aventuras de alyssa

We’ve hit the month milestone! Technically yesterday, October 11th, was my full month milestone, but I’m taking you back to last Monday. The week turned into my very own London restaurant week, so I’m going to review everywhere I went!

monday / sketch

My friend from NYC was in town until Wednesday morning so we took advantage and went to sketch. It’s a trendy restaurant in Mayfair that lived up to the decor hype. There are several different rooms and we had dinner in The Gallery, which is the main dining room for afternoon tea and dinner. Their website is honestly terrible to navigate, so if you’re interested to see more about each of the rooms, click here. Sketch is great for the experience, but fair warning, it’s a bit heavy on the pocket. I ordered the beef filet, which was delicious. It did leave me a bit hungry, so if you’re looking for a larger portion, I would go for fish. My friend got the Dover Sole and it was a size-able piece of fish. We ordered dessert – the Saint-Remy-De-Provence raspberry parfait and the homemade macaroons. The parfait was bizarre – I’ve been trying to figure out a way to describe the texture and all I can think of is a freeze-dried wafer? Unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture, but I can’t recommend that you order it. The macaroons were delicious though!

One other note – they have these weird egg shaped bathrooms (middle left!). I’d recommend sketch for the experience and I’m interested to go back for tea and possibly cocktails in the Glade (middle right), but I don’t think you’ll find me back there for dinner!

tuesday / dishoom

It was my friend’s last night and we met up with her friend’s dad, who took us to Dishoom in Kensington. This was my first ever time eating Indian food and I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to try! It was absolutely incredible. We ordered so many things off the menu and it was very reasonably priced. Some of my favorites from what we ordered were: vegetable samosas, okra fries, paneer tikka, chicken berry britannia biryani, the garlic naan, chicken ruby, and chloe puri. So basically everything – the only thing I didn’t eat was the lamb chops because I’m not a fan of lamb. For dessert, we had these mango ice cream pops and they were to die for.

I’m not sure about the other locations, but the Kensington one doesn’t take reservations after 5:45 pm, unless it’s a group of 6 or more. The line outside to wait was an hour long, but thankfully our friend’s dad is a regular there and we were able to sneak past the line 🙂 Honestly, worth it to wait or get there closer to 5:45 pm – we were trying to get in at 7:30 pm. At the end of the day, I will 100% be going back to Dishoom!

wednesday & thursday / home & radio rooftop

Wednesday I stayed in and cooked at my temporary housing, so no fun restaurant to review, but there was an incredible sunset, so I included pictures below!

On Thursday after work, the weather was gorgeous and one of my coworkers wanted to go somewhere “with a view.” I did some googling and found Radio Rooftop, which wasn’t too far from our office. The views were excellent and it was a fun spot for an after work drink. However, the service was incredibly slow, so if you’re going, I’d recommend going for a sunset drink and then heading elsewhere. Something came over us that night though, and we ended up staying well after dark, then going to The Wellington across the street for food, but the kitchen was closed. This week was my unofficial restaurant week, but we consumed zero food all night… I got back to my apartment at midnight and had some leftovers as my “dinner.” Mistakes were made, but it was such a fun night with my coworkers!

friday / the ned

The receptionist at my temporary housing recommended The Ned, which is a collection of six restaurants within a former bank and they all have a different theme. I went to Electric Bar & Kitchen, which is the American restaurant! I got the mozzarella sticks, of course, and the mac & cheese. It reminded me of home! I also tried a new type of wine, Assyrtiko, Voila Vineyard, from Crete. It’s a white wine and I enjoyed it, which I’m happy about because I need to expand my white wine palate – can’t live off of Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand forever.

It’s funny because service at the restaurants I went to this week all varied – it took us forever to flag someone for the check at sketch and Dishoom, but the waiters were attentive during our meals, overall so slow at Radio Rooftop, and then at Electric Bar, they came over almost every 5 mins to refill wine or check in and it was a bit overwhelming! The variation was crazy. However, I definitely want to go back to The Ned and try other restaurants within the bank. They had live music in the center of the bank that was lovely background music throughout dinner.

saturday / orjowan

I had two housewarming parties Saturday night and the first was for one of my coworkers. We decided to make better choices and met up for dinner beforehand at Orjowan, near Earl’s Court. It’s a Lebanese restaurant and it was my first time having Lebanese! We ordered the hummus and tabbouli to start, both of which were very flavorful and for my main dish, I had the Chicken Shawarma that came with salad and rice. The portions were huge and also very reasonably priced! We shared some Lebanese Sauvignon Blanc and I was thankful to have so much good food before a night of festivities. The restaurant did get more crowded after I took the picture below – we had an early dinner at 5:30, hence the emptier place. If you’re near Earl’s Court, Orjowan was a great pick! After the first housewarming in Kensington, I headed over to Dalston for my friend’s party. I took absolutely no pictures from either party, but it was a really fun night filled with good friends!

sunday / the happenstance

In the beginning of this post, I was mostly joking that it was my own little restaurant week and now that I’m down to Sunday, I realized I truly did go out six out of the seven days this week… You only live once!! I didn’t initially have plans to go out to eat, but I had to move out of my temporary housing into my Airbnb (I can’t wait to actually move to my flat… October 20th!!) and I had a few hours to kill between check out and check in. I went shopping but came out empty handed, which was probably good given the week I had. I was walking to another shop around lunch time and truly stumbled upon The Happenstance – ironic given the name! It’s right behind St. Paul’s Cathedral and the bells were chiming while I was sitting outside enjoying lunch. The Happenstance is owned by the same people as the Folly, where I went for brunch in week two. The menus are the same, but the service was a lot better at the Happenstance. I ordered the avocado toast, a mimosa (hair of the dog!), and the halloumi sticks. I think halloumi sticks are basically the British equivalent of mozzarella sticks. Everything was delicious and the decor was stellar!

There was also this adorable art installation right behind the cathedral called Wild Table of Love. It’ll be up until May 2023!

Until next week, friends!