London Calling

Taste of Bengal

or as Kirsten suggested this post be called "Follow the yellow Brick Lane" (I like mine better but we'll let the readers decide).

It is worth mentioning that there is a new link along the right hand side, as I now officially work for the Microsoft corporation I thought I should represent.

Today we had no set plans so decided to have a bit of a lie-in and then head over to one of our favorite spots, Spitalfield's Market. Rather than just do the same old same old walk through we went a bit further afield from the market and checked out Brick Lane and the area surrounding it. We were well rewarded.

Brick Lane is the heart of the Bengal community in London (big shout out to Imran). It is lined with restaurants, cloth shops and localised (yes I spelled that with an s) supermarkets. After taking the street in we selected one restaurant and sat down to a very filling 2 hour lunch, it's what you do on a sunny Sunday in London. To be honest I'm not sure what the difference is between Indian and Bengali food, but it was good.

After lunch we strolled up Brick Lane past all the fashion shops and individuals selling random wares, some of sellers looked as if they just emptied out a closet and put the stuff on the sidewalk. Needless to say we didn't buy anything. What we didn't find were the Jewish bagel shops that one of my clients promised were there, I guess we'll have to go back at some point, oh well. There's also a S. African BBQ place connected to an outdoor beer garden, somehow I don't think it will be very long until I find myself there, perhaps when one of my brothers comes to visit (ahem).

There is also an indoor market just off Brick Lane. It's like a smaller version of Spitalfield's - various ethnic food stalls and "up and coming designers". Again, we didn't buy anything, but we've got our eyes on some stuff.

Still waddling from our Bengali lunch we wandered back towards Spitalfield's for a quick run through. A lot of it is under work so the layout was different than we're used to, but it was just an obligatory visit anyway.

And on home we went, to nap on the couches, make some dinner, watch the Red Sox beat-up on the Braves and start to switch to work mode.

posted by Brian and Kirsten Hennigan @ Sunday, May 20, 2007