London Loves

I love London. Every time I visit it feels like a little holiday – we drive down to Mum-in-Law’s place in Kent every couple of months and pass the Olympic site on the way, it’s amazing to watch it all taking shape… and driving there at night with Canary Wharf and all the skyscrapers glowing is magical!

We spent last weekend in London for Mum-in-Law’s 75th birthday, so I started the weekend by booking a free haircut at Toni & Guy in Westfield Stratford City – I won a year’s free hairdressing there in their recent photo competition! The staff at Toni & Guy are charming and always want to hear my comping tips. One of the girls mentioned her best friend’s mum Pauline is a comper… it turns out I’ve met her several times at Comping days! Westfield itself has amazing shops, a good range of smart restaurants and is neatly designed… they don’t seem to run many competitions though, although next weekend there’s a big ‘Future Fashion’ event: if it’s anything like the Derby one it will be worth checking out!

Searching for Treasure
Last Friday a brand new two week Treasure Hunt launched on the GoldRun App (available only for the iPhone and iPad I’m afraid). Menswear site MrPorter are choosing locations in major cities round the globe – visit these locations in a specific two week window and you can collect a virtual shopping bag containing a prize. Most of them are free shipping codes but some lucky winners will bag designer goodies like Lanvin shoes or Paul Smith cufflinks! In London you can pick up your virtual bag by visiting one of four locations:

EMMA WILLIS: 66 Jermyn Street SW1
THE BOUNDARY: 2-4 Boundary Street E2
BARRAFINA: 54 Frith Street W1
LA FAMIGLIA: 7 Langton Street SW10

You can enter once every 24 hours! We popped into Barrafina to collect ours; you just launch the GoldRun App and it automatically knows you’re in the right place and pops up a bag. You can then take a photo of the bag and Share to Facebook/Twitter if you like.

Click to move on and you’ll find out what you’ve won; Rob and I got free shipping codes. More importantly, we got to enjoy beer and snacks at an amazing tapas bar that we’d always fancied visiting… it’s funny where comping takes you! I saw on Facebook yesterday that one of my best comping friends Marie bagged a pair of APC jeans in her virtual bag at the weekend, so if you’re in London it’s worth having a go!

Lunch …at Dinner!
We had a late lunch booked at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal. Not a prize this time; believe it or not I do occasionally pay for things! Having had a few cash wins lately we decided to treat ourselves to an exciting lunch date. Rob won a day at the Fat Duck with Heston a few years ago and has always been a fan of his quirky dishes so we knew we’d enjoy Dinner.

If we eat out at a fancy restaurant we usually opt for a ‘tasting menu’ but as this wasn’t an option we each chose a starter, main and dessert from the main menu. Rob had the classic ‘meat fruit’ (as seen on TV!). Liver parfait enclosed in a wafer thin mandarin skin. Visually striking but perhaps a little bit too much of something so rich!

My starter was an incredible Savoury Porridge of cod palette, parsley, beetroot and herbs. The fish tasted amazing, part of it was almost raw and tender like a scallop. Yum!

The selection of mains was actually a tiny bit predictable; though we enjoyed our powdered duck with fennel and pigeon with artichokes, it did seem a bit steep to pay £32 each for them.

The side order of triple cooked chips was delicious though… with dinner we drank a lovely Chardonnay from Central Otago (I’m not much good at handling red wine at lunch!)

The dessert selection was great, I had Tipsy cake with slow roasted pineapple…

…and Rob had Brown Bread ice cream on a biscuit which looked and tasted super.

This was followed by a shotglass of chocolate & Earl Grey and then we paid £8 to have a fancy icecream made at our table. They have a specially made trolley with built in mixer, and dry ice is added to créme anglaise and mixed to make the icecream; a little bit of Heston magic! They roll your cone in tasty toppings: I had apple popping candy and sweet fennel seeds.

The meal was really great and the restaurant and staff were casual and friendly. I would definitely recommend it – but make sure you prepare yourself for the bill!

A prize with the Metro
On our way home to Nana’s house we paused at London Bridge station to capture and Tweet the Metro Tablet advert on the big screen: every day last week they gave away a new iPad to someone who tweeted a photo from a mainline London station, and with such low entry numbers each day it had to be worth a go!

On our journey home yesterday I checked to see if they’d announced a winner, and squealed with delight to see my hubby @robcoke had won – they only had 13 entries on Friday!

I openly admit that I’m competition-obsessed, and if there’s a creative or unusual competition about then I WILL go out of my way to enter it. It’s easy to sit at home just sharing competitions on Facebook or ReTweeting on Twitter, but if you get out and about, taking photos or looking for new on-pack promos in the shops it’s SO MUCH more fun! If you get the chance to have a comping away day then I highly recommend it – try and drag a friend along too (…you could even ask me!)