City living

Phew! Back at home after a two week stay in London dog sitting for friends on holiday. It's easy to forget just how expensive city living is, with the easy temptations of decent restaurants within walking distance from your front door (so much easier when stumbling back home after a glass too many). Out here in the sticks, good eateries are few and far, require planning (word gets around very quickly), designated driver decisions and just general faff. So much easier to cook at home and put your feet up. East London has a wealth of cooking creativity, from Vietnamese, Turkish and Caribbean to the latest street food pop-ups. Combined with some cultural catching up, meeting friends, tempting park side pubs, specialist grocers, butchers and oops...haberdasheries and knitting shops (yes, still obsessed), it's just as well I packed a sensible pair of comfortable shoes as well as a fully charged Oyster card.

First up was a Vietnamese curry at Vu Viet (previously Namo) on Victoria Park Road. We've eaten here before a number of times and despite the change in ownership I was very pleased that the quality remains the same. A perfectly aromatic stewed beef brisket curry, heavy with star anise and eaten from enamel bowls, I wish this place was on my doorstep, I would definitely be a regular.

Our second trip was lunch with friends from work at the Royal Inn on the Park, a large London pub, right on the edge of Victoria Park. As well as having a pretty view across the park, with seats outside on the pavement at the front and a large seated 'garden' at the back, the inside is beautifully decorated with huge vases of flowers and theatrically draped curtains. A nice touch (on the one exceptionally hot day too) was the free water with lemon and ice from dispensers sitting on the bar. Service was a little slow (this may have been the heat) but our orders of lamb curry and pork belly with Dauphinoise potatoes were flavourful, generous and well cooked. The two orders of burgers for our party looked a little too rare for my liking but were scoffed none the less.

Popping into the local Ginger Pig butchers (always fab) to pick up supplies for a cooked breakfast, we noticed a new restaurant, Spit Jack's, serving Spanish/Latin American style food and dropped in for lunch later in the week. It's a charming place, the hostess friendly and welcoming, and just perfect for a casual lunch/dinner. Lunch was a bargainous £7.50 for half a spit roast chicken or buttermilk fried chicken, home made fries and coleslaw, so good in fact, that we went back for dinner a few days later. I still have breakfast to try (I've already decided on their huevos rancheros), so I wish this place every success. Exploring a little further East, we happened on Chatsworth Road (searching for the Hackney Draper and the Botany Shop). Here we rested awhile at Venetia's with an excellent coffee and pastel de nata, again, it was the welcome that made this so special, friendly and chatty, people forget just how important this is (I once went to a very well known independent cafe where the barista was more involved in perfecting his beard in the reflection of the Gaggia than concentrating on my coffee).

For a different take on breakfast and something I really recommend, choose the Sri Lankan breakfast over the usual meaty cooked breakfast options at the really excellent Pavilion Cafe in Victoria Park. For a very good value £9.50 you will not need to eat again for the rest of the day. The simple potato and egg curry, rich with chillies and coriander, wholesome earthy lentil dhal, 'string hoppers' (rice noodles) and coconut and chilli sambal are definitely my most favourite way to start a weekend.

Along with plenty of beer stops in pubs along the way, tempting (but expensive) cakes from Ottolenghi's and window shopping in many ethnic food stores (sniffing out the overwhelming 'fragrance' of the durian fruit), it's now time for a little frugality (and planning the next adventure).