Food tour

We spent most of Saturday cycling around the city, checking out various eating options. First, we rode from Crouch End (also pronounceable as "Crouchend", with a fake French accent) over to London Fields, to meet my colleague Heike and her 2 1/2 year old son Peter. I saw Heike along the bike path in London Fields and stopped perhaps a bit too quickly and SB almost ran into me. A lively start to the day.

We browsed through the Broadway Market between London Fields and Regents Canal. I quite liked it. Seemed far less precious than Spitalfields and less crowded than Borough Market. We picked up a loaf of sourdough from DeGustibus and 100 g of Montgomery Cheddar. The bread had a good flavor, but was a touch underbaked and no crust to speak of. Also, it'd been baked too close to the other loaves so the sides were undercooked. Peter got a small cement mixer.

Then it was off to E Pellicci, where we enjoyed what was surely the finest meal we've had in London. Pellicci is an old Italian cafe (caff here) with glorious inlaid wood paneling, a mousetrap sized dining room, and excellent standard English breakfast. I had Lasagna - sauce was a bolognese - bechamel mix. The dessert was eh but the overall experience, fantastic. Must go back.

From Pellicci we rode through the city over to St Pauls, across the Bridge to the Tate Modern - quick natural break there - then a quite slow meandering ride to the Old Post Office Bakery (http://www.oldpostofficebakery.co.uk/) in Clapham. On the way we stopped at a knitting shop near Waterloo. There was a French street Market. Odd.

Anyway the Old Post reminded me very much of Rising Sun Bakery in Charlottesville. I worked there for two years at UVA. Small, run by hippies, very good quality. We had a checkerboard shortbread cookie and went back for a poppyseed version. Checkerboard cookies are a pain in the ass to make. You have to roll out thin sheets of contrasting dough, chill, stack, cut, restack, chill, cut, and bake. Old Post did all these steps, but seemingly refused to let things come out too rectangular - so it ended up looking like a chuck close cookie. Picked up a tiny rye loaf. SB hates rye, but they were out of everything else. The cappucino at the Portugese market across the street was bilgewater.

Then off to the Lighthouse Bakery on Northcote Street. Closed, and seemingly permanently. Northcote, though, full of hipster leaning establishments and Italian meat shops. SB is currently mad for cupcakes and we picked one up from a vendor. Mmm. Mmm.

From there we rode across Batersea Bridge into Chelsea, where SB was politely lectured by a woman on the operation of pedestrian walk/don't walk signals on traffic lights. This is the flip side of the public loutishness described in the earlier post - a strong urge to hector strangers on their behavior. The British dipole, either end of which would be totally unfathomable to most across the briney.

I navigated us back through Hyde Park and we checked out this year's pavilion at the Serpentine Gallery - this one by Frank Gehry. Spectacular. It reminded me a Frank Gehry creation.

Then back through more well-troden parts of London to Crouch End. The last part of these rides always a bit of a grind. I made grilled cheese sandwiches with the rye and cheddar. Should've added a bit of salt. Drank a czech bud and read for a while.