No cooking over the weekend...Aubaine..

No cooking at home a couple of weekends ago. Instead, we tried out two new restaurants (having a good friend visiting from NY was the perfect excuse to expand our London restaurant horizons). I know, that was a couple of weeks ago and am posting only now.. ..I was waiting for my friend to get back to NY and download the one precious picture I took at the first restaurant. Given that I am new to blogging - I had forgotten my camera so had to request my friend to take a picture (and I only remembered when the dessert arrived..was too busy enjoying the food)! Anyway, now that she is back in NY and I have a picture (prefer to post with pictures)...here are my thoughts on the restaurants.

The first restaurant, Aubaine came highly recommended by a friend from work. He said it was French food so was a bit skeptical since French food does not always hit the spot with vegetarians. This one most certainly did! The ambiance is really nice, especially on a warm summer day. The entire front of the restaurant opens out onto the street, creating a bright and airy atmosphere and you don't feel like you are missing out on a beautiful day (those have become rare in London this summer). We went for a late lunch and between all of us we ordered Beef Carpaccio, Cauliflower soup, salad Aubaine, Roasted Vegetable tartine and Salmon tartine. All of it was fantastic! I had the soup and roasted veg. tartine and both were bursting with flavour. The topper was ofcourse, dessert! Normally we would have just looked at the menu and then skipped the temptation. However, the staff walks around with this little dessert tray and everything on it looks so beautiful and appetizing, we indulged in two desserts for the table! My favourite was this strawberry concoction (forgotten the name so looks like I need to go back!!). It was light, not to sweet and just gorgeous to look at which is finally when I remembered I should take some pictures. It was a lovely lunch and will definitely return to sample the brunch menu which has a eggs in addition to the lunch fare. The lunch fare had tartines, salads, sandwiches and mains. Dinner is somewhat similar with more mains on the menu. They also sell fresh bread and have a special bread of the week. Will definitely return here.

The second restaurant we tried was Tom's Kitchen. Again, loved the place and will post more on it once I go back and take some pictures of the food! We went for dinner, had some lovely drinks...husband loved the Dirty Martini and I thought my Caipirinha was good to. The non-alcoholic Mojito got plus points from my friend who said it was not super sweet, drowning in syrup. They had a brunch menu that mentioned waffles..I'll definitely be going back for that.