too much good Japanese is a good thing: tweat-up reunion @ Roka Restaurant, London

Some things in life are just impossible to have too much of. Hugs, for example, I could have all day every day, but that “work” thing, it gets in the way.  Japanese food, especially good Japanese food is another example. I could eat that all day every day too, but again work gets in the way.

Lucky for me, there are those “after hours” hours, when work is put aside and whims are satisfied to within an inch of my life. I get hugs and I get food and damned if I can’t have them both at the same time.

Damned indeed.

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avocado & mango tower with grilled scallops: summer lovin’ my way

avocado and mango tower with grilled scallops 2

Summertime in London is a really odd thing. For one, you don’t pack your jackets away. And secondly, it’s actually colder than Sydney right now and they are in the midst of their winter. The third thing, and this happened yesterday, they announce there’s a heat wave when there is not. It’s 23 degrees, my English friends. 23 degrees.

But I will pucker my little lips together and I Shalt Not Whinge. In fact, I think I even embraced the London summer not so long ago, no?

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dinner at Tamarai: much about “meh-ness”

Pan Fried Pork Belly, golden lotus root, honey hoisin sauce; Coconut and Palm Sugar Brûlée, elderflower sorbet

It is so weird for me to not have an opinion about something. Usually everything; whatever the thing may be - a restaurant, a movie, a service or even just my new L’Occitane Red Rice mattifying moisturiser - everything leaves me with some form of an opinion. I love it, I rave about it. But if I hate it, wow, I run around the internetz bagging it all over Twitterverse, much akin to social media murder (’tis a good thing I don’t hate very much. Or have any influence).

Drawing an opinion from me (either good or bad) is really not very hard. What’s a more difficult achievement is balancing so precisely on the thread between leading me to like or dislike something that I am left speechless (which is an unfathomable feat in itself) and without an ability to form any opinion.

My dinner at Tamarai left me with one such conundrum. I went, I ate, and I really don’t have much of an opinion about it.

Well, ok, I lie, the pan fried pork belly made my tummy dance in glee, but other than that it really didn’t leave an impression. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t bad, it was just meh. Oh wait, was that an opinion right there?

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20 hours & 4 restaurants: Inamo, Lantana, Sketch, Hummingbird

marble beef from Inamo; friend haloumi breakfast from Lantana; tuna sashimi from Sketch; red velvet cake from Hummingbird

After surviving our food-binge weekend in Lille, my friend Ying escaped to travel through Spain, Italy and France (in relative gastronomous sanity) before stopping by London for another few days enroute back to Oz. She gave me a day, 20 hours to be precise, in which I could take her to my favourite eat-outs. I protested vehemently that 20 hours is merely a fraction of what I needed, but hey, I can improvise.

Our itinerary: dinner at Inamo, breakfast at Lantana, lunch at Sketch, and cake at Hummingbird*.

Yes, this is how we roll in the catty life.

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yum cha at yum cha, it doesn’t get any simpler than that

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Tw-eat-ups! Twee-eat-ups. Tweet. Eat. Up. No matter how you spell it out, tw-eat-ups are paving way for friendships of the 21st century. Well, in my world anyway. Despite the glaring dangers of meeting up with near strangers for the sake of a decent meal, my primal necessity to seek out good food with gooder company triumphs time and time again, challenging me to take on risky rendezvous with fellow foodies from twitterverse.

And I never turn down a challenge.

All right, so Yum Cha is not exactly risky. But it was up Camden High Street.

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