British

My boyfriend took me to Glasshouse for my birthday. Glasshouse is one of those restaurants that for years I have seen in the Hardens guide as one of the most mentioned restaurants, that always scored very well on the quality of food, but that I have never visited myself before, mainly because it is located in Kew, so not that easy to get to. Hence I was very happy when my boyfriend booked this and surprised me. The Glasshouse serves modern British food and is owned by Nigel Platts-Martin and Bruce Poole, who also owned two other restaurants in London Chez Bruce and La Trompette (MMm) and out of these two, I prefer Chez Bruce. The Glasshouse opened in 1999 and got its first Michelin star in 2002.

I have been reading about Elliot’s Café in blogs and articles for a while now, and everyone that goes there generally tends to like it a lot, so I decided to try it out for brunch with my friend Irina. I had booked a table for lunch for us on a Saturday at 12.15. Elliot’s Café is located in Borough Market, and is quite small and cosy and very welcoming as outside in front of the restaurant they have loafs of bread which they make themselves and which look very tempting. The menu that they give you states that they want you to begin your meal with the best bread possible, hence they make their own, by using organic, stone ground English flours, a 48h fermentation and a fiercely hot oven. I did try their bread, I had to after all this advertising, and it was indeed very good, but in comparison to good home made bread that restaurants serve it did not really stand out that much, nevertheless it was a delicious bread. 

Aqua Shard is the third restaurant that has opened in the Shard, the tallest building in London and Europe, after Oblix and Hutong, and in my view is the worst one out of these three. Aqua Shard is the sister restaurant to Aqua Nueva and Aqua Kyoto, a Spanish and Japanese restaurants located on the top floor of a building by Oxford Circus and run by the Hong Kong group Aqua. In contrast to the other Aqua restaurants, Aqua Shard serves “innovative contemporary British cuisine”.

This was a wonderful discovery my boyfriend and I made totally by coincidence. I went to Pekcham for the first time in my life as my boyfriend’s university friend who had been in the Master chef final was doing a “pop up” of Thai barbecue and I was super keen to try it. We went to the bar in Peckam where this Thai barbecue was taking place only to find out that the place was totally overloaded by orders and just to take our order we had to wait an hour. As I was starving I decided not to wait for this and try to find alternative food, which initially for me seemed quite hard to do in Peckham. However, on our way to this Thai barbecue we had passed what looked like a nice, small and buzzing restaurant - Peckham Refreshment Rooms – and so we decided to go back there to try it out and have dinner there instead.

The Ivy is one of those restaurants that used to have so much character and grandeur and with time this has faded. The Ivy serves European/ British food and since 1990 is owned by the Caprice Holdings Ltd, same group that owns Le Caprice, J Sheeky’s, Scott’s and other iconic London restaurants (but the Ivy is the oldest restaurant out of all these). All these restaurants are or have been the destinations for celebrities, and some of them still are and some less so. The Ivy dates back to 1917, when the owner Abel Glandellini and Maître d'Hôtel Mario Gallati opened it, but then it was a modest café. Ever since The Ivy has seen many redevelopments which slowly has created the dining room you can see now. The name of the restaurant comes from a phrase the actress Alice Delysia said "Don't worry, we will always come to see you, we will cling together like the ivy,", quoting a popular song of the day. The Ivy has a dress code and you can’t wear shorts or vests.