They Eat And They Drink: A Little Trip To Thailand

As mentioned in my last post it was indeed my birthday yesterday and as it fell on a Sunday this year my boyfriend and I decided to go out for a lovely meal and drinks (lots of drinks, that's my excuse for the not great pictures!) on Saturday night. I chose a little place that I've been dying to try called Thailand No1 in Nottingham's Lace Market after hearing lots of good things about it from my housemate (you can read her blog post on it here). 

The restaurant has a lovely atmosphere and I didn't feel at all out of place in my fairly dressy birthday outfit, we were seated by the window which is fine by me as I love a good people watching session! The staff are all so lovely and our extremely cute waitress even explained what some of the words on the menu meant, I was also struck at how accommodating they were for our special dietary needs. Everything on the menu is clearly labelled if it is vegetarian, gluten free or contains nuts making order a hell of a lot simpler!

We both decided on the Tom Yam soup, a hot and sour clear soup with lemongrass, chilli and coriander. I went for the mushroom option and Jack went for the king prawn and mushroom variety. The soup was a great dish to start really delicious despite packing quite a punch in the spice department!

For mains we both went for curries, I love love love Thai curries so it really wasn't much of a decision for me! But in the end I decided on the Gaeng Pha which is a spicy jungle curry with Thai spices and mixed vegetables, again this was definitely spicier than I'm used to but it was super tasty all the same especially along with the sticky coconut rice we ordered. Jack went for the Thai green curry with duck and it smelt absolutely perfect. I had a sneaky taste of the sauce and it was perfection. 

Shamefully we were both too full to finish our main courses but obviously found some room in our dessert tummies for something a little sweet to finish the night off with! The boy ordered us a shot of Baileys each along with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and warm banana in a coconut sauce, this was the perfect end to a lovely meal, the Baileys was smooth and the banana was so creamy and rich with the coconut and the ice cream off set all of this keeping it light and delicious. 

I would also like to mention the wine. I have recently become partial to a glass of rose here and there, but I went for a Thai classic rose on Saturday night and needless to say it was excellent as I polished off the entire bottle. It went great with the food, possibly a little too great judging by my sore head the next morning!

Thai food is most definitely a favourite of mine, I much prefer it to Chinese which I find can be quite heavy and greasy at times, and aside from my own mums excellent curries not much bets a Thai curry, be it red, green or jungle.

xoxo

She Eats: Italiano

February is a very exciting month, my birthday, mine and my boyfriends anniversary (three years on Monday!) and Valentines day. So we decided to take advantage of Zizzi's offer of a free bottle of Prosecco and a free main course last night. 

I've always been a big fan of Italian food and Zizzis especially, my only complaint is how often they change their menus! I always have something absolutely amazing and then return to find that it's no longer available, sigh. Anyway we throughly enjoyed our meal and they really do well to accommodate for everyone as I'm vegetarian and Jack requires a gluten free dish we both came home with very full tummies indeed!

I started off with Arancini which is risotto balls with mozzarella and peas coated with breadcrumbs and served with a tomato pepperonata dip. A great dish to start, they were so crisp on the outside and full of flavour on the inside and the dip complimented them perfectly. We also shared a  portion of olives and both concluded that the giant nocellara olives are delicious but the purple olives taste like cheap wine. You win some, you lose some. 

For our main I went for the simple Spaghetti Pomodoro E Bufala which is simply tomato spaghetti with mozzarella, I drizzled it with some chilli oil from the table and devoured it. Sometimes the simplest of dishes are the tastiest. This did need a tiny bit of seasoning and I would have liked a little more mozzarella but it was lovely just the same. 

Across the table my man friend ordered the Risotto Di Pesce which consisted of king prawns, mussels and squid rings in a tomato, chilli and white wine risotto. From how quickly it disappeared I can only assume that it was delicious (I asked and true to form the boy simply replied 'Yeah, it was nice' he's a man of few words). 

I was pretty much bursting at the seams after my pasta but theres always room for dessert! We both went for the Chocolate Melt which is a delicious oozy chocolate (and gluten free, I've never seen the boy look so happy when he realised he could actually eat this) cake served with vanilla gelato. This was amazing, really rich and scrumptious I could have done with a tiny bit more gelato to accompany the warm chocolatey cake. Jack also decided on a Baileys coffee, I had a quick swig and it was lush. Real creamy and rich, thumbs up from us! All in all a great way to finish off the meal.

What's your favourite Italian? 

xoxo