Hospital, Sloane Square Pubs and Oliveto

Posted on 2008/06/15 10:22:43 (June 2008).

[Monday 9th June]
Went to the hospital for another consultation after work. Having satisfied himself that it definitely isn't anything else (like a muscle strain or something), the surgeon is now recommending I go in for surgery. Don't have an exact date yet, but I'm hopefully aiming for mid July. It sounded like it would hopefully just be day surgery, although I was surprised to hear the surgeon recommend I take up to two weeks off work afterwards. Well, it'll probably be a nice chance for a good rest.

Just like the last couple of times I went to the hospital, I felt a bit out of sorts after finishing there this evening, and as it was still only 6:30 and a pleasant early summer's evening, I thought I would go for a bit of a wander. I walked to Sloane Square, and once there determined there must be a nice little pub somewhere in the vicinity at which I could park myself and mull things over. I found just that - a very nice little pub called The Antelope. Very nice interior, although the clientele were a bit on the posh side. I also sampled the nearby Duke of Wellington which didn't have quite the charm of The Antelope, but was still a perfectly reasonable little boozer in and of itself.

I'd given Chie a call earlier, and suggested she come straight to Sloane Square from work, on the premise we could meet up for dinner. Actually though we ended up walking back from there towards Victoria, as there was an Italian restaurant we'd been wanting to try for a while.

So we had dinner at Oliveto - Chie had heard about it because it is apparently very popular with London's Japanese community, and sure enough once we got in there we did find at least two tables of Japanese diners.

I was altogether very impressed, albeit a bit on the pricey side. I ordered a pasta dish (bavettine ai crudo) then pizza ai funghi, Chie had sardines for a starter and "spahetti ricci". It was all very well made, but certainly not cheap, and the prices seemed a bit random - my very simple pasta dish, effectively a starter, was a surprising £13. My pizza on the other hand, very large and lavishly topped with some extremely tasty porcini, was under a tenner. The bavettine was quite good, but not really worth the money. The pizza on the other hand was ludicrously good. I just don't think there could have been any conceivable way to improve it.

I would definitely go again, but I'd probably just stick to the pizza next time.

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