The last week and a bit have literally flown by with lots of stuff going on. Last week I spent a couple of days up near Coventry and stayed in a wonderful little boutique hotel in Kenilworth unimaginatively called The Kenilworth. Recommended to us by our client, it was the soft jazz music and the long list of cocktails and wine on offer that hinted this was no ordinary place. It was only walking into the room did the throw on the bed, the Molton Brown toiletries and the three cocktail books in the corner confirm my suspicions. Who has a book of cocktails in their bedroom, let alone three of them?

Returning almost exhausted to London, the weekend kicked off with a visit to Borough Market on Saturday to prepare a couple of desserts for a traditional steamboat or shabu shabu (in Japanese) dinner at Mike’s place. It kicked off with six of us around a table that ended up in some dice and card and us leaving sometime in the cold early hours of the morning trying to get everyone to where they needed to go. We had plenty of mojitos, lots of food and lots of wine (including some dessert wine to finish off).

Sunday slowly started with some dim sum planned in Chinatown. Straying away from Laureate and managing to organise a table at Golden Dragon I was amazed that we managed to get a table amongst the crazy crowds that circled the entire area given Chinese New Year celebrations. We got our table almost as soon as the majority of the ten people arrived. As always, the bite sized portions and the few dishes ordered on top went down like a treat and so cheap (for how much we had) at only £14. We also headed to the Cabinet War Rooms afterwards – an amazingly non de script entrance leading to the underground maze attached to so much recent history.