La Tasca

A friend of mine came all the way from the East side of town (world) to visit me and so I brought up an excuse to myself to try a new restaurant. Wouldn't you know and being 'asian' to value my money as much as I can, I went to check up on any nice decent UK vouchers for a restaurant deal.

And I found one great deal for La Tasca. 50% off the entire bill until the 1st of Dec (get it while you can!) as well as I haven't tried Spanish Tapas food as yet.

Booking can be done online the day before but they can only hold it for 15 minutes before they have to give it away.

I was half an hour late =(.

But the highlight of the night was that the guy at the counter was so kind enough to slot me to the top of the waiting list (after looking at my droopy face perhaps). We were so appreciative!

I love it these days when the restaurants are offering great deals to try their food. It is a blessing in disguise perhaps when the economy is slowly recovering.

Anyway, seeing that most of us didn't know how to order, there was a great menu deal for 2 where you have a set of dishes that you can try. Tapas, is almost the equivalent to the chinese 'Yum Char' but the dishes are slightly bigger. We picked the Chef's Selection of Tapas which consist of 8 dishes and they were extremly lovely! My favourite was Patatas Bravas, which is fried potato with spicy tomato sauce as it tastes like wedges dipped in tomato dressing LOL.

Didn't manage to take any photos as the restaurant was quite dimmed. Service was excellent as food came out 10 minutes after we ordered. And we could order even more while we were eating.

At the end, we paid £9 each (4 of us) for 11 dishes, 2 pints of beer and 3 full cups of fresh orange juice.

I'd recommend this place if you've got the voucher with you and of course that you have not tried Spanish food for the first time. It gives you a great start and a decent choice of variety dishes to pick from.

More information:

63-66 St Martin's Ln
London, WC2N 4JS, United Kingdom
020 7240 2011
www.latasca.co.uk
latasca.regentst@bayrestaurantgroup.com

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Cupcake Decorating

The Make Lounge offered a really good introductory course to cupcake decorating. Leigh was our instructor and she works for Sketch, one of the only restaurant that serves Michelin standard of high tea. She was so helpful through the class. It started tonight from 6.30pm and wasn't too far from where I live, so I walked.

We learnt things from making a piping bag out of baking sheets to colouring and shaping marzipans with really cute motif cutters. The session was 2.5 hours long with tea, coffee and wine served with biscuits. And we get to go home with 7 nicely decorated cupcakes =). I took home tips too such as falling in love with meringue butter cream (it tasted soooooooo good) and using salted butter instead so that it adds more to taste.

Best part: No need to wash up!

 

Icing colour I decided on. Either that, it was purple and yellow. Decisions decisions...

 

Pretty 1M Swirls with glitter, marzipan and icing white balls

So if you're keen to play around with icing, I recommend this course as most materials are supplied plus you get to bring home your very own designs...

York & Albany

Name: York and Albany (website)

Location: 127-129 Parkway, NW1 7PS (Tube: Camden)

Course type: Sunday menu, 3 course for £25

It was one of those days where one of us ladies found that the high class restaurants are offering much more reasonable deals on their food these days so one of them came up suggesting to try out one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurant at Camden and I put my hands up straight away since I haven't been to his before.

While killing time, walking on the street to the restaurant somehow turned Camden into a posh place, where celebreties actually roamed about. Very interesting and suprising. I checked out an organic shop that really sold proper organic vegetables and food for a reasonable price.(Called 'Fresh and Wild'). The chocolates are cheaper than Sainsbury's!

Curious? Click here for more...

Pearl Restaurant by Jun Tanaka

It was a friend's birthday do and after passing it so many times, this is the occassion that I could go in and try out Jun Tanaka's dishes at the Pearl. We had a 3 course meal and cocktail set for 37 pounds which is quite a nice deal. The bill came out to be abit more because water was charge at 7.90 each..so be warned! Then again we were given samples before our starters, pre-desserts and after dessert dessert that didn't come with the cost. I was quite full after the whole 2-hour session.

It was a great experience in the sense that it was my first time having fine cuisine food, therefore eating it was rather different (as in trying to piece all the different flavours through a stab of a fork)...and I am inspired to head to a farmer's market to expand my knowledge and taste buds on herbs, spices, sauces and vegetables!

I must say though that we were warmly welcomed and greeted, to the point that they asked about whether I want my cake to be brought out towards the end of the dinner session with no extra cost. I was brought to the waiting lounge which was very comfortable and ordered my cocktail.

Curious? Click here for more...

Princi

Princi (Italian)

My favourite bakery for the moment

Located on 35 Wardour Street, linking Chinatown area to Oxford Circus, I always pass this place thinking that it's a posh place for posh people to have their posh cup of teas. But all my assumptions were thrown out of the window when my cousin brought me into the shop.

Amazing pastries from stuffed fresh custard roll to slices of pizzas plus fresh warm bread samples, all for such a reasonable price. Croissants here are only 30p more from Tesco and the best part is that they actually have a window display of the entire kitchen for the public to see how baking was done by hand from scratch. Sitting areas have miniature fountains and it has and always been crowded. I bought a couple of pastries and felt like I was a kid again when I took my first bite. Sweet and soft gooey vanilla pod flavoured custard followed by the crispy pastry crunch sends wonderful tingling comfort to my taste buds. Sinfully rewarding.

So if any of you are wandering through the streets, just poke your head to this shop. You'll never regret it. Last but not least, it opens till 10pm on a Sunday to satisfy your cravings...

More information:

135 Wardour Street
Soho, London, W1F 0UT
020 7478 8888
www.princi.co.uk

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Gaucho

Yes, I shall attempt to keep this alive. Perhaps it's good to have 2 different blogs after all. Makes me feel organised :)

Anyhoo, I was invited to a Client lunch at this Argentine restaurant somewhere near Liverpool station and it was my first time having Argentinian food.

Apparently they were famous for their steak. I couldn't find the place to begin with, and when I did, it looked more like a pit stop for posh drinks for posh people as I saw people wearing headsets.

To my suprise, we were brought downstairs and found ourselves a proper restaurant, full of people! We had a 'private room' to ourselves.



Dinner was a set 3 course meal with white wine, red wine, sparkling or still water and personal service. Amazing.

We had the signature menu, and I picked the scallops as my starter, which was suprisingly a cold dish and I was abit disappointed with it. It was perhaps one scallop sliced finely and coated with cheese, topped with chopped mango, onions and parsley.

Mains were shared and consisted of very well cooked 3 different pieces of beef with chips, tomato salad and sweet corn wrap in cooked corn leave (my favourite). The beef was so tender that it can be cut with a normal knife. But the best dish for me so far was the ice cream, as it was rich with high class chocolate, vanilla and dulcha de leche. Never had wonderful rich ice cream for some time now.

Overall, I'd give it a 7/10 since I'm not really a steak person, and the dishes got better towards the end =)

More information:

5 Finsbury Av
London, EC2M 2PJ, United Kingdom
020 7256 6877
gauchorestaurants.co.uk

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