Saturday 15 December 2012

Beckworth Emporium

Afternoons off work – instead of fighting with commuters and lunchtime rushes you can eat when you want and mingle with Mother’s and pushchairs as well as the early bird special crowd. Still it is all very civilized  I popped over to Beckworth Emporium for some pre-Christmas entertainment and food.

The dining room is actually like a massive conservatory – called the Garden Room. Somehow they manage to keep it nice and warm; luckily it was a really sunny day. Not sure what it would be like in the cold grey rain. The menu has plenty of exciting things on, but we all went for the Panini’s. Me? Pulled Pork of course. What else?
Sunshine on a winter day
Special Lunch Menu
Pulled Pork Panini
Homemade coleslaw
Served with homemade coleslaw and fries it was divine. Large glass o Sauvignon Blanc was the right accompaniment and the way to take us through into the Christmas shop. In here it was filled with decorations, gifts and delicious looking food.









Some more camera practice

The candle looks a bit more 'hen party' than Christmas dinner






I also had a little go on a reindeer. Unfortunately the ice skating was closed (boo) so that had to be foregone in favour of going home and sitting by the fire. It’s a tough job...

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Sunday 9 December 2012

We Feast London; Festive Special

Earlier in the year - we ebulliently trekked to London Bridge for We Feast (here is the lowdown), so when the lovely people behind it announced the next instalment around Christmas time I was in.

This time we were off to Islington on a crisp sunny Sunday afternoon. The bar were serving hot drinks in the form of mulled cider and mulled negroni. We started with the cider and headed to the longest queue - which happened to be Yum Bun. Pork, hoisin sauce and chili in a thick pancakey / bready bun. They were completely delicious and a  great starter, no wonder they had the longest line.




On the table there were lovely candle displays which really didn't look like they could pass a fire safety test! Candle's in paper bags? Effective and dangerous

We didn't need much coaxing before joining the Anna Mae line. The biggest dilemma  Straight up mac and cheese with pickle on top or Chili Mac, the standard mac topped with homemade chili, a dollop of sour cream and a tiny bottle of Tabasco. OK, it wasn't actually that much of a dilemma. It is a good job we were sharing as this was a huge portion. The chili was better than your average and went amazingly well with the main event. The sour cream was complementary and unfortunately we were too ravenous and slightly out of control so when the Tabasco didn't open at my first touch we disregarded it and devoured everything else.







Time for a refuel at the bar, this time we went for the Mulled Negroni which is basically turbo mulled wine - including Gin, Campari and something else I can't remember  It was slicker than your average mulled wine. My only problem with these sort of things is they get quite cold quite quickly. Even more of an excuse to drink fast.


Next on the agenda? Mishkin's. I still haven't been to the real deal although it is firmly on my wish list. We went for the hot salt beef English Muffin's with mustard and a sauerkraut salad-y topping. We had them cut this in half, one with hot mustard (for me). Heaven. I honestly need to go here immediately for a proper dinner. The small but perfectly formed burger (esque type affair) was delicious.



After all this we started basically groaning in fullness the only sensible thing to do was start thinking about all things sweet. In the meantime though we found the music to be very enjoyable. A mix of folk and country, we had a little dance along.



Someone we had seen earlier was having the most incredible rainbow cake. It would be ours. The stall from Pomp De Franc also had an impressive array of cupcakes. They wouldn't divert us from the rainbow cake though. It reminds me of something you'd see on the Great British Bake off in the Showstopper challenge. The taste however may not have won Mary and Paul over. It was good, but each layer had the same taste. Variation in flavour would have been better. The buttercream however was immense.







As we thought we were leaving the only thing left to do was eat chocolates. First up from Co&Co. The champagne chocolate blocks were absolutely heavenly. They tasted like a Charbonnel et Walker. They are new business who we will definitely be seeing more of.





Next door to them are my neighbours The Modern Pantry. These had some truffles that looked very much like one of my favourite snacks from The Zetter Townhouse. On biting into them though then were very different...completely filled with ooey gooey caramel, which I wasn't expecting therefor ending up with a handful of it! Better that than a scarfful though.

There were so many other fabulous traders whom we didn't visit, mainly because we frequent them anyway! One of these were the lovely Pizza Pilgrims boys. Their pizza is down right delicious...


The ambiance was also very festive and didn't feel too cold in the warehousey space






Thank you We Feast London, until next time!
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