Kentucky Eatin'

Hello again! Didn’t think I’d be posting so soon, didja? Well, this a special treat seeing that I am trying to pass the time before I head off to Cardiff for grad school. Also, this is a special entry because it’s a travel and food blog entry! I recently had the pleasure of visiting my sister and her husband in Kentucky and got some fun and fine dining out of the trip. Well let’s not dilly-dally! Let’s get to it!

First off, I’d like to welcome you to Tom + Chee. This little gem serves sooooo many different kinds of grilled cheeses with classic tomato soup (hence the name). However, I couldn’t help but order the Grilled Cheese Donut. That’s right. Grilled cheese slapped between two toasted glazed donuts. Now, this sandwich didn’t sound particularly appealing to me, but when someone comes up with something that just might make your arteries scream, well... I can’t help but be curious. Overall the Grilled Cheese Donut wasn’t too bad. The cheese was melted just right and the sandwich didn’t feel heavy. It was smooth and gooey and soft. Nevertheless, it just tasted like a donut with melted cheddar cheese. Did I love it? No. Hate it? No. There is a baker’s dozen challenge with the Grilled Cheese Donuts and I think it’s totally doable, though I think you’d want to detox after consuming probably a week’s worth of calories in one sitting. If I lived in Louisville, I’d definitely frequent this place to taste all their different grilled cheese combos (but thank goodness I don’t ‘cause otherwise I’d probably have to run everyday).

As cliche and touristy as it is... I did have fried chicken in Kentucky, granted it wasn’t from KFC. My dad was pretty adamant about having Kentucky fried chicken so after a morning of picking fresh fruit and veg at Huber’s Orchard and Winery, my family and I popped into the orchard’s mom and pop restaurant and got some fried chicken with plenty of starchy and filling sides. The fried chicken was pretty good. The batter and skin never slid off the chicken and the mashed potatoes were lovely and smooth. The meal also came with free fried biscuits and apple butter. However, nothing was particularly amazing. I love spices, so I would have liked a more flavorful batter, but that’s just me. The moral of the story is: just because there’s a worldwide fast food chain called, “Kentucky Fried Chicken” doesn’t mean that Kentucky is the land of the best fried chicken. 

Last on our restaurant tour was Seviche--a pretty snazzy restaurant with great seafood. Everything was so fresh and tasty. The menu is continually modified based upon which fresh ingredients are available and the chef seasons everything perfectly. I had the scallops and they were impeccable. Great crust and perfectly cooked. Gordon Ramsay would be proud. They also have a great selection of desserts and I melted when I took a bite out of their Tres Leche Cake. Genius idea of putting crushed macadamia nuts in it. My parents had the Avocado Ice Cream, which was quite fun and tasty. Very smooth and clever (the ice cream rested in a dark chocolate shell and had a bourbon ball in it to represent an avocado seed). The restaurant is a bit pricey, so I only recommend it for very special occasions. Oh, and the presentation of the food was spot on. I mean, look at these photos!

I also had the pleasure of going to the Bourbon Trail (which I soon learned was not really a trail but a name given to an area where a lot of distilleries were located). My family and I toured the Wild Turkey Distillery and afterwards we had a bourbon tasting. Since my sister and her hubby are seminary students at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, they couldn’t join in on the tasting. More for me then! Although we’re only allowed to taste two different bourbons (two cups per person), I got to take my sister and her husband’s glasses and try six different bourbons and could actually taste the difference between each one (whiskey typically just tastes like fire to me, so it was really nice to be able to identify different flavors in each one). 

And lastly, but definitely not least (How many times have I used this transition phrase?!), here are pictures of the beautiful food my sister cooked at home. She made a really tasty pork noodle dish and mushroom bourguignon. Serious props.

The next time I’ll post I’ll probably be in the UK. I’m so excited to start this new chapter in my life at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (if this is your first time tuning in, I’m getting my Masters in Theatre Design at RWCMD)! I probably won’t have much time to post this next year because of my work load. I apologize to the handful of people who follow my blog in advance (thanks for following at all). Nevertheless, I will probably update my personal blog more often. So if you like my writing or just me, you can follow this blog.

Still Here! Just been a little busy...

It’s been way too long. Ridiculously long in fact. No, I did not abandon my food blog, but life has gotten a bit crazy and writing about food hasn’t been on the forefront of my mind. What has been on the forefront of my mind is grad school. I spent the last year applying to UK theatre conservatories for an MA in Theatre Design and then spent a month in the UK in the summer interviewing with the schools. However my crazy schedule hasn’t stopped me from eating at great places! So... Please prepare yourself for a super long entry with lots of photos (what else is new?)!

Let’s first talk about Komodo. For those of you who haven’t stepped into this wonderful restaurant or laid eyes on its black food truck, Komodo serves Californian and Asian fusion dishes (that’s a mouthful!). I’m talking Asian spices with familiar SoCal ingredients like guacamole and fresh veggies. Needless to say, I love their food (being Taiwanese and born and raised in SoCal might play a huge factor). I got to try this gem’s truck first, but I got to say I like their restaurant a lot more. There’s more choices AND their fountain drinks are PHENOMENAL. I adore the Lychee Lemonade, but the Passion Fruit Green Tea and Mango Citrus are also great. I had the MP3, which is a burrito filled with top sirloin, seared quail eggs, tater tots and garlic aioli. I was really craving comfort food that night and so this really hit the spot. I also shared truffle fries with a friend. I’m more of a thick-cut fries kind of girl, but I can’t complain with this side’s flavors. 

Moving on to Top Round, I really wanted to try this little joint because LAist had an article about their shakes (I love pistachio ice cream and they have a shake version). Funny enough, I didn’t have a shake when I got there (the food is pretty heavy by itself). What I did have was the Bar-B-Cue sandwich (provel cheese, friend onion, jalapeño straws, bar-b-cue sauce, all between onion buns) and Dirty Fries (fries with gravy, provel cheese, carmelized onions and Round sauce). Sad to say, I was a bit disappointed. I hoped that the Bar-B-Cue sandwich would have some kind of kick to it because of the jalapeños, but it all kind of melted together into one goopy mess. The dirty fries were also a bit disappointing because the fries were all super thin and crispy (again, I’m a thick-cut fries gal) and it all quickly cooled, making the whole thing a ball of cheese and gravy. The restaurant is cute and I was with great company, but I’ll probably be back only to try the pistachio shake.

Tea Rose Garden is a cute high tea spot in Pasadena that my friend Melissa introduced to me. Nestled on a little street of shops, you would hardly notice it. However, when you walk in, you’re presented with a kind of gaudy, but quirky and lovely cafe. The owners try to make the inside look like the outside by installing a fountain in the middle of room and painting the ceiling sky blue. Tea Rose Garden feels like your grandma invited you over for tea because all the cups and saucers are mismatched and there is wonderful clutter of flowery decor everywhere you look. I expect that when I’m 80, this is what my house will look like. I personally like places like this, places with personality bursting out its seams. The food was also pretty good and loved how they gave us PLENTY of Double Devon Cream. You can never have enough cream with an English scone.   

And lastly, let me introduce you to BLD. One of my friends treated me to this swanky restaurant and you can definitely sense how high-end this place is by the price on its menus and the celebrities that line up to eat there (spotted Minka Kelly there and yes, she’s just as pretty as she looks on TV). I had a chorizo tortilla española, which is a Spanish omelette filled with chorizo. Not only was the omelette delicious, but the roasted potatoes were FANTASTIC. I would eat a plate of just those potatoes if I could. Everything was seasoned just right and I can understand why such a long line forms every morning.

When I was in the UK this summer, I didn’t go on any new food excursions, but I revisited my favorite markets and restaurants and got to cook a bit when I was WWOOF-ing in Wales (WWOOF stands for Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms and it’s a program where volunteers work on a farm and are housed and fed in return). However, I did get to see Yotam Ottolenghi! Ottolenghi is a celebrity chef in the UK, who’s dishes are inspired by Middle-Eastern and Mediterranean flavors. I got to eat at one of his restaurants last year with a friend and was quite impressed by his flavor combinations. I was just wandering around London one evening and decided to stop by the new Foyles bookshop. Just so happened that Ottolenghi was opening the cookery section that night, so I got to hear him give a little speech and snap a few photos. Pretty cool, eh?

Oh! And I forgot to tell you that I did in fact get into grad school! I’ll be attending the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama for MA Theatre Design (Scenography). School starts in September and I don’t know if I’ll have any time to blog to be honest. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll pop back to write about some traditional Welsh food!

Spice Up Your Life!

To be honest, this isn’t that spicy of an entry. Spices are involved, but not to the extent where I think it does the title justice. I’ll probably end up writing another post in the future about spicy food and wishing I didn’t already use such a great title that makes people nostalgic for 90’s Brit pop. But alas, life and blog writing isn’t about what if’s and anticipation of future entries. So let’s get down to it. 

I baked and cooked this week! After a two weeks of pretty unhealthy restaurant and fast food eating, I decided to go on a juice cleanse for a day and then... Go back to unhealthy eating! I’m tryin’--not real hard--but I’m tryin’. At least this time around I’m baking and cooking my own food. That’s healthier than eating out, right? Maybe not ‘cause I baked pumpkin cream cheese muffins and harissa chicken thighs with buttermilk, but at least I know exactly what I’m putting into my body!

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Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

Ever since I had a pumpkin cream cheese muffin at Whole Foods in November, I’ve been wanting to replicate it. Now, the recipe I used didn’t replicate the look (the one from Whole Foods was huge and had a lovely mushroom-like muffin shape), but the taste was pretty spot on... Maybe even better because it was more moist. 

In the past, I used to use Punchfork to look up recipes and see how people would rate them to decide whether or not I would try a recipe out. Sadly, Pinterest--which I adore except for the fact that the company took away one of the most useful and awesome recipe sites gifted to the Internet--bought Punchfork and absorbed it into their site. Except, they didn’t really incorporate Punchfork with all its rating glory. All you can do on Pinterest concerning food is pin great photos of food. For all you know, it might taste horrible.

The point to my rant (LONG LIVE PUNCHFORK) is that I had to find a recipe online blindly. Sure, some sites have comments and people can rate on the site directly, but how honest can it be if it’s on their own site? Websites are free to delete or write their own comments. I digress. I ended up picking Crazy for Crust’s recipe and am pretty happy with it. 

Now why did I decide to bake these Fall/Winter friendly muffins when Spring is around the corner you might ask? Well... There was a sale on pumpkin puree at Ralphs. I got too excited and bought three huge cans. I had no clue that I would only use 3/4 of a can for 36 muffins (that’s right, I made 36 muffins--for no reason other than to share), so I’ll be eating a lot of pumpkin-flavored goods for the next month or two. I CAN’T WAIT. 

I’d now like to give a little shout out to my sister and her husband for gifting me these lovely silicon spatulas that were extremely handy in this whole baking process. They gave them to me for Christmas and had them specially engraved with the most British sentence they could think of...

Back to baking, the recipe online is pretty self-explanatory. I didn’t change the recipe.  My only “complaint” is that there was too much cheesecake filling leftover. I put complaint in quotations because it’s not really a problem because I ate the rest of the filling. Problem solved! You probably only need about 10 oz of cream cheese or maybe you can get even get away with using 8 oz and save yourself from buying an extra box. Oh, another thing is that I would recommend you leaving the muffins in the oven for an extra 2 minutes. I think my muffins came out a little undercooked. Eh... They were still yummy. And to tie in the spice theme... Pumpkin spice is in the recipe! See... The title does work.

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Harissa Chicken Thighs

Now these little puppies were a lot of work. I recently went to the LA Art Book Fair and stumbled upon an adorable, mini cook book published by Short Stack. I bought the Buttermilk edition by Angie Masier (there are other editions highlighting other ingredients) because I don’t have much experience using buttermilk (I remember the first time I bought it and was surprised it was tart!). 

There are plenty of other recipes that I’ll be getting to later on this year, but I decided to try the harissa chicken recipe because it looked relatively simple and incorporated interesting flavors. Little did I know Ralphs didn’t carry harissa paste and I would have to make it from scratch. I’m sure World Market or some other market in LA has harissa paste (a Tunisian hot chilli pepper paste), but I don’t have time to scour Los Angeles for it. I ended up finding a simple recipe for the paste on good ol’ About.com and adapting it to what I could get my hands on. For instance, I didn’t have coriander or caraway seeds, so I used rosemary instead. I also doubled the amount of everything in the recipe because it didn’t seem like enough for amount of chicken and veg I was cooking. The recipe on About.com also doesn’t specify what type of red peppers you should use, so I went for the standard thin red ones (please excuse my lack of knowledge of red pepper names). 

To respect the publishers and writer of Short Stack’s Buttermilk, I will not be posting their recipe online. However, if you ask my personally I will email you the recipe with my notes. 

During my prep, I had to de-seed 24 peppers, which took awhile and left me with stinging fingertips. Let me tell you, the acidity of spices quickly uncovers where you have cuts. Oh, and I don’t advise rubbing your eyes or really touching any part of your body while working with peppers. Seriously. 

I ended up using my mini blender (similar to a Magic Bullet) to blend all the spices and herbs together instead of using a food processor (‘cause I don’t have one). A mortar and pestle would probably give you the best results though.

The end result was so tasty! I love the sauce, especially with the baked sweet potatoes and red onions. I wish I bought leaner and thinner cuts of chicken thigh, but it’s not a huge deal. If you want to attempt to make this, I would set aside at least four to five hours to prep and bake. Not only does make the paste take time because of all the de-seeding, but the chicken needs to marinate for 30 minutes in the fridge and 30 minutes at room temperature. The vegetables also have to bake for 20 minutes before you place the marinated chicken on top. And lastly, the bake time is about an hour (or at least it took me that long because my chicken thighs were pretty thick). Nevertheless, the labor was worth it and now I can enjoy this dish for the next three to four days!

Why is it so hard to cook for one?

Summer is Over

This entry is long overdue especially since school has already started and I’ll be writing about what happened this past summer. I guess I should start out with what I’ve baked! I mentioned in my last entry about making cream puffs—which were probably my favorite goodies to bake this summer—and in addition to the cream puffs I also got to make lemon bars (personally requested by my coworkers during my last week at my internship with MovieMaker Magazine). I’ve made lemon bars before but I wasn’t fully satisfied with the recipe I used. Although everything tasted and looked fine, the lemon bars had an eggy smell (weird, I know). So this time around I took out one egg (using three instead of four) and juiced an extra lemon. I also added lemon zest into my crust for extra lemony goodness. I was afraid I over-killed the bars with lemons, but all my friends and coworkers dug them and I couldn’t stop at just one helping of these bars.

I also was feeling super nostalgic this summer and wanted to fly back to London ASAP. Sadly, no flying for me for a while, so I had to bring London to LA. I made English scones! I bought Double Devon Cream (sadly you can’t get clotted cream in the States—which has 4% more fat than Double Devon and is much more creamy) from World Market (also known as Cost Plus) and generously spread the cream on my scone and added strawberry jam on top. And of course I had to have a pot of tea with it! The recipe I used required me to convert measurements from grams into cups (many countries actually use grams instead of cup measurement—the US just likes to be a rebel and use its own measurement… i.e. inches, feet and Fahrenheit), but it wasn’t that hard thanks to good ol’ Google.

This summer I also got the privilege to dig into some tasty restaurant food. When I was driving down to San Diego, I stopped by to visit my friend in Long Beach and we had Moroccan food at a restaurant called, “Asha.” Pretty tasty. It actually reminded me a lot of Lebanese  food and made me miss Comptoir Libanais in London. My friend and I shared the Baba Ghanouj for appetizer and I had Kafta with Roasted Tomatoes for my entrée. Baba Ghanouj is made of eggplant, garlic, lemon juice, and tahini. It reminds me of humus, but has much more delicate and subtle taste. The appetizer comes with pita bread that you dip into the Baba Ghanouj. As for my entrée, I kind of chose it based on the fact that it had a pouched egg. I don’t know what it is about pouched eggs that I find so enticing. Maybe it’s because I haven’t mastered it yet. It’s a lot harder to cook than it looks. I remember when I was younger I was afraid to eat pouched eggs and because it seemed raw and runny like snot. Now, I think it’s wonderfully creamy and delicate (cooked and seasoned well of course). The Kafta was delicious and had this sour taste to it that I love. I've realized, as I’ve grown older I have learned to appreciate sour-tasting food like olive and artichokes.

Moving on, I went to Olvera Street with some people from my church and we had taquitos at Cielito Lindo. I’m not a huge taquito fan, but what made their taquitos the bomb was their green avocado sauce. It’s very subtle, so you don’t really notice the sauce until it’s gone and you realize that the dish was so good because of that green sauce. We also went to Mr. Churro and had churros filled with various sweet goodies. Mine was filled with condensed milk while some of my friends had custard, caramel and apple jam. If it wasn’t for the $15 parking, I would consider going to Olvera Street much more often.

I got to go to a tea tasting at Chado with my friend Cristin (who’s been on this blog once or twice) in Pasadena a couple weeks back. She bought a Living Social deal and we got to learn about and try various teas. On top of that, we had scones and got to bring some tea home (all part of the package deal). I think the total came out to be around $24 and it was originally somewhere around $75. I’ve been to Chado before so I wasn’t really surprised that they serve great food and tea, but their prices can get a little steep. I enjoyed the tea tasting experience and I thought it was fun learning about tea history. I would have had a better time if there weren’t loud obnoxious people sitting next to me (“Ugh… I need sugar and milk with this”—it’s a tea tasting for goodness sake! Show some respect for the tea) but that’s not the restaurant’s fault.

And lastly, I want to talk to you about Street Food Cinema. I saved the best for last! I found out about Street Food Cinema from Simon Pegg’s tweet because they were having a double feature—Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz—in honor of World’s End. Luckily, they were having this event at Exposition Park, near USC. On top of having a fun outdoor movie showing, there was going to be a band playing and a whole bunch of food trucks! And did I mention this was only $10? I couldn’t miss it. I love events that bring the community together and I honestly don’t feel like LA has many of these kind of events. Something like this would definitely happen in London all the time though. I didn’t get there that early before the screening, and there were a LOT of people, but I managed to snag a pretty good spot near the front. I also bought some hot wings at CJ’s Wings, which were so-so (it came with a slice of bread, which I thought was a bit weird, but it may be a Southern thing). Nevertheless, it was fun and I’m glad I wasn’t there alone (Cristin to the rescue!). Next time though, I will bring a sweater and not wear shorts. It may be summer, but it does get colder at night. 

And so ends my summer of food adventures. I realize that this past summer will be my last summer of being a kind of a kid. There’s more gravity of responsibilities lying ahead and I’m a bit anxious, but also extremely excited. We’ll see where God takes me and how He’ll use me this year. I probably will go out and eat and bake this school year (who am I kidding? I will definitely bake! I’ve already made more scones and some cookies today for tomorrow’s afternoon tea I’m having with my study abroad friends), but I must admit my focus will be more concentrated on theatre and applying to conservatories this year so I probably won’t blog as much as I use to. Good bye for now!

*Oh, and y’all haven’t heard the song, “Summer is Over” by John McLaughlin ft. Sarah Bareilles, GET ON IT! 

Raising the Bar

I’m back in the baking game and I’m ready to play on whole different league now. Ha. That sounded intense, no? But in all seriousness, I am trying to elevate my baking skills and that’s why I made profiteroles this week (pun intended). I’ve grown up eating ice cream puffs from Costco (you know what I’m talking about—the ones in the big white plastic cube bin), but never thought about making them. Why? They kind of seemed daunting and to be honest I was never a huge fan of puffs, so I didn’t bother. But then… The Great British Bake Off  happened. It’s a fantastic show and each week the contestants get a range of challenges and I saw how puffs or profiteroles can be fun and easy to bake. In an ideal world, I would make rose-water cream-filled profiteroles with some kind of caramel nest encasing… sounds elegant doesn’t it? Well to my dismay, Ralphs doesn’t sell rose-water extract (does anyone know a LA shop that does?). Should have known better. I ended up making a traditional vanilla cream-filled profiteroles with a kind of dulche de leche and chocolate sauce with a touch of Kahlua. Delicious.

I actually used two recipes for the profiteroles (I’ve decided to not address them as cream puffs anymore because profiteroles sound much more posh and are probably the proper name for ‘em… I say this as I throw my nose into the air). The first recipe I used was for the actual pastry bit. I didn’t read the entire recipe thoroughly and later realized it was for ice cream profiteroles and I wanted to make traditional cream ones, so I sought another recipe for the cream bit and also got a chocolate sauce recipe with it. Best decision ever because the sauce is fantastic. I followed the recipes pretty faithfully except I added a bit of vanilla extract into the cream and used Kahlua in the sauce and didn't add cinnamon in the pastry dough. Oh the advantages of being 21—I can now experiment with alcohol! Also, I used Ziploc sandwich bags to the do the piping—yay poor college student alternatives! I really should invest in a piping bag because it got really messy. At least I have a mixer, rolling pin and whisk now! If you read my past entries, making meringues with tied forks is really tiring. When you pipe, be patient and squeeze cream into the profiterole until a little cream bounces back at you from the hole you have to poke at the bottom. I sometimes squeezed too hard and cream squirted out of a random hole at the top. Piping cream makes this shooooo-wert sound, which is pretty fun. I piped cream when my profiteroles were entirely cooled so that the cream didn’t melt and I advise you pop the profiteroles into the fridge into the fridge as soon as possible so you don’t end up with soggy pastry and a pool of vanilla whipping cream. I left the sauce at the side for people who wanted it and because it’s not tempered chocolate, it does not harden so if you pre-dip ‘em for your guests their hands will get sticky later.

I also played with caramel last week. I never made it before and though it’s easy to make, it’s very hard to shape. I should read and watch more videos because the stuff hardens pretty fast but then maintains an intense heat that made me wear gloves when I was handling it.

Well, I guess that’s all I have to share for now. DineLA’s Restaurant Week is happening soon and I should get on top of making a reservation. Oh, and I also want to create a new website for my food blog with a new name, so if you have any suggestions please send them my way. As much as I love Chugachuga, the name and layout doesn’t really scream, “I’m an adult.” And I am… I’m an adult. Don’t like the young Asian face fool you.

Last London Leftovers

My my my… my last entry on London food. As silly as it sounds, I’ve avoided writing this entry for about two weeks despite having all the photos ready because I thought that once this is written, it means that London is really over (yes, I know it’s over but I’m still going through withdrawals and hanging onto my experience… I listen to Matilda the Musical songs every day… “We are revolting children, living in revolting times...”).

Okay, okay enough of me being all depressed about leaving London, let’s talk about FOOD. I mentioned in the last entry about Propstore. Sadly, I didn’t get the opportunity to wine or dine there, but it nevertheless was awesome! This is a little pop-up restaurant National Theatre opens every summer and it’s made out of… PROPS! How fantastic is that?! They take some old parts of sets from the past year or two and build this joint outside of the theatre. Food and drinks are also decently priced and it’s just a fun place to be. I saw the white silhouettes of the city skyline from The Magistrate (designed by the fabulous Katrina Lindsay), lights from Frankenstein (Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance gave me goose bumps, but then again his performances always do!), the floor was from Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (I saw that twice!), and there were some props from War Horse as well. It was so cool. Londonners, get your butt to South Bank for me! When I thought I couldn’t love National Theatre even more (I legitly want to work for them), Prophouse made me head-over-heels in love.

Moving on: welcome to Comptoir Libanais! This Lebanese food heaven was in my eat.shop london book and the colors and pictures were so vibrant, that I had to take a peak. The first time I tried to eat there they were closed (apparently the hours they list online are wrong), but I did get to eat here once and it was sooo good! I got the Chicken and Green Olives Tagine. I had no idea what it was and hoped it tasted good, and it did! Shredded chicken and olives and a bit of lemon zest on top of a bed of some type of rice or couscous-like grain. Yeah, this description needs some work, but I loved it. Light and filling. I also had a Roomana, which is a pomegranate and orange blossom lemonade, which was just the right about sweetness and tart. Oh, and the restaurant’s environment is so fun! So many colors! There were Lebanese canned goods and accessories on shelves, this wonderful mural of a woman in the back, and fun colored chairs. There was a sense of culture and vibrancy that I really enjoyed about Comptoir Libanais. I wish I got to go more often, ‘cause it is someplace I’d frequent if I lived in London.

Ooh! Now I get to write about a restaurant that I wish I opened myself! Hello Muriel’s Kitchen! Located right outside of the South Kensington station, this wonderful oasis is the cutest thing ever. I love the decoration of this place… it’s how I would decorate my own home. I’m talking light blue accents with a rustic homey vibe. Some decorations were also baking tools, which made this place even more loveable; some lights were made out of cake tins and there were baking tins just hanging on the wall! The food was quite tasty as well. I had their lasagna and I was so happy it was meaty. One thing I learned about lasagna in Europe is that it’s creamy compared the meaty U.S. lasagna. Although not shown here, I also had their grilled salmon that came with a delicious pesto-like sauce. The only thing that would make Muriel’s Kitchen more awesome is if it was cheap. It ain’t cheap. I’m a firm believer in the phrase, “Treat yourself once in a while” and Muriel’s Kitchen is just the place for that.

Riding House Café was a total random finding when I was looking for Attendant (the café I mentioned in my previous post). I was walking towards Attendant when I saw Riding House and it looked all hipster and lovely inside. It was pretty packed, so it had to be good. After getting coffee with my lovely friend Thalia, we went to Riding House for a nibble. We got seated in this lovely long family table and the chairs were vintage theatre seats. How cool is that?! They’re a bit difficult to squeeze into (‘cause they’re bolted to the floor), but I still dug them. I just had their lamb soup and I was floored. I’m not a fan of lamb because of its gamey taste, but this wasn’t gamey at all! The meat was so tender and the soup was a simple clear broth yet bursting with flavor. The herb garnish was a necessary touch too because the bits of herbs added a fresh zing that played on your taste buds. Everything in Riding House is a bit on the pricier side, but I would (if I could… sob) just go back for a small bowl of lamb soup anyways.

As with a handful of restaurants I visited, I found out about J+A Café via eat.shop london. I had my last dinner in London here actually and ate a wonderful steak pie. Perfectly cooked. As yummy as it was, I can’t say I totally loved J+A. It’s in a weird location (a little hard to find) and has weird hours. The café was near closing when my friends and I got there and then we got moved to the J+A Bar—the café and bar are next to each other, but in separate buildings. The waitress was kind and tried to explain how they did things, but I still thought it was a bit weird that we had to move.

And lastly, but surely not least: Jamie Oliver’s Diner. I mean, I had to eat at a famous English chef’s restaurant while I was in London right (and there was no way I could afford a Gordon Ramsay meal)?! This fun diner is a pop-up restaurant meaning that it will only be in Piccadilly Circus for a limited time! The restaurant was super fun and there were dinosaurs EVERYWHERE. Pretty awesome. Now Jamie is all about health, but he lets his customers indulge here (he listed items there were especially fatty with devil horns and healthy dishes with halos… cute right?). I’m talking ribs and savory waffles. I shared the ribs with a friend and then the group of us ate a slice of chocolate cake at the end (great way to finish off). The diner also serves boozy milkshakes, but they weren’t offering it at the time we ate there (my question is: why put it on the menu if you’re not serving it yet?! Such a tease). I wish I got to try one of their milkshakes and would of gone back for it if it wasn’t for my flight. Really, this is a great restaurant with a great environment. The bathrooms were even cute (well I can say that for the lady’s at least). Jamie actually goes all out when it comes to his restaurants and so he even had nice wooden vintage-like toilet seats! Man knows how to open a restaurant and cook.

And so this chapter of London eats has come to an end. When people say the English aren’t known for their food, I’d like to say they are wrong indeed! I’ve had great food experiences in London. Yes, you might have to pay a pretty penny once and a while, but that’s the cost of quality, awesome food. The only thing the English haven’t nailed down yet is Mexican food, but we can’t all be perfect. Cheers and farewell to London, my love. I hope to be back soon.