Cake please. Never has there been a bakery or patisserie that I have walked past and longed quite so hard to have one of everything behind the counter.

I have been a very good boy on every occasion that I’ve been to Princi in the past though and merely left a nice puddle of drool on the counter, then walked out empty handed mumbling to myself and wishing that cake could be consumed without the side effects of causing spontaneous man boobs or faux male pregnancy.

Today to mark the first holiday of 2010 (not to mention the first holiday I’ve had since the end of 2008), I decided why the hell not, I will have cake please.

For those that have yet to fall in lust with Princi, talk a walk down Wardour Street and it’s really quite hard to miss it. It’s the one with the gigantic glass window that lets you see straight into their huge traditional ovens and see their squat of immaculately presented Italian staff pulling fresh delights from the oven and putting some new interesting treats in.

You get the real deal at Princi, it’s the first branch in London of a Milan boutique bakery chain by gourmet baker Rocco Princi. The layout is a bit crazy, all the seating is communal and service is hectic at best, shove your way to the front and try to get the attention of one of the crazy Italians serving.

Incidentally, I did not eat both cakes shown in the picture, I had half of each and the other halves are being given to my mum as a token of thanks for kindly offering to give me and my luggage a lift to the station tomorrow before I catch a plane to somewhere considerably warmer than London!

It was pointed out by a colleague today that despite having been to Ping Pong countless times, I haven’t actually gotten around to posting a review yet. That’s mostly down to the fact that I am not a great fan of chain restaurants and I tend to prefer the small gems that might have their quirks but always ensure you leave happy and full.

I was first introduced to Ping Pong by a friend who is considerably more adventurous when it comes to food than I and seemed to know all of the hot spots, and obviously my first experience was good otherwise I wouldn’t have gone back or taken countless other people there either.

In general, the quality of the dishes at Ping Pong is pretty good, the food seems to be slightly Westernised as you’d expect for a chain (though perhaps not as badly as you’d find at Wagamamas), but it’s all genuinely of quite a high standard and some of the dishes can be exceptional.

Personally I can’t say I think much to the set menus, you only really get one or two of each dumpling and if you have your favourites that just ends up being a complete let down, it’s much better to just pick a few dishes you know you like, as you get two or three pieces on each dish anyway.

The prices at Ping Pong are above average, and given the size of the portions this can seem a little bit of a set back for some people. I personally often wonder how much of the cost of the food goes on the décor rather than the food.

Service is incredibly Jekyll and Hyde. At the Ping Pong on Great Marlborough Street it is always packed but I have only had one occasion where my food was forgotten and even when busy you can usually pester waiters to get some service. Southbank seems more relaxed in comparison with more staff and less of a feeling that they are at bursting point all of the time.

However, Ping Pong Spitalfields is an absolute nightmare. I’ve been there once on my own after working late only to have to wait an hour for my food whilst the restaurant was close to empty, and today in a group outing with work colleagues we had to wait, as well as the waiter not making any effort to announce dishes and make sure they got to the right people, or in fact to mention that some dishes were no longer even available after we’d already ordered them.

It’s a great concept, spreading the word of Dim Sum, offering nice teas, cocktails and so on, but for the price I’d expect a much greater level of service across the board and more consistency in quality of dishes across the menu.

If you do want to give Ping Pong a spin though in one of it’s less hectic locations, my current favourites are:

• Char sui buns (honey roast pork in a fluffy white bun)
• Chicken and cashew steamed and then griddled dumplings
• Emperors ribs
• Crispy prawn balls
• Wonton soup

It’s a good thing that I don’t tend to give much weight to customer reviews on some of the popular restaurant sites that cover the London area, otherwise I’d probably never eat out. According to the reviews, Gama is a Japanese restaurant with bad toilets, bad food, and worse service.

Shall we have a little reality then? Gama is a Korean restaurant, which happens to also have a small Japanese section to their menu, which is common in a fair few Korean restaurants in London, and typically the Japanese meals are of a much lower quality than you’d expect elsewhere, but the Korean dishes are authentic and definately worth a try.

The first time I ate at Gama, the place was bouncing with Korean music, and at first we didn’t sit down at a table big enough to have any of the BBQ options from the menu but despite the fact that the staff aren’t very proficient in English, they still went out of their way to move us to a table that had space for us to enjoy Korean BBQ.

Only thing that would have been nice would have been a warning to put a napkin on and prevent spatter from the BBQ going all over our clothes, which understandably might cheese a few customers off.

After bypassing all of the police barriers in place to cordon off Dean Street due to the #sohofire that has taken Twitter by storm, we decided to give Gama a second try and see what other picks on the menu were like.

Much deliberation led us to the following:

• Kim chee
• Mixed namul
• Fried tofu
• Dol bibimbap
• Chicken wings

The portions for the mixed namul were generous, as were the portions for the fried tofu, which came with a sauce that was similar to agedashi sauce, only with more spring onion and something else in it. Never really had thin slices of fried tofu rather than cubes of tofu in a restaurant before, but what the hell, it was tasty.

My dol bibimbap (beef, vegetables and rice with an egg cracked on top in a hot pot) was really tasty, and very spicey, at first the waitress only mixed in some of the sauce, but I gave in and mixed the rest in half way through.

Somebody couldn’t eat all of his way through the chicken wings, they arrived on a sharing platter so I’m guessing they weren’t meant for one person, but I was too full to help out other than taking a nibble at one to see how they tasted. They looked pretty funky but tasted really crispy on the outside and the meat was still really tender.

The negatives? No Korean music on the second visit, all American pop trash… and my Jasmine tea was made from a bag which is always a bit of a let down, but I’ll live, maybe.

Yesterday was a busy day, recovering from a hangover from what was meant to be “a quick drink” with friends from work, funny how quick drinks end up being an entire evening of drinking cocktails by the pint. Had my back and neck cracked by my chiropractor, leaving me in a state of bliss, had a guitar lesson, and got a bit of shopping in as well.

By the time 8pm rolled around, we were looking for somewhere in town to have something to eat, and Soho was mostly off limits unless you wanted to be blasted by gay anthems from what was left of the London Gay Pride celebrations.

Gerrard Street seemed to be one of the only places not absolutely crowded in London, so we went from restaurant to restaurant admiring the almost identical and unappealing menus, until we stumbled onto Macclesfield Street and discovered Leong’s Legend, which had some really interesting food scattered over the tables and a queue to get in.

We spent about 15 minutes both in the queue and at the table scanning the menu and trying to work out what to get, and it wasn’t easy, there are a lot of really interesting sounding dishes, some of which I wasn’t feeling brave enough to try.

Eventually we settled on:

• Vegetarian Spicy Soup
• Chicken Hot & Sour Spicy Soup
• Leong’s Long Bao
• Taiwan Mini Pork Kebab
• Belly Pork
• Beef with Garlic Slices

I have to say, the food smells and tastes amazing, but if you’re one who judges food with your eyes then you might struggle, for example the belly pork came in a hot pot in a thick gravy, and was absolutely full of fat, but cooking it like that meant that the belly pork tasted absolutely amazing after a bit of manual spoonage and struggling to remove the fat.

The beef was a bit disappointing until we discovered that the random bowl of black stuff was actually the dressing, which was mirin and something else and made the beef absolutely sing… shame we hadn’t noticed the dressing earlier.

The soups were a thick broth and very tasty, but overall we found them a bit overwhelming, neither of us managed to get further than half way into our soups.

I’d never had Long Bao before, or even knew what they were, so probably didn’t eat them properly. Having had a sneaky peek on Google I’ve discovered that the are soup dumplings, so I shouldn’t have been quite so shocked at the liquid coming out of the dumplings! They were very tasty though, even if they did remind me of stuffing.

There is a lot more on the menu that I’d love to try, next time I think it’d probably be more sensible to go in a larger group so that a lot of dishes can be sampled without anything being left to waste.

I’ve been naughty and haven’t been keeping track of the restaurants that I’ve been trying, so here is my attempt to catch up since I’m awake bright and early on a Sunday morning (typically unheard of).

On Thursday of the week just gone my friend Chris was made redundant, and these hard times he’s probably one of the only people that wanted to go out to celebrate the news, his settlement is going to fund a three month safari around Africa.

I wasn’t being very useful at making decisions, so Chris demanded that we were to try Haozhan on Gerrard Street, in the hustle and bustle of China Town.

I’d spotted Haozhan in the past but wasn’t sure if it was just trying to sound like Hakkasan, the incredibly expensive and well reviewed restaurant. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Haozhan was actually opened by Chee Loong Cheong who was previously head chef at Hakkasan and even more pleasantly surprised that the prices were at least affordable!

The menu is somewhat of a fusion of different cultures, there seemed to be a lot of Chinese dishes, with a peppering of Schezuan (get it? doh), Malaysian, Thai and so on.

The staff are attentive and incredibly humble and polite, the interior was dark and modern, and most importantly on the sweaty Thursday evening, it was chilled!

We ordered a mix match of dishes from the menu to share:

• Prawn Won Ton Soup
• Haozhan Beef Rib Eye (red wine, black pepper, garlic, spring onion)
• Schezuan Duck (sliced and delicious)
• Haozhan Tofu (topped with spinach and a scallop)
• Black Sesame Ice Cream
• Custard Bun

The food was absolutely delicious and the presentation looked like it was a labour of love, the head chef clearly cares deeply about everything leaving the pass without a single flaw.

The Schezuan duck slices were probably my favorite because of the use of chilli to give a strong warm flavour without the urge to cough up or drain several glasses of water like you have to at some Schezuan restaurants.

The beef was tender as promised and packed with flavour, but I’d already had steak three times in the past week so it didn’t notch it’s way into the favorite spot.

The tofu was something else, and I’m still undecided if I liked it or not. The “supreme dressing” that is layered on top of the tofu above the spinach looks and tastes pretty much like lemon custard, and the tofu is very soft, which makes for an interesting experience at the very least!

Dessert followed on the trend of perfection, the black sesame ice cream was lovely even if it did leave a nice trail of black dots stuck in your teeth afterwards that you can give people crazed miles with. The custard buns were evil and naughty, smelling like fresh doughnuts, perfectly round with a crispy outer layer, coconut layer, and then slightly cooked custard so that it doesn’t gloop out.

Belly full, the waiter asked if we’d like to try some of their teas, which are apparently exquisite, and he looked so utterly disappointed when we declined.

Haozhan is definitely on the list of places to go after the next pay day, and this time I’ll have to try some of the tea as well otherwise I risk upsetting them