I met a foodie at the bar of Tayēr + Elementary back in October and we chatted about life, food, cocktails and wine. He asked me to recommend a wine region to visit, I told him about Priorat, and he went there a few weeks later. I asked him for restaurant recommendations for my next…

A cool but sunny Saturday afternoon in November found us exploring the East End, our rumbling bellies drawing us closer to Shoreditch for a 2pm reservation at Rochelle Canteen. I had seen the Reels and knew where the buzzer was. We arrived to the door marked “BOYS” surrounded by a Victorian era brick garden wall,…

Out of the three of us present at our dinner at Noizé restaurant in Fitzrovia back in August, no one was actually paying attention to the food. Or, at least, not enough attention. My friend was focused on her beloved bottle of Soldera, freshly pulled from bond, hoping our somm would remember not to decant…

In the London episode of his Parts Unknown, Anthony Bourdain has a Scotch Egg with Nigella Lawson at the Princess Victoria pub in Shepherd’s Bush. So on a trip to London with my mom, we also had a Scotch Egg at the Princess Victoria in Shepherd’s Bush. Actually, we had booked a Louis CK show…

A 1-hour Chiltern Railways ride from Oxford Parkway to London Marylebone brought my Mom and me back to the capital for a day of sightseeing and mother-daughter bonding. See it, say it, sorted. We walked through Fitzrovia and Saint Pancras to King’s Cross Station and crossed the foot-bridge to Granary Square on the banks of…

The first morning of a trip to London in September found me walking a lot. Through Hoxton and Haggerston, across Shoreditch High Street to Spitalfields, all the way down to London Bridge, where I took my own damn self on a romantic walk along the River Thames. I crossed the bridge, which for some reason…

After the perfect day of doing London things in London, I took myself out on a romantic dinner date to Andrew Edmunds in Soho. I read up on the place while sipping a not-so-frosty pre-dinner pint at the Duke of Argyll pub. (Do Brits like their beer room temp, or is it just me?) The…

You gotta get the soup dumplings and the spicy dan dan beef noodles at Dumpling Shack in Spitalfields Market when in East London. Opinions on this place converged; enough people with different tastes, budgets and lifestyles recommended it to designate a statistically significant sample size. So I popped over for lunch before my train to…

“Wanna meet for a bagel on Brick Lane? Big cultural experience.” An innocent enough message before a night full of misunderstandings that might have gone differently had I overthought a bit less and just gone for the bagel plan. But j’avais la flemme [insert shoulder raise and pursed French lips sputtering to express general annoyance…

For a few years there, I kind of forgot about London. It just hadn’t really been on my radar. I didn’t have anything against the city, but nothing drew me there either. “London? Meh…” would be my official stance, as I’d list the many other place I would rather live in or visit. That stance…