London treats, TNT #10 (clotted cream) and TNT #11 (Eccles cake)

Deciding to celebrate my birthday in London this year gave me the opportunity to re-visit this fascinating city, see some excellent exhibitions and for the purposes of this blog, try some new foods and shop for chocolate!

The trip began well with a burger on a toasted bun and excellent fries from Billy Goat Tavern at O'Hare. This almost made up for missing my flight due to a delay in a connecting flight.

On this trip judicious use of Chowhound's UK board gave me (too) many places to try but I was really happy with most of my meals and most importantly got to try many new foods. No photos sadly.

No. 10 chinese restaurant : Conveniently close to my hotel this was the site for my birthday dinner. More elegantly decorated than I expected, dinner was a large bowl of water-cooked fish from the Chinese-only menu. Loved the Sichuan peppercorns in the flavourful broth and the generous chunks of fish and napa. Not as fiery as other renditions but the flavour more than made up for this. Priciest item on the menu at £12.50.

Museum cafes were overall excellent. Meals in the Victoria and Albert's magnificently decorated cafe are always a pleasure. A very good salami tart with excellent carrot and radicchio salads. A currant tart at the British Museum after the magnificent Shah Abbas exhibition was particularly memorable. Best of all was the cream tea at the National Gallery Cafe. Amazingly this was the first time I have had clotted cream. With a dollop as large as the scone served alongside it, the cream was amazingly smooth but not overly rich, as I had feared it might be.

Afternoon teas and snacks are always one of my indulgences while travelling. This trip was no exception with coffee and croissants at Paul, a lemon tart at Patisserie Valerie, surprisingly good cappuchinos at McDonald's for breakfast, a focaccia from Ottolenghi, steak and mushroom pie from Square Pie and a spicy chicken pasty from a pasty chain.

Other memorable meals were the huge and very tasty bacon sandwich from St John Bread and Wine, nasi lemak at Rasa Sayang (memorable for the blandness of its sambal) and a light gingery cold spinach plate and bowl of dan dan mein from Baozi Inn.

Borough Market: a huge and piping hot sausage roll from Ginger Pig satisfied my sausage roll cravings for the next few years. Other snacks picked up at the market were creme caramel (a light and cool dessert after the sausage roll) from Real France, an amazing Eccles cake (packed with currants in a flaky pastry and topped with crunchy sugar crystals) from Flour Station and an incredibly rich, dense wedge of chocolate tart from another stall.

Lots of chocolate and biscuit purchases as well that I'll be working my way through in the next few months...