"Looking like a small lost surfboard returning to shore along with the treasures and plantation of Atlantis placed atop"

Chado Tea Shop Cihangir, Istanbul Squirrelling my way around the "Camden of Istanbul", my other half told me about a perfectly lovely little tea shop. One that I simply had to visit due to my recently acquired interest in any tea other than the mundane English Breakfast tea I'm so accustomed to. So, whilst she had to jet off to a different country for work, I thought I'd head down the road from our Airbnb and kill some time before she came back. Open until late and serving light bites and ...

"After the initial scrub, cold water was thrown on me which felt amazingly renewing - possibly the only time I've enjoyed having cold water thrown on me without warning"

1100 Turkish Lira (around £50) per person Aga Hamami Beyoğlu, İstanbul, Turkey Situated in the hyper-bohemian Cihangir area of Istanbul where the street cats and dogs roam about as if they rule the place is the oldest Turkish hammam in the city (and I'm assuming because of that, the universe). Now, I had no idea what a hammam was nor did I know the difference between a Turkish bath, a Roman bath, a B&Q bath, the city of Bath, et Cetera. My levels of interest and curiosity we almost at an all...

"I had already lost my mind about the potential food combinations I could create. Cheese with honey? I am Greek royalty. Tomatoes dusted with exotic spices? I am a Mediterainnian millionaire. A doughnut with my coffee? I am an uncouth American. "

Breakfast for two - 152 Turkish Lira per person (around £7 each) Beyoğlu, İstanbul, Turkey Fancy a breakfast where each individual ingredient comes on its own plate or bowl knowing that you're not the poor person that has to wash about 100 billion of them before the end of your shift? Then head on down to the hustlin' and bustlin' Arada Beyrut Cafe in Istanbul where you can fill every square inch of a table with items of food! A fairy chilly Saturday morning didn't hamper the hordes of peo...

"I'd never thought 'this is what they probably smell when they push open a sarcophagus' prior to opening these"

£2.80 Tesco Marmite. It can be the salty tar that bonds kings and paupers together in harmony or the unbreachable wall between love and hate. A savoury sludge that hits all the right notes like a seasoned jazz musician playing a solo straight from the heart...but that's only if you like jazz. For those that don't, it's the awful noise of some escaped mental patient slapping a piano like a wilding until the whitecoats burst through the door and capture them. During a trip to the 'big Tesco' ...

"Adding more grey to the flavour of grey"

£5.75 All good Pret locations After a mundane morning of slowly tapping on a laptop keyboard and calling it 'work', I had built up quite a monstrous appetite - one befitting of someone who really puts the hard graft in, and because of where the lifeless, blue-tinged, hospital-lit and cold boxed shit-of-a-room they call an office is located, only a Pret looms nearby ready to force people in looking for a quick lunch. I forwent my usual Pret fare of the posh cheese and pickle baguette thing a...

"If cutting open a poached egg is like cutting open a baseball, you're probably in a place that sells tinned chicken"

€9.50 Barcelona Around a 23-minute walk away from the hustle and bustle of the tourist funnel that is Las Ramblas, Barcelona, sits a corner-cafe serving brunch to the locals. Luckily, it's too far away from the main areas, so any globetrotters that make it all that way are there for a reason and not just dropping in because there's a queue at Burger King. And speaking about dropping in, surely a party of three can drop into a hot brunch zone at peak brunch time on a Saturday without a reserv...

"Black on black on slate-black"

£99 Casio Store, Carnaby Street, London The latest in the lineup of the almost-indestructible G-shock range is the ruggedly-handsome GA-2100, dubbed as the 'CasiOak' by watch aficionados due to its resemblance to the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak. And unlike the AP Royal Oak, you can launch this at the wall with tremendous power and the watch would be fine (anyone who'd like to challenge this with their own AP, let me know how that goes). For those of you who're unaware of Casio G-Shocks, you can...

"Looking like one of King Midas' test touches, the Eti Gold bar hummed the air with a sense of false opulence not too dissimilar to the "look, we too can bump gums with the upper-class" products like Nescafe Gold and every other shit with 'gold' added to their line"

“Looking like one of King Midas' test touches, the Eti Gold bar hummed the air with a sense of false opulence not too dissimilar to the "look, we too can bump gums with the upper-class" products like Nescafe Gold and every other shit with 'gold' added to their line. Rose gold...there's another.” The hills of Istanbul steepen forever upwards. Cars parked wholly on the sidewalks surrounded by cats and dogs, and carts selling freshly-squeezed juice of pomegranate or orange. The roads are the o...

"All of the marketing material on the walls lovingly stated how much your meal saves a planet’s worth of water by not watering cows or some shit, and how plant-based living is the best ever or something. I dunno, I didn’t properly read any of it"

Neat Burger, London £8.99 - burger only (£1.50 for extra cheese) A while ago I decided to better myself and join the only elite club I’d ever be able to get into and became a vegetarian. Not quite the to the lofty heights of being a vegan card-holder as I’d rather inhale the takeoff blast from a rocket destined for deep space. The switch to ‘not being good enough to be a vegan’ was surprisingly easy considering I couldn’t class a meal as an actual meal unless it had some form of meaty protei...

Marks & Spencer £3 Vegetarians will tell you (usually when asked, not bleating on and on spoiling pure silence like vegans) that they made the switch to a plant-based lifestyle because they don’t want to be a part of the suffering of animals and the destruction planet and yada-yada. Yet they’ll snuffle about looking for a meat substitute that looks and tastes exactly like meat, and if their vegetarian burger doesn’t taste exactly like a meat burger they’ll throw it back on the plate and decl...