meemalee

I stink of meat. Two hours in a Chinese hotpot restaurant - like sitting in a porky sauna. And I would do it again in a heartbeat. I’d first heard about Little Lamb from Alex Carnegie who’d actually been on a quest for shabu shabu but settled for a close cousin . Then bellaphon paid a visit to the place and I knew I had to check it out myself. A couple of days later, I’m drifting around town waiting for my husband to meet me after work when I find that I’m at the top of Shaftesbury Avenue which is where Little Lamb lives. I ring the hubby and say “Oi, we’re going for Chinese Hotpot, meet me in front of Curzon Soho asap”. I locate Little Lamb, ask for a table for two in twenty minutes and then wander into Golden Gate Grocers and randomly buy some ngò gai aka sawtooth herb and the tiniest pink Thai shallots in excitement. The lady at the till waves the sawtooth at me and says something in Chinese. I apologise and say me no comprende and she says slowly “You. can’t. cook”. I’m bemus...

I'd never been to Notting Hill before. It exists in my mind as a weird amalgam of Hugh Grant and spangly breasted dancers. But the other day I found myself at Notting Hill Gate tube station, attempting to find the Westbourne Grove sibling of Mayfair's El Pirata known as El Pirata Detapas , which seeks to present a more modern take on Spanish food than its older sister. I'd been invited to a tapas dinner to celebrate the launch of Viewcard (from Viewlondon - you know, that website you go to to find out what's on at the cinema now that Teletext is dead). Viewcard entitles you to special offers at lots of London restaurants and El Pirata Detapas is one of the latest to join the scheme. I'm going to call it EPD now because El Pirata Detapas is too long to keep typing out. The road to EPD is paved with strange pretensions - I lost count of the number of shops along Pembridge Road advertising themselves as retro chic or vintage glamour when all they seemed to be touting...

My name is meemalee and I write about food. That first part's a lie. "Meemalee" is just a nickname my best friend made up for me at uni. My real name is MiMi which virtually no-one can spell correctly (that's two big M's, thanks). I do, however, write about food. I always wanted to be a writer. My mum still has a book in which I scrawled my first ever offering at the tender age of three. I'm reproducing it verbatim as a world exclusive: " A long long time ago there was a man and a wooman. They went to Beflehem. A long long time ago. " At the age of five, I wrote a Blytonesque six-chapter extravaganza about a kindly grandfather, his adorable grandson and a magical rocking horse. I was meant to write about what I'd done that weekend. At the age of eight, I typed up a sequel to the Ramona series by Beverly Cleary . I illustrated it and everything. At the age of ten, I wrote a storybook called "Dragons in the House" for children (well, f...

I'm wandering around Smithfields at 8 in the morning in search of sustenance. I can still smell the blood from the market, but that does nothing to quell my appetite. I've narrowed it down to two choices: The Hope and Sir Loin or John Torode's Smiths of Smithfield . Daddy or Chips? My heart is saying the H and SL, renowned for its legendary breakfasts of double egg, double bacon, double sausage, liver, kidneys, mushrooms, black pudding, baked beans and fried bread, all washed down with a Bucks Fizz or pint of Guinness (lax licensing laws in this neck of the woods). My head is saying that my heart must be on some kind of kamikaze mission, and so SOS it is. Industrial warehouse chic aside, Smiths is surprisingly welcoming. I pick a table in the window and look at the menu. And then kind of wish I hadn't - they've used that schtick of pricing everything in "pounds and 1/2 pounds" which jars me immensely - why not say "2/6" or "4s.3d." wh...