NYC Comes to London

Of the many things I like in and about New York, I miss the steakhouses the most. So, imagine how thrilled I became when I heard the news Friday that the Palm was opening in London that night! I immediately got on the phone and secured a booking for Saturday night. Since then, I have been in a state of great anticipation, but also high anxiety driven by the fear that the London version will fail to meet the New York original's high standard.

I've always had mixed feelings about New York steakhouses the Palm and Smith & Wollensky branching out to other cities. It can only dilute the franchises, as the copies can never measure up the original - and they don't. They also run the risk of becoming chain restaurants like Chili's or Olive Garden, which I guess they really are, albeit with a much higher level of quality.

That said, because I do not go to New York often enough but do travel occasionally to other large American cities, I really like that I can eat at the Palm or Smith & Wollensky when I go to Miami, Chicago or Los Angeles. These restaurants are close enough to the originals that I always enjoy them.

So on balance, and especially as I live in London, I view the Palm coming here as an exceptionally good thing. Not that there aren't any good steakhouses in London. I have found a few fairly good places. None of these, however, come close to the experience at the Palm or its New York brethren.

I will give you a full report on tonight's meal next week. If the London Palm stands up to the original, and if my wallet can take it (which is highly unlikely), I'm hoping spend many happy evenings there eating steak.

In the meantime: your move, Smith & Wollensky.

Cameron's House

For a cool $2.3 million, you can buy the house where Ferris Bueller launched his friend Cameron's father's Ferrari through the glass walls and into a ditch.

(Picture via The Telegraph)

Sunshine State

Some observations from Naples, on southwest Florida's beautiful Gulf Coast:

1. Everyone drives huge cars and SUV's. I'm always amazed by the number of Cadillacs and Lincolns here (and I never knew Saab made an SUV).


2. White sandy beaches and warm gulf water suite me just fine.


3. The older age demographic of both locals and tourists is noticeable everywhere (and I'm contributing).


4. These alligators look like they could easily turn a small domestic pet into a tasty snack.


5. It may take me a while to get used to dinner at 4.30 pm.


6. Warm weather beats cold weather hands down.


7. A lot of people here still really like Dick Cheney.

Return to Prague

It's been almost exactly one year since my last visit to Prague, and this time my stay is proving to be a much more pleasant affair. Last time, I found my hotel seriously sub-standard and to top it off, my trip coincided with the Champions League final causing me to miss all of the match, except the part where Chelsea lost.

This time I'm staying in a infinitely better hotel, the Pachtuv Palace, which overlooks the Charles Bridge and the Prague Castle. The room is great, the service personal and efficient and the location spot on. First rate all around. I'm enjoying myself despite the fact that I'm here on business and doing nothing else but work.

And, Chelsea has already bowed out of the Champions League (I'm still having a hard time talking about it), so I don't have that to worry about this time.

Walk of Shame

A while back, I commented about how I found it amusing to watch people who have slept somewhere other than their own bed make their way home on Sunday mornings. Now I find that doing this actually has a name: the "walk of shame."

I came across it while reading a site called Texts from Last Night. Their hook is "Remember that text you shouldn't have sent last night? We do." Recipients of these text faux-pas forward them to this site for all the world to see. Very funny, and usually pretty vulgar.

Anyway, the text that caught my attention was:

The good thing about walking home in a dress on Sunday morning is that people mistake my walk of shame as a walk to God.

Pretty good.

And after doing a little more poking around, I found that the Huffington Post reported last summer that "the 'morning after' look has morphed from ignominy to desirability -- the walk of shame has become chic."

My favourite, though, is the report in Campus Delight (albeit fictitious) that describes a walk of shame hall of fame to be opened near Boston University. The piece says:

An independent alumni group of Boston University, long known throughout the Northeast as a party school, unveiled plans yesterday to open a ‘Walk of Shame Hall of Fame’. The Hall will honor BU students who have gained a certain amount of celebrity throughout the campus for shacking up with randoms, then making that long walk home the next morning in their nighttime attire.

(Photo from Campus Delight)

Maybe they should do this for real.

The Future of Portfolio Management

Even though the world's financial markets remain in turmoil, recent rises in equity markets have re-kindled interest in stock-picking, with many investors desperate to make their money back.

An article in yesterday's Evening Standard highlights the difficulty in choosing a portfolio that will actually make money. They set out to discover "Who is better at picking shares in the midst of a major recession — a highly trained, media-friendly stockbroker, or the office cat?"

The result? Over the past six months, the stockbroker's portfolio beat the overall FTSE 100 return, achieving a 6% gain, but failed to match the cat's strong 14% gain over the period.

Separately, Metro reports that rattraders.com uses trained rats to choose whether stock prices will rise or fall by pressing levers. When they make the right decisions, the rats receive bonuses just like real traders, although the rats get food rather than cash.

Rattraders.com says:

Our program is a professional service to the financial industry; rats are being trained to become superior traders in the financial markets. Using our own methodology in accordance with well-established animal training techniques, our subjects learn to recognize pattens in historical stock and futures data as well as generating trading signals. We provide solutions for tick based trading data and day based data. RATTRADERS rats can be trained exclusively for any financial market segment. They outperform most human traders and represent a much more economic solution for your trading desk.

Potential cat-rat office politics aside, for those calling for serious reform in financial market practices, perhaps the day has arrived.

I know I'm putting my cat to work on my portfolio immediately.