London – Page 6 – Yellywelly

Looking for the blue door

5 May 201330 Sep 2013 Yelly

My feet were killing me (I’d been wearing only heels for months and on this London trip I only brought flats–let me tell you, that was not intentional! My feet and leg muscles were telling me, in no uncertain terms, exactly how they felt about wearing flats after a heels-only arrangement for months! They hated the idea and me at that particular moment in time). They were absolutely murdering me. But I walked on–completely ignoring Portobello Road (which was an experience in itself – especially when the market is on!).

I walked on because I wanted to go to a Filipino food place. But as the experience was definitely forgettable, I won’t talk about it again.

My disappointment was all but forgotten when I left the Filipino food place because a few doors down was a familiar looking bookshop. People were posing in front of the shop, having their pictures taken and I couldn’t understand why. And then it dawned on me: I was in Notting Hill and they were posing near a BOOKSHOP! I ran (hobbled really quickly, more like!) the 100 meters to the bookshop and gasped (yes, out loud!) because it was THE bookshop. It was THE bookshop where the scenes for the Travel Book Company were shot for the movie Notting Hill (which rangs high up in my list of favourite movies, near enough to Sliding Doors for it to matter a lot!). I tried to be cool. I tried to be nonchalant and I managed to convince myself that I only wanted a photograph of the shop front, that that was enough. So snap away I did! Only just one photo! Ha!

So I walked away, and round the corner, I found the Notting Hill shop of the Biscuiteers. I had a look around the shop and oohed and aahed at the lovely iced biscuits. But I really wanted to ask the shop keeper if he knew where the house with the blue door was. I figured if they were local, they’d know where William Thacker’s house with the blue door was. I was told to go back to the Notting Hill Bookshop because the lady who ran the shop would definitely know. So my crown iced biscuite securely stored in my purse, I went then went back to the Notting Hill Bookshop to ask directions.

I went around to the bookshop because it was a bookshop and I LOVED bookshops. There’s something about the smell of bound paper that comforts me. Plus I didn’t really want to pounce on the lovely shop lady and just get the information and run out of the shop! It didn’t seem right. They had a copy of the Travel Book Shop Company’s sign up in the area where Rufus the thief stuffed a book down his trousers–or at least that’s where I thought it was shot. Apparently the interior layout of the shop hasn’t changed, it remains exactly same as it was in the movie! I couldn’t help myself and did a happy little dance because I was — sort of! — sharing a space with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts!

I bought a cloth book bag and a fridge magnet (to add to my growing collection) because I felt that I owed it to the lovely lady who ran the shop. As I waited at the till for her to ring up my purchases, I asked if she knew where the house with the blue door was. I also apologised in the same breath as I know she gets asked the same question time and time again. She laughed and gave the directions. I was relieved to hear that it was only a block away because as excited as I was to be in the Travel Bookshop, my feet were still hurting!

After a few pained steps, there it was, the house with a blue door! And for a while, I stared at the house, trying to decide why it looked a little different (I realised later that the pillars and the area framing the door were painted blue before and now they were white, except for the door). But it didn’t matter so much that it looked only slightly different.

For one brief shining moment, I was a girl, standing in front of the door, living a dream!

Yelly Eats

Just saying

21 Apr 20138 Aug 2017 Yelly

I logged on knowing that I hadn’t written anything on the blog for a considerable amount of time. I didn’t really realise that the last blog entry I’d written was the day before Easter. My how time flies, even when one isn’t having fun. I’ve been battling a throat infection and a bad bout of flu for the past few weeks.

A few days ago I was in Notting Hill, mostly to find a Filipino restaurant that I’d been looking forward to trying. I think I’m not alone in saying that if it was a Filipino restaurant, run by Filipinos, Filipinos would flock to it because Filipinos would, if they could. I had eaten in another Filipino restaurant in London, in Charlotte Street, called Josephine’s. The decor was a little dated but I didn’t mind it because the service, and of course the food, was wonderful. Despite the fact that there were other customers, I felt well-looked after, not ignored.

That wasn’t the case in this other restaurant. I know I definitely looked Filipino and made the point of mentioning that I was Filipino and read about the restaurant which was why I wanted to try it but I got an indifferent response. Colder than lukewarm. Most Filipinos would ask where you lived, how long you lived there and what you did for work. This wouldn’t really be intrusive, it’s just the way Filipinos connect. There are about 300,000 Filipinos spread all over the UK, a mere drop in the ocean compared the general population. My experience, so far, has always been Filipinos wanting to connect with each other. But funnily enough, the warm and effusive welcome for a fellow Filipino that I was hoping for was not what I got. There was no effort to connect, there was no effort to engage.

The food was okay but the ordering wasn’t explained (the menus were on clipboards on the wall and you took one to the table then ordered at a make-shift looking counter), I had to ask. The options weren’t explained but after I asked if I could have water instead, I was told they could serve me water. I just felt like they weren’t interested in the business that I brought in. And I was massively, massively disappointed.

There was another person in the restaurant, a person who, from the conversation I could overhear was a friend. The person at the counter talked to this friend more than he talked to me. I think most restaurants, in this day and age, would fight tooth and nail for punters. I didn’t feel important to this establishment. I felt like I was an interruption to their conversation. I felt completely unwelcome.

Even now when I think about it, I feel like crying. The entire experience was that awful. I know I only paid £10 in total for my food. But I would’ve rather not gone now. I hope they treat other paying customers differently. More importantly, if they’re going use a Filipino word for their restaurant name, I pray that they treat fellow Filipinos better because the Pinoys that come to them want to come in and feel like they’re in a Filipino oasis in the hustle and bustle of London.

Service is as service done, but this was badly done. Very badly done. I’m certainly not going back to this Filipino restaurant.

Yelly Eats

Remembering The Cavendish

19 Mar 20138 Aug 2017 Yelly

It was horribly busy at work today and tomorrow is going to be an even longer day. It’s Budget Day tomorrow and the firm I work for has a post budget presentation for its clients. Tomorrow will be a long day because we’ll be prepping materials for the presentations.

Ah well! I’m in my happy place though because I’m still thinking about last Tuesday when I had afternoon tea at The Cavendish.

I’d never been to The Cavendish but it was easy enough to get to because it was right behind Fortnum and Mason. The hotel was understated but it was quietly elegant.

We gave our names at bar concierge and I felt fairly special as we were made to feel like they were expecting us. We were led to a quite corner of the Lounge Bar and were given menus so we could choose our teas.

Afternoon Tea at The Cavendish is from 2 to 5PM everyday and they charge £18 per person. This includes a pot of tea for each person, a selection of finger sandwiches: Wicks Manor smoked ham with whole grain mustard, egg mayonnaise with rocket salad, Scottish smoked salmon with cucumber and cream cheese, and cheddar cheese and pickle; a selection of pastries, tartlets and chocolate truffles and scones with jam and clotted cream. The £18 also includes a glass of champagne but I opted for the non-alcoholic option of passion fruit juice.

On the menu it looked like a substantial amount of food but I wasn’t prepared for the amount of food that was brought to the table. It was a LOT! We ordered afternoon tea for two people but the food that was brought to the table could have easily fed four people very generously.

I loved the service because the staff were wonderfully friendly and attentive. We were looked after well. I appreciated the fact that they offered to refill our teapots with hot water. The teapots held about two cups worth of tea and water costs next to nothing, but not ever establishment will offer to refill your teapot. I loved that about the Cavendish. While it is expected for most establishments to offer a non-alcoholic option, not every place does. We were given a lot of options to replace our glasses of champagne and I must say, the passion fruit juice that I had was wonderfully fresh!

When the afternoon tea tray was brought to the table, it was brought to us with a slight flourish and the waiter explained the contents of each plate. There were 2 scones for each person with large pots filled with delicious clotted cream and lovely jam. There were more than enough sandwiches which were generously filled. I love smoked salmon and the sandwiches were stuffed to bursting! You certainly get what you pay for and more!

Am now looking at my calendar and planning my next visit!

The sweet element was the mini cakes, tartlets and chocolate truffles and they were lovely! They were cute, individual pieces and very beautifully made.

At one point during the meal, I certainly worried about not being able to finish the food (we couldn’t manage it in the end) because there was so much of it. I would definitely recommend having afternoon tea at The Cavendish. The venue is quiet and has the element of privacy even though the space is quite open plan. You get wonderfully attentive service from the staff and the food is definitely value for money.

I’m certainly looking forward to the next visit!

Yelly Writes

Hearts day post-mortem

23 Feb 201330 Sep 2013 Yelly

On February 14, I was woken up by 2 text messages: one from my mum and one from my big sister from another mother. I crawled from under the toasty warm covers and read the text messages, smiled sleepily and then crawled back into bed.

Valentines Day was just another day, really, because I had loads to do work-wise. I’m quite happy that work is keeping me busy because busy is always good. I got home late because there was a staff meeting and I had to catch a later train. The idea was to have take-away from my favourite Chinese take away. But when I called the Chinese take away I was told they couldn’t do anything about delivering food to me until about 9PM. I was exhausted so I wasn’t going to cook. Settling for fried chicken wasn’t so bad. At least I didn’t have to cook and the clean up after was a breeze!

Now, y’all must be thinking, awww what a sad Valentine’s day. It wasn’t really. I had a really productive day at work and learned new things, I managed to catch a train that got me home earlier than I thought I’d get home, and even though I didn’t get my Chinese take away (I was craving chow mein noodles!), I still shared chicken and chips with the person who knows me the best. I’d say it was a good day. After all, like Christmas, every day should be Valentine’s day. We should all make an effort to make sure our lives are filled with love and romance and the appreciation of what our loved ones do for us.

However, I thought this photo was good to share: a picture taken at Covent Garden in London the Saturday before. Things like these, they make me smile. Romance is grand, aint it?

Yelly Eats

Gelato fix

26 Aug 20128 Aug 2017 Yelly

Mother Nature has blown hot and cold fairly regularly in the past few weeks. Last Saturday was the hottest day ever in England. I was in London on that day and boy, did I feel the heat! I’m Filipino so I should be fairly used to hot weather. But even I was struggling in the muggy heat. I was cursing the decision to wear jeans. I should’ve work something lighter. Even the dreaded leggings would have saved my poor legs and allowed for better air circulation!

Yesterday, as we journeyed to London, the sky was painted a slate grey. Rain clouds were racing across the east Anglian sky and I was hoping against hope that I could get through my London trip without getting drenched! That of course was a pipe dream. As we dodged the raindrops throughout the day, by the time we got to Soho, it was quite evident that we had to take shelter. We were trapped on Berwick Street!

When the rain finally let up (very temporarily), we thought it would be best to take shelter in the nearby Gelupo on Archer Street. Gelupo is this lovely little gelateria in Soho. They have lovely flavours and a lovely bright, crisp and clean interior that always seems to invite you in, whatever the weather. I heard about Gelupo from Helen, who is a food blogger that I follow on Twitter. Based on her recommendation, I went to London and looked for Archer Street. It’s that street that is behind the Gielgud Theatre in Soho on Shaftesbury Avenue.

Gelupo is primarily a gelateria and serves the most wonderful flavours! But as you walk through the shop past the gelato counter with its lovely gelato and Italian pastries, past the freezers holding lovely gelato-based treats and frozen Italian pantry essentials (you will, on occassion, find a frozen baby octopus!), towards the back of the shop there is a lovely deli section that is filled with wonderful Italian treats, from arborio rice to bottles of extra virgin olive oil!

If you’re in London, going to Gelupo for a gelato fix is a must. The staff are lovely and ever so friendly and they very generously let you taste the ice cream before you make your choice. You also get a wafer with your gelato with the Gelupo logo on it that is too cute! My absolute favourites are the bonet for its rich chocolatey rumness, sour cherry and ricotta with its lovely balance of creamy and tart, stawberry yumminess and, of course, hazelnut which is like having Nutella in ice cream form.

I had the stawberry and peanut butter gelato this time and it was sooooooo good! It was like having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich flavoured ice cream treat! Going to Gelupo is a treat each and every time and definitely recommend going there, whether the weather is gelato weather or not! Any excuse for a Gelupo gelato fix is a brilliant excuse!

Yelly Eats

Chicken Licken

22 Aug 20128 Aug 2017 Yelly

I love chicken. I love it fried, braised, barbecued, stewed, roasted. Chances are as long as it’s chicken, I will eat it and I will love it. I could probably eat chicken all year without complaining. You could probably say I am slightly pollo loco!

I’m lucky that most of the fast food restaurants in the Philippines serve chicken. While it may sound weird to some people, chicken is almost always served with rice and some sort of gravy or sauce. But most places that serve fried chicken will almost always have mashed potato and gravy on the menu as a side. It probably seems very American but there you go. Fried chicken and mashed potato in gravy is, in my opinion, a match made in fried chicken heaven!

When I lived in Atlanta for a while, my love for Southern fried chicken grew. Chicken in the South was so much better than KFC (and don’t get me wrong, KFC in the South seems to be even better than the usual, but that may just be me!) and the mashed potato was even more amazing than the mashed potato that you got in those little styrofoam tubs that you got from fast food restaurants. I was in chicken heaven. Every single element of southern fried chicken made me smile: from the crispy fried chicken batter to the juicy chicken pieces! To borrow KFC’s slogan, PROPER southern fried chicken was of the finger-lickin’ good variety.

I moved to England nearly 4 years ago and I think I spent nearly that much time looking for great fried chicken. Don’t get me wrong, the various southern fried chicken take away places do have their merits, particularly the ones near us. They’re okay, not amazing, but okay if I needed a fried chicken fix. But obviously, it was chicken and chips (I used to call them fries) and not chicken and mash…and I almost always had to make my own gravy. No one seemed to think that mashed potato and gravy was a good flavour combination. I even went to my old standby KFC, expecting to see the same things on the menu but boy, was I disappointed! There was no mashed potato and there was no gravy and the chicken wasn’t as good as I thought it was. And so began my quest for the perfect southern fried chicken.

I’ve bought chicken from lots of places, from different supermarkets, had meals in a lot of restaurants but I’ve never really found the kind of chicken that I really enjoyed: crispy, flavourful batter, slightly salty and juicy chicken. Until that fateful day in July. Alan had read about Roost who served chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy. And not just any chicken, it was chicken marinated in buttermilk, battered and fried! It was proper southern fried chicken, the way southern fried chicken is supposed to be made! Or at least that’s what it said it was. After looking for nearly 4 years, I think you wouldn’t blame me for being slight skeptical.

We made our way to the Dalston location Friday after work where that week’s Street Feast London was happening and ordered a serving: 2 pieces of buttermilk chicken with gravy and mash. I was prepared to be disappointed. But as I stabbed my fork into that crispy batter, the crackle that I heard calmed my doubtful heart. Batter that sounded like that had to be some sort of good! And bite of juicy chicken with a little bit of batter made me smile. It was SO good! The next bite had to be a fork-full of chicken, batter, mashed potato and gravy had me closing my eyes in absolute enjoyment. I’m salivating while thinking back to that first mouthful of chicken-mash-gravy. The chicken was perfect and the mash was creamy-buttery. I made the decision to share a 2-piece chicken meal with Alan (yes, I have been known to demolish a 2-piece chicken meal with gravy and rice in the Philippines!) because we were at Street Feast LDN and there were other food places to try (and, if I’m honest, because I had prepared for disappointment, I didn’t want to have too much of the chicken left over if I didn’t like it! I am, apparently, a fussy eater!). But as we walked away from that parking lot in Dalston, I was thinking about the chicken. I wanted to turn around and order another chicken with gravy and mash to take back with me! It was THAT good!

We had our next taste of chicken when Eat Street was at Exhibition Road 2 weeks later (a little thing called the Olympics had descended on London). This time we each had a 2-piece meal, absolutely no sharing! And I’m very glad to report that the chicken and gravy and mash were as perfect as I remember.

If you’re ever in London and in a street food market, and you spy the Roost truck, run, don’t walk, to it and ask for a 2-piece chicken meal with gravy and mash as a side. You won’t regret it! To find out where Roost are, follow them on Twitter. They are @weareroost.

I cannot wait until the next Roost fix!

Yelly Eats

Breakfast

7 Aug 20128 Aug 2017 Yelly

One of my favourite restaurants in London serves all-day breakfasts. As a Filipino, breakfast is a very important meal. We were raised to value breakfast. I remember being continually scolded by my mother when I try to skip breakfast. When I discovered the Breakfast Club, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. While they don’t have the traditional Filipino beef tapa or longganisa with garlic fried rice, I am a fan of the full English breakfast and they have the best spread I’ve seen so far! But they’re not limited to just English breakfasts. They have Huevos Rancheros and a really good Chorizo Hashbrown plate. They have the most amazing Eggs Benedict and their Green Eggs and Ham is dee-lish. You also have a choice of the divine French toasts and amazing stacked pancakes. But you do have the healthy option too, because they serve oats and fruity options as well.

If you’re ever in London, you must find a way to have a meal at the Breakfast Club at one of their locations. The service is friendly and the food is amazing! Worth every penny! And mind you, you don’t have to shell out a lot of pennies to enjoy the HUGE breakfasts 🙂

Yelly Eats

Salt Beef Heaven

10 Jul 20128 Aug 2017 Yelly

I have been looking for a really good salt beef with pickle and mustard on rye and found it.

If you’re in London, find out where Bel Shapiro. She absolutely will NOT disappoint. My salt beef sandwich was bee-yoo-tee-ful and absolutely delicious.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: