Bite Me!

I bought my lunch from the Scandinavian Kitchen the other day.  This turned out to be a good decision, for three reasons:

1) I had a money-off voucher from kgb deals - £5 worth of food for only £1.  Bargain.

2) The guy behind the counter was cute.

3) They sell my favourite little green cakes from Ikea.  This is a great thing, as my nearest Ikea is miles away and I usually just have to beg people to buy them for me when they visit.  You’d think it was a foreign country or something (well, it is Croydon.  That’s practically foreign, right?)  On second thoughts, this is probably not such a great thing, as now whenever I’m around Oxford Circus I’m going to be tempted to go and buy cakes and that will do my figure NO GOOD AT ALL. Hmm. 

So, that aside, I suppose you’ll want to know what the food is like.  Scandinavian, obviously – little Ikea cakes, open sandwiches, a selection of salads – £4.75 will get you two open sandwiches and some salad to take away, or variants thereof (see menu here).  I went for the Greek salad, Greve and radish open sandwich, and blue cheese mash open sandwich.  It was all fresh, and perfectly nice, if a little small for someone with my gargantuan appetite.  The blue cheese mash open sandwich was an exception, being piled so high with blue cheese that I rather wished for the missing slice of bread to even things up a little.

My conclusion?  I’ll probably be back.  If only to flirt with the counter man.  

Scandinavian Kitchen, 61 Great Tichfield Street, London W1W 7PP.  Tel: 020 7580 7161.  They don’t just do food to take away – there’s a café and grocery store too.

We popped in here recently for a mid-week lunch – located just off Oxford Street, it seemed like it might be a good alternative to the usual run of over-priced, shopper-filled cafés on Oxford Street itself. This is not exactly the full-on, tacky, Americana diner experience (if that’s what you’re after, you’d be better off going to Ed’s), but a souped-up version with chic brown leather booths and cocktails. This is reflected in the prices, which are reasonable but not exactly bargain basement (we spent about £15 each on lunch altogether)...

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Being in a massive hurry the other lunchtime, I nipped into a new sandwich shop called Leon which has just opened on Regent Street to get some lunch. Slightly alarmed by being the sole customer (well, it was about 3pm) and the way all six of the staff were all looking at me (albeit in a smiley, friendly way) I grabbed the nearest salad that came to hand and scarpered. What a stroke of luck – it turned out to be a Leon Superfoods Salad, containing broccoli, alfalfa, peas, feta, quinoa, cucumber and seeds, with a minty dressing. It was quite simply the best salad I have ever eaten – I was going to say, from a sandwich shop, but it occurs to me that it was probably one of the nicest salads I have ever eaten full stop. The avocado was perfectly ripe and not at all brown, the feta creamy, the broccoli of a perfect firmness. I’ll definitely be going back to try out some of their other lunches – the sweet potato falafel sound right up my street!

Leon Superfoods Salad, £3.95. For a list of all Leon restaurants (photo is of Leon Spitalfields), see www.leonrestaurants.co.uk

Today I went for a nice cold winter picnic in Green Park with a friend at lunchtime - we pooled our meagre funds in Sainsburys and came out with a baguette, a clump of celery, a big tub of houmous and some taramasalata.  A feast for £1.50 each!  Bit chilly, but fun...