Things I have loved in December
My cherry-picked selection of favourite films, activities, reads, galleries, restaurants, products etc. I am currently obsessed with, coming to you monthly from London and beyond.
1. Hojicha
If you follow me on Instagram, you are probably fed up by now of hearing me blab about this Roasted Green tea I have discovered in Japan. It has a nutty flavour that reminds me of Pistacchio, and can be enjoyed as a tea or latte (in the same way you would a Matcha). Naively thinking I had tapped into the great next drink trend ahead of the curve, I soon realised upon my return to London it’s already everywhere here too.
Well, if you know where to look that is.
Here are the places where you can enjoy Hojicha in London:
my favourite Korean tea house, Be-oom (Exmouth Market), has it on the menu and it is available for purchase as loose leaves (here it is called Roasted Green Tea)
you can enjoy a Hojicha latte on the go at Be-oom sister company Cha-Oom (Boxpark, Shoreditch) and buy here powdered Hojicha (ideal for making a latte)
One of my favourite tea companies Avantcha stocks a premium Kuki Hojicha, which you can buy online here
The Japanese tea rooms Katsute100 (multiple locations across London) also stock it
Matchado makes delicious sweets made with Hojicha: I had the cream biscuit and it was heavenly
2. Past Lives
We watched this movie over Twixmas and it made us quite emotional. Beautifully written and shot, it’s a movie about first love, nostalgia and “what ifs”, all accomplished without a trace of the usual Hollywood cliches, uber-romanticization and irrealistic grandiosity. It felt refreshingly honest, truthful, un-embellished. The kind of movie that will stay with you for a long time.
3. Our new sofa
There are few things that brought me as much Joy over the past month as our brand-new sofa. I had been wanting to upgrade from our old Ikea Friheten sofa for a while (now sitting proudly in our den room), thinking that our front room deserved a proper, grown-ass sofa. So, I diligently scoured the web far and wide for years before committing to something new: in truth, we found our Friheten already very comfortable, if not for the annoying fact that the linen slipcover we bought to hide its unappealing dark grey colour (bless Bemz for their incredible range of fabrics) kept slipping down. The clue is in the name.
And then I found it. The Anders from Sofa.com.
The Anders model is blissfully comfortable, deep, just enough firm, and exactly the width we needed it to be to make the most of the space available. The smart linen fabric we chose (designed by the ever-so-talented
) is stain resistant – a fact we tested early on when Joe accidentally splashed a tiny bit of soup on it. Yes, we are the kind of people who eat on the couch. And best of all, we don’t have to constantly tuck any slipcover in!