All posts tagged: london

Pimps and Pinups, Shoreditch

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I thoroughly enjoyed my bank holiday weekend. Four days and five nights of relaxation, drinks with friends and lots of indulging. The first day back at work after any kind of holiday is not the easiest, unless you have an incentive to get to the end of the day. Mine just happened to be heading for a cut and colour before popping down to see a new band at The Borderline. I have visited a few salons over the last year and each has been different and unique in its own right and Pimps and Pinups, my hairdressers on Tuesday, was no exception. I remember walking past this salon years ago when I first moved to London and it almost embarrasses me to tell you that the thought of entering used to scare me. You see, the people inside just looked way too cool for my 18 year old self. Fast forward a good few years and as I walk up to the door I realise that all fear has diminished. I also realised as …

Inn the Park

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The joys of living in London. There is literally always somewhere new to visit. Despite living only a twenty minute walk from St James’s Park in my first year of university I never visited. And despite having worked no more than a ten minute walk from the park for over a year, I still never visited. Until last weekend. I have heard may good things about Inn the Park, which is a cafe / restaurant from Oliver Peyton of Peyton and Byrne fame. You might also know him off the tele – his face has graced our screens on Great British Menu for a while now. We visited last Saturday at 2.45pm, which was the last lunch sitting of the day. It was a beautiful crisp (very cold!) day in London and the warmth that greeted us as we walked through the door was very welcome indeed. We were seated and provided with the lunch menu. Almost immediately I knew what I wanted to order. Jack and I pretty much always share so that we …

Ottolenghi, Islington

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I have already done one post on Ottolenghi but I was very hungover that time and I figure I should just do it again. Ottolenghi is a vegetarian or cake lovers heaven. It is also one the best places to go for brunch and lunch in London – in my opinion anyway! The word vegetarian has been tarred with the wrong brush over the years. People expect vegetarians to live on a diet of Linda McCartney sausages, carrot sticks and celery. Ok, maybe that is a bit far but Yotam Ottolenghi has shown us over the last few years just how exciting the humble vegetable can be. If you haven’t had the pleasure of visiting his restaurant in Islington (or the three take away cafes branches in Notting Hill, Belgravia or Kensington), you may have been lucky enough to see one of his two cookbooks. The first, Ottolenghi: The Cookbook was written by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi and took influence from their home towns of West and East Jerusalem. But their culinary repertoire does …

Msmarmitelover’s Christmas Market – oof

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It’s the day after Msmarmitelover’s Underground Christmas Market and I’m shattered. But I’m still buzzing from the fantastic time I had yesterday. At first I thought I had bitten off more than I could chew by taking a stall. I then heard that around 300 tickets had been sold and the panic alarms in my head went off. With the help of my very understanding boyfriend, I made everything on the stall completely from scratch and bagged, ribboned and tagged, ready for purchasing. I had a week to do it and each night after work I spent my time in the kitchen beavering away. You may have already seen some of the results but I have more pics of the stall from yesterday. We arrived at 10am to set up and were ushered into the living room where the other stall holders were unpacking their goods. I was situated next to Bake Me Happy and her delightful cupcakes. She had a great range of flavours from Chocolate and Peppermint to White Chocolate and Cranberry, Gingerbread …

Clarence Court eggs three ways

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There’s something magical about Hix, Soho. Maybe it’s the open dining room with high ceilings, the countless pieces of fabulous art or the snuggly bar in the basement. Whatever it is, I feel special every time I walk through the huge wooden door on Brewer Street. I haven’t been fortunate enough to eat in the restaurant yet (I really should get round to that) but I was lucky enough to be invited to an event in the private dining room by the lovely people at Clarence Court. The event, for bloggers, was an attempt to show us just how fantastic Clarence Court’s fabulous eggs are. After all, according to their motto, Clarence Court produces fabulous eggs from fabulous birds and if the recent adverts are anything to go by, I truly believe them. I wonder how they got their feathers so ruffled!? We had a surprise visit by Mark Hix himself who plonked himself down and explained a few of the reasons that he uses the eggs in his restaurants. We were then treated to …