Weekly Love: Week 120

Hello to the first Weekly Love of 2014! I arrived back in London last Friday. Honestly, over the Christmas period I was more interested in just relaxing and spending time with my family and I felt a little miserable about the blog, but cooking up a storm for my family on New Years Day, shooting the first recipes of the year and spending a weekend out eating in this incredible city now has me very, very excited for everything I have planned for here on the blog in 2014, which I started working on in earnest this week. And while I usually don’t go in for reality TV that is not The Great British Bake Off, those of you will remember how excited I got about the first season of The Taste hitting the USA. So, you can imagine my joy at being able to enjoy both the British and American versions at the moment, a double whammy of three of my favourite food people: Nigella Lawson, Anthony Bourdain and Ludo Lefebvre every week. Lets hope I don’t get too confused watching both!
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1. Finding the first forced rhubarb of the year in Daylesford Organic. | 2. My best discovery of 2014 so far. You can get real, genuine, California style cold pressed juice from Canyon Juicery, inside the Joseph store on Westbourne Grove in Notting Hill. My cold pressed from Pressed Juicery or Blueprint Cleanse was literally one of the things I missed the most about living in Los Angeles. | 3. The scotch egg on the bar snack menu at The Brown Cow on Fulham Road in Parsons Green is something really special, and if you live on my side of London, well worth trekking out West for. Remind me why I was willing to share this one? | 4. Picking a little of whatever I fancied while I was working on a feature from Ottolenghi’s in Notting Hill for both breakfast and lunch. From my visit, I recommend the Cinnamon Pretzel Rolls and the Sweet Potato with Lemongrass Cream (I’ve actually made it from the Plenty book, and the in store version is disturbingly better.) | 5. Another one from Parson’s Green worth visiting for: Hally’s. A stupidly late brunch at 2pm of Smoked Salmon, Cream Cheese, Rocket, Avocado and Capers on Rye with a wedge of lemon and two poached eggs on the side. I also really recommend their Bloody Mary’s. | 6. Pisco Sours to start off an incredible Sunday lunch of steak and seafood at Shrimpy’s in King’s Cross.

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I’m not usually one for doing guest posts on other peoples websites, but when the lovely Tania who writes the blog Joy Felicity Jane asked me if I wanted to contribute to her ‘Making Lists’ series I jumped up and down with excitement. I have loved her beautiful photos on her site since I first stumbled across it when she took out advertising here on Rachel Phipps. It was also very lovely to be able to meet up with her for brunch just before she headed back to her native France, before she moves off to Australia for a year; talk about exciting! Anyway, if you head over to Tania’s blog you’ll find some photos I shot earlier this week for the feature of some of my favourite London food spots and on one of my favourite walks in the city along Southbank, and my list of 10 reasons why it is amazing to be a food writer living in London.

What have you been enjoying this week, and what do you have planned for the weekend? I’ve honestly got a few days of studying ahead of me, but depending on how I’m doing at the end of tomorrow I might try and make a few last minute brunch or lunch plans for Sunday morning to break things up a bit! 

Also, in other news, on February 1st Rachel Phipps is going to turn 5 years old – practically ancient by internet standards I know, but I landmark that I can’t believe that both the blog and I have made it to! I was wondering as it is a Saturday if I put together some sort of event like a brunch or drinks in London as a type of reader meet up to celebrate the blog birthday, if any of you would be interested in coming? Let me know in the comments section, or via Twitter or email

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