Sea of Purple: Mayfield Lavender

Summer is one of the more popular times to explore London despite the occasional rain and ridiculous tourist crowd. For once, the weather is not all gloomy and cold. Aside from the open air film screening, music festivals and endless happenings all weekends, the warm summer months is also the flowering season for lavenders.

Lavenders, one of the most common scent in beauty products is more astonishing than its beautiful scent. Often lavender fields are associated to Provence, France but little did many know, just an hour away from London lies a breathtaking lavender field. Mayfield Lavender is easily accessible from Central London and oh boy, the lavenders in full bloom is one spectacular view.

Open daily until September, the lavender field is a great place for a day out. Its purple shades under sunny blue skies makes it an amazing setting for great photo opportunities. Their small shop sells a range of lavender products and a few choices of refreshment including lavender lemonade, lavender bread, lavender cordial, lavender ice cream – technically lavender in almost everything.

Their latest newsletter update states the fading of the English Lavender in the front of the farm but the Grosso variety is said to be in full bloom.

Drown yourself with the spectacular view and scent of lavender!



Or go crazy and take lots of photos!



Getting there:
From central London, Mayfield Lavender is accessible via train or the Overground to West Croydon. Trains depart from London Victoria and London Bridge frequently. At West Croydon, board bus 166 which terminates at Banstead or Epsom Hospital (both would pass by Mayfield Lavender) and alight at Oaks Park stop which brings you right to the lavender field. The bus journey takes about 40 minutes.

ALTERNATIVES:
Trains from London to Purley and Coulsdon also connects to bus 166 and reduced the bus journey time by about 20 minutes. However, buses are often very packed when departing from West Croydon and sometimes, it’s not possible to board the buses at Purley or Coulsdon.

CHEAPSKATE TIPS:
Oyster Card is valid for the train journey as it is still within London. Pay lower fares using Oyster Card Pay As You Go instead of buying train tickets on machines.

Find out more about their products, opening hours and more here!

Mayfield Lavender Field,
Croydon Lane, Banstead
SM7 3BE

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Lanka

London has an abundance of patisserie and finding a good one is a simple thing. Located just minutes away from Finchley Road station, Lanka is a heaven for those with a sweet tooth and an added bonus for those who loves a hint of Japanese in their food.

Run by Masayuki Hara, a French and modern British cuisine chef with years of experience in Michelin restaurants under his sleeves, Lanka serves an amazing variety of French pastries which captures not just your eyes but your taste buds as well. Serving Ceylon tea, the tea infusions in Lanka are great compliments to a sweet indulgence.

A small tea saloon with only less than 10 seats, stepping into Lanka makes one spoilt for choice. Decorated with a minimalist touch, Lanka is a wonderful place to enjoy a pastry and pot of tea with soothing jazz music playing in the background. Bring friends along because trying only one or two slices is a torture.

Really, really spoilt for choice

Having friends together makes trying more pastries easier!

Three visits within 2 weeks in a failed attempt to try all the pastries before leaving the UK. Kindly scroll down and drool!

Green Tea Eclair @ £4.10

Oblong choux dough baked to perfection glazed with green tea icing and filled with green tea cream and regular vanilla fresh cream. A real green tea festival in the mouth! The pastry is soft and rightly baked to the right texture. Perfect pastry coupled with the rich green tea cream and icing, every bite of the green tea eclair feels like a party in my mouth. The best of French pastry fused with the classic Japanese green tea! 

MUST MUST MUST TRY!!!

Green Tea Strawberry Cake @ £4.50

Fluffy sponge layers infused with green tea sandwiched between fresh cream and strawberries. Looking great with the subtle contrast of green and red, there is nothing much to shout about this slice of cake but it always leaves me wanting for more. Carrying a hint of bitterness from the green tea and a slight sourness from the strawberries, the touch of sweetness from the fresh cream creates the amazingly ordinary yet perfect dessert. 

A MUST TRY!

Green Tea Pannacotta @ £4.30

Velvety smooth mascarpone and rich green tea beaten to perfection. Set on a green tea cookie base with a small ring of sweet red bean paste penetrating through the middle of the pannacotta, the green tea pannacotta is another perfect infusion of Japanese green tea in French pastries. Bittersweet from the generous green tea used, the pannacotta is completed with the smooth red bean paste. Another match made in heaven for French 

pastry and Japanese flavours.

Rum Baba @ £4.10

A partially glazed sphere of sponge generously soaked in rum and filled with fresh cream. The light plain vanilla sponge soaks up the rum generously, a little too much for my liking. Every bite is filled with a strong taste of rum. A heaven for those who love alcohol in their dessert but just not my kind of dessert.

Passion Fruit Tart @ £4.30

Tart crust filled with rich flavoured passion fruit mousse beaten to perfection. The passion fruit taste strongly dominates the tart filling with a strong sour taste from the passion fruit. Combined with the slightly sweeter crust, the sourness from the passion fruit mousse is balanced to create the right taste though sour is still the dominant taste.

St. Honore @ £4.30

A classic French pastry done with a circle base topped with fresh cream and small cream puffs. The Saint Honore in Lanka is topped with 4 tiny cream puffs topped with a caramel glaze and decorated with glazed macadamia and sunflower seed. Looking like a beauty, the small cream puffs were soft and generously filled with fresh cream. However, the circle base is slightly too hard and difficult to cut through even with a knife. The glazed nuts is a great addition albeit being too hard. With Saint Honore being one of my favourite French pastry, this is definitely not the best I’ve had.

Green Tea & Azuki Pudding @ £4.10

Strongly infused green tea pudding with a generous amount of red beans (azuki) baked to perfection and topped with a dollop of cream. A much more compact dessert than the rest, thus creating a denser texture. As I prefer lighter cakes, despite the right combination of flavours, the green tea & azuki pudding didn’t make it into my favourites.

Coconut Pineapple Tart @ £4.50

An unconventionally square shaped tart crust filled compactly with sweetened desiccated coconut topped with glazed pineapple and a dollop of cream. An extremely hard crust topped with a whole lot of sweetness. The coconut pineapple tart comes across to me as too sweet with all layers of ingredient being extremely sweet. Only for serious sweet lovers.

Chocolate Pear Tart @ £4.10

Tart crust filled with rich chocolate and topped with glazed pear slices. Didn’t have a taste of this but my friend who ordered had no complaints.

Macaroons @ £1.60 each

The macaroons come in a variety of flavours with some infused with the classic Japanese elements. Not one of the best place for macaroons but the green tea ones is rich with the taste of green tea and had the right hint of bitterness.

One of the best part of the visits to Lanka is the complimentary tasters served by the chef Masayuki Hara himself. A great way to try more of his work without stuffing myself crazy with dessert. Amongst the things given complimentary were peach sorbet and macaroons.

Lovely macaroon samples

Peach sorbet

There is a variety of tea infusions available as well as coffee. The Ceylon tea leaves are matched to perfection. Before ordering, have a sniff at the tea leaves samples on the shelves and choose your best pick. My favourite is Green Tea Rose Petals, classic green tea infused with rose and Green Tea Paradise, a fruity infusion with Ceylon green tea. A pot of tea for 2 is only £2.20. If you love them, you can even buy the tea leaves home for only £4.80 for a pack of 20 tea bags or 100g loose tea leaves. I hardly drink tea but their infusions are so good that I pack a couple of boxes home.






Located a little off the busy central London, Lanka is a great place to unwind and enjoy some good pastries. The staff is extremely attentive and friendly. Though on one occassion, one of them was a little concerned over the amount of photos I took of their food.

Besides the regular pastries available in store, Lanka also offers bespoke services and take pre-order on whole cakes. In conclusion, Lanka is a tea saloon that is small in size but big in quality and taste!

Open from 10.30am to 6.30pm from Mondays to Fridays and 11.00am to 5.00pm on Sundays.

Find out more about Lanka on their website and pay them a visit here:

Lanka • Finchley Road
9 Goldhurst Terrace,
London NW6 3HX

Nearest tube station: Finchley Road (Metropolitan Line, Jubilee Line)
GPS Coordinate: 51.545967, -0.179453

Food rating: 8.5/10
Service rating: 9/10
Ambience rating: 10/10
Overall rating: 9/10

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Home. Oh Boy!

There’s no where like home. That’s what everyone say. Coming home this time around came with the difficulty to adjust to the nature of our beloved society. Despite all my hawker favourites being just a drive away, adjusting to home was hit by things that annoyed every strand of patience left in me.

1. Pedestrian Coercion

One thing I cannot comprehend is why can’t Malaysians obey the traffic rules. If the traffic light is yellow turning to red, for goodness sake, slow down and brake; not hit the gas and speed ahead. Barely 24 hours after I am home, I almost got knocked down by a car which dash through a red light at a pedestrian crossing. A PEDESTRIAN CROSSING WHICH IS GREEN!!! Downright absurd.

Traffic rules are there for a reason and these reckless law offenders shouldn’t be given the ability to bully other road users. Comparing their imported steel made car protecting them and the layers of fats cushioning me, they have the upper hand and it feels like being coerced to let these sort of drivers have their way or risk being flung into the air and sprawled in blood.

Also, say hello to the world where pedestrian crossing is not for the priority of pedestrian. Instead of car stopping, pedestrian have to look out for oncoming cars and cross only when there is no cars. Pretty sure the pedestrians are suppose to have the right of way!

2. Impatient drivers

Unfortunately, being on the road seems to drive me crazy. As I don’t drive in the UK, I can’t compare the standard of manners of UK drivers. But, welcome to Malaysia where 1 in 100 is destined to be a F1 driver. There are always these F1 aspiring drivers that moves from the left lane to the middle, then onto the right and back to the middle all within less than a minute. Impressive naturally born talent. All those swerving and speed changing lanes just to get maybe 10m ahead of the rest. A great way to start training for serious race driving.

To add to the bad traffic conditions, meet drivers who like to stop in the yellow box. An offence to begin with, being in the yellow box is not being in a teleport machine that brings them to their destination. Only thing that happens is it clogs up the traffic flow from the opposite direction as well. Great job!

3. Impatient Humans

One of the biggest contrast I’ve seen since touching down in Malaysian soil is how Malaysians and the rest of the world react to boarding a plane. A great way to see how lacking social consciousness is in some of our Malaysians.

Boarding a plane is done by section from the back of the plane to make it easier and faster. By boarding the passengers at the back, those in the front would not be jamming up the aisle when they are trying to store their luggage in the overhead compartment. Unfortunately, some people Malaysians and non-Malaysians live in an illusion where the plane is going to take off without them if they don’t attempt to get on it once the gate open. So, we have a ‘great’ society that cannot understand simple instructions.

Being in the back of the plane on both my London-Kuala Lumpur and Kuala Lumpur-Penang flight, I was given way to board when boarding from the back rows started in London but, there was no chance at all to even try to board when the gates open for the Kuala Lumpur-Penang flight. When the airport staff announced boarding for those with children to board, our dear Malaysians will flock the gate like a flock of pigeons being fed. Suddenly, instructions were being filtered out like they were never said.

4. Queue cutter

Found frequently in busy times at the shopping malls. While time is precious for them, the same applies to everyone else. So, what rights have these people got to go shoving their body mass between the queue or pretend like a queue never existed. Worst thing of all, most people grumble and make angry faces and stay in their MYOB mode and let them off silently. Cutting queue shows a lack of respect of others and these people deserve to be told off and put to the back of the queue even if it’s miles long. Unfortunately, here they get by and grow the courage to cut queues in the future.

5. Irresponsible shoppers

Ever wonder why sometimes you find chicken, milk or vegetables in shelves of dry goods. Meet these group of people I label as irresponsible shoppers. There is no shame to return something that has been bought or taken from the shelves or the salesperson. Sometimes, we change our minds or come across better choices. No hypermarket or supermarkets are the size of the Pacific Ocean, so it’s not that difficult to take a minute to put the unwanted items back. It’s just civic consciousness; which is clearly lacking in these people.

Perhaps more forgivable if something non-perishable is randomly placed. (not encouraged as well) Only downside is the store staff has an extra job to do at the end of the day. Putting something meant to be chilled or frozen in places they don’t belong meant completely spoiling the food stuff. What’s worst is what if these items are put back into their shelves and others buy them. Innocent shoppers having to bear buying a possibly contaminated item due to these irresponsible shoppers and profit making entrepreneur.

Bags of chicken going to waste

6. Mentality

One of the thing that irks me most is the people who squat on top of the toilet bowl in public toilets leaving the toilet bowls so dirty. These are not even the roadside toilets. These are the toilets in the pretty shopping malls we have. With a choice of sitting and squatting cubicles, there is an option for any preferences to carry on your business. So, why is there a need to squat on toilet bowls?!

Just a small matter but isn't it about time for these people to grow up and be more civic minded?

Oh Malaysians/Penangites, what kind of society have we morphed into? Did the society changed or is it just me?

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