London – Page 4 – food by sole

23rd November 2020

Heddon Yokocho

It’s almost a month since we visited this place, but since you can’t go anywhere anyway, we might as well revisit it!

Natsuki Kikuya had posted about this place in her Instagram page, so I was curious about it.

But wait… a ramen place in Mayfair? 🤑💸

I looked at the menu on their website to make sure I would not have to sell a kidney to visit 😆 The prices seemed within the standards of ramen in Central London, and since there’s not a lot to look forward to these days, I made a reservation.

28th October 2020

Noble Rot Soho

I have a confession to make: I am late to most culinary trends and “best kept secrets”.

I had never been to the Gay Hussar, the restaurant that used to be in these premises. I actually barely knew anything about it, its fame (used to be frequented by politicians on their old-school long lunches) or the type of cuisine it cooked (Hungarian), until it was threatened with closure.

And then it was finally closed and boarded up, and I never had the chance to visit, and then it spent quite a bit of time shut, and I would cycle past it and never give it a second thought (there’s only so much you can be saddened with before everything drags you down).

Then a couple of weeks ago Devvers said we should visit the restaurant as it had just opened.

25th October 2020

Akoko

This restaurant opened recently and we decided to try it out because we have had very little exposure to African food and are quite curious about it (perhaps the most we’ve tried is North African food i.e. Moroccan, Egyptian…). But also, it is in our neighbourhood and we would like it to not become a Ghost Town again, so here we are, keen to support local businesses!

7th July 20207th July 2020

Pseudo-isolation, week 16: in dialogues

“Shall I sprinkle some dukkah on this?”
“Of course!”

28th June 2020

Pseudo-isolation, week 15: in food, not photos style

I hope Devvers allows me the license to include one photo. Here’s food, not photos if you want to go for the text only experience!

Monday: Mushrooms, carrots and aubergines in a miso sauce with sesame seeds on rice. Socially distanced conversation with a friend in St. James’s Park. The grass tickled our legs. First sunset outside our home in many months.
Tuesday—the saint’s day for St John: My cousin declares “the good thing about masks is they hide a double chin”. A salad with endive, chickpeas, orange and dukkah. My fennel seedlings reach for the sky. It’s too hot to cook, let alone bake the Spanish sweet I wanted to make for St. John, a Coca de San Juan.
Wednesday: cocktails with Blu Hydrangea for Pride at work, via Zoom. It’s still very hot; we’re persistently sleepy all day. I make gazpacho with limited ingredients; I read out the ingredient list with delight. Devvers keeps asking if I’ve spiked it, like in the Almodóvar movie.
Thursday: we melted. Devvers goes to Bubbledogs to have a look at the new deli; inevitably comes back with grower champagne.
Friday: working from home at 32ºC+ is unbearably suffocating. There are no more windows left to open or fans left to run. We had a walk to cool down when we finished work. We saw an orphaned coffee machine in the street.
- Our train of thought was mildly eccentric:
  - “Can we have the champagne?”
  - “Only if we have popcorn first”
Saturday: it rained overnight and it was cooler during the day, so I finally had the chance to make the Coca de San Juan and some sort of baked butternut squash kofte. We found two ladies having a picnic in our very urban doorstep, because evidently it’s the best place to set up shop in the whole of Fitzrovia. We tried out the Great Thai for dinner (take away, obvs).
Sunday: it rained again. It’s chilly today. Devvers invented a chicken and cardamom pilaf style rice cooked in the rice cooker. It was extremely satisfying.