Our lunch spread at Portal Everyone loves doing good, right? That’s why PORTAL at No. 1 Martin Place is so amazing. You get to do good, while eating lunch. PORTAL is the new cafe from the same people who brought you FOLONOMO and GRATIA CAFE (now closed) in Surry Hills. The concept is the same, as they say on their website: We are a social business, which donates 100% of profits to a range of “not for profit” causes. Our customers choose their impact with every purchase… Each time you order a coffee, a salad or any items or our menu you can choose what’s important for you. https://www.porta ..read more

Spring roll, mung bean noodle, shiitake, wood ear fungus, beansprouts (£4) Crispy duck, pancakes, plum (£18) When we travel, we always find ourselves searching for good Asian food. Whether it’s Japanese in Amsterdam, or Chinese food in London! I’ve had A.WONG on my list for ages and when I heard they had a sister restaurant in the newly opened KYM’S I thought I just had to check it out! We headed over for lunch and I’m just going to stay at the start that it was good, but we weren’t blown away. There were a couple of creative touches that we enjoyed but we came away feeling sort of ‘meh’ ab ..read more

Bread & butter Snack – seaweed (with SW’s hand encroaching) Snack Pickles One of our best meals of our entire January 2019 trip was probably at TIMBERYARD in Edinburgh, Scotland. Was it because the restaurant was soooo dark that we couldn’t really see our food and assumed it was good? I joke – although, it was very dark. I do apologise for the average photos of some dishes! As I mentioned in my previous post about Edinburgh we headed up there with our friend SW. He recommended TIMBERYARD and we were more than happy to go with a recommendation with a somewhat local (well, more local tha ..read more

North Sea Coley, Shetland Blueshell Mussels, Largo Bay Cockles, Smoked Bacon, Leeks, Pink Fir Apple Potatoes (£22) On our travels back in January we also headed up to Scotland with our friend SW. He wanted to go climbing in the Cairngorm mountains, which sounded terrifying to me. More so because, on the train to the airport, he proudly showed us the new ice pick he bought. Any sort of climbing that involves an ice pick probably isn’t for me… I have been to Edinburgh before – years ago with SLW. I wrote a couple of blogposts back then and was pleased that some of the places were still around w ..read more

DIEPPE – scallops, sea urchin emulsion I don’t quite recall how I heard about SAN BRUXELLES. What I did recall, though, was feeling really excited at eating some modern dishes inspired by Asian flavours. Enough of traditional hearty Flemish food! I did enjoy all that. However, it was time to change things up again and particularly get some vegetables into me that weren’t in the form of fries. Luckily for us, Brussels is small and most things were within walking distance from our hotel. We enjoyed walking through the old town square and weaving through cobbled streets on our way to SAN BRUXEL ..read more

Coq au Vin with garnishments (€25) When I was looking for more modern restaurants to try out in Bruges, Belgium, KOK AU VIN kept popping up. It has excellent reviews on Google too, which gave me a bit of confidence. I was surprised that we could get a booking with only a few days’ notice. In fact, our hotel receptionist was surprised at that too! We attributed that to it being the middle of winter in January. It was quite ironic when we showed up at 7pm that we were the only people there. It started to fill up a bit more when we left around 9:30pm – I guess people dine a bit later in Belgium ..read more

Breakfast at German Gymnasium We were about to pop on the EuroStar and head to Belgium, so why not stop by for a German breakfast at GERMAN GYMNASIUM at Kings Cross?! Makes sense in my head, somehow… From what I hear, GERMAN GYMNASIUM was an actual gymnasium in a previous life. I imagine wooden floors and lots of German men doing vaults and hanging from the rings. However it is also quite confusing, as DS pointed out, because the word ‘gymnasium’ in German is a kind of high school. So it also kind of means German high school?! I digress… The GG Breakfast – two eggs (scrambled or fried), gr ..read more

Snack – butter beans in chilli oil with aioli (complimentary) Can you believe that I have never been to an Ottolenghi restaurant before?! All those trips to London… Ok, I have been to Ottolenghi in Belgravia where you get takeaway and there is barely any seating. I feel like that doesn’t count. This trip, we decided to hit up 2 Ottolenghi places to make up for all those years! I was also particularly keen because I have recently gotten into his cookbook ‘SIMPLE’ and been really enjoying it. Has anyone else been cooking from that? We will be going to NOPI towards the end of our trip, but ri ..read more

I forgot to take a picture of the menu but I think this was: Pappardelle with chopped chicken liver, Marsala and sage I had heard HEAPS about PADELLA, which is located just outside the famour Borough Markets. And then we walked past one day, and I realised that a lot of other people had also heard of PADELLA! We jokingly asked how long the wait would be on an evening, as they don’t take bookings – 2 hours. This must be bloody good pasta. Padella sourdough bread with new season Fiorano olive oil 2018 (£2) Burrata with new season Fiorano olive oil 2018 (£5.50) We decided to brave the crowd ..read more

Our lunch spread at Portal Everyone loves doing good, right? That’s why PORTAL at No. 1 Martin Place is so amazing. You get to do good, while eating lunch. PORTAL is the new cafe from the same people who brought you FOLONOMO and GRATIA CAFE (now closed) in Surry Hills. The concept is the same, as they say on their website: We are a social business, which donates 100% of profits to a range of “not for profit” causes. Our customers choose their impact with every purchase… Each time you order a coffee, a salad or any items or our menu you can choose what’s important for you. ht ..read more