Last weekend, I caught up with my lovely family for my brother’s graduation at Kingston Uni. We always seem to end up in the same two places whenever my parents come to visit  – The Druids Head, Kingston-Upon-Thames (a great central pub with a cute pub garden for the Summer and wood fireplaces and mulled wine in the Winter), and then Busaba Eathai:

One average Thai dish too many!
I used to really rate Busaba Eathai. I first visited the Shoreditch branch around three years ago when the restaurants were only in Central London locations (no shopping centres) and the food was amazing – the jungle curry nearly blew my face off, in a really good way.

But now they seem to have sold out, opening restaurants here there and everywhere, each with less charisma than the last. Vouchers and offer codes have taken over, and now it’s the sort of place that you’d never go unless you were getting at least a 25% discount (just like Pizza Express or another below average soulless chain.)
A group of us visited the Soho branch last winter for their 50% off food deal- we queued for over an hour and when the food arrived it was foul. The pork was basically deep fried gristle and the Pad Thai became an overcooked chewy lump of broken up noodles, what you get when you try to cook a stir fry for the first time as a kid and realized that noodles don’t need as long as pasta to cook!
Regardless of this, we enjoyed the catch up and consistent excellent service – and their Thai Calamari with ginger and green peppercorn is perfectly cooked and delicious every time!

Thai calamari with ginger and green peppercorn, Busaba Eathai, Kingston