Easter Weekend: Restaurants, Coffee Shops, Shows and Events

This was the first Easter weekend I was spending in London. We are usually off on holiday but since I am off to St Lucia this coming week we thought it made sense to stay put in London for now. And I must say I love London during Easter! Its empty and not as crowded so you have all the coffee shops to yourself!

Thursday

If you saw our Instagram stories you might know this but I decided to make a booking at this place and take DJ for a surprise dinner. This was the Dum Biryani House. Its a cute place in Soho in the basement and I wanted to try it out and knew I had to take DJ there – biryani is probably one of his favourite things to eat. We ate Andhra prawns which were really good although the portion was tiny. Sadly, I have to say the biryani was just passable.

I would rather recommend trying out Inito – their biryani is probably one of the best I have had in London. A fancy place that does great biryani is Gymkhana – their deer biryani blew my mind. Absolutely fantastic.

Instead of ice cream at our usual place Amarino, we tried our vanilla and chocolate ice cream at Snowflake which we loved. Super creamy, super tasty.

Friday

We spent the whole day at home but since it was Bengali new year DJ decided to make a reservation at a new place that serves Bengali food, Calcutta Street. Although London is obsessed with Indian food, Bengali food is still pretty difficult to find in London. We ordered almost everything on the menu – the prawn, the fish, the lamb, the fried fish, luchi and all the desserts. The lamb which is kosha mangsho, my favourite food in the world was not bad at all but I didn’t like the luchi (bread) – it was too flaky and not really what I expected. The fish which was steamed and wrapped in a banana leaf was also very good. I didn’t like the fried fish – wasn’t special at all. The dessert were really good – especially the mango flavoured mishti doi although I wouldn’t say it was 100% authentic. All in all, it was a really shubho nobo borsho (happy new year)!

We walked all the way to this place which was in West London – I was getting really tired and threw a tiny tantrum on the way glaring at DJ.

The other place I would recommend trying for some really good kosha mangsho is Talli Joe‘s – theirs is definitely spicier than the one in Calcutta Street. However, I haven’t yet been able to make up mind which is better! Maybe I like the Talli Joe one better – I cant decide!

Saturday

We were randomly walking around when we saw a chalkboard announcing a new coffee shop, The Blend. Of course, we trooped in. This place was literally inside a shed and tiny. Its been open for a week or so. Its so new it doesn’t even have it website yet. I mean its not even on Facebook – is it even real? (I did find them on Twitter!) What I noted was its right on my way to work for a coffee pick up whenever I run out of coffee at home or forget to take my own. (They were also really sweet and gave us free coffee since we didn’t have cash – I promise we did end up paying them back later!)

The Blend

The other coffee shop nearby that I really love is Gentleman Baristas. Its the best coffee I have had in London. Seriously – try it. The only pain with this place is trying to get to it in the tiny sliver that its open – it closes about 4 pm so we always end up too late. We also tried Ozone Roasters near Old Street which I really liked – the actual place just has the best vibe!

We walked around and had lunch at the Southbank food market and walked back home.

Sunday

We finished off the Riverdale binge we were on. Its a fun, fast, easy to watch show but a warning: if you are overly sentimental about your Archies comics you might want to skip this one. Once we were done we went to see the circus. Yes, you read that right. It was such a fun experience – I hope you caught our Instagram stories. If not, make sure you follow along!

Monday

I had seen this place walking around and had made a mental note. It looked really lovely with a outside eating space surrounded by plants. So we landed up in Smokehouse for lunch on Monday with friends. The menu is not extensive but from what I heard around the table almost everything was great! I had the salmon with Thai salad which was really really good. I did think the portion was a little small but no one else around the table seemed to think that so maybe I am just a little greedy.

I skipped dessert at the restaurant and picked up coffee from a Swedish coffee shop called Kobo on Upper Street (you may have caught a glimpse on Instagram stories). We tried something called Swedish coffee which was an interesting mix of butter, intense and sweet. What caught my eye about the place was that their coffee cups are 100% compostable – which is amazing. Ok, I agree it doesn’t sound impressive but do you know most coffee cups (think Pret, Starbucks etc) actually cannot be recycled? The cups although made of paper have a plastic lining which makes it quite difficult to recycle so I liked the coffee cups Kobo has opted for. (Sorry about the lecture but please just take your own coffee flask – saves so much waste!)

We also picked up cupcake from Hummingbird Bakery – have you tried it? It was quite the perfect end to a perfect weekend.

If you have you been following us on Instagram you know we have started start out our new collection for Zari! We still have a few from our previous collection in case you have a fancy wedding to go to this summer! And make sure subscribe to our email below. I promise I am almost getting the newsletter organised.

– Anisha