The Riding House Café may call itself a café, but let’s get one thing straight – the modern all-day brasserie is a restaurant in every sense of word. It’s been cleverly split into two with a bar area that houses a long wooden table for casual drop-in diners. The bar then leads into a main dining room with leather chairs and banquettes, sumptuous wood panelling and gorgeous low light pendants which have been brought together with a slightly retro feel. The Riding House Café is gorgeous, and it has to be one of the sexiest restaurants I have seen of late.

And then it has the kind of menu which makes you want to taste everything. There are lots of smallish plates for sharing, satisfying sounding salads and hearty rustic mains. Make no mistake; the clever people behind The Riding House Café took great pains in the design of this outfit. This is the kind of restaurant you want to come to eat at and slink around in.

With such great expectations, we decided on a number of small plates, starting with the chicken liver parfait (£5) with truffle butter, cornichons and served on crostini. The parfait was creamy and tasty, and this would have been a good dish had it not been for the over seasoning.

Chicken liver parfait

(Continue reading her story…)

Delfina is a restaurant I discovered while on route to Zucca and Jose, all three of which are on Bermondsey Street near London Bridge. It has an inviting contemporary look to it – lots of white space – and its high ceilings can be attributed to the fact that it is housed in what was once a converted chocolate factory. The building is now used for exhibitions and the like, and the restaurant opens for lunch from Monday to Friday, and for dinner on a Friday night.

On the Friday evening of our visit we tried seared scallops (£7.50) which disappointed. The scallop had started to go bad with an unpleasant taste to them. Furthermore, they weren’t really scallops (plural), but one scallop cut into two. The accompanying saffron cauliflower was also a touch underdone.

Scallops

(Continue reading her story…)

Fraisier

Maison Blanc is the French Boulangerie and Pâtisserie originally created by two-star Michelin chef Raymond Blanc of Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons fame. It first opened in 1981 in Oxford, and today brings a little slice of France to 14 locations in the South of England. Maison Blanc serves a selection of freshly baked artisan breads, pastries, savouries, cakes and pâtisserie which are all hand finished.

I was lucky enough to sample some of the Maison Blanc celebrations cakes for my birthday recently with my office colleagues. First up was the delectable Fraisier, a light mousseline cream made with crème pâtissière and cream which was soft whipped to achieve a smooth, almost mousse-like consistency. Layered on a vanilla sponge base and topped with fresh strawberries and a white chocolate glaze, it was heavenly and lusciously light.

Fraisier

A tentation was a showcase in decadence. Raspberry soaked almond and chocolate sponge had been layered with chocolate and raspberry scented ganache to produce a beautifully rich and luscious cake with hints of raspberry. Finished with a shiny chocolate glaze, the cake was a feast for the eyes.

Tentation

Also delicious was the chocolate surprise box, a lovely pistachio and almond sponge alternately layered with a rich and creamy chocolate and raspberry ganache. Topped with a whole mixed berry jelly, the surprise element came when you lifted the 72% premium dark chocolate box to reveal the cake. The box had been sprayed with gold powder to give it a glamorous finish.

Chocolate box

These cakes were divine and a great birthday treat. Maison Blanc also offers a seasonal café menu that includes a selection of lunch options from filled baguettes and sandwiches, to salads, soup and savouries. There’s also a breakfast menu, with choices ranging from Scottish smoked salmon platters to a classic Le Parisien.

Website: http://maisonblanc.co.uk/

Wallace & Co.

Wallace & Co is the new cafe/restaurant (opened about three weeks) undertaking by Greg Wallace of Masterchef fame. You know, the self-proclaimed “cooking woman’s crumpet”. The happy chappy with the shiny skull and the big booming voice, who along with John Torode, came up with some rather memorable (or depending on your viewpoint – laughable) turns of phrase on the show. Wallace & Co is located in Putney, rather than the more competitive locales of Central London, and it looks the part of a wholesome neighbourhood restaurant. It’s cosy, airy and spacious, and decorated in warm green and beige colours, it feels so homely that you can’t help but want to go in and sip a cappuccino or two.

The centrepiece at the front of the restaurant is a huge wooden table, littered with scrumptious looking baked goods. There is also a take-away salad bar, and, something that should come as no surprise, vegetables for purchase (Greg is a wholesale greengrocer after all – his business is called Secrett’s Direct). Behind the front section is the split level dining area.

(Continue reading her story…)

A note from A Girl:

As you might have guessed from the name of my blog, ‘A Girl Has to Eat’, I am a firm believer that a girl has to eat. And it’s not because I’m trying to be exclusionary when it comes to boys, for I rather like boys. I like boys a lot. Past about the age of 13 (oh alright then, 12) when I kinda started getting use to them pulling my ponytail and yanking at my skirt, I sorta came to realise they weren’t ALWAYS so annoying after all.

No, it’s just that I love to eat. For me, food is more than just nourishment for the body, but pleasure for the soul, the backbone of every important family gathering and every great celebration with friends. But I suppose, eating isn’t something I can claim as being a prerogative belonging solely to me. And so, to reciprocate the gesture extended to me by a fellow food blogger, a boy, where I featured on his blog Londoneater with my ‘Storming into Tsunami’ write-up, I too have invited him to write here, on ‘A Girl Has to Eat’, for I suppose, a boy has to eat too…

Lantana, not just eggs, bacon and chips.

Coffee at Lantana

So the story goes about a girl from Melbourne who traversed the continents to show Londoners there is breakfast beyond the bacon sandwich, and then she blogged about it. Seriously, it’s called scrambling eggs, and she has affectionately named the café after an Australian ‘weed of national significance’. In the six months it’s been around, Lantana has bloomed into a significant café and now boasts a loyal following.

(Continue reading her story…)