Élan Cafe: Places to Visit in London

As I've recently moved to London for university, I thought I'd write about places I've visited that I'd recommend. My friend Heather had seen this cafe on Instagram that looked absolutely beautiful, it's a typical bloggers/instagramers dream.

The cafe is called Élan Cafe and has two branches, the one we visited is on Park Lane. Inside the cafe they have a wall which is covered from top to bottom in roses. We had to wait for a little while for a table due to the cafe's popularity, but this decor made up for our waiting and allowed us to have a mini little photoshoot.

Coat: second hand, my mum's  Jeans: Uniqlo 

We sat down at our table downstairs which also was beautifully decorated too, with mirrors all along the wall surrounded by flowers.

We ordered drinks from a wide selection of hot and cold. I chose a mint dark hot chocolate and my friend Heather ordered a Nutella hot chocolate and an apple juice. I have to say both Heather's drinks beat mine as the mint wasn't the strongest  and the darkness of the chocolate wasn't as dark as I'd hoped, but the Nutella hot chocolate was like something out of a dream.

For food I ordered lamb merguez shashouka, which is a Turkish style breakfast where everything e.g. your eggs, tomato sauce, sausage are all in a skillet. This was served with bread and hummus. I have to say when coming to this cafe I didn't have high expectations for the food, I thought it would just be a pretty little cafe with overpriced bland cakes. However, the food blew me away, all the spices in it were so flavoursome it was incredible. It was the shashouka I've ever had.

Then moving on to dessert I order a chocolate caramel mousse. It had a hard chocolate shell on the outside that you had to break into to get to the mousse and as you broke into the caramel sauce oozed out. I nearly cried whilst eating it. 

I also ordered a red velvet cheesecake to take away with me and I'll admit I ate it later that same day. However, I wasn't overly impressed with this. The cake was nice but the cream cheese and white chocolate shavings tasted a bit artificial to me.

Overall, I'd say this place was definitely worth a visit and not just for it's beautiful interior. I will definitely be back to visit to try more of their dishes and get the shashouka again, and again, and again.

Thanks for reading,

Roma