Slightly Peckish
August 9, 2011
Slightly Peckish: Thai Food at The Churchill Arms Pub (LDN)
One of the surprising things about London is that you can get very good, cheap Thai food in pubs. My friends and I call them Thai pubs, but they’re just normal pubs serving Thai food cooked by Thai chefs instead of the usual pub fare such as roasts and chips.
One of
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July 26, 2011
Slightly Peckish: Totally Tiramisu
When I was but a spring chicken who had just graduated from university, I went on a backpacking trip to Italy with one of my friends. It was hot, we were young and Italy was a marvelous cacaphony of ancient ruins, art & culture and food. From Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum to
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July 12, 2011
Slightly Peckish: Sanuki Udon at Koya (LDN)
We’ve been very lucky. Since last summer, we’ve had a bona fide udon-ya (shop) right here in London. Serving sanuki udon (a type of udon from the Kagawa region of Japan) that is prepared in-house, Koya boasts chefs that trained at the famed Kunitoraya in Paris.
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June 28, 2011
Slightly Peckish: Hainanese Chicken Rice
My sister is married to a wonderful man, whose mother also happens to be an exceptional cook. As a Malaysian diplomat’s wife, the prime minister preferred her cooking to going out to restaurants whenever he rocked into London. She’s that good.
The
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June 14, 2011
Slightly Peckish: Indian Bites at Masala Zone (LDN)
One of the best things about living in a multicultural and cosmopolitan city like London is that if you fancy something to eat, you can be sure to find it (…except for proper ramen, that is). Compared to twenty years ago when British food was often accompanied by the words over-cooked,
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May 24, 2011
Slightly Peckish: Paris in the Footsteps of Hemingway, Serge + Jane
My family and I went on a flying visit to Paris again to rendez-vous with my dad (since he managed not to get his UK visa in time–visa people suck). Last year I gave him a copy of Ernest Hemingway’s memoir of 1920s Paris, A Moveable Feast, which he
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May 11, 2011
Slightly Peckish: Lanka: Japanese Cake Shop + Tea Salon (LDN)
As you may all know, I’m half-Japanese and half-Sri Lankan, so anything to do with either country sparks an immediate interest. So when I began hearing rumours about a new Japanese cake shop and tea salon springing up in trendy Primrose Hill in north London last year, my ears
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April 26, 2011
Slightly Peckish: Mitsukoshi Restaurant (LDN)
In Junichiro Tanizaki’s celebrated novel, The Makioka Sisters (or Sasameyuki (細雪), loosely translated as ‘light snow’ or ‘a flurry of snow’–titles in translations are always so different but I guess it’s as much about nuance as meaning), the four Makioka sisters, Tsuruko, Sachiko, Yukiko and Taeko, all born and bred
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April 12, 2011
Slightly Peckish: Wattalappan (Sri Lankan Coconut Custard Pudding)
You may think that coconut custard pudding sounds quite ordinary or not your thing, but trust me, you haven’t tried one of Sri Lanka’s best-loved desserts. I’m a self-confessed dessert-aholic and one of my favourite sweets is crème caramel (pudding or purin in Japan). Wattalappan (or wattalappam, the spelling seems
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March 29, 2011
Slightly Peckish: Vegetable Shopping, Sri Lankan Style
My parents do their daily and weekly shopping at the vegetable shop just down the road from their house. The thing about South Asian countries is that even though their produce is fresher than fresh, but because of the heat, things go bad very quickly (who wants a bunch of wilted greens?).
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