weekend (in london)



Yummy food at Spitalfields Market


The Lost Angel pub

Our clocks went back in the weekend and the darkness is well and truly setting in. I finally noticed that the trees outside our windows have changed colour. S pointed out that they've been like that for a while, but when you leave for work in the dark and come home in the dark, it's easy to miss these things.

We had a lovely lazy weekend. It took me all week to recover from last weekend's epicness (I must be getting old), so it was just what I needed. We kept it local on Saturday. We brunched at a cafe around the corner from our house. I like it there, but S doesn't. He thinks it smells like wee. To be fair to him, the coffee was bad and the food only average (remind me why I like it there again?). It is fun to watch the oldies having their breakfast pint and dressing up in Halloween masks though. Brunch was followed by a spot of shopping, a visit to the bookstore and some yoga practice. In the evening we went out for a very early dinner of Japanese. Good Japanese food is hard to find in London and it's always expensive. Recently, S discovered Atari-Ya, which isn't too far from us. We got to the restaurant at 6pm when it opened and were told we would have to eat at the sushi bar because they were fully booked. It wasn't hard to see why, the food was amazing! We ordered lots of little plates and everything was fresh and delicious. The sashimi was the highlight, I miss it so much living over here. After dinner we walked to the cinema to see The Ides of March. It was pretty good. I'm not really into American politics, but it was entertaining with a few twists and turns (and, let's be honest, any movie with Ryan Gosling is a winner). 

I've been wanting to eat a custard doughnut from St John Bread and Wine forever, so on Sunday we headed East to try them out. We ate breakfast there (which, I'm guessing by the length of the menu and the amount of yoghurt we were given to eat, is not their strong point), but when I asked them to set aside some doughnuts for us we were told they wouldn't be ready until after 12pm. We had to be on the other side of London at 1pm so we settled for an apple and cinnamon doughnut instead. I was gutted. We'll have to go back some other weekend and try again, obviously. We did have time to explore the Spitalfields Market though, which I highly recommend. Lots of independent designers, handmade goodness and yummy-looking food. After buying a few essentials (ahem), we hopped on a bus to South West London where we celebrated a friend's engagement with a big Sunday roast in a pub decked out in Halloween decorations. I love days that revolve around food.