Tutti Frutti UK

It's a real blessing to find an eating place in Soho where you can sit down for as long as you like without feeling like you should get up and leave so that you can make room for the people in the queue and escape the accusing stares of the staff.

Tutti Frutti has an entire funky basement filled with sofas, chairs, tables, books and board games which is a huge appeal for people who have time to kill whilst in the Soho area, or those who fancy a lengthy sit-down with friends over yummy dessert which won't make you feel too guilty.

There are about ten dispensers of different-flavoured frozen yogurt lining a wall in the shop, and these flavours vary day-to-day. Some which I have seen are Red Velvet, Blueberry, Kiwi, Soy, Nutella, Peanut Butter, Watermelon, Chocolate, and many more. Peanut Butter has got to be my favourite so far. They've got the full list on their website, but not all of these flavours are always available in shops.

The prices go by the final weight of your cup, at £1.85 per 100g. There are two cups to choose from, and the smaller one has an average price of £3.50 while you could expect to pay an approximate £5.50 for filling your froyo in the bigger one. Students get a discount of 10%, or 15% if your bill is over £10. (That would have to be a big cup of froyo, and no, getting two cups in the same bill wouldn't be very smart if you're a student.)

You can mix and match flavours, and I tend to sway towards those which aren't related to fruit, because the toppings which I choose afterwards are cookies and chocolate – you've got chocolate chips, mini oreos, chocolate chip cookies, buttery shortbread biscuits, Cadbury Flake, coconut shavings, ground peanuts, gummies, and all sorts of other stuff, it's hard to be short of options. Not too far away, they also have a healthier selection of toppings which includes grapes, pineapples, kiwis, and cubes of different fruits in general. I've been apprehensive to try, say, Nutella froyo with a topping of kiwi cubes, but I'll try to be adventurous in my next visit.

There's an app on the app store called Kooki which has a few loyalty cards from various eating places in London, and Tutti Frutti has got a card on there, which enables you a 6th cup of free froyo.

The shop also sells bubble tea, brownies and Malaysian pancakes. It really is a gem in the middle of Soho and I do recommend it, as there is something for everyone!

I just wish that they had awesome topping variations which can be used to make epic froyo architecture like this one which my friend did in Tutti Frutti Canada:

Tutti Frutti
2 Bedford Street
Covent Garden
London WC2E 9HH
United Kingdom
info@tfuk-froyo.co.uk
www.tfuk-froyo.co.uk/

Masters Diner @ Covent Garden

Courtesy of Google

Masters Diner at Covent Garden is almost hidden, practically sharing a storefront with a newsagent and squeezing their doors side-by-side. My friend and I doubled back on the pavement and popped inside before noontime to take away a coffee (hot chocolate, in my case of a set of immature tastebuds) for our walk to Oxford Street before the ballet performance of La Bayadère at the Royal Opera House started.

Interested in the cosiness of the place and the buzzing, alluring kitchen behind the counter, we returned for a post-show lunch, if it can still be called 'lunch' at 4pm.

We were sat down by friendly staff, and picked up our menu from the side of the table, diner-style. The place serves burgers, club sandwiches, ciabatta, breakfast food, jacket potatoes, dessert cakes and pies, coffee, chocolate – the sort of food one would encounter fifty percent of the time in this country among eating places.

I ordered a Covent Garden Club sandwich, which was a toothpick-reinforced double-decker sandwich with regular white (rather flattened) toast, filled with lettuce, melted cheese, beef slices, mushrooms, mustard and mayonnaise. And not to forget the random topping of alfalfa sprouts on the top. I'm not particularly fond of mustard, so I quite regretted getting this sandwich.

The sandwich, which was warm and fresh, fell apart annoyingly easily like any other club sandwich. I rejoice when biting into burgers and sandwiches without accidentally pulling out all the filling with my teeth, so the tougher beef slices did not work well here. The amount of meat and veggies were pretty generous, which my hungry stomach was very grateful for.

I do love mayonnaise, but I had to use the toothpicks to scrape out as much as I could of the yellow, vile, stinging mustard. I remember spending ages staring at the menu and deciding what to get, by scrutinising the contents of each burger/sandwich to find a combination which I really like.

It's pretty phenomenal, what hunger can do to my common-sense.

The mushrooms were plump, juicy and a real treat, but were quite disconnected from the fillings and didn't go that well with the tough beef texture.

Master's Diner is obviously not somewhere you would travel halfway across the country for, but is definitely a life-saver if you're looking for a cheap, reliable eating place which serves a wide variety of hearty meals in the heart of Covent Garden.

Master's Diner
32 Henrietta St
London
WC2E 8NA
020 7240 9266

Cybercandy | Part Two

Click here for part one.

Moving on, we are faced with a variation of the peanut butter cup by Megaload, which is filled with caramel instead of peanut butter. (£1.15)

From left to right, the caramel cups are topped with Almond 'Buttercrunch', Candy-coated chocolate pieces, and Peanut 'Buttercrunch'. Not as interesting and original as the combination before, with their peanut butter cups. The m&ms are here again, between two very similar-looking 'buttercrunch' variations. This pack doesn't get me as excited as the peanut butter cups. I mean, two out of three of those were slapped on the top with a whole cookie!

The caramel was runny and smooth, and the cup reminded me of a Cadbury Caramello Koala.

There was nothing very special about it taste-wise, but it sure looked pretty as I ate it.

I couldn't tell the difference between the next two. Because the chocolate and caramel combination is already very strong for the tastebuds, the pathetic brittle (almond buttercrunch above, peanut buttercrunch below) doesn't do anything, and it felt like their purpose was unserved.

Likewise, these caramel cups are pretty and unique, and make great gifts. (i.e. pop some into my letterbox please, I wouldn't mind)

Cinnamon Toast Crunch Treats (£1.29) is a snack bar variation of the original Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal, much like the Lucky Charms Treats bar. 

My friend, Esther, and I sitting in the middle of Piccadilly Circus on a sunny day, taking pictures and enjoying the weekend. Sometimes, you have no choice but to enjoy yourself in London so much.

We watched La Bayadère at the Royal Opera House and ate lunch at Master's Diner at 4pm in the evening. We even had two minibons from Cinnabon at Piccadilly Circus. No regrets!

American cereal-ness was definitely noticeable here. It took me a long time to recognise the cinnamon taste, because most of it was just sweetness. The yogurt base was really good, and the bar was huge, tasty, and satisfying.

This was the elephant of my purchase, the main act of the variety show.

Oreo Os were the highlight of my childhood. The journey these blue boxes made from the supermarket shelves, into the multi-purpose (yes, hanging on to the handles and riding on it IS a purpose) transportation vehicle of The Trolley, momentarily hidden in one of the many white NTUC plastic bags like a cursed shell game, tucked out of reach in the cupboard, and magically appearing in a bowl the next morning next to a carton of PURA milk – all of this was ritualistic and sacred, and I treasured every aspect of these events up until the woeful year of 2007, when Post stopped producing these Oreo Os.

Where else am I going to get the best cereal marshmallows in the world? Where else am I going to get cereal which tastes like freaking OREOS?

At Cybercandy (Islington) for £6.99, it seems, with a Korean title. I cry a little, but I think about that fact that a) it is the only one of its kind, b) I can earn it back by working at my library for an hour, and c) it tastes like Oreos.

The black, crispy O's are filled with the taste of Oreo biscuits, and speckled with white bits of the stuff present in the original sandwich cookies.

Among the O's are similar-sized, sweet marshmallow circles, which have the best melt-in-your mouth feel one you get past their delicate, icing-like texture.

Like how you dunk Oreos in milk, this moreish cereal also goes well in a bowl with milk. The deep flavour of the O's is complimented so well by the milk, but don't expect any special taste in the leftover milk. You can have Oreo O's in a bowl with milk, you can have it in a box with a spoon in hand – I just wish you could have it for under £3 a box from the local supermarkets. Sam I am.

The Butterfinger (£1.19) is a famous American chocolate bar filled with dense peanut butter flakes, coated with chocolate. It is longer than the average chocolate bar, and rather heavy too. The flaky, puff-pastry like texture was rather unusual, and the peanut butter and sugar filling stuck to my teeth pretty severely. Not something I would buy again, but it was alright.

More Hardy's adventures

I returned to Hardy's Original Sweetshop at Covent Garden.

Don't buy anything made by Taste of Nature. Ever. They couldn't have picked a worse name to brand their products.

This looks like balls of paint scraped from the floors of an art class. Okay, I'm being harsh. They are colourful, but the colours serve the same purpose as those on a poisonous reptile, rather than those on birthday cakes.

Look at the colour running away from the sprinkles.

The outer cover of these things is a matte, powdery coat – some sort of soft icing or fondant. It's a rather disgusting texture to have on your tongue. There is a little crunch in the candy that you would get when biting into icing, which was nice. After that, you get a flour-y, artificial taste, which does remind you a little bit of a cupcake – made from play-dough.

I would just like to give the company a huge no-thank-you to its unique but poor products. I did express my interest in trying out some of their other products previously, but now I give up.

Next up: This 'Lucky Charms Treats' bar would cause fans of General Mills' Lucky Charms cereal to gasp – and there is good reason in doing so.

This cereal bar is absolutely yummy. Those who have had Lucky Charms' cereal will know how the crunchy charms have a hearty and sweet taste, while the marshmallows provide moments of bliss with its soft but crusty texture. These bars are just like the cereal but joined together in a bar, with a little bit of sweet white-something underneath it – I really have no idea what it is.

Although expensive everywhere in London, this bar is great to have once in a while, when you find yourself having a kid-cereal craving.

Here is another Quaranta nougat. It was my main purpose of going back into that shop, after trying the mascarpone-flavoured soft nougat.

This one is topped with chocolate and chopped hazelnuts, and is further infused with hazelnuts and chocolate. One thing that annoyed me when I opened the packet were the loose hazelnut bits on the top which rolled around everywhere instead of sticking to the chocolate layer.

Otherwise, I would describe this bar as high-quality chocolate ice cream with hazelnuts – but drier, and at room temperature.

This soft nougat is good for chocolate lovers, and although I admit guilt, I still prefer the mascarpone-flavoured soft nougat bar.

Candied weekend

There's a cute, vintage-looking little sweetshop near Covent Garden called Hardys. It sells many rare and snazzy confectionaries, ranging from posh Italian nougat to Angry Birds-endorsed candy. (Why.)

This here is the said posh Italian nougat.

It is absolutely gorgeous. I finished the whole bar before dinner, it was just that good. It was sweet, slightly soft, crunchy and creamy. There was a fragrance of white chocolate in it, and it contains a generous filling of almonds and hazelnuts. There must've been mascarpone in it somewhere as promised, but I couldn't distinctly find it, but the flavour as a whole was an A++++***+++withgoldenstars. I'm adding this nougat to my must-buy-when-in-Covent-Garden list alongside Ben's Cookies, and I will aim to add all its flavours to my palate like pokémon into a pokédex.

This looked promising. I fell in love with cookie dough while I was making oatmeal chocolate chip cookies at Chaice's house sometime last year. It was the perfect cookie dough. The kind that you wanna finish up before it even gets a chance to go into the oven.

This, however, went nowhere near cookie dough. Not the taste, nor the texture. You know the kind of cookie dough chunks you get in Ben & Jerry's tubs? This had that kind of solid, crumbly texture, coated with mediocre milk chocolate. The insides look nothing like in the picture on the box.

It's an annoying confusion of flavours, much like trying to read an essay written on confetti-sized paper, such that all I taste is artificial sweetness. The contents are as dissatisfying as a half-filled packet of crisps, especially for its price. What these kids say pretty much sums it up.

I'm still going to try the "Cinnamon Bun Bites" and the "Cookies 'N Cream Bites" if I can find them.

This isn't from Hardys, it's an impulsive purchase from ASDA in Twickenham a few days ago. I got some Daim from Tesco's just before I left London for winter break, and I really liked it, and could definitely see the reason for all the fuss over it.

Well, in retrospect, I don't see the need for these Milka people to come and try to make what looks like another type of Daim chooclate bar. It is rather yummy, but I'd much rather have the real thing.

Hardy's
25 New Row, Covent Garden
London WC2N 4LA
Tel: 020 7240 2341
Opening times: Mon-Sat 10am-7pm, Sun 11am-6pm