An old friend of mine was visiting London this weekend. Unfortunately it was a work trip and she couldn’t stay with us like she normally would, but luckily she had some free time today so I went to see her in Richmond where she was staying.

We did a little bit of shopping and it wasn’t even midday when we were sitting down at All Bar One with glasses of Prosecco. It is just the best thing to catch up with a good girl friend.

After the Prosecco we walked around the shops and the pretty Richmond, talking more than bying anything. As the stomachs started rumbling we found a little Italian / Sicilian restaurant Adesso for lunch. My friend has a specific soft spot for Sicily, she used to spend a lot of time there with her family and even her cat is from Sicily. A fact she shared with the proprietor, who politely feigned interest and asked whereabouts in Sicily the cat came from. Apparently he is from the very same area. They could be family.

We decided to share the antipasti platter and ordered a rocket and parmesan salad on the side. We thought if this was not going to be enough we’d order more, but it did the job perfectly. The platter looked great, there was a generous helping of green and black olives with some kick to them, grilled artichoke hearts in oil, sundried tomatoes, a delicious  melanzane parmigiana, shrimp in their shells, fried calamari, green salad and stuffed baby peppers, which also had some heat. 

The melanzane parmigiana particularly was wonderful, it had some hard boiled egg in it, which I never knew went to the dish, but it worked well. This is something that I have to try again - I have made the dish before, but mine was nowhere near as tasty as Adesso's. And I'll definitely include the boiled eggs.

We had some crisp Sicilian white to go with the antipasti and couldn’t even manage desserts. We finished the lunch with coffees. A perfect day of girly chat, shopping, food and drink.