Portobello Juice Cafe

The weekend before Christmas I realised that this term I had not yet been to Portobello market this term. So I dragged a friend with me. Sadly, I was pretty hungover so I needed to make a pit stop. One of the places we stopped was "Portobello Juice Cafe". I was attracted to this place because of the awesome graffiti exterior, and the fact that I didn't feel like another cup of coffee, especially on a Saturday afternoon. 

I tend to have a pretty big problem with Portobello Market, every time I go there and spend the afternoon outside I get a really bad cold. So I spent a few hellish days blowing my nose hoping that I didn't look like Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Anyway, back to this juice cafe. The indoor wall art was just as good as the outdoor, and they played some soft jazzy music as we strolled up to the bar. 

We ordered our fruity drinks, and weirdly enough I opted for one of the few ones including coffee. I know I just said I didn't want another cup of coffee, but this one was different, it was cold, and it had bananas! The Portobello Juice Cafe was a perfect place to hide from the cold and the tourists. I'm looking forward to enjoying a drink once the weather gets warmer, I have to start avoiding these colds. 

Here's their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/portobellojuice

Zaza

Walking down Portobello Road you stop at all the market stalls but somehow I never stop at the restaurants around it. This time I was finally able to look around a bit more, and I decided to stop at a place called "Zaza". This place has Italian ice-cream, or as I like to call it "real ice-cream".

I chose the smallest size cup, for 2,50 pounds, and the flavour licorice. I know, I know, its a weird flavour, but since this one summer I tried it in Sicily I can't get enough. It was amazing, it had a very subtle taste with a pang at the end. The store also had Italian candy and other Italian desserts.

The ice-cream flavours they had were all really cool for example there was; amarena, zuppa inglese, cassata, and many others. It was great because they had the English descriptive name on the top of the label and then the actual Italian name underneath. The people serving were all Italian except for one person that seemed like he was new at the job because he was still learning how to use the touch screen on the till.

The place has a few small tables in the back and around, there's also a stack of pillows that you can grab to make your seat more comfortable. Being such a small shop gives it more personality, and it reminded me a lot of an ice-cream place in Milan. I really want to try some of their other flavours when I go back to Portobello. Here's their site: http://www.zazagelato.eu/index.html