Here’s 9 of my most memorable meals in 2009.

St John

Let’s kick things off with something British. I like restaurants which push the boundaries, and Fergus Henderson’s ‘nose to tail’ concept was certainly something that appealed to me. For such a well liked restaurant, I was delightfully surprised to find an easy going feel about the place: no ponciness on the menu, what you see is what you get, and just brilliantly cooked offal slapped on a plate. I tried their legendary roast bone marrow, sipped some of the most tremendously hearty veal broth (ever), and witnessed the bloodiest pigeon ever to be presented. I don’t think St John applies to everyone and one has to be pretty brave (or have ordered a strong shiraz) to wash down all the gaminess some of the dishes will throw at you. However, if you’re up for a totally alternative experience, I can think of no better restaurant in London to try than this one. You’ll certainly remember it, as I did.

Goodman

I love steak, and I know many of you do too. I tried Hawksmoor – the blogger’s choice, yeah not bad, very good actually but I prefer Goodman just because they can grill a steak just as well (One of few in town equipped with a Josper grill), and they have a multitude of choice when it comes to type of meats, chief among them : Prime American beef. On my first visit, they overcooked my rib eye but it was still very good. On my second visit, they served Irish Jack O’Sheas along side the American stuff, perfectly bloody and it was orgasmic. On my third visit, they presented us with stuff from all over the place, including cuts from Lake District and I was literally blown away. Last I heard, the Russian owners were now importing Wagyu from New Zealand. It’s expensive, but you get to choose what you pay for and the sheer number of quality choices is – in my opinion – Goodman’s greatest attraction. Steaks are all about the meat afterall, my favourite steakhouse in town, go try the massive porterhouse cuts and make sure you ask for medium rare.

Sushi Hiro

As much as I love steaks, I can’t eat it everyday. On the other hand, sushi is like the perfect food : it’s healthy and it melts in your mouth. I frequently return to this modest sushi bar out in Ealing (once every 60 days or when I have a sushi craving or whichever comes first) and it has never, ever failed me. Not only do they serve the silkiest raw fish in town, they are also one of the most affordable sushi bars that I know. Forget sNobu, if you want to try the best sushi in London, this is it.

Ledbury

I went to the Ledbury in March, and so far, no dish has surpassed my experience of the “Celeriac baked in ash with hazelnuts, wood sorrel and a kromeski of middle white pork”. It’s the best dish I have had this year. I’m simply going to cut and paste my original notes on this:

It didn’t take them very long to plate up and what a glorious looking dish. The little mayonic dashes dotted around the dish is actually a black truffle mayo I’m told, and it also comes with some shaved hen eggs. The celeriac was simply amazing. It had a rich salt flavour, but also had a warming smokiness associated with it as well. The inherent natural sweetness of the celeriac added dimension, and the slices of celeriac seemed to retain alot of moisture. The texture was almost like a gently silky steamed turbot, or even a cod. If I was blind tasting this, I wouldn’t have guessed it to be a vegetable. The hazelnut really added alot colour to the flavour, it gave it that regal and fragrant aftertaste. The breaded pork – in comparison – was smooth and mild, but the celeriac didnt need it at all. Of course, when you try to put abit of everything together, the dish becomes a whole new rollercoaster ride altogether, though the celeriac really dominates.

In other words, effing awesome. Only £13 a pop – go before Brett gets his 2nd star in January and hikes his prices.

Eastside Inn Restaurant

I was reluctant to include this in my end of year round-up because I have niggling issues with this restaurant. First of all, this weekday only establishment is too expensive. The ala carte is £70, a glass of burgundy is £13 – my wallet was visibly thinner after paying for one of the priciest lunches, not to mention servings comparable to Calista Flockhart’s diminishing frame. But, I did have very, very good food. The lobster, sweetbread and cepes – oh my god, the best lobster soup/sauce/veloute I have come across thus far. And to top it off, a flaming whisky meringue with pop rocks – gimmicky but it was fantastic. I predict great things for Bjorn in 2010, great things and I will be returning to the more affordable Bistro come the new year.

Franco Manca

I was discussing the need for a point of reference with fellow food fanatic Mark of Food. By Mark. He brought this to my attention and he highlighted how it was important for a readership to be able to gauge what the author is talking about when he compares experiences. And so going forward in 2010, this is an area I would want to pay more attention. For one, to give people the chance to relate, and secondly for my own discovery in terms of trying different things. Which brings me to the pizzas at Franco Manca. Many say that this is the real deal. I’ve had FM three times now (at their original Brixton location), the base is indeed incredible: doughey, chewy, toasty, just fantastic. But is it the real deal? Who knows, I’ve never been to Italy. What I do know is that if you want pizzas that are unusually amazing, you need to give Franco Manca a try. Alternatively, the Donna Magherita recipe is pretty stunning as well.

La Trompette

I was gob smacked to find such good food at such low prices – the three course a la carte is under £30, dinner is under £40 and it’s got a michelin star. The grilled bavette of beef was – and I quote:

was a bovine sponge that soaked up the syrupy sauce that carried deep balsamic and saltiness..

…or something like that. Equally good were the giant ravioli of crab, salads were enticingly fresh and everything about this Chiswick outfit was a breathe of fresh air. If I had to choose one restaurant to take someone out to which served great food, had comfortable atmosphere, is well priced, nothing too adventurous, something French, maybe abit posh – this would be it.

Sheen Suppers

I will remember 2009 as the year of the home restaurant, underground supper clubs and the rage against the man. Eating in someone’s front room is abit strange but when it’s done right, it can be quite enthralling. The most memorable one to date has to be Sheen Suppers. We started with an amazing prawn and pancetta pate, followed by a hearty gnocchi with a ragu of beef shin, before finally finishing off with a proper orange sponge cake. To top it all off, each course was paired with a wine. I donated £25 toward the meal, since you know, it was a dinner party and there is no such thing as a home restaurant.

Uncle Lim’s Kitchen…

..should open a branch in central London, because this is the best Hainanese chicken rice money can buy within the M25. It’s near enough perfect and almost as good as anything you can find in South East Asia, almost. I can’t afford to eat £50 dinners everyday and I wouldn’t really want to do either (well..) . Most of the time, I am happy to settle for something tasty, something cheap and something comforting. I could have this for lunch everyday, just like it is originally intended and I just might if I lived in Croydon.

And that’s a wrap. I hope you’ve enjoyed all the 2009 restaurant write-ups. I have unloaded more adjectives and more vivid images than ever before, I promise to continue the trend into the new year and I hope you continue to read my work. Thank you for being such a wonderful audience, folks.

That’s all he ate in 2009, here’s to a bigger belly in 2010.

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Community sites are starting to realise the power of the iPhone, and to an extent the Google Android platform. Lately, I’ve been test driving three free apps which can help you find something to eat in the City and their usefulness when on the move, so this might be helpful if you’re an iFoodie too.

1. Qype Radar

Let’s get this going with the one from the boys at Qype. This community giant started out in Hamburg and how now grown to become a pretty massive user review site. My understanding is that users can pretty much review anything they like in the city/community, so it’s not just limited to food. In a sense, it makes Qype Radar rather powerful as you get direct access to quite a huge information base there.

As you can see, the interface is quite simple, no fancy pictures, just an easy to read list, I noted the apps’ quickness. So let’s try hunting for some curry in Harrow:

So I’m interested in ‘Five Hot Chillies’, rated 4/5 stars by Qype users, GPS (for iPhone 3G only?) tells me how far the location is and it also tells me how many Qype users have reviewed it. The simple interface is great on the move – it loads quick, gets me the information that I need, quickly, I would have loved to see a phone number displayed though. Overall it loads fast and its got a big database.

2. OpenTable

Let’s move on to OpenTable app now. The OpenTable concept is simple, it allows diners to make reservations without having to physically calling the restaurant. You would have to sign up with the Opentable website and the iPhone app is basically a natural extension of that idea.

The interface is alittle snazzier than the Qype radar, but it still loads relatively quickly. This one helps locate a free restaurant table for you in a selected region, or perhaps even a near your current location. Once you punch in the time, date – it will tell you what restaurants in the vicinity have free tables and at what time.

Its as zippy as the Qype radar, and you can instantly make reservations. Extra step involves you signing up with an OpenTable account in order to make reservations though, and there is an option to view the restaurant menu, if indeed the restaurant has posted one. You gain speed in booking a restaurant and gauge instant availability of several places in the area all at once, but you do lose out on user opinions.

3. Urbanspoon

This is the most graphic intensive, and unsurprisingly the slowest app of the lot. Urbanspoon primarily is a community restaurant review site which draws together reviews from critics, bloggers and also users get to vote on whether they like a place or not. The best thing about Urbanspoon is this voting aspect, which gets fed into a popularity top-list showing you an approximate ‘trend’ of what everyone is eating in the city. It’s in lots of cities and unsurprisingly, London is included in it.

It’s also the most gimmick heavy in which the main screen is a ‘jackpot shaker’. Put in where/what you want to eat and shake away. This will throw up some suggestions in the area you chose, though ONE BY ONE.

I’ve pulled up The Harverster for this one (Still want to try the salad bar there).

The interface looks great and the ‘lottery’ aspect of is kinda fun – but on the move, where speed is key – it becomes a real pain. I mean, I have to keep shaking it to get individual recommendations, instead of just an easy to use list. On the other hand, the individual review page is excellent. It has the urbanspoon ‘score’ which tells you how popular it is, it has links to read user reviews and it’s got a phone number, mighty helpful. I have tried using this on the go while looking for restaurants and the search function is usable. My only gripe is that its slow and its the sole really I dont use it more often.

Best of the best of the best

So, which should you download? Well, honestly, just download all three, its free afterall. Each have their own strengths and each do slightly different things.

I guess the best thing about these apps are that each can be further improved in future version. Personally, the apps I use the most are always the ones which load quick and run fast because when you’re on the move, every second counts. I’m sure cocoa developers out there are aware of this fact and are working hard to streamline their apps for a more elegant experience.

I have yet to try the snazzy new SpoonFed Radar which requires the latest 2.2.1 iPhone update (I’m still on 2.0.1, I think) and I am still waiting for TimeOut to do their app. Metrotwin should not be far behind and maybe we’ll see a trustedplaces , toptable one or even a tipped one in the near future.

OK. So what are your thoughts on iPhone ‘Going out’ Apps, do you use them, like me, and if you do, what are your favourites, and what kind of App would you like to see in the near future?

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So it’s six seven am on Monday. I’ve just opened my favourite excel spreadsheet and sipping down on the hard filter brew Vanessa makes for the bunch of us every morning. No it’s not. It’s Saturday afternoon as I write this. Well, it sort of came early a couple of weekends ago, the sun I mean, and I took every opportunity to exploit it before it gave way to the rain clouds again. It was still abit breezy, but was a nice little preview of picnic in the park. So it was me, grass, my 50mm and a little bit of wholefoods and now, you too.

Picnic mix.

I think the serpentine/kensington palace is my favourite bit of Hyde Park. Girls sunbathing with their girly mates, and the boys occasional letting their balls (totally intended) accidentally roll toward the unsuspecting beauties. Yes. Spring is back. I picked all the nibbly ones from the rich wholefoods selection in High Street Ken. Cold by the time I broke out all the boxes, including the crunchy jerusalem artichokes.

Depth of food

Shutterbugs love (the lack of) depth of field. It’s the easiest way to give your photos an ‘artistic look’ without much effort. Take these yummy buttermilk fried chicken drumsticks for example. Notice how there’s only one drumstick in total focus in the picture and the other sticks are thrown out of focus. Yeah, you can do this too by keeping your camera aperture at it’s widest. Try it, different model, different capabilities of course, if it permits, set your camera to ‘Aperture Mode’, and set the ‘f/’ number to it’s lowest possible number and then go as close as you can, and focus on what you want to keep in focus, and then let the camera do the rest.

It’ll create some lovingly tasty shots. The fried chicken carried a faint creamy edge to it, oh yummy stuff. Could do with abit more temperature, but I ain’t complaining.

Time for wine

One of the coolest things happened to my inbox last night. Gary Vay.Ner.Chuck. sent me an email. I flipped out. Come on winos, you know him, the Thunder show? It’s only the internetz most watched wine review show, ever. I’ve been a vayniac for almost two years now, I subscribe to his video podcast and he is absolutely the most awesome wine critic around. One day Vaynerchuck will displace Bob Parker as the voice of wine, and I said it first.

So who knew that Wholefoods had impressive wines on their racks. An Australian Hunter valley semillon which showed the trademark clean, lively and crisp characteristics the hunter whites are famous for. Eight quid, not bad at all. Man I miss Sydney. Hunter valley is about a 3 hour drive from Sydney. My mate drove. We hit the information centre to get a map of the entire valley first and then we marked out the vineyards we wanted to visit.

We started at midday and since he was driving, he was only suppose to have about five glasses every three hours. As we got to each vineyards, we were greeted by the winemakers and these guys were the most passionate people I’ve ever met, best of all – they let us sample everything they made, including their premium stuff. We hit four vineyards before three pm, and then stopped at one of the many restaurants dotted around the valley. Food was amazing, needless to say, but the best memory from drinking on location was how every single sip was so alive. Everything tasted like freshly pressed grape juice and I had never quite had wine like that before.

It is true wine doesnt travel well, but great wine doesn’t come to you, you go to great wine. I’m still planning my trip to burgundy – it’s £899 for like five days staying with a winemaker I think. If anybody is up for it, email me.

So this is kind of what it feels like to picnic with me

The potato cake was pretty solid by the way, but I was ready to dig into the grilled sardines, they really look appetising. It’s a little under seasoned, needs just a dash of sea salt, but I don’t want to complain, the whole occasion and the rays of light are just so relaxing, I wish the afternoon sun would never leave. I was looking into my lightroom library the other day and it showed that I had taken something like 4,000 food photographs in the past six months. That’s a mad stat just thinking about it. Yes, I have more digital food pics than I do mp3s.

It gave me a little brainbolt about contracting myself as a food photographer for magazines, restaurants, pr companies… or just anybody who likes looking at pictures of food. That would be a nice little freelance job to have on the side, I mean, what are they going to do with the food after the fact right?

I mean, I’d eat it . Commitment to the job. 100% committed, passionate and environmentally friendly too. I can’t think of a better reason to do food photography other than that I want to eat what I shoot. Hey, that’s a great blog motto: ‘Eating everything I shoot’ , might use that for twitter or something.

Eating antipasti, last.

Im unconventional. I’m one of these problogger readers who swear by Darren’s secrets to success and am a student of copywritingblogging. But almost all of my pillar posts cross the four digit mark. Oh well, guess you need to break the rules to make new ones.

Join me for a real picnic, when the real Spring really arrives.

For now, the weather is still a little breezy, my hayfever hasn’t started yet, so spring is not really here yet. When it does roll around, I’m sure I’ll be back for a full on picnic.

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London does not always have bad weather. Sometimes, it really is awesome. Like this weekend for example. Spring came early and yes, while it’s a breezy 13C , the sunshine is just awesome. Just the colours… the vibrance… I had to do it, the internet deserves to know what a truly awesome place London morphs into … when the sun comes out.

Eating and reading in the park

The flowers in and around the Kensington Palace, with the Orangery (packed to the brim and looking like a two hour queue..) in the background. I was suppose to pop in for a spot of high tea but the queue was just ridiculous and perhaps it’s better to just roll around on the grass.

It’s been a while since I last did a proper edition of eat&read and I think I may just change it to a fortnightly one instead. Believe it or not, a eat&read post takes a really long time to produce. All the linking up, the rounding up, alot of ideas to organise and compose. I’m finally back from holiday and back to my tuesday/friday review schedule once again. If you havent read them yet, I posted a review of the new Italian crowd favourite Bocca di Lupo and also published a write-up of my visit to the Butcher’s block.

Brand new ideas.

I like this photo – it makes for a pretty kewl desktop wallpaper. This was shot with a nifty 50 mm at f/2.5 for you glass heads, processed with Capture NX2 (vivid option) and then exported with Lighroom 2.1.

I’m trialing my photos as desktop wallpapers and starting with this one as ‘beta’. You can download a large 1600 px version here. When the picture has finished loading, right-click on it and select ‘make as your background’ option, and make sure you tell me if you like it, or not.

I’ve upgraded to a brand new camera by the way, so picture quality should be even more sumptuous. It’s a little bittersweet to say goodbye to my trusty D40, but man the D90 is simply an awesome camera. Until I get the D300 that is. Ah yes, I don’t always think about food all the time, I also fantasize about sexy cameras, and also sexy site design.

For the benefit of my subscribers, I’ve streamlined the site design a little bit. It should be sleeker now, but it’s still abit of work in progress as there are a few more tiny features I would like to add to it, pop your browser to http://londoneater.com to have a quick look see. I’ll speak more about site design in another post some other time.

And before I go back to the park again..

Righto, it’s another glorious sunday morning as I write this and one more picture I’d like to make available for you to download as a wallpaper is this one of the wind blowing through a park chair, taken through a park chair.

I’m going to turn my little quickie wine guide into a free ebook for your to download sometime soon and would love to know if you’d like any of my foodie photos turned into full blown desktop wallpapers for you to peruse (ethically and for private use only, of course):

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My port of call is usually the Gloucester road bus stop, though we start our little photo tour just outside Hyde Park Corner for the number 9. The sky was doing amazing things on that particular Friday and it allowed me to grab this shot of the golden lights seemingly opening it’s arms to the Mandarin Oriental. What a lovely sight.

Riding on the No.9, one of the last remaining routes to still be using the old routemasters (that’s what they are called, right?), I lay witness to a beautiful day and all the vibrance of Green Park’s lush greens, colours so rich I might have mistaken it for one of the paintings for sale just outside the fences.

Final destination was the National Gallery in Piccaddily for a spot of Debussy. On that friday evening, a recital was organised in room 18 and put together by the Royal college of music … no Claire de Lune though. I realised how I’ve never really photographed the London landmarks before. Well, all in good time I suppose, and with this trip, Nelson’s column at Trafalgar Square.

Of course, how can I go sightseeing and not include a photograph of the weekend’s sins…

On the way back westward, I was in Whiteleys for some glorious Belgian waffles.

Ahh… that’s another great weekend’s worth of me and the Smoke. I got a nod from Charz at Timeout (Thanks Charmaine!), sitemeter shows you still care enough to read my stuff and I’m still stinting at Qype.

Hope your weekend was awesome, folks.

I’ve been off for two weeks and the sky is still falling down on London, seriously when is it all going to stop? Did anybody miss me while I was away? I did manage a couple of reviews on my break but my first London restaurant visits will have to wait till Friday. As I said yesterday, I bought a new camera and this will be it’s virgin usage for a very sinful post.

This sushi train is located somewhere south of the South China Sea (I forget the name of the place) and the rate is 50 pence per plate. This isn’t really a review, but more like food glorification, though the technically accurate term is foodporno. If you’re anything like me, you’ll appreciate great sushi trains for peanuts – it’s just a shame we don’t have more of them in London ( Yo! is alright, but seriously overpriced). On this visit, the count is about 20 plates (my record is 37 in Sydney, I think) and that’s a grand total of £10. A tenner barely gets me like 2.5 plates at Yo!

Yo.

Cheap sushi bingeing – as far as I know – only exists in Asia; ok so welcome back to another edition of London eater, the name is Kang and I will be at your service for the rest of this post.

Number one, the salmon

Some places call it the shake, or the sake nigiri and this is perhaps the most common sushi dish found amongst faux-sushi bars outside of Japan. Contrarily, thickness does not equate value – a good piece of shake should be filleted at a very artful angle to attain a smooth and consistent texture that will melt in the eater’s mouth.  I just love a robustly silky salmon nigiri with a dabble of soya sauce. Yummy.

Number two, steamed egg tofu

Not everything in sushi bars is raw. Case in point: A creamy and gentle slow steamed egg infused tofu is oriental comfort food central. This particular one was almost like a smooth vanilla custard, mild, eggy and milky – it was a pretty interesting contrast to the salmon.

Trinity, octopus

I’d like to think of this as an inside out nigiri with a boiled octupus’s body (sounds abit yucky doesn’t it?) sliced down the middle, stuffed with sushi rice and smothered with teriyaki sauce. As an avid fan of the rubbery creature of the deep, this was thankfully chewable, believe me, if you overcook it you may as well use it as a doorstopper and in parts of Asia, its a delicacy.

Hmm, ok I’m sure it’s a baby octopus and not a squid (squids have tentacles in the front bit I think) , can anybody confirm?

Fourmage, California roll with roe sauce on top

My tastebuds didn’t quite agree with the bitter and strong flavoured roe sauce that seems as though it’s been made with mayo and soya base. Perhaps it’s the bitterness from the roe itself but I just didn’t quite get this. Having said that, the golden hued topping looked so good (it was a special) that I scoffed a piece even before I took a picture. Wrong move.

At five… Unagi on rice.

Remember this one time Ross told his Friends that he had a black belt in Karate and he picked up an acute sense of awareness known as Grilled teriyaki eel? I loved that episode and I also love unagi. It is ex-pen-sive in London (last I checked, prices hovered the £2 per piece mark, on average) and I usually have a couple more plates of this whenever I am stopping in a cheap sushi bar in Asia. I’ve never really had unagi that was bad before, how wrong can it go right? It’s grilled, with teriyaki sauce and slapped on rice.

You can get frozen pre-grilled unagi fillets for six quid at Japan Centre which tastes like the real thing, so if you are craving unagi and you live in London, that might be a cheap alternative for ya.

Six is a white fish.

Ok I must confess, I am not that good with fish names. My best guess is that this is the flesh of a sea bass who’s family still swims in the south china sea. But I’m not too sure. White fish sushis are plain at best, at worst they emit a decaying, fishy odour. Here’s a tip for your virgin sushi-nos, if you find yourself needing to dip the raw stuff in lots of soya and wasabi to mask the flavour – then it’s a high probability that it’s gone off. The whole philosophy of sushi is to eat ultra fresh fish and ultra fresh fish should smell and taste fresh – not dead.

Seven scallops and a tree full of money

It’s the little touches you know, abit of teriyaki on the scallop just brings out the sweet and creamy scallopion fragrance. Nothing like fresh spanking dollops of scallop on rice, yes it’s pretty good at sushi hiro and sake no hana but no where in London are you going to find this for 50p, and as for the little touches? Wake up, London sushi trains, do it like the way they do it on the other side of the globe and be generous with those funky sauces.

Eight abalone, mayo and colourful chips

Good abalone is a delicacy in Asia, but over here in the UK, it’s nearly unavailable. I was pretty surprised to find a ‘delicacy’ available for 50p to be quite honest and the simply boiled slices – while edible like slices of chicken fillets that taste like prawns – wasn’t the wallet busting double boiled stuff you’d find in pricy Hong Kong restaurants. This one was whimsically decorated with chocolate chips. Will the wonders never cease?

Nine – crabs, mayo on rice

The same way we have crabs on toast, sushi bars have crabs on rice. Japanese mayo is more intense than European mayo. It’s saltier, edgier and I think more umami rich – goes criminally well with strands of crab….

Ten, lightly seared salmon with abit of skin.

Finally, this is not so much seared than torched. The sushi chef comes to the salmon with a mini blow torch to pink the flesh. The direct flame from the torch means that the fish maintains it’s creamy texture but now carries a cool charcoaled smokiness when it hits your mouth. With abit of oil (not melted) and abit of a temperature, it’s more decadently soft too.

Little touches, just little touches. I love sushi, I wish I was still on holiday and that was a tenner well spent.

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I’ve always had this idea to use the tube map as an eating guide for anyone wanting to sample highlights of London via the underground – I just didnt really know how ( or more like when ) I could figure it onto this blog. When I was approached by Hillary who edits both Recipe4living and the chewonthatblog , she wanted a kind of snapshot of London and I thought wow – what a coincidence we’re on the same brainwave. So I mined the archives and put together an ‘underground eating list on the underground’. I included stuff such as Borough market and sampling some very British crabs on toast at 32 GQS. I also included a recommendation to my personal favourite: Cambio de Tercio.

You can download and print this map if you want, just click on the image for a bigger version.

Anyway, I thought it’d make for a great guest post and one that can be useful for anyone who’s about to visit London and are looking for a few places to munch up. As with my last few guest posts, I am giving away my best stuff and treating these guest posts as if they were to be published here on LE. To that end, I’m giving away the same quality of pictures too and I do try and make sure they are decent enough. Hope you guys find my stuff both useful and entertaining – oh and if you feel hungry after reading then I’ve done my job! 

(Yup, that’s one of my personal missions now: to make people feel hungry) 

Snapshots from London : Do check it out over at the Chew on That Blog.

I take it everyone had a smashing time getting all loved up yesterday? As for myself, I’ve been a busy bee planning content for London Eater over the next couple of weeks. Yes there are a few announcements I need to make in this edition of Eat&Read and the first one is that your resident London Eater (me) is going on holiday for two weeks (Hurray!) , but fear not, I’m still going to be blogging and I’d like to tell you abit about the coming content so do keep reading (please, please, pretty please.)

Eating. happenings here on london eater

The past week has been abit of a blur and the workload is due mainly to email. First of all, my apologies to those of you who sent me an email and are still waiting for a reply – I’m still working through my inbox and I promise I will get round to you eventually, if I don’t – do email me again and bash me abit and I am sure to reply

On this topic of emails, I’ve started to receive emails from readers about places to eat/things they wanna eat in London and I just want to say it’s a really rewarding feeling hearing from you. Apart from writing foodporn, this website is set up to help people find things to eat in London and I’m glad that you’ve put your trust in me to help you with recommendations. I’ll keep up the work here and believe me, I’m always thinking about new ways to bring exciting, entertaining and useful content to my readership, so here’s to you my dear reader!

Announcements. special seasonal stuff on london eater

I’m going to skip the usual round-up of the last week’s blogging activities and go straight into some stuff I wanna get off my chest:

1. Write for me and win £50 competition I would like to thank all of you who sent in your reviews, everything is great and I’ll put together a schedule for release and email you once I figure out when your review is going online. The first one should go out around the 21st of Feb, in the meantime, if you still want to join, then do write in, I’m still accepting submissions, deets here.

2. London Eater is going on Holiday which is why I organised a little competition on this blog, I will be going away in a couple of weeks time. I’ll still be eating and blogging of course and there will be four more London reviews between now and the end of February. There will not be any London Eating in the 1st week of March. Eating resumes on the 2nd week of march. As for content in between, here is what I plan to write about….

3. Write about the good stuff I eat back home I wonder if escapade still does that £15 lobster and scallop dish back home, if they do, it’s going on LE. I’ll also be doing abit of travelling and I will be giving away my travel eating posts to Delightful Eggtarts and the Food site. I think I can probably squeeze out about eight posts on while traveling and if you’d like me to give one of these guest post to your blog, I’d be more than happy to do so just email me.

4. The London Eater Wallpaper Pack giveaway While I am away, I will be looking into my photo archive and I will be turning some of the photos into desktop wallpapers. Everything will be free to download and I hope you’ll like some of the stuff I have planned. Look out for the Wallpaper pack sometime in the end of February.

5. London Eater All Week Quirkers I will be blogging more quirkers as I receive brainbolts while boring myself on the airplane ride and there are a few ‘editorials’ I’d like to write about, I say editorials but really it’s more like ‘rants’, oh no no, let’s use glossier words, polarising opinion in the world of food blogging.

Reading into London. stuff really worth reading about

Tipped is an ultracool online community in which local people share ‘tips’ about things to do in London. I’ve been using for the past week or so and I love the simple clean interface. You’ll find me as ‘Kang.L’ on tipped and you can go befriend me if you like.

Wee Birdy London is one of the finalists for the 2009 bloggie awards for best kept secret. It’s a fashion blog by a fashionista for fashionistas. The blog design is super clean and the pictures are really slick. I mean, I’m a dude and even I’m impressed by this, it’s a really cool site, go check it out girls.

EatMakeRead is the blog of Kelly the Graphic Designer who loves to eat, make fun things and read interesting stuff. Yet another superiorly slick foodblog with great photographs and a superclean design. It’s all about the white space, I love this one alot.

Drinking chocolate Maybe cos its Sunday I am really craving a damn good cuppa hot chocolate. So I googled it and stumbled upon this gem of a recipe at Recipes2Share. Oh look at all those bubbles….

Next Week on London Eater

On Monday, I will unleash the foodie tube map on the chew on that blog, on tuesday I will write the delayed cafe rouge breakfast trip and on friday you will witness the sophie lobster roll. In between will be the usual London Eater quirkers and on Saturday I will be leaving on a jetplane. Have a great sunday folks and see you back here tomorrow!

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1. Make a valentine proposal and win £1000 worth of wine 

This one comes from a relatively new wine website and their video competition is pretty quirky. You can be all serious and propose to your honey, or you can be cheeky and propose anyway, and she might find it funny and fall madly in love with you? Check it out here.

2. Buy a limited edition bottle of wine from an artisan food seller

If you’re going to give wine and chocolates, then do make sure it’s something special at least. Flavours of Spain are doing this box set which includes a bottle of Pedralonga Barrica – limited production of biodynamic white wine only 1800 bottled - accompanied by a gift box of two chocolates (Yuzu and Mascletà) created by Spain’s leading chocolatier Oriol Balaguer, former pastry chef of Michelin starred El Bulli, all presented in an elegant wooden case. Thirty quid from their website here, or perhaps it’s better to pay them a visit at their Borough Market stand..

3. Go hang out at Borough Market

What couldn’t be better than a day trip to one of London’s better known food markets. Instead of switching off the lights and going in for the kill – maybe a whole days worth of sampling great food and feeling the buzz of food market – coupled with a visit to monmouth for great coffee or even a nice tapas lunch – could help strengthen the love and make the lights off bit last longer, yeah. (PS: I’m told asparagus are good for lights off action.)

Who knows, you might even bump into your valentine in the market… I’m still searching for this lovely lass whom I bumped into and accidentally photographed the last time I was in Borough market. My write-ups here.

4. Take a boat ride around the Thames

No need to do book anything fancy, just jump on the ferries outside Greenwich park (um, four quid I think) and they go all the way around the O2 and then back to Waterloo. It’ll be cold, she’ll be curling in your arms – the world will be perfect. You better check for boat times with TfL.co.uk just in case though.

5. Share spaghetti ice cream

Well it’s more like ice cream made to look like spaghetti than the other way round, so nothing too out there. One of my favourite cafes, Ciao in Soho is delightfully Italian and what could be sweeter than treating your sweetie to a low-key late night ice cream snack.  All the details here.

6. Go to a gallery

Or a museum, it’s all free really. I like the Saatchi and Saatchi, National Portrait is always cool and I especially love the Reading room which sits in the middle of the British Museum, really grand room and huge, just huge. More here.

7. Open air Music at Covent Garden on Friday night

I can’t say for certain that the Italian crooner with the acoustic guitar will definitely be there this Friday (the 13th, yikes!) but if he is, he’s amazing, usually has an army of groupies who come out to scream and shout at him and it’ll make for a pretty romantic off the cuff date, stay out till midnight and into Valentines. Love is in the air and it’s all free too. 

Ok so that’s seven more ideas to my initial seven eating ideas, good luck with whatever you’re planning this weekend and I hope you have a great Valentines. Just keep in mind, it’s about spending time with her and the thought that counts.

Do let me know if the suggestions turn out to be a smashing success (or an epic failure)!

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It has been abit of a winter wonderhell this past week, yeah the snow has been alot of fun but it completely destroyed my shoes ( I bought new clarks for work yesterday ) and forced me to take a day off ( mixed feelings as I enjoyed the lie in but loathed 9 hours less vacation time..) work. By saturday – I’d managed to catch up on most of my mandatory spreadsheet staring, met a couple of beautiful and lovely bloggie lasses and somehow managed to find myself on a food tv show, ah the precarious life a humble food blogga.

Welcome to the first sunday eat&read of february ladies (and gents).

Eating. happenings here on london eater

This has been one of the better eating weeks as site traffic began to pick up and food bloggers have re-started communicating with likeminds again. I produced four posts this week.

1. Life is good and food is still good when I paid a visit to Arbutus last Friday with my pals over at metrotwin.
2. I also wrote up a review about the mozzarella bar in Selfridges ( eat cheese while you watch women pick their next overpriced handbag ) Obika; yes they fly the white blobs in at least three times a week which means that it’s expensive.
3. The little bay in Farringdon is letting you eat anything you want and letting you pay anything you want. No joke, article here. So, what do you think your meal is worth…..
4. ….and abit of blurb about mah plans for London Eater in the next quarter plus stats.

London. happenings around the Smoke

Yes. That’s been the big news all week: England was hit by the worse snowstorm in two decades and here in London we had a good 3 inches of snow that wrecked havoc on all public transport. Like all things in this country, disruption equals impromptu public holiday. Oh how I wish my fake fireplace burnt real wood. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to snap pictures of snowy London (believe me, the blogger part of me is in tears right now…) but it really was beautiful outside. I made huge snowballs from the snow covering the cars parked outside my street and selectively threw it at pretty ladies walking by hoping that could lead into an opening pick up line. Unsurprisingly, that random act of hopeful(less)ness failed – but with no catastrophic consequence. I must re-read my little blue book regarding ‘The fine art of small talk’.

I received a rather cryptic email from a man from ITV asking me if I’d like to participate in a new cooking show on tv called Taste The Nation. I was close to putting this in my junk mail folder until I googled it and it turned out to be the real deal. So I said yes and a couple of days later I receive a phone call from the production crew:

“Is this… KANG?” says woman with the estuary accent.

“YES” says me.

“Do you know the….LOCATION.”

“Um..no.”

“It is in…. FULHAM FOOTBALL CLUB. Do you ….. know it.”

“YES.” …. and 24 hours later I’m in the presence of too many cameras and am sat on a table with a japanese food writer, a novelist and a couple of lads who help organise lavish partays for fallen investment banks (that’s where the bailout money really goes) but the most interesting person I met on the shoot was a retired and very worldly Hotelier just back from a trip to Indo-China. He spoke of his lack of confidence in Mark Hughes and how he thought Sven was a real charmer: The man used to be a shareholder in Man City, get it? Thanks for the invite Ben and great to have finally met ya Lizzie.

The TV show is abit like a cooking version of X-factor and I saw Nick Nairn (woo.) and Rosemary ‘Lady to Ladette’ (in that order). Didn’t manage to snag their Hancocks but I did get a taster of food cooked for ‘TV’ and refrained from turning into the next Simon Cowell when the camera swung my way for comments about the stuff I tasted. I wasn’t too keen about screen time and I’m hoping the edit room will be kind and not turn my vox-pop into a mangled foodie from hell sort of thing , thankfully I was sat on a table with a couple of folks who seemed desperate to prove they are TV material by summoning all kinds of adjectives to describe how food tasted ‘awful’. I hoping their ‘performances’ are going to outshine my own. Like I said – being ‘the entertaining one’ on reality tv is not quite that funny.

And on that note..

Expect a write up on Abeno too and the Cafe Rouge on Friday and Tuesday (yes, in that order) respectively in the week that will be upon us. Until then, happy eating folks, the sun is out in London and I’m going to Wesfield – have a great end to the week.

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