Fine Dining at the North Pole: Gruvelageret

During our visit to Spitsbergen last weekend, Gruvelageret Restaurant in Longyearbyen (the capital of Svalbard, Norway) invited me to try out their 4-course fine dining menu with wine pairing. I was joined by my wife, Ms B. The restaurant, whose name translates into mining warehouse, sits 30 metres up the hillside, no more than 200 metres direct distance from Coal Miners’ Cabins, where we were staying (0.5km by car), but – being cautious (everyone seemed to think: overly cautious) people, we took a cab anyway. At least in winter, polar bears occasionally stroll around in this northernmost human settlement on planet Earth, and we didn’t want to end up as polar bear picnic. Like most structures in town, the building doesn’t look like too much from the outside (even though the whole building has a beautiful history and a lot of love and hard work went into it), but as […]

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Brunch in style at Aster, Victoria

We’ve just returned from another London Victoria brunch at Aster, a further venue from D&D London, and were very pleased. The outside seating looked very welcoming with nice flowers and decorations, but we chose to be seated in the very stylishly furnished 1st floor main dining hall, designed by Russell Sage Studio. It oozes some of the elegant atmosphere of an upmarket 1960ies New York 5th Ave. diner while at the same time looking very modern. There was only one other table taken when we arrived at 11am, however, the room quickly started to buzz with bubbly bohemian brunch-fanatic ladies, most in their twenties and thirties. I was literally the only male person besides a few of the waiters, but that’s fine in my book. My undivided attention was focused on MsB and our lovely brunch, of course.      We went for the three-course option at £26 a pop. MsB […]

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