We went for the Chinese, but stayed for the Malayasian

During our typical ‘where will we go for dinner?’ debate the other night, my hankering for Chinese won out over C’s desire for a burger. We decided to go to Kensai in Camden, as we had eaten there before and they had a 2 for 1 happy hour. Hmm 2 for 1! We were given a specials menu, which had any main course for £6.95, but at first glance it was all curries and complicated ingredients. I really just wanted a bog standard Chinese, so I consulted the main menu. All Malaysian… eh what? The entire menu was two pages of just Malyasian food, all long, complicated, curry based stuff. I’ve no problem with Malaysian food, but it was really not what I was in the mood for. Plus I didn’t really want a whole mess of lemongrassy type ingredients, it just wasn’t that kind of night.
The waitress kept coming over to see if we were ready to order, but I was a little confused with having to interpret a whole new genre of food.  I was just amazed at how they changed the entire menu, when it was working fine to begin with. Anyway, as we were having our 2 for 1 drinks, we decided we might as well stay. As we both don’t eat spicy food, there wasn’t a lot to choose from. In the end we just got starters.

Prawn Fritter, with peanut sauce.

As you can see from the pictures, the food wasn’t anything outstanding. The spring rolls and squid were fairly standard, but the Prawn dumplings were good and the fritters were very tasty, filled with some kind of pumpkin mush and accompanied by a peanut dressing. Very nice.

Szechaun Salt and Pepper Squid.

 Vegetable Spring Rolls.

The damage was about £25 for four starters and drinks, which was fine, I guess. But I left feeling unsatisfied, obviously because I hadn’t gotten my Chinese - also because it was yet another restaurant where I had to ‘make do’ with something on the menu. This really annoys me when restaurants change their menu or dishes unexpectedly, I know that variety is the spice of life and all that hoo ha, but still, I have a right to be grumpy and cantankerous.

Steamed Prawn Dumplings.

London goes Irish

This morning it was all sparkling sunshine, now hailstones and thunder…so I said ‘well that’s Irish weather for you’. Except it isn’t, is it - it’s London!!

Just like that movie, what was it called…oh yeah Mannequin!

Outside my work window, we spotted these lovely fellows. It looks like an extremely bizarre cigarette break, lounging about, shooting the breeze…naked, on the roof of a building. Just another day at the office.

We think it is possibly Liberties, who must have a shit crazy sense of humour, I particularly like that they are lined up according to colour and that my camera managed to skilfully focus on their packages! Hurrah for another productive day at work.

No added sugar

I have mentioned before that I have a real aversion to adding seasoning to food, I hate the taste of salt and pepper and cannot comprehend adding sugar to tea or coffee. Although I do love ketchup and mayo, I am the condiment queen!

The other morning I bought some porridge from the Marks and Spencer’s breakfast counter, but declined to add fruit compote or honey to it, as the staff really add too much. Instead I reluctantly picked up two brown sugar sachets. The porridge was really well made, but as bland as porridge tends to be. So I added a little sugar and it instantly perked up the taste, so I added a little more and a little more, really delicious. But I felt so guilty. How ridiculous, she who has no problem swigging fizzy drinks and gorging on chocolate, feels guilty about adding a sachet of sugar to porridge. I’m not sure what it is, but I just have such a guilt complex about adding sugar to anything, cereal, coffee etc. Perhaps it is knowing that my already sugar fuelled lifestyle, doesn’t need any more sweetening. The annoying thing was it did taste better with the sugar, so maybe I am a little bit closer to understanding why people add pepper to food, but salt…never! I once saw a girl adding salt, a lot of salt, to a pizza…why, why would you do that? Gag!

Birthday Food

So yesterday I turned 25 and this is what we ate for lunch!

Charcuterie plate of meats and cheese.

Mushroom Ravioli.

Strawberry and Raspberry Frozen Yoghurt.

Kiwi Cuisine

To celebrate cake day this week, we went to a New Zealand run cafe called Fernandez and Wells. H’s cousin N and friend L became Honourable Cake Day members, both found the concept of food blogging hilarious and kept asking funny questions about it.

Fernandez and Wells is a cute cafe at 73 Beak Street, they specialise in rolls, desserts and say that their aim is to make a really excellent cup of coffee. With all their menu on display, it is seriously tough to decide what to choose. As I have proven myself time and again to be an absolute glutton, I had to go for both a roll and a cake! Yumtastic!

Most of the rolls were meaty, with gorgeous looking fillings like Mortadella, Prosciutto, Salami and Parmesan. I chose one of the few vegetarian options, Buffalo Mozzarella, Plum Tomatoes and Rocket, they offer the addition of salt and pepper or olive oil. As I’ve already mentioned my dislike of salt and pepper, I just went for the olive oil. It gave a much needed moistness and taste to the roll, but was especially messy. I would really recommend this roll as even though it is simple, the mozzarella is buttery and delicious.

As it was cake day after all, I chose the Bourbon Vanilla Cheescake. A serious hit of vanilla bean, this cheescake was the real deal, baked to perfection - it was definitely not your usual boring restaurant  concoction. Though it was a unanimous verdict that no one could taste the bourbon, so I can’t say if it was actually in the cake - perhaps just a name? Excuse the blurry photo, my camera is always letting me down at tantalising times like this.

You can also choose from a delectable selection of smaller cakes, including Portuguese custard tarts. H insisted that we order a flat white coffee, as it is the cafe’s speciality. The barrista adds a silver fern design to the top of the coffee, this I have been told is the national tree of New Zealand. Very cool!

The verdict of Fernandez and Wells is that I would definitely go back, fantastic sandwiches and fabulous cakes. The only downside is the terribly uncomfortable bar stool style seating. The price tag: £10.70 for a roll, cheescake and tea. Priceyish for lunch, but you do get what you pay for. Plus the Kiwi staff are adorable, but H will kill me for saying that!

Hmm mm Patisserie Valerie!

Lunch at Patisserie Valerie, Spitalfields Market. Not much to say, it was delicious, a favourite of any cake fan!

Mozzarella, avocado, tomato and pesto ciabatta.

Minute Steak ciabatta.

Selva Gateau.

Chocolate Milkshake.

Great cake, shame about the service!

Yesterday we celebrated ‘Cake Friday’ with a trip to Canela, off Carnaby Street. H, from work, assured me that her previous visit to this place had been really good and that the cakes were gorgeous.

It is a cute restaurant with a selection of their ciabattas and cakes in the window, very tempting. They have limited bench style seating upstairs, but some more tables downstairs, which has an underground club sort of feel. The menu is Portuguese/Brazilian, with lots of meats, ciabattas, seafood soups and salads. We decided to share a cheese board and two desserts, though the filled ciabattas looked very good too.

The servers were very sweet ladies, though we should have gotten our first indication of trouble when they served a man opposite soup, instead of the antipasti plate he had ordered. After placing our initial order, which the lady did not write down, she had to come back to tell us there was no carrot/cream cake, so H ordered a lemon tart. We sat there for about a half hour, with no drinks or anything. I wondered how long exactly does it take to slice some cheese? The server appeared after a while, with my coke - took a look at our foodless table and disappeared upstairs. After another long while, she appeared with our cakes.

Now, while I appreciate the art of eating your dessert before your dinner/lunch, this wasn’t really what we had been planning. Obviously they had forgotten all about the cheese board - she asked H whether she would like a drink. H gave me the ‘yes I would bloody like the drink I ordered half an hour ago please’ look and replied that she ordered a latte. We then asked about the location of the cheese board, to which she replied ‘oh yes, it is coming’ - so we said ‘is it being made?’ - and she smiled ‘yes I will make it for you’. Whatever!

Then another server appeared with H’s coffee, ‘here is your cappuccino’ - how it had turned from a latte into a cappuccino in the two seconds it took her to walk upstairs, we don’t know. These ladies should really write stuff down. We decided to eat the cakes anyway, since we had been there about 40 minutes at this stage. The lemon tart was a really high quality lemon meringue with a serious lemony kick - delicious. My banana cinnamon cake was a lot richer, with chunks of banana and extremely cinnamony. More like a cinnamon bun really than a cake. I couldn’t really finish it as it was too rich and overpowering.

Midway through the cake eating, the cheeseboard arrived. The server then attempted to take away our half eaten cakes. Very frustrating! The cheese board was pretty tasty I have to say, with a very generous portion of cheese. Photo was taken half way through, so we had eaten a lot. Very nice brie, stilton, and some kind of cheddar. My complaint would be there wasn’t enough bread for the cheese and they should have provided some kind of dip, as it was a little dry. We had to ask for some olive oil to accompany it. Also we didn’t get any plates and ended up eating off our napkins.

Overall the food was quite good, but the service was really haphazard, friendly but completely incompetent. They kept a lot of people waiting to order and we were there for an hour -which is not great for food which wasn’t even cooked. The bill came to just under £20 - expensive for what we got - we left about a £1.20 tip - mostly because we didn’t have time to wait for the change.

The verdict: while the lemon meringue was delicious, I really wouldn’t go back - good service is important and the food wasn’t good enough to endure that kind of wait at lunchtime.

Nordic Bakery

I love it when people introduce me to their favourite food places, it is the best kind of recommendation. At my new job, one of the girls and I discovered a similar fondness for cake and pastries - passing the time discussing what kind of delicious concoction we are going to have next. H had been telling me about a Nordic Bakery she had gone to, which had amazing cinnamon buns. Needless to say, I was hooked instantly - imagining large, blond men standing around needing dough on a snow covered hillside (okay my imagination got away from me a little). Located at 14 Golden Square W1F 9JF, Soho, it is actually an uber-cool, modern little place - with dark wood, bench style seating.

As the sign says, they specialise in dark rye bread open sandwiches and sweet sweet cinnamon buns, they have some other little biscuity cake things too. I looked it up and apparently the rye crispbread or reissumies, are baked in Finland, frozen and flown over. How’s that for authenticity? (Obviously a hefty carbon footprint, but we’ll ignore that) Featuring traditional Scandinavian and Finnish ingredients such as egg and anchovy, smoked salmon and gravadlax - it made me feel like I was holidaying in Europe for the day.

As I am not a huge fan of pickles and anchovies, we decided to skip straight for a coffee and a bun - despite my protestations about having not having something ‘proper’ for lunch. We chose one of the aforementioned sweet sweet cinnamon buns and salivated over its golden stickiness. I love the way everything comes on a little tray, it’s like being on an airplane with really tasty food.

The bun was so delicious, cinnamony and sticky, it tasted incredible - very decadent. The syrup was soft and gooey inside and caramalised on the bottom, unlike any cinnamon bun I had every tasted. The clever Nordic people also keep the basket of buns covered and with a heat plate underneath to maintain the moist, warm goodness.

Please excuse the blurryness of this last photo, clearly my camera was too overcome with cake envy to focus properly - it’s the mechanical equivalent of drooling. Anyway, that is the Nordic Bakery in Soho, definitely worth a visit.

The verdict: It will set you back about £2 for the bun and £1 “something” for the coffee. Quite reasonable for the area. I will be back!

making do

Status: Exhausted and hungry

Thinking: that when you are hungry, Sainsbury’s sushi is damn tasty!