Outandaboutfit #2 - London Walk (From Bethnal Green to Limehouse Basin)

Well bloglets, it is September, which means summer is officially over for another year. This might then make this weekend’s choice of activity seem a little odd, but I refuse to let the passing of the warm weather signal the end of my romping in the outdoors. That’s why this weekend, my right honourable flatmates (RHFs) and I decided we would go for a good old-fashion walk to blow (fairly literally) away the cobwebs.

It is true that, if you live in the countryside, a weekend walk is a fairly natural thing, but must seem rather strange when one lives in a bustling metropolis such as London. Well, the whole idea came about when RHF1 brought home The Rough Guide to Walks in London & Southeast England. This handy little guide suggests around 40 routes, all within an hour’s train journey of London, and ranks them by difficulty, as well as pointing out interesting sites and the best places to eat or drink. So, we thought, since this blog is all about exploring London, what could be better?!

Don't ask me to explain this one...because I can't...

Since the day allotted for our walk promised to be bright yet blustery, we thought we would start off with a shorter walk, fairly close to home in good old South-East London. The route we chose started off at Bethnal Green station and skirted along Regent’s Canal and around Limehouse Basin to…the pub! Where else?  It was – justifiably – rated easy and should have taken us 1 hour and 20 minutes. But we stopped for cake, and to take pictures…and just generally ambled, so we ended up doing it in 3 hours… No judging!

There was no escaping that this was an urban walk, with an abundance of tower blocks and frequent sights of the Shard and Canary Wharf, but most of the route was along Regent’s Canal or the Thames and there was plenty of greenery to be found and that, plus the sunshine, really made for a most agreeable stroll.

One of the potential pit-stops along the way is the RaggedSchool Museum , which is dedicated to the work of Dr Thomas Barnardo, and has very strange opening hours (if you fancy visiting – I’d suggest you prepare in advance!). It is situated in the school set up by Dr Barnardo in 1877 for the children of Mile End. We decided to see a different face of Mile End, however, and went for tea at a charming café called The Coffee Room, which I would highly recommend.

Nearer the end of the walk there is also Limehouse Basin, an old dock which used to be used by seagoing vessels to drop off their loads to canal barges which would transport the cargoes further up along Regent’s Canal. It was built in 1820, but did not achieve huge commercial success until the mid-nineteenth century. Later it became one of London’s most infamous slums, a den of vice and sin, and the home of old Chinatown, which moved to its current location after much of Limehouse was destroyed in the Blitz. Anyway, the Basin was redeveloped in the 80s and is now the location of a number of fancy-pants apartment blocks.

I feel like this picture makes it look as if the top of the Shard is opening some sort of portal...

We finished our walk at The Prospect of Whitby – London’s oldest riverside inn. It was opened in 1520, during the reign of Henry VIII, and has been going ever since. Nice, atmospheric old pub, with gorgeous views of the Thames, but beware! The prices are extortionate. We were going to have dinner, but after RHF3’s pint came to £5.70, we decided takeaway at home made more sense…

The Outandaboutfit itself is fairly straightforward – slouchy jersey material so I looked put-together but was also extremely comfortable, and also pearls to offset my really-rather-manky Vans with the holes in the toes. Again I say, no judging. All black may have been a slight oversight considering how sunny it was, but it did make me feel a great deal more at home walking around edgy East London…

Skirt - Asos
Top - Topshop
Shoes - Vans

London Walk details

Closest Tube/Overground station = Bethnal Green at the start, Wapping Overground at the end

Ragged School Museum Opening Times = 10am-5pm - Wednesday and Thursday, 2pm-5pm – First Sunday of each month

Admission Costs for RSM = Free 

Restaurant Review #2 - Yauatcha

Well whaddya know? Finally got my lazy butt into gear and got round to doing another restaurant review! Actually, I’ve been wanting to go to/write about this week’s choice for a while because… well because Dim Sum. As you may know, I currently work in restaurants, which is great because I can devote a fair chunk of my free time to “assessing the competition”. I currently work for a couple of Chinese restaurants so…this was basically research. Yes.

For this particular culinary expedition, I reunited with the gal you might know as Joy Of A Roommate from bon ol’ Dressing up in Paris. Our rendez-vous would probably have been more topical if we had gone somewhere French and had steak tartare, but JOAR is a vegetarian and I was craving Chinese.

Char Siu Bun

Steamed Vegetable Dumpling

Like the last restaurant I reviewed, Yauatcha can also be found in Soho – but if you’re not quite as edgy as I am (lol) you can also find it in the City. Yauatcha was opened in 2004 by Alan Yau – the wonderful genius behind one of my high street favourites, Wagamama. Like its (very fancy) older sister Hakkasan, Yauatcha has a Michelin star and – I would say – well deservedly. It specialises in Dim Sum (small dishes, designed to be eaten with tea around brunchtime) but also does a good line in cocktails and patisserie. So many of my favourite things in one place.

Crystal dumpling wrap with pumpkin and pine nut

The restaurant itself made me feel like an extra in the Fifth Element. It has been described as “minimalist” but I’m not sure what’s minimal about a fish-tank cocktail bar, niches in the wall filled with fake flickering candles, sparkly stairs, blue glass walls, oddly-shaped low tables, and twinkly ceiling lights. Nonetheless, it’s a pretty classy joint. I might have preferred it if it had been a little less loud and a little less dark. Though that may be my inner grandma talking…

Edamame Truffle Dumpling

Venison Pufff

What We Ate (And Drank)

Char Siu Bun - £4.80 

– Everything you want in a steamed pork bun, light but sumptuous in the middle. Nom.

Crystal Dumpling Wrap with Pumpkin and Pine Nut- £5.00

– Slippery and slide-y and tasty. Good crunch in the pine nuts still too.

Edamame Truffle Dumpling - £6.20

 – These tasted decadent and looked beautiful.

Steamed Vegetable Dumpling - £4.20

– Sticky and fragrant. Really blimmin’ good.

Roasted Duck Pumpkin Puff with Pine Nut - £5.80

– This was my favourite. I think I would go back just for this. Possibly also a little heavy but thankfully I ate this before I could to the venison so I wasn’t full yet…

Venison Puff - £5.20

– Delicious but heavy! And not at all what I was suspecting, flaky puff pastry around a very-rich venison filling. This was what finished me off.

Roasted duck pumpkin puff with pine nuts

Cocktails: Cha La Lai: Belvedere vodka, black grapes, oolong tea, apple juice, and Champagne - £11

– This was weird… really weird. Very fragrant and light and delicate. Tasty but… tea and champagne?!

Kumquatcha: Germana cachaça, Campari, kumquats, mandarin juice and lime – £11 

– Citrus-y and a bit like sherbet. I wish I had ordered this one myself…

Kumquatcha

Cha La Lai

Food = **** 

All delicious, all cooked to perfection, the only reason it doesn’t get five stars is that it was a little too heavy so I couldn’t finish it all.

Atmosphere = *** 

Lively, buzzing, but a little too loud and slightly pretentiously dark.

Service = ***** 

First-rate. Our server was lovely, very knowledgeable about the food and was happy to banter with us when he came past. At least I think it was banter. Could barely hear him so he may just have been trying to get us to leave…

Price = ££££

 This is Michelin-starred food so it was fairly pricey, yes. That said, for the quality it was, factoring in drinks, it was not extortionate. I’d say this is the place to go for an out-of-the-ordinary night out but not THE MOST special of occasions. A side not to mention was that, despite its popularity, it was really very simple to book a table on the day. 

Closest Tube Stations = Leicester Square, Tottenham Court Road, Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Circus

http://www.yauatcha.com/soho/

Outandaboutfit #1 - Afternoon Tea at The Serpentine

This week was the auspicious event of my (3-inches-taller) little sister turning 21. And did we celebrated by going out and getting trashed? Did she stumble home at 5am, hair a messy halo, one shoe on, having vomited on the night-bus? Did she heck! We went for friggin’ afternoon tea, coz we’re classy as hell.*

Afternoon Tea is something of an institution here in the UK, and rightly so. It’s been around since the early 1800s, to combat what Anna – the 7^th Duchess of Bedford – labelled “that sinking feeling” that one experiences in the late afternoon. You know the one, the post-lunch, pre-dinner slump. And what better way to fill a gap between meals than with…another meal! Anna, you Bedford babe.  

There are hundreds of places all across London where you can enjoy an Afternoon Tea of varying quality. Some of the best you can find at www.afternoontea.co.uk Yup, that’s an actual thing. And that’s where we found Liv’s birthday tea – at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery by Hyde Park.

The Serpentine comprises two contemporary and modern art galleries and is nestled in the heart of the very-beautiful Kensington Gardens. Our tea was in The Magazine Restaurant which is attached to one of the galleries – the Serpentine Sackler – which was designed by Zaha Hadid in 2013. The gallery itself lies in a gunpowder store from 1805 and houses art, architecture, and design exhibitions throughout the year.

The restaurant is just beautiful. Modern, light, airy, with a lovely convivial atmosphere without being too loud or close. The whole experience was elegance itself. The six of us arrived, were ushered to our (oddly-shaped but pleasantly large) table and given a cocktail. Which is the best way to start anything, as far as I’m concerned. There was a wee bit of a wait for the food but I just took that as reassurance that it hadn’t been pre-made and then left to wilt. And wilt is the right word as the menu was Chelsea-Flower-Show-themed, which I thought was charming. From borage and nasturtium flowers on the canapés, to the thyme syrup in the cocktail, mint in the smoothie, and orange-blossom in the patisserie it was delicately and artfully themed.

And the food was delicious – if you can call it “food” it was all so tiny! It was like going to the perfect cocktail party, where you don’t have to pretend to listen to small talk while actually keeping an eye out for the person with the canapés, instead you got a tray full of them and were done with it! The strawberry, mango, lime, and mint smoothie was the highlight for me. Fresh, aromatic and….served in a really cute bottle with a straw. Woo!

Now, if you’re going to go for a fancy-pants afternoon tea, you have to wear a fancy-pants outfit. So I donned my fanciest pants paired them with this lovely, summery white number from ASOS and blue suede heels customised with my hilarious and wonderful clip-on shoe pompoms from Cheeky Poppins. I felt like one classy lady and I didn’t even spill anything, WIN!

Just to clear up – this is the first post in a new series known as “Outandaboutfits” for those bits of London life which aren’t location-specific and aren’t all about food, but more about capturing the other aspects of London life (not that it’s all white dresses and scones, but I’m hardly going to do a post about watching RuPaul, while eating toast in my pyjamas, am I?)

*Disclaimer - she may well also have celebrated in the above fashion, but if she did I wasn’t invited because I am too old and uncool. And classy as hell. ;)

The Serpentine details

Opening times = Tuesday-Sunday, 10am-6pm
Admission = Free!

Closest Tube station = Lancaster Gate and Marble Arch