The Ledbury, London

I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty excited about the Ledbury. And this isn't really a review, because who needs a blogger review when you're ranked no. 20 on the top 50 restaurants only in the entire WORLD?? (And number 10 last year, hurray).

So I guess this is more of a photo 'guide' than anything else :)

French cooking class at L'atelier des Chefs

"What do they wax lemons with, chef?"

"Er...wax?"

This was the question I asked the chef at our cooking class this week. In an effort to seem keen and interested (which I was!) I had asked a Stupid Question.

One of the other guys there, bless him, did try and help me out "Don't worry! We were all thinking it". But its ok, I had already died of embarrassment at this point.

So where was I asking this question, you ask?

A group of us found these excellent Groupon deals for a place called L'atelier Des Chefs near Bond Street, which run a bunch of different cooking and baking classes ranging from Japanese to Moroccan to French and Italian.

What did we think of it? And how was the food? I can only say is that I came home with a very content belly full of French delicacies after a great evening chatting with good friends and meeting new people.

To start off, we all put our aprons on and moved into the kitchen, where our expert chef (she used to work in fine dining all over the world) told us how to properly prepare the ingredients we were using.

In our French class, we cooked (see pictures below!)

Crisp confit duck leg with salad paysanne and fried quail's egg

Roasted fillet of pollock with samphire, shellfish velouté and girolle mushrooms

Creme brulee with mini madeleines

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal

As a restaurant named one of the top 10 restaurants in the world, as well as having a celebrity chef renowned for this quirky inventions and scientific experiments with food, I was so looking forward to Dinner. It’s actually easier to book than you think, and with some three or four months of advance planning (for the OCD like me), some furious mouse action, and the help of Opentable, you can get an 8pm Saturday reservation.

Restaurant 360, Dubrovnik, Croatia

When we arrived in Dubrovnik, we asked our taxi driver about the more famous Restaurant Nautika what he thought of it and his reply was "oh, it's for old people and politicians", but when we asked about Restaurant 360 the reply came "ah, that's a lovely restaurant, it's cooler and for young people!" 

And because, you know, we're hip and kosher (at least I think that's what the cool kids say these days) we decided on Restaurant 360. Thanks Mr Taxi Driver!

So the entire restaurant is literally inside the city walls, you eat on top of the walls with a panoramic view of Dubrovnik (hence the name...). It's all very cosy and romantic and posh without being stuffy, which we really liked.

Would we come back? Definitely! Think worth a flight to Croatia just for this restaurant :)

Taste of London 2014

If you are a Londoner, you might have seen the posters advertising Taste of London everywhere. But I didn't need any persuading. I was totally there.

For non-Londoners, Taste is one of the biggest food festivals where loads of top restaurants (I MET MICHEL ROUX) and food producers come together and exhibit their dishes / products (which are all available to buy), which range from Scotch eggs to spicy Korean marinade to gourmet gin & tonic flavoured popcorn. 

It was awesome, I only wish the event was open longer...

Did I mention that I met Michel Roux?

So the day went something like this...

Restaurant A. Wong, London Victoria

Raise your hand if you like dim sum. No, the prawn toast doesn't count. Put the prawn toast down. Good.

Aahh...dumplings. Now we're talking :D

This dim sum post kicks of a series of restaurant related posts I've got coming up. I haven't found the time to bake very much in the lead up to this exam I have in June (I've somewhat called it a "baking ban" I'm going on but I think that's just a paraphrase of "gotten a bit lazy and time constrained"). However, I have remained to find the time to eat, whoop whoop! Which, you know, is great.

Moving on to restaurant A Wong. It's a small restaurant just off Victoria station which, in my opinion, looks a bit takeaway-ey from the outside, but in the inside it's an oasis of dim sum related well cooked and beautifully presented upmarket Chinese food. I came here with my boyfriend a few weeks back after hearing some pretty damn good reviews. We were not disappointed, hurray!

Galvin at Windows, London Mayfair

I really like French restaurants. I like the fact that there are always table cloths on the tables, the waiters are (usually) oh so oh-la-la and the food is (mostly) excellent.

Galvin at Windows falls into all of those categories, and I know that this place has been blogged to death but wait till you see the last photo, I promise to put a caffine induced smile on your face. 

Also, another thing I've been doing lately is observing the quality of the cutlery at every eating establishment. Yes, I know it's weird when the girl next to you picks up her knife and fork and starts weighing and tapping them but ever since I bought my flat I've been furniture obsessed, with kitchen stuff at the top of the list. 

 Galvin at Windows had good sturdy forks. I approve.

Booking in advance pretty essential here. I booked with my boyfriend for about a month later for lunch, and we used a LivingSocial deal which was £40 for two courses from a set menu and 2 glasses of wine. Pretty brilliant I'd say! We got some coffees and drinks and with service it came to about £30 a head which for a Michelin star restaurant is great value.

Plus the view...oh the view, c'est magnifique!

The Reach Bar & Kitchen, East London

Did you know that we have Cyprus in London? Yeah, there's a Cyprus on the DLR! Sun and sand is closer than you think. Except in this Cyprus I suppose you'd have to make do with Sun(days) and sand (dust). 

But anyway, one stop away from Cyprus, in E16, is The Reach Bar & Kitchen, a newly opened cosy little gastropub set in a old grade (I or II) listed building, which looks rather picturesque set by the Thames swooshing away.

Being in the location that it is, I think this pub is better then the clientele that it serves. On the other side of London, or Shoreditch (I get a bit of a Shoreditch vibe to it), it would have been perfect. Which is a shame, because I really liked The Reach :-)

Dotcomgiftshop Blogger's Evening

So about a month ago now, the lovely people at Rex London invited a few of us bloggers to preview some of their new products and Christmas range. 

EVERYTHING WAS SO PRETTY. And cute. 

I love this kind of stuff :) 

I also met a few other bloggers out there (hello The More Than Occasional Baker and Caroline Makes!), and the guys at Dotcomgiftshop who are super nice. After being offered champagne and canapés (yum yum) I wandered around the display in the gallery and went a little bit crazy with the photo taking. 

And these are the selection I weeded out from my (very vast) collection!

Onyx Restaurant, Budapest

Continuing on from my Budapest post, my friend and I decided to foray into out first overseas Michelin star restaurant at Onyx, in the centre of the city. Onyx is one of the two Michelin restaurants in Budapest and we choose this one as it looked more, well, funky. Funky is good.

There was a LOT of food. So I'm just going to jump straight into the photos :D

Hungary in Budapest

I know, I know. I couldn't help it. It was just too easy.

Bad pubs aside, I wasn't actually that hungry when I went to Budapest last week, partially because I was stuffed up my eyeballs in goulash and goose liver most of the time. And what a good week of goulash and liver it was.

Oh, and the views in Budapest aren't too bad either.

(That's Buda Castle in the top left photo. I'd say the building's very Disney Princessy. I love it.)

Afternoon Tea at The Ritz, London

Let me tell you a little bit about the story behind how this afternoon tea came to be. 

Four years ago, I was accepted at Cambridge to study Economics. Of course, my parents were delighted. And as a reward, my dad was going to take me for afternoon tea! And at The Ritz! Somehow, we never really looked into making a booking. Actually, I think the word I'm looking for is that a certain someone had 'tactically forgotten'. And then I graduated and started working and that was that.

But aha! 3 months ago I was browsing the booking website at the Ritz (as you do) and it seemed someone had made a cancellation... so before any more forgetting could be done (because by the time we got round to it I have have retired... Who knows?) I made a booking for three.

Oh my, I do love afternoon tea. And thank you to my wonderful parents for taking me! :)

Feast Food Festival, London

So the joy of living in London is that there is a lot of stuff going on. Good stuff. Foodie stuff.

Good foodie stuff.

Stuff that makes me very, very happy.

Like the Feast Food Festival in the Tobacco Dock Wapping last weekend, which was named one of the 10 best food festivals by The Independent (along with the Galway Oyster Festival with a 'speed shucking' fete...? Hm. Hmmmmmmm.)

Zhonghua Traditional Snacks, Cambridge

I miss Cambridge.

I miss being a student. I miss the may ball chat, the not being allowed to walk on the grass, the tourists with the big cameras who wander around looking lost, and yes, even the supervisions (!).

I mean, where else will it be acceptable to cycle around wearing a gown and black tie??

So, last weekend I went back to Cambridge for a friends birthday, and we went to formal at Trinity College. Which was fun! Aside from the part where two of us got on the wrong train, ended up in Biggleswade, taking a 45 minute taxi to Cambridge whilst changing into black tie in the back of said taxi, and running into formal hall 15 minutes late.

At first I got angry. And then I got sad. And then I got hungry.

So the next day (after formal hall and a few bad headaches), a few of us wandered over to Zhonghua Traditional Snacks, a new(ish) cafe that opened sometime after I graduated in June. I've heard a lot about it from my Chinese friends in Cambridge, so here is the rundown!

(Please excuse the photo quality, I only brought my point and shoot to Cambridge.)

Zhonghua Traditional Snacks serves Chinese dim sum including jaozi (dumplings), bao zi (steamed buns), noodles and wontons.

The food is good, quite traditional in that I would expect this on the cafes in China. I don't think the food alone is enough to rant and rave about but I would definitely recommend purely because its such great value - one of the great points about this cafe is the price. You'll struggle to spend more than £10-£15 per head, with drinks.

Well, I mean, unless you're reeaaaalllllyyyy hungry.

The cafe is quite small, located near the Grafton Centre off Newmarket Road. We came at about 12pm and managed to get a table, although it got quite busy afterwards. The owners were really nice though and tried their best to fit everyone in. On the walls inside there are posters showing how to make dumplings, which was pretty cute.

So long Cambridge, it's been fun!

So that's it. I'm officially a graduate! I have a BA (Hons) Economics from Cambridge... 

Well, that was not an easy three years.

My Facebook is currently filled with statuses of "congratulations to all, I have made some wonderful friends, you have made my time special etc. etc." and I really do mean all of these things too but I thought that if I wrote a (very) long paragraph about how great all my friends are that would sound quite cheesy. So I'm going to be concise and sum it all up in two words that you can usually hear me say (not usually together though):

Yay Cambridge!

Some of the Trinity College Econs together - this was when the photographer told us to 'look like we liked eachother'. So we did.

Before I go any further, I've got to warn you that this is a really long post and you might fall asleep before the end. So I'm going to put the video that was going to go at the end here, whilst you still have some patience. I know I know this actually is quite cheesy but something in me thought that it would be less cheesy to put it in my blog than directly a link on my facebook. Please don't judge me I'm a sentimental person!

Congratulations to you all! :)

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Barcelona baby!

So I've just finished my penultimate term of University! I've done my last ever dance society's annual show, I've handed in my dissertation (sadly only a draft), I'm home for the last ever Easter holiday before I enter The Real World. 

I must warn you, however, that my brain has been turned into frazzled mush from last term at uni. Most days, anything that goes in one ear comes out the other as"blah blah blah Economics mumble mumble supply and demand yada yada yada profit and loss! ZzzzZzzz", therefore I apologise if this post is a bit all over the place.

So, last week I went to Barcelona with my parents. I'm not sure why. I really should have been revising instead. Hm.

The food was good though =)

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A man (a busker man?) playing the guitar in the Park Güell.

Macarons, dance shows and other sparkly things

There was once a girl from Cambridge,

Watching her degree go down the drainage,

So she decided to dance,

Well it sure is more fun,

Then analysing the economics of

supply and demand.

And as all parents do,

They said "we'll see you at your dance show soon!"

They came on the day,

Were soon back on their way,

But not before leaving her a BIG BOX OF MACARONS!!

My dad just got back from a business trip from Paris, so that's how I got them. They told me they had a 'surprise' for me, and I thought it was just more dumplings from home...but THIS WAS AMAZING!! 

A slight baking hiatus

It's week 5 in the Cambridge University term, and we all have something commonly known as 'week 5 blues', where you have work crisis after work crisis (and for me, a dance show to rehearse for), thus stranger than normal university sleep patterns. Therefore no time to bake :-( Like my friend at My Final Year, who is graphing his sleep/work/free time, I could do the same, except mine would look something like:

Okay okay, a slight exaggeration, as the total number of hours don't actually add up to 24, and you can't have negative sleep. But it might as well be.

Yes seriously, the only thing I have baked this week is a 5 minute chocolate mug cake (see below), though I promise to do something big and yummy and extravagant soon and take lots of photos and write some kind of poem on it very very soon!