London Eateries

So here I am, on my second day in London, reviewing some of the restaurants and cafes I've visited so far.

For breakfast yesterday, we went to Richoux on Brompton Road. It's right opposite Harrod's and is decorated in warm reds and dark woods. I loved the fact that classical music was playing throughout. Some famous ones were Boccherini's Minuetto and Vivaldi's Winter.. I had strawberry waffles with syrup and loved every bit of it. I also had fresh cranberry juice. I was in the mood for Bircher muesli so I ordered something called "muesli with fresh fruit and nut". That was the one thing that disappointed me. It was basically a fruit salad or strawberries, grapes, melon and pear slices set upon a base of muesli. It was DRY.

I've found the perfect London substitute to my usually late lunches: afternoon tea. Yesterday we had afternoon tea at the Dorchester. Tea is served at the Promenade, which is the hotel's lobby. The flower arrangements are beautiful. Yesterday they were peach and cream and white. I love white roses. The sandwiches were melt in your mouth scrumptious! That was my favorite part. I also tried their Jasmine Dragon herbal tea which was very nice. They served a strawberry jelly with yogurt between the sandwiches and scones/pastries. When you make a reservation, they ask you in advance what food requirements you have and we said vegetarian. They were prepared for us when we came and had a selection of vegetarian sandwiches ready.

We then went to Laduree at Harrods. Beautiful pastel shades and a scrumptious (yes I love that word) display of sweets. What kind of ruins the place is that it's frequented by people from the Arabian-Persian (diplomatically correct ;) )Gulf, who primarily want to see/be seen/show off/ and generally look absolutely weird. Lines of "exotic".. garish, in my opinion, cars are parked outside the cafe and other foreigners are constantly seen taking pictures of them. I saw a mat, hot pink Qatari Lambo Murcielago today.. emmm... what? AH, I better remind myself that this is a FOOD BLOG and not a social commentary. SO, going to the food at Laduree.. I tried the macaroons after hearing they were like heaven. (so far, my favorite is Paul's macaroons).. I tried the vanilla, chocolate, caramel, and raspberry macaroons. Loved the raspberry and vanilla best!

I then met up with a friend and we walked over to The Terrace on Knightsbridge which is by the Sheraton on Lowndes Square/Sloane Street. I ate olives a la Provencal and she had a sandwich. They brought the wrong sandwich at first and then took half an hour to bring the correct one. Their fries were good though, friendly staff, and the place is perfect for people watching on the street if you don't really want to be seen yourself.

For dinner, we then went to Artisan at the Westbury Hotel Mayfair. Lovely restaurant. Everything was amazing, creative, lovely, delicious, and simply wonderful! The menu is pretty interesting. The cuisine is modern European and everything has a creative take to it. They bring lots of appetizers, canapes, and palate cleaning things that are on the house. I tried a mini foie gras burger.. (first foie gras for me.. tried not to think of what it really is...) I also tried a tomato and basil milkshake. There was also trout stuck on something like those pop up wire photoframes. We all had a fillet of sea bream as our main course. This was cooked perfectly. As a starter, I had smoked salmon, caper, and tartare terrine which I loved. My other dinner companions had spring onion and mushroom veloute... which is a soup. The staff bring you bowls with sprigs of leaves on them and then pour the soup from a sort of transparent teapot. We were too full for dessert but the restaurant did give us mini chocolate giveaways which I have yet to eat.. saving it for when I really get the munchies!

Day 2's restaurants were as follows:
We had breakfast at Harrod's Georgian Restaurant/Terrace Bar.. I've always wondered, is it the same thing or two different things? So yet again I was in search of the muesli I've been craving so bad and ordered a home made granola.. (oats, milk/yogurt, fruits, raisins..) DISAPPOINTED yet again.. the only places I've had perfect bircher mueslis or muesli in general are Qatar's W hotel breakfast and Bahrain's Ritz Carlton. Tried making my own once but it didn't work out somehow...
Anyways, I've had breakfast @ Harrod's Terrace Bar before and I really like their eggs florentine. I became an eggs florentine person the last time I was here in London.

For our afternoon tea/late lunch we went to Brown's Hotel in Mayfair on Ablemarle/Albemarle (sp?) Street. If you'd like their "tea-tox" you need to order it at least 24hrs in advance. Tea-tox is their "detox" version of afternoon tea which is low-fat, low-calorie, low-sugar, low-carb. We ordered two tea-toxes and one normal one.. as you can imagine, we started eating more of the traditional, normal, full fat tea food than the detox one. Although, kudos to Brown's, their tea tox was GOOD! there was a nice selection of sandwiches, namely tuna, cucumber, and salmon on rye and brown breads. There were cucumber, carrot, and capsicum sticks served with hummus, and the desserts were the most creative of all. Jellies and mini tarts, and little cake slices but all healthy. They also bring two large, round cakes on a tray and serve you slices of those but we were too full. One of those was a Victoria sponge which looked fab. I love Victoria sponge. The traditional tea was also really goood. Nice sandwiches and mini scones. If I'm not mistaken, clotted cream tastes like butter... I had a hibiscus tea there which was very nice, and as you leave, the staff present you with tiny sachets which contain the dried tea leaves of the tea you had.

For dinner, we visited Via Condotti on Conduit Street.. it rhymes doesn't it? Via Condotti, the Italian restaurant is right opposite the Westbury Mayfair where Artisan is. Via Condotti, the actual street in Rome that the restaurant is named after, is one of my favorite places on Earth <3. The restaurant had such a warm and friendly feel to it. The walls are orange, the flooring wood, and each table has a little flower pot and candle. Their spaghetti pomodoro is phenomenal!

So that's it! ALSO, london-eating.com is amazing for making reservations! SEE FOR YOURSELF.
ciao. x

Plain Butter Cake

So there's this theory that I came up with a while back... it's actually quite simple to understand.. I find that a plain butter cake is akin to a white canvas.. There's so much you can do to a butter cake.. it's the base for everything. I find large, round butter cakes more of an outlet for creativity than cupcakes perhaps only because of their size difference.

Here are two things I did to a plain butter cake recently:

The first of the instances was last week when I realized that I had some whipping cream in the fridge that would go bad if I didn't use it quickly. So I made a plain butter cake, let it cool, and then decorated it. I hate waiting for cakes to cool down! They take so long and all the while you're impatiently waiting to get your hands on it.
So what I did was to tint the batter pink, bake it, and then when it cooled down I whipped up the whipping cream and spread it over the cake. I tried to make it look like a snowy expanse.. I then washed some berries, dried them, and placed them over the cake. After that, I grated some dark chocolate around the fruit and then sifted a little bit of icing sugar for an extra snowy effect. It looked like a winter wonderland! I realized that a little less icing sugar would have been better, appearance-wise. I had to store the cake in the fridge though, otherwise the cream would go bad- especially in our weather! However, storing the cake in the fridge made it hard.. That's an issue I need to resolve.

The second butter cake I made was yesterday. I love how quick it is to make these. At 3.30 I had decided I wanted to bake and by 4PM the cake was in the oven and the dishes were in the sink.

After the cake cooled down, I spread Nutella alllll over it.. afterwards I realized that perhaps the Nutella wasn't SUCH a good idea.. extra decadence wise, but everyone loved it! So I spread Nutella over the cake, and then placed a whole bunch of Malteser's in the centre along with chocolate chips and chopped pieces of dark chocolate. I wanted to use Flake but both of the supermarkets I checked with didn't have it in stock. Have they stopped making Flake? nooo.. :(

Oh, I also mixed some chocolate chips into the cake batter, but they all somehow sunk to the bottom.. Any ideas why...? :(


A fun activity with kids: bake a cake or cupcakes, apply the icing if you are, and then arrange bowls of jelly beans, chocolate chips, sprinkles, MnMs, maltesers, mini marshmallows, and the like.. and ask them to decorate!

I should probably add more pictures to my blog.. I really should actually.. I take the pictures and then don't upload them, or Blogger usually takes REALLY long to upload them.. *sigh* better do it, though.

Enjoy xx