Gelato in London - Black Vanilla, Greenwich

So, continuing my quest for gelato in London, we went to Black Vanilla in Greenwich yesterday.  It was very very good.

I had some apple sorbet that was basically the best apple sorbet that I have ever had and I have eaten a lot of apple sorbet.  It was just such a perfect texture, no iciness at all, just completely smooth.  The lemon meringue ice-cream that I had with it was not quite as nice - for my taste not nearly lemony enough - but perhaps it wasn't a great combination with a nicely sour apple sorbet.

My lovely husband had peanut butter and jam ice-cream which I thought was really interesting - I had kind of expected them to go for making the jam quite sweet and fruity and then have the peanut butter as the salty counterpart but, actually, they went for the peanut butter as quite sweet and the jam as the sour counterpart which was unexpectedly really nice.  I hate peanut butter and jam as a sandwich combination so it was quite impressive that I liked the ice-cream!  He also had the apple pie ice-cream which was also very nice.

Mmmmm.  Definitely going back.

Restaurant review - The Vaults, Cambridge

Much though I love my home town, Cambridge, it has never seemed to have as many good restaurants as it should do.  Or perhaps during my formative years, I just never had the money to eat at them.  Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised recently to have a lovely dinner at The Vaults.

We had the dinner menu which suggests that you have 2-3 dishes each and share.  I had the twice cooked eggs and half of the goats cheese toast and the mushrooms with stilton.  The mushrooms with stilton were delicious - I spent half my time thinking "mmmmm" and half thinking "I must figure out how to replicate this at home" (I have an idea of how to - will post when I try out my idea).  The goats cheese was pretty tasty, though came in rather small portions.  The twice cooked eggs were a good idea but rather underseasoned - I'm not sure they were salted at all and, in my view, eggs really need at least a little salt - so a bit disappointing.  Though, really, I enjoyed the mushrooms so much that I wasn't that disappointed.

In general, the only real quibble I had with the food was that the portion sizes seemed a little arbitrary - the meat dishes that my husband ordered came in much larger portions than the vegetarian dishes.  Fortunately for marital harmony, the mushrooms came in a reasonable portion size so we weren't reduced to the indignity of squabbling over the last bit of stiltony sauce.

I rather wanted some gelato to finish (as previously mentioned, I love gelato) but, sadly, they'd run out of every single flavour.  I attempted instead to order some pomegranate dessert wine but they'd also run out of that.  So, poor me, I ended up with a rather lovely espresso martini to round off the meal.

Despite having had five dishes and bread to share, a glass of wine each, a pudding for my husband and an espresso martini for me, the bill came to around £60 which I thought was damn good value.

Overall:  definitely the nicest meal out I've had in Cambridge.  I will return. 

Places I love in London: Gelupo

So, a while back, I said that I'd write - as the  mood struck me - about my favourite places to eat and drink in London.  Today:  Gelupo.  I love Italian ice-cream.  It was love at first taste.  Italian ice-cream somehow managest to taste more like its flavour than the actual flavour does - Italian lemon sorbet is more lemoney than actual lemons, Italian blood orange sorbet tastes more like oranges than they do..  Above all else, Italian ice-cream tastes like Italy - like sunshine.

I have sampled a lot of Italian ice-cream in London in a quest to find this experience closer to home.  It was a tough job but someone had to do it.  There is a lot of lovely Italian ice-cream in London.  Marine Ices is reliably tasty and has a great range of sorbets, especially.  Gelateria Danielli once served me some truly extraodinary blackberry sorbet.  Cafe Chai, down the road from where I used to work, was a great source of "I've had a bad day, I need some Italian ice-cream" pickmeups (and, again, is particularly good for sorbets - I used to particularly enjoy their pink grapefuit sorbet).

But the winner has to be Gelupo.    The first time I had their blood orange granita, I spent the whole weekend talking about it to everyone I met.  Yes, I was a granita bore. But it actually was that good.  I actually don't usually like granita that much, too icy and not enough fruit, but Gelupo's granitas are amongst the nicest things I have ever eaten.  The sorbets are delicious too - the blood orange one is lovely but so too is the clementine and..  well, basically, they're all good.  And, then, the ice-cream itself - I had the peanut butter ice cream yesterday with a scoop of bitter chocolate and.. well, suffice to say, I just want to talk about it for the rest of the week..