Vietnamese @ Viet Grill, London

Most Asian dishes are meant for eating banquet-style, with the idea that sharing dishes can help bonding between family and encourage camaraderie amongst friends who come together for a meal. If you think about it, the often large portions of dishes in Asian cuisine make it rather impractical for anyone to dine by themselves, so one usually would sensibly look for dining companions (family, friends or colleagues) to enjoy a meal with. I personally love sharing food because it's a great way to get a variety of food in one meal, and I feel that sharing instills a certain sense of trust amongst those who eat the same food together. Towards the end of our 2-weeks in London, a small group of Rob's colleagues organised dinner at Viet Grill, and Zak and I were also invited. There were ten of us in the group, and after a short discussion on how to have the meal, we decided that everyone would choose one dish to order, and the dishes would be for all to share. To be honest, I was a little surprised when no one objected to sharing food, because in my experience, most of non-Asian descent wouldn't be very open to the idea of eating from the same plate (even if there was a separate set of utensils for serving on the dish). Although there was to be one dish per person, it seemed that we ordered more than that, and the food just kept coming that it was amazing there wasn't much leftover to take home. We must have been pretty hungry that night.

Viet Grill wasn't the trendiest restaurant, but I reckon it would be nice enough for a romantic date (for me, anyway; good food trumps appearances anytime). It got quite busy even for a Tuesday night, so I imagine the food at this restaurant has drawn a large number of regulars. Staff were friendly and tried their hardest to meet our requests (even bringing out a high chair for the 2-year-old without us having to ask for one). The food was pretty good, and I can't think of any dishes that I didn't enjoy. Here are shots of some of the dishes we ate that night (excuse the quality as lighting wasn't very good and I didn't want to use the flash).

Crispy bánh xèo (savoury pancakes) containing chicken and prawn in its filling. Lovely but perhaps most of our company found it a bit fiddly having to eat with using hands instead of cutlery:

Gỏi cuốn (Vietnamese spring roll) with fresh vegetables and prawns that was a bit too heavy with the coriander herb for my liking:

Grilled scallops - plump juicy scallops served piping hot fresh off the grill:

"Flamed Wok Chicken" - with bell peppers, scallions and lemongrass:

Viet Grill squid in lemongrass, tomatoes, celery and dill:

Ginger roast duck, wok fried with seasonal greens, garlic and a satay sauce - yummy!

Coconut Red Sea prawns:

Campfire beef - check out the blue flame under the claypot:

Sizzling seafood, wok fried with seasonal vegetables and garlic sauce:

I like the fact that vegetables feature strongly in Vietnamese cuisine because I love my veges almost as much as I love seafood and meat! There was no need to order a separate vegetable dish or salad because there were plenty of vegetables in most of the dishes at dinner that night (I find it's a waste having to spend extra money on a plate of vegetables or salad just to get some nutrition while dining out). I've made up my mind that I quite like Vietnamese food - there's definitely so much more to the cuisine than just phở.

Viet Grill
58 Kingsland Road
Shoreditch, London E28DP
Tel. +44 (0)20 7739 6686

Indian @ Brick Lane Brasserie House of Spice, London

Indian food is apparently the most popular choice in Britain when the Brits don't feel like having a traditional English meal, and curry is even touted to be the unofficial national food of UK. Never mind the fact that most Indian dishes served in the UK are not actually Indian and that most of the population in India would have never heard of these dishes, we had to include this so-called Anglo-Indian cuisine as part of our London experience. We were informed by one of Rob's London colleagues that Brick Lane has "the best curry in London", and he also kindly gave us a few restaurant recommendations. Brick Lane is also known as Banglatown as it is located in the centre of the city's biggest Bangladeshi community, and there are plenty of curry houses to choose from. From the short list of recommended curry houses given to us, we chose one, but for some reason we couldn't locate it. It was pretty crowded with the Sunday market, and it was pretty late for lunch (we thought it was 2pm, but in actual fact Europe had begun daylight savings that day so everyone and everything in London but us were running an hour ahead) so eventually we gave up and just selected one that seemed good. Whenever we dine out, we usually have a specific place in mind to go to (after having done some prior research) so we don't usually pay much attention to signs declaring "best restaurant of the year/street/city" (which usually seem to indicate otherwise). This time, with our first option out, we had a huge number of Indian restaurants to choose from and nothing to let us know which ones would be good other than what was displayed on the windows of restaurants. We went into one that was supposedly the "winner of the best restaurant in Brick Lane 2011" (according to the sign posted on the window), the Brick Lane Brasserie House of Spice.

Our staple drink at Indian restaurants, Mango Lassi:

It was a fairly small restaurant, but the waiters were friendly and the food was pretty good. The lunch special run for £6.95 which includes a choice of starter, main course and rice/naan. It's great value since a-la-carte dish start from £8.95 each. Rob went for the lunch special, and chose Samosa for starter, a Mutton Saag for his main course and garlic naan for carbs.The samosas were fresh out of the fryer and delicious. The mutton was tender and the saag gravy was yummy. The naan was good for sopping up all the sauce.

Slightly spicy vegetarian samosa. Zak polished off a whole triangle on his own:

The kitchen made a mistake and prepared chicken saag. We did receive the mutton one Rob ordered, and the chicken saag was given to us complimentary because of another ordering misunderstanding regarding the green bean dish (see below):

I was keen to have briyani since it's the standard benchmark dish I always get at new Indian restaurants, but it wasn't included as part of the lunch deal so I didn't get the lunch deal. There were a few varieties to choose from at different prices, and I ordered the Shrimp Briyani because Zak loves eating prawns. The restaurant was happy to oblige with our request to remove the cashews from the briyani as Zak has food allergies to nuts. The briyani was a hit with the boy (see previous post for an amusing photo of our 2-year-old eating the spicy rice). The vegetable curry that came with the briyani was so good, that even meat lovers wouldn't mind eating it. "Mmm, yummy good", as my son would say.

Shrimp briyani with vegetable curry:

The "green beans" dish which turned out not to be the French/runner bean type. I am not really aware of any other legumes called green beans, but the waiter said that this was a type of green beans. Well, green bean or not, this was really good. Seems like this place does vegetarian dishes really well:

We ended up eating more than the "light lunch" we'd intended to eat, but we were pretty happy with the food experience, especially considering we'd walked into this restaurant from the street with no idea of how good the food would be. 'Twas a shame we didn't have more time to fit in more than one Indian meal in London.

Brick Lane Brasserie
67 Brick Lane
London E16QL
Tel +44 (0)20 7377 8072

More of London sights and food

We are back in Hong Kong from our 3-week Europe trip, but not before enduring 2 flights from Venice, 6 hours transit in London, and dealing with a toddler in his Terrible 2s while surviving on only 30 minutes doze on a 33-hour day. Honestly, we always feel like needing a holiday after getting home from a trip with our toddler. Italy was gorgeous, and I was very snap-happy with my cameras, so much so that I ran out of space on my dSLR about 3 days into our 7-day itinerary in Italy. Of course, the more photos I take, the more sorting and editing I have to do. I have lots to share about the things we did, where we stayed, what we saw and the fantastic food we ate in Rome, Florence and Italy, but for now, here are some snapshots of London on our second day out and about.

Waiting at an underground station to board the train for Hyde Park:

One of the entrances to Hyde Park, the Marble Arch which has a giant horse head structure nearby (something I hadn't noticed while snapping away on my camera until Rob pointed out the obvious):

Hyde Park was immense with lots of open flat fields, quite different from the beautiful St. James Park we saw the day before:

Catching one of the palace guards leaving Buckingham Palace. We'd missed the changing the guard process because daylight savings had started on that day and we were 1 hour late:

We headed to Brick Lane for lunch at one of the many Indian curry houses. Brick Lane hosts a market every Sunday, and the street was packed full of people when we arrived:

Zak eating briyani, one of the dishes we got for lunch. It was hilarious watching him eat the spicy rice, as he would enthusiastically shovel spoonfuls of rice into his mouth, chew and swallow, and then stick his tongue out complaining "Hot!" but shortly later would proceed to shove the next spoon into his mouth. Here he is simultaneously sticking his tongue out in protest of the spiciness while spooning the next heap of spicy rice into his mouth:

After lunch we headed to Primrose Hill to visit a friend's sister working at a bakery. Truly a beautiful part of London:

At Primrose Bakery, we bought a chocolate cupcake for Rob, a lemon one for me and a mini vanilla flavoured cupcake for Zak. They were all delicious, and we especially appreciated the fact that the frostings weren't as tall as the cupcakes themselves (which is apparently how the Americans like them, as I recall from our first trip to New York). It was on the crumbly side, but we did get in to the bakery only 5 minutes before closing (that was when we realised about daylight savings):

Zak polished off his mini vanilla cupcake really quickly. I wished he would do the same for vegetables:

Zak and I headed to the Science Museum during the week, and this was a great place for kids to hang out. Free entry, loads of educational stuff and plenty of fun and interactive activities for the kiddies.

The world on display. Zak loves planets (something he picked up when we visited HK's (outdated and ancient) Space Museum last month), and he would sometimes answer the question "Where are we?" with "Planet Earth" (occasionally he would get it right and answer "Hong Kong" or "London" or wherever we happen to be at the time):

Zak had a ball in The Garden gallery of the Science Museum which is targeted at 3-6 year olds:

The night before our flight out of London to Rome, I caught up with an old friend from primary school whom I hadn't seen for 6 years! Neither of us live in Perth anymore, and it was a little bit out-of-this-world catching up in London. We ate dinner at a pub because it was a British thing to do. Pretty good grub for a pub. I can't remember the name of the pub, just that it was near Liverpool Station.

Warmed Duck Salad with hoisin:

My friend's vegetarian burger, which looked really good and I was told it was delicious:

I do have a couple more food-related posts on London, so stay tuned for more!

An exquisite afternoon tea @ Sketch, London

Having afternoon tea is a very traditionally English thing to do, and we treated ourselves to a very nice afternoon tea at Sketch after having walked seemingly everywhere worth seeing in central London on Saturday. This place came recommended by a friend in Perth who said that we just have to check out this cool restaurant while in London, if not for a meal, then for afternoon tea. Sketch didn't seem like the place to bring toddlers to, so we'd planned to get there for the more casual affair of afternoon tea. To describe the décor of this modern French restaurant as “bizarre” would be an understatement, and “creepy” would be a more accurate statement, a fact obvious from even before we stepped in the door. A statue of a faceless dog (and I mean faceless - as in its face chopped off) stands on the wall near the entrance facing the ground. In the foyer, the chairs blend into the walls in a sort of creepy way.

The faceless dog structure that greets people on the streets who walk by Sketch:

Curious chairs:

Once inside the Parlour, however, there were none of that strange art around, at least not ones that stood out as obviously. The waitresses were beautiful in their European manner, and I just loved listening to the French accents when they spoke. And they did their job really well too because the room was full the whole time we were there, with a line of people outside waiting for a table. Sketch is pricey, with the Afternoon Tea for Two costing at least £60. This includes your choices of tea and a range of lovely pastries, sweets and sandwiches gorgeously laid out in tiers made out of plates and mugs stacked on top of each other. Each item were exquisite in both appearance and flavour, but my favourite item was the rustic fruited scone with the jam and cream. It was so good in its simple and unpretentious way. Another item worth mentioning was the chocolate macaron. It was so rich, dense and bursting with flavour, it was quite unlike the usual macaron that are lighter in texture.

Me: white tea; Rob: green tea with osmanthus:

Tower of delectables:

The food was good, the tea was lovely, but I think the best part was the fact that Zak had fallen asleep in his stroller just before we reached Sketch, and he continued sleeping for awhile longer in the restaurant which gave us a little time to ourselves, enjoying each other's company, people-watching, and disagreeing on which waitress was the prettiest. The boy woke up just as we were just finishing up the last bit of our tea, and we made our hasty retreat back to the real world outside, but not before one of the waiters had given Zak a little cake treat.

Sketch
9 Conduit St
London W1S 2XG
Tel. +44 (0)20 7659 4500

More impressions of London, and sights in a day

I am really liking London. It is full of old historical buildings yet not in a dingy decrepit way. It is pretty easy to get around on foot (better than the underground tube especially with a toddler and stroller), and the streetscape is lovelier than Hong Kong's. In addition, the people are quite amicable and a high proportion of the population is good-looking. Now, that might seem like a superficial thing to say, but it's true: most everyone I encounter of all races, genders, sizes and ages – whether on the streets, at the supermarket or on the tube – they are blessed with natural good looks. I would love to know the reason why. Taking the underground tube is an experience on its own (especially with a toddler), and last Thursday I took the underground tube to the Natural History Museum. On my own, with Zak and the stroller. Both stations at either end had no elevators or even escalators, just lots of stairs. Fortunately, the stroller is pretty light and easy to collapse, and Zak can walk the stairs fine so it wasn't too bad, and I had a few passers-by offering to lend a hand. That's the other nice thing about the people in London – strangers offering to help when they see that help may be needed, and I often saw people offering a seat on the tube to someone else who needed it more. At the museum, we saw lots of dinosaurs, but the boy's attention waned really quickly so we didn't stay very long at the museum (I also didn't fancy Zak falling asleep in the stroller on the way home which would make it rather difficult to do the stairs between street level and underground).

(Images are unedited, taken from both the dSLR and the point-and-shoot)

The Natural History Museum (which is an architectural beauty itself), and the stairs we took from the underground tube to street-level:

Since we only had one weekend in London, we had a full day planned for Saturday: to see most of the sights of central London on foot (the Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace) and to squeeze in afternoon tea at Sketch (because having afternoon tea is such an English thing to do, and Sketch is one of the best places in London city to go for afternoon tea). Shortly after arriving at Westminster by the underground tube, I made the unfortunate discovery that my dSLR AND my point-and-shoot cameras were both running low on battery power. To make matters worse, we realised from seeing the large number of police presence on the streets together with people holding banners and handing out flyers that some huge protest was scheduled to be held that day. Since this was our only weekend in London, we had no choice but to go ahead with the plans and to put up with the craziness that was happening around us.

The sight of the famous London clock tower that greeted us as we exited from the underground level at Westminster station:

The beautiful and historical Westminster Abbey:

The wide tree-lined road leading towards Buckingham Palace. The gorgeous St James Park is on the right:

Encounter with a cute squirrel in St James Park on the way to the palace:

More cute animals in St James Park:

Buckingham Palace and the golden statue of the Queen Victoria Memorial in front of the palace just beyond St James Park:

The ornate gate shutting off the public from the palace grounds at Buckingham:

One of the most boring (but probably well-paid) jobs – a palace guard on duty:

Takeaway lunch at Inn The Park (yes, that is the name of the restaurant/cafe) in St James Park included a butternut squash and vegetable pasty which would have been nicer if it had a meat filling. Smoked salmon and cream cheese made for a simple but good sandwich filling. The salads were about as exciting as salads can get, and nothing special really:

Heading out to the palace and having lunch at St James Park kept us away from the main areas of the protest, but we couldn't avoid it because our route coincided with the protest march route. I personally thought the protest would be relatively civil and low-key (having no previous knowledge of what it was), so imagine how I felt when we stepped out from our arvo tea at Sketch to be greeted with the sight of police squads decked out in protective anti-riot gear (complete with helmet and shield) marching out to Regent Street where some riot had apparently been happening while we were enjoying our quaint little afternoon tea experience. Police vehicles and many businesses in the area were the target of unsightly paint-bombs. Not very pleasant, especially when you have to consider the safety of your 2-year-old, but it certainly added an interesting dimension to our London sightseeing experience.

Cops in anti-riot gear, standing at the ready for more riots. Permission was asked and granted to take a photo of them (Rob informed me that I could get my camera confiscated otherwise!):

At one end of Regent Street, which would probably be buzzing with traffic had it not been shut off to motor traffic for the protest march. Love the way the building curves so gracefully along with the road curvature:

We also paid a visit to Hamleys Toy Store, which is heaven for the little people (and big people who are young at heart):

We then walked home via Oxford Street, which took us about 1 ¼ hours. All in all, it was a good day. I was pretty pleased with how much we managed to fit in one day. I just love exploring new cities on foot because I would miss too much if I took the train, bus or taxi everywhere. You can even feel the vibe of the local culture and atmosphere just by walking through the area. This method of travel is not for everyone, and needless to say, I slept very soundly that night. We looked at a bit more of London on Sunday too, but that will be another post for now.

A visit to a London city farm, and Chicken Cacciatore recipe

Earlier this week, I took the 2-year-old to a nearby city farm. Rather than tackling the underground tube with a stroller (the access to the tube system from street level is usually stairs), I walked the 2km distance there and back, which gave me a good chance to see the streets of London and admire the beautiful (old) architecture that I enccountered along the way. Zak loved chasing the uncaged chickens around the farm yard, and he kept edging up to the large geese that were as big as him! He gawked at the sheep, but barely gave a glance at the pigs. I wonder at when he will - in that little brain of his - associate those flappy clucky chickens with the chicken dishes I put on the dinner table. That boy loves eating chicken drumsticks, and nothing pleases me more than seeing him enthusiastically eat his dinner (Lord knows what we sometimes go through at the dining table trying to get him to eat).

Zak getting acquainted with chickens at a London city farm:

I cooked this Chicken Cacciatore a couple of weeks ago back home in Hong Kong, and I need to write it down before it gets left forgotten behind a backlog pile of photos of our trip to London and Italy. This is a pretty quick and easy recipe to execute, which is great for weekday dinners. The olives add a fantastic flavour punch, and it's a versatile dish that goes well with pasta, rice, couscous, bread, polenta, potato – any plain carbs to soak up the yummy sauce. I used this recipe from taste.com.au, but with a few modifications (but of course! I hardly follow recipes to the tee). I skipped flouring the drumsticks, added lots of mushrooms and used dried parsley. The first thing Rob said when stepping through the door after work was “Mmm, smells yummy”, and he was full of praises when eating it too. Zak ate his dinner, which was good enough for me!

Chicken Cacciatore

Ingredients

1kg (about 8) chicken drumsticks
Olive oil
1 brown onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, chopped
200g mushrooms
400g can whole peeled tomatoes
250ml (1 cup) chicken stock
140g (3/4 cup) pitted kalamata olives
dried parsley
salt and pepper, to taste

Method

1. Heat some oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add half the drumsticks and cook, turning occasionally, for 4-6 minutes or until well browned. Transfer to a plate. Heat another 2 tsp of olive oil in the frypan and repeat with the remaining drumsticks.
2. Heat some oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring often, for 2 minutes or until it softens slightly. Add the garlic and mushrooms, and cook, stirring, for another 2 minutes.
3. Add the browned drumsticks to the pot. Stir in the undrained tomatoes and stock, using the spoon to break up the tomatoes. Bring to the boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer, uncovered, for 25-30 minutes or until the chicken is tender.
4. Stir in the olives and dried parsley, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Cook, uncovered, for a further 5 minutes.
5. Serve with your choice of carbs (e.g. rice, pasta, couscous) and vegetables for a complete meal.

First impressions of London

We are here in London, after a 1 hour flight delay and 13 hours in the air. I am short on sleep, but thankfully not jet-lagged (unlike that time we went to New York). I dozed for about 10 minutes on the plane (sleep and me, we hardly meet on planes), so I zonked out on the bed quite easily after we arrived at our London apartment around 10pm. Zak, on the other hand, slept unusually well during the flight, so he is still adjusting and hence the reason why I am short on sleep.

(Images in this post are unedited because I am using the tiny ASUS that can't even handle viewing images.)

Food and caffeine @ Starbucks - blueberry yogurt, greek yogurt with granola, babyccino for Zak, grilled beef and cheese panini, and a tall cappuccino (not in shot). Coffee is pretty cheap in London:

On our first day in London yesterday, we spent some time getting food supplies and acquainting ourselves with the neighbourhood. However, the very first thing we did was to get some breakfast at Starbucks. Rob was starving and was very happy when we sat down in Starbucks for some late breakfast. We had nothing in the apartment, and because it was Sunday, most shops were shut. Thankfully there is a really nice supermarket (Waitrose) just around the corner from here which opens on Sundays but only from 11am. I could get everything from fresh groceries and cleaning stuff to allergy medication and thermometer. Being Sunday, the roads were quite dead, but we saw plenty of bicyclists and special bicycle lanes marked out on the roads. Nice change after Tokyo (where there are lots of bicycles but not encouraged on the roads, which then makes it unsafe for pedestrians) and Hong Kong (just plain unsafe on the roads with the shocking driving, and impractical to go with pedestrian traffic down the underground subway system and/or up the overhead footpaths).

Zak chillaxing on this massive swing at the playground:

One thing that took us by surprise was how friendly Londoners are. Through tales of others who'd been to London before me, I got the impression that people here are usually unsmiling, always gloomy to match the weather. I'm glad to report that it is definitely not like that at all! For example, I found a lovely park with playground near our apartment, and there I met a mum who introduced to me a "stay-and-play" playgroup at the school next to the park that is open to the public for free. Informational treasures like this can only come from local knowledge, or by doing some hard homework of scouring the internet. I probably won't use the playgroup much in the next 11 days because I intend to explore London a bit, but it is definitely good to know something like that exists in the area just in case my plans for the day don't work out. So far I like what I've seen of London, and I can understand why so many of my friends love it here.