Uyen Luu

Who pays on the first date? The man, I would say and most of my friends would agree. Especially if he suggests the place and orders the wine. In my twenties, I was all about being an independent woman, who would pay for her own way, even dinner dates and drinks because I wanted to be in control. Nope, I was wrong and I was with boys who just took advantage of my generosity. (I even stupidy paid for boys to go on holiday with me – and its not to say its because I was wealthy, because I am not!).

A lot of women think that if they let the man pay the bill then they owe something to him, perhaps a night or more dates. Now in my thirties, I think I may have wised up a little, I offer to pay half of the bill if there is no consensus that he should pay it all.

But to be honest, if he pays it, he wins in my book, I would happily pay on the second date if he’s any good. He looses many points if he doesn’t. Its just the way it is.
“Did he pay?” Would be one of the first questions a friend would ask afterwards.
If yes, then,”O good, is he good looking? Is he nice?”
If no, she would (all) say, “dump him.”

I don’t want to be spending my future with someone, be it long term or short term and dividing up money. The worse is when the bill comes, he says, you had more wine than me, plus a dessert so I only owe this much. Gah! This actually happens a lot! This is where I say – forget it – !

Chivalry should not be forgotten. Opening doors and general politeness goes a long way. And girls always love to receive flowers! Very Good. Thank you! More Please!

The Look Of Love – (Upcoming Art Exhibition By Leluu & Fatine)

That moment, the moment at the end of the night when its time to go home… comes the moment of awkwardness. Is he going to kiss me? Is he not going to kiss me? Where will he kiss me? How shall I behave? Is my breath smelling ok?

The worst is when you are not so into the person and they are really keen. He is having full helm of the situation despite you giving him all the No- please-don’t-touch-me signals. He goes for it and most of the times when you least expect it like whilst crossing the road or whilst you are in the middle of giving him the cold shoulder with some speech about how busy you are and your heads crash into each other or his teeth bangs onto your lips or he simply ends up licking your face. Yuck! Sometimes you don’t know whether to kiss him back to be polite or deck him. (Depends on how dry your season is I guess).

Sometimes, he doesn’t try to kiss you at all and you think? What the hell? I am never brave enough to kiss him. So I just let it be. If he doesn’t get in contact, then its because he didn’t want to kiss you in the first place. No point rushing it and making a jack arse of yourself. Plenty of fish…in the…(wait! even fish is getting limited)!

But when you fancy the guy and he asks if he can kiss you or kisses you at the right moment, when you are ready and its brilliant. Its just brilliant! More brilliant if his eyes are closed, he caresses your hair and holds your face and kisses slowly and nicely – (not like he’s trying to dig his way down to Australia)!

And he goes home and you go home. Both smiling. And you can smell him on your face. Hmmm. : ) Knowing there will be a second date.

A full packed brilliant year – it was the start of (just) Leluu and the end of Fernandez & Leluu

Jamie Oliver and I did a supper club together: Leluu & Oliver

I started the Vietnamese Cooking Classes

ALMOST had Feist at my cooking class!

Said Goodbye to stuff

Did great singles nights My Singles’ Valentine

But fell ill from hard work and stress and ended up in Homerton Hospital : (

Read the best book ever The History Of Love which developed my thoughts, views and hopefully writing skills and also did great creative writing classes.

Still kept running the supper club with great Vietnamese dishes like it was Secret Saigon In London
and made many people happy in their bellies and full in spirits.

I went to Vietnam and reflected on belonging Flying Home: My Trip To Vietnam 2011

I showed Tim Hayward how to Cook Pho With Tim Hayward For The FT

I went to Berlin to be with my best friends for a 40th birthday party Happy Birthday To Daddy

I had an amazing Courvoisier Punch Birthday Party

photo by Paul Winch Furness

Co founded Grazing Asia At Jamie Oliver’s Test Kitchen – a supper club with 4 cooks from Japan, Malaysia, Burma and Vietnam.

I got to meet Meeting Stanley Tse – from Seewoo and worked on recipes for their Way On Chilli Oil Brand, Pearl River Bridge and Seewoo hampers Leluu For Seewoo

I went to California for my grandparent’s 60th anniversary and found out about the history of our family, after the war and our flights to freedom

The Monsoon, Bun Bo Hue, Elephant Man & My Uncle Thu
Stories from Uncle Thu, His Escape From Vietnam
Blood Cakes & Banana Blossom

I went to visit my friend in Hollywood, whose about to release a movie in 2012 called Project X
My Night With Nima Nourizadeh

When I came back to London, I witnessed the London Riots happen right outside my front door – it was a sad week for all.

I spent most of the year being single and loved it
A Single Serendipity
When We Were The Greatest, Rolling In The Deep & Two Weddings

I met a boy, had the best time but it was short lived.
Had the best meal of the year in Cinquecento – 500

Francesco Mazzei & his boy

Had lunch with Francesco Mazzei and his lovely family.
and a superb evening at Viajante – A Tour Of The Town Hall With Nuno Mendes

Started to write:  Love & Other Afflictions

In between, I cried, laughed and moaned. Always wishing for more, ate a hell of a lot, worked like a slave to myself, ruined relationships, burnt bridges and built long lasting friendships, love, lost my temper, walked the dogs and kept loading and unloading the darn dishwasher and formed an art to filling it up to the max and getting everything sparkling clean.At Christmas, I lost a boy.

Carp for pre Christmas dinner

I often get extremely excited about Christmas. I love giving gifts, I love receiving gifts and I love being festive. I’ve been invited to spend Christmas with boyfriend’s families and experienced the majestic white christmases in an Austrian barn with a 20 foot trees, decorated with real candles, home baked cookies. They would have a turkey so huge, you couldn’t see the shrivelled sweet old grandmother from across the table and with so much gift giving that it surfaces the whole lounge, (one area per person) and takes 3 hours to unwrap. The mother would spend a whole month arranging the perfect Christmas for her boys, even though they were not children anymore and what she did was magical.

It was a serious thing to be invited to spend Christmas with the potential in-laws but for me, it was also a gateway to the Christmas my mother would never be able to give my brother and I. Don’t get me wrong, she did her best when she could. We had real Christmas trees to the fake ones, to the very luxurious fake ones with beautiful decorations and presents but for most of my young life, I got the feeling that we did not belong. We spent our lives in the middle of the world with people who had different cultural values. My mother’s family in Vietnam and my father’s family in America. We always felt like we had been cast away – there were just the three of us on an island and Christmas was a way to remind us that we actually had no family.

My mother would spend Christmas with her best friends who also, didn’t have family in England, and combined, they were our family. We used to spend a week at her friend’s house and they would chat about food, make food, where to buy food and gossip. And so, when I was invited to spend Christmas away, my mother would be happy for me, to get away from a “poor house’s christmas”. She always wanted me to have better things.

Baked with Onion, Ginger, Lemon. Added Soy, Butter & Rosemary

But an outsider was still what I really felt whilst being at these different families’ homes on Christmas without my own. I observed and I smiled and I ate the dry turkeys, and opened thoughtful and un-thoughful gifts, sometimes feeling the love from the boy I was with and sometimes feeling it fade and fade.

I once felt the love fade so much that to my surprise, the boy tapped his glass with a knife and said, “I have an announcement to make: Leluu and I are getting married next year.”

I felt my face on fire, my smile nervously wobbled. Was that a proposal? The mother, a beautiful aged version of Grace Kelly, screeched her congratulations and hugged us both in what I can remember as with her claws digging into my back. The family roared in shock and champagne flutes were clinked and I looked the boy in the eyes from across the room and he looked away.

We broke up that year and he married someone else soon after. He probably offered her a ring.

Lego for The Boy From Alassio. I think he loved it.

I would often spend Christmas doing a tour at friend’s houses. I’d go to my (Polish) friend, Aggie’s house and we’d have the carp, herring, sour cream and the traditional works on Christmas Eve, and they would even buy presents for me and my dogs and we would even take bread together and give thanks to each other and then go to my Spanish friend, Fatima’s house where her parents would invite the entire Spanish neighbourhood of Arsenal over and we’d eat a whole roasted salmon, turkey and greasy Spanish things. Chorizo with everything!

Talking of Spanish, I once gave a boy a watch because he was often late but also because it was a beautiful watch and a Hugo Boss bag because it was better than carrying a blue plastic bag around and always forgetting your keys, wallet or phone. I was so excited to give it to him and he was happy to receive it but after 3 bottles of wine, he said that although I was very kind for giving him such expensive gifts and they were beautiful, he didn’t want it because, “that would break if I go rock climbing or deep sea diving.” (he doesn’t do either). He concluded by telling me I was an idiot and drove me to leave the house on Christmas morning and it took me 2 hours to walk home with all the gifts in tears. But at least it was sunny. I opened his gift and it was a book, “How To Stop Worrying & Do More.”

I soon came to discover that spending money on gifts is an issue for some boys. They feel uncomfortable that I would spend money on them because simply, they wouldn’t spend it on me. Money, somehow gets in the way of generosity, although a meaningful present doesn’t have to cost anything.

Is it better to do less at first and give more later? I don’t know… but this year, I am alone for Christmas. No tour. No in laws. My family came round and cooked me a lovely roast lunch and they left, because they should be with other people and party and enjoy when they can. It is hard for others to understand how that is totally, just OK. That’s what I love about my mother and my brother. In the end, we just care about each other’s happiness and enjoyment. I know they will always be there for me, but they don’t have to watch Christmas television with me.

I am waiting to host a majestic Christmas of my own and with my family. One year, it will come.

After meeting Stanley Tse and his daughter Lucy Mitchell at a lunch, my favourite oriental supermarket, Seewoo, asked me to write recipes and take photos for them. So I created 8 Chinese recipes and 8 Vietnamese recipes all for their Christmas hampers.

I gave them the idea for the hampers when I was talking about my Vietnamese cooking classes. I take everyone shopping and introduce people to my favourite ingredients, the cupboard essentials for Vietnamese cooking.

And so, they created the hampers and I had the pleasure in writing a few recipes for them and taking photos – my favourite thing! Click here to buy the Vietnamese hamper

You can buy them on the Seewoo website as Christmas gifts or anytime around the year for your favourite person! My recipes are included.

Pleasant. Pleasant to see familiar faces, from the lovely David Hesketh – Master Of Wine, MD of Laurent Perrier UK to the blogger supremes – Chris Pople, Food Stories, Hugh Wright, A Girl Has To Eat, Slow Food Kitchen and so forth. Disappointed not to see Algernon Moncrief though.

Chris Pople, David Hesketh, Lucy London

Each course was paired with a Laurent Perrier champagne: Ultra Brut, Millésimé 2002, Grand Cuvée – Grand Siècle, Demi-Sec and Cuvée Rosé. The meal was great! Everything was of course cooked very well and offered what fine dinning offers – mainly lobster! and that is just fine.

My companion, Ernest Yang Opoku and I couldn’t stop buttering the lovely selection of bread for our fair share of carbs to absorb at least 7 glasses of champagne. I would be happy if someone took me here for dinner (although I do wish fine dinning would explore more of the Eastern taste explosion avenue) but until I am all in Chanel, it will be a long time before it would be possible to return.

Apple Cider Marinated Mackerel, Horseradish Snow & Pickled Black Radish

Atlantic Cod, Leek Fondue, Smoked Potato, Yuzu & Champagne Sauce

Poached Scottish Lobster, Cep Mushroom Ravioli, Chicken Oyster Bisque

Rhubarb & Apple Milefeuille

Treats

A lovely but formal evening, thanks to WildCard PR for having me because they know I love champagne. I really do.