So I thought I would come back to my blog with another one of my days in London! Not so much an event but I went to a lot of different food places that I'd been meaning to try so I thought I would write about it! I can also say I completed one of my bucket list items which I'm really happy about!
Thus I began the day in Leicester Square waiting for my friend, Viet-Anh to arrive. I happened to be sitting by the square overseeing a street act which is rather common throughout London. At first I was pretty uninterested but after overseeing the act I was very confused. The man attempted to get a string-less tennis racket from head to his toes going over his torso and so on... He managed but it was a very weird act...
Once he arrived, as we met in Piccadilly Circus to proceed to Whaam Banh Mi located in Soho. Whaam Banh Mi is a Vietnamese restaurant which is also the location for the ice cream macaron sandwich pop up shop. Yolkin is a small pop up shop, a one woman business selling ice cream macaron sandwiches.
Sammie, Yolkin's owner, decided to call her business based on the idea that if she hadn't looked for a recipe with "yolks in" she would have never considered the idea of making macaron ice cream sandwiches.
The pop up store is located inside Whaam Banh Mi at 40, Great Windmill Street Soho. Her business hours are from 12PM - 4PM on Saturdays and Sundays. However, the macaron ice cream sandwiches have sold out beforehand, as early as 2PM!
So I'd been meaning to actually try one of Yolkin's macaron ice cream sandwiches for a long time, that it was even on my bucket list! The flavours change every week, with new flavours being posted on Tuesday weekly! For that particular weekend, there was Snickers, Melon, Skittles and Milo as the chosen flavours for the week.
Sammie, the owner always updates Yolkin's social media so do feel free to like, follow and share to find out the latest news on Yolkin's products, particularly new flavours and her making process! Click the links below to check them out:
But don't forget to also check out their website for contact details and more!
Anyways! So for that weekend, I opted on the Skittles flavoured macaron ice cream sandwich, whilst my friend opted on the Snickers options. Honestly, I'm really happy about the product, the ice cream was sweet but not to sweet (I don't particularly have a sweet tooth). As I began to eat the ice cream there wasn't any skittles at the moment but the more I ate, eventually the skittles came up in the ice cream. My ice cream was softer in comparison to my friends, which made it easier for me to eat. Yolkin provide small spoons for you to eat the ice cream but it was difficult trying to work out how to eat the actual macaron itself. I chose to eat the ice cream first before the outside of the macaron...
It is a worthwhile dessert to try though! I think it's a place you should try at least one's but look out for flavours as you might be amazed at what comes up! For one, I hope that the pocky flavour comes back as I missed out on that weekend when they were being sold! Fortunately, flavours do return so don't think that you missed out if you couldn't go on a particular weekend.
Moving on, we began walking towards Covent Garden. If you know me, you'll know how incredibly indecisive I am. I was given a time limit from when I arrived at Leicester Square till when my friend arrived to decide on picking where to eat for lunch. Trust me, I struggled, I didn't actually decide for a while... Fortunately, with the help of my friend, Katrina (thank you babe) I managed to decide on Shake Shack.
Shake Shack is an American fast food restaurant located in 4 places only in the UK: Covent Garden, New Oxford Street, Stratford in London and St David's Dewi Sant in Cardiff. I'd heard about this restaurant from a few people here and there but thought it would be worth trying for a lunchtime meal. If I'm honest, I wasn't too sure on what to pick. They offer burgers, hot dogs, crinkle cut fries and more.
I finally decided on a shake burger which is a typical cheeseburger topped with lettuce, tomato and ShackSauce. I decided on the single without the tomato but found it was pretty small and wish I had ordered a double. My friend ordered a Shack Stack a cheeseburger with a 'shroom burger topped with lettuce, tomato and ShakeSauce. I didn't even know what a shroom burger was myself... The 'Shroom burger is crisp-fried portobello mushroom filled with melted cheese, topped with lettuce, tomato and ShakeSauce. From my friend, I heard that quite a lot of people particularly like the portobello mushroom although I'm not sure why myself... Finally, we ordered cheese fries, which are crinkle cut fries topped with cheddar cheese sauce. I particularly liked these the best and had heard a lot of people order them when they went to Shake Shack. The cheedar cheese sauce accompanied the fries really well so I'm glad I asked for the cheese sauce on top.
After we finished eating, we were aiming to get our steel wool photography done however it wasn't dark enough yet for the process to be effective. So in the meantime we decided to kill some time at Las Vegas Arcade in Soho playing on some dance machine games such as ITG (In The Groove) and PIU (Pump It Up). Trust me, it was exhausting, I am totally unfit aha... Need to get back into these games and improve again oh dear...
As it had gotten dark enough, we decided to proceed on trying out the steel wool photography. The only problem was trying to find a suitable location to complete the photography. In the end we decided to travel to South Bank and complete our photography by the beach area by the bridge. Both of us are the kind of people who don't like to draw attention to ourselves so it was interesting trying to try this out since we knew people would be overlooking us trying out the steel wool photography.
You might be wondering, why would this attract so much attention? Well the steel wool photography involves steel wool (well if it wasn't obvious already...), a whisk (yes... don't question it just yet...), a rope and a lighter, making sure we set up the camera on a tripod at a shutter speed of 20 seconds.
Here's a link of how it works:
For those who didn't have time to watch the video. The basic concept is you attach the rope to the whisk. Fill the whisk with a reasonable amount of steel wool. Then lit near the bottom of the whisk where there is steel wool then begin to swing the rope with the whisk attached and keep doing it till the steel wool stops burning etc. It is best to do it in an open space avoiding grass unless it is wet. The open space should be away from the public as the sparks can reach quite a large distance and we want to avoid having sparks hit the public. I was also told to wear a hoodie so wear long sleeves underneath is also a good idea and people with long hair should tie their hair back and put their hood up to avoid your hair being burned...
Now you may be wondering what it looks like in action. Coincidentally, my friend's friend oversaw us in practice not realising that it was her friend completing the steel wool photography. Thanks for the snapchat video! Here it is in action:
We did various attempts with the steel wool photography and had a lot of interesting comments, and quite a few spectators too. Fortunately it was dark and being the awkward person I am when I actually swung the whisk around with the rope once we lit the steel wool on fire I turned my body away from the public... Unintentionally...
These were the results (my friend and I took it in turns to complete the steel wool photography so we got some interesting results):
I think our attempts turned out pretty well, especially as it was my first time trying it out aha! Definitely going to try it again when I can!
After our steel wool photography, we decided to return to Soho to have dinner. We had used so much energy trying to do the steel wool photography aha. I think my arm was aching for days afterwards. We decided to have some Japanese food at Eat Tokyo in Soho. I've heard about this place through a lot of friends and have eaten at quite a few of Japanese places such as Taro and Dozo which are on the same road and next to each other. Ironic really aha. For some reason, the wait was incredibly long, I think we waited for at least 30 minutes before we managed to get a seat. It was really busy.
Once we were seated down, we started ordering our dishes. Thus my indecisive instinct comes in... Again... My friend opted on a salmon sashimi bento (?) I'm not too sure what it was called, but it salmon sashimi pieces on top of rice. We also ordered a sushi dish which I really liked called the Alaskan roll (?). It had prawn tempura, tobiko (flying fish roe), salmon and rice... My memory isn't very good... Apologies oops. I also ordered a dish which is pretty much Katsu don. However, I didn't realise how much I would get if I ordered the full one, I regret not ordering the half one, which would have filled me, I only managed to finish half of this. I also found it was quite salty in comparison to the one I had at Taro. I was happy that both our dishes had accompanying miso soup. Miso soup usually consists of tofu, wakame (edible seaweed) and scallion (spring onion).
Overall, I had a really great day, but it was incredibly exhausting aha. I got to try out quite a variety of food I hadn't done before which is what I usually aim to do when I go out to gain new experiences of what is good and what is not.
Thank you for reading my latest blog update, and hopefully I'll be back soon to update you on another event!
