It was a toss-up between the lunchtime buffet at China Red in Hertford Street, or the Handy Nasty (Han Dynasty) near West Orchards. We chose China Red simply because we were nearer to it at the time.

The buffet was fairly cheap at £5.90-ish. The selection was reasonable given the price. Starters included prawn toast, chicken satay sticks, ribs, spring rolls. Main courses included beef curry, sweet and sour chicken, noodles, rice.

The food was tasty, but the disadvantage of eating at lunchtime is that I can't eat as much as in the evenings, so I didn't get to have as many platesful as normal.

We went back to Aqua for a meal tonight. We were there as part of a conference organised at the University.

Everything seemed to go smoothly. When you are a group of over 50 people in a small restaurant, you appreciate that the service can sometimes be a bit slow, especially when they're still open as normal.

The food was excellent. When we arrived, there were bowls of olives on the tables. The first course arrived and consisted of plates of falafel and pizza. Subsequent courses had pasta, pizza and a bit plate of spiced chicken.

After the meal, most of us went down the road to the Whitefriars pub for a pint. A lot of the people with us were from other universities and they liked the old medieval building, and the range of beers on offer.

We've seen a few films recently which were highly regarded by either critics or the Oscars:

There Will be Blood
No Country for Old Men
Brokeback Mountain.

They all fell into the 'well photographed but rather slow' category.

There Will be Blood started off rather strangely. No dialogue for the first part of the film, with eerie music which reminded me of the 'moon monolith' sequence of 2001. The oil rig fire sequence was visually spectacular. The ending was a bit odd.

No Country for Old Men looked like it would be a more straightforward film, with a more of an actual story. It was well acted, with Tommy Lee Jones settling into a similar role to the one he played in "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada". The ending was somewhat unexpected.

Brokeback Mountain wasn't an easy film to watch. Not really because of the homosexuality, but due to the amount of mumbling which made it difficult to hear what people were saying.

I'm not a big fan of musicals, but we went to watch this anyway. It hasn't changed my views on musicals.

I didn't find the songs very memorable. Johnny Depp's singing sometimes sounded a bit like David Bowie. The actual story was ok - I think I'd have preferred it as a 'normal' film.

When I got home, I decided to check the Movies application on Facebook to see if any friends had reviewed it. I mis-spelt the name, missing out the final 'e'. The list of 'near matches' for the titles was bizarre to say the least.

We've walked past this place lots of time but had been put off by the loud music coming through the front doors. It was much quieter this time so we ventured inside.

The restaurant isn't licenced but they have an extensive range of soft drinks, including freshly made fruit smoothies. We shared a mozarella and balsamic onion garlic bread starter, which was very good with lots of cheese stuffed inside. We then took advantage of their mid-week £4.99 pasta and pizza offer, and had a couple of 12" pizzas (wood fried according to the sign outside) and a penne pasta dish.

At full price, most main courses are around £7 each, which is good value. When the £5 offer is running, they become amazing value for money. An optional 10% service charge is added to the bill, but as the food was great and the service was friendly, we had no objection to paying it. This was in stark contrast to MYO where they added a compulsory service charge and illegally tried to force us to pay it. As a result we decided to never return to MYO but we're certainly going back to Aqua in the future.

They have a website which lists their menu and prices: www.aqua-food-mood.co.uk

I want to eat at the Zesty Fork restaurant. I've seen the advert for it a dozen or more times. It's there every time a newspaper or magazine reviews or discusses the film.

The sign is only on screen for a fraction of a second - one of many "blink and you'll miss it" jokes in the film.

The writers probably worked hard coming up with some scenes or clever in-jokes. Unfortunately for them, the bit most people will remember is Homer holding the pig up to the ceiling, singing Spider-pig Spider-pig, does whatever a Spider-pig does....

This is a 'new' Persian restaurant Far Gosford Street. It's been open for a while now but this was our first visit.

It was fairly quiet when we went in. The proprietor greeted us and described the menu, recommending a few dishes. For our first course, Emma and I decided to stick to what we knew, and had Falafel and Halloumi. Neither was particularly Persian but both were good. The falafel was crunchy and doughnut shaped, and was coated with sesame seeds, which gave it some extra taste and texture. Stuart had lamb and mushrooms.

The main courses were mostly between £7-10, including rice. Slow cooked or stewed meats featured prominently. I decided to choose the proprietors recommendation, which was lamb cooked in a sauce with spices and a dried lime. We were brought a lime to examine, sniff and taste. It was unusual, with a more delicate flavour than I expected. Emma chose chicken legs which had been cooked in some kind of flavoured liquid or stock. A bowl of this cooking liquor was provided as sauce to go with the meal. Stuart chose one of the more expensive meals at £11, but it did consist of 2 different types of steak.

Emma and I were too full for dessert, but Stuart had Baklava. He seemed to enjoy it, eating it all without giving us a taste, although we'd had it before elsewhere.

The food was tasty, the service was friendly. I think this is another restaurant to re-visit, to further explore their menu.

If you know where to look, Coventry has some great restaurants.

I am currently reading Where Did It All Go Right?, by Andrew Collins. The broadcaster and journalist tries to counter the fashion for 'miserable childhood' autobiographies with this book, where he describes growing up in a fairly normal family in Northampton in the 70s.

The book is effectively a time capsule of that decade, with chapters alternating between describing aspects of his home life (sometimes in great detail), and extracts from his diaries. He's a few years older than me so some of the TV and music was different to my childhood, but some aspects were painfully familiar.

The chapter called Supermousse covered food in the 70s and was an absolute gem. He came to the conclusion that, although kids eat rubbish today, things weren't actually that much better back then. He presented extracts from his diary describing meals, and most of it was out of packets or tins. Pasta and rice were non-existent, beans and chips were ubiquitous. A lot of this was similar to my own recollections. Vegetables did mostly consist of carrots and peas (with sprouts at Christmas of course). In our family, Cauliflower Cheese made an appearance after I discovered it at my Aunt and Uncles wedding and ate several platefuls.

Potatoes were the main bulk, usually chips or mashed, or sometimes mashed then fried - we sometimes had 'Bubble and Squeak' if there was leftover cabbage. One thing people did do better in the 70s was re-use leftover or spare food, probably because it was more expensive in real terms than today.

He mentions the lack of curries, or anything rice based really, but no mention of rice pudding. In the book, pasta was largely confined to tins of spaghetti, but at least we had Macaroni Cheese, usually out of a tin but I remember my mum making it on occasion, and thinking it took an awfully long time. The home made cheese sauce was better than the tinned variety though.

The 70s was a decade full of terrible food, but through no fault of the people living through it. Most people had never encountered foreign food, most people had never been abroad and even those who had were largely wary of the strange foods on offer. People weren't used to experimenting with food. Ingredients which are common now were a rarity back then - I don't remember seeing peppers, aubergines or courgettes as a child (recently in Asda, we saw Courgettes on the shelf under 'Exotic Veg' - I hope that was a mistake and they don't still consider such a common vegetable as exotic. But this was Asda so you never know.)

We were surprised at the length of the queue when we got to the cinema. I expect a lot of people were taking advantage of the Orange Wednesday offer where you get 2 tickets for the price of 1 using an Orange mobile phone, but the queue was still ridiculous. It was certainly the longest I've ever seen at the Skydome, curving and snaking around the foyer until it was almost in the car park. It took us about 40 minutes to get to the front and buy our tickets.

It wasn't too busy in the film itself - I don't know what films everyone else was watching but thankfully they weren't all in with us.

The film itself has had some fairly indifferent reviews but I don't think it really deserved them. The humour might not be so original any more but the film was still funny. It took a while to really get started though but it got quite funny towards the end, and if a film ends well then you tend to think of it as a better film. I think that's what earned Casablanca its classic status anyway. The 3rd Shrek film certainly isn't a classic but it's funny and worth watching.

I don't really have time for a full review but it was a good film despite its 3 hour running time. I had to nip out at the start because we forgot to validate our parking on the way in and we didn't know if there would be anyone at the desk on our way out.

The film was a good balance of comedy, surreal and serious (well as serious as a supernatural pirate caper can be). The visual style was more impressive than the previous ones with some impressively shot sequences, such as when the Black Pearl was in the middle of the salt flats. The sequence which followed was like a bizarre version of Fitzcarraldo.

I don't usually review trailers but the film was preceded by the trailer for the Transformers film. It was like a psychotic version of the Citroen advert where the car turns into an ice skater. I know the advert borrowed from the original Transformers idea but seeing a sequence from the film where a car/robot skates along, it was just too similar to the advert. We were also treated to the proud boast that it was a Michael Bay film. That's not a phrase to make me rush eagerly to the cinema.

I was still feeling a bit full after last nights visit to the Oriental Palace so I don't think I managed to eat as much as I might otherwise have done. This was an office trip which also included the Senior Manager and Secretary/PA so I thought it wise to show a little restraint and not over-fill my plate. This plan may have back-fired because I needed more visits to the serving area, so it may have looked like I was eating more than I was.

Jimmy Spices is yet another of the Asian/Italian buffet places which seem to be quite popular these days. The starters included spring rolls, pizza slices, assorted types of salad and pasta. Main courses were the usual selection of curries but also a 'Live Stir Fry' where you select the raw ingredients and have them cooked for you. There was no sign of the Thai food which is advertised but there were a lot of empty spaces where the serving bowls were so I imagine a fuller selection is offered in the evenings.

Puddings were more limited than at other buffet places. There was Fruit, Strawberry mousse, ice cream and something resembling a stodgy cheesecake but on a thin sponge base. The one novel feature was the provision of ice cream cones but sadly no sauces or sprinkles.

There were three of us this time around so we managed to try more dishes than last time. Never afraid to repeat ourselves, we started off with the excellent Dim Sum selection and Butterfly King Prawns this time with Curry Triangles, which were like small vegetable samosas and came with a curry sauce to dip them in.

We continued the familiarity theme with a repeat of the Jill Yuen chicken, which is battered pieces of chicken served with onions and chilli. The Crispy duck was also excellent.

The main course featured Noodles and beansprouts, and Sizzling Chicken with ginger. We felt like we still had some room left so had a second helping which included Pork and mushrooms and Egg fried rice. We would have managed ok if they hadn't brought us a double portion of rice.

Location: London Road, near junction 4 of the ring road.

We've driven past this place lots of times and noticed the banner on the outside of the building advertising their 'eat as much as you can' evening menu. Unlike most other 'all you can eat' places this isn't a buffet. Instead you get to choose from the menu and eat as many different dishes from each course as you can. The only other place I've been to where they do this was restaurant called Raffles in Chester. Although you have to wait a bit for each course, it does mean that all the food is freshly cooked unlike at buffet restaurants where it may have been sitting in the hot trays for an hour or more. See more ...

This was an unusual film to open on Valentines Day, but I suppose it offered a bit more choice for people who didn't want to sit through some dreary rom-com. Simon Pegg is joined by his usual lardy side-kick Nick Frost, and a who's who of British acting (including Timothy Dalton, Bill Nighy, Steve Coogan, Bill Bailey, Jim Broadbent, Edward Woodward, Anne Reid, Billie Whitelaw).

At two hours, it was longer than the average comedy but managed to keep going without running out of steam. Very funny pretty much from start to finish. I lost count of the number of film references and spoof sequences, but a lot of them were quite subtle and were worked into the film quite well.

The much anticipated bar and restaurant complex in the Old Fire Station finally opened last month. One of the restaurants there is MYO which provides all-you-can-eat Indian, Chinese and Thai food.

They offer a fairly lacklustre salad bar but the Indian food really shines. There is a wide range of starters and curries. All the ones I tasted were very good with a nice balance of spice and heat. The Chinese food on offer includes a stir fry section where you choose from a range of meats and vegetables and have them cooked while you wait.

The dessert selection included the now ubiquitous chocolate fountain. There were mini bits of swiss roll and a really tasty treacle sponge available for dunking.

The only problem we encountered was when we asked for the bill. They initially tried to bill us for 8 people despite the fact that only 7 turned up. They were fairly quick at bringing us a corrected bill though. We were then horrified to find that they had added a 10% Service Charge. For a Self-Service restaurant! Drinks were brought to the table but we served ourselves food. One of our party paid by credit card and they forced him to pay the full amount including the compulsory enforced tip. We paid the rest of the bill in full and left them some change for the tip but it fell slightly short of the 10% they demanded. It soured the whole dining experience and I'm unlikely to ever go back there again.