Rita loves love loves her dessert so its no surprise that she was able to walk into what looked like an ordinary Italian café near Leicester Square and find to her delight not only a selection of pretty good gelati but some pretty astonishing ice cream concoctions and all at a fairly decent price.

I’m not sure if there is an ice cream parlour or dessert place or café anywhere in London that serves you spaghetti ice cream, or ice cream pizzas or fried eggs or ice cream lasagne! It was great! In addition to these novelty ice creams there is also a great selection of huuuuuuge ice cream sundaes. Oh I can’t wait to go back! But I almost want to keep this café a secret!

Here is my spaghetti and Rita’s black spaghetti ice creams:

Rache’s Ferrero Rocher ice cream sundae and Claire’s ice cream scoop. Hilariously they served it on a plate with a cone turned over on top so as to make it look as dramatic as our other dishes. When we added some nuts it looked kind of clownish on the colourful plate …

Of Rache’s sundae I only had a spoonful but it was delightfully decadent.

I’m sure I’ll be returning …

Jenny has been living in her current home with her boyfriend for I think over a year now but I haven’t yet had the chance to visit here … she lives all the way in Harlow which is in Essex! Its miles away so Jenny thought it would be good to have an overnight stay.

We spent Friday night at Goose Fat and Garlic in Sawbridgeworth (along the way we drove by Beckingham Palace – heh heh), had a gorgeously long sleep in on Saturday morning, a lovely cooked breakfast by Sean, when we had some deliciously sinful butter on lovely fresh bread, followed finally by some shopping Lakeside. Phew!

Goose Fat and Garlic is a bar/restaurant which I’d put on my “to eat at” list ages ago when Jenny first told me about it. I love eating with Jenny because she gets so excited when we go out for a meal. I’ve probably mentioned it before but the game we like to play is to “guess the other person’s meals choice” for the evening. Sure you may think it takes a bit of the surprise element out of it but we usually spend quite some time poring over the menu before hand just for fun!

Goose Fat and Garlic offer an a la carte (predominantly European) menu plus a tapas menu. The two didn’t seem to really go hand in hand but its clearly something that works well for them if they continue to offer it. The restaurant area of Goose Fat and Garlic seemed quite posh with the wood polished floors and white cotton tablecloths. Service was efficient and friendly though I’m not convinced our waitress new the menu very well. Jenny asked her about one of the sauces and she appeared to just make up something on the spot! Still, she nearly redeemed herself when she came back later to say that she saw someone else has ordered that dish and she could tell us exactly what was in the sauce …

For our starters we both opted for seafood options – Pan fried spiced king scallops served with an aubergine purée for Jenny and King prawns in crisp ale batter, served with garlic mayonnaise and sweet chilli salsa. Jenny was quite pleased with her scallop and my tempura prawn wasn’t too bad though the sweet chilli salsa did appear to be the kind that came out of a bottle.

For mains Jenny continued on with her seafood theme going for a Pan seared cod fillet with a pea and bacon velouté and roasted fondant potato whereas I decided to go a bit carnivore and went for the Pan fried fillet of Hereford beef served with rosti potato, Mediterranean vegetables and Café de Paris butter.

Both dishes weren’t too bad though I think Jenny thought her velouté was a touch salty and my rosti potato was a bit dry and over deep-fried. The Mediterranean vegetables were cubed bits of carrot and not exactly generous. It could have been a slightly more balanced dish. The winner at mains though was our side of creamed cabbage. Really really good!

Finally, even though we were really really full already, we had some dessert. A strawberry millefeuille served with crushed fresh strawberries for Jenny and a delicious Ginger crème brulée served with coconut shortbread for me. Loved my dessert but hard to go too wrong with crème brulée.

Its been a long time since I’ve had me some Vietnamese. Proper Vietnamese that is. I loooove the Vietnamese grilled pork and there’s no better place for Vietnamese in London than in East London. I met my brother for a meal at Old Street. There are an abundance of Vietnames restaurants in the one street so we went to one I’d not been to before – Taydo Café. Its pretty casual so don’t let its façade and the initial impression put you off. It delivers where it counts – taste and value for money!

Service was a bit hit and miss – friendly when we got it but a bit lacking in terms of checking back with us and very relaxed!

We ordered way too much tonight and as a result I’m struggling with a very painful stomach now … not that I regret it too much. Food was delish.

It was time for another duck date with Sandra – tonight’s venue was HK Diner – mainly because I was desperately craving a black sesame milkshake. Sandra didn’t care where we went to as long as we could have duck pancake!

The duck at HK Diner wasn’t too bad but the star of the duck pancakes was the sauce. It was really good! We didn’t get that many pancakes with our half duck though so we ended up with a bundle of duck and zucchini etc. left over. Not that it stopped us from almost practically licking up all the duck … heh heh.

The black sesame milkshake at HK Diner wasn’t as good as I remember the one at Cafe de Hong Kong being but it was still pretty delicious. It was clear that many people who came to HK diner were coming for the drinks and the cheap quick meals. Sandra and I must have been a bit unusual as we went the whole starter and mains – they’ve probably never seen a table eat so much! LOL.

Nothing I loooove more than a cooked breakfast. This morning, before we set off for the Day Spa, we had a bit of a not fried fry up – something that came out of one of Julian’s triathlon mags:

Tasty!

For my birthday Sandra surprised me with a day spa at the Royal Day Spa in Tunbridge Wells. Being in Tunbridge Wells Sandra thought it would be better if I stayed overnight with her and Julian so we could set off early tomorrow morning for the drive. She promised me a delicious, and filling, dinner which she delivered on both counts! It was a lovely Prawn and Asparagus Risotto. She piled so much on to our plates that I couldn’t even finish my meal for the first time in a looong time!

To walk off the meal we went for a short stroll around Denham to try and catch the lovely sunset and the horses in the paddocks. We were a bit late as both sun and horses had already gone down for the count for the evening! Well, we caught a bit of the last of the sunset over the airport. It would have been a marvelous sunset.

Trying to find the horses in the paddock

After the walk we then had space for Sandra’s fruit juice jelly and strawberries: