Veggie Heaven in Primrose Hill

Ok, so I am a veggie but I don’t like vegetarian restaurants, certainly not vegan ones. Lettuce munchers, allergic to good taste. It’s just something about the atmosphere in them that turns me off. A room full of veggies, a crazy night does not make.

Ah, Manna. Primrose Hill. Beautiful people. Warm evening. Ice cold prosecco.

Cafe Below

God, I love living in London.

Where else can you eat lunch in a crypt made by Sir Christopher Wren? Cafe Below is an exquisite cafe under St Mary-Le-Bow Church on Cheapside. A hop and a skip away from Bank tube station.

Sunday Mayhem in the West Village

Of course in New York you have to go for brunch. I have plenty places to recommend but my favourite is one that you don’t go purely to eat. You simply must try the Beaumarchais in the West Village, New York.

Don’t waste your time going there in the week, you have to go on a Sunday afternoon to get that truly bonkers feeling of turning repeatedly to people around you screaming oh my god can you believe this crazy place on a SUNDAY??

It starts off ok. A little bit pretentious and we were made to wait over 30

At the BVLGARI, Darling

Hello plebs, is that you having brunch at Cafe Rouge? With a voucher? Oh how the other side live.

Me? I brunch at the Bulgari in Knightsbrige, London. It comes with unlimited prosecco, did I mention that? I am guided to my chair and as I await my friend, I sip my drink and enjoy the view which is decidely Arab/Russian. My friend arrives and we hit the buffet. This is not the Pizza Hut salad bar, you know, so we don’t load mountains of food on our plates. We start with cheese, meats, breads. We order eggs benedict and eggs florentine. We go back to the buffet for desserts. We go back for croissants and pain au chocolats. We go back for…. you get the idea.

Orchard

Because you can get lovely veggie food everywhere it is easy to forget how different it is to actually go to an exclusively veggie restaurant/cafe.

If you find yourself around Holborn, you must skip along to Orchard on Sicilian Avenue. The Ave is cute enough but a fab lunch time stop is offered by Orchard. They don’t take bookings

Hakkasan

Are we cool? We go to Hakkasan, Mayfair for dinner and cocktails. Or are we stuck in the noughties? We used to go there when we were young and crazy, we would drink cosmos, giggle with strangers and go on to a club.

We went on Saturday – do people still go to Hakkasan? Apparently, yes.

Waterloo Bar & Kitchen

It’s sunny in London and that means the evenings really do begin at 5!

If you are catching a play south of the river, heading to the BFI or find yourself generally milling around Waterloo then please may I recommend this slightly pricey but fabulous restaurant: the Waterloo Bar & Kitchen, it’s next to the Old Vic and is divine.

The menu

Sunday Brunch In Style

On the way to the London Marathon today, we popped into The Wolseley on Piccadilly.  Isn’t it wonderful? You live in London for a million years and there are still amazing treasures to find. The welcome was lovely and we were quickly guided to lovely seats even though we hadn’t booked and it was busy brunch o’clock.

We ordered

Cecconi’s

I remember when I first moved to South West London and my cousin took me to a bar in Chelsea. “Oh my god” she heard me mutter as we walked in. “Great isn’t it” she nodded at me. No. It wasn’t great, it was awful, full of tossers, one of whom said “it was great to see Asians drinking in Chelsea”.

This experience happened time and time again. I would be taken to a “fabulous place darling”

Seventeen

Having heard great things about Seventeen in Notting Hill, I broke with tradition and decided to Go West and try it out.

First impressions were incredible, this certainly is a very cool Chinese restaurant, very modern but in keeping with a Chinese aesthetic.  I’m not entirely convinced it belongs in Notting Hill which is more understated cool, but anyway, I was looking forward to a fab meal having been very impressed immediately with the restaurant interior.

Nobu London

Nobu is one of those marmite restaurants that people either love or hate.  A friend went a while ago and was hit with a £500 bill between four and frankly speaking, that did put me off a little.  I love sushi but always feel hungry after a couple of hours and would not appreciate a rumbling tummy after a hefty bill.

Having said that, every time I have had sushi at a restaurant with a Nobu guest chef

Oysters

There is probably a good reason why I have stayed away from oysters. The slimy texture really isn’t my thing, so I cannot understand the appeal. I was literally frightened away from them even more when I watched a tiny wiggling creature pop its head out the oyster as my friend was about slurp one down……

 

Yuck!!!!

Himalayan Kitchen

The Himalayas stretch fromPakistan to Nepal and there are countless restaurants borrowing the majestic mountain range’s name.  However, the Himalayan cuisine I will focus on is the Nepal/Tibet side as I review one of my favourite restaurants in Delhi: Yeti, the Himalayan Kitchen.

Always fresh ingredients and light

The Buttery Cafe

I remember when I first moved to London and fell in love with Hampstead.  It was so pretty even on a miserable rainy day that I went home and dramatically declared to my sister that we must move there.

The Buttery Cafe sits at the top of my road in the 300 year old Burgh House

Victorian Glam

That is how good it looks and this is what it is: the cafe at the Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington.