Questions For Locals*

1. What is the deal with Cafe Rouge? Are they any good?

2. Where can you get a good, reasonably priced manicure in London, preferably centre/west?

* and by locals, I still mean you Rali

Real Food Festival

I had been looking forward to the Real Food Festival for months, and was so relieved that we moved in yesterday so I could hoard what I hoped would be many goodies home.

I hoped right: the festival was absolutely amazing, a veritable feast. Kath, Andrew, Susan, you would have died and gone to foodie heaven.

The Real Food Festival is all about quality food, direct from the farmers. The food might be organic, free-range, humanely reared, concerned with sustainable farming, and talking to the farmers today, these were people who understood and cared about those labels instead of just slapping them on the packet. They were bubbly, enthusiastic, invited us out to visit the farms, to pick our own cherries, coming up with great ways of getting their produce from the farms to bobos like me in the city. It was extremely impressive, and extremely delicious.

As any food festival goer knows, first in, best fed. So we were there at 10am, getting woozy on sampling all the morsels we could. There was cheese, meat, cheese, cakes, oils, chutnies, cheese, salamies, juices, wine, ok, everything. And then some. It was huge, and took us over three hours to cover every delicious stall.

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Oysters are my favourite food in the world. After the World Cup in 2006 I went to Cancale in Brittany, home of what many say are the world's best oysters, just to try them. And I was satisfied in concluding that Sydney rock and Pacific beat them hands down. Today, there were a handful of oyster sellers and I sampled oysters from three different farms, and was blown away. I'm sorry Sydney, but the oysters I had today (details to come, I have an evening of brochure sorting ahead of me) were magnificent. The luminous pale grey bulbs were the taste of the sea. I can't describe them any better. They were faultless. Stunning.

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The prices were really good and I bought up big: melting mozzarella di buffalo, blushing beefcheek tomatoes, butter flecked with salt crystals, a scotch egg from Heston Blumenthal's pig supplier, pots of crab, pork and Stilton sausages, and a salt marsh rump of lamb for a proper Sunday roast tomorrow.

See more of the photos at my flickr photoset.

Home Sweet Home

Moving was painless. We love Hammersmith. I'm sure there are nicer parts of London - certainly everyone (from north London) tells us so; but it has everything we want and we feel instantly at home. Our little corner reminds me that London really is a city of villages. Around the block, we have a nook of little shops, a fish and chipper (with falafel and kebabs), dusty chemist and a cute-looking Italian restaurant. We are down the road from the White City development, which at the end of the year will be the biggest shopping centre in Europe. In the meantime, there are busy shops and supermarkets left, right and centre. And our street is pretty, tweeting with birds and lined with beautiful pale pink blossoms.

Locals: can anyone recommend broadband/wireless internet? It looks like our run of free wireless has come to an end :-(

Moving Day

We're moving to our place in Hammersmith tomorrow, and hopefully we'll be able to leech internet so I can show you around.

In the meantime, enjoy Fee, the Hungarian puli dog, aka the best thing I've ever seen, jumping in a competition in Germany.

What's Going On

With my beloved Richard Quest?

Another Favourite Ad

Watch till the end.

There's Something I Kinda Like About This

In a 'modern art' kind of way. Burger King is introducing the £85 burger.

St George's Day

We had to celebrate St George's Day with British food. I decreed it so. It was only halfway through our search for a suitable pub that I realised we should be finding a curry joint, tucking into a tikka masala while working out who George was and if dragons really exist? Too many pubs had the ubiquitous nachos and jacket potatoes. However word on the street, or Time Out, pointed us in the direction of the Princess Louise in Holborn, down the road from us. The restaurant upstairs could have done with some tunes but had a nice, loungey feel decked out with portraits of Princess Louise. Who was Princess Louise? Not sure, but there was plenty of British on the menu. Tick.

Lancashire hot pot for Dani didn't have enough lamb but was still tasty, and my beef suet pudding was delicious, both served with mustard mash and vegies. Mmm, suet. Served with a Smith's wheat beer. Cheers, England!

Just One More Time

Catching Up

What do two girls who are desperately looking for work in London do? We live in Bloomsbury and drink delicious coffee. We meet new friends for outrageous times. We walk along the Thames. We eat fish and chips and bangers and mash. We go to the gym and do Julia classes (pilates, yoga) and Dani classes (body pump, spin). On Saturday we walk down to Covent Garden and then The National Gallery. It is such a wonderful gallery and I'm thrilled with the beautiful works of art, Seurat, Ingres, luscious mangoes from Gauguin. The building inside is stunning - large round ornate ceilings filled with perfect light. I can't wait to go back again and again, and you can here, because the galleries are free and it's so important.

I will talk work another time. Hopefully we move in to our new place on Friday. I say 'hopefully' because the agents are degenerates.

I love it here.

London In The (Almost) Summer Time

I had a million names for this new blog...Pants Off? (Rali, wouldn't that have been the best? Alas taken). Tales Of A Hard Man? And one particularly cheesy one, Eat Pret Love (geddit?).

But it's London in the (almost) summer time and a line from one of my favourite RHCP songs stuck in my head,

Summer time to talk and swear
Later maybe we could share some air
I'll take you to the movies there
We could walk through Leicester Square

And hopefully I'll still be here when it will be,

Time to say hello to snow on the Thames

I'm ready to write and take photos again, so thanks for joining me at this new blog.