Lisbon fits, 2022.

Part of my return to blogging will be some retrospective outfits of the day. As I tend to dress more adventurously when on holiday, I've raided my iPhone vaults containing photos from various holidays in recent years to showcase my more interesting 'fits!

Thus, I bring to thee: every outfit that I wore on a girls' holiday to Lisbon in October 2022 (with some bonus pictures of the delicious food we had)!

Day 1

Restaurant review: SANTA MARIA (Fitzrovia)

Earlier in the lockdown, I'd tried my hand at making a pizza from scratch. It was a solid effort given my complete lack of experience in the department, but it wasn't a patch on the pizzas from Santa Maria, a restaurant which I had had the good fortune to visit at the tail end of 2019.

Santa Maria is a small restaurant, whose aim is to bring the charm and flavour of Napoli to London. The staff are very welcoming - when I asked about what types of cheese I could add to my pizza, the waiter actually took the time to give me a thoughtful, detailed, response. This is a far cry from the eye rolls that I am usually met with in most central London restaurants when I ask the waiters for help ordering.

The recommendations he made were astute as well:

Lockdown activities: making a pizza from scratch

I decided to make the most of being stuck inside during the lockdown to try my hand at some cookery experimentation. This was what the result was:

It was delicious! A good thing about making a pizza from scratch is that you can pile on all the things you like, and none of the stuff you don't! 

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!

The Pizza Express Master-post.

I've dined at Pizza Express a few times in the last month (pro tip: if you attend Pizza Express using Nectar or Tesco points, one point can earn you 4 times what the point would get you in store, so it makes sense to trade your points in for Pizza Express credits!), and I thought I'd share my thoughts on each of the individual pizzas/pastas/meals I tasted there!

Sloppy Giuseppe: the green pepper is super-spicy, and complements the beef well.  The pizza could have stood to have more cheese. 7/10.

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: PIZZA PILGRIMS (Soho)

The servings at this much (over)-hyped pizza parlour didn’t taste anything out of the ordinary compared to a bog-standard oven pizza you can buy at Sainsbury’s, and compared to Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference, the meals completely paled in every department. 

Portion-wise, they left a lot to be desired; the cooks scrimped on the components of the meal that actually cost money (aka, the meat and veg, as demonstrated by the photo below), choosing to swamp you with dough instead. Big mistake: I prefer thin bases. And, ironically, they couldn’t even get the dough right; look how charred that is!

Restaurant review: FIRE & STONE (Covent Garden)

(I'm making my way through the backlog of pizza places I've visited in the last few months, but not yet made the time to review!)

Restaurant review: FRANCO MANCA (Bromley)

Living out in the suburbs of south east London can be a bit of a drag sometimes, given the Tube connections revolve around north London, and all the coolest events are generally in central. Yet Franco Manca illustrates the flipside of living in the ’burbs, and how in terms of dining in a chain, being in a less busy part of the city can work to your advantage.

A pretty sick pizza.

The staple of this was just a margarita pizza, with greens and sweet-and-sour chicken bought separately and applied on. Tasted a dream, especially dipped in salsa sauce!

Three delicious meals I had in Amsterdam.

As you know, when in London, I'm constantly on the search for the best breakfast it has to offer, the last cooked breakfast of which I had was utterly uninspiring. The breakfasts in Amsterdam, on the other hand, were superb. The basic omelette (and toast) was just €3.95, but each additional ingredient was an extra Euro. I asked for cheese, onions and tomato. I wasn't entirely convinced the amount of onions they included (or lack thereof) merited €1, but the cheese really gave the omelette fantastic flavour and the tomatoes were a welcome, healthy addition too.

Another thing I dig about Dutch breakfasts is how generous they are with the butter. In this picture, there are two mini-sachets of butter, but if you wanted more, they would casually give you about five. Delicious (and enough to give oneself a heart attack!)

I ate this pizza at an Amsterdam restaurant called Casa di David, and the taste evoked memories of my favourite pizza place in London, Icco's. It had a thin base, which I love, and focused the taste of the pizza in the ingredients used in the toppings. I had a tuna and red onion pizza, which complemented the cheese and tomato perfectly. As it was an Italian restaurant, they had bottles of balsamic vinegar and olive oil at the ready, which I used to make a nice dip to dunk my pizza crusts in. Nom!

Again, orange juice is my drink of choice with my breakfasts! What I liked about this meal was that they allowed you to swap ingredients. I don't like mushrooms, so instead of them, I asked for onions (the more perceptive readers might have realised I have a penchant for onions). Due to being burned by that godawful Bella Italia breakfast, I was wary of how the sausages here would taste, but graciously, they were both moreish and healthy. The yellow egg yolk was also a nice addition to the meal; gave me something to dip my crusts into!

Restaurant review: FOUR HUNDRED RABBITS (Crystal Palace)

You may have noticed there’s a few actors and actresses who I have a fondness for, given I mention them in pretty much every film post I write about. Similarly, when it comes to what tickles my culinary senses, I also have quite the penchant for pizza, as it’s my go-to comfort food and can never get enough of the combination of carby base and explosion of flavours on top. I’d already had a pizza on Friday, but such is my predilection for pizza that I had no qualms about having another one the very next day.

The menu at Four Hundred Rabbits is extremely uncomplicated, featuring just six different types of pizza and two specials, which change on a daily basis. This has pros and cons: on my first visit to Four Hundred Rabbits I’d had the chorizo pizza, and on Saturday I had the beef one, and those two were the only two flavours which really pique my interest, so, were I to go again, my choice would be limited if I didn’t want to repeat an order. The upside, however, is that what they do produce, is of very high quality, all for affordable, reasonable prices (the six staples range from £6.75 to £9.75).

The flawless sourdough base really accentuates the toppings, and as was the case in the most expensive topping, the one I had on Saturday: ground Hereford beef, green chillis, onions (KEY!!!!!), tomato and mozzarella, the chefs don’t scrimp on ingredients. The crusts, which are usually the part of a pizza I don’t consume, were light, so I ate more of the crusts here than I usually do.

The food is intricately crafted and aesthetically pleasing (see photo above). There was a healthy selection of drinks, including craft beer on tap (one of my favourites), which washes the pizza down a treat. On Saturday, I ventured out of my comfort zone and had a vodka seltzer with rhubarb which complemented the pizza a treat! For dessert, there are ice cream sundaes, an unpretentious delight which very few would turn their noses up at.

My pleasant trip to Four Hundred Rabbits was accentuated with the efficient waitress, who was very attentive and noticed when our supply of water was dwindling, replacing our water jug without prompting. This makes a welcome change from most restaurants in central London which are grossly understaffed, and you have to ask several times for such a courtesy. Naming no names, of course. That would be shady and it’s not like me to be shady. Is it? But yeah, kudos to Four Hundred Rabbits for that, because on a busy Saturday evening, they certainly weren’t at any lack of customers, so the fact that they paid all their punters equal attention merits praise. 

Overall, Four Hundred Rabbits is comfortably the best pizza place in south London that I’ve had the good fortune of visiting.

Grade: A-

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-

For more of my restaurant reviews, click here. If you would like me to review your restaurant, drop me an email at lemon_and_lime7@hotmail.com

Restaurant review: ICCO (Goodge Street)

Delicious pizzas, rich in ingredients, and with a super-thin base, so you're ingesting flavour rather than carbs. They're also produced right in front of you, efficiently and quickly, so the wait isn't too agonising. The fruit smoothie was also wonderful, and the whole meal came to £9, which I was ecstatic with!

A

For more of my restaurant reviews, click here. If you would like me to review your restaurant, drop me an email at lemon_and_lime7@hotmail.com

Two buffet meals this week.

Diwana, Euston. £6.95 for vegetarian all you can eat.

 

There was a seriously excellent selection of food on offer, and the majority of it was cooked better than you standard bargain basement Chinese buffet. Such was the usage of quorn supplements that, like Kailash Parbat, you didn't notice the lack of meat in your meal. And the fact that it's a buffet means you can stuff your face to your heart's content, for a modest price :)

 

However, what let this place down was the horrendous, horrendous service. Abrupt waiters who didn't register a request and had to be prodded into reminding, and when you did remind them they glared at you like, gee, I don't know, it wasn't their job to serve us or something. One was in my way and didn't even have the manners to step aside. Charming.

 

So, for that, I'll have to give this place a B-. Shame as the food was lovely, but the waiters there really need to be schooled in etiquette, just truthing.

 

Pizza Hut, Oxford Circus. £7.50 for all you can eat.

 

 

I went to Pizza Hut's lunchtime buffet out of nostalgia for when I did it as a kid, but was disappointed to discover that both the quality of the food, and the quantity, is nothing like what I was used to all those year's ago. There was one flavour of pizza that came out consistently: margherita. Also known as the most boring pizza flavour. The pepperoni one tasted flat and flavourless, and the less said about ham and tuna the better. Only the veggie pizza have anything going for it. The salad bar was also extremely paint-by-numbers and dull.

 

Factor in awful service (we ordered bottomless cokes and they seemed extremely reluctant to top them up, knowing that they weren't going to get any extra money for it) and the fact that every time I tried to make eye contact with a waiter, they purposely looked away, and I can safely say I will not be going back to this dive in a hurry.

 

Grade: D

A pledge for healthier eating.

I had two more pizzas this week--

 

Unfortunately, due to the lack of variety in my diet, I got ill on Shrove Tuesday, which was the worst possible timing as it meant I was poorly and missed out on Pancakes Tuesday --

 

 

That, and the ensuing indigestion I suffered, was more than lesson enough, and from here on forward, I pledge to have a much healthier diet, to avoid this ever happening again! Which means I will have to cut back on the pizzas, which is a shame, but hopefully in doing so I'll discover new types of food that are just as tasty!

Big pizza week...

A not a single trip to Pizza Express, surprisingly. ;)

 

Tuesday - Sainsbury's pizza

 

 

Wednesday - Sainsbury's pizza

 

The Sainsbury's pizzas were 10 inches, so exactly the same size as the Domino's pizzas in the photo below. They were 2 for £6, which I think is an absolute bargain because they taste every bit as good as Domino's pizzas, and with more nutritional content! So yeah, get on it!

 

 

Saturday - Domino's

 

Some stuff wot I've eaten recently.

Yet another trip to Pizza Express.

And yup, I did just go a few days ago. This time it was just me and my brother going for lunch. What can I say, we're addicted!


Oh dear, someone's in desperate need of a haircut!

La, love, lick you like vanilla ice.

Photos of nice meals I've had this week! Me and the housemates had a huge Chinese food haul, so the vast majority of pictures this week are from the deliciousness then!

(favourite dish of the week)