Camden

So this weekend Jackie and I didn't have much planned. On Saturday we took the train to Hampton Wick and walked to Teddington, we had afternoon tea there and acosted a lady in a baby clothes shop asking her all sorts of questions about her pram, she was very obliging and said she did the same when she was looking for a pram. We then picked up some salads from the supermarket, walked across Teddington Lock, had our salads by the River Thames in Kingston. A nice day out.

Today we decided to head up north to Camden. Camden is famous and infamous. A real tourist trap but also one of the gems of London. Jackie and I first went to Camden over 4 years ago. I remember loving it and saying I wanted to go back soon. Today was my second trip to Camden markets.

Camden is notorious as the home of Amy Winehouse who recently died at her flat in Camden, the biggest shock being that apparently there were no illegal substances in her body when she died. I suspect the damage had been well and truly done in the preceding years.

Camden has several markets selling all manner of things, lots of knock off goods as well as original design clothing and accessories and lots of yummy food stalls. As you can probably imagine most of this blog will be about the food.

We started with a sandwich we had made at home with yum turkish bread from a local shop.

Two home made sandwiches modelled by Jackie

First of all a few photos of Camden to set the scene for those of you that haven't been there....

There were lots of oversized, quirky shop signs

We didn't actually go in to this particular market, there are other Camden markets but with different names, I guess this might have been the original Camden market

Camden has several shops selling leather clothes, I guess the one here specialised in tight leather trousers -  Jackie and I did NOT getting matching pairs. 

Not sure a slogan of "Evil from the Needle" was particularly well thought out for a tattoo shop, although we're not really the target market are we.

Another oversize sculpture, this one for the Chinese Buffet

Dark Angel, another tattoo shop

Camden Lock

Oversized rocking chair

The Stable Market, another one we didn't actually go in on this occasion

Unfortunately, and like our first visit to Camden, the weather wasn't the best so we had to find shelter. We just happened to find shelter near several food stalls.

We started with a chocolate chip cookie which was yum and made yummer by the fact that that they warmed it up in a little oven they have. While Jackie was buying the cookie I went to the Ethiopian coffee stall where they were roasting their coffee beans in a little frying pan on a cooker. A machiato for me and chai tea for Jackie.

We spotted the cookies from here, the Ethiopian coffee stall is the small one on the left of this shot

Close up of the cookies that we would later snaffle. 

We went back to our shelter to share the cookie and our drinks. We happened to be standing at the back of an ice cream shop which was fascinating. We had a good view in, basically the idea is you go in, there are 3 ice cream flavours, and each serve is made to order by pouring the flavoured cream into a cake mixer, then, and this is the cool bit (pun intended!), they poor liquid nitrogen into a flask, which is then poured into the mixer which is turned on at this stage. The liquid nitrogen freezes the cream in seconds and served in a little pottle, sauce is added and a topping.

After watching this process with fascination from the back window we decided to head in and get some of this. Photos below step through the process...

Our view of the ice cream "lab" from the back window, Jackie holding the Ethiopian drinks. The cookie is long gone by this stage

View from inside, this is the mad scientist that owns the ice cream shop/lab with his wife, here he is getting the nitrogen to freeze our vanilla cream

Out comes the nitrogen

Nitrogen being poured into our vanilla cream as the mixer goes on

Abra cadabra

Hey presto, perfect ice cream

The assistant technician applies the desired sauce (caramel in our case) from the beaker

And we choose a topping from the selection - we went for honeycombe

Voila

Someone looks excited

Another oversized thing looked over us as we tucked in to our ice cream (and hot chocolate)

The Lab

The Hot Chocolate was pretty special too, very, very rich but not too sweet. It was thick and hot and delicious. 

Chin chin labs (http://www.chinchinlabs.com/) is the name of the place, it's only in Camden at the moment but I wouldn't be surprised if they start branching out in the near future, it's a great concept and the ice cream (an performance) really are worth it.
Some how as we left Jackie thought it would be a good idea to have a donut, we decided that it might be best if we left that till next time we visit - hopefully not another 4 years away!

From here we got on the tube home, out of the station in Balham Jackie asks "what do you think we might have for dessert tonight?" A piece of fruit maybe!