ate at the bar at hamersley's last night. the food was very good, but andy and i both were rather offended actually at how the bartender was rude and condescending on two separate instances, so much so that we complained about it. mini rant: why is it so hard to get good service anywhere? andy points out that service in england is poor all the time, but still you'd think it wouldn't be that hard to teach your waitstaff, especially a bartender, to be gracious, polite, and eager to please. and it really does make a tremendous difference on how enjoyable your meal is. and then it's funny how you get perfect friendly and polite service in unlikely places, like some hole in the wall place like samraat or dok bua. i find the whole situation to be completely baffling. anyway, back to the food. mmm. i had the wild mushroom soup w/ white truffle oil which was very mushroom-y. i also had buttery/lemon spinach noodles w/ white asparagus which had a bit of sheep's milk cheese, spinach, and some nice little bits of some type of strong, earthy mushroom. andy had the tuna which he said was great, and it came w/ this beet "cake" (basically three layers of beet with goat cheese in between) that, surprisingly in a good way, had mustard on it. for dessert we had the orange meringue which i thought had a hint of sesame but which andy didn't taste. a note about desserts; andy summed it up the best. he said we end up ordering desserts not because we expect them to be any good, but because we wonder if this will be the one time that it is good. when we thought about the last time we've had a really excellent dessert we came up w/ a complete blank, though (although i have to say that i still have fond memories of the creme brulee i had at radius, and the chocolate plate at great bay was also good). where in the world can we get a good dessert?