Eating in "The City" in London (UK) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Eating in “The City” in London (UK) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

On our second trip to London (UK), we set out for the Tate Gallery in London.  As we were walking towards the Tate, Laurent got a nasty piece of dust in his eye and said he needed to sit down and deal with the dust.

“Ok, honey,” I said.  I knew he really did not like modern art.

“Let’s just eat light lunch and skip the Tate today,” I said.

Laurent liked that idea.

The Wren Café sat next to a small Wren Church in the financial district where we eventually walked.  London’s financial district is called “The City.”

The Church was designed by the architect Sir Christopher Wren, the 17^th century Baroque architect, who also built St. Paul’s Cathedral where royal weddings have taken place.  There are about 50 Wren churches in the city of London.  Most have little parks around them with a café.

The Wren Café where we went to eat looks like most American University Cafés.  This is probably why I liked it.  The moment you walked in this café, the aroma of homemade soup teased your nose and made you hungry.

This café served broccoli-cheese soup.  I ordered it from a menu written on a chalkboard.

What made the Wren Café so collegiate was the eccentric collection of customers.  The people eating at the Wren Café included hippies with very long hair, a chic couple with a big bag of books from Dillons, and an older lady with a big bag of books in grocery bags – probably from a used book store.  I thought you could get several perspectives for book discussions here.

We just had tea and a muffin here.  We took the Underground back to the hotel and passed Highgate Cemetery where Karl Marx is buried on the way back to Laughton.  We were going to change hotels for a place closer to town, so I could walk Florence around in her stroller easier.

We ate at the hotel before going to our new hotel.  I loved it that hotels had some “garde manger” or pantry items that they could offer as light meals in the lobby of the hotel to guests.

I ate tomato soup as an entrée and a sesame chicken salad as a main dish, or plat prinicipal.

Most hotels in London at that time used French menu order to designate dishes in the following way:

-hors d’oeuvre (appetizers)

-entrée (first course)

-plat principal (main course)

-fromage (cheese)

-désert (dessert)

If the French have a reliable source of lettuce like a home garden, they serve salad.  The French eat croissants and dessert on the weekend, walk a lot, and do their own housework, and cook lovely family meals, which keeps them thin, limber, and financially independent.

I have always liked this style of living, which I was exposed to on trips to Canada as a child. 

You can take a bus to Canada and shop for Christofle Crystal on Oulette Street in Windsor, Ontario, for example, come back to Detroit, shop at DuMochelle’s and drive back to Grosse Pointe, if you really wanted to.

After lunch, we moved to a Posthouse Hotel in Epping and called it a day.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup in Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting the British Museum in London (UK) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the British Museum in London (UK) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I continued my tour of London with a visit to the British Museum.  Toddler Florence was sleeping in her stroller.  I lifted the stroller with her in it and walked up the steps of the British Museum to see the main collections at the British Museum.

The Museum was still a hot house from the previous day’s heat wave.  Florence started squirming as soon as I hit the room with the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon frieze (Athens, Greece), the Rosetta Stone (Egypt), the Sutton Hoo Ship Treasures; and the library which had pages on display from the Lindesfarne Gospels and the Harley Gospels.

I would show Florence all the pretty artwork she saw as a toddler later in life in art books as we sat at home.

I went back to Hampstead Heath to look for a place to eat.  Hampstead Heath reminded me of Lincoln Park in Chicago with its brick apartment buildings, used bookstores, and wonderful shops where you could buy coffee, tea, wine, blank journals, pens, and Florentine stationery with its paisley swirls of color.

I was hungry and decided to try an Indian Restaurant, which I knew was Punjabi.

When I entered the restaurant, the owner was eating a pizza.

I looked at him and said, “Please tell me your restaurant is open.  Every other place in town is closed, and I’m starving.”

“We’re always open,” he said and sat me by a corner window in his vacant restaurant after the afternoon rush.  I might have fought him for the pizza, if the restaurant were closed.  That is not true; I would have offered to buy two slices of pizza.

I never got to eat Indian food in Paris, so I was really living it up at the Punjabi tandoori chicken restaurant.  I ate red-colored tandoodri chicken without skin with a platter of coral-colored rice.

I also ordered a tray of curry vegetables – potatoes, peas, cauliflower, and tomatoes.  Curry vegetables probably do not go with tandoori chicken in a traditional meal, but I liked them.  I also ate lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers on the side as a salad.  I dipped warm naan bread in the curry.

I think the owner enjoyed plying me with naan bread as much as he enjoyed giving Florence chocolate mints to eat.  She was a sticky, brown mess by the end of the meal.  She smiled and giggled as I cleaned her up with some water and a cloth napkin.

I bought a coffee and cream at a local coffee shop to drink in the room.

(As a side note, the Punjab region is shared by both Pakistan and India in the Northwestern corner of India.  The Punjabs are mostly Muslim and speak Urdu.   Naan is their bread not India’s.)

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting London's National Gallery of Art with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting London’s National Gallery of Art with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

On the first weekend of our visit to London, Laurent, baby Florence, and I took the Underground to the National Gallery of Art.  We were the first people in line, waiting for the Gallery to open.

Florence squealed in front of all the paintings and was frustrated when she could not touch them.  The guards laughed and said she was cute.  They gave her some museum maps, which she immediately crumpled up in her hands and laughed.

After that, she pointed at paintings and clapped her hands in front of the ones she liked.  It was hard to contemplate art with an active toddler bopping around in a stroller.

You hardly need to go to Italy to see Italian paintings when you lived in London.  I like Ucello’s battle scenes of Medieval Italy.  Italy’s Dolce Vita lifestyle has been hard won.

I went through the Spanish collection in relative calm.  I think the paintings of saints contemplating skulls in their hands might have frightened Florence.

By the time I made it to the Gallery’s bookstore, Florence was sleeping.

I bought some bookmarks as Christmas gifts and several good books that day:

-Cennini’s Craftsman’s Handbook – he was Italian, but worked primarily in France

-The Oxford Dictionary of Saints – it is always good to have reference books to deal with religious art criticism

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France


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Eating at Cafe Flo in Hampstead Heath (London, UK) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Eating at Café Flo in the Hampstead Heath Neighborhood (London, UK) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget – Ruth Pennington Paget

When Laurent came back from his first day of working with his English colleagues on a bone marrow transplant project for the European Community as a computer engineering consultant for hospitals throughout Europe, he said we were invited out to dinner at a nice place down the street. 

We walked down the street to a restaurant called Café Flo.  This restaurant featured French and cosmopolitan dishes such as sukiyaki from Japan (chicken kebabs with a sweet soy sauce coating) and souvlaki from Greece (lamb kebab with yogurt, cucumber, and green onion dipping sauce on the side).

I installed Florence in her stroller next to a wall and told her “Café Flo” is your resto, kiddo!”

Laurent’s colleague seemed more relaxed when he was not in a traffic jam on the Orbital.  Laurent’s work colleague ordered rosé wine to go with our meal.  Laurent liked rosé and asked if it could be chilled.

Laurent’s work colleague said that you could hardly get a cold beer in London let alone a bottle of wine.  As an entrée, Laurent and I ordered fish followed by a plat principal, main dish, of poussin diable – a spicy, broiled and flayed baby chicken for me and an English dish called bangers and mash for Laurent.

I regaled Laurent and his colleague with a travel dialog about Ruthie’s Walk around London Town.

As a dessert, I ordered lemon sorbet followed by a cappuccino.

I really thought my vacation was great.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Eating Great Breakfasts in London Town (UK) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Eating Great Breakfasts in London Town (UK) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The restaurant was near Oxford Street, a real carrefour of consumerism.  I love stores that collect sales tax and keep the money in local coffers for neighborhood programs.

It was 3:30 pm.  I could see that I could order breakfast at any time of day in the UK with cake as a dessert.  4 or 5 hours of walking would work off the calories in that cake.

I installed Florence in a sturdy, wooden chair provided by the restaurant.  My big English breakfast included: two sunny side up eggs, three sausages, three strips of delicious bacon, two broiled tomatoes, sautéed mushrooms that oozed butter, French fries, toast and jelly, orange juice, and coffee with warm milk.

Florence was interested in all the people around us talking in all sorts of languages, wearing all kinds of colorful fashion, and a few women wearing hats with feathers.

I toured Charing Cross and went back to the hotel.  The rest felt good.  I was generally thrilled with my tour of London Town.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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