Second Helpings – September 2009
Oct 1st, 2009 by admin
(photo taken by Kang @ London Eater in Lille, France. Thank you Kang!)
The monthly summary for September…
World Foodie Guide celebrated its second anniversary this month. The last two years have gone by incredibly quickly and I’ve consumed vast quantities of food, learned much about various cuisines, and developed some wonderful friendships, both online and in reality.
I’ve now decided to focus more on food & travel or ‘traveleating‘, seeing as WFG was intended to be ‘a guide to traveleating’. 25 Food & Travel Destinations: A 5 Year Plan explains my new plan. Meanwhile, I’ve been planning the November trip to Japan, as well as a long weekend to Gothenburg, Sweden and a Eurostar day trip to Brussels, Belgium, both in December.
There will also be a couple of guest posts over the next two months – insider favourite tips and suggestions for Taiwan and Istanbul, Turkey – both of which are on my travel list. I’m really looking forward to reading their recommendations!
I recently tried Japanese restaurant Dinings (the wagyu beef sushi was superb) and new Korean Naru, where each dish was exquisitely presented. Italian Bocca di Lupo was revisited and I had a far more enjoyable meal compared to the first visit. As a result of the focus on food & travel, I’ll be writing fewer London restaurant reviews and I’ve also abandoned the rating system, which I thought was too subjective to be of any real use.
In the kitchen, my three mushroom pan-fried dumplings were featured in In The Kitchen With on Design Sponge! I also had a go at making Sri Owen’s Indonesian crabcakes and was really pleased with the way they turned out (I’m not usually so adept at forming such perfect round shapes). Last but not least, I met fellow food blogger Kavey from Kavey Eats, her husband and her mother Mamta from Mamta’s Kitchen at the Covent Garden Real Food Market, where they were manning the UKFBA food stall for the day. I can still taste Nana’s Spicy Tomato Ketchup (which I had with the crabcakes!)…
Dan (Food Urchin) won the Eurostar competition for two tickets to Lille. He was chosen by the PR company We Are Social and will be off to Lille very soon! Congratulations Dan!
Please let me know if you have any suggestions for future posts. There are a few more book reviews coming up, some recipes and of course plenty of food & travel posts. You can also tell me what you don’t like, I won’t be offended, I promise!
Thank you as always for reading…
Nice photo and I like the background action of Niamh taking a photo of a dog! Congratulations to Dan as well.
Gourmet Chick – Kang takes great photos! I also have many photos of that cute dog. In fact everyone took photos of it. Can’t wait to hear Dan’s stories from Lille!
Helen Yuet Ling
Such a cute photo Helen!!
I love the plan you’ve drawn out for the blog. I can imagine how exciting this would be with guest posts with inside news on that city’s best kept secrets.
So envious of your trip to Japan. A friend of mine recently came down from there and stupid customs confiscated the knives he got for me.
The Purple Foodie – London Eater took that photo! I’m quite excited about my blog plans and being more focused about the type of posts I write in the future. I can’t believe you didn’t get your knives. What reason did Customs give for confiscating them?
Helen Yuet Ling
Well, his flight got canceled and they took a chartered flight from Delhi to Bombay where they would keep the luggage in the cabin by their seat. So the bunch had to give up a lot of their thing!
You know since you’re going to Japan, you should check out this post: http://www.whiteonricecouple.com/travel/nishiki-market-kyoto-aritsugu-knives/ I can’t stop staring at those knives! It’d make an awesome purchase.
The Purple Foodie – what bad luck! So some lucky member of staff is the proud owner of some Japanese knives. Thanks for the link, I’ve actually read it (and was very excited as I’m planning to go to Nishiki Market in Kyoto!).