Tomato, Toe-mah-toe.

One of my favorite establishments on "The KR" (which is what us Chelsea-ers call The King's Road for short) is a restaurant called Big Easy.
It's a Crab Shack style, American-sized portions place that serves home-style cooking, and has a different "All You Can Eat (fill in the blank) + Free Margarita" special every night of the week.

Their slogan, "put a li'l south in yo' mouth..."

Big Easy view from The KR

Inside the Crab Shack

Eating at Big Easy is like coming back to America for a few hours. There's a live band covering "Brown Eyed Girl" and they have Red Velvet Cake on the dessert menu. It's tacky, but it's awesome - and the food is delicious. So I organized a night out at Big Easy to show all my English friends what dining in America is like.

A hungry group of 15, we crammed into two long tables surrounded by oversized twinkle lights and banged up road signs and began to evaluate the oversized menus and chalkboard specials.

I'm a fajita girl myself, so my mind was made up before I sat down. But all my friends were drawn in by the all you can eat shrimp and the lobster festival. Most of them had never tried lobster! Apparently its not very common in England, only in very fancy restaurants where it's priced at about £45 - so this is understandable. A £14 lobster was very alluring to the Brits.

I realized a strategy that if just one person ordered the shrimp, we could all have their fill of them because they were "all you can eat." I love cheating the system.

My mates were like kids in a candy store when the food came. 

"This is amazing," shouted my friend Nick sitting next to me, who had ordered lobster but was also sharing my fajitas.

"I've got unlimited prawns on my left, fajitas on my right and lobster and chips in front of me!"

You're in American, Nick! They're called shrimp, and fries.

My Brit friends have started constantly making fun of my accent - like I'm the one who sounds ridiculous when I speak. They like to repeat everything I say in a high-pitched hick-voice, which could not be farther from how I actually sound. 

Peels of laughter last night when I said "no tomatos please." 

"HAHAHAHA You mean toe-MAH-toe?"

No, I mean tomato.

I've encouraged them all to come visit me back in New York, or better yet Ohio - where they will be surrounded by Americans and the tables will turn.

Despite making fun of my American-ness, they all LOVED Big Easy, and were extremely appreciative of my planning...perhaps a little too much! I suddenly got sung a shouting round of "Happy Birthday" as a token of appreciation, although they all well know my birthday is February. It may have been their free margaritas singing.

My night at the Crab Shack was a pre-cursor to my upcoming trip to America. I leave tomorrow night for JFK and am overjoyed by the fact that I will wake up in England, and fall asleep in America! I also get to see my best friends that I haven't seen in ages and work from my New York office for a day before continuing onto Ohio after work Friday night for a long weekend with my entire family! 

That's right - all 7 of us + 3 spouses + 2 babies + 2 toddlers + 3 dogs. That makes 17. 

This whole weekend was my bright idea, and somehow I got all 16 others on board. Perhaps I am a good group planner after. 

I asked my mates if there was anything they wanted me to bring back from America. 

Their requests?

"Those chocolate peanut butter bits, please!"(Reese Pieces)

"Proper tortilla chips would be lovely" (Tortilla Chips here in England look and taste like Doritos)

"Peanut Butter!" (You can get that here despite what they think...)

"Supplies to make those sah-mores you are always going on about" (They mean S'mores)

None of my friends have any idea what a s'more is - and I am very excited to show them on our camping trip in October. If they thought lobster was good - just wait until they get a load of s'mores!