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. 

Chelsea Saturdays

One of my favourite things to do on the weekend is hang out in Chelsea. As well as my best friend Lisa living there, it is less busy than the rest of London during the weekend, with a distinct lack of tourists among the well dressed Chelsea-ites.

The Saatchi Gallery is particularly good - with often changing exhibitions, free entry and none of the usual queues buzzing around museums, this is a local gem.

They have a pretty surreal giant ant exhibition on at the moment..

And an amazing Media exhibition, by The Times - I couldn't believe that the below two are photographs taken by Times photographers in Libya/Afghanistan, the colours are breathtaking.

As well as other random arty bits..

Puts my doodling to shame!

A room filled with oil. Has been residing in the basement for a looong time now, but still serene and beautiful, worthy of a visit every time.

Being cultural is hungry work. Helpfully, just outside in Duke of York Square was the weekly Farmers Market. I LOVE this market - it's unique, not overly-busy or expensive, and all of the food is brilliant.

[Get the duck sandwich - you won't be disappointed]

We had a healthy-yet-delicious falafel wrap, and some amazing hand rolls from the sushi stall. (vaguely healthy, to make up for the ridiculously good, greasy Ranoush kebab that we had at 3am)

but all of the food is SO tempting - let the onslaught of food porn pictures begin!

^ This stall, Galeta has the BEST dessertss. Definitely try and grab a giant, £2 brownie before they are all gone.

For a relatively small market, the massive range of food on offer is very impressive. Everything from fresh root cane sugar juice, to the famous duck sandwiches, to oysters/lobster, to foreign fruit imported from Thailand (above), to the vast array of desserts (crepes, cakes, mini cakes, brownies, stuffed pancakes to name but a few).

(A truffle stall - major weakness!)

Some are true farmers (as above) who having home grown their produce, come to sell it to the stylish masses, some are families who can just cook really well.

A great place to go on the weekend to get away from the hustle and bustle of central London, with all the perks of great food and none of the cons!

Lord of the Rings Marathon Feast

So I have never seen Lord of the Rings. Combine this with Dima finding a random marathon recipe on the internet and eight hours cooking the day before, the LOTR marathon feast was born.

We start the day at 8.00, dressing up like good hobbitses.



Starting with Honey Nut Cake with Bilbo's orange marmalade, and coffee/tea. This was super amazing, and the entire cake was gone by the end of the day due to nibbling little hobbits.

At 9.00 we settled down with our blankets, french toast, strawberries, banana, bacon & sasuage to watch LOTR 1. 

Not the prettiest dish ever, but still pretty good! 

11.00 meant 'Elevenses' which resulted in mega sugar highs and lows as we munched away on Lambas Bread & sipped our tablespoon-of-sugar Menry's Mulled Cider. (Who is Menry? I have no idea, but his mulled cider is quite nice, if a little odd before lunchtime). 

Peel back the Thai banana leaf... 

Lambas bread! According to our mate Legalas, a bite should sustain a man for a day. Like ze hobbits, we probably ate about 6 each. 

At 13.00 we had finished LOTR 1 (it was ok, Frodo is super annoying and Sam is the hero of this entire trilogy, it is safe to say), I had gone for the quickest of runs around the block due to my insane sugar high, and returned to luncheon -  Po-tay-to and Onion Soup. Why is it spelled like that? I have no idea, apparently someone in the film says it so. 

This soup was pretty nourishing and amazing though, and the perfect accompaniment to LOTR 2, which was my favourite out of the three. 

Afternoon tea was at 15.00 where we were greeted by some lavendar muffins, Bilbo's tea cake & tea. Probably my favourite 'meal', the tea cake was ridiculously insane and was quickly eaten up as we all became extremely food coma-ey. 

LOTR 2 finished and 3 was hastily put on. It also coincided with 17.00 - Dinner - Balim's Spiced Boar. Aka roast pork/beef/vegtables. I just managed some vegetables, my stomach was rapidly losing space. 

I don't have a picture of the meat - probably due to a food coma - but here is a cuter picture of Alex, Dima and Danny aka the LOTR chefs 8)

Did you think dinner meant it was over? Don't be silly, Supper is at 19.00 and it is obviously COTTAGE PIE because who doesn't need a huge nourishing slice of meat and potato after a long hard day of eating and watching tv?

And last but definitely not least, my contribution came at 21.00- The Londoner's Chocoberry Cookies! These were literally insane, and due to putting way too much chocolate/eating before ready etc. it was basically just a huge mound of delicious chocolate chip cookie dough, with raspberries. 

That concludes our LOTR day! I unfortunately fell asleep half an hour before the ending of the last film, so the films were basically a GIANT WASTE OF TIME as I don't really know what happened in the end due to an insane amount of food and too much tv. I was quite impressed I stayed awake throughout the first two, I have quite a reputation of falling asleep during any kind of film. 

 Definitely worth trying out, if you have the dedication/time/energy/motivation! 

You shall not pass!