Best tea house in London

Firstly I’d like say I’m enjoying this whole “not working” thing… I have so much more time to try out new eating places and hidden treasuries in London.

One of our guests recently told us about this hidden tea house in London, which sounded interesting so The Boyfriend and I decided to give it a go today.

We arrived at Teanamu Chaya and what greeted us was a beautiful Chinese marble stool.  I haven’t seen one of these for a long time I thought to myself and it reminded me of the old times when we used to sit on one and play chess on the streets of China.

Chinese stool

The Boyfriend and I sat down at the sofa table and met the incredibly charming owner, Pei.

Pei

As Pei walked us through the incredible range of teas on offer, close to about 30 I think, we were just memorized by Pei’s knowledge of tea and by the romance he brings to art of tea making (yes we are now converts!)

The Boyfriend and I didn’t even know all these different types of teas existed.  We didn’t have a clue where to start so Pei came to our rescue.  He recommended me the Honey Orchid Phoenix and The Boyfriend the Emperor Pu Erh ’98 vintage with rose pastels.  Clearly he thought that The Boyfriend would enjoy tea picked by untouched virgins designated for Emperors (that’ll go well with his hand rolled cigars).

Our teas

A few minutes later Pei brought our teas and showed us how to brew, drink and more importantly appreciate tea.

The Honey Orchid was deliciously sweet amber coloured tea.  For my money, it matched the tasty bakewell tart (infused with Yuzu) perfectly.

Honey Orchid

The Pu Erh was a much stronger, richer darker tea.  You only brew the tea for 15 secs before it becomes too bitter to drink.  Pu Erh tea is now incredibly popular in China as its believed to reduce, blood pressure, cholesterol, and control blood sugar levels (a big thing for a country gripped by diabetes).  The Boyfriend thoroughly enjoyed the tea, but said he would find it difficult to drink more than a small pot’s worth because of its strength.

Pu Erh

The Boyfriend and I had completely lost ourselves in the world of Pei’s beautiful zen-like tea house.  We didn’t really want to leave .

The tea house

I think we will be visiting Pei’s regularly.  Teanamu is a truly hidden treasure in London.

Thanks again for a beautiful experience, Pei!

Thanks S&S for the recommendation!

Brixton Village

I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about Brixton Village in the last couple years.  But given that life had always got in the way I’ve never actually been down there myself.  Now that I was no longer working I didn’t really have any more excuses that stopped me from discovering new things in London… so I packed my bag, called Mama Lan and we headed down to Brixton.

When we got off at Brixton tube station greeted us was a large outdoor market that sold anything people needed from fresh vegetables, dry stocks, meat and seafood.  Me and Mama Lan both loved markets like this as it reminded us of how people did their shopping in China.  Through the open market we came to the entrance of Brixton Village.  The village looked really original

Brixton Village

and was packed full of little gems… so where do I start?  I couldn’t possibly cover all of them but if you’re in the area definitely try the following:

Ms Cupcake – the naughtiest vegan cupcakes in town

Ms Cupcake started baking because being a vegan she’s always struggled to find cakes that were suitable for vegans.

“Could vegan cakes really taste nice?” I thought to myself.  They certainly looked the part so I dived into some chocolate chip ones and girl (yes that’s you Ms Cupcake), the cupcakes were A-M-A-ZING.

Chocolate cupcakes

I couldn’t believe that there were no eggs, butter or cream in them because they tasted just like cupcakes that had full fat diary in them.  There were 70 flavours and I couldn’t possibly try all of them but the chocolate ones were definitely awesome!

70 interesting flavours

Oh for your info, Ms Cupcake bakes her cakes on site everyday and I even caught her doing cup cake decoration for the Lemon Curd cupcakes.

Ms Cupcake decorating cupcakes

Honest Burgers – best burgers in London

Honest sign

The only burger in London

Honest burgers started by two friends Tom and Philip.  While Tom runs the kitchen

Tom says "Service!"

Philip puts on his best charm at front of house.

"Yes chef!" says Philip

The menu is amazingly simple and deliciously designed.  I also loved the furniture the guys made themselves (gosh are there anything these guys can’t do?)

We ordered a cheese burger and a vegetarian fritter burger and honestly (ha that’s smart, right?!  Honestly Honest Burgers) they were the best burgers we’ve had in London.  I even had a dream of the burgers and woke up the next morning wanting more burgers.  I think I’ll be making a weekly trip to Honest Burgers to get my burger fix!

Cheese burger

Vegetarian fritter burger

Rosemary and salted chips - I was in heaven

Mama Lan loved it too!

Elephant – the authentic Pakistani food

This little café felt really cosy and it was almost like someone’s living room.  That someone was owner Imran and from the look of the place you could tell that he took great pride in what he does.

Imran working away in the kitchen

Elephant - living room

Unfortunately I’ve already had dinner at Honest Burgers when I saw this place but will definitely be back for it next time!

OKAN – Japanese street pancakes

Chef Moto used to run a stall on Brick Lane serving Japanese street pancakes for 10 years (now she only runs the Brick Lane store on Sundays)!  She’s now brought her delicious pancakes to Brixton.  No advertising, no fuss, just quality Japanese street food.

Chef Moto

Japanese pancake

Japanese pancake with kimchee and seafood

Brixton Cornercopia – ultra local food

One of the original restaurants in Brixton Village serving the ultimate locally produced comfort food.  There are just so much to try here and I shall be back!

Fabulous Cornercopia

Shop Cornercopia

A new beginning…

I have officially stopped being an accountant on Friday 20^th May… as much fun as it was I couldn’t deny myself any longer that my heart was in food.  It wasn’t usual for a risk adverse accountant to do something so drastic but I thought to myself ‘why not?!  If it doesn’t work out, then I could always go back and beg for my old job back .’  So I quit my accounting job and taken up cooking full time.

Now… to do this properly, I thought I needed some inspiration and what better way than heading back to my hometown Beijing.  The street food stalls, authentic local markets and traditional restaurants would be fantastic to provide me with some ideas of what I could cook at Mama Lan’s.

So fast forward a week, here am I, in Beijing.  Still jet lagged (it’s 3:16am local time) and I just can’t sleep.  To be honest being sun burnt and with the night temperature of 30c properly doesn’t help the situation.  Whatever the reason maybe… I’m here sitting in front of my laptop going through the first day of food photos and I think I’m hungry again!

Today we had traditional Beijing steam pot – the copper style.

the copper steam pot

A lot of the modern restaurants nowadays only use electric pots, like Red and Hot in London.  The taste is never the same really as the food don’t get the smokiness from the coal burning inside the copper pot.

lamb slices and vegetables boiling away

The lamb we had was so smooth and tender, I thought I’ve died and gone to lamb heaven.

time to eat

Oh Beijing, I missed you!

Dinner at Dinner

When The Boyfriend called and said ‘don’t repeat anything I’m about to say, just listen and say yes or no’ I thought he was about to reveal his secret identity as a MI5 agent and that I was to whisked away like a bond girl on thrilling chase through London…  but alas it turned out he just wanted to check ifＩwas free for dinner on Wednesday because he had found an available table at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, which was meant to be booked up until July!

Fast forward a week and here we were at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, 15 minutes late for our table.  I was expecting the front house to tell us that we only had 1 hour and 45 minutes left for our booking but instead she was all smiley and showed us to table next to the window.  I whispered to The Boyfriend ‘don’t we have a time limit on our table?’ The Boyfriend looked at me unconvinced and said ‘hopefully not’.  I was impressed already as a lot of restaurants these days only give you a two hour slot for dinner but Dinner allowed you to enjoy your meal at your own pace – great!

Dinner is one good looking beast of a restaurant.  The mellow yellow lighting bouncing off the high ceiling looked classy and for my money, very masculine – apart from the jelly mould lights on the wall that is.   I loved the complete opened kitchen on show.  You could see the chefs working away calmly and neatly nothing like other commercial kitchens I have seen in action.

Starters

Starter menu

The menu was simple and yet exciting.  We decided to share a starter, so we could have two desserts later.  I know a lot has been said and blogged about the meat fruit dish already but it was simply the most beautiful dishes I’ve ever seen.  Words couldn’t possibly describe how amazing this thing was… so you better get down there and try it yourself!

Main

Main menu

As soon as we turned to the main we couldn’t take our eye off the Wing Rib of Black Angus, so we asked the waiter how big the steak was… and he brought one to show us and it was MASSIVE!  So there was our main decided!

The steak

The steak now cooked!

The steak didn’t fail to impress.   The boyfriend had managed to ‘capture the moment’ with the pic below.  Now I wasn’t about to include this pic for obvious  vanity reasons, but looking through our snaps,  a picture of me gorging my face on the beef rib without a care for the expensive WHITE designer dress probably shows how friggin good that beef was!

Forget the white designer dress

Accompaniments of triple cooked chips, mushroom ketchup and the red wine sauce and even the side order of carrots were also delicious.

Dessert

Dessert menu

Since we heard so much about the Tipsy Cake we decided to order one and another dessert later (the tipsy cakes take 30 minutes to cook so it’s better you order it with your main).

Pineapple grill

We also ended having Brown Bread Ice Cream along with the tipsy cake.  The ice cream was really nice (though I wasn’t keen on the yeast caramel base) but the star was of the show was definitely the tipsy cake.  The cake looked perfect but it was the smell that melted me away.  I thought I was in love!

Tipsy cake & brown bread ice cream

To top the wonderful meal we ran into head chef, Ashley Palmer-Watts on the way out and he even invited us for a photo – OMG!

The Boyfriend and I and Ashley

Rating: 11/10

Dumplings Legend

I’ve recently read a good review about this place and since I’ve walked past it so many times I decided to give it a go.  I went with two friends for dinner a couple of days ago and I was left more than slightly disappointed.

Nice front

Given that the place was named after dumplings, I was eager to order some to show my friends what traditional Chinese dumplings were like.  To my disappointment, they didn’t have dumplings on the menu, instead they had Xiao Long Baos, which are stuffed Shanghai buns.  Was it that difficult to get the name right?  Dumplings are dumplings and buns are buns, they are different things.  Dumplings originated from Beijing whilst Xiao Long Baos are from Shanghai, they made in completely different ways.  It’s like calling a haggis a Cumberland sausage… this has already got me started on the wrong note.

Xiao Long Baos making station

Chefs making Xiao Long Baos

I scanned down the menu and was left confused… because most of the dishes were Cantonese, but there were some Malay curries and some Szechuan cold starters.  I really didn’t know what to order, so I suggested we order something my friends haven’t tried before.  So we ordered vegetarian Xiao Long Baos, drunken chicken, Malay chicken curry and a vegetable dish.

Vegetarian Xiao Long Baos

Eaten with rice vinegar and ginger

Drunken chicken

Malay curry

To be fair, the vegetarian Xiao Long Baos were nice – they were well made, nicely seasoned and had tasty filling.  But rest of the dishes were just bog standard China town. I had hoped with the opening of places like Bar Shu and Empress of Szechuan (though both Szechuan style food) signalled the arrival of more authentic Chinese food but Legend just felt like a step backwards.  (sigh….)

To finish the meal off, when the bill came it was headed “Golden Harvest” – seriously could you get anymore careless… I at least expected the name on the bill to say ‘Dumplings Legend’ not the old Chinese restaurant that was once here and had shut down two years ago!

Thank you for eating at... errr... what was that?

My friends were left unimpressed too and had set me a challenge for a better suggestion next time – sorry!