Location: London, England Cuisine: Italian North and East London is blessed with simply amazing bakeries. One of the most reputable is Pophams. Ollie Gold, the founder, spent years working in catering departments in various Formula 1 teams, travelling around the world and…
Location: London, England Cuisine: Thai Part of my childhood was spent in Bangkok and while I have mixed memories of growing up there, one thing for certain that I adored was the food! I have such fond memories of all the salads,…
Location: London, England Cuisine: Turkish First visit Victor and I first visited Mangal II in January 2022. Having visited so many wonderful Turkish places in Dalston over the years, we hadn’t yet tried this modern take on Turkish cuisine. Mangal II has been…
Location: Barcelona, Spain Cuisine: Catalan Along the main thoroughfare, or rambla, in the neighbourhood of Poblenou in Barcelona is a place that looks fairly casual, but offers the best tapas and plates in the area. A couple, Nuri and Jordi, opened their…
Location: Barcelona, Spain Cuisine: Italian 50 Top Pizza is a website that ranks pizzerias all over the world. There’s a list just for Italy (can you blame them?), but there is another one for Europe (without Italy). As of 2023, number three on…
Location: London, England Cuisine: Italian Traditionally, manteca means “grease” in Spanish, but today Spanish speakers usually mean lard. However, it can technically mean any oil, grease or fat. Therefore, there really is no more appropriate name for this restaurant in Shoreditch as all…
Location: London, England (3 locations) Cuisine: Sri Lankan / South Indian This review is 99% referring to the Hoppers location in Soho, but I’ve now also been to the King’s Cross location and I’ll discuss that experience a bit further down. Now, onto…
Location: London, England Cuisine: Basque / British I’ve been wanting to go to BRAT ever since moving to Northeast London. I mean, it’s not a hidden gem since BRAT has had a Michelin star since October 2018. The cuisine is heavily influenced by…
Location: Covent Garden, London, England Cuisine: Portuguese When Victor surprised me with theatre tickets to go see Endgame, I must admit I immediately thought: what are we going to do for dinner? I had never done a pre-theatre dinner before, so I was…
UPDATE: Unfortunately XU closed in November 2021. They do not plan to re-open however, the same spot is now home to a joint venture JKS restaurant: Speedboat Bar. But for now, I’ll leave this review here, for nostalgia’s sake. Location: West End, London, England…