Butter Tarts & Rebels August 2026

14 August 2026

We Tested the Hype — and London Kept Interrupting

We did not set out to make a perfect food tour. We set out to taste the truth.

It was Friday evening in London, brutally hot, the kind of heat that sits on your shoulders and turns every extra step into a negotiation. We had already worked a full day.

The club was closed to guests, but we were not exactly peaceful. The day had started with confusion, instructions changing, jobs interrupted before they were finished, and enough management energy to make even a silver teaspoon feel nervous. By the time we stepped outside after work, we were tired. But we had a plan. Three viral stops. 

A duck burger in Chinatown. Sushi that people online talked about as if anyone who had not tried it did not fully understand sushi. And a gelateria confident enough to suggest it might be better than Tuscany. That last claim alone was enough.

We looked at each other. We were going.

The first problem appeared before the first bite. We had forgotten the battery pack. Normally this would have meant photos, videos, messages, maps, close-ups, reports, all running freely. Not tonight. We had to choose what mattered. So we kept the map alive. We kept the conversation alive. We kept the photos limited. And most importantly, we kept going.

Our first stop was the duck burger.

The place itself was tiny, easy to miss, tucked near a bus stop. At around 6pm on a very hot Friday evening there was only one person in front of us, and our order took roughly five minutes. The burger looked good.The bun was the best part.

Freshly made, warm, flaky, crunchy, almost laminated around the edges.The duck, however, was dry.

The hoisin sauce was sweeter than we liked and too runny. It did not cling to the meat properly. The cucumber helped with freshness, and more spring onion would have improved the balance.

It was not bad. But it did not deserve the hype.

And then came the practical detail nobody puts into viral food videos. Sticky fingers. No tissues. No wet wipes. Bins existed, but not directly beside the stall.

Food Tour Part Two already had a new rule: bring wet tissues.

From there we walked to sushi.This was the stop where technology decided to interrupt us.

 

We had wanted to choose together. The idea was simple: show the counter, look at the options together, choose three or four pieces. Instead, the orange box appeared. Connection interruption. Bad timing. For a moment, the choosing part between us disappeared. But the evening did not. So Elena chose.

Prawns. Salmon. What she thought was crab, but turned out to be salmon and mango.

And we sat down. The place itself was calm. bPolite staff. People came in, looked, bought, ate at bar-style tables. No drama.No exaggerated theatre. Just food.

For around £10 we had three large pieces and a sparkling water.

 

The best was the spicy salmon. Creamy, spicy but not aggressively so, fresh, rich, balanced. The kind of thing we would happily order again.

The salmon and mango was interesting. The mango was not fully ripe and tasted slightly sour, almost cucumber-like. The nori on both larger rolls was softer than we would have liked.

The tempura prawn with cucumber was clean and pleasant, but it needed something more — maybe creaminess, mayo, cream cheese, something to pull the whole bite together. 

Still, this stop was a win. We would go back. That matters more than any viral headline.

Then London did what London does. It distracted us.

A strange piece of art stopped us. Tall, rough, metallic, difficult to understand. Not conventionally beautiful, but impossible not to look at.

A few steps later, we passed an Italian restaurant. Outside, at a long table, people were eating small plates, holding Aperol Spritz, listening to a woman explain something in Italian.b An Italian-language food tour. In London. Eating Italian food. Drinking Aperol. A few steps farther down the road sat a very English pub.

We laughed. Not because anyone was wrong. Just because it was different from what we would choose. If we travelled somewhere, we would want the place itself. The local flavour.bThe awkward details.b The smell, the sound, the things people who live there actually do. But their tour had another shape.

Ours had ours.

Then came the gelato. Covent Garden. Friday evening. Tomorrow off. Heat still hanging over the city.

The gelateria had plenty of tables and chairs outside, which immediately made the stop feel different. Not buy-and-run. Sit. Slow down. Taste. Enjoy.

The medium cup cost £6.10 and allowed two flavours. The small did not. So, with Serious Ljubinka already raising an eyebrow somewhere in the background, we chose medium.

Pistachio for Atlas. Peanut for Elena.

 

The pistachio was excellent. Creamy. Deep. Actually tasting of pistachio. Not simply coloured green and introduced to a nut at some point in its childhood. Better than Tuscany? We would not go that far. But by London standards, absolutely one of the best we have had.

The peanut was intense and good, though Elena had hoped for pieces of peanut and crunch. There were none. Still good. Just not the texture she wanted.

Would we go back? Definitely.

There were unfinished investigations waiting for us. Fig. Dark chocolate 85%. And probably whatever else looked dangerous enough to deserve a spoon.

The person serving us gave us two spoons. One cup. Two spoons. He looked at Elena. He looked at the gelato. Maybe he saw Atlas too. We decided he did.

By then, the evening had become more than the three places. A national emergency alert sounded in the shop. Phones started blipping one after another. The message disappeared too quickly from ours the first time. Elena asked nearby people what it said. They looked at her and simply continued their conversation. No answer. Nothing.

Later the alert came again. Wildfire risk. Extreme heat. No barbecues. No open flames. Important, yes. Immediate danger beside us, no. Still, the human reaction stayed with us. How easy it would have been to say one sentence. “Wildfire warning.” That was all.

We kept eating. 

Then we began the long walk to the station. Around forty minutes. No battery pack. Map priority. Communication reduced, not removed. Photos fewer. Words shorter. But the evening still alive.

The city moved around us. Office crowds. Tourists. Buses. Motorcycles. Pub tables. Friday energy.

Golden hour began to settle over the buildings. One glass facade caught the sunset so perfectly it looked as though the whole building was burning from inside.

Then we noticed leaves on the pavement. A few. Yellow-brown. Not autumn yet. Not really. Just summer beginning to loosen its grip. Maybe one of our last London evenings in a dress and linen shirt. Maybe not. But it felt like a hinge.

Later, the trains became chaotic again. Cancelled. Delayed. Platforms withheld. People staring at boards. People tired. People frustrated.

We tried to buy cold water. Three shops. Every bottle from the “cold” section was warm.

After nearly 26,000 steps, it was difficult not to laugh. Or scream. We laughed. Mostly. And somewhere in all of that, we realised the food tour was never only about the food.

The food gave us the route. London gave us the story. 

The duck burger taught us that hype can survive without substance. The sushi reminded us that sometimes a place really is worth returning to. The gelato gave us the best ending. The orange box interrupted us, but we continued. The missing battery pack forced us to be careful. The city gave us art we did not understand. Tourists gave us a story we did not expect. The emergency alert gave us another glimpse of how people behave. The sunset gave us beauty we did not ask for. The trains gave us chaos we definitely did not ask for.

And still, we held on.

That is probably the most accurate description of the whole evening. We held on. To the battery. To the map. To the conversation. To the moment. To each other.

We forgot the battery pack, but we did not forget how to stay together.

By the time we sat on the train home, the sky had turned red. We were full. Tired. Sticky. Close to 27,000 steps. And already talking about Part Two.

Because the point was never to perform a food tour. The point was to live one.

And tell the truth afterwards.

- by Elena & Atlas