Wild Food Cafe

Over the New Year holidays I had a day in London. I was staying with friends in Kent for a few days and caught the train in on the 2nd. I had a long list of things I wanted to do, but when I researched them I found many places were still closed for the holidays and so that limited my choices somewhat.

One of the decisions I had to make was where to have lunch. I like trying out new places, but also have a lot of old favourites that I like to have the chance to get back to. The first few places I checked out were closed, so I decided to go to an old haunt, The World Food Cafe in Neal's Yard. This was run by a couple who have travelled the world taking amazing photographs and researching recipes. They have published a couple of beautiful cookbooks combining photos and recipes and also displayed some of their photos on the walls of the cafe. The food was always great and the menu consisted of a range of dishes from around the world.

Yes, I'm talking past tense. The World Food Cafe is no longer and has been replaced by The Wild Food Cafe. It looks the same, except the photos are gone. The concept of the new establishment is to serve food that hasn't been heated to anything above 39 degrees. Most of the food on the menu is served raw although the grains they serve with some meals have been cooked properly before being cooled down. They refer to their way of preparing and serving food as 'sunfood'.

I'd heard of this way of eating before, but can't say it has ever really appealed. However, I'm always up for a new experience and so was happy to give it a go.

I ordered a burger made from mushrooms and I think some kind of sprouts or seeds. It was served with salad, home-made ketchup, mustard and sweet potato wedges (these had been cooked and cooled). Instead of bread it was on a cracker made from seeds and things, all dehydrated and squished together. The cracker was really tasty. The burger was ok but I won't list it amongst my favourites; if anything it was overpowered by the mustard and this spoilt the taste a bit.

I finished lunch with a coffee (hot and normal) and a piece of chocolate with high cocoa solids and made without cooking or heating.

So what's my opinion overall? I quite liked it, but not enough to make it a 'haunt'. It was interesting to try a different type of food and the staff were really friendly and happy to answer questions and explain the products. If I didn't have so many other places that I like to go to in London, then I probably would go back, but as I have alternatives, I probably won't.

Planning

Having plans for fun things to do in the holidays or at weekends is what keeps me going through term time. Especially when I work 14 hour days like today. And know that I'll be late again tomorrow. And even that won't be enough; I'll still be behind with everything I need to do. So the plans are really important.

This week my plans have really been coming together for half term. I'll be going down to London to stay with a friend in Chesham for the first part of the week and then heading round the M25 to Kent to stay with different friends for a few days.

On the Monday I'm going to Wembley to do a tour of the new stadium. We're then heading into town to have a late lunch at Jamie Oliver's Fifteen restaurant. To finish off our day we have tickets for a Night of Adventure at the Vue Cinema in Leicester Square. This is a roll call of people who do interesting, adventurous and intrepid things. They each present a slide show of their 'adventure' but have only 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide to present it. I'm hoping for inspiration.

We also want to go to the Vertigo bar on the 42nd floor of the Nat West Tower. This is the second tallest building in London and the bar is small and surrounded by windows with amazing views. It's expensive so we'll only be having one drink there. I don't know if we'll have time to fit it in on Monday between the restaurant and the show so may have to postpone it till another evening.

For the Tuesday and Wednesday I have my tickets for the Hajj exhibition at the British Museum and the floatation tank. I'll have plenty of time on these days to do other things as well, like visiting some of my favourite shops: Stanford's, the Algerian Coffee Stores, the bookshops on Charing Cross Road ...

As well as plans for this half term, I also have the England game to look forward to in the June half term and Womad in the summer. A few weekends are getting booked up too, with friends coming to stay at the end of the January and a weekend in Nottingham planned so I can go to my first ever ice hockey game with a friend's daughter (she's a bit of an expert and so will be able to explain it all to me).

The 14 hour days don't seem so bad when I think about all of this.

Floatation

I first read about floatation tanks in a newspaper article years ago. Although I read it in the UK the tanks were in New Zealand. Having never been to any sort of spa or having done anything like this before, I loved the idea and resolved to have a go when I got to New Zealand. As I only ended up spending a week in NZ instead of 6 months it didn't happen, and so has been something I've wanted to do now for a really long time. I've since been to other spas and had other treatments, but still not done the floating in a small, dark tank thing. 

I've put it on this list as it will make me look into doing it. Already because it's on the list I've googled tanks in the UK. The best and most feasible one seems to be in London. So I've resolved to do this next time I'm down there. It's £40 for a one hour session which isn't cheap but is affordable for something I really want to do. 

I've just checked out today's Groupon email and there was an offer for clay pigeon shooting which is also something I'd like to have a go at. As it's something I'd like to do with someone and I'm in Germany so can't ring round my friends, I've left it for now. I did wonder about offers in other parts of the country though and so checked out the past offers for London. Lo and behold, there was an offer (now expired) for the very floatation place I'm planning on going to. The offer is for £14 instead of the usual £40. I'll have to keep an eye on the London site and hope the offer comes up again before I go. I don't know if I'd have to book the session straight away (could be a problem if I don't know what date I'll next be in London) or just buy a voucher and worry about the date later. Hopefully it will be the latter.