London

120 Fenchurch Street Rooftop Terrace – Some of the best views of London

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In February last year, The Garden at 120 in 120 Fenchurch Street in the City of London opened to the public. It is the largest roof top in London, operates on a first-come first-serve policy and it is completely free. You simply rock up, enjoy the digital art installation by Vong Phaophanit and Claire Oboussier on the ceiling of the lobby (psychedelic, rotating flowers on multiple levels, when we visited, but there are different themes at different times), go through the airport-like security check, then make your way to the elevators, which will take you up to the 15th floor. The 360 degree views are magnificent and very different to the views from the tops of the surrounding skyscrapers. Apparently some people are upset that the Gherkin, Cheesegrater, and surrounding buildings ‘block the view’… I was just blown away by the beautiful views onto those skyscrapers right in front of […]

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London, London restaurants

Berners Tavern – We are starting to warm up to this former favourite of ours again

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This upmarket restaurant in Berners Street in Central London’s Fitzrovia used to be our go-to place for Sunday brunch for a few months, until we had several bad experiences in a row. Rude staff, long waits, and major cock-ups on the food, to name just a few of the issues. So for a whole year we avoided Berners Tavern. A few months ago, a couple we’re friends with suggested we meet up there, and we were curious, so agreed to the location. We’ve been back for brunch two more times after that, and overall we enjoyed ourselves each time. Located inside boutique hotel inventor Ian Schrager’s Edition Hotel, the main dining hall is one of the most beautiful spaces on the London restaurant scene. Two huge chandeliers, inspired by the ones in New York City’s Grand Central station, dangle from the nearly 6m tall ceilings, counteracting the pompousness of the […]

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England, Restaurants

Baqueano – Brighton’s Best Bite

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I recently spent one and a half days in Brighton to watch some stand-up comedy and to go deep sea fishing while Ms B stayed in London (things you do for the blog, sometimes life’s tough but you bite your teeth and somehow manage to carry on). I always liked Brighton. It was one of the first places I visited without my family on a two-week language course when I was 13 (back then we did a day trip to London which was the first time I visited the city that has now become my new home town). I love the fact that it’s so diverse, that it has a huge LGBT+ scene (no one parties like these folks), so many great night clubs, bars, cafes and restaurants, heck, and they even threw a beach in on top. Plenty of our London friends commute to London from Brighton and have […]

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London restaurants

RedFarm, Covent Garden

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Ms B and I have just returned from a late lunch at the once much talked-about RedFarm restaurant. It is located next to another New York import, Balthazar, in Russell Street, next to the Royal Opera in the centre of Covent Garden. From inside it is bigger than it looks from outside, with nearly one hundred seats over three floors. RedFarm has been founded and, from what we understand, continues to be part-owned and run by Brooklyn-born, Chinese cuisine scholar and restaurateur Ed Schoenfeld (he’s got nearly 60 restaurants under his belt) and dumpling master chef Joe Ng, who grew up in Hong Kong. Their first of now three restaurants opened in Greenwich Village, NYC, nearly ten years ago (the remaining one is located on the Upper Westside). The London outlet opened last year. Ranking a relatively low #2,330 of 20,000 London restaurants on Tripadvisor with 8 out of 96 […]

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Art and Culture, London

Leonardo – An Immersive Experience at the National Gallery

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We’ve just returned from “Leonardo: Experience a Masterpiece” at the National Gallery. We are huge fans of this bedrock of the British museum scene. One of the things we like a lot about it is that the standing collection with all the masterpieces is free. This usually includes Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks. So why, you might ask, would anyone in their right mind pay an exorbitant £20 per person (we paid £10 using our National Art Pass) to see something that they can normally see for free? £20 to see one single painting? If the standing collection charged admission at the same rate, then the tickets would be £5,000 a pop. What?!! Well, the idea is that you pay for an immersive experience, kind of get into Leonardo’s head and the heads of the people that discovered this painting’s secrets. Fifteen years after a hidden drawing beneath Leonardo’s Virgin […]

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