Dine at a UK Masterchef café + Visit the Gavin Bond Exhibition

Of course the first thing I ticked off ‘The List’ had to do with food!
Now I must say I don’t think food has been a high point of my time in London. Compared to my home land of Australia I must say that the UK sucks at fresh food (although they do have amazing strawberries in the summer time). However I will admit in my time here and maybe this has been the influence of my lovely flat mates, but I have become intrigued with cooking shows. I never would have thought 2 years ago that I would be excited to leave work to come home to watch everyday people compete on a cooking competition show but now I am hooked!
However I do get the feeling that I am not alone. A lovely friend of mine has her own cooking blog (http://www.whatdeliciousness.blogspot.com/) and food was one of the main focuses of a recent girly weekend away. Food seems to be a salient subject!
With this new obsession in mind I thought it would be appropriate that I dined at a place that was associated with the most popular cooking show in the UK, Masterchef.
The first place I visited in early March was Smiths of Smithfield. The café was nothing like I expected, I was thinking it would be super posh and my friends and I would look completely out of place. However I was pleasantly surprised to find myself in a warehouse type establishment in the trendy area of Farringdon. My main gripe about Sunday Brunch at this café is that you can’t make a reservation so we had to wait over an hour to be seated. However they do have a drinks bar for consumers to suck down a bloody mary for their hangovers (they looked lovely) or a much needed pick me up coffee- mine was the second for the day!
The menu is extensive and it was super hard to pick one meal but in the end I chose the delightful pancakes with maple syrup and bananas. The meal, as you can see below, was very tasty and worth the wait. I washed this down with a yummy Booster juice and lots of great conversation. Overall the experience was very enjoyable and worth the wait.
After brunch I walked most of the way to the Gavin Bond exhibition off Shoreditch High Street. The exhibition was impressive although sadly I had seen most of the images within the pages of Q magazine (one of my absolute favourite magazines in London, it sits in third place behind Grazia and Elle). That said it is always a thrill to see professional photos in high quality print, especially photos of music artists I like/admire.

All in all a great first experience ticked off the list. Have you visited any restaurants recently that you have been dying to go to for a long time? If so please share

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