What to do This Weekend: 13th – 15th October
The evenings may be drawing in, the leaves are changing colour, but there’s so much going on in London that we’ve no time to mourn, let’s instead go and stuff our faces with chocolate at The Chocolate Show, or swig rum at RumFest or beer at Heist Bank Beer Festival. It’s Diwali too, there’s afternoon tea at The Roof Gardens, there really is something for everyone!
The Roof Gardens and Babylon
Afternoon tea at The Roof Gardens
When is afternoon tea in an English country garden not afternoon tea in an English country garden? When it’s afternoon tea up one of the tallest buildings in Kensington. The Roof Gardens is the quintessential country garden, with manicured lawns and walled recesses. Over summer they’ve been holding regular sell-out afternoon teas and and this Saturday marks the end of the series for 2017. Taking place in the cosy Tudor marquee, go and indulge in a traditional assortment of sandwiches, golden scones and cakes, all accompanied by specially selected teas and coffees and a glass of bubbles!
Saturday 14th October
Where: 6th and 7th Floor, 99 Kensington High Street, Kensington, London, W8 5SA, United Kingdom
Website: www.virginlimitededition.com/the-roof-gardens
Aesop London
Aesop's dinner series continues
If you thought that skin, hair and body care formulators Aesop only cared about your outsides, you’d be wrong, they are also looking out for your stomach! Aesop’s series of Richmond dinners continues with chef William Gleave this weekend. Gleave honed his skills initially at Garagistes in Hobart, Australia before arriving on our shores where he built quite a reputation at P. Franco in Clapton and most recently at 40 Maltby Street in Bermondsey. His sampling menu will include a starter of garden vegetables and fresh cheese, Charentais melon and cured pork Cornish crab or almond milk wheaten bread and whey butter followed by a choice of mains featuring scorched mackerel, elderflower and tomato, young peas, Scottish girolles and anise hyssop or roast saddleback, onions, white currants and black currant leaf and a pudding offering of lemon verbena, mulberries and cultured cream or warm chocolate tart and sour cherries. All washed down with carefully paired wines.
Saturday 15th October
Where: 19 King Street, Richmond, TW9 1ND
Website: www.aesop.com
Hutong
It's Mid-Autumn at Hutong
It’s the Chinese Mid-Autumn festival and what better way to celebrate the shortening evenings and changing trees than by staying very much indoors and, ideally, at Northern Chinese restaurant Hutong. After all, when you’re half way up The Shard you don’t really mind that it’s overcast and drizzly, because the view is so great. And so is the food. The Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival, is the second biggest Chinese celebration after New Year and Fei Wang, Hutong’s new head chef and Sichuan expert, has created a chilli-based set-menu using ingredients traditionally served during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Dishes include Red lantern crispy soft-shell crab with Sichuan dried chilli (crab is lucky in China), whole crispy sea bass with pickled chilli sauce, cuttlefish and enoki mushroom, white sesame and chilli oil, beef-tenderloin with dried chilli in spicy chilli broth, Hutong’s spicy fried rice with prawns, fennel seeds and chilli oil and chilled string beans with Sichuan ginger sauce. Sounds like the perfect way to celebrate to us!
Saturday 14th October then every Saturday
Where: Level 33, The Shard, 31 St Thomas Street, London, SE1 9RY, United Kingdom
Website: www.hutong.co.uk
Red Roast
Bottomless Bordeaux? Cheers!
If you didn’t think a roast dinner could get any better, you obviously hadn’t thought of adding in bottomless red wine. Thankfully Butler’s Wharf Chophouse, Paternoster Chophouse, Skylon and New Street Grill already did. Launching Red Roast this month the four venues will be offering their fantastic meaty wares along with unlimited Bordeaux wines specially selected by the restaurants. If you’re looking for something to do this weekend we can’t think of a more productive use of your time than a roast Aberdeen-cross sirloin and braised Welsh lamb shoulder served with all the trimmings and lashings of gravy at Butler’s Wharf or Paternoster Chophouse. Or an afternoon gazing over the river while savouring Hereford sirloin of beef with roast potatoes and seasonal vegetables at Skylon. Or how about a tender rack of Welsh lamb and roast free range chicken for two down at New Street Grill? All with no end of Bordeaux.
Every weekend in October
UK RumFest
Rum Festival
There’s nothing rum about this one, UK RumFest markets itself as the world’s premier rum festival and given London is the epicentre of the global cocktail culture it’s quite possibly right. Buy a ticket to the event and choose from over 400 different rums from around the world, from major producers like Jamaica to little known corners of of the rum world like the tiny Japanese island of Minamidaito. As well as seminars on all things rum, festival-goers will have the chance to drink in the world’s largest Tiki bar! The Tiki-head bar, the creation of Plantation Rum will showcase the brand’s pineapple rums, while Fever Tree’s Highball Bar will give us all a lesson in the best mixers to enjoy with rum. Yo ho ho and a bottle of finest overproof for us, please.
Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th October
Where: ILEC Conference Centre, 47 Lillie Road, Earl's Court, SW6 1UD
Website: http://rumfest.co.uk
The Chocolate Show
So much chocolate!
Chocolate is, objectively, the best thing in the whole world. So an event where this brown miracle food is front and centre-stage is music to our gluttonous ears. The Chocolate Show is back for the fifth year running and will see over 20,000 chocolate fans file into Olympia to celebrate its existence. As well as every chocolate maker you’ve ever heard of, there will be a number of celebrity chefs lining up to demonstrate, masterclasses from the likes of Hotel Chocolat, Lauden and the Bad Brownie Company and various pairing and tasting events. We’re already planning to attend Chocololics Anonymous come Monday, but my it’ll be worth it!
Friday 13th to Sunday 15th October
Where: Hammersmith Road, Kensington, W14 8UX
Website: www.thechocolateshow.co.uk
Aster
Nordic-French Bottomless Brunch
The sound of the brunch alarm is ringing, that sweet, sweet sound that lets us know that Aster has just launched their bottomless brunch. To drink will be bottomless prosecco or brunch cocktails and combining Nordic and French flavours, dishes will include: cinnamon bun French toast with maple syrup and crispy pancetta; venison burger served in a juniper brioche bun, and field mushrooms and poached egg on sourdough with truffle hollandaise. Choose two courses if you want, but with coconut panna cotta and poached peach melba on the menu for pudding, we predict you’ll go for three.
Saturday 14th October and then every Saturday
Where: 150 Victoria Street, London SW1E 5LB, United Kingdom
Website: www.aster-restaurant.com
Haymarket Hotel
FloatFit
How can we tempt you out of bed for a 9am fitness class? With the offer freshly baked waffles, bananas and strawberries and sweetcorn chilli fritters with avocado, tomato, lime salsa and poached eggs? That would probably do it. Here’s the small print: before you get the brunch, you need to take part in FloatFit HIIT, an exercise class that takes place on boards in swimming pool, trust us, it’s going to really work your core and balance.
Saturday 14th October and then every Saturday until 2nd December
Where: 1 Suffolk Place, London, SW1Y 4BP, United Kingdom
Website: www.firmdalehotels.com
Sea Containers London
Family Package at the Mondrian London
‘I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees for the trees have no tongues.’ Something for us all to think about there…another thing to think about is that to celebrate the return of The Lorax at The Old Vic, Mondrian London have come up with the I am the Lorax package which is perfect for families visiting London. Starting this Sunday, it includes 25% off the room, breakfast, a two-course Riverview pre-theatre menu, four tickets to watch Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax and free in-house films for children. You don’t even have to be visiting London, why not just go on a family holiday in London?
Sunday 15th November to Sunday 5th November
Where: 20 Upper Ground, London, UK
Website: www.seacontainerslondon.com
34 Mayfair
34 Mayfair X Liberty London
34 Mayfair have partnered with Liberty London to create an exclusive limited-edition print, Garden of Beauty and with it comes a beautifully intricate dessert and cocktail both inspired by the print. Reimagined from the Liberty London archives, the Garden of Beauty print features colourful and vibrant floral patterns, so the pudding is an airy chocolate and cherry parfait ‘cushion’ bearing the Garden of Beauty print with a fragrant rose centre and sat on a sweet and sour Griotte cherry sauce, pistachio cake, edible flowers and dried crisp cherries. The cocktail which is sweet and floral is also finished with edible flowers. We suggest a decadent Sunday afternoon of cocktails and puddings.
Available Now
Where: 34, Grosvenor Square, London, W1K 2HD, United Kingdom
Website: www.34-restaurant.co.uk
Bounce
Next Level at Bounce
When video mapping meets a smart-ball game (admittedly not a common encounter) the result is Wonderball at Bounce, they’re basically upping the ping pong experience. State of the art projection mapping technology is going to unlock brand new games, turning the table into a giant interactive arcade that will even keep track of your score. Friday after works drinks are sorted then.
Available Now at Both Bounce Farringdon and Bounce Shoreditch
Where: Central London, London, UK
Website: www.bouncepingpong.com
Old Spitalfields Market
Old Spitalfields Market's New Chapter
The next chapter of the market’s 200-year history is about to start as ‘The Kitchens’’ are completely transformed and the market floor is modernised. Sitting in the heart of the new market will be ten of London’s much-loved restaurants and food stalls: Berber and Q, Breddos Tacos, Barbarian, Dumpling Shack, Flank, Happy Endings, Rök, Thousand Knives, Sood Family and Yum Bun – so that’s your weekend of eating sorted. By the time the market is completed in spring 2018, it will feature in excess of 100 market traders and we’ll all be significantly heavier.
Opens Friday 13th October
Where: Old Spitalfields Market, 16 Horner Square, E1 6EW
Website: www.oldspitalfieldsmarket.com
Hyatt Regency London - The Churchill
Hyatt Regency x Saatchi Gallery
This is the last weekend that you can try The Montagu’s menu that has been created to celebrate the hotel’s latest partnership with London’s Saatchi Gallery, a brand new ‘Beneath The Colour’ hotel exhibition and unique Saatchi Suite. The menu includes: cured British Isle salmon, poached lobster, pea, edamame, fresh horseradish puree and Sharon fruit dressing; baked cauliflower cheese with crispy kale and spiced pine nuts and local raspberry lemon thyme mousse with damson sorbet and a blueberry almond slice. Afterwards, head to the The Churchill Bar & Terrace for the exclusive themed cocktail, Chromatic.
Available Now until 20th October
Where: 30 Portman Square, London, W1H 7BH, United Kingdom
Website: www.themontagurestaurant.co.uk
The Westbury Mayfair
Tea cocktails at The Luxury Collection
You’ll want to be dipping your trunk into this series of Elephant themed cocktails from The Luxury Collection’s London Hotels. The group, including The Westbury, The Wellesely and The Park Tower Knightsbridge, have teamed up with Indian-American designer and actor Waris Ahluwalia in honour of charity Elephant Family. Infusing the cocktails with teas developed by Waris’s House of Waris 100% of the profit from teh cocktails will go toward Elephant Family’s conservation in India, ahead of The Extraordinary Elephant Adventure rally across Rajasthan in November. The Hibiscus Royal blends House of Waris Organic Hibiscus Citrus Tea with Scotch whisky, vanilla syrup and Mandarin Napoleon and garnished with a physalis. The Ganesha cocktail is a mix of turmeric syrup paired with House of Waris Tea Elephant Gin-infused White Pomegranate Tea. Finally Haze Tower is a classic cocktail of whisky infused with House of Waris Tea Earl Grey Tea and paired with Gomme Syrup Giffard and finished with a dash of freshly squeezed lemon juice. You don’t have to be an elephant to never forget these creations.
Available now
Where: 37 Conduit Street, Mayfair, London W1S 2YF, UK
Website: www.westburymayfair.com
