Michelle-Leanne: Taste of London Winter

I do love a good food market, so when I was very kindly invited down to Taste of London I was more than up for going! Held at Tobacco Dock, it is a really nice place for food markets being mostly covered up but with nice open roof areas complete with blazing fires and big comfortable places to chill out. And of course, it is huge which means more room for food!

Taste of London is a little different to other food markets as it brings together chefs, restaurants and producers rather than just the usual street food vendors. First stop was to see my friends at Office Pantry - these guys have a great concept which is providing boxes of British-sourced snacks for offices, to banish vending machine trauma and the 'hunger grumbles'. I used to intern for them, so can assure you that every snack is excellent and they are getting bigger and bigger.

Giles & Charles were cleverly challenging every passerby to a Rock, Paper, Scissors match promising a free box of snacks if they succeeded.

Then it was off for some snacking! First of all we found ourselves (I can't imagine how..) in the Gu Garden of Temptation, complete with tasters of their amazing puddings! I do love GU.

There was a swing, too!

Then we... somehow... found ourselves in the Green & Black's room! Complete with free flowing samples, me and Dima did happen to find ourselves in here munching away madly on three separate times. They gave us little samples of port too, which I had never previously considered but actually goes really amazingly with chocolate - give it a go.

Then Dima dragged me off in search of other treats - he somehow doesn't like chocolate!?? But the good thing about this is that I get to eat his portions!

We found a birthday cake Baileys stall - little shots of baileys topped with whipped cream, marshmallows & sprinkles. My kind of drink!

Came across our regular West-end haunt in the East, slightly surreal..

(That dog you see in there is a drink!)

We first stopped by Ember Yard's stall, as I had really wanted to try it since working on the restaurant in my PR internship. The food was as good as I had imagined, but portion sizes quite small - we paid the equivalent of £5 for a small skewer of two pieces of octopus and one bit of chorizo. The truffle mac & cheese was much more satisfying, but it is difficult to go wrong with that!

We then stopped by Shake Shack which I was previously pretty unimpressed by (though that may have been due to queueing in the rain for a long time!) - a burger for Dima, pumpkin pie flavoured frozen custard for me. Both were pretty good, especially my custard :)