Weekend update: fashion, music, food, FUN!

Weekend recap! On Friday, I met a friend for lunch near Vauxhall and spotted these lovely, colourful tiles at the tube station...

And earlier that week, I headed to Starworks' media preview of the resort collections, which are often my favourite as they are also so colourful. I sense a theme... 

A bit of Nicholas Kirkwood. A bit less wacky (though they wouldn't be Kirkwood if they weren't a wee bit crazy), a bit more wearable. I love those bright pink metallic slippers.

Love the swirl, wave detail on the top row pairs (especially the nude flats with his signature rounded heel), and the mix of bright blue and vermilion on the bottom row.

A few of these pairs (i.e. the ones with the laces) look a bit more 'traditional' Nicholas Kirkwood.

These shoes feature Swarovski crystals, and I bet a few bride-to-bes will be putting these on their wish lists. As someone who owns a few pairs, I can honestly say that Nicholas Kirkwood shoes (even when they are five inches high) are actually, really comfortable. Definitely not as narrow as Louboutins, which I love. (I'm sure my podiatrist back in Vancouver - yes, I have one... TMI? - will appreciate their width, too.)

Starworks also represent Tucker by Gaby Basora, a brand I first fell in love with after buying a blouse at The Block in Vancouver's Gastown. Gaby designs all of her own prints - how great is this lipsticked-angry-woman print for Resort 2013?

Another series by Tucker - love this chunky yellow knit. What a great way to brighten up a drab fall day. I need one of these!

And on to Roksanda Ilincic, who is probably one of the most beautiful fashion designers and best embodiments of her own brand. I love her signature lantern sleeves and wool crepe - it's a combination that gives her pieces so much amazing volume, but keeps them light and comfortable at the same time. Definitely on my wish list.

And yes... she is launching a children's line! SO ADORABLE. This little rack of little clothes was enough to make even the coldest heart feel broody (which is what they say here in the UK to describe someone whose biological clock is a-ticking away).

And on to Jonathan Saunders. How '70s does this coat feel?!

Let's breeze through the rest - some new, lighter fabrications (seersucker!) but still-sporty silhouettes from Lisa Marie Fernandez swimwear...

Wild, bright, and always-amazing digi-prints from Peter Pilotto...

Another amazing piece by Peter Pilotto. This dress is made from layered mesh (with an inner lining), so it feels light and sporty, while its print is nothing if not elegant.

And then it was the BBC Radio 1 weekend! We got 4 guest list passes (thank you to the BBC, Mallorca Rocks and my flatmate's boss!!!) - wicked fun. The tickets were actually free for everyone who bothered to apply (it was a bit of an arduous process - people had to submit passport-sized photos and provide proof of address as certain boroughs were allocated more tickets than others), with a £10 donation to charity at the door.

I saw Ed Sheeran recently in Mallorca and Ibiza, but this ginger(bread) man has some serious talent. He is one of the only big acts I've ever seen that has NO ONE supporting him on stage - no drummer, backup singer, nothing. 

Elliot spotted him wearing "Ibiza Rocks" underpants. Quick note - no one really says "boxers" or even "briefs" here; everyone says "pants". And what if you're trying to buy what we call pants in North America? You ask for "trousers".

Anyway, we got very very drunk, but not so drunk that we couldn't take a picture of this massive #jagerbomb #fail. 

We also saw Will.I.Am, Nicki Minaj, Example, Kasabian, and a couple of other random acts, but the highlight for me was seeing Jay-Z - even though I saw him a month ago at the O2 arena. This time, he brought along Rihanna, M.I.A. (uh, amazing!), AND Kanye West.

You've probably seen loads of other coverage of Hackney Weekend (Florence and the Machine, Azealia Banks, Rihanna, Lana del Rey and David Guetta all played on Sunday) - so I'll skip over the rest, but seriously, it was amazing.

The next day, we went for brunch at Dishoom, a Bombay-style café near Covent Garden.

This was my "Full Bombay" breakfast, which was a delicious take on a full English breakfast, with Akuri (spicy scrambled eggs that are apparently an Irani café staple) on toast instead of poached or fried eggs. I'm craving this again now.

And that's my weekend update! 

More London eats: East Street

I was walking to Tottenham Court Road station the other day (which, before I moved to London, thought was a fictional name from Harry Potter) and chanced upon this big, open space that reminded me a bit of the street markets in Singapore.

Lo and behold, that is exactly what East Street is going for.

As usual, I was hungry, so I went in and sat down. It was a bit empty (it was around 4pm, before dinner and well after a normal lunch hour), but they had a few people sitting there on laptops, using the Wifi.

In addition to a menu that includes traditional dishes from Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Korea, Singapore, and Malaysia, they have a shelf near the front displaying a few essential ingredients, too.

I was glad to see that these weren't exorbitantly priced. I bought a very large bottle of sweet chili sauce. Yum!

A blurry photo of a corner of my placemat.

A shot of my super delicious chap chae. 

East Street has an "Eastern Express" lunchtime menu where, for £7.95, you get:


A choice of: 

• Korean chap chae, sesame-scented fried glass noodles with shiitake, cucumber, carrot, chili, and optional chicken
• Thai tom yum soup with prawns, straw mushrooms, and glass noodles
• Japanese "gomoku yakisoba", which are noodles fried with prawns, chicken, red pepper, carrot, and bean sprouts
• Indonesian nasi goreng, which is a spicy fried rice (we eat this in Singapore, too)!

AND a choice of:

• 3 pork gyoza
• 3 "tod man khao pod" (Thai corn fritters)
• "goi cuon" (Vietnamese rice paper rolls, or "summer rolls" as they seem to say here)
• miso soup

I don't know how authentic the chap chae was, as it was only the third time I've ever had it, but the servings were enormous and I thought everything was delicious. Next time, I'll try the Singaporean spicy chow mein off the regular menu and let you know how similar it is to the dishes you get in hawker centers.

3-5 Rathbone Place

London

W1T 1HJ

+44 (0)207 323 0860

Bad sister, bad friend!

Unfortunately, I have been a bad sister AND a bad friend!

Bad friend because I had to miss my bestie Shannon's baby shower... so "gutted" (as they say here, which I quite like)!!!

Bad sister because I have been neglecting to read my sister's blog regularly. Today, however, I FINALLY revisited it - and she and her boyfriend have chosen a new Wordpress theme and it looks great!

Look! It's me!

JUST KIDDING. That's my sister! She likes food, too!

(Photo: Three o'clock road blog)

So, to try and make up for the bad sister bit (the bad friend bit, I've remedied by dropping something into the mail...), please check out her blog here!

She and her boyfriend both up and quit their jobs (well, she finished her master's: she's smart like that) in January and are spending the next 10 months travelling through Africa. Insane—and way braver than I will (probably) ever be.

Soho Yum Yum: London's first "Temakeria"

So apparently, Yoobi is London's first "temakeria". I happily chanced upon this little corner restaurant (38 Lexington St. in Soho) on my way to work in a café—and it reminded me of Michi Sushi in Vancouver, a cute little "sushi on the go" restaurant right at the corner of Granville and Broadway.

Someone told me (I think it might have been one of the guys working in the restaurant!) that temakerias originate in Brazil... but, er, somehow I doubt that (Japan, no?!). To this person's credit, however, if you google "temaki", there are a surprising number of hits from Brazil.

Cute branding.

Brand new interiors—clean and spacious, if a bit sparse.

They do actually sell other things as well—miso soup (£2), for example. I quite liked this version, which, in addition to miso, tofu, and bits of seaweed, also had broccoli! I went there quite early in the lunch hour so I imagine the broccoli would get soggy by afternoon, but maybe not.

Temaki! This is making me hungry just looking at it. 

Citrus Salmon temaki: £3.60

 Tuna tartare temaki: £4

See you there soon!

Adventures in London: lost and found

Mind the Gap!

Seven months into living in London and I already barely hear the "Mind the Gap" announcements and am basically immune to the horrible squeal between Paddington and Edgware Road stations.

But never mind: the tube isn't so bad, otherwise. And check out what we chanced upon!

(Ok, so this was actually two months ago, but I only remembered my plan to post this after I lost my good ol' Telus BlackBerry and discovered that these photos had somehow made it into my iPhoto anyway.)

The official Transport for London Lost Property Office! 

That wasn't the cool part, though. In the windows were shelves of stuff that had been found, labelled with the year they were found and which station / bus. It was a true mishmash of stuff from different decades... 

Check out the mobile phone from 1993. I'm pretty sure my dad had a similar one—perhaps an even bigger one! Apparently, someone also lost an IRON on the tube, back in 1934. 

A top hat found at Euston station in 1951!

Here: a telephone lost at Camden station in 1936, and an amazing vintage Mamiya camera lost in Brixton in 1979. Immediately after seeing the camera, I noticed the "things in this window are not for sale" sign. Damn. 

I have yet to lose anything on the tube in London (Elliot did lose a pair of gloves I gave him for Christmas a few years ago, though)—and I doubt much actually gets turned in these days... but what an interesting place nonetheless!

Wish List Wednesday: Texture!

I've been really into the TEXTURE of my clothes lately - I'm not 100% sure why, but I think it has something to do with getting tired of all the high-street, crappy polyester clothes out there. In fact, I've basically stopped going to H&M and Topshop: as much as I appreciate fast fashion, I've completely gone off of it... not such a good thing for my bank account, although it does mean I'm buying fewer items in general.

Anyway, I think feeling so many crappy fabrics in these types of stores gave me a craving for interesting, more "authentic"-feeling materials.

The results:

A loopy skirt by Rag & Bone from The Outnet that I've been loving ever since I tried on the matching jacket over a year ago. Here's a photo of me at an event in Vancouver's Holt Renfrew wearing it. 

A teensy back story: I had interviewed the designers earlier that day and have never blushed so much in an interview. It all started when I said my boyfriend was British and co-designer David Neville said, "Oh, you like British boys, do you?" with his little twinkly eyes, to which I replied, "Yes, but I've also met your wife!" (His wife is makeup artist Gucci Westman, and I met her years ago, backstage at New York Fashion Week). Such "cheeky chappies", as they say here.

Another photo from the event. Us three girls are all trying on Rag & Bone dresses; I ended up buying that red/maroon one. Our retro-school-picture pose was Joy's idea :)

More texture: this time via Zara (the one high street store I still do love). This beaded and embroidered clutch was the last one - and I kept such a firm clutch (sorry, couldn't resist) on it that the changing room attendant let me bring it into my room while I tried on a skirt (they never allow accessories in there). Woo!

And my last bit of texture - so I'm pretty sure these ARE polyester, but how amazing are they?! I got these Isabel Marant beauties at the Shop at Bluebird, a gorgeous boutique in Chelsea that has an amazing buy. These are also available in black (though what's the point, when you have black hair). 

Love!

Weekend in Mallorca

Monday, May 7 was a "bank holiday" here in the UK (stat. holiday in Canada - yet another little language-ism I feel the need to share) - May Day, officially. I went to visit Elliot in Spain, which was more eventful than normal.

On Friday night, we went to Pirates (Reloaded) with some of the Mallorca Rocks reps and guests - it's a dinner show with a sexed-up version for adults that features, obviously, a pirate theme and acrobatics-type numbers. It's one of the main attractions in Magaluf, which has a lovely beach but is far more known as a playground for 16-20-year-old British lads on their first vacation away from their parents (for you North Americans, think a bunch of teenagers on their first trip to Cancun or Vegas and you get the idea.)

Then, on Saturday night, we went to a launch party for McQueen Ibiza, which has just opened a new location in Mallorca. I was told this was a party to celebrate "adult toys", which was no, NOT sex toys but stuff like this:

That, my friends, is a jet pack. It's this weird, Ironman-like contraption that basically has two hoses near your armpits that shoot out water that has been sucked up through a hose hanging out of a 'base' that you wear on your back. Sounds weird... and it looks weird, too. 

That's not all: it retails for €100,000. If I have that kind of money, a jet pack is NOT the first thing I would be lining up to buy....

We got a better look the next day (actually, Elliot was going to try it out but after three hours and a few "incidents"—a loose screw here, a missing Allen key there, and plenty of "we'll be ready in half an hour"s—we gave up).

Weird.

This, however, was my view — so no complaining.

We also went to one of my favourite paella restaurants at Camp de Mar on the west side of the island - didn't have the saffron-y dish this time, but did start with another Spanish favourite, pimientos de Padrón. Legend has it that 1/100 of these little peppers will be spicy, but I have never, EVER had a spicy one. 

But watch: now they'll always be spicy.

In Palma, there was also a little festival / market this weekend - I think it might have been for the Feria de Abril, but I'm not sure.

My favourite little stall was a "Pulperia", which was selling Pulpo a la Gallega, a signature Spanish dish. SO fresh and so delicious. I want some now!

Look at those tentacles!