European food

I went to Shoreditch house with a big group of people for a Saturday brunch. One of my friends Katrina is a member and she decided to organize a brunch for a few of us and we all arrived to Shoreditch house on a Saturday for 12.00 brunch. Note Shoreditch house is a private members club and so if you want to go there for a meal like I did you will need to find a member friend that is nice enough to invite you. Shoreditch House is located in Shoreditch and is a large building that also has a spa, a hotel with rooms for members. On the 6th floor they have an outdoor pool area where you can go in the summer and relax and eat but the rest of the time the 5th floor, where there is a dining room, a pool table room with a casual sit down area and also another relaxed room full of big sofas and fireplaces, is the place where people usually go. We had our brunch in the dining area on the 5th floor, which has long communal tables and the 8 of us were sitting on one side of it.

I went to Vinoteca for dinner for my friend Santa’s birthday. We went to the Marylebone branch although there are 2 other branches, one in Soho and one in Clarkenwell. Vinoteca is inspired by the wine bars of Spain and Italy which also often function as wine shops and these wine bars have a great atmosphere and you can drink, buy wines and have good food there, which is what Vinoteca aims to achieve. The first Vinoteca opened in 2005 in Farringdon and Vinoteca stocks nearly 300 wines and 25 of these you can drink by the glass (and they are changed all the time apparently). Dan Richards is the head chef of the Marylebone branch and each of the different branches will have slightly different food as the chef will chose what to have on the menu, so do remember this review has nothing to do with the food in Vinoteca’s Soho and Clerkenwell branches, but note all premises do have the same cured meat imported from Spain and their bavette steak (none of them which I had).

I had been to The Delaunay in January last year when it first opened and absolutely loved it, and now I came for the second time for brunch. The Delaunay is a sister restaurant of the Wolseley, and calls itself a “Grand European Café, Restaurant” so it has that amazing aura when you enter the restaurant, with high ceilings, beautiful slightly old feel furniture, very nicely dressed staff. They also have super cool heavy silver cutlery, the nice champagne glasses from the 1950s and old clock so it feels like you could be in Vienna in the middle of the last century. The Delaunay is located on the Strand and serves Austrian/ Eastern European food and last time I came here last January I had borsch (traditional beetroot soup from Russia/ Eastern Europe) which I liked and remember being vegetarian (usually it has meat in it) as well as Chicken Kiev, and I had a great meal.

William Thornton or Willy T as the people who know it call it, is a floating boat that has one of the best bars in the British Virgin Islands and also a restaurant serving burger and seafood type of food. We went there for dinner and when we got there at 7.30 it was already super busy and we found it hard to find a place where to park our dinghy. On one side of the old boat is the bar, which was already buzzing at this time, but we went to the restaurant first.

I was a bit disappointed by this recently opened place that has been generating big publicity and got good reviews by the FT and evening standard and the concept of cool, european type tapas in Soho is great, but there were a few problems: 1) there was no room in the restaurant, it is cute to have small places but this was so small, and the tables put together so close, I had no place where to put my bags and I could not move, 2) the concept of the food is good - european cool tapas (see menu in the picture), but for some strange reason a lot of the dishes just did not work … octopus and lamb chops that I had were amazing, but the meatballs, mozzarella, mushrooms and papardelle pasta with beef ragu were a bit tasteless. I give this place 3 Ms.

Date: 03/02/12