When Mac met Cheese, London

The second meal yesterday was at a place which I have been stalking on instagram and twitter for about the last 6 months - when Mac met Cheese! They started out life as a pop up restaurant, but recently opened in Bayswater, where they will be until the start of June, so I decided it was high time to visit!

The menu is pretty simple, but just how complicated would you want mac and cheese to be?! Starters are limited to two flavours of "macancinis" (mac and cheese balls), and there are three mac and cheese mains plus one special..I went for the jalapeño and cheddar mac and cheese balls, and the special, which was mac and cheese with chuck steak chilli, a tortilla chip crumb, and guacamole! Clare and Evie had the truffle and wild mushroom macancinis, and Clare had the same main as me, whereas Evie went for Mum's Classic (mature cheddar, red leicester, parmesan and nutmeg) with bacon!

The macancinis were delicious - crispy panko breadcrumbs on the outside, coating creamy cheese with tiny soft pieces of macaroni! Mine had a spicy kick from the jalapeños and Evie and Clare's were amazingly rich from the truffle. Such a cheesy treat!

 Mains were just as good as the mac and cheese balls - crunchy top with cool guacamole, thick, creamy, cheesy sauce and flavoursome chilli with big meaty bits of steak. I don't actually see how it could be any better - comfort food at its finest!

For pudding they only have one option as well, but how perfect that option is....deep fried oreos!!! If you thought oreos couldn't get any better, then you were 100% wrong.

 Lightly dusted with icing sugar, with soft, sweet batter and a squidgy oreo centre, they are absolutely inspired and only left us wishing we had deep fat fryers at home so we could make them all the time!

I absolutely loved When Mac met Cheese - they've taken one of the best comfort foods and centred an entire menu around it, and cooked it brilliantly!

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Boom Burger, London

Yesterday I spent a lovely sunny Saturday in London, having two lovely meals with friends; the first of these was at Boom Burger on Portobello Road. 

Boom Burger is relatively new to the London burger scene - it's a tiny little restaurant/take away with only about 5 tables, serving Jamaican style burgers, salads and sides. It's nothing fancy at all - you order at the counter, everything is served in plastic diner-style baskets and plastic cups, but what it lacked in fanciness, it made up for in tastiness!

I had the Boom Burger (with cheese and bacon jam), plantain fries, and a side of the bizarrely named Stamp and Go (who knows where that name came from!) which are saltfish, chilli and herb fritters!

The burger was great - soft brioche bun, salty sticky bacon jam, and lots of gooey cheese. It was a really juicy burger; the one thing I would have liked is for it to be more pink in the centre, but that's a small gripe! The saltfish fritters were amazing and incredibly moreish - the fish was meaty and packed full of flavour, and the jerk mayo added heat and creaminess which went perfectly. The best thing of all was the plantain fries - they were soft and fluffy but with the most incredible outside - it almost tasted like they had been caramelised as they had a sweet crunch almost like the top of a crème brûlée! The sweetness might sound as if it was strange with a savoury dish, but it wasn't overpowering and just made them so different and interesting! I think they're almost better than sweet potato fries!

Fran and Olivia both got salads, and Fran got some plantain fries on the side; however, I think I definitely made the right choice with the burger as the salad wasn't particularly awe inspiring...you can tell their effort goes into the burgers and the sides and the salad barely gets a look in...

The red snapper looked tasty and well cooked but it was such a small piece and the salad next to it was just leaves and tomato - it could definitely have had far more interesting ingredients in order to make it live up to the other flavours on the menu! 

All in all a really good place to eat - great burgers and amazing sides, but just don't order a salad!!

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Taqueria, London

For a Mother's Day treat my mum and I went to London to visit the V&A, and then I took her out for a meal at Taqueria in Notting Hill. There were some amazing exhibits at the museum; our favourites were the jewellery through the ages one, especially the display of rings with different gemstones, and the theatre and performance one, where you could see the horse puppet used in War Horse, and there was so much cool memorabilia!

I'd been to Taqueria once before with my friends Laura and Phoebe, and I knew my mum would love it - the main thing on the menu is a huge selection of tacos, plus plenty of other mexican style food. We went all out as after lots of walking round the museum we were both hungry, and tacos were half price between 4 and 6!!

My lovely drink of orange juice and hibiscus mix

We mainly went for tacos, plus a couple of extra sides...

Avocado with lime, salt, coriander and onion

Garlicky pan fried spinach

Champiqueso - garlicky mushrooms inside browned cheese with onions and coriander

Choriqueso - chorizo with browned cheese, onion and coriander

Milanese de pollo - fried breaded chicken, chipotle mayo,griddled cheese, house pickled scotch bonnet, tomato, onion, coriander and a lime wedge

Pescado - beer battered pollack, guacamole, chipotle mayo, tomato, coriander, onion, green chile, lime, shredded cabbage

Papas y rajas de poblando - fried potatoes, onion, strips of roasted poblano, crema, grated aged cheese and coriander

My favourite taco was definitely the chicken one, as it had so many different flavours and textures - crunchy tender chicken, mature cheese, fresh bursts of coriander and a spicy kick from the scotch bonnet. I also loved the pescado - the fish was so meaty - and the potato ones as the cheese was nice and strong, but all of them were absolutely delicious. Also, weird though it may seem, the sides were as good (if not even better!) than the tacos themselves!! The avocado was so simple but unbelievably delicious - I have never had an avocado that flavoursome before (the salt probably brought out the flavour and the lime juice made it tangy and fresh, as did the coriander), and the spinach was lovely and garlicky and also had red chilli running through it which gave it real heat. What I really liked about everything was how fresh it all tasted - even though there was some deep fried stuff and a fair amount of cheese, I still felt like I was eating fresh, good quality ingredients which might actually do me some good!

We were absolutely stuffed after this (which I was surprised about as I wasn't even sure if we had ordered enough!!); so much so I very nearly didn't get pudding.....but they had churros with caramel sauce!!!

Deep fried, sugary, cinnamon-y deliciousness, dipped in thick sweet caramel - how could it get better?! An amazing, value for money meal all round - I'll definitely go back soon!

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The Cottage Kitchen, St Andrews

Cottage Kitchen is a really attractive looking coffee shop on Logies Lane (near Little Italy); it's in a lovely white stone building, has fairy lights around the windows, and Christopher and I basically had our noses pressed to the window one day because of the amazing looking brownies in big glass jars! 

The inside reminded me of a lovely homely countryside kitchen, with big wooden tables and chairs, Cath Kidston jugs of water, and pretty cake stands, along with a chalk board menu and glass jars filled with different loose leaf teas. 

There is a small menu which I think might change daily (correct me if I'm wrong, anyone!), and there are also lots of homemade cakes which all looked so good!

I love places with freely available water so much!!

We arrived quite late for lunch, and this is clearly (and deservedly) a very popular place, so sadly they had run out of the steak sandwich and the brownies which Christopher and I had been craving earlier, but there were still tempting things to choose from! The man we spoke to at the counter (who I think was the owner!) was so friendly and helped me to convince Christopher to share with me so I could try both the sausage roll with apple chutney, and the pastrami, rocket, cheddar and mustard mayo sandwich. My dad had a sausage roll and my mum had butternut squash and ginger soup with soda bread.

The sausage roll pastry was very good - buttery, flaky and crisp, and the sausage meat was herby and flavoursome. The apple and raisin chutney was thick and chunky and went very well with the sausage roll, making it sweeter and more moist. The sandwich was also delicious - the cheddar was really strong and the pastrami nice and salty, and I loved the tangy mustard mayo. I tried my mum's soup and it was very tasty too - quite a thin soup (which I prefer to some soups which are actually more like a purée!) with a gentle heat from the ginger.

Obviously we then all had to make room for some cake (apart from my dad who is clearly mental/blind to not be tempted by the amazing display of them!). I went for the strawberry cake, Christopher chose carrot cake and my mum had espresso cake.

Mine was absolutely huge, and basically a tower of cream! It was such an impressive sponge though; extremely light and moist - I wish I could make one like that! The fresh strawberry was delicious with the cream and soft sponge too, but the only thing I would change is maybe having more fresh strawberries in the centre of the cake too! Christopher enjoyed his carrot cake and said it came a close second to the one at North Point, and my mum absolutely loved the espresso cake. I tried it and really enjoyed it too - another very moist sponge with lovely buttercream with a really strong taste of coffee, it was excellent.

I really loved it in here - the décor mixed with the extremely friendly service and delicious food (made all the more impressive because it's homemade!) made it a really great place to have lunch - I kept telling Christopher he has to come back lots, especially in the summer as they have an outdoor seating area! 

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Nahm Jim, St Andrews

On my first visit to St Andrews a year ago, Christopher's friend Natalie (who is from St Andrews) said that Nahm Jim is her favourite restaurant, and a year on I finally managed to go there to put her recommendation to the test! Nahm Jim was also the 2010 winner of Gordon Ramsay's best UK Thai restaurant, and the Times ranked it in their top ten, so I definitely had high levels of expectation.

As you walk up the stairs into the restaurant, there are numerous pictures of the staff with various celebrities who have been there, including Hugh Grant, Ian Wright and Tim Henman, so they are obviously used to serving some pretty discerning clientele! How cool that we might have sat in the very same chair as Hugh Grant....!

The menu is much more expansive than is shown on their website which meant all my pre meal preparation was pretty useless as I had so many more choices to narrow down! Luckily for starter my mum was willing to share with me, so we got sweetcorn fritters and prawn toast (I quite wanted to try the tuna basket, but I was kind and let my mum make the final decision!). Christopher went for the pork and crab meat dim sum (I was very proud at the adventurous choice!) and my dad chose "Haggis Bombs" which aren't on the website menu but are basically haggis in filo pastry with sweet chilli sauce!

The food was really beautifully presented, and tasted just as good as it looked. The prawn toast was crunchy with lots of king prawn and a good sesame flavour, and the sweetcorn fritters were crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, and had a lovely sweet taste, as well as bursts of coriander every now and again. The sweet chilli sauce had a good kick. Christopher's dim sum was also great - soft meaty little parcels bursting with flavour, complemented well by the soy sauce dip. I think my favourite starter could have actually been my dad's though; the haggis was meaty, spicy and smokey, and it was just such an interesting and different starter, but executed well so it still contained Thai flavours and didn't seem out of place!

I asked the waitress on her opinion for my main as I couldn't decide between beef panang and rice, or a "Fruits of the Sea" seafood curry - she didn't even have to think and immediately said the seafood, so that made it very easy! I also had a side of sticky rice. My dad had chicken in oyster sauce with steamed rice, my mum had sizzling chicken and steamed rice and Christopher had thai red curry with duck, and royal fried rice which was pretty much egg fried rice but with crab meat in it as well!

My "Fruits of the Sea" seafood curry had scallops, mussels, prawns and squid in it, and the sauce was quite similar to a thai red, but had the addition of egg which changed the texture somewhat. I thought it was absolutely amazing. It was chock-a-block with seafood, and everything was so meaty and delicious. My favouite was either the scallops or the king prawns as I love the texture of both, but I have to say they had also cooked the squid really well as it wasn't rubbery at all. The sauce was fairly spicy and rich but not overpowering (although I think they got the portion size bang on as more might have been too much), and I liked the way the egg made the sauce a bit thicker and added more flavour. With the occasional crunch of vegetables and the sticky rice soaking up all the sauce I basically had the perfect curry. I absolutely loved it.

Christopher's duck thai red had a lovely creamy sauce but was much spicier than mine - he must have drunk nearly the whole jug of water! Despite that he really enjoyed it and said the duck was very tasty. The rice was also great - lots of egg and flaked crab!

My mum's sizzling chicken was so cool - they set it alight just before serving it, and so it arrived on a sizzling black platter! It had a honey based sauce (I think!) and the chicken was juicy, with lots of crunchy onions and some coriander (our favourite!).

My dad's is the only one I don't remember trying, but it looked colourful and attractive and he really enjoyed it, which makes the meal an all round success!

Nahm Jim definitely isn't cheap, but the presentation and the taste of the food show that it is an extremely high quality place, so it's one that I would recommend for a treat - it would be the perfect post graduation meal (hint hint Christopher!) and is certainly somewhere that anyone living in St Andrews should try at least once!

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