Overpriced restaurant

L’Anima is an Italian restaurants next to Liverpool street station and it is always full of business people, it has a very big “work” atmosphere when you go there, and no wonder the Hardens guide has named this place as one of the top 10 business restaurants in London.  The main chef at L’Anima is Francesco Mazzei who has worked in many Italian and non-Italian restaurants in Italy as well as in London and in 2008 he opened L’Anima, which means “soul” in Italian. Since it first opened the restaurant has won many awards, including Time Out’s award for the Best New Italian Restaurant of 2009. L’Anima offers southern Italian fishes from Calabria, Puglia, Sicily and Sardinia, with some Moorish influences and according to their website this means “bold yet clean and distinct flavours”. Their ingredients are sourced both from Britain and Italy.

The Frommers travel guide as well as my small guide to Puerto Rico recommended to go to Aguaviva, so despite the fact I knew this was not a traditional Puerto Rican restaurant which I really wanted to go to and try the local food, I decided to go there to see if it really is as good as the travel guides were saying. Aguaviva is one of the restaurants owned by the “Oof! Group” and they seem to own the most trendy restaurants in Puerto Rico. Aguaviva was opened in 2002 and specialises in  “Seaside Latino Cuisine” and besides the main dining area also has a ceviche and oyster bar in front of the open kitchen. It was a short walk from our hotel to Aguaviva and when we entered I loved the interior of the restaurant. The restaurant is decorated in blue shades and has jellyfish type of decorations hanging from the ceiling.

As you probably know by now I love Peruvian food, so whenever a new Peruvian restaurant opens (this year there have been 4 opening!!) I always go there to try it out. So when I read that Coya, a Peruvian restaurant, on Picadilly, about 100m away from Hide Park Corner, had opened, I gathered some friends and arranged a dinner on a Saturday evening to go there. Coya has a formal restaurant, a lounge bar that serves the best of the restaurant food as well and also a private members lounge.

One of my best friends Kristine has a flat next to Santini so I have been walking past this restaurant for more than 10 years and have always wanted to go there, but up to this point have never really had an opportunity, so I was very excited when my friend Toby suggested we go there for lunch. Santini is located on the corner of Ebury street, and this restaurant also has branches in Edinburgh and Milan. Gino Santini established Santini in 1984, and Santini serves Italian food with a strong Venetian Accent. The restaurant also has a nice outside veranda where you can eat food (Ebury Street is nice and quiet so it is a pleasure to eat outside there and there won't be too many people staring in your plate), but on this occasion we sat in the main restaurant inside (as it is winter and cold), and the dining room is very bright and pleasant.

Chrysan is such an interesting/ slightly weird place and I don’t think I truly understand it. Chrysan is owned by the same people that own Hakkasan and is a newly opened Japanese restaurant close to Bishopsgate. But it is so different to Hakassan. Whilst Hakassan is buzzing and has table turning, Chrysan was almost empty when we arrived and the bar had no people and only 1/10 of the restaurant was occupied, which meant I was not kicked out after 2 hours of eating and also had a lot of attention from the waitresses. Also whilst Hakassan serves very mainstream Chinese food, the kind of food when you look at the menu, you know, totally understand and feel comfortable to choose, Chrysan is totally different, and when I looked at the menu I had trouble recognizing any of the dishes and I had not seen almost any of these anywhere else.