return and report: hot chocolate edition

After the last post (yikes--that was a while ago), I have taken upon myself the very serious and heavy responsibility of hunting down the best hot chocolate in London. I have amassed quite a bit of information since then (at least about the hot chocolate available around my flat and along my route to the library), though I still have a long and not-so-arduous investigative path ahead of me. I shall update accordingly.

I preface this list with a bit of an explanation: I am quite picky about my hot chocolate. This does not mean that I turn up my nose at the powdered variety--rather, it means that I have an unswerving devotion to Nestle's Rich Milk Chocolate (5 spoonfuls, stirred into water), and have exceeding great difficulty choking down Erik's preferred Swiss Miss. Sister #4 is a devotee of Stephen's, for which I've never really been able to muster up any great affection.

The Cadbury's mix here is serviceable, as long as you get the one that requires milk (the water one is fairly revolting), but it's fairly sweet. To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking for in this great hunt of mine. I like the chocolate fairly to quite dark and extremely pronounced, I like the consistency to be on the thick side, and I don't like a pronounced milkiness. I also like it served extremely hot. And so, that said, in no particular order:

(Most of these run from 2.50 - 3.00)

British Library
This is the worst hot chocolate I have ever had in my entire life. It tastes like perfumed dish soap. It makes me want to die.

Senate House cafe
Cadbury's variety, so fine. Also, cheap.

The Haberdashery (Crouch End)
Excellent. Fairly dark and exceedingly thick--by the time you get to the bottom of the bowl, it's a bit like drinking chocolate pudding. Bonus: when I went in, I discovered after ordering that I didn't have my wallet. They gave it to me anyway. (And a tip: you don't order at the till. You stand awkwardly at the entrance and they show you to a table.) 2.70

Bread & Bean (Archway)
Fine. A little lukewarm, a little milky.

Coffee Circus (Crouch End branch)
Pretty good, though a little on the lukewarm side. The regular isn't anything hugely striking, but go for the chili version, which makes it a bit like mexican hot chocolate.

Bean About Town (Tufnell Park station)
What I remember mostly about this is that it was freezing and rainy and this was hot. So I think it was good. Not the greatest, but good.

Caffe Mike (Kentish Town)
Lukewarm, Cadbury's. Apparently I should go back for the pastries.

Chorak (East Finchley)
I don't remember much about this, except that, once again, it was freezing and raining and I desperately needed something hot because I had forgotten my Oyster Card and was trying to walk to church and took a wrong turn and it was several miles later and I didn't have a coat on and I vaguely recall this not quite hitting the spot--so a bit weak and a bit lukewarm.

Ronis Bagel Bakery (Belsize Park)
I came here on a rather strange day, when I had gone to see about a flat and ended up listening to the landlord talk about his recently deceased mother and the injustices of the inheritance tax for over an hour. I stopped by Ronis on my way back as part of my great bagel quest. Once again, it was freezing and raining, and the hot chocolate was a bit on the lukewarm (and small) side. Decent, though I expected a bit more from the upscale-ness of the place (which surprised me, it being a bagel bakery, but, then again, it is Belsize Park) and the price. Pretty good, though.

La Gourmandina (Bloomsbury)
I stopped by here on yet another cold and rainy day because I was freezing and the chalkboard outside said 'best hot chocolate in London.' It's an upscale French/Italian deli/cafe/restaurant. They asked if I wanted the hot chocolate French style or Italian--apparently the former is milkier, and the latter (for which I opted) is thicker. Anyway, it was quite good, though on the small and expensive side, and not as thick as I thought it would be given the description.

Paul A. Young Fine Chocolate (Soho)
I stopped at this exceedingly fancy chocolate shop after a rather superb performance of the St Matthew Passion. They keep the chocolate warming in some sort of pot by the window, and serve it 'Aztec style', which apparently means that it's made with water rather than milk. They have a host of spices that you can add. I told the guy just to add his favorite, so he put in cinnamon, ginger, and black cardamom, and, frankly, I was a bit underwhelmed--in large part because the spices sort of overwhelmed. So I guess it was partly my fault for letting them add so many spices, but it was all just a bit too floral for me. Also, exceedingly pricey and exceedingly small, and I expected more of a chocolate hit.

Sacred Coffee Cart (Bloomsbury)
I guess there is a kind of order to this list, because I'm ending with my favorite (so far). It's a tiny coffee stand on Torrington Square right behind the Warburg. It's thick and seriously chocolatey, but not cloying. Halfway through pouring in the milk, they stop and sprinkle in more chocolate. It's decently priced and large and I think I like it even more than Ruby and Violet and it's delicious.

on the necessity of excluding hot chocolate from a lenten sugar fast

I woke up on the loveseat this morning knowing that it was going to be a dismal day. It wasn't because I slept on the couch, fully clothed, since that's where I sleep more often than not. But there's waking up on the couch and there's waking up on the couch, and this was definitely the latter. It wasn't that I was angry (though there have been moments today when I've been furious, at all the usual suspects). I just knew I'd be miserable. That I wouldn't get anything done, once again. That the whole day would be suffused with a sense of dread and heaviness.

It's probably because the sun was out today.

Anyway, after forcing myself down to the library, I finally realized after staring out the window for a few hours that I should just give up and head home. And so I dragged myself down the stairs and began the 4.5-mile trek home.

It turns out that once you manage to dodge all the tourists and the shrieking, carefully sullen eye-linered teenagers populating the blight that is Camden, head up the very long and gradual hill of Kentish Town, skirt by the last of the die-hard British punks as they carry their amps into the Boston Music Room, and begin the penultimate leg of your journey through a motley jumble of off-license shops, take-outs, and cozily wall-papered pubs (at least through the windows), you happen upon a tiny slice of dairy heaven on Fortess Road. Sidestep the babbling toddlers and the enormous prams (takes only two to fill up the minute storefront), and order a hot chocolate. It will seem ages until the cheerful but slightly harassed-seeming (the toddlers are loud) girl brings your chocolate out, but that gives you plenty of time to lust the salted caramel ice cream and the blood orange sorbet (or is it the rhubarb ice cream and the lemon and cardamon sorbet?). And then she finally brings it out and you take a sip and it turns out that the whole thing is nothing but melted chocolate--no milk, no sugar, just gently melted straight chocolate, for less than starbucks' burnt-coffee-insult-to-humanity--and as you make your way through Archway, pausing every three steps for another glug, suddenly the moments don't feel so excruciating after all.

And then you stop at the charity shop and find nestled among the trashy romances and pseudo-historical novels a copy of mimesis in danish, which strikes you as hilarious.

shop of the day (oxford edition)

sun of a beach tanning.

moving day (in which it is discovered that london is not, despite most appearances, flat)

as i staggered up the hill to our new flat tonight on my third moving trip of the last 24 hours, i was trying to decide whether pushing or pulling the bulging food cart was less likely to shred my insistently protesting tendons. of course, having been duly reared on the children's songbook, right on cue 'some must push and some must pull' leapt into my head, accompanied by its faithful companion, pioneer-guilt: 'at least you aren't pulling a handcart.' but then, in a moment of inspiration, i finally hit upon a successful counter to the 25-odd years of generational shame born of my inescapable physical, emotional, and spiritual enervation in comparison to my ancestors' indomitable fortitude:

the pioneers didn't have to take the tube.

yes, they did face the wyoming hinterlands. but the northern line at rush hour, pack-muling all one's belongings in various contrivances that insist on encroaching on others' personal space and then making a run for it? when standing at the bottom of 3 flights of grimy, slightly fetid stairs as one lurches through london's labyrinthine bowels, nebraska sounds awfully refreshing.

on a more positive note, i can actually hear a bird outside my window. i think it might even be a nightingale. we're obviously not in whitechapel anymore (i'm in mourning for rinkoff's.).

continuation

after sating ourselves at a local tea house, then we drove around wales a bit and tried to go to a very old church, but felt it would be a little rude to intrude on the funeral. so we headed north to spend the night in ilam. we decided that before we called on mr. darcy, we should actually get out and do some hiking around the peaks, which were gorgeous, and for which we most definitely were not appropriately dressed. we made it about a mile, but realized whilst i was standing in my chacos in a mixture of frozen mud and sheep feces while the rain was hurtling down in sheets that hiking in britain is very different from hiking in utah, and the scenery was very nice when viewed through the car window. so we headed back to the hostel, changed into some semi-dry clothes, had some hot chocolate, and then headed on a very meandering path to lyme park.

ilam (missing from all these pictures are the school children who were rambling around the county park, considerably better prepared for the elements):

view from the hostel window, overlooking another wing of said hostel.

not an eleanor cross, but still not too bad.

ilam town centre. 

ilam church graveyard.

windshield view

in case you're wondering whether lyme park is worth hunting down, either because you're not a bbc p&p fan or you think it's a bit over the top to go hunting down the filming locations, the answer is yes. it is. you can slip around in the mud while ogling the scenery and dodge the rambling deer and clamber to the top of hills and get some pretty phenomenal views.

case in point.

ditto.

some other visit highlights:

oxford. not shown: the little kids at rugby practice. kee was swooning.

turning on the christmas lights is a serious event.

for which you must be well hydrated.

greenwich.

free range AND free spirit.

i feel this way about greenwich too.

i have yet to pull myself out of my post-kee funk, though i'm trying my best to bludgeon my despair with as many christmas concerts/carol services/markets as i can afford (which is not many. but i did get in a goodly number of samples at a cheese evening at borough market the other night. you just have to sneak in through the throngs and grab quickly, then sneak back out before anyone registers how much you just took.). good thing ixoj and t-rav are coming in a mere 6 days and e in 13. spass und faszination indeed!

schwesterfest pt. ?

after that downer of a post, on to more exciting things (though still depressing because: 1. kee isn't here any more; and 2. i'm pathetic and haven't finished up this post and i'm not going to do her visit justice anyway because i'm just going to put up pictures and not tell you all about all the fabulous things we did. i'll give you a hint, though: ginger beer float. utterly mind blowing.) like kee's visit. here, in abbreviated form, are some of the things we did once we picked up our car and gps at the airport and made it out the parking lot (after ascertaining that, indeed, the rear view mirror was supposed to be angled in such a strange manner).

we skipped stonehedge and then did an impromptu stop at avebury, where you can hang out with the sheep grazing around the rocks. then we headed across the border to wales and disembarked at tintern abbey.

turns out we do look alike--it's all in the furrowed brow. 

view of the wye.

not too shabby.

because i don't have internet access at my apartment, my knowledge of world events tends to be pretty eastern hemisphere-specific (particularly those things reported in the evening standard, when i can get my hands on it while i'm walking home) and early-in-the-morning us events. this can be somewhat disorienting, especially when i get to the library in the morning and check facebook (admittedly an entertaining way to get a good recap of nd football games).

anyway, last night i went to a shadow puppet performance of one of the cheerier winter stories, the little matchgirl. this particular performance was conceived as a passion, so there was lots of bach at parts, as well as a melding of the anderson text and the crucifixion account--deeply moving on a number of levels. afterward i walked home through the former slums of east london, thinking about the incomprehensible vastness of human suffering, the pervasiveness of systemic violence. i didn't find out about what happened in connecticut (on the heels of the attack in china) until i got to the library today, after eating my oatmeal and stopping at costa for tea and getting my hair cut and browsing around for a coat. i don't have any pithy comments to offer up, just that, once again, while there is much that is good and beautiful in this world, it is also a place of unfathomable cruelty and pain and trauma, and it is important to remember that in tandem with the examples of goodness we seek in part as proof that all is not lost.

a tale of two schwestern

according to a myriad of insidehighered and chronicle of higher ed articles, as well as a plethora of blog posts and books, the way to get progress done on your dissertation is to write just a small nugget of it a day. most people recommend two pages. i have yet to put this no doubt excellent advice into practice on my own dissertation (especially since i'm currently full of angst and crisis over it, having realized that i really just want to write about diagrams (it'd be fascinating, crossmyhearthopetodie), and thus am throwing a mental temper tantrum every time i consider the monster hiding under my bed/in my closet/ lurking around every corner dissertation), but it struck me that it might be an admirable approach to blogging, not just kee's visit, but this whole london thing generally. you can consider it a haphazard and completely unreliable advent calendar, of sorts, which i suppose negates the idea of an advent calendar, since reliability does seem to be one of the relevant characteristics.

so, in short, kee came to visit. and it was divine, as proved by this visual evidence:

kee masquerading as cindy lou who.

her friend sara came up from paris for the first two days, and we did things like walk through brick lane market and eat delicious food, attend an organ concert at westminster, and stop off at a christmas market which promised to be all germanische which means that it had very expensive wursts. i managed to convince them that it would be nothing short of delightful to walk back to my apartment from westminster (although at a slightly more relaxing pace than the one i had taken on my way to meet them at westminster, since i realized partway through that there was no way i was going to make it on time, but during the weekends they have this particular habit of shutting down entire tube lines for maintenance. i might have outwalked even chules.). it was, undeniably, the correct decision. there was even a convenient wagamama right by the globe to quell desperate protestations of numbed toes and fingers.

Of course you would dress up like a star so that someone could film you in the graveyard of Christ Church, Spitalfields.

kee, heading south over the thames. 

christmas market, from the bridge.

yes, please.

Tower Bridge from the south bank, walking back home.

as a teaser for the recounting of kee's visit, i offer you this representation of when we found ourselves sodden on a hillside in the peak district. there was even a farmer with a tractor, though we didn't talk to him. and our car worked. and we weren't miserable, and weren't there by mistake. but we were very, very wet and cold, with utterly inappropriate footwear.

bad [food] porn

they'd better sell green and red m&m's here. otherwise christmas won't come.

i have a whole host of pics from kee's visit last week (this refrain sounds a bit familiar), but am only going to share a few today (i like to tantalize, titillatingly). blahblahblah (that's me being all academic) said that england and the us are two countries separated by a common language (where does canada fit in? they should protest. loudly.). entire, excellent blogs are devoted to the subject, as are a myriad of books which tend to be aimed at the american audience, since, as we all know, having any sort of uk accent at all immediately makes you more intelligent and sophisticated. anyway, point being that i was prepared for some translation issues (moreish. look it up.). however, coming from a family with serious english heritage, as well as from a country with a sizeable connection to the island, i failed to realize the much larger gulf between myself and my surroundings: the culinary one. i'm not even talking about jellied eels, and i like haggis. despite the fact that i grew up eating roast beef on many a sunday, turns out that a lot of culinary similarities are rather surfacey. for example, they sell bread pans here not by size, but by the weight of the loaf. (so what do you do if you're making a pumpernickel/rye one day, and an angel food cake the next?) and, as kee and i discovered when we set out to make jules' rolls-of-divinity for thanksgiving (you can have thanksgiving w/out the turkey. you can't have it w/out the rolls.), there's no such thing as shortening. you can easily find duck fat, lard, and suet (of both the meat and the vegetable varieties), but no shortening.

panic.

despair.

tears.

rage.

after scouring the shelves of at least five different stores, i finally settled upon the suspiciously-named and malevolent sounding 'baking fat' in the hopes that it would render the rolls at least somewhat recognizable. upon arriving home, i realized that i was also missing some other notable components to the baking exercise, such as the all important rolling pin. (they use them here; i just don't have any kitchen equipment and am too poor and miserly to buy any, choosing to spend my spare pounds on concerts where i can't see the stage and thus fall asleep.) this lack didn't stop me during my freshman, sophomore, or junior years of undergrad, and it wasn't going to stop me now (though discovering that someone had gotten a hold of my bank details and was draining my account via various tabacs in france almost did. it was the thought of the rolls that kept me going. and kee. and a viewing of white christmas.)

it's not instagram, but i documented a few elements of the process for you:

This is what 'baking fat' crescent roll dough looks like. i was going to save half the batch and make it for Christmas, but ended up taking it  out of the freezer the next day. 

The process. Hot chocolate helps with both the rolling process and the eating process.

The baking fat. One benefit to shortening (other than the fact that it takes right) is that it's generally white, which is less disturbing than the lurid orangey-yellow of baking fat, which makes it feel like you're actually dumping fat in what you're going to stuff in your face a few hours later. There are no tomatoes in the recipe. I was experimenting with various rolling pin replacements. The tomato can was helpful because of its weight, but ultimately the hot chocolate canister won out.

The final result. Not too bad. Not as good as jules', but they never are.

back to the hunt for the m&m's. mince pies are great and all, but pastry and cadbury's chocolate will only get you so far.

move over, macgyver

i know, i know, too much radio silence, and i have much to report: meetings with living distant relatives, cemetery hunting for dead distant relatives, trips to exotic places like sheffield, bonfire night fireworks, and more. loads of photos waiting to be introduced to the world. but i feel it very important to state for the record that there are definite drawbacks to living alone in a large, albeit at times unbearably exciting, city in which one knows precisely nobody. one of these is that when you slice your finger wide open whilst attempting to slice your egg bagel from the local bakery and realize in a moment of horror as you watch the blood pouring down that not only are there are no band-aids in your apartment but that you probably need stitches but you don't really have health coverage here and the hospital is a mile away and walking to it with a finger wrapped in a dishtowel would be awfully inconvenient...there is nobody to run to the store for you to pick up some gauze and tape and, hell, some glue because a trip to the emergency room would be awfully expensive.

never fear: as i started going into mild shock while sitting on the kitchen floor with said dish towel wrapped around said finger, i maintained enough self-awareness to reach up to the counter and grab said bagel because blood sugar levels or something, and, after eating both it and a couple of oreos, fashioned a bandage of some sort out of strips of dish towel (sorry, landlord) fastened with brown packing tape. it's not soaked with blood yet, so i think i can forego both the er and the glue.

first the hot water, then the oven, then the elevator w/out working lights (i can affirm that riding in an almost pitch black elevator is, indeed, beyond the pale of creepy to the territory of blood curdling), now my finger. despite its best efforts, i won't let this apartment destroy me. i shall conquer it.

this is war.

stuze my photodump

right. the blog. as an exercise in overcoming my deeply ingrained conviction that i can't blog unless i've written the greatest. post. ever., i'm just going to post these photos of the last few weeks to give you an idea of what i see when i leave the library. 

rainy malaysian festival at trafalgar square:

bloomsbury trees 

on the walk home:

thames views:

columbia flower market (3 bunches for a fiver):

sometimes i go on short walks and turn down the wrong canal and then the walk becomes 10.5 miles: