eatori

24 hours in St Petersburg

03:03 AM, June 9, 2012 |

Twenty four hours in St Petersburg is just not enough.

We had plumped for a 72 hour visa to be used over a long weekend. Two days in, I knew it wasn’t going to suffice.

I wish we’d stayed longer. I wish we’d had time to taken the hydrofoil out to Peterhof Palace and the Versailles style gardens. I wish we’d done a World War 2 tour about the siege and the ice road to Lagoda. I wish we’d made it through more than two floors of the Hermitage.

I wish it hadn’t rained in a biblical way for 10 of the hours we were there. I wish I’d known to expect rain. …

Bistrot Bruno Loubet (an anniversary meal)

10:42 PM, June 7, 2012 |

Eating out - London

By the time you’ve shuffled a ring onto a fourth finger and hitched wistful photos onto the wall of a lovely day in a white dress, is there any point celebrating that other date?

Unless you were very quick off the mark, it’s probably a more impressive number. Yet somehow it felt greedy. So since our wedding four years ago I gave the slip to the sixth of June.

When it rolled around this year, it felt harder to let it sneak past. Maybe because it’s date that totals nine years (making up all of our twenties). Or maybe it’s just because there’s a small part of me who wanted to shine …

Adzuki beans with miso and greens

01:00 AM, June 5, 2012 |

Japanese, pulses, vegetarian

Pulses are good for many things, chief among them their ability to help you find your balance again.

Two hours ago I was squashed on a flight from St Petersburg to London.

This was what they served us for ‘breakfast’.

Two stumpy, flabby berliner sausages and some powdery wedges of potato. Because I was starving I ate some of it (DIY plane-gazpacho of tomato juice with ice can only get you through so far).

Twelve hours before that, in the midst of a Russian white night I was drinking vodka and eating plate after plate of these.

Confession; there were many pelmeni dumplings consumed over our three days in St Petersburg. These stodge …