it.

Queen Victoria. Where?

I once downloaded a photo of a statue of famous composer and the photo instantly disappeared. I thought it had failed to be downloaded from the server to my computer.

The Statue of Liberty. When?

For weeks I did not realise what was happening. Then started looking for another Photo and found my statue picture. I finally twigged that my photos were being stored under the date they were taken. The solutions?

Important Dates
Firstly, to notice when the picture was taken from the detailed description in Wikipedia. I never used to take much notice of dates. Now I make a point of noticing every time.

I used to hate out of date pictures. Who needs a picture of their own high street or a shop from five years ago or ten years ago. For a travel writer, an out of date photo, even six months in a four-season country is a waste of time. A snowy scene is useless when you are writing in summer. Unless you are writing about booking a ski holiday for next Easter.

As a travel writer, I used to be selling stories immediately I came back from a trip. I had up-to-date photos and experiences.

Photographer?
You want to label the phtographer to give credit. I also want to know whether a photo was taken by me or by soembody esle. I might prefer to have a statue with a live person beside it.

Angela Lansbury standing by statues in Singapore. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Statues by railway station in Singapore. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Statues in Singapore. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Old Photos - Out of Date?
Now I can see the point of the old photos. You can show before and after photos. Has the new decor of a restaurant improved on the way it used to be a year ago? Will I or you or another reader be able to see that the place they remembered and didn't like has improved for the better?

I was at a meeting of travel industry people at the annual World Travel Market in London. One member of the audience complained that Tripadvisor kept old reviews. He said any review more than a month ago was irrelevant. The chef might have changed. The seasonal menu would have changed.

I disagreed. I had been to a hotel which has a broken window in a bedroom. The owner told me it had just happened and he would fix it. Should I believe him? I went online and discovered that people had been complaining about that and similar problems for years. Nothing got repaired or fixed. If I had only had this week's complaint, I might have thought it was one off. By carefully analysing all the reports over the years, it was clear that those people in the renovated top floor rooms gave the hotel glowing reports. Those in the middle floor rooms were all complaining.

Another interesting point. If all rooms in a hotel are the same size, you don't know whether you will get a good room or a bad one. Since the rooms were different sizes, you could see at a glance that a three-bed family room on the top floor was in good condition. So, you had to ask for and only book if you could get a three-bed family room.

You might think, if the place is run down in some areas, surely you should not give them your business at all. However, if you didn't want to pay twice the price for bland chain hotel room which could be in any country of the world, the hotel with the piano-playing owner, statues in the garden, board games for children, a clientele of bohemian and off-beat visitors to talk to, might be just thing - provided you got the renovated room and not the one with the broken window.

The other point is that I hesitate to say anything bad about a hotel or restaurant. What I think is a small portion might be just right for somebody else. Better to show a photo and let the viewer judge for themselves. My family can't agree on a meal. We have totally different tastes.

The old saying, a picture is worth a thousand words, holds true. An old picture showing the place is just the same, or tally changed, may be very useful.

But how do you find the old picture? We have come full circle.

Author
Travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, Angela Lansbury. Please bookmark your favourite posts and share links with your family and friends.

Notting Hill Gate Carnival Videos Are On YouTube! Music, Colour, Singing, Dancing!

Problem
I was looking on the BBC and Daily Mail sites and finding little of nothing.

Answer
Then I looked on Youtube and found this years' (Saturday Aug 27 2017) as well as 2017 all in one place without having to flip from one news site to the next.

The reporter getting daubed with paint:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzrEJSl_Yks

Nottingham 2017
I clicked on this because it popped up. I thought it was Notting Hill. better than the Notting Hill videos.
Best so far of this year - Nottingham Carnival 2017, starts with great music and lots of different bands. If there's one you don't like, slide the slider to the next.
ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIQRcF9tDss

Highlights of 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkI5og9jum8
Annoyingly when you copy the code you get the numbers and letters and not the title , so, especially when the video jumps to 'on next' you are not sure whether you have caught the current title or a subsequent one.

This has some good if repetitive music, some stunning near naked dancers of both sexes gyrating. I was reminded of the quotation that dancing is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire.

I just looked up the quotation. It was George Bernard Shaw. He said perpendicular, not vertical. As is usually the case, the relative nobody who repeats the quotation incorrectly succeeds in saying it more succinctly and memorably that the famous person's original.

I suppose the best part of the Notting Hill Carnival is being saved for the Grand finale tomorrow, Bank Holiday Monday. Come back.

Meanwhile:
Toronto Caribana 2017. If Rio has Rio Toronto has rears. "If you've got it flaunt it," says the nearest male in my family when I call him to comment. Busts too. Glamorous girls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuCXSLE8kQE


Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Author of Quick Quotations for Successful Speakers. See previous posts on Carnival in UK and worldwide. Please share links to your favourite posts.