A London Honey-day – My London Lifestyle

There’s just something so delightful about summer in the city. Sweet, golden floral and sticky, almost like honey.

Funnily enough when I met up with Dominika to have a lovely Saturday, it purely coincidentally seemed to have a honey theme to it. I swear we didn’t plan this, but it just happened this way.

Miel Bakery

It all started when we decided to grab breakfast at Miel bakery.

And of course, Miel is the French word for honey.

And bring properly French, they of course had lots of delicious pastries.

Not only your traditional croissants and pains au chocolat, but other creative twists on traditional pastries too.

For example the blackcurrant croissant Dominika ordered,

or my choice: the pistachio swirl.

Or this delicious chocolate mousse bun.

Their secret comes from the best French ingredients (e.g. traditionally milled flour from Normandy, proper French butter from Poitou Charente. Even the owner and main baker Shaheen Peerbhai trained at Le Cordon Bleu, where all the best pastry chefs are trained (Peggy Porschen trained here too, as you may remember).

So yes, pretty decent stuff to start your day with!

We enjoyed a lovely breakfast here while soaking up some rays of sunlight.

While we did, we met two really friendly Israeli guys who were here on holiday and asked for recommendations for great places in the area. We tried our best giving our recommendations on Charlotte Street like Lisboeta and Caroussel, Bricco e Bacco, etc.

Hopefully they managed to enjoy them!

They asked us what summer in London usually looked like and we gave them our honest answer: once there’s one way of sunshine, Londoners hop outside to make the most of it, because you never know how long it’ll last.

And that pretty much sums up today!

Because when we got to Charlotte street ourselves, the rays of sunshine pretty much had gone and clouds started coming in.

Honey & Co

So we walked on towards Honey & Co for brunch (see the theme now?).

Honey & Co is a restaurant by an Israeli couple. Both of them were chefs and they decided to utilise their skills and passion for Middle Eastern food by opening a series of restaurants. Honey & Co is one of many. They also run Honey & Smoke in Great Portland Street, Honey & Co Daily in Store Street, Honey & Spice in Warren Street (almost next door to Miel bakery), and the pop up bakery in conduit street, just across the road from Honey & Co.

But back to brunch! Honey & Co also serves delicious Middle Eastern brunches.

It includes classics like a shakhuka, which is what I went with.

Or a Sabich: a sandwich of pita bread stuffed with roast aubergines, eggs with a drizzle of tahini sauce and a sprinkling of amba and chopped parsley: Dominika’s choice.

For drinks we had the orange blossom iced tea, which is so deliciously floral and a refreshing complement to the food!

Satisfied and full from brunch, we did a bit of window shopping on the rest of Lamb’s Conduit Street.

The street is full of small independent shops, which will guarantee you to find something cute.

Ken’s Wine Bar

And finally, we walked on to Exmouth Street, for drinks at Ken’s wine bar which had been on our list forever!

Ken’s wine bar is located in a former pharmacy – because wine is medicine – and it’s decorated in a lovely, quirky way. It even has actual Kens in a car.

The wine is great too.

We started with a bottle of Domaine Gross, ‘Sonate’. It’s a rose wine and it is said that redcurrants and cranberries jump out of the glass at first, followed by a palate of rhubarb and strawberry yoghurt atop a bed of earthiness. But to me it tasted a bit like olive for some reason, but maybe my tastebuds are off. Either way, I love olives, so it doesn’t really matter. I think this wine is perfect for the summer!

Then we followed up with the Momento Mori, Fistful of Flowers. As the name suggests, this is floral white wine, but with a steely backbone and saline finish. I thought it tasted very refreshing and floral.