Various places: Little Venice, Camden Locks, Urban Food Fest @ Shoreditch, London

Date of Visit: 21^st September 2013

A day out in London led to strolls around the canalside, walks through the markets and plenty of food.  We started the day with Brunch at Café Laville in the Little Venice region.  Whilst the view was nice (we were sat outside, overlooking the canal where you could boat and people watch), I thought the food was mediocre.  I opted for egg benedict which was ok but really nothing special.  The others had different forms of big breakfast.  I tried the grilled mushrooms and it was super salty and the saltyness continued through to the bacon etc.

After taking the boat (aka, the scenic route) to Camden locks, we had dessert in the form of Dutch pancakes with Nutella – it reminded me very much of ‘gay dan jai’ in HK but I prefer the Chinese version since it doesn’t require any sauce, making them less sweet.  Oh and the Dutch turns the pancakes over manually one by one – business opportunity to sell them the ‘gai dan jai’ turners? Hehe

Anyway, the next food stop was Shoreditch for the Urban food festival.  We were disappointed with the size of the “festival” when we arrived as it was set up in a car park area with about 15-20 stalls but we were thankful for proper tables and stools in the middle of the area and we were lucky to bag a table space at the beginning.  Despite the small area, we managed to find some tasty food as we made our way round the stalls.  First up was the Jerk Chicken stall where we tried a quarter chicken served with plantains (unfortunately with no fries as their fryer was playing up) and a Jerk Chicken wrap.  The Jerk chicken was tender and the outside was tasty but I don’t think it was marinated long enough as the inner parts were lacking some flavour. 

Next up was a fire stoned pizza (pepperoni and jalapeno) from StreetZza– the thin base was crispy and it had a nice sharp kick to it – a pretty good pizza I must say.  We then tried Korean burgers in the form of rice burgers and noodle burgers.  They were a strange concept but it was quite tasty, especially with the kimchi sandwiched in between the rice or noodle and the meat.  Next, we tried the Argentine style steak sandwich and a couple of Empanadas (half moon of pastry puffed with savoury filling) from Portena – we tried the beef filling and the spinach filling.  None of these were great… the pitta style bread for the steak sandwich was cold and the meat quite chewy and there wasn’t much flavour to the meat.  The Empanadas were dry and again, lacking some flavour.

There were a couple next to us who tried the frog legs and whilst I’ve had frog legs before, these looked awesome as the legs were still very much attached to the main body so you could still make out it was a frog.  We decided to give it a go too and the verdict was that it was quite fleshy and the taste was very peppery - for those who have not tried frog legs, the texture is in between chicken and cooked white fish.  The strips of sweet potato it was served with was a nice bonus.

So, with all the savouries out of the way, we ventured into Portuguese desserts which consisted of Nata (Portuguese egg tart), Orange Cheesecake and a Coconut based dessert – I can’t remember the name so I’m going to call it a coconut bomb!  All three were rather sweet and we weren’t keen on the orange cheesecake – it did not resemble a cheesecake at all (e.g. no crumbly biscuit base and no cheesecake filling).  Instead it was like a tangerine sugar sponge like dessert.  The coconut bomb was also very sweet but you could taste the coconut bits which added a nice texture.

To end, I took home some macaroons since some weird and wonderful flavours were on offer.  I opted for the following flavours:

-          Strawberry Milkshake

-          Margarita

-          Cosmopolitan

-          Apple Pie

-          Bacon (yes, it has real bacon bits in it)

-          Mint Chocolate