London's wonderful Christmas lights and trees

London looks brilliant any time of the year but in the build up to Christmas London dresses up in its very best festive lights and trees pop up all over the city.  

I'd love to show you a few of the fabulous sights to enjoy right now in London.   Covent Garden is a good place to start as they have the best tree, in my view, and fabulous lights. This year's theme is mistletoe - ahhh...   You can shop for gifts and enjoy some refreshment as you explore. 

The Queen's grocer (they have a plaque to prove it!) has some really unusual windows this year including the boy and the brussel sprouts and the turkey having a tug of war with a chopper! They are all beautifully crafted in the strangeness. 

Last year Regent Street had an epic fail with their decorations which were far too dark to enjoy so it was a relief this year to see the light, bright and very sparkly angels that cover the full length of this famous shopping street. 

Kew Gardens goes all out with their illuminated trail which sells out so fast I missed out last year so was determined to book early and was entranced by their lights.  The high point was a laser and lights show on the palm house, hard to photograph but here a a few to give you an idea of the magic. 

Ice rinks pop up in all of London's most iconic sights:  the Tower of London, Somerset House and the Natural History Museum:

Talking of ice, one of the more unusual trees was to be found at Kings Cross where a tree is trapped in an enormous block of ice.

The Strand didn't want to be left out and repeated last year's jolly decorations, as did Oxford Street: 

And finally, the best festive afternoon tea, happily consumed at St Ermin's Hotel:

I hope you enjoyed a virtual tour around festive London, where it really is 'looking a lot like Christmas.....'

Bye for now

Sue 
@itsyourlondon
www.itsyourlondon.co.uk

New favourite London tapas bar: Duende

Seven friends enter a tapas bar, they stare at the menu and ponder the big question: how to chose, how many dishes each, who wants which dish, do we all like the same things? We don't have all day to make these big decisions. Then it came to us, there was an easy answer - order one of every dish on the menu!  Except no one likes oysters so we drop those 3 choices and wait in anticipation for everything else to arrive. 

We are in Duende, a new and rather chic tapas bar in Covent Garden from the co-founder of Bravas in St Katherine's Dock which I reviewed  in 2014 and still rates as one of my top tapas bars in London. Duende is small and beautifully designed yet big enough to house a table of seven and still have room for a couple more tables and bar and window counter space. A single room serves as restaurant, bar and kitchen so each dish arrives freshly cooked and carried just the few feet to your table.

Join me now for a tour of the menu, although the range of dishes on offer change so you may miss some of our favourites when you go. 

Our first dish was Galician Seaweed salad with avocado and piquillo pepper vinaigrette. Immediately we were feeling positive about the place with this beautiful and healthy dish packed full of flavour with and a riot of colours. 

 Grilled Aubergine and Goat's Cheese Croquettes with crystallised acacia honey had me slightly worried as I'm not always a fan of the aubergine but the mixing of the purple (yes a Prince reference!) veg and the cheese was a perfect blend topped decoratively with the lightest of crystallised honey. 

Pacharan Marinaded Salmon Rulada with crispy sweet potato, red onion escabeche and wasabi alioli came next. These had good texture and a long way from the standard salmon roulade, showing off the pacific fusion touches we found in other dishes here. 

Then we had Semi-cured Galician Beef Filet with pickled hon-shimeji mushrooms, roasted hazelnut and seasonal truffle and  mushroom vinaigrette. This was my least favourite but it seemed I was in a minority of one on this one so I perhaps I should not comment further!

Blistered Padron Peppers with aji amarillo and roasted garlic dip, and charcoal salt. was eagerly anticipated.  I've have tested many padron peppers all across London and can pronounce these among the best, with a great dip and plenty of crunchy salt.  The serving dishes were fun too, looking like paper but were solid china pieces. 

Poached Duck Egg with smoked potato, truffle and grilled bread was next. We needed more bread which was supplied without any question as the cooked just right egg demanded to be soaked up 

Roasted Quail with Iberian pancetta and Pedro Ximenez demi glace was a fun dish. It was the presentation that really caught our attention with quail brochettes sitting in a nest with the demi glace dipping sauce served in an egg sitting in the nest..

Crispy Tiger Prawns with kataifi, 'vi de panses' and tamari caramel and horseradish infused 'queso de Burgos' was our next treat. I had no idea what 'kataifa' was and it turns out to be the sort of shredded wheat type pastry you find on Greek deserts. This gave a good crunch to the prawns.  At the risk of sounding like a fussy eater, I have to own up to hating horseradish but those who love it really enjoyed the zing it gave the cheese. I also had to check what 'vi de panses' is and found it to be a sweet wine from Catalonia which was blended into the dish.

Lamb chops with rosemary and tarragon alioli  was a dish we had doubled the order for so fortunately we didn't have to fight over just 2 chops. I love lamb and particularly chops with a handle for ease of eating so this one was for me. The meat was great quality, soft and tasty and the simplicity of the cooking allowed this to come through with the delicate alioli accompaniment. 

And finally, Velvetted Turbot with cava and anchovy cream and morels.  This was definitely a favourite even though we were feeling pretty full up by now. The combination of good well structured turbot with an amazingly smooth sauce full of flavour to complement the fish resulted in a vote for this as our favourite dish of all. 

We squeezed in a share of the ice cream and almond caramel cookies but just a very small piece each! 

Even the bill was beautifully presented! It was also a very reasonable price,  coming out at £22 a head without drinks but with coffee. 

So, what was the overall verdict?  The room is lovely, the staff charming, the food outstanding and we were all checking our diaries to see when we were next anywhere nearby to engineer a return visit as soon as possible. I've not heard my group so enthusiastic about a restaurant for a very long time.  

Check out Duende's website for more information.

Bye for now,
Sue
@itsyourlondon
www.itsyourlondon.co.uk

Full disclosure:  myself and my 6 friends paid for ourselves.

Christmas lights in London 2105

It's that time of year again when London comes to life with festive lights in all the major shopping areas. I've been out and about checking them out for you and my view on 2015 is that some new ones are great, some areas have kept with old favourites which is no bad thing  but some of the major shops have not made much effort this year and one major street is just not up to our high standards. 

Carnaby Street's 2015 offering wins as usual, it's fun, it suits the street and is new and fresh and even looks good before it's completely dark!

Carnaby Street

A Carnaby Street side street

Carnaby Street 

Trafalgar Square hosts the Christmas tree sent each year by the people of Norway to express their ongoing thanks for our support during the 2nd World War. This year it's been a bit battered by a storm which hit the capital just after it went up, so it's slightly crooked but as lovely as ever, especially when reflected in the fountains. 

Trafalgar Square

Oxford Street has stuck with it's massive baubles which works well for them and I was pleased to see that South Molton Street have kept with their elegant blue arches.

Oxford Street at the Selfridges end

South Molton Street

Covent Garden has gone for enormous mistletoe this year which I liked and had some fun to it and they have kept their enormous Christmas tree and the striking silver reindeer.

Giant mistletoe in Covent Garden

Covent Garden's tree

Covent Garden's silver reindeer

This year's big disappointment is Regent Street where they have replaced their successful reindeer antlers with the 12 days of Christmas with small shiny triangles which are too small to bring much light and large circles with projected video animations which I couldn't quite fathom and the circles are not always lit on both sides.  Apologies for a poor photo to match!

Regent Street 

The Strand has joined in this year with a jolly look in blue which brightens up this part of the city: 

The Strand

Two of our major stores, Selfridges and John Lewis, usually have inventive and playful festive window displays but this year they are unimpressive and so have not made this gallery of the light show of 2015. 

London hosts ice rinks outside many of the famous landmarks such as the Tower of London and Somerset House, and the Natural History's rink is one of my favourite sights especially when the kids have a go. 

Skating a the Natural History Museum

Finally, I visited the posh shopping streets of Mayfair to see their lovely display, again kept from last year, of delicate, feathery lights. 

Mayfair

Mayfair

I hope you enjoyed this visit to London at Christmas, it's a great time of year to come here and even the shorter days are a bonus as you can see the festive lights from late afternoon onwards before enjoying a mulled wine in a cosy bar. 

Bye for now,

Sue

@itsyourlondon

www.itsyourlondon.co.uk

4 horses and 100,000 balloons in London!

You don't expect to 4 horses to appear in the river Thames nor to find 100,000 balloons in Covent Garden but then London is always coming up with the unexpected to keep us guessing.  

Public art is one of London's great strengths and my only complaint is that sometimes it is too short lived, it's gone before we realise we need to rush to see it and I'm going to show you two perfect examples of this in today's blog post. 

The Totally Thames Festival lasted all of September and saw a range of events and exhibitions of all things Thames related. You could enjoy all manner of river races, Tall Ships, concerts inside the Tower of London and a night of poetry readings celebrating wild swimming!  It was the horses that really caught my attention. I read about 4 life sized horse statues that had appeared on the foreshore at Vauxhall, a piece entitled The Rising Tide,  so I set off, at low tide, to find them and learn more.  

Skirting round the outside of MI6, much loved of the Bond franchise and not at all secret, I took the slipway normally used by the Duck tours boats, down to the river. My timing was spot on as the Thames was at low tide so there was no danger of falling in and drowning - I'm not being dramatic, I just can't swim! However, despite a helpful warning from the man guarding the slipway, I managed to step on the softer area of the foreshore and spent the rest of the day walking nonchalantly around London with one foot covered in grey mud!

One very muddy foot

Turning my attention back to the horses I was amazed how powerful they were. The Rising Tide is a piece by Jason deCaires Taylor, an underwater sculptor.  The artist is known for his focus on conservation and climate change and these themes are clearly explored.

Each horse is a life size shire horse with their wonderful large hooves and powerful bodies There are 4, a number that may be a nod to the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. Placing them within sight of Parliament seems to ask questions of lawmakers, questions which the sculptor feels they are ignoring, choosing instead to make damaging deals and compromising policies. 

It was a delight to be able to wander around the horses and see them from all angles, to get so close you could touch them without guards telling you to keep away. Photographers, both the iphone folk and those with tripods, were there in big numbers, taking away their own digital memories. A passing beach comber was rather non-plussed by horses and crowds appearing on his regular patch but showed us a few pieces of metal he had found, including a very worn coin and a belt buckle which he dated as Victorian.

The head of the horses has been replaced by the head of an oil well pump giving them an eerie futuristic look.  Two of the horses have male figures, looking like business men or politician whereas the other two carry children giving us the contrast of those with responsibility for what is happening now and the hope for the future. 

Horse with an oil well pump in place of a head

As the tide comes in the figures are submerged until the heads alone are above the waves and I would have loved to have seen this dramatic sight but after a month, the horses and their riders moved on and we are left with the fleeting memory of this wonderful work.

The thousands of shoppers who crowd into Covent Garden were treated to another short lived art installation when balloons outnumbered people for just one month. 

100,000 white balloons, each one of a different size, floated delicately under the Victorian roof of the South Hall. French artist Charles Petillon created a work called Heartbeat to delight and intrigue visitors. Pulses of light run through the balloons making the experience of viewing them rather hypnotic and symbolising the beating heart of the market, now and stretching back into its past. 

I loved the fragility of the balloons that become almost solid in such numbers and how the light changed so much even in the hour that I was there. Each time I looked back at the roof I saw a different colour, a new shape, almost like watching clouds change and reform. 

For those who like to know the behind the scenes info, the balloons were blown up by people, 25 of them who spent 5 nights and a lot of puff to make sure there were 100,000 perfectly filled balloon to form this work.  

Now, both art installations have gone and we look forward to whatever comes next. London is full of surprises but sometimes you have to be quick or you miss them, passing moments in a city of such enduring history. 

Bye for now,
Sue
@itsyourlondon
www.itsyourlondon.co.uk