A Dinner Party with La Belle Assiette - Fine Dining At Home.

Numbering 4 nationalities (5 if you count yearning) amongst 6 diners, we gathered on a snowy evening gathering from all corners of London to make merry in a pre-Christmas celebration. We covered the globe ranging from Antipodeans (New Zealand and Australian) to Americans with a token English Rose, we knew by the tone of the late excuses from "sorry I’m going to be 5 minutes late" all the way through to "I got held up at carrot point by snowmen - they wanted to know where I was hiding the penguins but I refused to tell them. Trying to uber a reindeer now..." it was going to be fun night.

Disclaimer: Our meal was provided courtesy of La Belle Assiette, but I would absolutely use them again - and with the 3-course meals averaging out from a pub dinner to a luxury restaurant pricing, without having to put up with other noisy diners, I will definitely be using them again. 

Sorry for the long disclaimer. Which I've just made longer.

On the table we spread out Eucalyptus fronds in a beautifully haphazard array, crowned with a bronze ornament placed just so and star tea-lights sprinkled amidst the table centre, twinkling merrily away. Gathering in our good friend’s lounge, we hugged and told tales of our recent adventures.

48 hours in Sydney, Australia

I'd only been to Australia once for more than 4 hours - back in the days when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Aside from picking up a sole faded photograph - sat on the plane next to my little sister, both of us dressed in scarlet velvet dresses trimmed with crisp white ruffles, I can't remember a second of it.

It's kind of crazy - even though Australia is the closest geographical neighbours to New Zealand, as it was so close, I'd never visited. Fresh from the desert city of Doha, Qatar, where the lovely Polly had shown me around her home in 40°C+ temperatures, I was ready to walk into an antipodean Autumn - a far more reasonable range of 15-20°C temperatures.

Touring Lord's Cricket Ground (and learning to bat with Matthew Hoggard)

How often do you find yourself in the cricket nets at Lord's, getting tips on how to improve your skills from an ex-England fast bowler before taking a tour through the hallowed 'Home of Cricket'?

Disclaimer: We were invited guests of the England and Wales Cricket Board
but my terrible hand eye co-ordination and ensuing words are all my very own.
Tours don't usually include a personal Cricket masterclass.

So for Shikha (of Why Waste Annual Leave) and I to find ourselves batting and bowling in the Marylebone Cricket Club nets at Lords, we actually couldn't stop grinning at our blind luck - and when Matthew Hoggard MBE, former England test cricket team bowler and captain of Leicestershire) saw me pick up a cricket ball and just how terrible my bowling was, he also smiled. Slightly grimly if truth be told.

4 Days in Doha - A stopover in the Middle East

Having decided to change my career, I thought that I deserved a wee holiday to celebrate. Now, most people would book a long weekend in Spain or perhaps a week on a beach, but I decided that a 3 week trip to New Zealand was in order. With the blessing of my Mr Kiwi (who had to keep the UK hearth fires burning and the cat fed due to work commitments) and a brand new baby nephew to meet, I booked myself on a flight.

It's becoming a bit of a cliche to say that the best thing about blogging is the community - but it is. Hence the cliche. I'm in the very, very lucky position to have made friends all over the world through blogging, and when I realised just how easy it was to hop off my flight to Qatar en route home, I couldn't resist the temptation to harass Mrs Follow Your Sunshine for a few days, not to mention soak in some of the Middle Eastern sunshine.

An annual afternoon tea at Dalloway Terrace, Bloomsbury Hotel

A year ago we met here. We gathered amidst green boughs, tinkling teacups and marbled table tops. On the table champagne flutes sparkled, delicately dove grey striped crockery nestled arranged just so and green blooms drew the eye to the space left for our afternoon tea towers to occupy.

Disclaimer: We were again invited guests of the Dalloway Terrace at The Bloomsbury Hotel but my (very many meandering) thoughts are still mine.

It is amazing how simultaneously so much, yet so little can change in 365 days .

23 of the best places to go in New Orleans

Please excuse the somewhat clickbait style post title, but I was at a bit of a loss how to describe our time in this magical Louisiana city. The home of Jazz is heavy with music spilling from each corner, the buildings are redolent with French-style balcony railings perfect for people watching and Mardi Gras beads literally hang from the Jackson Square trees year round. Creole and cajun spices imbue meals with history, a melting pot of cultures mingle in amongst music notes that hover in the air and everyone we've ever known to visit talks about the city their eyes light up remembering the joie di vivre.

We wanted to love New Orleans. And we most certainly did. We adored our side trips (blatting on a boat through the Bayou to track down the coal-black eyes of alligators and a walk through the history of two quintessential Louisiana Plantations) but the city well and truly stole our wanderlusting hearts. With only 3 full days to spend in the city (2 full and 2 half to be utterly precise) we tried to fit in as much as we could, all the whilst dodging the rain drops that followed us over from Austin. After a 2-month drought.

My 2017 New Year's Resolutions

The start of the year. The gyms are rammed with bunnies, stores are heaped with leafy vegetables, counters are stuffed with elixirs promising to make everyone skinny and half of the smoking population are walking around with grimaces whilst subtly getting a whiff of the hard stuff. Inspiring masterclasses are being staged to help you emerge into 2017 like a zen butterfly casting off all the bad habits of a lifetime, the shops are trying to convince you that you need to by half priced Christmas gift sets and the office biscuit tin is suspiciously empty - especially considering no-one will go near it.

No, I'm only kidding - there isn't anything wrong with starting the year with a fresh face and a positive 'tude to make this year the best ever. It's why we love our travel linkup to begin with dreams & wish lists for the year ahead - not only are we inspired by some amazing destinations but love discovering a few of the stories we may have missed.

Unfortunately I definitely broke several, if not all of my 2016 resolutions (so much for being publicly culpable) including the very domestic thou shalt not use the laundry hamper lid as a shelf - though I'm proud of lasting at least the month of January with that one. The team at CheapFlights commissioned me, wanting to suggest a few exotic destinations to break my New Year's resolutions in (they clearly know me too well).

But first, to set a few resolutions.

A Christmas corner of London: Chelsea

We've decided to fill our cups with Christmas cheer this year, and visit the 4 "corners" of the Circle Line (in true London style) to enjoy the different faces of festive London. This weekend I found myself brunching with some of the crew in Chelsea (at the beautifully instagrammable no.11 Pimlico Road) so went for a meander.

The short walk from Sloane Square tube station to Pimlico Road was a revelation alone. Christmas trees adorned shop lintels, harpists gently plucked carols whilst raising money for charity, chestnuts were being roasted over flame (I didn't actually realise this was a thing in real life), a small choir sang on a pub corner and the smell of mulled wine from a local business hung beautifully in the air.

Chai Wu, Luxury Chinese Restaurant Review in Harrods

Quite rightly, Harrods is often described as pure melodrama. 4.5 acres of retail space, seven floors and 330 departments, each offering up its own kind of lavish loopiness. Rising above the bejewelled occupants of Knightsbridge, as luxury sports cars (try to) zoom along the Brompton Road,I found myself making my way through those infamous green awnings once again to enjoy the fine Chinese cuisine at Chai Wu.

Disclaimer: We were invited guests of Chai Wu but all thoughts (and #firstworldproblems) are definitely my own...

As you ascend the floors of Harrods, the shopping gets more and more decadent. On the fifth floor in amongst the designer squash rackets and sneakers, a haven of sushi, Wagyu beef and champagne sits just waiting to ensnare flagging shoppers.

Halloween Cocktails (in conjunction with thebar.com)

In the wilds of Northern England lives a purple-haired, upstate New Yorker. She is ensconced in a beautiful home that came with two chicanerous cats and the boy who stole her heart before taking her wanderlusting around the world.

We met over the interwebs, thanks to a series of blog posts she wrote about their year in New Zealand, and after an initial IRL dinner with our 3rd musketeer Amanda, we keep finding ourselves sat around a table with ribs sore from laughing over the same expat woes.

So, it was only natural when thebar.com contacted me to try and make a few of their Halloween cocktails that I began perusing Dannielle’s glass collection and we arranged a weekend tete a tete, States-style, in her Doncaster home found in the middle of Yorkshire.

The day I broke Southwark Cathedral

Many moons ago when I was much younger and freshly arrived on these ancient shores I did a Bad Thing which probably, really should have got me deported. I don't have many regrets, but this is definitely one of them. It wasn't anything illegal, violent or intentionally nasty and it brought tears to my eyes.

I was volunteering with a charity outfit called Cathedral Camps, a mentoring programme that works quite closely with the Duke of Edinburgh scheme and teens from all over Europe who want to improve their English. Spending a week living on or near a Cathedral and working odd jobs for them - ranging from vaccuming towers to repainting railings - whilst exploring the city at night (we were lucky enough to have a special tour of St Pauls, a night at Shakespeares Globe for the Merchant of Venice and of course the delight of Leicester Square of an evening) we slept in a hostel and cooked in nearby kitchens.

Iris and June, weekend brunch in Victoria

Years ago when I worked in the area, Victoria always seemed like a little bit of a gastronomic no-man's land. Sandwiched between the tolling bells of Westminster scuttling with politicians (though I do kinda love the Blue Boar and have spent far too much time drinking champagne, breakfasting and afternoon tea-ing in the Conrad St James) and Belgravia bustling with the yummy mummy's, thankfully there are more up and coming restaurants beginning to showcase their chef's credentials.

Over the years we have discovered a few of the [bloggers favourite klaxon] 'hidden gems' in the area that aren't necessarily fine dining (though we've found a few of them too). The cake menu hidden beneath Westminster Abbey, the cockney cobbles of Strutton Green, the rumored Royal favorite Thai restaurant (ok, ok, I began the rumour), the uber-touristy Albert pub where British Army retiree's sit hoping to warm their bones with a free pint and the cabbie's favourite greasy spoon The Regency Cafe.

Eating & drinking in Bordeaux

Bordeaux seems to be going through a renaissance. 10 years ago it seemed to be a grimy port town that people knew of mostly for the ruby red elixir that makes the town infamous. With a mayor who realised the tourist cash they were missing out on, he set about rejuvenating the city and promoting Bordeaux as a destination within its own right.

In my limited experience of the world, I feel it's safe to say that the French live, breathe, eat and drink. And possibly not in that order of importance. Following that train of thought, it would be a little remiss to blog about the lovely Bordeaux, and omit sharing our favourite places that we imbibed. As a tourist armed with the internet, I can't pretend to be any kind of authority, but after 4+ years of blogging and calling myself a foodie I do know what I like.

The Ivy Kensington, an early dinner/late brunch

She was born in Doha, amidst gleaming Qatar skyscrapers buried in desert sands. With her occupation officially stamped 'baby' on her ID card, she travelled to London and lured 5 adults to the Ivy in Kensington somehow managing to convince her parents to come along too.

 
Presented with offerings of soft bunnies and a flowered dress, she snuggled into our shoulders and giggled at the seriously weird faces only mini-adults can evoke, pleased to have enspelled yet more minions to cater to her every cooing whim.

Roka Aldwych, Bottomless Brunch Review

A while ago something in my head prompted me to share 9 of the ways that London has been made better for me, and one of them I didn't mention (well, I sorta did) was being adopted by hordes of London bloggers. For some bizarre reason I have been allowed to invite my way into a few informal tribes of genuinely friendly, brazenly brunching, sushi addicted, bubbly loving blog addicts. There's the loose ring of London Kiwi blog mafia, the massive expat massive and the association of travel addicts (anonymous) that brighten up London life immeasurably, not to mention the individual characters who don’t tie themselves down with memberships.

I don’t know if it’s the effect of such a big city full of a plethora of cultures and nationalities, the enormity of the population size or just the social makeup of the citizens, but for the most part the London foodie/travel blogging scene is a rather friendly collection of individuals. Since I began my corner of t’internet I’ve been to Northern Africa, nipped across The Channel to Paris for lunch, sipped cocktails by the pool in America, tiki toured around Bath and slept like a princess in Gloucestershire, not to mentioned brunching with all with me #internetfriends who have become IRL friends. They are good peoples, everyone of them.

^ If dishes had an instagram/blog per piece value, I'm pretty sure this would win hands down!^ 

This particular brunch began quite innocently. It started as a touch of chatter, but before we knew it the excitement of a TimeOut offer appearing brunch at Roka Aldwych with bottomless bubbles had us all a-Twitter (literally). I invited myself along (it's the sad eyes that gets them every time), we sussed out a good date thanks some email lasso-ing and in no time at all we were gathered in the Aldwych branch of Roka.

Christmas & New Year, Kiwi-style

Forget that it's already a month after Christmas. Ignore the fact that New Years Eve has been and gone. Overlook the fact that blogs are meant to be on-topic reflections of all that is trendy (which probably isn't my dowdy forte at the best of times). Consider it a suspension of disbelief that I'm such a tardy blogger.

Let me take you back a few weeks, to a time far sunnier and entirely upside down in a completely different hemisphere. It was Christmas Eve in New Zealand: the sun was shining, we had our drinks fridge all chilled and the ham was in the oven slowly being honey-glazed. One by one car loads of family were pulling into the drive before unloading copious amounts of kids and presents under the Christmas tree.
 

Goodbye 2015, Hello 2016

2015 has been incredible and sad. 3 trips to the other side of the world, more hugs than I can count, dinner table laughter, a burgeoning coffee addiction, ticking off a new continent, many adventures in the UK and overseas to countries I will never be able to spell, a few heartbreaking incidents, discovering new nooks and generally trying to live life to the full.

And, as you read this, New Zealand has counted down & embraced the new year of 2016. We'll have watched the sun set on an incredible 2015 and we'll be (probably, ok maybe) watching the sunrise over the horizon of 2016.

Traditionally each year I like to finish with a little roundup of the year that was. I think we'll play with the top 15 this time (I did the top 14 last year, 13 in 2013, and 12 in 2012... see where I'm going with this?)

10 Things You Must Do in Hawaii (Guest post: Carolann)

There are some bloggers who you think would be your friends if only they didn't live an ocean away (or manage to miss when they come to London for a quick trip as you're disappearing overseas yourself - we will get that coffee in one day!)

Carolann from The Two Year Honeymoon is one such lady, and has kindly taken over Adventures of a London Kiwi, with her top 10 things you must do in Hawaii. All I know is that my credit card is itching with wanderlust...

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10 Things You Must Do in Hawaii 

 

Hi there, readers of Adventures of a London Kiwi!

I’m Carolann, and for the past two years, my husband and I lived in Hawaii on what I’ve been calling our “Two Year Honeymoon.” We just left Hawaii and are in the process of moving to a little place in the United States called Connecticut. But first, we are traveling to Europe and then New York to spend the holidays with our family! My husband is in the military, so we are always moving around. We will be stationed in Connecticut for just a few months before moving on to somewhere new. Having my husband in the military is such an amazing adventure, and I love that we get to travel and live so many different places.

10 things I have to do in Autumn

Autumn - Fall, Oсень, Herbst, Automne or Jesień - is unconditionally my favourite season of the year. Rust-hued leaves twirling to the ground, blue skies with a crisp feel to the air and the best excuse to lay a crackling fire. Spring is a welcome relief to winter, but festooned with allergy causing pollen; summer is normally disappointing or hot and smelly, and winter is icy. Nah. Autumn all the way.

 

Being a list junkie, there are a few things I have to tick off each time autumn rolls around.

1. Wander through a park and stampede through a pile of autumnal leaves. (Instagram proof is optional, though entirely irresistable)

A surprise September trip to Broadstairs seaside..

A couple of Saturdays ago I found myself at a loss. I was home doing boring things chores whilst the September sun was gloriously full. We had no real plans, a proper cozy weekend in, watching Downton Abbey, baking and lounging around in our PJs. Half an hour later, Mr Kiwi was in a car on his way up North to Great Grimsby with his brother for a family birthday (I opted to not go because I didn't want to spread my plague symptoms any further around) and the weather forecast said clear, blue sunshine on Sunday.

I was at a crossroads. Continue in the same vein of Saturday, or run away. So run away it was. With some frenetic Googling of 'best beaches near London' (don't laugh they are real), a few stressed messages to said husband to ensure I wasn't planning on going to a seaside gangland and a train ticket later I was outta there. Well, after a good night's sleep any way.

I hopped out of bed, grabbed my beach skirt with glee (in late September no less!), packed my book and vaulted out of the house. It takes 1hr 20 to train from St Pancras Station to Broadstairs (or Margate) so I sat back, relaxed and made sure I had a coffee in hand. Before long, the chalky cliffs of the Dover coast came into view, and then the sea started to sparkle through my window.