Product review: two Japanese snack boxes

One of the things that a lot of people have struggled with during enforced lockdown was that, without social events to attend in the evenings or at weekends, it was difficult to pass the time without something to look forward to.

I completely sympathise with this, and as an act of self-care, during the quarantine period, I have been ordering myself little treats on the internet every few days. It doesn’t quite substitute the endorphin rush of hanging out with friends in a packed, boozy bar, but I find that if you have mail deliveries to look forward to, it helps delineate the days, and prevent them from blurring into one.

If you have the means to do so, I recommend you do the same!

Two things I ordered near the beginning of the lockdown were two Japanese snack boxes. Below are my brief thoughts on them:

52 Japanese Candy and Snack Okashi Set (£20)

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!

Film review: MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (Kenneth Branagh, 2017)

Renowned sleuth Hercule Poirot finds himself in the first class carriage of the Orient Express, due from Istanbul to London. In torrid and icy weather, the train gets derailed, after which he discovers that Ratchett (Johnny Depp), an indecorous art wheeler dealer who was travelling on the carriage, has been murdered, by 12 stab wounds, spread indiscriminately around the body. 

In isolating the suspects to the cohort of first class passengers, he interviews each of them to find out whodunnit. However, each person he speaks to happens to be, rather inconveniently, being imprecise with the truth.

I like how Kenneth Branagh's gone for the pretence of wanting alphabetical billing, yet conveniently abandoned that idea when it comes to Lucy Boynton. I wonder why?

Product reviews: BOX OF SIX MACARONS (Ladurée) and POSH PROFITEROLES (Marks and Spencer)

"Not really your kind of place, is it?"

Restaurant review: SALVADOR AND AMANDA (Bloomsbury)

I’m slowly starting to get the hang of buying tapas from Groupon. Whereas when you buy cocktail deals, the fact that it’s a deal doesn’t restrict you to having just a subsection of the drinks menu comprising of the cheapest, most basic drinks, but instead, let you order any drink you wish (as testified to by my pleasant experiences drinking at The Escapologist and Adventure Bar). 

However, when you buy tapas deals from Groupon, such as The Cuban in Camden (one of the worst run places I’ve had the misfortune of having visited), which purported to have a RRP of the price of nine full dishes, actually only provided the diner to the most minute, insufficient quantities. Salvador and Amanda is another agonising case where a restaurant has two separate menus for their regular customers, and the plebs who dared to show up with a deal.

Needless to say, the sh_tty sidebitch menu reeked of afterthought; almost as much of an afterthought as Emma Stone's BAFTA speech when she tried to play Katniss political and failed. The voucher holder was entitled to six options from a very limited tapas menu. This is what we went for:

Review: Starbucks Fudge Hot Chocolate

Just in time to use Christmas to trouser more money away for themselves, Starbucks have introduced the Fudge Hot Chocolate. Ingredients are Milk chocolate and fudge syrup mixed with steamed milk, topped with fudge flavoured whipped cream and a sprinkling of gold chocolate curls. 

I wasn’t very impressed. The USP, the fudge, is used far too sparingly to make a distinctive impression, so it just tasted like a bog standard hot chocolate. My cream on the top was about a third of the amount other coffee chains give. Finally, the fact that my fudge hot chocolate was serve lukewarm did little to raise a festive cheer within me. 

For £3.25, you can get a much more satisfying hot chocolate elsewhere, or make one yourself, and put in a quantity of fudge in where it can actually be detected in the beverage. Perhaps Christmas drinks in early November is a little early. This was an absolute horrorshow.

Grade: E

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To read my restaurant and bar review, click here. If you would like me to review your restaurant or your products, email me at lemon_and_lime7@hotmail.com

Cake watch: banoffee pie (John Lewis)

The cream, chocolate on the cream and fudge binding everything together was a dream, but the base tasted a little stale. Overall, still delicious, but a tiny bit below John Lewis' (admittedly much higher than average) bar.

Grade: A-

Restaurant review: AMPHITHEATRE RESTAURANT AND TERRACE AT THE ROYAL OPERA HOUSE (Covent Garden)

Last April, I went to see Madame Butterfly at the Royal Opera House. It was an exquisite performance that moved me to tears. Before the show and during the intervals, I drank and dined at the Amphitheatre Restaurant and Terrace, which I will now give a review of.

I'm generally wary of dining at restaurants that are part of the institution where the opera/ballet/concert is, because I worry that they'll be an afterthought to the building; a way for the owners to make a quick buck, rather than put any real thought into feeding their punters. Having visited this place, I think my reservations were correct.

Unsurprisingly, given the rather eye-watering price tags, the food was presented well enough, if not quite the same level in terms of taste. The steak pictured above wasn't the most delicious I've had the pleasure of tasting in London (that would have to be the transcendent Hawksmoor), but it wasn't the worst either. But, for the price paid, you'd hope for a little better than 'not the worst steak in London'. It was the chewiness that I really could not get on board with; as much as I like rare steaks, this tasted rubbery. Ew.

One aspect of Amphitheatre Restaurant and Terrace that was excellent was the service we received. The waiters were obliging and charming throughout, and I was very impressed with the organisation of the staff working at the restaurant, for, the second we returned to the restaurant at the interval, our dessert was waiting for us.

I had three flavours of ice cream; a tad overpriced at around £10 for what it was. It tasted fine, but the £1.99 ice cream tubs you get in Tesco taste exactly the same, minus the chocolate shavings ornamented on them. So I wasn't too impressed with the mains or the dessert.

As with The Savoy, extravagances like this where we unleash our inner Iggy Azalea and inwardly holler I'M SO FANCY are only one-in-a-year-type things. In terms of food quality, The Savoy far surpasses Amphitheatre and Terrace. In fact, it's fortunate for the Royal Opera House that their production of Madame Butterfly was so on point, or I'd be even more scathing in my critique of the restaurant; clearly a get-rich-scheme for the owners. They're laughing all the way to the bank. We're still struggling to cut up that rubbery steak with our incisors.

Grade: D

Review: AMORINO (Islington, Camden Town)

Over the past few months, I've visited Amorino ice cream parlour twice, so thought I'd share some photos, and my thoughts on the experiences.

Trip 1: Islington

£3.50 for three scoops, including mango sorbet, raspberry sorbet and the dulce de leche. All delicious, albeit a bit too fruity for my tasting. Hence, I learnt my lesson and stockpiled my cup with sweeter tastes on...

Trip 2: Camden Town

Four £4.50, you get four scoops! This was much more sweet in flavour, with only lime sorbet acting as the fruit component, and every scoop was absolutely wonderful. If you're going to go here, what I recommend that you know in advance whether you want sweet or fruity, then make sure one scoop in your cup is something else, just to counterbalance the rest of the sweetness, for example.

There were many other enticing flavours which I look forward to trying out. The place was clean and the staff polite. My only foible, and it's a small one, is that for £3.50 and £4.50, respectively, I expected a fraction more, for example, what you get for that amount at Cream's.

Grade: A-

o2 Priority freebie haul: no. 2 - Hotel Chocolat Valentines slab.

Meals of the Week.

Lancashire hotpot and greens. £3.30

9/10

Cheese potato skins and banoffee pie. £1.50 + £1.50.

9/10

Pasta and lasagne from the Farmer's Market, Russell Square. £5.

9/10

Cake watch: chocolate fudge cake (John Lewis)

John Lewis' cake collection are the gift that keep on giving. A generous chunk of chocolate cake, pure indulgence, utterly delicious.

Grade: A

o2 Priority freebies: caramel skull from Hotel Chocolat

Cake watch: Raspberry & White Chocolate Muffin (Starbucks)

The raspberry and white chocolate complement each other perfectly, both in terms of flavour and texture. My only foible would be that there's too much of the actual muffin; I don't like wasting food, and for a mere snack the amount of dough is a bit much. I would have preferred if the consistency of white chocolate chips and raspberry was more even, over a small amount of muffin (they were only really present at the top).

Grade: B.

RESTAURANT REVIEW: Ibérica (Marylebone)

Offering a killer collection of Spanish tapas as well as dinner dishes, Ibérica had been recommended to me by someone actually from Spain, who had been none-too-impressed with the La Tasca-type tapas places that I personally enjoy. So, my logic was, if I liked La Tasca and they wasn’t impressed with it, then Ibérica must be something special to merit applause from them.

The quality of the food is unanimously high, albeit not pandering to people’s common perception of what Spanish food is (olives are starkly omitted from the menu). For starter, I ordered a platter of meats, all rich (and deliciously salty - even the ham impressed me, which is saying something as that’s my least favourite of the red meats) as well as croquettes, which were to die for. I’m all for the easy (read: cheap) option of mozzarella dippers from McDonald’s, but sometimes you just have to treat yourself, and I wolfed down my five croquettes in a matter of seconds. They were that good. For main, I had a bowl of black rice, which tasted much better than it caused me to look (my teeth were all tinted), and steak, which was possibly the weakest of the ensemble. I prefer steak in a big, juicy slab, but this was sliced into many pieces, and as such, looked like an anorexic steak. Not that edible.

The highlight of everything I had in my visit, however, was the dessert, la tarta de la abuela. Packaged in a kooky glass-with-a-lid, it was the most glorious concoction of nuts, chocolate, caramel and biscuit. Heavenly - make sure you get yourself some of that!

Whilst I would definitely recommend Ibérica from a gastronomical point of view, the prices were a little inflated for what they were. Spacing wasn’t ideal either - they squash you in in the most constricted of spaces, so that if you move even an inch, you affect the table next to you. Lastly, the waiters weren’t the cleverest. A shame, really, because the food was intelligently planned, joyfully cooked.

Grade: B+

Creme egg brownies.

Anna (the person who this blog is named after) baked me these bad boys for my birthday, and they were INSANE.

RESTAURANT REVIEW: da Scalzo (Belgravia)

I went to da Scalzo yesterday with colleagues for dinner before the opera and was more than satisfied with the quality of the food, both main and dessert, and the wine, which was a charmingly fruity 2012 red number that went down a treat.

Being an authentic Italian diner, da Scalzo has a few signature pasta and salad dishes, but is primarily a pizza place, where it boasts the usual you’d expect from Pizza Express, but all prepared with that bit more oomph than Pizza Express’ paint-by-numbers style that has resulted in them desperately offering so many 2-for the price of-1 deals just to get bums on seats. The vast majority of pizzas were around a tenner each, which is very reasonable, given that this is the same price you’d expect to pay in Pizza Express, and for a lower quality. I had the Siciliana, which had tuna, anchovies, vegetables and cheese on, and it suited my palate perfectly, especially the handsome saltiness. Perhaps the only mild foible about the food was that when we asked for food, only tomatoes and onions were laid on our plate. Whilst I like both of those, it would have been nice to have been fed some greens too. However, it would be churlish to whine too much, particularly given the high quality of the service - anything I asked for, the waiter had it to be within seconds.

For dessert, I had a tiramisu, which I find a concoction that’s very hit-and-miss. When it’s good, it’s orgasmic. When it’s bad, however, you might as well just get the Sainsbury’s one, so dull is the mesh of flavours. Fortunately, this sat in the former camp. Creamy, rich, filling and completely delicious, I wolfed mine down in four bites.

Just a couple hundred metres away from Victoria coach station, this isn’t a particularly hard place to find. Downstairs, there is a bar, so if you arrive before friends, you can settle in with a nice Peroni. Across the walls are painted sayings by the likes of Fellini, Euripides and Sophie Loren about the virtues of food, and how it enriches life. Dine here, and it’s hard to disagree with them.

Grade: A-

Meal Deal watch: the Co-op.

Drink, sandwich and snack: £3.

I've tried an expansive range of Meal Deals, and in terms of value for money, the Co-op one blows its competition out of the water. You get a wide selection of sandwiches and pastas and salads to choose from, though in terms of stifling your hunger, you simply must have the BLT, which is both generous with its quantities of bacon and sauces. Unlike other Meal Deals, energy drinks are included in the drink options, which is a perfect pick-me-up for my afternoon lectures. And the snack selection is great too; I vary between getting the healthy option (pineapples or other fruit), and the caramel shortbread, which tastes like heaven.

The best part is, often, the price of the individual components will touch six quid! A total bargain, and more than suffices for a healthy lunch (well, healthier than my other option, which is to go to Maccy D's ;) ). Love this Meal Deal.

Grade: A

Just doin' my bit for Children in Need.

Delicious chocolate cake and shortbread, bought from work canteen, as part of a bake sale to raise money for CIN.

Caffe Concerto (Leicester Square)

We stopped into Caffe Concerto on Anna's birthday for a taste of some of their legendary desserts.







They tasted fantastic, and weren't too ridiculous by central London standards (£5.30-ish), but the service was atrocious and the general atmosphere was not a welcoming one.