Tag: kensington

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Remembering the Duck at the Hare and Tortoise

Sometimes when eating out, I don’t get a chance to write up the meal I had. Usually for another reason I am checking out that date or location and find photographs of a meal I had. This was the case here, when back in June 2024 I was staying in London at the The Hand & Flower in Olympia.  One of the places I would go for dinner in the area was the Hare & Tortoise in Kensington. This is a London chain specialising in Japanese food.

For a start I had some Tori Katsu Maki. An inside-out seaweed roll filled with deep-fried chicken in panko breadcrumbs with cucumber, avocado, dressed with tonkatsu sauce, mayonnaise and tempura flakes on top.

sushi

These were excellent, really tasty, good mix of textures and flavour.

For a main I had the Roast Duck and Rice.  Slices of roast duck, served on steamed rice with a homemade sauce mixed with cinnamon, aniseed powder and ginger, garnished with Chinese greens and spring onions.

roast duck

This was a generous portion of duck and I thought it was just okay. It was interesting when I had this same dish a couple of months later, I felt similar about the dish. I have to remind myself sometimes that the purpose of this blog is in the main about reminding me what I have eaten, when eating out, and not to order stuff I didn’t like or was not impressed with. I can imagine that over a year or so I might forget, this was just a couple of months!

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Pad Thai and Yasai Tempura at the Hare and Tortoise

Sometimes when eating out, I don’t get a chance to write up the meal I had. Usually for another reason I am checking out that date or location and find photographs of a meal I had. This was the case here, when back in June 2024 I was staying in London at the The Hand & Flower in Olympia.  One of the places I would go for dinner in the area was the Hare & Tortoise in Kensington. This is a London chain specialising in Japanese food.

For this meal I had gone for Pad Thai and some Yasai Tempura.

The Pad Thai was wok-fried flat rice noodles with king prawns, deep-fried tofu, peanuts, sweet radish, chives, egg, beansprouts and a hint of chilli.

This was a great tasting dish but did feel the portion size was quite small. I liked the fact they used tofu instead of chicken. I enjoyed the prawns in the dish too.

I was glad I ordered a side dish of Yasai Tempura.

This was a deep-fried selection of five seasonal vegetables in a light crispy batter, served with a dashi-based dipping sauce. Very tasty they were too.

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Remembering the Sushi at the Hare and Tortoise

Sometimes when eating out, I don’t get a chance to write up the meal I had. Usually for another reason I am checking out that date or location and find photographs of a meal I had. This was the case here, when back in June 2024 I was staying in London at the The Hand & Flower in Olympia.  One of the places I would go for dinner in the area was the Hare & Tortoise in Kensington. This is a London chain specialising in Japanese food.

I went with a selection of sushi. I had the Essential Sushi Box which came with ten pieces of sushi: salmon nigiri, tuna nigiri, octopus nigiri, prawn nigiri, 3 salmon maki and 3 tuna maki.

This was a lovely fresh selection of expertly made sushi. I enjoyed the fact it was (as it should be) made with raw fish. My favourite of the ten was the tuna nigiri.

I also had the California Maki which was an inside-out seaweed roll filled with omelette, avocado, crab stick, cucumber and mayonnaise, garnished with tobiko.

These were beautifully presented and I loved the flavour and textures of the maki.

That really should have been enough but I was intrigued and tempted by the Kani Gunkan or snow crab sushi.

I should have resisted temptation, the snow crab was very watery and lacked flavour. It was not quite what I was expecting.

Despite my (slight) disappointment with the snow crab, the sushi I had were delicious. 

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Dashing Cakes

I use the TooGoodToGo app quite a bit, more so when I am in London, as there are many more options available. However it can be a bit hit and miss. For example, last year I had a fantastic bag from Cord Cafe on Fleet Street. In that bag I got a cherry croissant, a baguette, and a brioche. Last week when I saw they had a bag on offer, I thought great, that’s breakfast for tomorrow sorted. However in this bag I got a salad, an asparagus pastry, and a sausage roll.

Last month in London I was staying close to Olympia and I looked at the TooGoodToGo app and Dash Cakes on Kensington High Street had a magic bag deal.

I got four cupcakes, a fruit tart, a macaron, and a chocolate gâteau slice. The bag cost just £3.39. I was well impressed, and all the cakes were delicious. I am not that big a fan of cupcakes, especially biscuit cup cakes, even so these were scrummy cupcakes.

The fruit tart and chocolate gâteau slice were excellent, as was the macaron (even if it was blue).

I was really impressed with the quality and quantity of cakes, and I certainly would not just use the TooGoodToGo app with them again, I would also pay full price for their cakes as well.