foodie

Afternoon Tea at Fortnum & Mason in London

January 10, 2020 By Kat

I got to spend my birthday in London on our honeymoon, and the ONE thing I wanted to do was have Afternoon High Tea at the famed Fortnum & Mason.

If you aren’t familiar, Fortnum & Mason is the Queen’s favorite grocer – it’s an upscale grocery / department store with fancy teas, cookies, and many other beautiful things. You walk in and want it all!

They are a couple of locations in London, but their 300-year-old flagship store in Picadilly is where the magic is.

On the top floor is The Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon, where they serve their afternoon tea complete with cakes, sandwiches, scones, and of course, tea!

Make a Reservation

First of all, to get in, you need to make a reservation. As soon as you know you’ll be in London and want to go, you should book a table. It was all full when we checked, and I was so sad! But luckily a couple spots opened up that morning when they opened for business. We immediately snagged one of those tables using OpenTable. Score!

The Store

When you arrive at the store, wow, it is a sight to see! It looks majestic even from the outside. Since it was near Christmastime when we went, it was also beautifully decorated for the holiday season.

Since the tea salon is on the top floor, you go up these red carpeted staircases from one amazing floor to another until you get to the top.

The Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon

Once you arrive to the salon, you walk into this big open space with comfortable seating in the waiting area and a counter to check in. You feel like a VIP walking in here!

We waited for our table to be ready and then got graciously seated with menus. The service is impeccable and all the staff is so polite.

So excited!

From the menu, you can choose different sets: Afternoon Tea, Savory Afternoon Tea, Vegetarian, or High Tea. I chose the classic Afternoon Tea, which comes with the all the below items.

If you come with someone, I recommend one person getting Afternoon Tea and the other person getting Savory so that you can try each other’s. The food and tea are unlimited!

Next you choose a tea flavor from their extensive menu. I’ve never seen so many tea options in my life!

They have all different types of teas (black or green) and special blends that are named after royal occasions like the Queen’s Jubilee or Prince William and Kate Middleton’s Royal Wedding!

My tea arrives! They pour it into this silver tea strainer that looks like it has fish fins, and it catches all the loose tea leaves. Then you put it into the container on the left and enjoy your tea.

It looks like ordinary tea but boy, it tastes so delicate and rich.

Then our food came. It’s hard to see the other person with the 3-tier cake stands on the table, ha!

This is the top layer of tiny cakes. They were so delicately made and very rich, but not too sweet. Each was better than the next!

Middle tier. The scones. One is plain and one has fruit in it. Very dense and filling. There are different spreads and jam you can eat with them. The clotted cream was amazing!

Sandwiches – my favorite part! They were so good. We asked for refills on these!

Vince’s savory tea set came with this egg thing called “Oeuf Drumkilbo” with lobster in it. It was impeccable. Got seconds of this too.

Pretty soon, I was feeling incredibly full. From tiny sandwiches, how is that possible??

With Vince’s savory tea option, you can also choose a slice of cake from the cart afterwards. We couldn’t even imagine eating anymore, so we packed it home.

They pack it for you in this beautiful to-go box. It’s like a gift!

Okay also the bathroom is really nice! They have this pomegranate rose hand soap that smells magnificent. You can conveniently buy it downstairs from their store, but sadly it was closed by the time we were done eating.

So that was our high tea experience in London! It did not disappoint! Lots of people were celebrating their birthdays there too and the waiters would go around singing for them.

His first time having afternoon tea. I think he liked it!

Later in our trip, we visited the Fortnum & Mason store at St. Pancras and bought some gifts to take home like shortbread and tea bags. We ended up getting this assorted set of 120 tea bags, so we could take a little bit of London home with us! 😉

If you enjoyed this foodie blogpost, here are related ones:
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Revolving Sushi Bar
Driftwood Deli for Sandwiches
Thursdays at Buffalo Wild Wings
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Meatball Mondays at Bucca di Beppo

March 17, 2019 By Kat

I love a good deal, so when I was driving in downtown Palo Alto one night, I saw a sign outside Bucca di Beppo (the Italian restaurant), which caught my eye.

It said Meatball Mondays – 50% off spaghetti and meatballs!! I made a mental note. A couple weeks later, when Vince and I were hungry on a Monday night with no dinner prepped, I said, “HEY! It’s Monday! Let’s go to Bucca di Beppo for Meatball Monday!” He loves Italian food, so he was down.

We drove there, parked in the downtown Palo Alto Ramona Street garage, and saw this tasty meatball truck parked there too. Made us even more excited to head to dinner.

Apparently they have a Sunday night special too!

Unique decor inside.. how to describe it…cozy?
I never understand the photos on the walls..

If you’ve never been to Bucca di Beppo, the restaurant is family-style Italian food. You can order the typical salad, pizza, pasta, appetizers, etc.. from the menu, but all portions come in family sizes – small (feeding 3 people) or large (feeding 5 people). No portions are individual sized.

Ok so we ordered the spaghetti and meatballs! You would think we would’ve ordered the small size, per the recommended portion sizing. However, Vince adamantly wanted the large family size – which is for 5 people!! and we are 2 people!!! Sigh. Why?! But we did so anyways.

Free bread and butter!! Yes please! I’ll happily fill up on that.

Hungrily waiting for our food.
Eyeing the empty table next to us where they left meatballs! So tempting.

Finally our LARGE family size of spaghetti and meatballs came! And boy, was it large.

Here’s his hand next to it for comparison.

After I had about 2 servings onto my small plate, I was already full. By the way, I couldn’t even eat a whole meatball. They’re ENORMOUS!!! Maybe it was because I was still chomping on the free bread through dinner. I can’t help myself.

P.S. to Bucca di Beppo if you’re reading this, Vince’s chef commentary is that the dish should come with 5 meatballs if the dish is meant to serve 5 people. Otherwise people would have to split meatballs…

Okay he finally gave up. This is how much was left. He did an admirable job.

Leftovers for many days to come…

Alright, that’s a wrap on our experience at Bucca di Beppo for Meatball Mondays! Next time, we need to bring a larger group. Plus I would probably like to order some other dishes next time. Eating plain spaghetti and meatballs can get a tad boring. Definitely add a generous sprinkling of red pepper flakes to add flavor. I think I actually prefer spaghetti with bolognese sauce instead of spaghetti and meatballs – spreads out the meat to pasta ratio better. 🙂

Okay if you try this out, let me know how it goes! Happy eating!

No more meatballs for us for awhile.

New Favorite Sandwich Place in Palo Alto – Driftwood Deli

February 18, 2019 By Kat

Apparently this place has been around for a long time, but this was our first time trying it! Their sandwiches are really good! It’s a bit hard to notice, but it’s next to the Creekside Inn on El Camino Real in Palo Alto, CA. Read on for a peek inside and to see what we ordered.

This is what you see when you walk in.

The staff is very friendly! And very patient while you try to choose among the many, many sandwich options lol. How to choose?!?

They said their most popular sandwiches are: #16 California Club, #29 Heaven on Earth, #23 Kevin’s, and #18 Turkey Pesto. They also do half sandwiches if you want to try different kinds.

Your meal’s not complete without a satisfying bag of chips! And boy, do they have chip options. Again, a very difficult decision lol.

Or if you have multiple people, you can opt for the bigger bags of chips and split it, which is what we decided to do.

If you need a drink or candy bar, they’ve got you covered.

After you’ve got all your food, you can sit at their cute little tables inside or outside. This guy had to get 2 sandwiches…

Ok here are the close up Instagram shots of the sandwiches you’ve been waiting for:

All of them were really good!!! My favorite was “The Customer’s Favorite!” That’s literally the name of it. They used to have it as the daily special, for a really long time (several months), and then they took it away, and customers kept asking for it, so they brought it back! It’s so good!!! *drool*

Other people in the community also agree that these sandwiches are the bomb.

We were SO stuffed from 3 sandwiches. I recommend going with 1 sandwich for each person, haha. Before I forget, they also have a cute coffee bar if you want that type of drink!

By the way, that’s Roberto in the picture. He’s a nice guy. Say hi to him if you see him there. He’s worked at the deli for 19 years! The owner of the shop is Steve, and he’s also around and friendly to talk to as well. Steve is in the video on the Yelp business page, which I watched before we walked in, so I recognized him, haha.

Anyways, back to the coffee bar. Here’s the menu of drinks available. And yes, they have ice cream too! From Dreyer’s.

Not done yet! They have breakfast sandwiches and salads too. I believe they have gluten-free options for bread as well. So there you go, they have everything!

This place has got a homey small-town feel to it, where they recognize the frequent customers by name. I like those types of places in the community. Sadly, they’re becoming rarer and rarer. So if you’re in the Palo Alto area near El Camino, stop by this place to support a small business!

Before we even finished our food, Vince said, “Let’s come back 38 more times!” Because we have 38 more specials on their board to try. LOL wow.

Interactive Sushi Experience at Kura Revolving Sushi Bar

January 20, 2019 By Kat

I had the chance to eat dinner at Kura Revolving Sushi Bar in Pleasanton with some friends, and it was so fun, I had to blog about it!

By the way, this is located near the Livermore Outlets by the way, if you’re in the area for some shopping, and still have money leftover. 😛

Eating at Kura Revolving Sushi Bar was an interactive experience, almost a game, and I loved it. Here are the basic instructions of how it works. Once you sit at the table, you can order items from a menu on a tablet at the end of table.

Then things start magically coming down the conveyer belt! You pick them up and enjoy your tasty food. They have so many menu items from sushi and hand rolls, to ramen!

The food comes in these little containers that pop open and you grab your plate.

Here are some snapshots of the food! I got a California roll of course. I know I’m so American.

So many choices on the menu!

I think the most thrilling part was ordering things from the tablet and eagerly anticipating them to come down the conveyer belt. Sometimes it’s a little too easy to order and you get carried away with too many orders in the queue!

Also because they’re geniuses, the restaurant also gamified the ordering/eating process. I believe the game part was called Bikkura-Pon. Every time you finish a plate, you discard it into a plate drop at the end of the table. The tablet keeps a count of how many plates you’ve put in there (so it can tally up the price of your meal – a set price multiplied by # of plates). BUT you also get rewarded the more plates you put in there.

After like 10 plates or so, there’s a fun little cartoon animation that plays on the tablet screen. And after 15 plates or so, there’s a little prize thing that drops from above. That was exciting! It was like automated, so it seemed like magic! And of course, it made us want to EAT MORE – in increments of 15 plates to be exact!

I captured a little video of it here: Bikkura-Pon Game Kura Sushi Bar

The prize that came out!

The anticipation…

A food keychain of a creamy tart..meh it’s alright. I don’t know who ended up keeping it. But the process was more fun than the end result. Ha!

Anyhow, we had a great time eating here! I would love to come back. Note that the line is really long, but I think they have an app where you can “get in line.”

And after you’re so bursting full, you can head several doors down to 85C Bakery for some dessert!!

Thursdays at Buffalo Wild Wings: Boneless Wings Deal

June 24, 2018 By Kat

What an oxymoron. Boneless wings. Regardless, it’s basically like chunks of fried chicken. Who can say no to fried chicken?

The price can be different based on the locations. When we went earlier this week (Thursday night) to the San Jose location, it was 70 cents a wing, and we ordered FIFTY wings for 3 people. Needless to say, we had so much leftover… They said it was because I didn’t do my part. But I didn’t feel the need to order FIFTY in the first place! We also got an appetizer sampler platter and fries. Oy, so much food! 😮

Here’s the official BBW website for Boneless Thursdays which I quote from them is “the greatest day of all time.” And here’s the list of locations. It’d be best to check that the location nearest you offers this deal.

It’s not the first time we’ve went to BWW, so here are pics from other trips, where we also over-ordered. Sometimes I try to eat salad. Trying to maintain some amount of health, here! 😛

P.S. The lemon pepper flavor tastes better on wings with the bone, not so good on the boneless wings.

Hope you enjoyed this tip!