A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu

Matilda treated herself to a toasted sandwich maker today.  It has been a long felt want of hers for an age.  She is a very parsimonious child though, and unwilling to spend her money unless she feels that she has found something of great value to her.  Over the months that she has been longing for said sandwich toaster she has seen many, but none have been worthy enough in her eyes to merit their cost in pounds sterling. amd her purse has remained resolutely closed.

Until today.

Our kettle blew up today.  This was a tragedy and a crisis. Not only because we drink an extraordinary amount of hot beverages on our own account, but because we had the builders round to do the rendering this morning and they make our tea consumption pale into insignificance.  There were only two of them, and between the hours of seven this morning and one this afternoon they drank eighteen cups of tea between them.  Eighteen! 

So you see how terrible our crisis was. 

Jason rushed out to purchase a new kettle.  Tilly went with him and returned with a sandwich toaster which cost £6.  She was delighted.  Jason was also delighted, as he has very fond memories of baked bean and fried egg toasties from his dissipated teenage years.

I was quite pleased.  As a child, toasted sandwiches were one of the few things that I dreamed of being allowed to eat that actually turned out to be worth the parental pestering to get, unlike Findus crispy pancakes and Smash instant potato (yeurch).  My only concern was the cleaning.  I love a good toastie. I hate cleaning the toasted sandwich maker.  Tilly assured me that as it was her toasted sandwich maker she would do the cleaning of it.  She and Jason then entered into complicated dealings where she tried to charge him for the use of the sandwich maker and he countered with charges for the cost of running it on our electric bill.  Hmmm.

Agreement was settled by tea time when we forswore the delights of jacket potatoes for toasted sandwich wonders.

I have to confess that my cheese and onion toastie was lovely, and did indeed remind me of that fateful afternoon in my granny’s kitchen in about 1982 when I first burnt my mouth on the molten cheese inside my 5000 calorie sandwich and tasted the nectar of the gods.  In fact we all enjoyed the fillings of our choice with gusto. But I have never had such a protracted meal in my life.  Each sandwich took about ten minutes to make.  It would have been quicker, quite frankly, to have lit a candle under the bread and done it by hand.  Clearly a £6 sandwich toasting machine combined with Jason’s stringent costings for electrics have taken their toll.

Still, I didn’t have to cook, and Tilly was true to her word and actually cleaned the machine afterwards, much to my amazement.  Not only that but she remained un burned within and without and still has all her own hair.  I was quite impressed.

And my sandwich was much more tasty than a Madeleine.

I wonder if Proust would have preferred a toastie?  I bet he would.  It would have been a much better book had he yearned for a bean and egg toastie I think.

Tip for continuing good health

Do not read Simon Schama’s Landscape and Memory while you have a bad neck. At least not in hard back form.  It is immense and weighs approximately ten kilos.  I had to give up in the middle of chapter three due to:

• onset of Simon Schama related narcolepsy, which seems to translate to the written word as well as his presence on screen, in my ear, etc. I do not understand this for I love Simon with unabated passion and enthusiasm.
• Intolerable strain on my vertebrae/head bones/eye bones etc.
• fear of damaging myself further by dropping book on other physical extremities due to Simon Schama related narcolepsy issues.

It will have to be resumed when I am back to full bodily health.

Cautiously Optimistic

Let us ignore all things CLD TM related.

I shall tell you more of Oscar. 

He and Tallulah were sharing a bath at my mum’s this week.  It was a divinely pink, radiant bath full of smells and bubbles courtesy of Lush bath bombs.

Oscar hopped in and immediately did a wee.

My mum caught him as she was shepherding Tallulah into the bathroom and immediately said that Tallulah was not to share his bath thanks to his wee pollution.  He cried out:

‘No! No! It’s alright granna, honestly.  Look Tallulah. I have only done a wee in my half of the bath.  You will be alright.’

A Retrograde Step

Neck not so good today.  It seems I must tread very lightly at the moment.

Bugger.

Have lots of lovely things to tell you, but too much pain to type right now.

Will share with you Oscar’s thoughts on his new and manly boxer shorts:

‘Mama! This is the best willy house I have EVER had.’

I AM BACK

Yes. I am back.  Has the internets been quiet without me?

Thank you for all your lovely messages.  It has been so odd not being able to use the p.c. I have felt quite disabled.  Not good.

Anyhow, I am feeling altogether better today.  Was semi mobile by Friday, and a weekend in London (long planned for) has done its usual restorative magic.  More of which anon.

It turns out that I am doomed to keep having this bloody neck injury if:

1. I don’t start doing neck strengthening exercises and exercises for my posture, pronto.
2. I don’t get a better chair for my desk than the one I currently have.
3. I don’t get one of those funny wrist support thingys for when I type.

I can do all those things and am already in the process of doing the exercises, much though they bore me.  Better bored and mobile than weeping in agony.  Even I, the original three toed sloth in human form, know this to be true.  I shall sort the other two things out in the coming week.

I spent all of last week at my frankly saintly parents house.  Particularly saintly  because a) they ran round after the children all week, who freed from the bounds of school and nursery were behaving like hyperactive gazelles, and b) I was so poorly on one night that I succumbed to the worst migraine of my entire life and ended up lying next to a bucket of my own sick on the verandah until two o’clock in the morning wishing someone would just shoot me through the head and have done with it.  My long suffering father nursed me through the whole thing and mopped up after me, which was utterly above and beyond the call of duty.

I got home on Friday, still feeling grim.  I managed to drive the entire half mile to the Co-op, which was the first driving I’d done for a week and a half, and which I wouldn’t have bothered with had we not had no milk, no bread and four mouldy tomatoes to sustain us.

It has been rubbish.

We will draw a line under it and pretend it never happened.  This is much the best thing.

I am going to go and reacquaint myself with my lovely husband now, and will be back at the coal face of blogging tomorrow with more London tales.

I have missed you.xx

I am having a short break

My neck is slowly, slowly improving as long as I don’t do anything at all.

My dear, lovely parents have taken pity on us and invited me to stay with them for the week so that I can recuperate and the children can pester them instead of me.

I have snapped their hand off. 

As such, there will be a small blogging holiday while I retire to the countryside.

I will be back.

We keep ourselves busy

My neck is boring.

It is making everything hard to do.

I am tired as a tired thing that has had some tired pills, being in pain is bloody knackering.  When I go to sleep I dream horrible dreams.  Last night I dreamed that someone was trying to kill me by strangling me.  I seemed rather resistant to being strangled, so they just tried to dismember me and put me in the large, Ikea wardrobe in the corner of my bedroom.  I knew it was a dream because I was worried that my stumps would bleed all over my clothes. 

I have some nice clothes.  From my before children life.  And some more modern ones which I buy in fits of excitement when I kid myself into believing that the children are too big now to wipe their noses on me, or vomit into my lap.  I would be sad to bleed to death all over them.  More sad about that than being dismembered while still alive.  It is important to get your priorities right.

Time seems to pass very slowly when everything you does hurts all the time.  It is making me fretful, anxious and pathetic.  The CLD ™ looms large in our lives and I chafe against its overstuffed, satin stitchery whilst saying: ‘Ooyah, owyah, fucking ow!’ a lot.

In lieu of anything more exciting to do with the children, I am watching the entire back catalogue of Outnumbered with them.  Tallulah is channelling Karen (they are practically twins, even the hair is the same), and Oscar is thinking deep and loving thoughts about Ben and his list of evil and yet wonderful things to do.

In between this Tilly has requested that we start our home schooling experiment already (I know! Not my genes I assure you).  We are making our way through her French text book.  For an English adult my French is passable.  My accent is not.  We are mangling everything into pure Midlandsese.  I am sending for an audio CD, stat.  She is thoroughly enjoying the French, and collars everyone to ask: ‘Comment t’appelles-tu?’ until their minds melt.

We have made a brief foray into science.  Oscar has decided that science is rubbish, and refuses to be drawn on the subject any longer.

Tallulah wanted to start her holiday project on the Egyptians today.  She hates to be left out.  We spent the morning staring at a globe and talking about how the geography of the country affects what people do there.  She drew a lovely map of Egypt and then got it back to front and coloured all the land in blue, with waves.  We are going to start again tomorrow.  I did not have time to intervene as I was overseeing Oscar’s rendering of the entire family in play doh.  It was all very sweet until he skewered us all with chop sticks and hurled us to the floor.  Hmmm.

For English, Tilly and I are reading Jane Eyre.  I thought we’d start at the deep end.  She is really enjoying it, and is currently embroiled in writing a ghost story using pathetic fallacy and fore shadowing to make it more spooky.  She’s set her story in Victorian times because she says the Victorians were naturally more spooky.  Thinking of the CLD I probably have to concur.  They are currently outside, pretending that the tent is a Victorian poor school and Tilly is the brutal headmistress.  They will all be dead of consumption by tea time, and it will be so very, very peaceful.

In between that we have finished reading the superb Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce, which I have blogged about before, and which I urge you to read, along with all the other oeuvre by Cottrell Boyce.  He is an unsung genius and his books always make me laugh out loud, and cry.  Which is tricky when you’re reading it out loud, specially when your voice goes all wibbly.  We are just about to start reading Framed, and then, when we’ve finished that we are going to write a begging letter to Mr. Cottrell Boyce to hurry up and get on with the next book.

School’s Out for Summer

My neck is still killing me, I am sad to say.  The children are killing each other, and the summer holidays has begun with a whimper and not a bang.

What joy.

Tilly sobbed her heart out yesterday bless her, as she waved goodbye to all her friends and her primary school for the last time.  I can’t get my head around the fact that she is not returning really.  In my mind she has stayed about four, which is much more manageable, particularly when wishing to deny the ageing process as a mother.  It’s all too surreal. 

I did feel for her. I remember crying on my last day at primary school, not because I was leaving, but because I wasn’t going to the same school as my best friend.  As our friendship never lasted the test of time I think it was probably wiser not to go to a school that was huge, terrifying and twenty miles away, just to try to sustain it.  Most of the time I was more awestruck and frightened by her at primary school anyway.  It was definitely not a friendship of equals.  I’d love to know what she’s doing now.  She was always so super confident and convinced she was going to be a famous actress or singer even then.  I wonder if she ever made it in the business, or whether she’s living a dull, suburban life style now, like everyone else?

Most of the popular kids at my high school, the ones who went out with the guys in the football team and who were able to patronise the rest of us lower mortals with their tolerant friendship or terrorize us by witholding it, are now extremely dull.  At least the ones I see around anyway.  One of the girls who was the school equivalent of an ‘it’ girl ended up working in Woolworths for the longest time.  Another one used to work at the petrol station at Morrisons.  It blew my mind when I ran into them.  I seriously had to go and have a sit down.

What it must be like to look back at your school days and realise that they were the best you were ever going to get, the most popular you were ever going to be, and the most exciting times you ever had?  How terrible for them?  And yet how liberating and somehow fair for the rest of us, the geeky little spods who ducked for cover and spent most of the school day praying for the bell to ring so we could go home and get some peace.

There is a kind of justice to the world sometimes, even if you have to wait years for it to manifest itself.  It might seem vindictive to take pleasure in it, but so be it.  I don’t care.  I spent the majority of my school days getting through, and wishing I was somewhere else, predominantly thanks to other, evil little shits who felt they were superior to me, and that it somehow gave them the right to behave brutally in a way that were I a political prisoner and Amnesty got wind of it, would send a hail of letters flying from one end of the globe to the other.  I think I’m allowed a teeny, weeny gloat when I find out that some of the people who were so spectacularly unpleasant to me, secure in their superiority, are now spending their days asking which pump number I’ve used or whether I’d like fries with that.

Now all I’ve got to do is survive for the next six weeks without murdering the children.  After all that smugness it would be a shame if all those ex-bullies got the last laugh, looking up at the television from their dreary Mcjobs to think: ‘I knew I was right about her.  Fancy murdering your own children in cold blood.  She always was an annoying little shit.’

London for Sonya, Part 4 – Shops

Ooh, the shops!

There are so many.  Ha! It’s great.

Department Stores

Harrods - I know it’s cheesy and predictable, but really, everyone should go to Harrods once.  There are two things in Harrods that I consider essential.  The rest you can keep.  Firstly the food halls. These are wonderful.  The design of them is sumptous and luxurious, almost baroque.  It makes you hungry just looking.  Then there’s the fact that there are lots of little cafes in the middle of the different food halls, where you can sample the wares and try all different kinds of cuisine.  There is also a branch of Laduree (and a shop in Burlington Arcade off Piccadilly) in Harrods, where they sell macaroons which are to die for.  Not to be missed.  The second thing is the toy department.  It is, in my opinion, much better than Hamleys (Regent Street), and way more fun.  To get there, take the Piccadilly line to Knightsbridge.  It is directly outside the store.  On the other hand, it is always rammed at this stop.  I prefer going one stop further to South Kensington and then walking up Brompton Road.  Not only can you pass by the V&A and the beautiful Brompton Oratory, but you can saunter past the window of Armani too.

Harvey Nichols – If you are going to do Harrods you might as well pop in to Harvey Nichols.  It’s only about two hundred yards up the road.  It’s great fun and the bar on the top floor is delicious and very stylish.  A must if you were ever a fan of Absolutely Fabulous.

Selfridges - I love Selfridges.  I could spend a whole day in there, easily.  Where Harrods is opulent, Selfridges is chic and fun and stylish.  I love the building too.  It has carvings by Eric Gill outside and the front doors are the epitome of Art Nouveau style. Take the tube to Bond Street, turn left, keep walking and it is on your right.  There are several entrances and it takes up a whole block. 

Heals - Heals is predominantly furnishing and interiors but it is one of my favourite shops.  It’s on Tottenham Court Road, right opposite Goodge Street tube station.  It is beautiful.  I love it there.  It is calm, stylish, wonderful and needful.

Liberty - is not to be missed.  At the back of Regent Street and the edge of Carnaby Street it is a stunning half timbered, galleried building which is packed to the rafters with needful items.  The fabrics are amazing, the furniture department is droolsome and the perfumes are practically edible.

Fortnum and Mason – On Piccadilly High Street, this smells like you’ve died and gone to chocolate heaven as soon as you set foot in the door.  The ground floor is a patisserie, chocolatier and general food paradise.  Upstairs is a restaurant and marvellous china department.  You can also order your hampers here.  In the basement is everything else, if you have any money left.

Clothes

I expect if you have a fifteen year old with you that Top Shop on Oxford Street is going to be a must.  I’ve only been in there once.  It melted my tiny mind.

If you’re looking for designer gear then New Bond Street, and the streets surrounding it are made for you.  From Jimmy Choo to Stella McCartney and Louis Vuitton, it’s all here.

Book Shops

Charing Cross Road is the traditional haunt for book shops.  You can either use Leicester Square tube or Tottenham Court Road.  It’s great for second hand book, speciality and antiquarian book shops.  Further down towards the National Portrait Gallery if you turn down all the little alleyways off the main road you will come across more book and print shops including one of the oldest esoterica book shops in the country.  There is also a huge branch of Foyles, which stocks just about everything, and a Blackwells, which is great for text books.  Blackwells should really be saved for Oxford though, which is its home.  There it is spectacular and has several branches, including its own dedicated children’s bookshop.  On Charing Cross Road it is mostly meh.

Hatchards on Piccadilly is probably the most famous bookshop in London.  It’s certainly the oldest.  Well worth a visit if you like your book shops oozing with history.

Daunt Books – I have blogged about Daunt endlessly in the past.  There are a few branches in London.  For my money the absolute best of them is on Marylebone High Street.  It is gorgeous, stocked full of wonderful things you will not find anywhere else and one of my favourite places in the entire world.

Stanfords – Between Leicester Square and Covent Garden tube stations, Stanfords is the place for maps, travel books and any travel writing.  It is a treasure trove of travel related things.  Their cafe is not bad either, but I would watch out for the wooden knives and forks, which suck all the moisture out of your mouth as you are eating and you end up resembling a cat’s arsehole.

London is also full of independent book sellers who deserve your patronage to keep them open.  Two of my favourites are in Highgate, on Highgate High Street, and in Primrose Hill.  Small, eclectic and with hugely knowledgeable staff.  They are both also excellent places for star spotting.  I once queued behind Terry Gilliam in the Highgate bookshop. I nearly wet my pants with excitement.  How cool is that?

I thought about picking out individual shops, but the post would take an absolute age.  Instead I will share some of my favourite shopping areas.

Marylebone High Street – This is one of my shopping meccas.  Apart from Daunt Books, there is an Emma Bridgewater store, a Conran shop, Paul and Joe, Diptyque, Aveda and countless other desirable places to shed money.  There is a wonderful Oxfam bookshop, a branch of Waitrose which I frequent and lots of lovely places to eat.  Off one of the side roads is the amazing ribbon shop V. V. Rouleaux which is just gorgeousness personified, and all in all it’s wonderful.

Islington - Take the tube to Angel.  When you come out of the station if you turn right and keep walking there are all sorts of treasures.  The road kind of forks.  Take the left fork on the main road out towards Holloway and you will find lots of wonderful restaurants, great shops and places like the independent cinema, the Everyman Screen on the Green, which is a fabulously intimate cinema showing all kinds of cool things, and the Almeida theatre, which also has a great cafe/bar and a restaurant across the road which is supposed to be wonderful.  Take the right fork and find yourself in a terrific maze of streets stuffed with antique shops selling the most wonderful collection of things imaginable.

Seven Dials - I blogged about this area between Covent Garden, The Strand and Tottenham Court Road before.  I love it.  Lots of fabulous shops, quirky boutiques, retro stores and vintage clothes shops.  Perfect shopping for when you do War Horse on Drury Lane.

Hampstead – The tube station brings you out at the top of Hampstead High Street, an incredibly vertiginous hill that has lovely shops, wonderful bars and restaurants and a great atmosphere.  Off the High Street to the left, treat yourself to an amble down the gorgeously quaint, Flask Walk, its antiquarian book shop and bijou boutiques.  Paul’s Cookies, tucked down a street off the road that goes across the High Street sells freshly baked, still warm cookies where the chocolate chips ooze decadently into your mouth.  Walking down the High Street, any of the roads to the left take you down to the wonderful Heath.  Walk across the Heath, go swimming in the ladies pond, or take the bus and go to Kenwood House on Spaniard’s Lane half way between Hampstead and Highgate.  Kenwood is wonderful, a Georgian confection with huge, empty rooms bedecked with priceless art.  The grounds are terrific and the tea room is an absolute must.  Or you can pop down one of the roads down between Hampstead High Street and the Heath houses and visit Keats’ house, which you can wander round.  It’s beautiful.

If you’re feeling really active you can walk all the way down the hill until you reach Camden at the bottom.  The bit between Hampstead and Camden is Belsize Park and that’s got another Everyman Cinema, some great restaurants of its own,  and its own branch of Daunt Books.

Chelsea – For the best shopping experience take the tube to Sloane Square.  You come out next to the Royal Court Theatre, which is a must if you like new plays.  It’s very hip and happening.  Walk up the road in front of you.  You are in the heart of Chelsea.  You have got Rigby and Peller for immaculately fitted bras and frou frou lingerie, the Kings Road for boutiques, Bluebird  for fabulous eats, the Saatchi gallery and all manner of amazing shops.

Greenwich, which I mentioned previously, has a lovely, villagey feel, some tremendous museums, a great Sunday market and stunning parks.  It’s well worth a visit.

Highgate, which I have also mentioned, is a lovely place.  Apart from the cemetery there are woods you can wander around, and the architecture is still really pretty.  There is also Waterlow Park, which has a lovely tea room, and Lauderdale House, which often has art exhibitions or theatrical happenings going on.  The shops, which are mostly boutique style affairs come and go, and there are a liberal sprinkling of estate agents at all times and seasons, but there is always something delightful to see.  If you are coming by tube it is easier to go to Archway tube station, which is at the bottom of Highgate Hill and take the bus up the hill. If you go to Highgate tube you will have a ten minute walk to Highgate High Street itself, which although not unpleasant, can be avoided.

St John’s Wood – Round the corner from the tube station is a small road of lovely cafes, bakeries and boutiques.  There used to be an excellent Oxfam shop where I once got an Alaia dress for an absolute steal.  A few minutes walk towards Kentish Town and Regents Canal is Abbey Road where you can pose on the same crossing as the Beatles.

Primrose Hill – I’ve already mentioned.  It’s lovely, but bijou.  It’s good to combine it with either trips to Camden or Highgate.  If you’re going from Primrose Hill to Camden don’t forget to check out Marine Ices on the main road from Chalk Farm tube station to Camden High Street.  Ice cream to die for.

London is full of hidden treasures and lovely areas which still retain an individual identity and feel.  You could spend a life time visiting them and exploring.  These are just some of my favourites.  I realise that they are predominantly north of the river, but then I was a North London girl.  There are just as many beautiful places South of the river, if not more.  I haven’t mentioned Lavender Hill or Hampton Court or Richmond or Putney or Chiswick, and they’re all lovely places to visit, let alone having lovely shops that will empty your purse in minutes.

I never mentioned the joys of Covent Garden, because it seemed so obvious I quite forgot about it until now, but you can shop in the covered market, watch the buskers, take in the Opera, visit the ballet and get pampered at the Sanctuary, all within minutes of each other.

Or then there’s the City on a weekend when it’s completely quiet and deserted and you can drift around looking at medieval churches cheek by jowl with glass and chrome sky scrapers, modern hotels nestled against the remains of Roman city walls, the oldest synagogue in Britain right by the Gherkin, the Barbican minutes away from Smithfield meat market.  It’s all there to see and it’s like no other city on earth, and I hope you will love it like I do.

Enjoy.

London for Sonya Part 3 – London Eats

This list could go on for weeks, so I will boil it down as much as I can.  In the meantime, as ever, please do chip in with fabulous suggestions in the comments box, for my benefit as much as Sonya’s!

The Blue Elephant – Now, I have never been, but this is supposed to be the creme de la creme of Thai restaurants.  They have branches all over the world, and I am gutted that I haven’t managed to try it yet.  Thai food is one of my favourite cuisines, and all the people I know who have eaten here, including people who have lived in Thailand, rate it highly.

Rasa Samudra - A South Indian restaurant on Charlotte Street off Tottenham Court Road.  A really interesting mix of dishes.  Especially good for non-standard U.K. Indian restaurant cuisine.

The Real Greek – one of a small chain of Greek restaurants based in London, the branch I tried was on Longacre, two minutes walk from Covent Garden tube.  The food was exquisite and the atmosphere was really fun.  They specialise in meze.  We tried about fifteen dishes, none of them were disappointing.

Lemonia – This is a fabulous Greek restaurant in Primrose Hill.  To get to Primrose Hill, get off the tube at Chalk Farm, cross the road and walk down towards Camden. When you reach The Roundhouse (it’s a theatre/performance space. You can’t miss it.  It’s round), turn right, walk about four hundred yards, turn left, walk over the railway bridge and Primrose Hill is right in front of you.  One road of wonderful shops, restaurants and pubs and a gorgeous park.  I’ve eaten at Lemonia before and sat next to Jamie Oliver and his wife, so if they eat there, it must be good.

Le Truc Vert - A wonderful French style bistro/deli on North Audley Street.  To get to it go to Bond Street tube station, come out on Oxford Street and turn left. Walk up almost until you reach Hyde Park Corner and North Audley Street is on your left.  The food is divine.  They make their own ice-cream which you have to wait for because they literally make it just for you.  Every meal I’ve ever had there has been a positive delight.

Wahaca – A great Mexican cantina style dining experience, where the food is sublime and the tequila is awesome.  I reviewed it a few weeks ago and went on the recommendation of Mrs. Jones.  Fabulous.  There are about three or four branches in London. I went to the Covent Garden one.

Bodeans – Also recommended by Mrs. Jones, also fabulous.  Bodeans does amazing barbecue and deep Southern American style food.  I went to the one near The Tower of London.  There is also one just off Piccadilly.

Daquise – This is a Polish restaurant just round the corner from South Kensington tube station.  It is very, very traditional and not at all glamorous, but if you like Eastern European cooking and flavours it is very authentic, incredibly filling and they have more pages on the vodka menu than they do on the food menu.

Babylon – This is a fabulous restaurant in Kensington.  Tucked down a side street, you enter through an office building and have to go all the way up in the lift. The top floor is a restaurant with glorious views, food to die for and one of the best kept secrets in town.  It is the home of Kensington Roof Gardens.  If you go there for lunch you can take your drinks out onto the deck and then wander around the acres of garden afterwards.  And when I say garden, I mean garden.  They have huge trees, a summer house, ponds and even flamingos.  It is a wonderful experience in every way.  I highly recommend it.

The Oxo Tower-  Just down from the National Theatre the Oxo Tower houses a restaurant and bar on its top floor.  Owned by Harvey Nichols, the food has always been delicious whenever I have eaten there, and the views are unparallelled.  You can either eat in the main restaurant or the bar.  You will probably have to book ahead, but it’s another must do experience.

Bibendum - This is on the top floor of the Conran Shop on Fulham Road.  It’s about five minutes walk from South Kensington tube station.  I blogged about this a few weeks back.  It is a fantastic experience for the architecture, the ambience and the food. Their lunch menu is incredibly reasonable.  The service is impeccable and I have never had a bad meal there.  There is an oyster bar downstairs which I have always meant to try and never quite gotten round to, but which always looks chic and delicious.  And you have the added bonus of being able to play in the Conran shop either before or after your meal.

St. John Bread and Wine/ St. John Restaurant - These two restaurants are some more not to be missed experiences.  Fergus Henderson is one of the finest chefs in the world and his food deserves all the accolades heaped upon it.  Not for vegetarians though.  His restaurant in Smithfield is old school and delicious.  St. John Bread and Wine in Spitalfields is a kind of tapas bar for traditional English dishes.  Both are fabulous.

Giraffe – Giraffe started off with one restaurant on Hampstead High Street, and now they’re everywhere.  I preferred it when they were not so big, but the food is still fun and  tasty and they do wicked Brazilian cocktails.  I quite often eat in the one on the South Bank because it’s handy for theatres.  I have a soft spot for their pancakes.

Restaurant Gordon Ramsay – his first restaurant in Chelsea is tiny, intimate and wonderful.  I have eaten there three times and each meal rates as one of the most wonderful taste experiences I’ve ever had in my life.  I’ve never eaten in any of his other restaurants though, so can’t say how well the food works across his many and various restaurants, but this is special.

The River Cafe – based in Hammersmith, I’ve eaten here a couple of times and it well deserves its reputation.  Their chocolate cake is one of the most decadent things I’ve ever put in my mouth.

Wild Track Greek Taverna - This is tucked in an out of the way corner off the Holloway Road.  When I used to work in Archway I worked with a woman who had a Greek brother in law and they always ate here.  It is rather like eating inside someone’s garage, but the food is amazing.

Two Brothers Fish Restaurant – This is another place way off the beaten track in Finchley Central. You would have to take a cab here as it’s nowhere near any useful tube station.  On the other hand it is one of the best fish restaurants I’ve ever been to.  One half is a traditional fish and chip shop.  The other is a sit down restaurant.  They do not take bookings. You have to turn up early and queue for a table.  Be warned.  It is always rammed to the rafters.  They serve everything here from Arbroath Smokies and lobster to traditional fish and chips, and it is all exquisite.

The Queen’s Head and Artichoke – minutes walk from Great Portland Street tube station is the gastropub where I met fellow bloggers, Keith and Noreen and had a fabulously long and lazy lunch a few weeks ago.  Their new potatoes cooked with samphire was a high spot, as was the Eton raspberry mess.  Real ale on draught with twigs in it is also a speciality if that floats your boat.

Chain Restaurants

In terms of chain restaurants I recommend Strada, which is an Italian style eatery which does some quite interesting dishes as well as the standard pizza/pasta experience.  Pizza Express is my first choice for Pizzas unless someone has specifically recommended somewhere local and/or authentic.  For a high street eating experience they are very good.  I also recommend Wagamama if you like Japanese noodle bar style eating and you’re in a hurry.

Snacks and Patisseries:

Patisserie Valerie which when I started going there only had two branches, both in South Kensington, now have branches everywhere.  Their pastries and cakes are always gorgeous. I love their coffee and I would walk a mile over hot coals to eat one of their apricot danish.

Le Pain Quotidien – Wonderful breads, great sandwiches, good coffee and cakes.  These are springing up all over London.  Not particularly cheap, but always excellent in terms of taste.

The Hummingbird Bakery- I always use the one in South Kensington, although there are others.  In South Kensington the cafe is tiny, so it is probably easier to buy your cakes to takeaway and go and find somewhere convenient to perch.  They do the most amazing cupcakes.  I would kill my mother for a red velvet cup cake with cream cheese icing.

The Fleet River Bakery - This is in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, just tucked away behind Holborn tube station.  It is divine.  Their service is friendly, their cakes are superlative and they also do lunches which look and smell gorgeous, although I’ve never tried them because I’ve always been too full of cake.

Places I Would Avoid:

The Ivy - I know this is blasphemy, but when I ate there I found the food ‘meh’ at best, the service casual unless you happened to be Cilla Black, and the atmosphere dreary.  If you like spotting celebrities more than you like food then I recommend you go there, but if you don’t want to spend a fortune on middling food you’d be better off hanging around outside and watching people coming and going.  I thought the potted shrimps were the best thing on the menu.  The sticky toffee pudding, which people go nuts about, was average.

Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen – I know this is all in a good cause, and the food was pretty good, to be fair, but the service was reasonably bad and the tables were so close together we were practically sitting on the lap of the people next to us.  He is currently opening a chain of restaurants up and down the land to get the Italian, bistro style thing happening at an affordable price.  I have never been to one, as there have always been huge queues outside whenever I’ve been near one at feeding time, but I know people who have eaten in them and rate them highly.

Simpsons in the Strand – Andrea and I went for dinner here last year as a pre-theatre treat.  The dress code was very buttoned up.  I was made to wear a cardigan in the sweltering heat for daring to show some cleavage.  The range of food on offer was not fantastic and we ended up basically having to have their roast dinner as it was the only thing they could offer us that they could cook in time for us to go to our theatre date, despite the fact that we had booked a pre-theatre experience.  It was a good roast dinner, but it wasn’t what I really wanted to eat and it ended up costing the thick end of £150 for two of us.  So if you want the traditional Sunday roast, and don’t mind paying, I recommend it, but otherwise not.

And finally, I have eaten in China town on numerous occasions, everywhere from swanky, high end dining to buffets and late night restaurants and I have never had a really good meal there.  Any recommendations for top Chinese food are very welcome.