England/London: Foodie Things

Charlotte cooks steaks a la Cheltenham

Well, I'm back in the USA, working (whomp whomp). I am surprisingly not jetlagged, at least not yet. I think I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow lst night, though. Anyway. Since I'm at the library all day, I can't do much blogging or add any photos, so the big posts about London, Paris, etc will have to wait. But here is a nice blog about food in England. Since I'm sure you're all dying to know what I ate...right?

Meals in/around Cheltenham:
Saturday's lunch: small plate of sesame tempura chicken and cucumber salad at All Bar One in Oxford. Chicken was flaky and tender, the salad refreshing. And oh my god, the pineapple lime juice.
Saturday's dinner: steaks on a portable grill, courtesy of Tesco and Charlotte. Couscous and salad as well. Sat outside in front of the house around a homemade table, true hillbilly style. And then we went to the pub.
Sunday's breakfast: a 0.99 GBS bacon baguette and strong coffee at Aroma in Cheltenham. The cure for ails ya...or at least, what ailed me that morning.

Lunch at the Farmhouse Restaurant, Chatsworth Estate

Monday's lunch: Open-faced sandwich and salad at Farmhouse Restaurant at Chatsworth. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't much of a sandwich...the thick slices of bacon and chicken had to be sliced and diced into bite-sized pieces. The pesto was interesting. Tea was delicious, and as the leaves were loose, I got to try and read my own tea leaves for fun. What does a deer symbolize, I wonder?
Monday's dinner: cereal, as I spent the night alone at the Victoria Place house in Chelts and couldn't figure out how to lock the front door, and so couldn't go out for food. Embarrassing.
Tuesday's lunch: spaghetti pomodoro at Ask restaurant. It's where I ended up when I was hungry on my solitary ramble about town. Beautiful, fresh tomatoes and an abundance of noodles. It's a chain, but it's a decent one, and I have fond memories of meals there during my semester abroad back in the day.
Tuesday's dinner: homemade prawn stirfry with cabbage, onion, bean sprouts, etc and spicy tomato sauce, courtesy of Sian. The veggies came prepped in a convenient pack from Tesco: toss it in a wok and you're set! We also had a selection of Asian appetizers courtesy of Tesco: spring rolls, chicken wontons, prawn toast, and...crap, what was the fourth thing? Oh well. Short story, Tesco is awesome.

Meals in London:
Wednesday's lunch: Leftover prawn stirfry and appetizers, eaten in the kitchen area of our hostel.
Wednesday's dinner: Fish n Chips, obtained from a "chippy" just down the street from our hostel, I think it was called "Star," and told us so in a font blatantly ripped off from "Star Wars." Prices weren't bad, and the guys inside seemed thrilled to have customers. The batter on the fish wasn't crispy enough for my taste; you could tell it had been sitting for a while because the bottom was soggy. The chips were small and rather bland, but it felt like the right meal to be having at the time. The best fish and chips I've ever had came from a cliffside chippy in Newquay, Cornwall, back in 08. The batter was crisp, the fish tender, and we ate in out of newspaper while sitting on the sand, the sea breeze ruffling our hair. What more could you ask for?

Paella, from a vendor in Convent Garden

Thursday's lunch: street paella!!! Convent Garden is famous for street performers and markets and the like, but on the lower courtyard wedged in between a crepe restaurant and a pub called Punch and Judy, there was a man with two enourmous cooking surfaces covered in paella. Yellow rice, shrimp, mussels, red and green pepper...oh my god. Amazing. Also tried some of Ollie's falafel in Camden Town, which was really delicious. It was my first time having falafel, believe it or not! His was of the middle-eastern variety. He says that if we'd been in Northern London we would have had falfel with a jewish flair; it would have come wrapped in pita, with smaller, more numerous bits of falafel and a different sauce. I say either way, bring it on!
Thursday's dinner: steak and ale pie, mashed potatoes and steamed veg at a random pub near St. Paul's cathedral. We spent an hour in search of an Indian restaurant called "Mustard," which turned out to be a very busy, trendy bar. We stopped in at All Bar One, like the one where Char and I ate in Oxford, but they wouldn't serve us because Ollie isn't 21. "What the hell?" I felt like saying to the bartender, "the drinking age is 18 in your country! And anyway, we just want food!" Made no sense. So we went next-door to a pub whose name escapes me and had some traditional English fare. We quickly discovered that most of the pubs in downtown London have different names and decor but are owned by the same company, and thus serve the exact same menu. A bit of a disappointment, that. But my pie was great. The pastry itself was beautifully fluffy and the steak was tendy, though I found the ale a bit too tart for my personal taste. I think they gave me two potatoes' worth of mashed.
Friday's lunch: grilled vegetable wrap at Garfunkel's, a well-known London restaurant chain. Not the best wrap I've ever had. The vegetable were cold and the cheese and salsa seemed like afterthoughts, but the chips it came with were much better than the ones from the chippy on Wednesday night. Thick, crispy, and actually tasting of potatoes.
Friday's dinner: bangers and...well, not mash. Charlotte and I prepared Leicestershire sausages but couldn't find potatoes at the M&S foodshop, so we had a prepared salad that came with sliced new potatoes, and a loaf of premade garlic bread. That was an unfortunate mishap, as our hostel kitchen had no oven. No OVEN, of all things! We had to microwave our poor baguette; no crispy, crunchy garlic bread this night, my friends. However, the sausages were freaking delicious! Why have we not picked up on the bangers and mash thing in this country?? Apparently the Fresh Market sells good, English-style sausages, so I may be making a trip up there soon to stock up!

So that does it for the English culinary scene! I didn't get to have my good curry, but what can you do? England has a bad reputation when it comes to food, but honestly, you can find foods there for anyone's appetite. Just because the native "meat and potatoes" foods aren't to your taste doesn't mean you can't find something that is. I love England's pasties and cream teas and sausages, damn it, and I'll defend them until the end! London's food scene is growing, and you never know what you might find.

Stay tuned for Paris, dear readers.

Oxford: Dreaming Spires

I've spent the last 12 years of my life in Oxford, Pennsylvania. Saturday, I finally got to experience my hometown's namesake! And it was all I had hoped it would be.

Charlotte was good enough to drive me to Oxford, which was a new city for us both. After an hour's drive through hilly and fertile countryside of Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, we left the car at the Park and Ride lot and got on the bus into town. We alighted at the first stop and set off, without any real plan. Another beautiful day greeted us: generous sunshine, a light breeze, warm sun. It was perfect weather for several hours' stroll around Oxford's wide avenues and tiny alleyways, as well as acres of parkland. We actually ended up sunburned by the end of the day! Everyone else seemed to be taking advantage of the weather as well: hordes of sunbathers, picnickers, and families out on walks crowded the streets and lawns. Along the river, I even saw a solitary, scholarly-looking man napping, head on bag and jacket over head.

A drink at the Eagle and Child, watering hole of literary geniuses!

Rather unexpectedly, after just a few minutes, we found ourselves under the familiar sign of the Eagle and Child pub. I had heard it was hard to find! Although, if we had gotten off at the city center instead of the first stop, I guess we really wouldn't have found it. But lucky me, there it was! We stopped in later for half pints, and I tried to soak up some inspiration.

The thing I discovered very quickly about Oxford is that if you want to see the scholarly quadrangles, the halls of the colleges, birds-eye views of the dreaming spires, etc, you'll have to pay admission; we saw it listed anywhere from 2-5 pounds. We did sneak peeks around corners and through barred fences, but we didn't get to see any interiors. I was most tempted by the Bodleian Library, for obvious reasons. Here's some trivia: founded by Sir Thomas Bodley in 1602, it's one of the world's greatest libraries and contains over 5 million books. The collections are housed on three separate sites linked by tunnels. Impressive! (Thanks to Tourist Net UK for the info)

Most of the buildings are historical, though we did discover a few modern ones. This area of the country is famous for its honey-colored stone, which comprised most of the older buildings and walls. As you'd expect, the colleges are the reason that most visitors come.  Some info about the colleges:

"The university is not a campus but a collection of 36 colleges and 5 halls scattered around the city centre alongside the shops and offices of commercial Oxford..today the university accounts for almost 15,000 of Oxford's 115,000 population...the streets, houses, colleges, churches and chapels of Oxford represent a carefully documented catalogue of English history. The centre of the city has 900 buildings of architectural or historic interest. The Carfax Tower is all that remains of the 14th century church of St. Martin: it offers a splendid view of the dreaming spires of Oxford."


The High Street offered shopping and dining galore. We ended up eating small plates in All Bar One, which I later found out was a nation-wide chain, but which was reasonably priced and stylish, and whose food proved quite tasty! I had a small plate of sesame chicken tempura with cucumber salad, and Charlotte's tiger prawns with chorizo smelled delicious. I washed down my meal with the most refreshing drink I've ever had: guava, pineapple and lime juice.

After luncheon we followed signs to the rowing boats and found ourselves riverside. The Thames, the same river that runs through London, is known in Oxford as the Isis, and flows along the western side of the city. The River Cherwell, on the eastern side, allows multiple types of boats to hire for small fares. Along the river were trees hundreds of years old, and veritable seas of daffodils on the banks.

We also managed to accidentally wander through the tents where the Oxford Literary Festival was taking place, (who knew?) where we snooped in on book signings (no authors I recognized, sadly) and were given free samples of gin and tonics...with cucumber instead of lime. Apparently this gin, Hendricks, is cucumber-infused. Who knew?

All in all, it was an absolutely wonderful way to spend a day. I saw so much I'd always wanted ot see, and soaked in some knowledge, some history, some culture, and an abundance of sunshine: when we found our way back to the bus stop, we'd seen ourselves in bathroom mirrors and realized just how red our faces and chests were! We each had necklace marks burned into our chests.

When we'd had our fill, at least for one day, hopped a bus back to the Park and Ride, hopped into the Lupo, and drove back to Cheltenham...

...And then we went to the pub.