You may have seen on our Facebook Page that we met Lord Livingston, Minister of State For Trade & Investment, at Sesame Lifts . They produce those lovely lifts that appear from disappearing stairs. The video below shows a lift for a residential Listed Building in Edinburgh but I digress, the meeting was a surprising one as the ‘Lord’ thought BBS was great idea and he had read all about us! We are now being cheeky and asking him to recommend a BBS Pictorial Access Description for the Houses of Parliament….
We also went to Terroirs off The Strand. They’re part of the group that owns Brawn (see our review here), a good accessible find in Columbia Market. Terroirs is a great wine bar, something of a new/revived trend from the 80’s as more and more seem to be opening in and around London which are a change from the Gastro Pub as the emphasis is on the quality and variety of wines. At Terroir many of the wines come straight from the growers and we let our waitress choose our white wine. When it arrived it was cloudy but apparently that’s how it is without the ‘added chemicals’ resident in many wines. We took her word for it and it was a delicious flavour.
The extra positive is I had no hangover in the morning. The food was good and consisted of charcuterie and pate which was more than enough as the portions were very generous – a good taste of France. Wheelchair access is only on the street level as all the toilets and the bar are down 4 stairs, with a bannister. Obviously there’s no disabled toilet. Nevertheless we give them 2 BBS Ticks as it had plenty of style and the wine & food were superb in simple way.
In a similar vein we went to Vinoteca in Chiswick which is a ‘cool and cosy neighbourhood gem’. There was a big step to get over at the entrance but after that everything is flat and there’s a good spacious disabled toilet. It’s in the dining room but it’s a small venue and at least they’ve bothered! There is a bar area but it’s inaccessible as it’s down 3 steps. The food again was very good without being over pretentious and the wines were very interesting and different from the usual Chablis, Gavi and Pinot Grigio. They again support small growers so the choice was left to the staff as we didn’t know what to choose from the list – never heard of most of them. Luckily they really know their stuff and made choices to suit three very different palates.
They get 2.5 BBS Ticks as the wines were excellent and although access wasn’t perfect I always have to applaud a small business that spends money on a disabled toilet in a small space. Definitely going back.
See you in a couple of weeks as off to explore Mykonos – an adventure as not many places appear to accommodate a wheelchair………I’ll let you know.