Food Coma Weekend

Image above: The thick yet juicy Kilvarock pork topped with crackling served with Frank Shermanas apple sauce, roast potatoes & vegetables. [Sunday 29 March]

One of the great things that I love about London is the number of new restaurants to try out as well as old favourites to return back to. And this weekend, partly by design and partly by fate, turned out to be a throughly enjoyable yet gluttonous continuous stream of good food catching up with a whole bunch of friends that I’ve not seen for ages.

The feeding frenzy started on Friday evening by trying out Arirang, recommended by some friends, with Phyllis so that we could finally catch up after months of trying. It wasn’t what I was expecting and turned out to be quite alright inside. Our choice of dishes ranged from the yuk hwe to the samgyupsal and all of it was good especially this pork in sake sauce dish. For all we gorged on, £24 each was pretty reasonable.

Then on Saturday, slept in (so much for that early morning swim idea!) and went straight out to meet Dan for dim sum at Royal China Canary Riverside. And, I kinda went overboard with the ordering and ended up trying to wolf everything down at the end so that I could make it to my photo assignment later that afternoon. Not particularly clever but the food is good there so too much to choose from!

And later that evening about 23:00, having completed the photo assignment, my client decided to drive us both to Windsor so that I could try out his favourite Indian restaurant, Mango Lounge, for a late dinner / supper. And, even though I was starving by then, the food was really good. Four different styles of poppadums, tenderly grilled meats, delicious soft shell crab (not really Indian but who cares?), and some great spicy curry to wash it down with. By the time we’d eaten through all of that and I got back home it was 03:00 in the morning. I was so tired but it was well worth it … especially with the client paying the bill!

So pretty much crashed out and kinda forgot that the clocks went forward for daylight saving so when Sayuri kindly rang me up at 11:15 asking me where I was, since we were meant to be having Sunday lunch together, and I was still lounging in bed thinking that it was 10:15 … I was mortified and somehow got up to Belsize Park in 40 minutes flat.

Image above : The amusing message on the reverse of The Queens’ business card. [Sunday 29 March]

Lunch was at a gastropub, The Queens in Primose Hill, that Myles and Sayuri had gone to enjoyed eating in previously as mystery diners. So Sayuri and I went for the pork that you can see at the start of this post and Myles went for the chicken. After not eaten anything in the rush to get over it was a perfect meal to start the Sunday with. And whilst we ate, caught up with Myles about his new job he just started and showed Sayuri some of the basics of how to use a SLR … basically: shoot, shoot, and shoot some more. ^^

Image above: Catching up over dessert with Sayuri and Myles at the fab The Queens gastropub. [Sunday 29 March]

The pork was tender and thick and the cracking was wickedly good. As for the restaurant itself, being on the first floor, it had high windows which flooded the place with natural light and a superb view of Primrose Hill itself. But we weren’t finished with main course. After taking a break and chatting some more we plumped for the sticky toffee pudding dessert which was so good.

Image above: A moist pudding with sticky toffee (unseen) topped off with a light vanilla ice cream. [Sunday 29 March]

Thankfully, the restaurant was a good walk away from the station so it was good to walk off lunch. And then since I was in neighbourhood where John and Jasma lived (actually a block down from Myles and Sayuri’s place) I called them up for an impromptu drinks since I had a three hours to kill before dinner. So we had a good catch up over mango smoothies in Tootsies before I had to head back into town.

Finishing the day off, I met up with Yuko and Julian now that they were both back in London as Julian had just completed his latest tour of duty as a ship’s engineer. They both expressed a preference for dim sum so we ended up in Leong’s Legends II, their latest branch on Lisle Street, to enjoy their xiao long bao and the rest of their Taiwanese cuisine. Yoko had joined Julian for part of the voyage so it was cool to hear about life on board sailing from Korea to Australia. I still don’t think that Julian actually works though but he was kind enough to shout dinner for me … so my thanks to him for that.

And that brings us to the end of quite a packed yet filling, both in food and in company, weekend. Great to try out three new places and catch up with absent friends once again. Though, I think that I probably should hit the pool now just in case I grow a spare tyre!!!