A Luxurious Lunch at The Mondrian Hotel

Over the past year I’ve been learning a new language…it’s called BlogSpeak and I’m becoming quite fluent…

When I bang on about Instagram, Twitter, google analytics and blogging schedules, my friends tend to look at me a little blankly…While most of them use Facebook, other forms of social media are basically a foreign language. I’m often asked what’s a hashtag, how does Pinterest actually work and what does SEO actually stand for? Mr S really doesn’t get my obsession with Twitter, but he is taking a huge interest in photography and has started reading a lot of professional photographers blogs 🙂

Fortunately, my dad is a computer programmer and a blogger and is well-versed in BlogSpeak, though that doesn’t stop other members of the family rolling their eyes when we start talking a foreign language at the dinner table.

Anyway, one reason I love to get together with other bloggers is that they are also understand BlogSpeak…we can discuss social media, blog stats, scheduling tools and camera settings…

And when I meet with fellow luxury lifestyle bloggers, Zoe from Love and Limoncello and Suze from the Luxury Columnist, we can also talk shoes, champagne and holidays! I’ve met both of these lovely ladies before individually but we’ve never had the chance to meet up as a trio. Diaries were compared and emails were sent before a date was decided and a venue picked for lunch.

The Mondrian is the latest London hotel owned by the Morgans Group, that’s that super stylish brand which also encompasses the St Martin’s Lane Hotel and The Sanderson in London and many others in the United States.

The hotel is located in the old Sea Containers building and Tom Dixon has designed a gorgeous interior with a glamorous nautical theme.

The huge spacious lobby is like the hull of a ship and the public areas have little navel touches that are quite subtle so that the hotel doesn’t seemed too overly ‘themed’

But I can imagine having some delicious sparkling cocktails on the terrace in Summer.

Back downstairs is the Dandelyan with it’s green marble and comfortable sofas.

As you can see, it was pretty quiet, but it was the first weekend of January and most people I know are detoxing from alcohol and saving money!

Ok, enough nosing it was time to meet the ladies at Sea Containers, the restaurant named after the original building.

And soon I was reunited with this lovely pair…a glass of champagne was called for and a big toast to luxury lifestyle blogging and an afternoon of BlogSpeak!!

With January doom and detox upon us we ordered two healthy starters to share from the selection of raw dishes on the Modern American menu.

Now, apologies for this photo, you may have seen on Twitter and read in my previous post that I have a big new camera, (yes, I’m a grown-up blogger now) and I’m still getting to grips with it. With that being said the first dish was out of focus and I didn’t get any better photos…I’m learning though and I was pleased with all the others.

In the background is the yuzu ceviche with bream, brill, prawns, cuttlefish, mussels, mango and yuzu, the dish was beautifully refreshing and citrussy. The blurry dish in the foreground was raw scallops with the lightest touch of olive oil and a sprinkling of espelette pepper, which is like paprika.

We shared these delicious dishes as we discussed our exciting travel plans for the year ahead plus our blogging resolutions and what we had coming up for the next month.

For main course, Zoe chose a lamb rump with charmoula marinade, borlotti bans, squash and salsify. It was beautifully cooked but a little bit too salty.

Suze and I broke a rule of food blogging by ordering the same main course (do we have to hand in our bloggers’ membership cards now?) We both really enjoyed the slow cooked salmon with artichoke puree, tenderstem broccoli and sauce vierge. I think John Torode would probably say ‘We need some more of that lovely sauce’ but actually it was enough for me… less is more after the Christmas period.