DISCOVERING GREAT VALUE BRITAIN (Day 2)

#OMGB...imagine staying next to the iconic London Eye

 

After a fitful night’s sleep at Premier Inn London County Hall, we started the day bright and deliciously thanks to the Full Premier Inn Breakfast (6.30am – 10.30am) served at the hotel’s cosy Thyme restaurant.

Trust me, it’s a challenge just to sample everything in the lavish spread. Notable picks we recommend include back bacon rashers, premium British sausages, eggs (scrambled, poached, fried, boiled or made into omelette), grilled tomatoes, buttermilk pancakes, sourdough crumpets, croissants and breads: white, malten or gluten-free.

Healthier options range from cereals and yoghurts to assorted fresh and dried fruits. Baked goods such as cinnamon and raisin bagels, pain aux chocolate and mini muffins are also served. Then wash your breakfast down with unlimited cups of Costa coffee, Twinings tea, fruit juices and smoothies. For families with kids in tow, the little ones get to eat for free (up to 2 children below 16 years old for every paying adult who opts for the Full Premier Inn Breakfast).

THRILLERS OF THE DAY

 

Since the weather was fair and cool, we strolled across Westminster Bridge and headed towards the imposing Parliament House. It was slow going mainly because we stopped ever so often to take endless photographs and to gape in awe at all the famous landmarks.

After rounding the corner, we stopped briefly at Westminster Abbey for a brief filming session and more photography. Frankly, it felt surreal to be standing in front of the ornate and historical St Margaret’s Church as excerpts from Hilary Mantel’s best-selling Wolf Hall novel came to mind.

 

Bicycle sharing scheme is available throughout London...look out for Santander bicycle docks and credit card payment machine

 For greater mobility, London's public bicycle scheme is a nifty way to travel around the city. Look out for Santander Cycles – a public bike sharing scheme which has more than 750 docking stations and 11,000 bikes in circulation across London. Available 24/7, 365 days a year, you can hire a Boris bike (nicknamed after London's Mayor Boris Johnson) for £2 for 24-hour access.

London is pedestrian and cyclist-friendly so there's plenty of time to admire the city's architectural heritage

The first 30 minute session is free so you can saddle up anywhere from Shepherds Bush to Canary Wharf. Look for a Santander Cycles docking station terminal and follow the instructions on its touchscreen on how to hire a bike.

Big Bus Tour customers can still make full use of their 48-hour tickets and board the ‘hop on, hop off’ Big Bus to catch the Changing the Guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace.

The regal Changing of the Guard ceremony marks the moment when the soldiers currently on duty, the Old Guard, exchange places with the New Guard. The pomp and pageantry is a ‘must see’ and major crowd-puller so be an early bird in order to snag a good spot before the scheduled time of 11.30 am.

From Buckingham Palace, you can either hop back onto the Big Bus or take the Metro. On arrival at the Victoria stop, take the Victoria Underground Line to Euston Station. Change here for Northern line to Camden Town Station.

We stopped at Haché Burgers (24 Inverness St, Camden Town NW1 7HJ, tel: +44 20 7485 9100) for lunch. Voted the Best Burger restaurant in London less than a year after opening, Haché was established in 2004 as the original 'gourmet burger with service’ concept.

The rustic and homey vibes drew a capacity crowd and we soon discovered why. Every Haché burger is a work of culinary art: a choice of fresh ciabatta or brioche bun comes served with rocket leaves, beef tomato and sliced sweet red onion as the base.

My Steak Bavarian (£9.95) burger with smoked Bavarian cheese and caramelised onions were out of this world. Juicy, hearty and chockful of big, bold flavours. I also enjoyed sampling mouthfuls of the Grilled Halloumi (£5.95) with mixed leaves, honey and lemon dressing with a hint of chilli. Equally superb was the Nachos (£4.50) which came smothered in melted mature Cheddar cheese and jalapeños, served with sour cream, salsa and guacamole on the side.

After that indulgent lunch, we had to walk it off and made our way to Camden Market.  Home to hundreds of stalls, boutiques, cafés, bars and canal boats, it is London’s largest and most popular market where you’d find unique creations by talented craftsmen for young and old, guys and gals.

The downpour didn’t stop us from wandering around for a splendidly eclectic shopping experience. We joined a snaking queue to devour piping hot baby Dutch pancakes drenched with Nutella and fresh strawberry wedges. There was even a Malaysian cuisine stall manned by a Malay lady with her son among the mind-boggling number of food stalls.

Besides snapping up two lovely shawls, my other memorable buy was a pair of cuff links fashioned from watch mechanism parts. Due to time constraints, we could only admire the goods (think hand-made jewellery and soaps, vintage clothing, quirky accessories and bags, etc) displayed and sold at The Stables and The Lock sections.

Fans of Amy Winehouse would be interested to know a statue dedicated to her can be found at Chalk Farm Road (Camden was where she lived). From Chalk Farm, we took the Northern Line (Southbound) to Waterloo Station for a short break back at the hotel.

We were eager beavers as we set off for an early dinner at Bill’s (36-44 Brewer Street, London W1F 9TB, tel: 0207 287 8712); a bid to ensure we were on time to catch Thriller, a West End musical tribute to the King of Pop at the Lyric Theatre.

Too excited to eat much, I chose Bill’s fish pie (£12.95) which was a sizeable casserole of cod, salmon, smoked haddock, prawns, peas and roasted baby onions with mustard and cheddar mashed potato. It was creamy without being cloying and chockful of seafood.

Our jaws dropped at the sight of Jennifer’s slow cooked barbeque-style pork ribs (£14.95) accompanied by sweet potato mash, smoky barbeque beans and creamy coleslaw. We swapped tasting portions and couldn’t stop raving over our dishes.

Part of the Lyceum Theatre building in Covent Garden, Bill’s is a hot spot with theatre goers. The restaurant owner Bill Collinson started out as a green grocer in East Sussex which segued into a café. A meeting place for good food, good friends and good time, Bill’s soon grew into a popular restaurant chain. The ambiance is rustically homey; kind of a well-furnished mom-and-pop shop filled with vintage bits and bobs, aged wood accents and cushy corners for dining and drinks.

 

From Bill’s, it was a mere short walk to the Lyric Theatre (29 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, W1D 7ES)  for our show. Having opened in December 1888, it is the oldest theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue but as with most buildings in London, everything on premise was lovingly maintained and in top working order.

The two-hour long performance was comparable to a concert, a musical throwback on Michael Jackson’s legendary 45-year music career; from his Jackson Five days to the epic Thriller phase and beyond.

Here’s a Great Value Britain tip: Visitors can buy discounted theatre tickets for current shows, some with as much as 25%-70% discount off regular prices. Just go to Leicester Square and look for a small booth which sells those discounted tixs.

No visit to London is complete without catching one of the many musicals or plays in the West End so make sure you don’t miss out on such a notable #OMGB experience.

Travelling from Malaysia to the UK on a budget? Book now via http://www.visitbritain.com/malaysia or visit CIT Malaysia http://cit.travel/europe/united-kingdom to plan your VisitBritain itinerary.

COMING SOON! DISCOVERING OXFORD IN GREAT VALUE BRITAIN (Day 3)

ALL CHOOK UP AT TAI THONG GROUP

Choi yin gai or free-range chicken has gained some notoriety of late thanks to netizens debating whether they’d fork out a princely sum for Seremban’s famous Chai Hong ‘diamond’ chicken rice.

Honestly, whether that chicken rice is pricey or not is rather subjective. Good produce doesn’t come cheap and I can personally attest to the fact that making tasty chicken rice is a painstaking process. What is so wrong with paying for top quality and proud efforts?

When we were invited to sample Tai Thong Group of Restaurants’ Free Range Chicken promotion, it was an offer nobody could refuse. Executive chef Lee Wee Hong deft preparations for the plump, juicy chooks: Poached Chicken with Fried Shallot Oil and Salt Baked Chicken with Tang Kwei are certainly worth crowing about.

The chef shows full respect for the free range chicken which are sourced from a farm in Semenyih. Fed with spring water, the poultry is given ample time to grow up to the desired weight of about 2kg. Hence the chef only needs to rely on the classic practice of poaching it till cooked. Dressed simply in supreme soya sauce and aromatic fried shallot oil with a scattering of fried shallot on top, the chook’s pale yellow skin and smooth flesh looks appetising.

Biting into the tender meat, the sweetness of poached chicken jus blended with mildly briny soy and shallot oil dressing suffused our palate; causing a chorus of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ around the table. The toothsome, springy meat texture and sublime juiciness are similar to kampong-bred chickens of yore that graced major festivals and family celebration tables.

Hints of herbal sweetness of tong kwei (angelica sinesis) prevailed in the salted baked version. We also detected a pleasant tinge of smokiness in the golden yellow skin and deliciously tender meat. Priced at RM48++ for half a bird and RM88++ for whole, the free-range chook is available until further notice.

Chef Lee also whipped up his range of signature dishes that evening. Should you wish to sample any, it is advisable to order them in advance to avoid disappointment. We recommend starting with Crispy Beancurd with Fish Paste (RM13++ per portion) to stave off hunger pangs while waiting for mains to arrive. Made from mashed house-made beancurd and fish paste speckled with bits of red chilli, the soft yet crisp cubes of deep-fried beancurd were wickedly addictive. Trust me, it is alarmingly easy to polish off a whole plate within minutes.

Well-heeled corporate clientele and urbanites who hanker for old school favourites like Home-style Yong Tau Foo (RM20++ per portion), do call ahead to request for Chef Lee’s homespun handiwork. Salted fish, pork, shallot, garlic, waterchestnuts, fish paste and chilli form the basis of the stuffing used to fill seeded and halved green chillies, baby bittergourds and beancurd puffs.

Slathered in a zingy, unctuous black bean sauce, the seared green chillies with fish paste would get the stamp of approval from finicky family matriarchs. Soused in some clear broth and complemented by baby bok choy, the stuffed baby bittergourds and beancurd puffs were equally scrumptious. I particularly enjoyed the fresh astringency of the little bittergourds which cuts through the milieu of rich flavours.

Fu yue or fermented beancurd (the Chinese equivalent of stinky cheese) is the central ingredient in Chef Lee’s Claypot Lamb Stew with Fermented Beancurd and Water Spinach (RM30++). Its assertive savouriness melded with the subtle accents of lemongrass, dried chilli and ginger, to temper the lamb (actually it’s goat meat) gaminess. The chef then brought the leftover gravy to boil before adding some fresh kangkung (water spinach) to it. Once wilted, the crunchy veggie slicked with that umami-rich sauce, created a major stir with us.

Cleansing our palate with a bowl of Double Boiled Black Beans and Pork Ribs Soup, we slurped up every drop of the heartwarming broth. Chunks of fried fish and red dates lent flavourful depth to the nutritious mixture.

Heady fumes of Chinese wine wafted up as Chef Lee showcased his prowess at cooking Flaming Drunken Tiger Prawns (RM48++ per portion) at the tableside for us. It was an impressive spectacle as bright flames leapt and the claypot hissed and sizzled as he tossed the wine-soaked tiger prawns around.

Once the drama has dissipated, we had a field day savouring the sea-sweet, alcoholic tasting crustaceans. It pays to get your hands dirty if you want to derive maximum enjoyment from the shelling of those prawns.

Another home run hit is the lush yet simple offering of Hokkien Mee (RM20++ per portion). Served with a little bowl of crisp deep-fried pork lardons on the side, the noodles with all the requisite ingredients are up to scratch although it has yet to reach that old school benchmark I’m accustomed to.

Should you have a chance to eat dim sum at Imperial Garden, be sure to sample some Baked Dried Oyster Tarts (RM8.80++). Dried oysters play a leading role here, tucked away in buttery, flaky pastry shells to tickle the tastebuds. Redolent with concentrated deep-sea accents with fleeting smokiness, the savoury tarts are unforgettable.

After such a sumptuous feast, we found light, sweet succour in a glass of Chilled Lemongrass Jelly. The citrusy nuance was amplified by the ice cream while gelatinous basil seeds gave the pudding subtle crunch, completing our dining affair on a delightful note.

For reservations, call IMPERIAL GARDEN, tel: 03-7956 6868. Address: 7th Floor, Intan Square, 3, Lorong Utara C, Petaling Jaya, Selangor. www.taithong.com.my