Creative food

Carousel is such a great restaurant and considering it is so close to where I live, I am really surprised I had not been there before and would not have found out about it probably for a while had I not been invited here by friends for dinner. Carousel is a three floor space in Marylebone that invites guest chefs to cook for around 2 weeks. Each 2 weeks they have chefs from around the world bringing their own cooking style to Carousel. Because of this it is hard for me to give it a ranking, as the menu would change so frequently, but I love the concept and I loved the dinner I had at Carousel.

It was my fiancé’s birthday and I wanted to take him somewhere special, so I chose Engawa. I had not been before, but had read about it and seen various pictures of the food, and I thought this could be a great special location for a birthday. Engawa is a Japanese restaurant in Soho, next to the Ham Yard Hotel, and in contrast to other Japanese restaurants specializes in kobe beef (beef from the Tajima strain of wagyu cattle raised in Japan’s Hyogo Prefecture, the meat is famous for it’s flavor, tenderness and fatty/well-marbled texture), and serves it in a variety of styles and ways. You can find kobe beef on the menus of other Japanese and non-Japanese restaurants in London (for example the restaurant M Grill in city sells a 150g fillet for £150), but Engawa seems to be the only restaurant that focuses exclusively on this and puts kobe beef at the forefront.

My friend Paul suggested we go for lunch to The Quality Chop House, a place I strangely had not heard anything about, especially considering how amazing the restaurant was. The Quality Chop House is a dining room, wine bar, butchers & shop on Farringdon road. It was originally opened in 1869 but obviously the original owners have changed since then and it is a different type of restaurant.

The restaurant apparently is great if you love wine, with a long wine list and a wine shop alongside the bar and dining room. 5 of us came here for lunch and one of us ( South African) ordered a glass of wine (the rest of us did not drink) and surprisingly was recommended a South African wine. The Butchers & Food Shop located next door sells a range of British meats as well as home-made condiments and pies. I did not visit it, but Paul went there after our lunch to stock up for his supper, and Paul only eats the best food, so this must be a great shop.

D.O.M is a very special restaurant and one of those very few restaurant to which I can’t give a rating… D.O.M is a modern Brazilian restaurant in Sao Paulo that currently is ranked the 7th best restaurant by the St Pellegrino restaurant awards, the highest ranked restaurant in Latin America. It does not have any Michelin stars yet though, as the Michelin guide is only going to Brazil this year, so I am sure it will get them soon. D.O.M stands for Deo Optimus Maximus, which means ‘God is greatest and best’ and the restaurant was opened by now celebrity chef Alex Atala, who is passionate about Brazil and tries to source ingredients from all over the country, including Amazon. Before opening D.O.M he worked in France and Italy as a chef.

I was meeting my friends in Riga for lunch and Olga and Arturs suggested we meet in Kasha/ Gourmet, which is one of their favourite cafes in Riga. Kasha is located on the corner of Brivibas and Stabu streets, and the word Kasha means porridge in Russian. From the outside the place does not look like much and also the inside is quite casual (apart from the great children’s corner which has a lot of interesting things for children) but the menu is very creative.