40 pounds a day

So, in honor of the overexposed Rachel Ray, K & I tried to do London on 40 pounds a day. One would think, given the exchange rate that $40 a person for 3 meals & tea wouldn't be that hard, but London is such an expensive city that we were much closer to gaining 40 pounds of fat than we were to keeping our wallets in check.

Our Zoom Airlines flight got in roughly 4 hours late (or right on time, as Zoom fully discloses that all of their departure and arrival times are approximate) so we arrived in London proper by noon, a little wary of mass transit given the recent bombings. We hit the streets from Waterloo station after stowing our baggage. I wanted to head right for fish & chips but K hadn't had any breakfast yet and wanted something resembling coffee and a pastry. We tried to find the nearest cafe (avoiding the 2 Starbucks we passed) and settled on the Charles Dickens Cafe because it accepted Euros and we hadn't gone to a cash machine yet. Big mistake. No iced coffee (which was all K really wanted), uninspiring pastries, and I don't know what sort of fuzzy math they used to convert the Euros, but we got a pound back from a 10 euro note after buying an espresso and juice.

More than a little bit frustrated, we moved on to find what we heard was the best fish & chips joint in London, Rock and Sole Plaice. The take-away menu was very reasonable (at least it would have been if those were dollar signs in front of the numbers) but there was a treat tempting us only on the sit-down menu so we decided it was worth the tripled prices. On one of Alton Brown's Good Eats episodes (Flat is Beautiful III: Flounder), whilst shopping for flat fish at a Georgia Whole Foods, the man himself asserted that if one ever has the opportunity to try Dover Sole, often very very expensive, one simply had to. With this declaration in mind, I had no choice other than to order the market priced (gasp!) Dover Sole, fried whole. I doused it in lemon and malt vinegar and began picking away at it. Great crispy and flavorful fried crust, doing exactly what a fried crust should do, keeping the delicate and buttery Dover Sole moist and tender on the inside. Even K, who is the first admit she doesn't have much of a palette for white fish and even less of one for fried foods found the subtle flavors very complex and satisfying. Since I wanted to nibble on an authentic version of a dish I've tried at home, I asked K to order the Cornish Pasty for herself. That was quite something, too, with the root vegetables tasting rooty, moist and flavorful (as opposed to starchy and dry, that is) and the ground beef very well-seasoned. The pasty's texture itself was as flaky as a puff pastry. Overall, a great fattening meal, which, unfortunately, cost nearly as much as the tasting menu I described in my last post about JLOB.

We headed over to the National Gallery and took in its stunning permanent collection and then meandered over to the National Cafe where we took in a Cream Tea service. A pot of tea, a scone, and a dish full of Jersey clotted cream for roughly $8 American. The tea itself was mediocre, certainly no Mariage Freres, but the raisin scone was quite something; I told K it was all of the pleasure of muffin tops without any of that pesky cakey muffin middle! Said scone was even further improved by the decadent Jersey cream (which, neophyte as I am, I mistook for butter as its color is hued more towards the caramel than the milk end of the spectrum) and divine raspberry preserves (the jar of which seemed to be reduced from a 1-ton vat of raspberries and yes that is a very good thing!). I'm not supposed to say anything about this but someone who happened to be sitting at my table (who certainly couldn't be K!) liked the preserves and cream so much that she actually started eating it by the spoonful whenever she could be sure that the waitress wasn't eyeing her. :)

We decided it was highly inappropriate to follow tea immediately with dinner, but we were on a tight schedule with a chunnel ride to Paris awaiting us at 7:43pm. We killed about 90 minutes wandering around the Leicester Square area, trying to squeeze the clotted cream through our by then surely clotted arteries, and then settled on a noodle-house chain called Wagamama. We were little bit concerned about the time, but our host reminded us that it was technically fast food so it shouldn't take too long. I ordered a delightful and refreshing pressed juice blend with cucumber, pomegranate and apple and layered like a parfait. K and I shared an app and an entree, opting for the deep-fried duck and leek gyoza and the seafood ramen. The duck was tasty though I realized that, with the exception of the occasional pork potsticker at Dumping House in NYC, I tend to prefer my dumplings steamed. That said, it was crispy while staying definitively un-greasy! After the day's delicious fried goods and other fatty indulgences, the main course was so clean and light: a very delicate vegetable broth with healthy-tasting ramen noodles (were they whole wheat?) and generous helpings of grilled shrimp, calamari, and dory. One rarely feels cleansed after a giant bowl of soup but this certainly did the trick!

We miraculously caught the Eurostar and, as first class was in this case cheaper than economy, we were treated to a second dinner, though K preferred to sleep through it and I was too stuffed to eat anything besides the 5 steamed shrimp on a skewer. I did help myself to the free wine though!

Okay, more updates in coming days as we eat our way through Paris.