Street Feast

On Friday evening Freddie and I headed to Dalston Junction for Street Feast.

Lunch in the Clouds

As I'm writing this, it seems like an entire lifetime ago that me and Millie, and our mothers flew up to the 40th floor of the Heron Tower in a Charlie and The Chocolate Factory-esque all glass lift, but our meal was just too good not to share.

Our mothers have been such close friends for years, Millie and I went to school together every day too, so it was only natural we would become great friends.
We went to London to see the wedding dress exhibit at the V&A where we chose our future dresses- look out Kate Moss, there are two copycats hot on your tail.

Taste of London Part 2

We continued our mammoth tasting feast to Club Gason, where we had their icon dish, crispy barbecued foie gras,

 … Just look at that shatter..

This was my first proper time eating fois gras, it wasn't what I had expected, a lot softer, although it was really yummy, I'm still yet to make my mind up about this one, beautifully presented though!

  
Then I demanded yet another coconut stop!

They had several places with lovely fresh coconuts stacked up, say the word and with the swoosh of a big knife the top would be off, straw inside, and you could have your coconut water fix.

Apres coconut, we tried Gordon Ramsey's restaurant Maze, and plumped for the Sezchwan salt and pepper squid, 

 

We agreed that it could use some lime, but that didn't stop Mum smiling!

Okay so, prior to this, I have never liked oysters, there was something so unappealing about the cold, salty slime but my mother and the waitress (turned photographer) took upon themselves to change,

The first one I had plain, which I foolishly decided not to chew once...

… Which, as you can see in the photo below, was a bit of a shock

After a bit of coaxing, the ever so helpful waitress recommended I try one with tabaso,

Plus I chewed!

Such an improvement, and now a converted oyster fan!

After our oyster palava, we ambled through the Thai restaurants, we both found it surprising that none of the foods really appealed to us (probably due to all the food we had been eating all day?), but we did come across a man making vegetable sculptures,

Have you ever seen a more beautiful carrot?!

Our last food stop was to go to Cliveden House, where Andre Garrett had such a delicious pudding in store for us, peanut butter parfait with salted caramel, chocolate and raspberry, 

Holding tightly to our pudding we went to the Shack Revolution, where we grabbed a raspberry mojito, for her, and a apple and ginger vodka collins, for me, and funnily enough we ended up preferring each other's drinks.. 

Which both proved to be a little bit lethal!

 Okay, enough fraternising with cocktails, because this could be one of the best puddings I have ever tasted, it was a bit like a a deconstructed, molten peanut butter and jam sandwich, replacing bread with nuggets of crunchie and popping candy, I mean, just look at the wonder on my face:

We headed home, a coconut in hand for me, a bag of treats for Mum, heavier than we arrived, and slightly merrier.

Taste of London has finished this festival, but there's one from 20th-23rd November HERE.

Taste of London Part 1

After a brief fandango with table bookings at Duck & Waffle, and thanks to Emily and D&W's executive chef, Dan, Mum and I boycotted a bird's eye view of London and moseyed on down to Regent's Park to go to Taste of London.

Taste of London is a restaurant festival.
Think of it as going to the cinema, and you're watching all the trailers before the film starts, only except you're in a beautiful park, on a glorious summer's day and the trailers are restaurants showcasing their dishes, their very best dishes.

We arrived, starving, and went straight to the first familiar name.
Remember Flesh & Buns?

We went for their roasted pork belly with mustard miso and pickled apple, all bundled up in one of their cloud like steamed buns. 

Think hog roast, but Japanese style, and just as delicious.

It filled enough of a hole to be able to wander around the smaller brand's stalls, swiping tasters off of their plates as we went.

Smith & Sinclair are an alcoholic sweet company, pretty cool packaging with some pretty cool ideas, Mixed Berry Daquiri Pastille, anyone?

Next we dos-a-dosed to Sushi Samba, where we poured over their Wasa roll: shrimp tempura, quinoa, shisito, coriander, wagyu chorizo, spicy mayo and red onion...

… And their tuna seviche served with watermelon leche de tigre, maize morado, wasabi peas
and basil...

But in the end we couldn't miss out on trying their icon dish: Lobster Taquitos: avocado purée, aji amarillo served with roasted brazilian nuts.

 This was Mum's favourite dish of the day, it was like eating a more oriental taco, with lobster, mmm mmm.

Seeing as it was right next door, and that our plans had changed we popped into Duck & Waffle, it was quite busy, but we managed to get to the front and choose our dishes;

BBQ Pigs Ears, they sound more like something you would give to your dog, not something you'd order in a high end restaurant, but they were tasty, chewy with a barbecue kick, sealed up in their own little paper bag.

The second dish we ordered was smoked chilli braised ox cheek, with cheesy polenta and a fried pickle on top, which was almost like a stewy casserole.
 I really wanted to like this because I've always heard such good reviews about D&W, but it was heavy and hot, probably my fault for choosing something like that on such a warm day.

I'd probably have really enjoyed it if the nights were drawing in early and it was November.

After Duck & Waffle we strolled over to Intercontinental, where Theo Randall had whipped up some pan-fried scallops served in the shell with pancetta, red chilli, parsley, capers, lentils di Castelluccio and chopped rocket.

The attention to detail was amazing, look at the seahorse pancetta!
I'm a bit of a sucker for scallops, especially when served with pancetta, and especially when they're presented as nicely as this.

Next we went to Roka, a restaurant I hadn't heard of before, which is now firmly under my radar for black cod, crab and crayfish gyoza with chilli dressing.

Both Mum and I are huge fans of gyoza, deciding instantly what we wanted, this over exceeded our expectations and I'd gleefully demolish a whole plate.

 So as not to bombard with photos of some of the tastiest food London has to offer, I've split the festival into two, part two coming soon!!!

Sensing Spaces

A couple of days ago I spied a picture on Instagram, I can't remember what it was, just that it was about an exhibition that was coming to an end very soon, Sensing Spaces at the Royal Academy. 

I showed mum and yesterday we went up to the big smoke to check it out.

There were seven different installations, each aiming to generate senses by using body, volume, vistas and smells.

This was the first piece, an enormous wooden castle by Pezo von Ellrichshausen, you had to climb up one of the four towers to reach the top of the fort.

When you reached the top there were several peepholes, but this one was my favourite, because when you peeked through you came face to face with one of the beautiful gold angels that holds up the ceiling.

This was most certainly the liveliest part of the exhibition, Diébédo Francis Kéré had made an enormous pyramid which was formed out of plastic with lots of holes in,

You grabbed yourself some straws and had to stick them in yourself, all the littlies in the exhibition loved this, and they weren't the only ones,

Mum definitely had a lot less trouble than I did, I was tiptoeing around for ages trying to get them in,

(Sporting a lovely skiing tan beard, but that's a story for another time)

 We walked through a curtain made of strips of material and found ourselves in a snowy woodland,

One of the architects, Li Xiaodong, had transformed one of the rooms into a woodland maze, we could hear a faint crunching noise but we didn't really think anything of it...

Until you reached the centre of the maze which had been filled with stones, and the littlies had been stomping about, creating a stark contrast between the peacefulness of the wood and the noisiness of the gravel!

An enormous mirror made the room double in size, and out of all the pieces, I think this was my favourite.

But that doesn't mean that there isn't more to see!

We slipped into another room through a curtain and into a blacked out room, where Kengo Kuma had created these beautifully lit up, for lack of a better word (sorry Kengo), sticks, which had been fragranced to bring in the sense of smell.

The last one I want to show you is by Grafton Architects, which was really quite scary because the slab  was so oppressive and intimidating, it felt like it could fall on you at any minute!

It's a shame because the pictures, no matter how hard I tried, could capture how impressive each piece was!