Date Day

I love day dates, especially in London. There's literally so much you can do - just get the tube to a random area and stroll around, discovering hidden shops, cute cafes and swanky restaurants. Last weekend the sun made a rare-ish January appearance so we wrapped up in lots of layers and headed out! 

I took Dima to Primrose Hill, this beautiful village-like area I had a shoot in a couple of weeks ago. This is yummy-mummy and posh dog territory - on every road there were at least 5 dogs happily bouncing along in the sunshine. We found the Ripe Kitchen, a cafe that generously let me change in their bathroom on the shoot day - they had 4 bowls of free cake samples so obviously I went back for more! 

Exceptional coffee and a vegan, gluten free cheesecake! 

Fuelled by coffee, we started our ascent up the hill..

Which was a lot tougher to walk up than it looks! 

But the views are worth it. And running down the hill of course! 

We just kept going straight, all the way through Regent's Park until we got to a tube station (which happened to be very very far away - we were walking for hours!)

I tried to take my polaroid camera out for a day trip, but it doesn't get on too well with the sunshine!

All that walking made us both extremely hungry - lucky that we found ourselves in Soho, surrounded by hundreds of restaurants. However generally eating out in London on the weekend looks a little something like this - 

A queue for the breakfast club at 2pm on a Saturday! It's good, but not that good! 

So it's a matter of searching out the just-opened-but-not-yet-on-timeout-london restaurants, the ones that stay secret for a couple of weeks before they either become fully booked for the next month or have a queue shivering in the cold outside all day, everyday. (Patty & Bun I'm looking at you and your amazing food hidden behind a constant hour long queue!)

First of all we tried out Bunnychow - a place I'd heard about quite a bit and thought they were based in Shoreditch's Box Park. They just opened a permanent restaurant in Soho! Bunnychow basically empty out reasonably sized loafs of bread and fill the innards with different delicious fillings - we went for meatballs. Other menu stand outs were the pulled pork, and the full english breakfast in a loaf. 

Highly recommended - their food was filling (more than enough to share one between two), reasonably priced (roughly £7 per loaf) and most importantly, perfect food for when it is freezing outside. The juices (above) were also some of the best I've had - particularly the plum and mint. Get the juice!

We purposefully shared one Bunnychow so we could find something else to try too - next up was Shoryu Ramen which was some of the best I've tried in London. 

The restaurant is teeny, hidden away in China Town and buzzing with the atmosphere of hot sizzling gyozas and steaming ramens being hurried around to hungry people. 

 

Try and get all of the above - from the fluffy bun stuffed with incredible pork, cooked to perfection gyozas and a filling ramen - it's a perfect meal.

Dima agrees! 

We finished off our mega-date at Pace Gallery, checking out some amazing photography before going home to play Crash Bandicoot all day - cultural! 

Date Night

Last week, I went to a restaurant called Tohbang with some friends and was seriously impressed. The food was excellent value, and exactly the kind of salty, sticky, Asian cuisine my boyfriend Dima loves - so this week I took him along for a Korean feast. 

To start, we had some on the house tidbits - crunchy vegetables and potatoes. This was a nice refresher before the avalanche of food arrived, we may have ordered a little bit too much! The menu is huge and as it is very traditional can be a little overwhelming, but I had my previous order to hand and our lovely waiter was very patient and explained everything for us. 

We had korean (barley) tea which was amazing, and some Sake in this cute little pot! 

Out first came Dima's favourite - Mendoo - dumplings! Fat, crunchy little things stuffed to the brim with pork and vegetables. These are some of the best I've had in London. 

And my favourite - Pajeon! This can best be described as a 'seafood pancake' however it is so much more than that. Absolutely massive, it could be a meal on it's own and it tastes like yorkshire pudding. With squid. Odd mix, but it works - so well.

Glass noodles with beef, very addictive and will have you shovelling hard to grasp noodles into your mouth quite fast. 

Ox Tail broth - the meat in this is so tender, it tastes like it has been cooking for three days on a spit roast. The soup is a little bland until you put in the accompanying salt, which instantly transforms it to a warming, meaty broth. 

This was the pork belly, something I knew Dima would love. Basically just a big bowl of fried, salty fat and bacon, it is incredibly flavourful. We were recommended to get the lettuce and spring onions, then you make little wraps out of it! 

So, we ended up with quite.. a bit.. of food. More than we could fit onto the table. 

But that's what winter is for! Stuffing yourself with as much hot, good food as you can before venturing back outside into the cold. 

And good company, of course. 

Dima wanted ice cream (?!!??!?!) which came in green tea form and was very good.

Tohbang is a lovely date restaurant. Oriental music plays as the incredibly lovely staff buzz around you serving steaming plates of food. Their service is so impressive - I dropped my chopstick (not a seasoned chopstick user over here) and before I could even reach down to grab it (three second rule!) they had zoomed down, retrieved it and given me a new set. 

The place was packed out on a Friday night, rightfully so, so it is worth booking ahead (though we booked 30 mins before, so not un-bookable at all). Great atmosphere, staff and food. 

Find them here. 

Date Day

For our fake-kissiversary (I see our anniversary as when we first kissed, Dima doesn't - so we get two!) me and Dima had a marathon date day. 

We started off for lunch in the most amazing place I have ever eaten - Barrafina - which deserves its own separate post, and made our way around London.

Dima felt like a second dessert, Asian style so we first stopped at Candy Cafe in Chinatown for some unusual treats. 

Dima very happy with his mango shaved ice and bubble tea!

^ What I can only really describe as a cold sugar explosion..

Whilst I settled for stealing his treats whilst sipping demurely on my white coffee - I have loved this coffee since Steph gave me a couple of packs on it and it's quite sad to go back to plain coffee :( 

We then strolled around Chinatown and came across a seemingly ordinary convenience store... but I spotted the birthday cake flavoured oreos in the window. 

It was a magical shop. 

THESE ARE INCREDIBLE. 

AS ARE THESE. The caps are out. 

Filled with mini pretzels, 'shortbread cookie' which is more like a mini shortbread, almonds and peanut m&ms, these made the perfect energising snack to run around London on. I demand all American treats come to London immediately! 

We were on a search for a board game (I love them and for once Dima was in the mood!) and ended up in the most crazy fan shop ever. Filled with comics and tv show memorabilia, it was quite surreal (Game of Thrones pendant for £100 anyone?!) but also quite (ssh) fun.  

It was quite freakily centred on Adventure Time, which may or may not be one of the weirdest cartoons you will ever see. 

We then pretty randomly ended up at the British Museum, which neither of us had ever been to before! It was beautiful, and huge. 

Then obviously it was time for ice cream. We stopped off at Selfriges, where there is a Magnum pop up where you can MAKE YOUR OWN magnum. Magnum is one of my favouritest ice creams in the woooorld so this made me very happy, even though I wasn't allowed one for myself because of the sugar highs and lows I had been on already that day. 

You pick your own topping - we went for coconut, sea salt and bits of gold but they had a huge range including goji berries, brownies, silver balls, honeycomb, mint pieces, edible flowers.. You choose three and they get a mini cocktail shakeabout to mix things up a bit. 

The next step is choosing which kind of ice cream  you want, Dima went for vanilla (why anyone would go for vanilla over caramel or chocolate is simply beyond my comprehension) and then choose the outer chocolate layer - white, normal or dark. Dima went for normal. If I had had it my way it would have been a chocolate on chocolate on chocolate magnum! 

The result was aaaaaaaaaaamazing. The best magnum I have ever had. I helped Dima finish his off, good girlfriend award :') 

Looking back I can't believe how much we managed to do in one day, and I haven't even told you about the main event yet... Barrafina's godliness. It was a fab day with a fab boy :)