A culinary tour from London to Dublin to Chicago

It's been over a month since I last blogged!  How the heck did that happen?!  Well, considering this post, I guess the answer is that I have been busy - eating!

Below is a flavour (d'ya geddit!) of my last month

London

Enid and I travelled with Irish artist Pigsy for the screening of the Mike Andrew's documentary film about Pigsy which was featured in the Irish London film festival.  Pretty exciting, and some achievement to make it to London it has to be said!  Plus very well received which was fantastic!



 

Red carpet! Enid & Ciaran/Pigsy

While we were there (just for two days, one night) we did our fair share of eating.  You need to know that I have a love/hate relationship with London when it comes to eateries. 
So.Many.Chains. 
Very nice chains I will say!   Restaurants, that you would not think are chains. Great food places.  Nice décor places.  Good atmosphere places.

But chains!  All chains! 

Bill's

We were fresh off the plane with big wide-eyed Oirish heads on us and we were hungry.  Enid knew of a chain (sigh) called Bill's which she said was good and would be just what we needed so we headed off to the Bill's in Soho.

The food was "fine"  The drink was better - I had a Malbec, Enid had a Prosecco (hey, we were on a mini holiday lol!) and Pigsy had tea, the wild thing.

Cote

We came across Cote near the film festival cinema - which was on Regent Street.  We were on a high after the great showing at the festival, and this cute little French restaurant was the perfect place to toast the success of the film we thought.  I took a bet with Enid that although it looked small, cute and authentic, it was a chain.  She lost the bet - these chains are sneaky I tells ya!

Anyway.  The chain thing aside, this was a good place.  The food was very nice - I had pork belly and Enid had beef bourginon.  The wine was good and the atmosphere nice too.  All in all a nice place for a fine evening.

The Ivy

So on our last day we decided to go all out.  Enid and I normally go for what we call our "boozy lunch" a few days before Christmas, but because I will not be around this Christmas we said we would do it in London.  Throw in my graduation, Pigsy and all his recent triumphs, plus that this would be likely the last time the Three Amigo's were travelling together we said we would push the boat out and go somewhere decent, and a little bit exciting.

So the very famous Ivy it was.  Which IS officially a chain btw.  But it has been around since 1917.  And the food was incredible and the service immaculate.  So I guess I can overlook my aversion to chains on this occasion.

Celebrate!



 

Dublin

My little trip to London, and my little rant above about chains, makes me appreciate how great Dublin is and how many nice little independent places we have.  And that is something I took advantage of over the last few weeks, while out and about with friends and family saying goodbye before I departed on my little year long adventure!

Dillinger's

I met up with my two best friend's, Enid and Alice, Sunday fortnight ago and we simply had the best night ever.  A ton of food for a really good price - the Dillinger's happy hour offer is very very good.  A lovely malbec with the food AND two Brandy Alexander's after dinner!!!  Today was the day that Brandy Alexander came into my life and it deserves to be marked.  If you have never had one of these cocktails I recommend you try one this weekend.  You will thank me for it.

Dillinger's.  It's plain and simple, consistently great.  You can always rely on it.  The food, the staff, the service, all lovely.

Do it! I am telling you, do it!



The Shelbourne

Hmmm.  Where to start? Well actually, first things' first.  I had a great night with Enid and Cousin Kasey! I always do with those pair.  And I really appreciate them coming out during my last week on a work night.
Everything was very nice as would be expected of the Shelbourne.  I had Guinness bread (mmm!) and tomato soup, a glass of malbec and a Brandy Alexander (it gets capitalisation because....emm...because it just deserves it ok!).  The gals had pretty much the same,  Oh and we got a plate of truffle fries for the table which was delish.  It was just a tad expensive I thought - particularly when compared to Dillingers.  For the same amount of money I had had a starter, main and three alcohol drinks in Dillingers.

But you know what.  It's The Shelbourne.  And I love it. A Dublin classic, always atmospheric and particularly so at Christmas.  Oh and always the chance of seeing someone famous lol.  Case in point, when Enid and I met Cuba Gooding Jnr!!

Hugo's

An ambient little Irish/French restaurant on Baggot Street.  I had the game terrine which was as punchy with flavour as game terrine should be.  And then for my main I had a melt in your mouth featherblade of steak.  Looking for a cosy little spot with great food and wine?  Hugo's is that place.  Lovely atmospheric Christmas decorations too!

The Rustic Stone

Everything was great about the Rustic Stone, except what I ordered.  Steak on a stone.  Cook your own food eh?!  I just don't get it!  I won't be doing that again. 
That aside; great starters (baba ganoush, my gosh the flavour) great company, great wine.  Bit of a dodge dessert - chocolate "soup" (a really weird, yocky chocolatey, thin watery excuse of a sauce) poured over a chocolate mousse with two florettes of cream - which were either sour cream or were gone off.
Hmmm.  Contrary to how negative the above sounds, I did actually like this.

Wigwam

Two mojitos for €12.  What's not to like?  Check it out on a Friday night.  A cute little Cuban inspired hipster coffee bar and pub on Middle Abbey Street. However, it's not fancy - be warned!

Chicago

Since arriving here in Chicago, aside from having a lovely time I also have been doing a lot of eating.  See below.  BUT! I also am being very good and trying to eat keto/no sugar.  Any carbohydrate (rice, pasta, noodles) you see in these photos, I did not eat.  I repeat, did not eat!  Anyway, all the rest of the dishes were so good, I simply don't need those evil carbs!

At Home

Shrimp and Lobster tail cooked on the barbeque!

Scallops and guacamole







Shrimp Jalfrezi

Eating Out

Seadog

Sashimi platter!

Yes!  So very good!
We are going back in two weeks with friends for a big night out and I am looking forward to it already!

London - Trip report

Where to start??! 

I think I shall just do a splurge of text summarising parts of the trip and then load up a few photos at the end which capture the atmosphere.

As you know this was a "working holiday" because I was helping Irish artist Pigsy present his work at The Other Art Fair.  First things first, the exhibition was a tremendous success!  We calculated that between Enid, myself and Pigsy we conversed with approx. 600 people across the weekend.  Everyone loved his paintings and really seemed to connect personally with Pigsy and his story.  And yes, he made some sales!  But more importantly, he got offers from galleries to come show - in London and further afield.

It has to be said it was a lot of hard work from start to finish, but it was a good bit of fun too.  The three of us, we make a good team. We were delighted with the results and we had some craic getting them too.

Eats

We ate in a number of different places and I must say all were either good or very good:

We had some nice hamburgers in Byron Hamburgers on the first night when I arrived off the Tube from the airport.

A superb little find was the café in Le Cordon Bleu culinary school - very close to our hotel - and only the best scrambled eggs I've ever had in my life :-)  And the bread.  The bread!!! Doughy with an intensely kicky yeast flavour. 

Marco Pierre White - we ate here on the last night to celebrate a successful weekend.  I had the most amazing prawns and a good malbec.  Service was excellent too

All Stars - this was a fun place!  A small 1950's style bowling alley with a cool restaurant and bar.  Pretty good food to boot!  I got the crab chowder.

Boozer! Local boozer!  We found a local pub.  The Queen's Larder was a nicely dingy and authentic London pub :-)

Accommodation

It was panic stations when just four days out from our departure our airbnb cancelled on us. Can you believe that?!! Thankfully Ciaran found us an alternative at that short notice.  We stayed in the Grange in Bloomsbury and we could not have had a better location.  It was literally 60 seconds from the venue which was exceptionally handy for running back to get supplies of information sheets and business cards when stocks ran low.

Visitors!

It was great to see our London family on Sunday.  Special mention to Jem and Kristina who travelled in from outside London with their three month old baby for the meet up. So great to meet baby Arthur who is absolutely adorable. As well as being a little cutie, Enid and I  worked out that he is our youngest (or newest born) of our SECOND cousins - out of about 15 other second cousins. We have a big family lol.

Nice to see Ciaran and Enid's friend Ronan. He was working in London for the weekend and took the opportunity to pop in to see the Pigsy exhibition.

And very nice to meet the lovely Aisling and lovely Catherine.  So kind to come support and say hi.

All in all I had an incredible weekend.  I simply cannot say more than that.  Oh I can actually!  Thank you Enid and Pigsy for bringing me along for the ride.  I am super proud to be part of the Pigsy story.

Edit. One of my regular blog readers has been on to point out that Arthur is actually my first cousin once removed rather than my second cousin. What would I do without you Cousin Kasey?! :)))))

Interview time!

Pigsy and Aleesha who interviewed him

Pigsy's friend Ronan

 

Aisling & Catherine

 Cousin Kim, first cousin once removed Arthur and his dad - Cousin Jem

London Day 3

Today we went on the bus - Enid and I had only used the underground which we found so simple and quick.

London Bridge in the background!

Kasey brought us to the fantastic Burough Market.  I hope the following photographs capture the atmosphere and the food!

We all chose something different to eat and each one was delicious.  I got tortellini with wild boar, Kasey a chorizo sandwich/burger and Enid noodles.

Enid & Kasey then had some watermelon for dessert.

We then pottered along Northbank and completely unplanned arrived at the Globe Theatre which of course is famous for it's association with Shakespeare.

How great is this!

We then arrived at the Tate Modern and went in for wander.  

It is an amazing space with some great displays.

Crossing over the Millennium Bridge with St Paul's Cathedral in front of us.

We had a great day in London but now it was time to nip home to have a shower and pack and head to the airport for our flight home.

We still had time for a quick drink and some nibbles in a local asian restaurant though :-)

We had an fantastic few days and I think you will agree from all the photographs we packed as much as we could in this small space of time.

Big thank you to Kasey for hosting us! (And Mo! lol) 

London Day 2

Up nice and early and on to the Tube with a cup of a coffee and a copy of the free Metro paper.  

Look at me like a local :-)

First stop was Covent Garden where the London Transport Museum is located.  Before going into the museum we enjoyed pottering around the lovely shops and the sights and sounds of Covent Garden

The next three photos are from the London Transport Museum.  Unfortunately I would not recommend this museum unless you have children.  I thought it was expensive - £15 - we only spent about an hour there. I also thought it was low on detail and information and also extremely extremely confusing to follow the route around the museum.  

There was a great exhibition of posters from the Underground over the years which was great but when we came out of the exhibition we found that we had missed a whole section of the museum which we had to go back to.

Some great full size old buses etc but not great information on each.

Overall very very disappointing :-(

Chinatown!

Just a small town girl :-)

Completely impromptu ,upon passing the Garrick Theatre, we decided to go to Rock of Ages!!!

We really landed on our feet: we chose "restricted viewing" seats which were the cheapest ticket available.  While the girl on the desk had explained to us what this mean...it transpired that it really was very restricted... Oh dear :-(

So one minute to show start time I ran out and asked could we just move up the back where there were empty seats.  The girl was very nice, although very straight "I told you about them!!!!!" (Me: I know! I know! But we just didn't know howwww bad).

So apparently, normally they charge you an additional "upgrade" charge but she kindly just gave us two unoccupied seats (in the middle) which we could take.

Score!

Seriously though: Thank you Garrick!!!!!

The show:

Amazing! Amazing! AMAZING!!!!!

I am still overwhelmed how brilliant it was.  Every single cast member was phenomenal. The production was superb. While every cast member was great special mention must go to the lead (Sherrie) - great singer and actress who captured the naievty of a "small town girl" and the wonderful Lonny/narrator who was just fantastic to watch and amazingly comedic.

Again: Thank you Garrick!!!

After another quick tube ride home to shower and change, and then we nipped back into to town to meet Kasey and her friends for cocktails in the Soho Hotel.

We then went to Burger & Lobster for dinner.  There are only 3 items on the menu; burger, whole lobster, lobster roll.  Kasey, 

Enid & I got one of each and shared which was great.

My order of preference was lobster roll, burger, whole lobster.

We then went to a nice cocktail bar/restaurant across the road where the barmen didn't mind me posing with the soda water bottle :-)