MOZART (NOT THE CAKE) AND EGGROLL AT THE SOHO
This time I will take a different approach and start off with some culture and then straight to the sweets. Last week we went to the opera (oh how cultured we are sometimes), only it wasn’t an opera ‘by the book’ but a modern version of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. For those who are not familiar with the plot of this particular opera, it’s about a hot, arrogant guy who is full of charm and spins all the girls in town on his index finger, but his end is bitter like in every opera, and he unfortunately dies (don’t tell me you’re surprised). In Mozart’s classical version the story is about the well-known Don Juan, while in the modern version he turns into Jonny, a sharp and good-looking London City banker wearing a deadly suit who seduces the girls on stage and in the audience at the same time.
This version of the opera played at one of the trendiest places who keep their finger on the pulse of everything related to contemporary culture in London – The Soho Theatre, which, as you can imagine from its name, is in London’s Soho district. The Soho is probably the most up-to-date and upbeat place in London in the last few years (and it’s been true all through the last two hundred years), and has many entertainment options such as theatres, clubs, bars, and of course countless restaurants from the whole world. The most well-known area within Soho is of course China Town, and in addition to it, you can find around Japanese, Indian, Italian, Thai, Fast and any other kind of restaurant you can think of. Additionally Soho is known by the ‘adult-only’ shops and it’s relative openness to the gay community.
17:20: just out of the opera, very good and original production indeed, we feel like munching something small; the other half feels the need for coffee (not very surprising).
We were exploring Soho at our leisure and in one of the area’s more well-known streets – Wardour St, we run into Leto, a coffeehouse/patisserie that appears at first sight like a museum for pretty pretty pretty cakes. We decided to enter, look around and of course taste some. The selection of cakes is simply bewildering! Cream cakes, layered cakes, tarts, brownies, pound cakes, and more and more...
17:30: we’re in, but there are no chairs to spare, so we had to have our coffee and cakes on the sidewalk...
It wasn’t easy at all to choose our desired cake – Sophie’s Choice indeed. But in the end each of us finally succeeded in the impossible task of picking the sweet of his fancy.
I had a lemon meringue tart (£2.90), and my beloved had a chocolate brownie (£2.60) and a macchiato (£2.20) like his tradition at coffee shops. If my beloved could rate his brownies experiences in coffee shops around the world, he would have a very successful blog of his own!
My lemon tart had a sharp lemony taste, and the meringue was made excellently – crunchy, melts in your mouth and not too sweet, and let’s not forget the tart itself, that was crumbly (as you can expect from a good tart) without breaking your teeth like other tarts I met in the past.
My beloved’s brownie and coffee did not disappoint either. The brownie was made of quality chocolate and had an addictive texture – a taste of pure decadence! The sugar rush from the brownie got a significant enhancement from the coffee – but the sweetness of the brownie lingered for long minutes after it was gone. It is very easy to ‘ruin’ a brownie by making it into an ordinary piece of chocolate, but Leto managed to turn their brownie into a cute and tasty piece.
18:00: Walking around OxfordStreet, window shopping.
19:30: Hungry... what’s for dinner?
We headed back to Wardour St (5 mins walk). ‘I feel like having Asian’ and there you go – we are in front of one of the 4 London branches of the Vientamese restaurant-bar PHO.
This place specializes in traditional Vietnamese street food, and is especially proud of the Vietnamese flagship dish – the Pho (just like the place’s name). It’s a soup that is actually a full meal – with rice noodles, chicken/beef/pork meat or shrimps, with a plate of sprouts, red chilli and green leaves that you can use to enrich the soup according to your personal taste. The decor is not like a typical Oriental restaurant, but like a warm and inviting bar where you go with friends to meet, chat and have good food at a reasonable price while you do that.
19:40: It’s not possible to book a table here, we were greeted by a cool funky hostess/waitress with a blonde Mohawk and make-up that would fit at a progressive rock club, and taken to the bar behind the restaurant area where we’ll have a bottle of white wine while waiting.
19:50: The atmosphere around us feels like a hipster meeting between East and West. The waitresses are nice and quick, while we wait we can easily see the dishes coming quickly out of the kitchen and our appetite is developing.
20:00: We seem to be waiting for little too long, the crowdedness and dark start playing with our nerves and we’re getting hungry...
20:05: Wondering about the background of the waitress that brought us here: she doesn’t look Asian... her ‘r’s are rolling and cute... very non-local accent... and now she’s just on time to take us to our table!
I already know what I want to have and my beloved also reaches the important decision very quickly.
We decided to share two starters: the first is Cha Gio Chay, spring rolls (£4.25). Don’t worry, when you reach the moment, you don’t really need to know how to read this, you order by the number of the dish that appears on the menu (or by pointing at it), just like any other ethnic restaurant in London. The spring rolls were to my taste, they weren’t dripping with oil and it’s best to eat them enveloped in the lettuce that comes with the rolls together with a sweetish mango sauce.
The second starter we shared was Banh Xeo Tom Ga, a traditional Vietnamese crepe with chicken, shrimps and sprouts (£6.95). At first sight the crepe looked like melted cheese, but it actually quite resembles a Mexican tortilla – only with holes... The crepe was filled to the brim. The recommended way to eat this is to break a piece of the crepe and create small portions by using this piece to pick up some of the meat and shrimps.
21:00: Waiting between the starters and mains, keeping to guess where the waitress is from... I think she’s Ukraine! There’s a weird trend at Asian restaurants in London of having East European people working there, we’re still not sure what this means...
Back to the point, the food: For main, my beloved had the Pho soup (£8.25), that included steak slices, beef meatballs and a plate of sprout, green leaves and chilli to add according to taste. Judging by his updates (and there weren’t many... Either he really enjoyed the food or he didn’t have much to say to me... I prefer the 1st option) he enjoyed the soup, his bowl contained a serious quantity of meat, and I think I should’ve placed a ‘do not disturb while I’m having this soup’ sign at the entrance :)
I had to deal with a huge bowl of Bun Noodles (£8.95) - it’s actually not a soup but a dish of rice noodles at room temperature, which also contained lots of vegetables, shrimps, and veggie spring roll. The sauce was great, it wasn’t too hot to make one nervous, and at some point I raised my hands, I simply couldn’t finish it, the dishes here are all big and very generous!
For dessert we shared that most Vietnamese of desserts – the ‘Banana Fritter’ (fried banana) with ginger ice-cream which gave a very good ‘sting’ to the ‘teeth-hurting’ sweetness of the bananas (£4.25) – we licked our fingers!
21:50: OMG! They don’t have Espresso!! I told you, it’s a pity my beloved doesn’t have a brownies and coffee blog!
21:55: Aha... turns out the waitress in question is Estonian – even more exotic that Vietnam!
HOW TO GET THERE?
Both places are on Wardour St. which is walking distance from each of the four Tube stations of the central West End: Goodge Street, Oxford Circus, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square.
Soho, London, W1F 8WG
155 Wardour st.
+44(0)207 494 4991
163-165 Wardour st.
Soho, London, W1F 8WN
+44 (0) 207 4343 938
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