When you live near London, it’s easy never to go in and take it for granted that you live so close to it. If you do make the trip, you go to the same old places, in my case Soho, and Leicester Square/Covent Garden. We decided to celebrate my cousins birthday in Golders Green, somewhere we had never been before. It was a pleasant day, not too cold, so we could walk around.
There were so many restaurants to choose from. There are two types of kosher restaurant, some only serve meat the others dairy, and you cannot mix the two. We picked a Restaurant called Novellino for lunch, they have two branches, we went to the meat based one.
I am a vegetarian, and chose the Aubergine Schnitzel, with sautéed vegetables and it was exceptional. Very often vegetarian options are not that great in restaurants that serve mostly meat, it was so good that I am going to try and re-create it at home. My cousin had the lamb, which was cooked to perfection. It was a lovely restaurant and a great place to celebrate his birthday.
We then walked further down Golders Green Road, to Kosher Kingdom, which is like a Tardis, it is far larger inside than it looks on the outside. I made my way to the chocolate section, there were a few things I wanted to try. The Nutty Chocolatier produce high-quality handmade chocolates, and I could not wait to try them.
They had a large selection and it was difficult to choose, but I picked Milk Chocolate Pretzels and a large dark chocolate bar with little smarties on it. I went to another section to buy some Chocolate and Vanilla Halva. All were delicious.
An Israeli brand Osem, makes very good quality stock powders, and when you cook from scratch as I do they are an essential part of my pantry. I can easily get the Chicken flavour locally, but the Beef and Mushroom I can never find.
They are Pareve, which means they are free of Dairy and Meat products and are labelled as vegetarian. I was happy to see they were in stock and bought some to take home.
It was an interesting trip, and we will be back soon, I can't wait to try the ice cream parlours, and bakeries, but we could only carry so much back on the train.
I am already planning my next trip to London for mid-January, but not sure where I will be going next. Apologies for the lack of photographs, but I am aware it is a sensitive time at the moment. I did not want to make people feel uncomfortable.
