REVIEW: Zima Russian Street Food and Bar

Sammii here!

So update on my life.. 

I have finished my exams recently, so these two weeks have involved me catching up with people I haven't seen since I declared myself a hermit during exam season. 

On Sunday I met up with my cousin and usually we like to eat some place cheap and easy but on odd days I say we have to venture out and go some place random. We were wandering around Soho and stumbled across Zima, a Russian restaurant. We both have never tried Russian food before so we decided to give it a go! It's always interesting to try food from different countries. 

The waitress explained to us that it was a tapas style menu where people would usually order 2/3 plates each to share together. So me n my cuz got ordering and ordered 4 plates together to share. 

'Pelmeni'- Beef and Venison Dumplings- Cep consomme, sour cream sauce (£9)

Dumplings! :D Is it me or you just can't go wrong with dumplings? These were like the Chinese ones, but not as nice.. though I am slightly biased :P 

The dumplings were filled with some soup and a dry piece of meat on the inside, the sour cream dipping sauce really went nicely with the dumplings. Yuuuum. 

Don Uka Fish Soup- Fish stock, chicken stock, salmon, cod, potatoes, roasted cherry tomatoes (£6.50)

The soup we ordered came with a side of dense bread. the soup was very fishy and it was quite light, nice for an autumn day. 

Short Rib Beef Stroganoff- ceps, sauteed new potatoes (£10.90)

 This was my favourite dish that we ordered, the beef was fall-off-the-fork soft, the sauce was slightly mustardy and the potatoes well roasted. 

Slow Cooked Lamb Tongue- Buckwheat, oyster mushrooms, horseradish and garlic tomato sauce (£8.50)

This was an interesting one for me, my cousin loves ordering dishes with animal insides i've noticed! Haha. I thought that the tongue was quite hard and the taste- like gut, I wasn't too keen on the tongue. The buckwheat had a pickled flavour and was soft. 

And seeing as we were doing all things Russian today, we washed down our meal with a vodka apple cocktail, it was a summer specials cocktail priced at £5. They had an extensive list of vodkas on the drinks menu, which I am very keen to try some more of :) Fun fact: Sammii's drink of choice- VODKA :D (not including tea of course!)

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed my first Russian foodie experience- especially the stroganoff and vodka :))

Atmosphere- 8/10

Service- 8/10

Food- 7/10

Chocolate Sushi Rating- 7/10

Galvin at Windows Review

Sammii here! So last weekend was my annual fancy dinner meal with my girls from back home in Manchester, we like to gather together yearly just to celebrate in style all our achievements and milestones that we've made in the year. For me I would say the biggest one is that I've got into Uni and knowing for the first time ever what I want to do with my career. For anyone still on that path thinking, 'hey I have noooo clue what I wanna do', it really does take time and just throwing yourself out there trying different things. Everyone reaches points in their lives at different times, so don't put pressure on yourself if you haven't found what you want to do yet :)

Soooo anyway enough with the life talk :] We went to Galvin at Windows for this years fancy meal. We wanted somewhere with a view and we cut it down to this place or a restaurant at the Gherkin, we went for Galvins as I was told that the Gherkin's food isn't all that, and seeing as all three of us were big foodies, a place without decent food was a no go!

Galvin at Windows is on the 28th floor of the Hilton on Park Lane, it offered 270 degrees panoramic views of London. Unfortunately we were not sat at a window seat- we learnt for next time to request for one! We had a reservation at 7pm, and when we reached there it was still light outside and when we left it was dark out, so we caught the sunset which was laaavly. Great time to go on a date. 

So the olives and the bread came out first, we were asked if we wanted olives and we said ok. Is it me or whenever I go to a fancy restaurant I'm not sure when they ask if you want something, is that thing on the house or not? lol! But it turns out the olives were not on the house and cost £6. Bread and butter came out too which tasted fresh. 

This was apparently the amuse bouche which is eaten to cleanse your tasting palette before the dishes come out. It was lovely indeed to start off our meal, though I wasn't sure what it was as the waiter talked very quickly and in a strong accent xD 

For a fancy meal I always go for a cocktail, they had a very extensive list, so I had to ask the waitress what she recommended which was sweet, she said that this one was good, it was a whiskey based cocktail, which was barely sweet at all and quite strong! XD I had problems finishing it and only drank a third of it. The biscuit thing on top was very nice though. 

For our meal we opted to go for the 3 courses for £79, there was a tasting menu as well which was pricier. 

Orkney Scallop Ceviche, Soy Vinaigrette, Pickled Ginger & LIme

 I really enjoyed my scallop dish, I thought that the vinaigrette went so well with the tangy lime and coated the scallops. It really made the taste of the scallops pop and the flavour really complimented each other. 

 Our table of starters, the starters were good all around, bring on the next course! But first let us take a minute to appreciate this beaut view!

 It was relatively empty when we got there at 7, but it got much more busy at 8 when there were groups of people that came in and sat blocking the view you see here, they even requested the blinds to be drawn down T__T, you can tell a regular fancy diner to one that doesn't get this sort of view often. No way would I want anyone to put down the blinds on this view here if I were sat by the window. What travesty?!

Seared Fillet of Brill, Cauliflower puree, Orange Glazed Endive, Pine Nuts and Curry Oil. 

 We were told that Brill is the known dish of the Hilton and seeing as I've never tried this fish before I thought I'd go for this dish. The fish was cooked to perfection, it was very light and I loved the orange glaze and pine nuts that went with it, the textures and again the flavours came together beautifully. The cauliflower puree, I didn't even think tasted like cauliflower which was good cause i'm not a big fan of cauliflower. Thumbs up for this dish! 

I had a hard time choosing a desert but in the end i went for a souffle as I only ever had one one time before and I love the look of the spongy cake rising over the top of the pot. 

Mango and Passionfruit Souffle & Coconut Ice Cream

 Doesn't the pillowiness of it just make you so happy? :D So the thing with souffles is that I have only tried one once and I have a thought in my head of what it will taste like, this mango souffle did not taste what I thought a souffle would taste like, but apparently they are meant to taste a bit moist inside and not like a soft chiffon cake. The top was the best bit as it still had a little bit of a shell on the outside, after that it all tasted like moose. 

 The size of the souffle, I thought, was very big in comparison to the rest of the courses that came out, I felt like it was the size of the starter and the main put together and more! I couldn't finish it xD It was disappointing, but this may be because it didn't fit my expectations of what souffle were meant to taste like. Lesson- never going to order souffle again!

 They put postcards on our table and said that they can post them for us, so we each wrote a post card to the person on our right and got them to post it for us. It was a nice little touch.

At the end of our meal we were also given a pot of marshmallows for the table, which you can see peaking out of the receipt in the picture below. I wasn't keen on the marshmallows, they were very wet. 

All in all Galvin at Windows was a lovely place for a dinner, the scenery- gorgeous, the staff-very polite, the food- amazing (though it was let down by the desert). I would defo come here again, but let us see what fancy restaurant next year will take us. Cheers to another year of successes! :)

Atmosphere- 10/10

Service- 9/10

Food- 9/10

Chocolate Sushi Rating- 9/10

Banging Biang Biang Noodles at Xi'an Impression

Another day, another day of food :D Sammii here, I must apologise again as I actually went to this place a year ago, but the case of the lazy blogger got the better of me. This restaurant is located just opposite the Arsenal stadium. When I saw a picture of the thick biang biang noodles I just had to go! There's nothing better than freshly made thick noodles. Just thinking about the noodles now over a year later is making me relive the moment I was slurping on them noodles. ahhh.. sorry.. Getting carried away again. 

So this restaurant is pretty small in that it only seats around 20 people, it was pretty packed out when my friend and I got there for dinner on a weekday. 

First up we ordered...

Boneless Chicken in Vinegar Sauce £6.50

This dish was sooo good! The sauce was really what made this dish, and even my friend asked the waiter after we had finished our meal if she could buy a bottle of this sauce, unfortuately the sauce was not for sale. We were dipping all the other dishes in this sauce it was that good! The dish was quite spicy and the chicken was a good texture. I would recommend this dish!

Xi'an Beef Burger With Special Sauce £3.80

This burger was quite nice although it was quite stodgey and I would have preferred it to be more hot when it came out- I wouldn't get this again. 

Xi'an Rice Noodle in Traditional Sauce £5.8

This was a cold dish, which was very refreshing with all of the other spicy hot dishes we had ordered, although this was spicy as well, it felt like a cold salad spicy salad. Have you noticed they haven't been very specific with the 'sauce' they have on their dishes? It is key! And must be a very secret recipe.. *drools*

Ok now time for the show stopper (which is not dessert this time!)

Xi'an Biangbiang Noodles in Special Chilli Sauce With Chunky Beef £10.80

This was highly recommended on their menu, and I can totally see why! The noodles were hand pulled in store and the were such a type of chewy slurpy goodness, the type that sends you slurping away to the other end of the noodles which ends with the place (or man ;) ) of your dreams. The noodles were very filling, and we didn't actually need to order all the dishes that we had.

I loved my trip to Xi'an Impression, their food is perfect for a cold day. The noodles were totally to die for!

Atmosphere- 5/10

Service- 5/10

Food- 9/10

Chocolate Sushi Rating- 8/10

Pretty Matcha Dessert at Oliver Maki, Soho.

Hello Sammii here! Sorry everyone, we have had a case of the lazy blogger and have not posted for a while, not to say we haven't been eating or taking pics of food, cause the foodie within us will not let that stop! Haha. The place I am going to blog about today, I actually went to it with a friend over a year ago and just never got round to blogging about it. 

This place I ventured to is in the heart of Soho. The place: Oliver Maki. 

The reason why I wanted to come here is because of their dessert ha ha and you will see why later :)

I went on a rainy day, the interior of the place is very dark, and dimly lit, I was taken to the upstairs seating area, the place is quite small, and the tables quite close together. 

Here is what we ordered:

Filo Shrimp Tempura Shots £13

The look of this coming out would excite you enough, but I would say that this looked a lot better than it tasted, I don't remember anything special about this and I didn't get the side plate of the little plum (can't remember what exactly it was- sorry XD) 

 Ebi Choco Maki £12

Another fabulous looking dish, and just look at the name! In other words this is chocolate sushi! Haha I had to try this out for the name alone! You could barely taste the chocolate on the dish, and I felt as though the dish was trying to be too trendy, which had consequences on the taste. I also thought that the outer sheet was much too tough. 

Ebi Choco Maki did not do our Chocolate Sushi name any justice. Let's just stick to having the two foods seperate shall we? ;D

Ok so now, the DESSERT! :) And the reason why I wanted to come in here in the first place, just to take a snap of this beaut! 

Terrarium Matcha Tiramisu £8

 You can see why I wanted to come here now, just look at how pretty the dessert looks! and even better that it's matcha! The rocks on the surface were made from milk chocolate. The tiramisu was very soft and had a hint of matcha taste and not much else, which made it quite bland. 

All in all, I would say that Oliver Maki is great for taking pictures of the food- you will get alot of instagram-able pictures here, but for quality of food it doesn't do it for me. Plus with the relatively high price tag, you would expect the taste to be on point!

The best part of the meal was actually that they gave us a free umbrella when we left, one of those long sturdy ones!

Atmosphere- 8/10

Service- 8/10

Food- 4/10

Chocolate Sushi Rating- 5/10

Foodie day in Southall

Hey guys, Nabs here! Recently, Sammi and I took a bus (well 3 buses) down to West London to spend a day in Southall. In total the journey took us around 2 hours but we didn't mind. I love bus journeys and definitely prefer the bus to the tube/train.
(Warning: This may turn out to be a long post as we ate a lot that day, I mean a LOT...)

This was the first time visiting Southall for the both of us and honestly, as soon we got off the bus I felt at home. There were food stalls left right and centre. Being the foodies that we are we literally went into the first food shop that we saw. Inside was an array of sweets and savoury snacks. As we had seen a jalebi stand right outside the shop and were planning to buy from there afterwards we decided to go straight for the savoury snacks. The selection to choose from was so big we spend a good few minutes there just trying to decide what to buy. They had the usual samosas and pakoras (deep fried snack, usually with potatoes inside) but with additional snacks that I hadn't really seen in any of the shops near home. They had bread pakoras (which I still need to try!), paneer pakoras, as well as deep fried chillies. We finally decided on a samosa each as well as a paneer pakora for me. [The samosa was 60p each and the paneer pakora was £1]

As I mentioned, outside was a jalebi stand selling fresh hot jalebi. (I love these stands as there is definitely a difference between fresh jalebi made there and then compared to jalebi that was made a couple of hours back. It's so crispy and hot).  It was Sammi's first time trying jalebi and I honestly couldn't wait for her to try one as Jalebi are delicious and definitely one of my favourite indian sweets. I'll let Sammi tell you what she thought of them :) [We bought £1 worth of Jalebi]

Sammi: I absolutely loved the jalebi! I totally wasn't expecting the taste nor the texture of what I ate! I was expecting more of a hard candy with the sweetness of the type in a flavoured sweet, but when I bit into the jalebi... oh boy!!! I went to heaven! It was very crispy and hollow inside and the sugar coating was sticky and syrup like! I loved it! I was secretly so pleased when Nabs said I could take the whole lot home with me :P Nabs also told me that it's a great accompliment with tea.. So guess what I did when I got back home with them?? HAD THEM WITH TEA :D 

We couldn't wait to try the snacks and despite the rain we stood on the corner of one of the roads to devour them. The samosas were so fresh, but the paneer pakora was definitely my favourite! I absolutely love paneer and when it is deep fried, even better! The pakora had a slice of paneer in the middle of the batter and the taste reminded me of a filet-o-fish burger. 

The high street was full of stalls selling samosas, pakoras, chaats! I don't think more than 5 minutes had passed after eating our snacks when we noticed one of these stalls and decided to try something else.

We decided to try another vegetable samosa each (you can never eat too many samosas!). We also bought a Aloo Tikki (Potato Fritter) [Samosa was 50p each and Aloo Tiki was 50p each]

Sammii taking over here! We definately ate our way down Southall! I was loving it. There was a shopping centre on the main street that had different stalls inside it so we went inside to have a look. They had clothes and accessories stalls mostly, at very decent prices! They had earrings going for £1 which Nabs bought 2 pairs, I was very tempted to get a pair myself! There were small cafe's in the shopping centre too. 

When we finished browsing the shopping centre we ventured down the rest of the road and saw fruit stalls (which were much cheaper than what you get in Tesco!) If I didn't have to lug the fruit back home to central London, I would have definately got myself a basket full of fruit! We walked passed more Indian sweet shops and smaller restaurants. There is so much in Southall that we already talking about when our next trip would be! 

Ok what did we do next? 

More food of course! :) 

We were browsing online and found a restaurant which we wanted to try out, it wasn't in central Southall so we took a 20 minute bus ride out to it. The restaurant is called Raunka Punjab Diyan. Even though we had been eating the whole day we couldn't wait to try out this place! 

Inside was beautifully decorated, the walls were painted with out door rural scenery. 

It had a large choice of items on the menu. One of the reasons why we choose this restaurant was because it sold Gol Gappa so of course that was one of the dishes we choose. 

Sev Puri £3.75

(Pooris, potatoes, chickpeas, tamarind chutney & masala water)

These were sooooo delicious, I really enjoyed the fillings and the toppings! This was my favourite from what we ordered- it was nice and crispy with a burst of different complimenting flavours. 

Samosa Chaat £3.75

Samosa with yoghurt, mint, tamarind sauce, diced onions and chickpeas. 

This was equally delicious, I loved that the samosa was warm under all that yoghurt!

Garlic Naan £2.25

This was made fresh and it very light, thin and slightly crispy- different to the usual fat naans that you normally get. 

There were a selection of curries that you could choose from that were priced at £6.9. 

Hot Gulab Jamun with Vanilla Ice-Cream £3.75
I looooved this dessert! Something about hot and cold desserts I can't resist! The gulab jaun was like a syrupy soaked cake. It was the perfect end to the meal. And that's not even it, when we asked for the bill, the waitress bought over a little basket of sweets, there tasted like little pieces of sugar, I loved the way they were presented- very cute.

So that was the end to our day exploring Southall, we really enjoyed it and Nabs said she would even want to move there! Haha. We defo will be back, bring back full stomachs :)