Arbutus. The good value set menu strikes again!

One of the best set menus to be had in London is the pre-theatre from Michelin starred restaurant, Arbutus in Soho.

Full of atmosphere and none of the stuffiness of a typical French restaurant, good conversation, food and wine was found in abundance!

Two courses of delicious food will set you back just £18.95 and three just £20.95. 

Go for three!! Just do it!!

We started with a most beautiful and delicate steak tartare.

Followed by fresh sheep's ricotta gnudi, broad beans, asparagus and parmesan.

Finished off with an incredible cold chocolate fondant and salted caramel ice cream. Just dreamy!

Booking is essential, click here to book.

23 on the 23rd

I wanted to celebrate turning 23 with a group of my absolute closest friends and loved ones. I haven't done something for my birthday in a long while, finding it really difficult to get everyone together at one time, but this year I was determined to have those I love the most around me. 

We celebrated at B-Soho, a great place for cocktails and pizzas, sofas and live music to dance and sing to. It's a good place to head before carrying on the night elsewhere.

I had the biggest smile on my face all night. I'm definitely framing some of these!

Quo Vadis, Soho

My mama was in London a little while ago (unusual for her, because she likes the quiet of the country) and I thought I would take her for a treat out on the town.

I knew she would love the understated elegance of Quo Vadis.

Greeted by the most beautiful bouquets of fresh daffodils, we knew that Spring had most definitely sprung. Also set a relaxing environment for my mother so she could chill out and feel like home after being amongst the polluted, grey jungle.

A fairly vast, sprawling dining room is hidden behind the quaint stained-glass window entry.

Ask for a table by said windows, they are the best seats!

Cute, quirky touches in the form of artistic menus are a wonderful touch, defining the personality of the restaurant. A weekly changing menu with seasonal produce means you will probably never eat the same thing twice here.

We skipped starters to save room for the dessert that we had already spied. I had lamb sweetbreads with almonds, pea and mint. A gorgeous, fresh and light dish with moist sweetbreads,

My mother chose the baked salt cod with pea, leek and potato.

And as it was blood orange season back then, we couldn't leave without sharing a fennel and blood orange salad.

For dessert my mother chose, fittingly, the mother of all desserts. Just look at that beauty!

Light walnut cake, with vanilla ice cream and lashings of chocolate and vanilla sauce - heaven.

And I had a chocolate (and booze) lovers paradise. St. Emilion au chocolat - an extremely boozy dessert (so much so it nearly knocked me over the edge after my glasses of wine!) - made with brandy in the cake and brandy mixed with macaroons in the light biscuit base. Just delicious.

A wonderful, lovely, incredible enjoyable evening. Service was a delight - having the words wanky said to you, to describe the way some talk about wine, by the waiter was a joy to fully banish any stuffy atmosphere that the linen cloths and suited and booted waiters might lend.

Super friendly and super delicious, I loved it, and most importantly, so did she :)

Quo Vadis

Bone Daddies Ramen, Soho

So I've been away on a few little jaunts here are there, just across to the Carribean (post to follow!), so I have a bit backlog of places that I have to share. Better get cracking!

It was a rainy, cold evening and after a long day at work, feeling a little under the weather, some quick comfort food was needed. Being in Soho, only one kind of food sprung to mind. Ramen. 

I love ramen and it's warming, filling properties. Having tried and tested - and loved - Tonkostu, it was now time to try Bone Daddies.

No queuing at about 7.30, (although I think one did form just after we went in) we were seated straight away at a little bar running around the restaurant. Loud and bustling, it was a fun atmosphere.

I started with some hot sake, infused with orange and cinnamon to flush away winter blues.

To start we had the most incredible sweet and sour ribs, with a deliciously mega spicy kick. Without a doubt the best thing we ate there. Does that bode well for the ramen?! We'll see….

Restaurant Reviews Mapped!

With a little help from my wonderful brother-in-law, we have put together a handy map of some of my favourite restaurants in London, along with my pictures and words.

Have fun exploring!

Iberica, Marylebone

Someone told me that they think Iberica is better than Barrafina. Blasphemy I thought, Barrafina (and Jose) is the best Spanish restaurant in London. I have to check this out.

With a few outposts now Iberica could be considered - eek- a chain. They have two restaurants in Canary Wharf, another in Farringdon but I visited the restaurant in Marylebone, not far from Marylebone high street. One thing that might please some, you CAN book at these London restaurants!

The tapas restaurant is open and spacious set over two floors. Details like wood and glass and classic Spanish tiles have been carefully thought out to create a beautiful and lively surroundings. 

The first thing I noticed about the menu is that they have tried to modernise traditional spanish tapas food. They have taken the classic spanish flavours, grilled sea food, cured meats and chorizos, and updated them and put a modern twist on them.

Sadly I did not try the green Canarian mojo, but whatever it is, I want some of that mojo.

We ordered a different kind of sangria, containing prosecco instead of red wine. Interesting!! Also came in very cute jars.

Food: starting with fried chorizo lollipops with pear aioli. Lovely and not too greasy.

The best thing we ate, the squid ink risotto with cuttle fish, prawns and aioli sauce.

This was delicious, asparagus, manchego, onion confit and truffle oil. I'm a sucker for truffle.

Lamb sweetbreads, two way egg and roasted red pepper.

Serrano ham croquettes.

Crispy confit of Segovian suckling pig, apple puree and frisee salad.

Yes, we ordered a lot. Yes there were just two of us. But we still wanted dessert.

La tarte de la abuela, a kind of chocolate mousse.

All very lovely and I had an extremely enjoyable night. I admit after I came away I was on a high and thinking "Yep, that was delicious. I like that more than Barrafina too!" However, as I've had time to reflect upon the meal, as lovely it was, the modern style of tapas that they do is not making me yearn for more. There is no stand out dish that I still dream of, unlike the sobrosada on toast with duck egg from Barrafina. 

Those stronger, punchier flavours of classic tapas, which maybe more simple - for example grilled prawns with aioli and chilli - linger in my memory a lot more than the now seemingly bland flavours of Iberica.

Try it, you will like it, but it won't leave you gasping for me. I'm back off to Barrafina.

Polpetto, Soho

Polpetto, sister of Polpo and child of Russell Norman, has re-opened, moving from Dean Street, to a bigger site on Berwick Street.

With rising star Florence Knight at the helm and banking on the already popular, tried and tested Venetian, no-reservations, small plates concept, this was always going to be a good. If you're looking for somewhere in Soho to eat, the Polpo/Polpetto group are always a safe bet.

Starting with a delicious blood orange and thyme alcoholic cocktail and some foccacia to keep us going, we waited for a table for around 35 mins after entering at 7.30 - not too bad. 

I'll admit, Polpo is never somewhere I'm going to be mind blown by the food, unlike say Chiltern Firehouse, the food here is too simple for that, but it is somewhere in Soho that you can go where you know you will have good food and always be pleased by the experience.

First to arrive was the creamy burrata with agretti and chilli. Really good creamy burrata.

Next up came the mussels with wild roasted garlic and canellinni beans. Good, if a little fiddly, having to pick out the beans from inside the sauce and I'm not sure mussels lend themselves that easily to the sharing concept, though the sauce was fantastic. 

The only serious disappointment was the soft poached egg and black truffle. I thought this was going to be so so good. Unfortunately, what came was a rather sad-looking poached egg. 

The black truffle flavour, usually my favourite, hardly came through. Perhaps some truffle oil should have been added for a fuller flavour, or simply a little bread to mop up the deliciously runny yolk. In my opinion this dish needs some work. It could be so so so good.

Then came my second favourite dish, the scallops with creamed and whole white broccoli with lardo. Really good.

And, they saved the best till last, the bacon chop with whitty pear butter and walnuts. The smell was incredible and that butter, more of a sweet jam, was deliciously sweet paired with smokey bacon.

We were stuffed at this point….but still managed to be tempted by the milk pudding with rhubarb and rose. Deliciously sweet flavours all mingled with the tart rhubarb and the texture of the milk pudding was perfect.

So an enjoyable evening was had, and a place in Soho I know I can always go and be satisfied, however not wowed.

Gauthier Soho

Whilst I was off work at the beginning of the year, I decided to take advantage of some lunch offers that expensive restaurants do. Pick from a set menu and get all the quality of their à la carte at a fraction of the price.

First on my list was Gauthier Soho. The French restaurant owned by Alex Gauthier is lauded as one of the best restaurants in Soho, no mean feat what with the incredible number of restaurants in soho. The formerly Michelin starred restaurant is clearly doing everything it possibly can to get it's star back.

The entrance is beautiful, especially on a sunny Christmas day.

You have to ring the bell to enter and are greeted by French waiters, decked out in classic white bibs, and a lot of "sir" and"madamming" goes on.

We started with an amuse of squash panzerotti with lashings of black truffle.

Then we had delicious pan fried foie gras, roasted apples and a crispy caramel verjus reduction.

So elegant and clever. That transparent caramel shard was a joy to crunch with the soft foie gras

Then on to roasted scallops, pickled root veg and a crustacean jus, which I don't have a picture of. But it was good.

On to main course, and I had brown butter cooked wild sea bass, braised chicory and a red chicory salad with a lemon aromatic jus.

Along with roasted guinea fowl, gnocchi, parsnip puree, and a spinach madeira jus.

Perfection! Just beautiful. Really hearty and rich. More exciting than the seabass.

Then came a lovely unexpected pre-dessert of the lightest île flottante in the world, and an incredible vanilla sauce. They should make this in large size. It was so good, and better than other choices on offer.

For the real thing we had, tart of grand cru virunga chocolate with banoffee ice cream.

Unfortunately the ice cream was overwhelmingly banana instead of a sweet mix of banana and toffee. But the tart was gorgeously thick and rich. Just how I like it!

We then went off menu as nothing else really caught our eye for another dessert. So we got a chocolate and praline tart with the shiniest ganache I've ever seen.

This didn't really live up to its description, as inside the chocolate was not rich enough, nor did the praline have much flavour, so the end result was a bit lacklustre.

I will have to go back to Gauthier for dinner sometime and choose from their entire menu. I think what lets them down most is the lack of choice on their set menu. With only two or three dishes on offer per course, they were not necessarily the dishes I would have chosen had I had their whole menu. An excellent meal, but didn't give me the wow factor.

The other overwhelming memory I have from the restaurant is the very sterile, quiet and almost tense atmosphere I experienced whilst sat down. Perhaps it was that we were just in a quiet part of the restaurant at lunch, but I felt like I couldn't talk very loudly, or really even talk at all. While I love attentive service, for some reason theirs felt almost clinical to me and I'm left feeling uncomfortable. Some people may love being waited on hand and foot, but I love a more relaxed atmosphere, even in the best restaurants. It can be done, as can be seen in Medlar in Chelsea, a Michelin starred restaurant.

I think the place was unfortunately lacking in atmosphere and therefore my overall memory of the place is not wonderful. But the food definitely spoke for itself.

Barrafina, Soho

I love tapas. I love the concept of sharing when dining, mostly because I'm a greedy so and so who wants to try everything on a menu and that is why tapas is perfect for me.

Emma and I headed to Barrafina, a little place on Frith Street I love so much. We arrived at around 6.45 and had to queue for about an hour.

If you're arriving after around 6.00 on any day of the week you are most likely going to have to queue. There is only space for around 30 diners, all sat around a bar-like seating area where you can watch chefs prepare the food. A mouth-watering marketing technique, that's for sure. I find myself constantly asking them "What's that? Which one is that for?"and it usually concludes with me saying "I'll have 3, please."

However if you are starving, like we were, you can have a glass of sherry and some little nibbles to tide you over while you wait.

We got ourselves started on some sherry, ham croquettas and some chorizo wrapped potato crisps.

For a "nibble", the perfect croquettas were definitely a taste of what was to come. They were packed full with oozing cheese and ham.

Once we were seated it took us all of 3 minutes to decide what we wanted. I love the charm of their hand-written specials blackboard that is passed around to all the guests.

As is with tapas, dishes come when they are ready. We started with a courgette flower filled with goat's cheese.

We then had gorgeously tender gambas al aijillo.

Then the scallop came, maybe the best scallop I've ever had, it was cooked perfectly and completely melted in my mouth.

Then from the specials board, we had the epic-looking sobrasada on toast, which consisted of goat's cheese spead on toast, along with a spreadable chorizo, topped with a duck egg. 

Ohhhh it was my favourite dish of the night. Damn delicious.

Then came the morcilla iberica (spanish black pudding) topped with quail's egg.

I really loved the heavy flavours in this, however E wasn't too keen.

Nearly done…..

Then finally came our grilled quail with al-i-oli.

Juicy tender quail, with a lovely garlic dip. However this is now the 3rd time I've had quail and I think that is a sufficient amount of times to decide that quail just isn't for me. It's not to do with the taste, I find it perfectly appealing. But it is such a small bird that it is basically bone. It is so fiddly to eat, and I am a lazy eater. I will get stuck in and dirty, but it's so difficult to get teeth around all those bones, unlike say a rib joint. I won't eat a fish with too many bones, getting bored of the boning process, so the same obviously applies to meat. Sorry quail! 

I did notice that from my angle the quail looked rather pornographic…

All limbs.

After all that, feeling thoroughly satisfied and stuffed, we obviously then went for two desserts. We chose a crema catalana, a spanish creme brûlée and a chocolate tart.

This was beautiful. A glazed, crunchy top layer which lent a gorgeous caramel flavour throughout and a lovely orangey, spiced centre. The Spanish definitely do it better than the French.

And the purely decadent and rich chocolate tart. A perfect end to a perfect evening.