Zizzi's

This is another one of my favourite restaurants and also my (sometimes not so lovely) ex boyfriend. However we always, ALWAYS order the same thing. This being Lasange, Sofia pizza and most of the time Spaghetti bolognese, this time being the exception.

The quality of the food always seems to be immaculate, the portion sizes also not too bad. It is also situated in quite a lovely part of Whitstable too. Just by the seaside. Whether that is a good or bad thing on a freezing cold, previously snow day like this I am not sure. But still rather enjoyable!

Lasange has never appealed to me, and I doubt ever will due to the large amount of cheese used to cook it. However with Sofia pizza, adding a little bit of Lasange over the top seems to do the trick and adds more flavour to do it. Sofia can be enjoyable individually, although it is slightly dry and rather meek in toppings, so this definitely adds a bit of sauce and I love nothing more than MINCED BEEF. YUM. This I all must give credit to Mr Hannan for inventing such a dish (as he would have wished, haha)

The spaghetti bolognese is delicious despite it being no competition compared to my mother's. It is still enjoyable and they sauce is normally quite tasty and their portion of minced beef and tomato sauce tends to be quite good as opposed to other restaurants which prefer to it seems RATION their sauce.

This Zizzi's is a lovely place and is a pretty much a regular for us and I think will always be a place which we will go towards. (Partly due to the fact that we can never decide, but also because we do genuinely love it)

Lincoln

Cooking
Unfortunately cooking is not one of my strongest traits, and most of the time I don't even attempt. However on a 7 hour trip to Lincoln and starving me and a friend decide it is best we cook instead of waiting for a delivery. Having not seen eachother in a couple of months we were eager to catch up with eachother, cooking and catching up come hand in hand when we are both starving.

However as the conversation became funnier, sadder and more deep we had forgotten about the rice which inevitably became cold by the time we had finished cooking the steak and mushrooms. Upon us falls another disaster, the mushrooms and rice further getting colder the steak was undercooked; having to place it back into the pan again.

In the end we settled with cold rice and mushrooms but scrumptious steak which is all I could ask for! Overall not bad for two cooks who can hardly be called cooks.

Wagamamas
Chicken katsu curry is one of my all time favourite meals. It just never grows old, not too spicy like Indian and Thai curry and not too sweet like Chinese curry. Just utterly enjoyable. Though having been to Wagamamas a few times in my life and hating the food, this was one of two exceptions and I quite enjoyed it and I think purely for the dish I chose. Ginger Chicken Udon, this tastes delicious. The udon is perfectly fried, nice and crispy on one side and tender on the inside and the chicken tastes just as good. Though I hate vegetables and removed all of them from the dish before eating, it actually adds to the flavour whilst cooking.

The service at this particular branch in Lincoln was also brilliant. The staff were quick on their feet, kind and endearing. Though one did look like a muscle builder and like he didn't belong, he actually was the nicest waiter in the restaurant and overall was a great experience for a girl who absolutely detests Wagamamas.

Lunch
Having spent the previous evening drinking and dancing until 3am and unable to have the chance to recover at 7.30am in the morning to catch my coach towards London, and having slept the entire 4 1/2 hours journey I was starving. The only choice I had was a measly pasta and crisps to pick up from Sainsburys. This was neither satisfying or tasty, but it just had to do. This pasta and crisps may not be much to blog about, but it just shows to you that we require time to eat, to enjoy our food AND HAVE BREAKFAST.

Lincoln was such an enjoyable experience, besides the long coach journey and cold weather. The people at the University are kind and the area surrounding the University is beautiful, the lake during the sunset is a magical sighting and the early morning snowfall.

Wetherspoons Sunday Roast

People seem to assume that I am a picky eater due to me disliking cheese, apart from on Pizza. But in actual fact I don't think I am. Any meat to me is tasty, be it beef, pork, chicken, turkey, lamb. I love them all, nothing is tastier than the juiciness from these meats, so it boggles me when people find certain meats "weird" or "different" and therefore not eating it.

So in this case, on this gloriously chilly Sunday afternoon we went to Peter Cushing's Wetherspoons which was busy as expected. Though people like to criticise the food for being microwave (which I can neither confirm or deny) for the price, the food is exceptional. This being one of the numerous times I have eaten at Wetherspoons. Having accidentally ordered a large portion with all the trimmings and extra cheesy cauliflower to accompany it, unsurprisingly I did not finish it all. (Considering half the food I dislike, peas, broccoli, cauliflower) Despite this, the pork was scrumptious, nice and juicy and the gravy perfectly complimented the lovely potatoes which I must applaud as potatoes can go terribly wrong! The double yorkshire pudding also something I would happily have another portion of.

All in all, for the price and portion size Wetherspoons is a winner for me. Quick. Delicious and relatively cheap.
Maybe more gravy to compliment the larger portion and NO cheese on the cauliflower but aside from that a lovely Sunday Roast.

Venice

Venice, one of the most romantic cities in the world but also one of the most famous in Italy. Having been to Florence previously and tasting a sub standard pizza in a tourist buzzing environment I wasn't expecting much from the food side of Venice. However I did expect actual food and restaurants like you would any country where the hot spots attract tons of tourists every year.

Having few amount of restaurants was the least of Venice's problems. The area was crawling with snack bars, every corner was a snack bar. This was no exaggeration. On the very first day the local people who I assumed tried their hardest to give their best directions despite the language barrier, took us in a complete different direction and all in all it took us a while to get to Hotel Delfino.

Having arrived at our destination finally we decided the first thing we want to do is EAT. So back we go trawling on the unknown roads of Costo De Poplo to find what appears on the outside to be a quaint little cafe; which supposedly according to their signs, sells "hamburgers". What we find when we sit down is the prices are dear, a small and I mean SMALL dish of pasta is $7.00 in a cafe and a coca cola is $3.50, and not only that but they do not sell hamburgers. Why the false advertising? Bring in the punters who are too embarrassed to leave once they have sat down. Coming to this cafe, I am not sure what we expected.. maybe some proper food as it appears advertised, but no. Once our food is ordered and our drinks arrived I hear a 'PING', thinking to myself that noise is oh so familiar, seeing as much of my food at University is microwave cooked. Lo and behold she brings it right over.. microwaved in all it's glory. Despite that, I love microwave food so I was going to complain about the taste; but the price for that is ridiculous.

So we thought this would be the end of the bad food. How wrong we were. For dinner on the first evening we decided it would be best to eat in the hotel as it had been a long day including the flight and early morning. Again, we were disappointed by the choices and the prices. One of the few dishes we thought would be appetising was English roast beef, which 99.9999% of the time comes warm. Not in this Italian restaurant. Cold. So we stick with the Grilled Beef which I must admit was cooked perfectly but the portion size was just too small. For $15 it just was not worth it, considering outside was a shop selling pizza and a drink for $10! (Which we did not get a chance to try)

On our first full day we attempted brunch at a small cafe in actual Venice town and for the price quality was sub standard, although the pizza, better than I remembered in Florence. Although this may have just been due to hunger. (Having 'brunch' at 2pm does that to you sometimes!) and my traveling partner having a burger, which he managed to eat quite quickly.

The hotel did not supply 24hr room service, considering it was a 4* hotel, it came as a bit of a surprise. Hungry hoteliers could not get a meal after 10.30pm! No chance of a take away either if you cannot read Italian. Due to this we slept hungry that evening. Come sunrise we were both starving and having missed breakfast the first morning we thought we should hurry. Disappointment once again. The milk was.. different. The croissants far to sweet. And this was not just me being picky, even my traveling partner found it hard to stomach. That evening just as we had been shopping all day and attempted to find a restaurant to relax in and have a good dinner before we leave, we walked around and found NOTHING. So what did we have to do? Settle once again for a cafe. And no surprise, the food was microwaved. Which then just led us to eat pizza at the airport, which was the best thing we had had all week.

Overall, Venice is a beautiful city with friendly if not over friendly staff in most shops and the hotel itself was convenient and was nicely furnished. The food side however did not do so well. Food is the utmost important thing to me which is the reason I hate traveling, because how could I live without Dominos Pizza? So on this note if you are traveling to Venice to experience food you will be very disappointed; but if you are there to enjoy being with your other half this is a wonderful place to be.