A girl has to eat, and this time it’s Japanese food! So check out my latest review on Tsunami Japanese Restaurant as I storm my way through a multitude of dishes. I’ve posted it as part of a blog exchange with fellow food blogger, Londoneater.
So to read all, and savour the yummy dishes, click here ‘Tsunami Restaurant Review’.
And be sure to come back here on Wednesday to check out Londoneater’s post.
Happy eating!
Pre-dessert of poached beetroot and beetroot sorbets
Although I have been to the one-star Michelin restaurant The Greenhouse before, this lunch was my first visit since it was refurbished in January 2008. My previous visit was at dinnertime, and my memory of the restaurant was that it was rather romantic. However, this time round, the dining room seemed a little more sombre. Perhaps my original impression was influenced by the volume of champagne I had drunk, or by the person I was dining with that evening. And being daytime, there was also no soft hue emitting from artificial lighting to provide a more seductive feel, instead there was a lovely, albeit slightly harsher, natural light pouring through the windows instead. Nor were there the lights that shimmer of an evening along the length of the pathway leading up to the entrance, and which also serve to illuminate the lovely landscaped garden. And rather than a clientele who might dine at night for the primary pursuit of culinary pleasure (or other pleasures), the lunchtime crowd appeared to have a more business focus. And my dining companion: he was just a very good, platonic friend.
There is an adage that all good things must come to an end. In our case, we will no longer be allowed to take the food that we cook home from cookery school. Truth be told, Westminster Kingsway College has always had a rule of forbidding students from taking the food, and this was communicated to us on day one. So the fact that we have been taking home our food ever since the course started was because our lovable teddy bear of a teacher (Chef), in his usual generous spirit, turned a blind eye.
But someone (not from my class) snitched, and the powers that be came down on Chef. Therefore doggy bags are to be no more. The food is to be sent to the cafeteria for sale so that the college can recoup some of their costs. This is understandable given how little our cooking course costs in comparison to the courses at other notable cookery schools such as Leiths School of Food and Wine and Le Cordon Bleu London. But you could imagine the collective chorus of groans that echoed across the room when we were told; and the disappointment that formed on our faces when at the end of the day, after plating and tasting the output of our work, we then had to relinquish ownership of the dishes: plaice florentine, grilled sardines with herb butter and deep fried sprats (a small oily fish) with paprika and cayenne pepper.
Plaice florentine
I know I was a little naughty and that I missed blogging about last week’s class. Somehow, time just passed me by. We also covered fish last week: salmon fish cakes, supreme of pollock with a herb crust, pan fried mackerel fillets and a supreme of salmon with a herb beurre blanc. I am glad to say that my filleting skills have definitely improved, but next week we will move onto meat; and I am also glad to say that I won’t be missing that fishy smell that just stays on my hands for hours after the class is over.
Westminster Kingsway College:
Web: http://www.westking.ac.uk
A call to chocolate lovers! The 2009 Chocolate Festival will be coming to London’s Southbank between Friday 3 to Sunday 5 April 2009 (11am to 8pm daily, 6pm Sunday). And it’s free to attend! There will be chocolate tastings (yum!), chocolate cakes, chocolate workshops, chocolate fountains, chocolate art, chocolate books, chocolates with wine, chocolate demonstrations, chocolate truffles, organic chocolates, chocolate milkshakes, hot chocolate, and even chocolate beauty products. What more could you want?
William Curley, the winner of the 2009 Best British Chocolatier prize for the third year running (as awarded by The Academy of Chocolate), will also be hosting a stall.
And here’s another date for your diary. Chocolate Week 2009 will run from 12 to 18 October 2009.
Summary information:
The Chocolate Festival at:
Southbank Centre Square
Belvedere Road
Outside Royal Festival Hall
Friday 3 – Sunday 5 April 2009
11am – 8pm daily (6pm Sunday)
Email: thechocolatefestival@yahoo.co.uk
Web: http://www.chocolate-festival-southbank-london
Ever since I started this food blog, I have come to realise just how tolerant my wonderful friends are. When we eat out together, they sit patiently by as I take photos of all our food. All the while they look hungrily on, twitching to start eating. I also suspect they silently groan every time I say “just one more photo”. But ever so supportive of my cause, they always let me taste their dishes without necessarily wanting to taste mine. One of my friends occasionally lets me order for her. (Am I spoilt or what?) I have therefore decided that there is definitely some merit in writing these restaurant reviews: I get to eat my food, and I get to try everyone else’s too. Could there possibly be a more winning combination? But in what was to be a first, I recently found out what it felt like to eat out with someone like me.
Tom Aikens
Having got in touch with a professional food writer recently, we decided to meet for lunch; our choice of venue – Tom Aikens, one of the restaurants currently taking part in London Restaurant Week. So here we were the two of us, at a one-star Michelin restaurant, with notepads in hand, scribbling madly away. And there was also the not so subtle matter of our photo taking: swivelling plates around for that ever better angle, rearranging the table for perhaps a more superior shot. What a sight we must have been to behold, both snapping crazily at the food like Japanese tourists! And oh no, it wasn’t just one photo, but at least two, three or four of every dish. At one point, I almost elbowed my dining companion in the face as I scrambled to take better aim. And we really couldn’t have been missed. With only five tables occupied during our sitting, less than half of those available, the black and white dining room was rather quiet and a little stark.
