This last week I have been watching season four of ‘The Mind of a Chef’ Narrated by Anthony Bourdain. In this season they follow Gabrielle Hamilton from Prune restaurant in New York. I love her, she’s strong and sassy and she speaks with such passion and intelligence and humour. I enjoy watching her cook, admire her food philosophy, and…
Tag: restaurant
Tortilla at Laxeiro Tapas Bar and another life lesson.
Here’s this thing, life isn’t always perfect. Sometimes it’s great, other times it can be stressful, disappointing, underwhelming. I’m going through a bit of a process at the moment. The more I live, get out of my own head and relax into the moment, the more I have a tenable understanding of how lucky I am…
Txotx – Finding my inner om with a green smoothie and mushroom toast.
I realized something at yoga yesterday. I really don’t like to om. I don’t even like listening to other people do it. I think I might associate it in my mind with the time my dad went through his weird Tibetan throat singing phase. Not quite as bizarre as the aliens that lived on the…
Padella – Where if you concentrate really hard, you can taste the sweat of the pasta maker.
A few nights ago I went with a friend to visit Padella. I had been meaning to pay them a visit for a while, but had always been dissuaded by the queue which snaked most nights in an orderly line down the street. Even on a Monday. I’m really not a fan of queues, and…
Korcarz – A hunt for the latke of our dreams, and Rabbi Yosef’s advice.
About ten years ago, I spent a weekend in Paris with my parents. I remember that it was the middle of winter, just before Christmas. To say that it was cold would be and understatement. It was ccccooooolllllddd. My mum insisted that we ride around the city on the top open air part of a…
Le Bouillon Chartier
We cross the lights on Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre in the 9th arrondissement, and Bouillon Chartier rises up to greet us. A monolith from another time and place. I’m only in the courtyard but I feel like I might be whisked away from the entrance in a ’20s style Rolls Royce a la Woody Allen’s ‘Midnight in Paris’…
Mildred’s Vegetarian Soho – A flavourful taste sensation
I once spent six months as a vegetarian. It was a reaction to working in the kibbutz kitchen when I lived in Israel. My job, especially on a Friday before the Sabbath, was to lop the limp, dangly necks off a few hundred chickens, and stuff a mixture of potatoes, herbs and spices up their…
Moro – A North African and Spanish style riot of flavours AKA. Post work-out treat
On Wednesday I went to a HIIT class. For the uninitiated, that’s High Intensity Interval Training, involving squats, push ups, dumbbells and so on. Basically, some guy with more steel than Robocop yells “You can do better!” while you run around like a demented hamster, sweat every last bit of salt out of your body,…
Gaby’s Deli – A delicious capsule within time’s changing landscape.
1971 was the year that decimal currency was launched, the first Mr Men books were published, one of my favourite TV crushes Damien ‘he’ll always be Soames to me’ Lewis was born and a fresh pound of turkey (apparently!) cost fourty pence. It was also the year that Gaby opened his eponymous deli on Charing Cross road,…
Bibigo Soho – Where the chefs are behind glass in a chef’s-bowl
Monday was just delightful. One of those rare summer days on London where you can lounge in the park until nine and not even realize the time. Until you get hungry. Then it’s time. To ‘forage’, and find. Try new things. “It’s too hot” my friend says “but I really feel like Korean. Let’s go to…
How to order a kebab
Knowing how to order a kebab sounds like something that should be easy. You decide what you want, you ask for it. Simple. Apparently not. I went to buy a kebab the other night. It had been a rather boozy evening and I hadn’t had time for dinner. Kebab shops are funny places. They are the…
A Food Adventure – Double Pie Dinner with a side of Jellied Eel
Another day, another eating adventure. Ordinarily, I would think that a soft pie with gummy mash covered in a radio-active green parsley sauce with a side of jellied eels sounded unappealing. This time though, the little elderly lady that was serving it too me was so adorable, (in a tough East London sort of way) that…
