The week in brief: 9 July – 15 July

This week: pasta making at Bottega, awesome dinner at Gypsy & Pig, more Japanese at Heirloom, and Bastille day celebrations. Vive le France!


I went to Bottega early this week to attend a bloggers’ pasta class (disclosure I was invited). Head Chef Gabriele Olivieri showed us how he makes two kinds of pasta – a tagliolini and a strozzapreti. He whipped up the two pastas in lightning speed: he has obviously made a lot in his lifetime.

Do you want to learn how to make pasta? Bottega are hosting pasta making classes on Saturday 4 August and Saturday 11 August. Classes are followed by a 2 course lunch. Check out the Bottega website for more details.

After pasta making, I met up with Alastair and we had dinner at Gypsy and Pig. It was so good – I’ve blogged it already. Amazing! Go read my post if you haven’t done so yet. :p

I went to Heirloom this week for a bloggers’ dinner (disclosure: it was a complimentary meal). Since the beginning of this year they have quietly rebranded themselves into a Japanese izakaya. The food was mostly pretty good – more in depth post coming up.

Unrelated to the meal, but I seem to have been cursed by dark dining environments this week. Bah.

On Friday we returned to Spicy Barbie and Chinese Kitchen for dinner with a couple of Alastair’s colleagues. I ordered a bit too much for the table (lamb ribs! spicy eggplant! fried tofu! spicy pork!), but everyone had space for deep fried ice cream at the end. 🙂

If you haven’t read enough of my raves about Spicy Barbie and Chinese Kitchen, check out my original post here, and brief mentions this week and this week.

And then it was Bastille Day. Our friend Maztech hosted her (5th annual) Bastille Day dinner.

Every year, Mazzie goes all out. There were cocktails to start.

And then several courses of food. We had duck confit and potato terrine with cherry gastrique and pepper tuille.

And bouillabaisse with croutons and potato rouille.

After that there was a cheese course – truffle coulommiers with quince paste and apple. Also check out my new spork! More on that later.

Apple and cucumber juice for a palate cleanser.

And dessert was frangipane, passionfruit and coconut bavarois with honeycomb. After which we had petit fours and tea/coffee.

See? All out. It was incredible.

Here’s another look at my new spork – courtesy of the lovely Maztech who is helping me build my collection. 😀

So I had a particularly well fed week. We definitely ate out far too much. How was your week?