Asian London experiences ~ part 2: Sights and Food

Hello everyone!

During my London trip I also found other interesting asian spots besides Purikura. First there is of course Chinatown where also the Purikura machine was located.

me in front of the main street of Chinatown

The London Chinatown isn't so big but quite nice. There are mainly Chinese restaurants but also supermarkets, little shops and some backeries - which were my favourite places there X3

Because of the purikura Lau and I went there three times though we never had Chinese dishes. Some restaurants looked odd especially because of the grilled chicken hanging in the windows >.<

But there were also some restaurants specialized for dumplings/dim sum but we prefered one of Japanese restaurants. The shop named 'Little Korea' was a nice Korean-Japanese restaurant. The variety of dishes was good and the prices were okay. I had Tofu-Teriyaki (marinated grilled tofu) with rice while Lau chose the fried gyouza.

restaurant from the outside

our dishes

I had also to enter some of the great-looking backeries. The cakes in the shop windows looked so awesome! Many of the buns reminded me of the Japanese ones I know but in the end there are little defferences. But you also got buns with anko filling and I also bought a Matcha bun with anko! It was really good ^___^

Kitty, Doggy and Panda cakes^.^

it made me so hungry Q.Q

In one backery they even sold Taiyaki (pastry in form of a carp filled with anko). They were mini Taiyaki filled with vanille or chocolate flummery. There were really good^.^

mini Taiyaki & coconut pineapple bun

But the most interesting thing was 'Pandan Cake'. I have never heard of that and the staff wasn't really able to explain it in English. The first Pandan cake I saw was green like Matcha (so I thought it was a Matcha cake) but there are different variations and some a really bright green (which looks quite chemical). So I had to search it in the internet later: Pandan is a plant from which Chinese make syrup which is used in cakes f.e. It hasn't got any taste it is just making the bright green colour. Apart from that Pandan cake is a kind of bisquit cake combined with either vanille or coconut. The two versions I tried were really delicious^^

Pandan Cake with Vanille creme

Pandan Coconut Cake

Outside Chinatown you also find many other asian restaurants especially Indian and Thai but also Japanese. Though supermarkets were concentrated mainly in Chinatown I must say.

A favourite Japanese food selling restaurant chain were called 'Wasabi'. We saw the shops everywhere. They sell onigiri, sushi, whole bento boxes and some sweets like dorayaki and also some main dishes like curry, doburis and yaki-soba for take-away for eating there but cold then. The prices were normal, so it was very interesting to see that you can get Japanese bento in London that comfortably.

the Wasabi shop at our station

Besides the Korean-Japanese restaurant Lau and I went for dinner in one Thai restaurant besides our hotel togehter with our friend Kirschu and her Mum. We had no idea where to eat and the restaurant looked quite nice. And we weren't disappointed: the choice of dishes were amazing! It was hard to choose but everyone of us was very satisfied.

Kirschu and her mother had starters first: vegetable tempura and vegetarian spring rolls with sweet chili sauce. The main dish were one of the many different curries there.

Lau chose a dish with fried rice while I tried a rice noodle soup with duck and soya sprouts. It was damn good!^o^

the starters: vegetables tempura, crab chips & spring rolls

my soup

In London there is also a Japan Centre located near Picadilly Circus but we hadn't enough time to visit. But at least we were there to see London and not Japan, ha ha.

The only other Asian things I bought in a normal supermarket: there you get bottles of Lassi (Indian Yoghurt drink) in different seizes and tastes. I love Lassis so I bought two little bottles, one with mango the other with lychee taste. It was very good *_*

And even some English sandwiches were influenced by Asian cooking: on our last day I bought a sandwich box with 'Chicken Tikka' (Tikka is a kind of Indian curry). That was cool^^

sandwich box & two Lassi bottles

So even in my European holidays I can satisfy my passion for Asian things^o^

Next I will see what I can find in Paris in July, ha ha.

See ya!