Degò

After a wonderful evening at Curzon Soho, watching the UK premiere of Thérèse Desqueyroux including a Q&A with Audrey Tautou as part of their 'Rendez-Vous With French Cinema', I had a delicious meal at Degò, an Italian restaurant and winebar a matter of minutes from the super-busy Oxford Circus.

The menu was full of traditional dishes and flavours from Italy. I started off with aubergine parmigiana - this version was partially de-constructed  with a beautifully sweet tomato sauce accompanying crispy aubergine interleaved with gooey mozzarella. It was certainly tasty, although a little too oily.

I was very happy with the house-made fettuccine for my mains. The pasta was perfect, just al dente, and with creamy fresh burrata and confit tomatoes was a pleasure to eat. It's a wonderfully simple combo, so I think I'll be trying to emulate it at home!

I finished with some great house-made gelato: peach, raspberry and pear - a refreshing end to a highly enjoyable meal.

Celia Brooks at French & Grace

I had a lovely vegetarian lunch today at French and Grace, where Celia Brooks was serving a special menu as a guest chef. She's written some great recipe books with interesting vegetarian recipes which I'm definitely going to try out some time and will probably take to university!

French and Grace is located in the very cool Brixton Village, which is full of good restaurants with reasonably-priced food and also hosts a few shops.

I really liked these caramelised onion, mushroom and cheddar tarts because the crispy cheese gave them a strong parmesan-like taste and the tartness (pun intended) of the onions made a good combination.

The trio of veg pâtés was stunning. I loved the three vibrant colours, especially of the purple pâté, made with beetroot, walnut and Stilton. I found the Stilton a little overpowering in this one, but the more subtle flavours of broad bean and basil were a hit with me. The brazil nut and garlic pâté was also delicious, with a great nutty flavour.

These gnocchi, made with wild greens, rather than just plain-old potatoes, were amazing. Served with a sage and porcini butter sauce and roasted courgettes, the whole dish was full of lovely deep earthy flavours. The salad of all sorts of different varieties of tomatoes, pomegranate seeds and olives was great. I really liked the olives which had been spice-roasted giving them a soft texture and slightly sweet taste.

The dessert was yummy - raspberry Eton mess: crunchy meringue and a rich, creamy sauce. It was sprinkled with leaves from the Stevia plant - a sweet leaf sometimes processed to be used as a sugar alternative. This, like most of the vegetables used in the meal, had been grown in Celia's allotment, making them all as fresh as possible.

I think I shall have to return to French and Grace another time to try out their street food, which includes delicious-sounding flatbread and hummus wraps as well!

Delicous lunch

Had a great lunch today: watermelon, feta and watercress salad and a tielle.

The salad, with chopped up watermelon, salty feta cheese and leaves of watercress for that special 'kick', was brilliantly refreshing.

But the tielle really made the meal. It's an interesting speciality from Setés, which my mum brought back from France. It's made with octopus and tomato with lots of spices in a sort of ragu type sauce thing, wrapped in pastry. Difficult to explain, and probably sounds disgusting, but it's surprisingly good! Shame you can't buy them round here, but you could always try making them...?