Lunch in Chelsea = heaven

Last Saturday my father came for a visit and, as he was staying way over in Heathrow, he asked me to pick a nice lunch spot somewhere in central London. I actually spent hours agonising over where to go: I didn't want to go somewhere with a Michelin star (too fancy and formal for lunch) but equally I didn't want to go to a random pub that does all the typical pub food. That's always such a risk if you haven't been there before, because the food might be a bit rubbish. Also, I really wanted to avoid anywhere that might be so rammed with people that we wouldn't be able to hear each other speak.

The main problem really is that there is simply too much choice in London. Between all the chains, the pubs, the Prets on every corner and the coffee shops in between the Prets, it's a case of having so much choice that it's impossible to make a decision. I honestly don't think that having access to the menus online helps....it just makes me that much pickier. But I digress. Eventually, I picked a gastropub in Belgravia: the Thomas Cubitt.

Chaps, you totally have to try this place. The food there is absolutely incredible, the wine is fine (lols) and the atmosphere is simply lovely. They have outdoor seating for those rare sunny days, and the decor inside is what I can only describe as 'modern rustic'. I.e. deer heads, wooden beams, bright and airy...just my kind of thing. The place was quite full when we get there (just shows there are plenty of Londoners happy to pay top dollar (top pound??) for a scrumptious midday meal. Luckily we managed to snag a pretty good table in the back, and settled in for two hours of tasting fun!!

What I love about dining out with my father is his wealth of experience with just about every kind of food and wine. I guess that's what comes from having lived all over the world. Anyway, I think he must have picked one of the nicest white wines on the menu: a Sancerre, and it went down like water. And after taking a sneak peek at the menu he decided he wanted to start his meal off with oysters on ice, brave man that he is. Boyfriend and I had never tasted oysters before - they're one of those things that people don't order often, and anyway why would you order something expensive that you might not like? So this was the perfect opportunity to try and oyster, and I think we can both firmly agree they are quite the acquired taste, and we have not yet acquired it. Weird though....I really like snails and they basically have the same texture...

We went down a safer route with out starter choices. Boyfriend had a goat's cheese starter with a muesli dressing; not something he'd seen before but it really worked. I was most impressed by my starter: supposedly pastrami with bread. It was actually a fantastic little terrine with toasted sourdough, with a pretty decent amount of two different cured porks. Absolutely incredible.

Oysters on ice

Goats cheese starter

Pastrami and sourdough

After that delicious starter, I was pretty ramped up for the main course. In fact, when it arrived, I totally forgot to take pictures, which is such a shame because it was all so beautifully presented. But I'm sure that I can use a thousand words to describe the picture ;)

I had the market fish of the day, which was salmon. It was beautifully cooked, just slight underdone in the centre which is how good fish should be. They had crisped up the skin ever so nicely (I luuuuurve fish skin), and they presented it on top of a celeriac puree (which I've never tried before but celeriac is now definitely my new favourite), with crispy kale on the side. Stunning!! It really was a day of firsts, as I'd never had kale before either. Yum yum!!

Boyfriend had the slow cooked Goosnargh duck leg, with sweet potato, kale, beetroot and blood orange sauce. It looked like it absolutely melted in the mouth, although the result of the beetroot was that his empty plate looked like it had contained something massively bloody!! I'm really into beetroot at the moment, and since my new recipe book has a ton of beetroot recipes, I suspect you'll all be hearing about that in times to come.

Dad had fish too, which was pan fried Atlantic hake, served with Jerusalem artichokes, puy lentils, green beans and a very nice looking dressing. Again, totally superb. I could happily recommend all three of these dishes. And on the side, we had some baby spinach with cheese and pine nuts, and some more Sancerre.

As you can imagine, we were pretty damn full afterwards, so we went on a bit of a walk towards Victoria, where we then took the tube over to Vauxhall to visit one of our favourite outdoor pubs, Riverside. We absolutely love it there because it's right on the river, and there's loads of outdoor seating when the sun is out, plus it's absolutely dead on the weekends. Perfect. We sat down in the sun for a few hours with some cider, and enjoyed the fact that it wasn't raining for a change. Daddy and boyfriend made it onto the whiskey by 5pm, but since I wanted to survive the night, I stuck with my cider. And it was the perfect day :D