We went back for the full experience at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal (click here for our first encounter) and we once again left in a very satisfied, almost hallucinogenic food dream. The menu at this fine restaurant is filled with dishes inspired by British history and feature interesting ingredients such as frogs’ legs (Jinn had these!) veal sweetbreads (hmm…), and who can resist lardo? Sounds so healthy…
Highlights of the night? My roast marrowbone (above) with snails and the nitro ice cream, where your waitperson adds liquid nitrogen to a delicious concoction of custard and vanilla bean to create your dessert right in front of you! I chose the apple pop rocks and dehydrated strawberry as my toppings. The crackle-in-your-mouth sensation of the pop rocks brought back some fond childhood memories!
For a meal that isn’t quite as crazily priced as The Fat Duck but still brings you the dishes that foodmeister Blumenthal is so renowned for, this is the place to go! Friendly and attentive waitstaff, and an atmosphere that remains upmarket yet refreshingly relaxed (not like those places where you daren’t laugh too loud and you can practically hear yourself chew!) add to the overall marvellous experience(s) we had here at Dinner.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal / Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, 66 Knightsbridge, London / Open 7 days a week for lunch and dinner
So whilst Jinn was diligently waiting in a very very long line on a very very cold Saturday morning in London to buy some much coveted limited edition vinyls on Record Store Day, I went for a wee wander around Soho! And I was well rewarded by the discovery of the Hummingbird Bakery. It took all I had not to cry, “I’ll have one of everything!”. Seriously, choosing a cupcake was like choosing a favourite child! Finally, one cupcake stood out from all the rest – it turned out to be their available-Saturdays-only Eton Mess cupcake, and it was gooooood. Fluffy light vanilla sponge injected with fresh cream and strawberries, then topped with an Italian meringue icing, crispy regular meringue bits, then more cream and fruit! What a blissful little mouthful that was…
This bakery actually does an insanely good recipe book. I only dare use this book and the Primrose Bakery cupcake compendium as their recipes are mouthwateringly well presented, as well as pretty foolproof, as I am in no way a particularly adventurous baker. None of this “a little bit of this and a little bit of that”, I’d end up with a bunch of chocolate rocks if I tried that!
To well and truly satisfy that sweet tooth of yours, pay a visit to one of their stores! Check out their website here for locations.
Wanting to do something a little different to the usual gallery hopping, we jumped at the chance to see the David Bowie exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum (or V&A for short) in London. Come on! An exhibition about one of the greatest music and fashion legends of all time that’s sponsored by Gucci and Sennheiser – haw yeah!
I have to admit, my ardent love for Bowie was something that crept up very gradually over the years. I’d hear songs on the radio or on TV shows and be like, “Woah, that’s so good”, then I’d google/Shazam them, and I kept coming up with a common theme – they were all by none other than David Bowie! This made me explore his back catalogue more and more, and I just kept striking gold.
Not only is Bowie a groundbreaker and major influence in the music world but he also never failed to make a massive statement with his fashion choices, constantly remaking himself to smash down new boundaries. He mastered androgyny with his 70s alter-ego Ziggy Stardust and has often collaborated with avant garde designers to create his outlandish stage costumes.
The V&A hosts a large collection of Bowie’s actual onstage outfits, instruments and even snippets of original lyrics – it was simply amazing to see them in real life. The exhibition also allowed us a greater insight into his early days before he finally “made it” and we learnt interesting trivia such as the fact that one of his pupils is permanently dilated after a fisticuff-related injury! And here I always thought he deliberately wore some kind of fancy contact lens!
After spending a couple of hours immersed in the fantastical world of Bowie, we recharged our batteries with hot chocolates in a courtyard overlooked by a number of the museum’s lovely red-bricked facades. If you happen to be traipsing around London any time soon, this exhibition needs to be added to your must-see list! The online tickets have long sold out but you can still buy tickets at the museum. We arrived at opening at 10:00am and managed to get tickets to the 10:30am admittance, and I highly recommend you do the same!
First things first, why is no one called Horatio these days? It’s one of those cool old-school names which has sadly fallen from popularity, like Chauncey, Mabel, and Hattie…But I digress! (I may have read a few too many Enid Blyton books as a child…Omg, there’s another amazing name, Enid!)
We hadn’t done a whole lot of touristy stuff in London even though we’d already been there a few days, so we thought we’d take ourselves on our own little whirlwind tour of the sights – Trafalgar Square was our first stop, then Big Ben, Piccadilly Circus, and then I joined Jinn (read: got dragged along) on an Arsenal Emirates Stadium for a tour with Charlie George, an ex-player and legend of the soccer team. Do I sound like I know what I’m talking about? It’s because I’ve been brainwashed/educated by Jinn who is an absolute diehard Arsenal fan. Last time we were in London we went to an Arsenal match and I actually thought we were going to die when tempers and overly passionate team-patriotism boiled over at the game. So at least this time round my life wasn’t endangered in the name of soccer!
It was actually a pretty freezing day for an on-foot tour as you might be able to tell from my less than discrete turtleneck. I absolutely love playsuits so I decided to try out their cold weather cousins, overalls! And amongst all the cute spring dresses all the London stores were selling (Spring??? You call this Spring??? Madness…) I found this gorgeous Zara jumper which begged to be worn with my newly acquired overalls. Jinn looked pretty dapper himself I must say!
I’d been researching the whereabouts of good flea markets in London and the name “Borough Market” kept popping up here and there as a really popular place to go, but I kept dismissing it as it was a food market rather than a place to rummage for antique gems or vintage duds, which is what I was originally after. After our visit to The Shard we were making our way back to the tube station, down a little lane being buffeted by the bitingly cold wind, when I saw a sign for the Borough Market! (Haaaallelujah!) It’s essentially almost right at the base of the monumental building, and was just what we were after since we were both starving and it had turned out to be a bit of a grey, miserable day. And what better to pick up your spirits than a piping hot brownie fresh from the oven?
The down side to this place? No matter how hungry you are, you will not be able to try every single delicious morsel there is in this market! There are places selling burgers, traditional Cornish pasties, amazing cakes and pastries, cheeses and sausages made and brought fresh from local farms, and also a healthy helping of stalls piled high with delicacies from other lands, such as Turkish delight, kibeh (they were the best), and baklava. Meandering through the aisles of fresh fruit and vegetables was also fascinating. Strangely shaped tomatoes, a thousand different varieties of mushrooms, and just the sheer vibrant freshness of all this produce made me wish I could live here just so I could cook with such amazing ingredients – and of course taste them!
We spent a good two hours here at least, gorging ourselves on the sights and the food. Recommendations? The hot brownies, millefeuille and raspberry tart (pretty much everything) from the bakery that presents itself as soon as you walk through the market’s main entrance off Borough High St (Comptoir Gourmand), the lamb kibeh from the Lebanese stall (we had one, then went back for four), and the chorizo stall. And of course, a cup of mulled wine to wash it all down and warm your chilly bones. The Borough Market is not to be missed!
Check out their website and how to get there here.
Just shortly before going on holiday, we watched a Doctor Who episode that featured this glass-clad skyscraper as the headquarters for an alien organisation that was trapping people in its WiFi and converting them into energy (make sense?). It was quite an exciting episode and I can’t quite seem to translate that into plain words, but that might have something to do with the pyrotechnics and motorcycle ride straight up the side of the Shard that made it more thrilling.
I was half expecting to see Matt Smith aka the Doctor during our visit to this glistening modern day pyramid. Unfortunately it wasn’t to be, but we still had a great view over the centre of London city – we were so high up that even large structures such as the Tower Bridge were dwarfed! See if you can spot some landmarks in our photos below! Also, I’m not quite sure what possessed me, perhaps I was having such a good time or it’s quite possible that the cold had cut off all circulation to my brain and I’d become delirious – but I decided that it was perfectly appropriate to have a little dance around the viewing platform. The incriminating evidence is below!
This red dress is one of my favourites. Gorgeous colour, great shape and fabric, and a skirt that falls just so. So why does it often hang neglected and overlooked in my closet? Well, this dress has “history”. I bought it last year for one express purpose – for an exam. And not just any old exam. For the single most scariest exam I’ve ever done in my whole entire life. No joke. Just thinking about the whole process leading up to it and the day itself is giving me the heebie jeebies. Thank God I passed, but even so the entire experience was so traumatic that my hand would try not to linger over its hanger whenever I came across it in my wardrobe, and I’d always find an excuse to wear something else.
Well, it’s been eight months since that-day-which-shall-no-longer-be-mentioned and I decided that it was time that the curse be lifted. And once I slipped this dress back on, I realised what a fool I’d been to let it languish behind lesser dresses. It’s effortlessly elegant, can be dressed up or down, and is so so soooo comfortable.
On another note, this was one of the few days during our holiday that I could venture safely out without a heavy coat in tow. We’d just eaten at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal (for free!) and just hopped across the street into Hyde Park to enjoy the snippet of sunshine and admire the daffodils and giNORmous white swans. They’re twice the size of our black swans! The sunshine, the greenery and the sugar high we were still on made for a lovely, laughter-filled afternoon (probably more like giggles and snorts) and off we trotted on our merry way.
We went back for the full experience at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal (click here for our first encounter) and we once again left in a very satisfied, almost hallucinogenic food dream. The menu at this fine restaurant is filled with dishes inspired by British history and feature interesting ingredients such as frogs’ legs (Jinn had these!) veal sweetbreads (hmm…), and who can resist lardo? Sounds so healthy…
