Welcome to Newsletter #12.

This week we have four restaurant reviews and a new TV show that you will definitely want to give a miss.

Food

I was lucky enough to have a few meals out over this past week so thought I'd take this opportunity to tell you about the experiences.

Some of my friends from the gaming world met up last weekend to watch some of the biggest annual Dota tournament that's being played out over the course of a few weeks. We stayed at Tom's house in Cambridge and had a couple of takeaways:

Four Seasons, Cambridge

A fairly inconspicuous restaurant, this Chinese has a few tables inside but looks to be predominantly for takeaways. We did the unthinkable and actually walked over and ordered in person; no phone call, no app, fantastic.

Between four of us, we shared spare ribs, prawn toast, kung po chicken, egg fried rice, chicken chow mein and a dish which wasn't on the menu but they were kind enough to cook for us. The lady serving was super friendly, the food was cooked quickly and given how hungry I was, it was a great meal. On any other day, I might have complained about the dry ribs and lack of sauce in the kung po.

Butch Annie's, Cambridge

Opting for a delivery we made full use of Tom's expert local knowledge and tried Butch Annie's hand-crafted burgers. I've always been dubious of delivered burgers: the potential risk of a well-travelled lukewarm burger wrapped in a soggy bun is not appealing. However these arrived hot and fresh and very tasty! I opted for the 'Lewd Lizzie' with a side of rosemary salt fries. Highly recommended.

Pizza Express, Banbury

I haven't been to a Pizza Express in years, but a new one opened up fairly close to us and with visiting parents and a BOGOF offer, I couldn't resist. I had a pepperoni and mushroom pizza and when it eventually arrived, it was worth the wait. My parents weren't so lucky as their Florentine pizzas arrived without the egg, as they were sadly out of stock (if only we'd thought to bring along some of the chicken eggs!). We'd already been waiting close to an hour so it wasn't an option to order an alternative.

Lains Barn, Wantage

We attended a wedding at this picturesque venue earlier this week, with a fully vegetarian menu. We weren't sure what to expect food-wise, but throughout the day it was fantastic. I tried every canapé (multiple times) and they were all good: you can't go wrong with anything with a bit of cheese. The main course was a hearty vegetarian lasagne followed by a delectable chocolate mousse. Later in the evening, tomato and pesto pizzas were served fresh from a stone pizza oven and even though I was still full from the meal earlier in the day, I couldn't help but polish off a couple of slices!

Film

Now that the final episode has aired, I'm working my way through the rest of The Rings of Power, Season 1 and expect to share some thoughts on this next week.

The only new thing I've watched is the first episode of The Mole on Netflix. It caught our eye as an interesting reality show: contestants have to work together to complete tasks worth monetary prizes, building up their prize-pool over the course of the series. The twist is that one of the contestants is a mole, trying to sabotage the group's effort whilst staying under the radar. The group takes a quiz each episode where they answer questions about the mole and the person with the fewest correct answers is eliminated.

I'll start by saying we won't be watching episode 2. It has the infuriating format of only giving you 15 minutes of content, stretched out across a 45 minute episode. As you're watching the tasks unfold, it constantly cuts to contestants commentating on what you're watching, post-event, as if they're giving their real time thoughts. Every single action prompts a 'This person did X so I started thinking: "Are they the mole?"' It's just tiring. It's a shame because the format has potential to make for interesting viewing, but this is truly terrible. Save yourself the grief and watch anything else.

Rating: 2/10

Dota

As mentioned above The International 2022 is the biggest Dota tournament of the year, with teams competing for a prize pool which currently stands at just over $18m. Last week saw the group stages followed by the main event and for the first time there has been a five day gap for the remaining four teams to rest and strategise before the finals are played this weekend.

Tournament favourite PSG.LGD have already been eliminated in 5th place while last year's winner Team Spirit only made it to the last 16. It's also interesting to note that two of the four teams remaining made it through the Last Chance Qualifiers, meaning they didn't earn enough DPC points throughout the year for an automatic invite, nor did they get through the regional qualifiers. Perhaps being forced to play more competitive games leading up the tournament has its benefits, or maybe with both teams being from Western Europe it shows how strong this region is compared with the rest of the world!

Tundra are going into the finals as very slight favourites over their fellow upper bracket rivals Team Secret and I hope they manage to pull it off. They have a unique style of play compared to all other teams where their offlaner is given farm priority and can pull them through the mid-to-late game, whereas their mid lane player acts as more of a playmaker, creating chaos whilst making space in that early-to-mid game.

Good luck to all teams involved!

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If you have any feedback, please get in touch and I hope to see you again for next week’s newsletter.

Thanks for reading and have a great week.

Adam