Restaurant review: SANTO REMEDIO (London Bridge)

After Chelsea beat Manchester City to become Champions of Europe for the second time, it was only natural that I was in a celebratory mood. As this win coincided with the restrictions being lifted in the UK, I decided to combine celebrating my club's win, with making the most of the momentary freedom we were being granted.

I did not choose well. This was some of the food below:

Restaurant review: KIMCHEE (Holborn)

I was so delighted that Parasite rightly won Best Film and Director at the Oscars this year (as you can probably tell by me proudly wearing their merch!), that I had an informal victory lap in its honour. This involved having several drinks celebrating its win, but the most specific bit of celebrating I did was dining at a Korean restaurant, Kimchee.

Sadly, Kimchee did not serve the ram-don that was made so iconic by the thrilling scene in the movie, but it did serve bimbimbap, kimchee, pajeon, and various other staples of Korean dining, so I was excited to visit it, hoping that it would join On the Bab, BimBimBap and Gogi Korean Bar and Grill in the pantheon of fabulous Korean restaurants I’ve visited in London.

But this wasn’t to be. The food at Kimchee was awfully overpriced for what it was:

Those portions of kimchi are tiny, yet it cost £5!

Nice dinner I had last week with work.

As part of a client dinner, my Company prepared this gorgeous and delicious meal last week. It tasted and looked brilliant, so I thought it would be rude not to share pictures of all the courses!

OOTD: new haircut

With the sun finally hitting the UK, I decided my long hair of previous was getting too unmanageable, and thus, in trimming it, I've gone from Alicia Vikander in The Light Between Oceans length to Jessica Chastain in Miss Sloane length! And, in keeping consistent with the Chastain look, I've duly painted my nails black, like Liz Sloane had!

Dress: Marietta dress from Hobbs

Earrings: Amazon

Glasses: Red or Dead

The Marietta dress is now  the third dress from Hobbs I own (the other two: un et deux). Their dresses are perfect for the kind of aesthetic I'm going for at work: elegant and demure.

I find clothes definitely help with the 'fake it 'til you make it' mentality, by which I mean, even if I'm in a sub-optimal mood, if I'm at least sharply dressed at work, I feel better about myself. This then helps to improve my frame of mind, and how I carry out my work.

Mark Twain absolutely nailed it when he said 'clothes make the man'.

Restaurant review: KILN (Soho)

Kiln is a Thai restaurant situated at Brewer Street, in the heart of Soho, an area that is graciously devoid of any franchises. Instead, the streets are filled with restaurants of which there are, at tops, two or three others in the UK, meaning when you dine in this area, you can be certain that your tastebuds will be treated to something atypical.

The dishes in KILN are inspired by the regions where Thailand borders Burma, Laos and Yunnan, whilst incorporating some Chinese herbs in their seasoning. Thus, for those who like their regional food to be nice and mild, some of the dishes at KILN may initially surprise you with their sharp flavouring.

The choice on the menu is quite limited - the current menu only features three starters, three vegetarian/salad sides, four fish dishes, four meat dishes, and three choices of rice or noodles. But the idea is that what they do serve, they do exquisitely. Below are the  Aged Lamb & Cumin Skewer, Isaan Style Tamworth Sausage and Slow Grilled Chicken & Soy:

Restaurant review: KOUZU (Belgravia)

I bought a voucher to dine at Kouzu on BuyAGift. The restaurant fancies itself an upmarket Japanese restaurant, and the deal retails at £49 ordinarily, so I will be assessing it as if I paid this amount for the deal (in fact, I got a fair bit off the price due to a discount code, but I’m aware discount codes don’t occur all the time).

The starters were perfunctory. With regards to the salmon, if they were going for the 'high quality and low quantity' vibe that's typical of many high-class restaurants, they really needed to work on the presentation, because what is photographed below doesn't scream 'high-class' to me:

Restaurant review: DAWAT (Tooting)

I could have South Asian cuisine for dinner most evenings, and Tooting boasts two great Pakistani restaurants, situated across the road from each other, to ensure that you never get tired of going to the same place.

My comments about Lahore Karahi pretty much all apply to Dawat, with regards to affordability, portion sizes and the no-frills dining experience. However, of the two, I think Dawat just edges it, because, from my two visits to Dawat, I felt their ingredients were fresher. See the photo below:

Restaurant review: THE BREAKFAST CLUB (Soho)

The film is iconic, setting the bar for talky-dramedies channelling teenage angst for years to come. So famous is it, that is has been name-dropped or riffed on in several teenage-orientated movies, including Easy A and The DUFF, and most recently, Ready Player One.

The restaurant was established a good 20 years after the film was released, but such is the goodwill and strong reputation it has forged, that The Breakfast Club is as crucial to any London-based foodie’s itinerary as the film is to a movie buff’s viewing list.

I had long been scared off eating here, however, because on any random walk past the restaurant, it had always had a massive queue outside it. Having succumbed to the marvels of Eat Tokyo and On the Bab, my favourite Japanese and Korean restaurants in London, respectively, however, I modified my outlook on queuing.

Both these restaurants don’t take reservations, yet the food has been worth the wait, so with my fingers crossed, I hoped The Breakfast Club was another example of this.

As it so happened, I needn’t have thought about it so much. Whilst the restaurant is hot property during brunch times of 12pm – 3pm, we went a little after this, so we were seated straight away. So if you have an aversion to queuing, worth bearing in mind!

Between us, we had ‘Huevos al Benny’ and Korean fried chicken pancakes. With both priced at £10.50, I considered the portions to be very reasonable: -

Restaurant review: LAHORE KARAHI (Tooting)

A friend recommended Lahore Karahi to me as a tasty, cheap curryhouse, and being an ardent fan of both Pakistani food and bargains, I ventured to South-West London to investigate. I have now been to Lahore Karahi twice, and here are my impressions of the dishes there!

Restaurant review: EAT TOKYO (Covent Garden)

Over the past few months, I’ve been to Eat Tokyo twice, and if I’m ever in Covent Garden and struggling to decide on somewhere to eat, this restaurant will be at the forefront of my mind.

Just with Dishoom and On the Bab, it doesn’t take reservations and you have to queue. This suggests the restaurant cares more about profits than comfort of its customers. However, the fact that there are always droves of people queuing outside the Covent Garden branch of Eat Tokyo means that these people deem the food is worth queuing for.

The first time I dined there, I had a salmon teriyaki bento box. There are a variety of bento boxes at Eat Tokyo, ranging from sashimi, chicken katsu and vegetarian. They range in price, but the most expensive bento box is £18. These two are both less than that (~£16 and £8.50, if I remember correctly):

Authentic Japanese food at its best!

Holiday in New York, 2017.

Earlier this month, I spent five days in New York City with my best friend Anna (the gorgeous lady who this blog is named after).

Here be a picspam of our time there (including a day in New Jersey) and some random non-sequiturs as and when I can be bothered to type!

Restaurant review: STICKS’N’SUSHI (Covent Garden)

Despite meeting Per Mertesacker at Sushisamba, I’ve never actually dined there, and thus the mantle of fanciest sushi restaurant I’ve been to is Sticks’n’Sushi at Henrietta Street, London.

We had the ‘Gala’, which, at £75, wasn’t cheap. The option included Beef Tataki, Edamame, Hotate Kataifi, Nigiri, Chicken with chili & teriyaki, lamb chop with miso herb butter and duck breast with panko & wasabi Caesar, so there was plenty to fill two people’s boots!

Restaurant review: MA’ PLUCKER (Soho)

I went to Ma’ Plucker this week to catch up with two girlfriends. To that end, it was a decent venue to choose for a Monday night: not busy, and we picked a spot at the back, where there was enough space around us for us to put our bags (rather than let them get dirty on the floor, which is what would happen at somewhere like Barrafina).

The way that food is ordered under the ‘3 way chicken’ system is that you choose your chicken (rotisserie chipotle, crispy coated buttermilk, pulled slow and low or cheese flan), you choose a base (salad, bun or maple waffle) and finally a side (MP chicken skin gravy, chipotle chilli sauce, Kansas BBQ, herb dressing or maple chilli glaze), and then it’s all cooked and bought out for you.

Because I don’t like mixing sweet and savoury things, and I never order salad when I dine out as I think it’s a waste of money (you can literally buy a bag of cabbages and apply some dressing to it from Tesco for like £2), I had the house bun, with chicken breast. This was how it looked:

The chicken was arid AF

Restaurant review: CHAPTER ONE (Orpington)

Chapter One is basically the only restaurant in Orpington to carry any kind of distinction. It used to possess one Michelin star (was sadly stripped of it in 2014), but for Bromley, that's enough to make it stand out. I’d never been there before, but for my 27th birthday, my friend Joy kindly treated me to a three course meal on the lunchtime menu there.

Restaurant review: DISHOOM (Shoreditch)

Dishoom’s reputation precedes itself. Due to great word of mouth, the Shoreditch venue, as with the Covent Garden venue, which I have also been to, doesn’t allow bookings unless the party is of six people or more. If you’re in a party of five people or less, you have to queue on the door, with the length of the queues ranging from half an hour to an indefinite period of time.

The menu claims these prawns are 'succulent'. They tasted dry to me.

Restaurant review: CRYSTAL CHINA (Tower Bridge Road)

If you fancy Chinese dining a little different from the noodles/rice & meat dish combination, or dim sum options, Crystal China specialises in dry hotpots. This is when the customer chooses several individual items from the menu, and they are all fried together, so the flavours blend together into a delicious melange. 

A fabulous three course meal at the Scarman Conference Centre, University of Warwick.

I attended a conference at the University of Warwick this April, and on one of the evenings, we were all treated to a delicious three course meal. Here are the courses:

Salmon starter. Such a generous (and appetising) portion of seafood! (I love seafood btw; whenever I'm at McDonald's I always get the filet o'fish).

Restaurant review: TGI FRIDAY'S (Covent Garden)

I've been to several TGI Friday's across the UK (Reading, when my family and I were checking out universities, Bath when I was there doing my undergraduate degree and Leicester Square just for an impromptu delicious meal one evening), and it's a chain which I have never been disappointed with.

Last Tuesday, me and three others were dithering over where to get dinner (Belgo was being suggested as an option, but I wasn't enamoured with it when I'd visited Belgo three years ago) in Covent Garden when I clocked a TGIF, confident that that represented a much better option.

And of course, I wasn't wrong. We were served by a bubbly waitress, who asked us if we were celebrating anything. Although it wasn't the cause of our get-together, I had just passed a critical PhD landmark, and one of the people I was with mentioned this. I didn't expect that to lead to anything, but she very kindly gave me this gorgeous and delicious slice of cake for my troubles!

Restaurant review: CHAI THALI (Camden)

A few weeks ago, me and my friends from my old work had a much-needed catch-up at Chai Thali. One of my friends, Sarah, had said it was a restaurant that specialized in Indian tapas, at which I was pretty much sold.

Restaurant review: MY OLD PLACE (Liverpool Street)

A few weeks ago, me and two of my friends had dinner at My Old Street, a Chinese restaurant that, judging from the online reviews offers great value food, with no frills when it comes to the service.