London help needed for visiting food blogger

What are the essential food and drink experiences in London at the moment?
I arrive back for the first time in four years, and the first as a food blogger, on the 10th September, leaving on the 22nd (Right now I’m sweating it out in Dubai for some reason).
Part of my visit is for work to conduct some interview for a book but so easily it can become entwined with pleasure.
But it’s a whirlwind tour where I also have to take my mum out for lunch on her birthday, the 11th.
Here’s a shortlist in a sort of organised random order:

1. Catch up with local food bloggers if any interested. Matt from Abstract Gourmet and I overlap for a few days.

2. Acorn House. One of the de jour eco eating establishments.

3. St Pancras Station – The world’s longest champagne bar. (Maybe visit that popular English champagne maker)

4. On the subject of champagne, a glass or two at The Royal Opera House.

5. Zetter, Clerkenwell (a mate of George Biron, a Melbourne chef and blogger)

6. Visit one/two of the East Room, Match Bar and Grill and Milk and Honey. They have set up their first bar in Australia with more to follow.

7. The Company Shed and/or The Butley Orford Oysterage. Sure Australia has a seafood, or perhaps that should be prawn on the barbie, reputation. But really it can’t compete with the range of seafood found in the UK and Europe. Here are the fish that I miss:

Turbot
Sea Bass
Skate (in black butter with capers)
Dover Sole
Monk Fish
Cod and smoked cod
Haddock and smoked haddock
Proper kippers
Wild Salmon or salmon trout
Cockles and winkles
Lobster (as opposed to Cray which has no claws)
Dublin Bay Prawns
Scottish diver caught scallops
Potted shrimps

8. Cook and eat a massive slab of fresh fois gras. We can only get cooked stuff in Australia. Forget the ethics; feed the blog.

9. Drink warm hand pumped real ale with friends (although I’m guessing that they all drink NZ Sauv Blanc nowadays. I’ll sort them out on that one)

10. Cider made from proper cider apple varieties

11. Fresh porcini and other mushrooms.

12. British cheese from Neal’s Yard, some of it quite possibly made with raw milk

13. Eat at a Michelin starred curry house. Sorted.

14. Atelier Joel Rubichon. because it has Joel’s name on it

15. Drink at the French House

16. Go to the Fat Duck. Probably won’t have time and don’t have a booking but we’ll see.

17. Jersey potatoes freshly dug from the ground. Okay, my seasons may be out of whack living in Australia.

18. Borough Market. Just because I know I’ll be drummed out of food blog land if I don’t.

19. Le Café Anglais. o know the reviews have been terrible but I loved Rowley Leigh’s food at Kensington Place.

20. Chase Mr Ishii on interviewing MPW.

21. Trace the origins of Chicken Tikka Masala in Glasgow.

22. Find out where the best balti’s are in the Balti Triangle. Visit and eat.

23. Gordon Ramsay? I’m still try to decide. Perhaps Marcus Wareing.

I’m sure there’s more but I’m jet lagged in Dubai where my access is slow and Flickr is blocked.


Food fascist

– Watch out for the Krispy Kreme Ramadam dozen. Really.
– My column is in the hands of Bob Hart for two weeks now.
– Shun knife winner picked using twitter and to be announced shortly.
– Sticky sand between my fingers and really am wearing the wrong underpants for the prevailing conditions in Dubai.
– Spelling, grammar and typos worse than usual as am on the road and hunched over Macbook Pro that keeps giving electric shocks because of dodgy earthing of plugs here.

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