Restaurants – food by sole

4th April 2022

Casa Julio (Fontanars dels Alforins)

Casa Julio in Fontanars, on a very drab day

This was the second birthday surprise for my mum! Lunch at the famous Casa Julio in Fontanars.

The story goes that it was a traditional restaurant, then got an ambitious chef, they did really well, so well they got a Michelin star at some point, then got really stressed about the implications of having the star, and then gave it up and went back to just serving nice food but without the added stress of being in the Michelin guide.

Star or no star, we did want to go both for the first time and also back again—some of us thought we had been there before in one of the pre-star incarnations. But weren’t really sure, as when restaurants are “traditional” it’s sometimes hard to distinguish between them, specially when that visit was many years ago. Had we been there? Did it really matter? No!

9th March 202216th March 2022

A visit to Requena

We visited Requena last month. Why not? It’s good to do something different and get out of our Russafa capsule!

Plus it has something that we’re deeply interested in: wines, and we got to try the new high speed train line from Valencia—or, new to us at least, as it’s been running for a while now. Double bonus!

8th February 20228th February 2022

Akira (at Japan House London)

Bento box at Akira restaurant at Japan House London

I went to visit the Windowology exhibition at the Japan House, and I decided to try their restaurant while I was in the area (given we know there isn’t a lot of great choices anyway).

So up I went into the restaurant, and I was pleasantly surprised to see it was fairly empty and quiet. They briefly hesitated initially, but managed to find me a table. I was mildly amused slash intrigued, because there were perhaps four or five more people in the spacious and nicely designed restaurant, but hey: they knew best.

4th February 2022

Restaurante Navarro

Each time someone wants to visit Valencia and asks us where to eat a good paella, we’re at a loss, because obviously there’s no place like home to eat paella!

But we’re determined to give people the answer to their question, and we’ve decided we’ll try out restaurants to establish where to eat the best paella in Valencia.

Restaurante Navarro is one of the first ones that popped up in our research. It’s very central, very close to the town hall square, so it’s an obvious choice if you’re doing touristy things.

31st January 2022

Endo at the Rotunda

We last went to Japan in 2019. And I don’t think I need to tell you what happened next! Either way, we do really miss the country and the Japanese hospitality.

Thankfully, we can get a piece of it in London: Endo Katuzoshi’s restaurant Endo at the Rotunda in White City blurs the line between reality and illusion.

Is he a chef? Is he a magician? Maybe both at once!