Wild about Wild Honey...

So last weekend found us in London again. We usually prefer to eat out at lunchtime when we're there...often better value, easier to find a good table and it leaves the evening free for other things...like sipping a world class margarita outside The Providores and watching the world go by, for instance!!

Wild Honey is one of our favourite lunch spots....



it's on the site of the former Drones club, and the panelling makes it look a little 'clubby' still...but it's a polished, beautiful space with a wonderful bar...which is where we always prefer to sit. Paul and I are both people watchers...a polite label for 'nosey'...and always fight about who gets to sit looking at the wall over the other person's shoulder in restaurants and who gets to look out at the room! So sitting side by side, able to see who's coming in & out, who's sitting down and being able to look out of the window at the same time as eating fantastic food is our idea of heaven!
The set price lunch menu (2 choices) at £19 is incredible value for this standard of cooking. Anthony Demetre and his team have perfected the art of simple presentation mixed with incredibly intense flavours and beautiful combinations. On this occasion I had a bowl of white bean soup...I can taste it now! The light broth was so deep and perfectly seasoned that I feel as though I could eat it for every meal a the moment. All I really needed...but I also had a salad of hazelnuts, sheep's curd, syrupy figs and bitter leaves which left me feeling light and virtuous but replete at the same time. Wines are served by the 250ml carafe, so you can choose a different one with each course if you want to...I chose a Gruner Veltliner, sparky & flinty and difficult to find a good one outside Austria. I always jump on it in a restaurant that knows wine well...and Wild Honey is one of those. The staff are always extremely efficient yet friendly, which is my ideal combination. It's somewhere we'll always go back to. A lot is made of their sister restaurant, in Soho, Arbutus. It seems to attract most of the accolades. We've been and it was fine. But for me, it's Wild Honey every time.

Afterwards, wandering around Soho...which is a favourite Saturday afternoon pastime...we visited the much-talked about new bakery Cox Cookies & Cake in Brewer Street. Opened by the designer Patrick Cox, it's on the site of a former sex shop...now a dark ,hot (they hadn't had air conditioning installed yet!) glittery box of a space...handsome young men in studded leather aprons serve amazingly decorated cupcakes from a perspex topped counter. At a price. A HUGE price (to me, also a professional baker as you know...) A selection of 4 regular sized cupcakes (no prices on display) came to £14.50! But they were a present (I imagine that is what most of them will be, I can't see people buying them to take home themselves..) and therefore it really didn't matter too much!

Good luck to them I say! But I'm not sure that I'll be back....soon, anyway!

Enjoy your week xox

Lunch at the TownHouse

We just walked back from Easter Saturday lunch at The Dean Street Town House in London's Soho. I'm SO full, wanted to write about it straight away while it's fresh in my mind. The restaurant is fairly newly opened and has received a lot of press recently. It's owned by the same company that run the amazingly luxurious Babington House hotel in Somerset...and every attention has been paid to the detail, look and feel of this gorgeous space. We sat at one of the round tables (like the one pictured above)...really comfortable, velvet upholstered chairs, beautiful linens and cutlery.

There's a special vegetarian menu (always a welcome bonus!) and it was hard to choose from the delicious sounding selection....most of which came in small or large portions, so you could mix & match the menu as you liked. I decided on Goat Curd, Beetroot & Chicory Salad to start....absolutely gorgeous, jewelled with pomegranate seeds, fresh & delicate...then a Chanterelle & Onion Tart with side orders of jersey royal new potatoes & purple sprouting broccoli. The tart was flaky & light with plenty of onion and the wonderful flavour of the wild mushrooms permeating through.

We drank a bottle of our favourite wine in the world...Isabel Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand...not often found, always ordered when we do!

I had the most divine dessert too....Peanut Shortbread with Salted Caramel Ice cream. Oh my. The shortbread was rich and salty with the crunch of peanuts and soft chocolate contrasting the texture from the middle....and the ice cream was a taste I could happily die eating!

The service was slightly slow to start with, but once we got talking to the friendly Aussie sommelier it soon thawed out. A great place to people watch (such interesting types in Soho!!) and they're open all day, including breakfast & afternoon tea. You could even get a room and stay after dinner (I always judge a place by the standards of it's bathrooms....and this one was just beautiful, all black & white with blood red velver chairs & antique mirrors....)

The Dean Street Townhouse: a feast for the stomach & the senses in Soho  8.5/10