Notes of a New Londoner Part II - Food!

I'm slowly catching up with the posts I've been meaning to blog about since last week. First up, I wanted to show everyone where I'm putting up at the moment - Saco Covent Garden Serviced Apartments. It's a nice one bedroom apartment with a kitchen and a large outdoor terrace that I don't make enough use of. It's right in the heart of Covent Garden on a quiet street, walkable to work, with H&M, Ted Baker, Paul Smith etc right at my doorstep on the same street.

Since I have a kitchen, I have been making use of it. No, not macarons or any sort of baking, but making simple meals (remember the student life I mentioned?) to save money. I do wonder if I am saving any money since I keep buying groceries from M&S, Tescos, Sainsbury. Stocked up on cereal, milk and some pasta ingredients. Here are my first home-cooked meals in London - Capellini with Sugar Snap Peas and Beef Bolognese, Scrambled Eggs and Capellini with Sugar Snap Peas and Sausage in Tomato Sauce. I usually make way too much, and end up either stuffing myself or eating leftovers for the next few meals. Totally not helping in my dieting plans.

And to make things even worse (in relation to my diet plans), I've been dining pretty well. Wan has been introducing me to all the good food and must-try places. His bunch of foodie friends meet quite often to try new places to my benefit. In the short week that I've been here, the places that I've already tried are:

• St John Bread & Wine (British food) 94-96 Commercial St, Liverpool St tube, E1 - good simple British fare with undecipherable menu names, like wth is a white faggot? stinking bishop? speckled-face sheep? ok I think the last is what it says it is.
  
• Rock & Sole Plaice (fish & chips, bottom left pic) 47 Endell St, Covent Garden tube, WC2 - age-old fish and chips institution that is getting pricier.
  
• Orrery (French chichi place) 55 Marylebone High St, Marylebone tube, W1 - tried the cheap(er) set menu, so-so not blow away but not too bad considering price. Many upmarket restaurants are offering 'recession' set menus
  
• GBK (gourmet burger chain) 50 Westbourne Grove, Bayswater, W2 - yummy beetroot burger!
  
• Hummingbird Bakery (famous cupcake place, top 2 pics), 133 Portobello Rd, Notting Hill tube, W11 - If you're wondering why the cupcakes in the below pics are so smashed up, it's because the silly carrier box they gave us was super not sturdy plus an entire day of walking around caused the cupcakes to do somersaults and backflips. We tried Red Velvet, Carrot & Black Bottom (my fave!)
  
• Cha Cha Moon (Alan Yau's take on noodle bar, bottom right pics), 15-21 Ganton St, Oxford Circus tube, W1 - Wan had really good crispy duck noodles (meepok!!!) and I had Jia Xiang Beef Hor Fun, which was very tasty beef hor fun with black bean sauce. Definitely gonna come back and try the other stuff.
  
• Dragon Castle (Chinese restaurant), 100 Walworth Rd, Elephant & Castle tube, SE1 - supposedly one of the better Chinese restaurants around, it definitely didn't disappoint, most things were quite authentic, not your usual angmoh chinese restaurant place.
  
• La Trompette (French Michelin 1-star), 5-7 Devonshire Rd, Turnham Green tube, W4 - I didn't know this was Michelin-starred till I went back and googled it. I had a business lunch there and I think the standard of the food was much better than Orrery. Chiswick, the atas residential area it's in, is also very nice. Probably will go back one day to walk around.
  

Sorry don't have pics for most of them cos it would have been a tad touristy to whip out my camera at the nice chi chi places haha. So the below would have to suffice for now.