Thanksgiving Dinners

Thanksgiving Feast in Aid of Benjamin Franklin House at the Butcher’s Hall
For a spectacular Thanksgiving feast in London, head to the Butcher’s Hall where a traditional meal is served in high style. All of the proceeds from the event go towards the work of Benjamin Franklin House, which is fitting as Franklin not only suggested that the turkey become an American national symbol, but also practised cooking it as part of his early work on electricity. Tickets are £68, or £28 for children and include a reception, Thanksgiving meal and drinks.

Ffiona’s, Kensington
This popular British restaurant has (perhaps unexpectedly) been serving an acclaimed Thanksgiving dinner for 19 years. If you’d like to celebrate at home but don’t have space to cook, they’ll prepare a takeaway feast for you!

Christopher’s, Covent Garden
The grill’s Thanksgiving dinner is always popular and it’s easy to see why: £45 gets you three courses from a tantalising menu that features delights such as Maryland crab cake and pumpkin pie with honey bourbon crème chantilly.

Le Caprice, Piccadilly
The restaurant’s traditional menu features crab and sweetcorn chowder, roast turkey with all the trimmings and a chocolate and pumpkin pie. Unlike many other menus, you can order the courses here individually.

Bodeans BBQ, Various Venues
With four branches around London, these laid back American diners are a great option for a relaxed Thanksgiving. Their special menu offers three traditional courses for £20.95.

Thanksgiving Drinks

The Big Easy, Chelsea
Thanksgiving tipples grace the menuwith a special Pumpkin Martini, Apple and Cinnamon Margarita; classic Egg Nogg; or Black Fig Sidecar. All £7.95 each. Plus a live band will be playing to cheer you on with toe-tapping music from 8.30pm.

The American Bar at the Stafford Hotel, St James’s
One of only two remaining American Bars in London (the other is at The Savoy), this is a great place for a post-Thanksgiving dinner cocktail. Select from a range of traditional favourites, or go for the special Thanksgiving Cognac Sparkler, which mixes Cognac with sparkling cider.

Bar 45, 45 Park Lane
If you can’t make the CUT restaurant‘s Thanksgiving dinner on 22 November, you can still sample their cranberry Thanksgiving cocktail 1863 (named after the year the holiday began in America) and Thanksgiving Pie Sliders at the hotel bar between 19-25 November.

The Rubens at the Palace Hotel, Victoria
For the duration of November you can enjoy Thanksgiving inspired cocktails in the hotels’ bars.

Thanksgiving Entertainment

Jetlag Bar, Warren Street
Their Thanksgiving menu is accompanied by an all-day programme of entertainment that includes a film screening, American Football coverage and live music from Mr Lee.

The Blues Kitchen, Camden
Be thankful for late opening hours at this popular live music venue, where the Thanksgiving party carries on until 1am. Live music will be provided by Mike Newsham, the Astrojets and Miraculous Mule from 9pm. The bar is also offering traditional food as well as a chance to win a Fender Telecaster – see their website for full details.

The Sports Cafe, Piccadilly
Watch NFL all night as part of this bar’s all-American celebration.

More Thanksgiving celebrations in London

You don’t have to venture into the countryside to experience the delights of Autumn, as the Royal Horticultural Society has brought the best of the harvest to London for its Harvest Festival Show.

On today and tomorrow, the show is a great seasonal treat for both horticulture enthusiasts and newcomers alike. The main attraction is the display of prize-winning fruit and vegetables, which are all awe-inspiring examples of their type. Beautiful, flawless and intriguingly uniform, they are a moving testament to the hard work of the growers, many of whom are in attendance at the show. The produce ranges from rings of exquisite onions to a display of enormous pumpkins, the largest of which weights 327kg!

The show also contains a fascinating art installation, a display of innovative ways to grow crops and stalls offering both useful and tasty merchandise. A range of talks runs throughout the day, in which experts provide useful ideas about how you can get the most out of your own resources.

Don’t miss the special Harvest Festival Late this evening, which gives people the opportunity to enjoy drinks and live music alongside the show. From 5 to 9pm you can sample cider and vegetarian cocktails from the RHS bar, while listening to folk music and undoubtedly memorable performances from the London Vegetable Orchestra.

Chocaholics will be flocking to London next week for Chocolate Week 2012. Running from Monday 8 to Sunday 14 October, the annual event celebrates the work of top chocolatiers and chocolate companies at various venues across the capital. Here are some of the week’s most delectable treats:

Chocolate Unwrapped, 13-14 Oct, London Film Museum Covent Garden, see website for talk and demonstration times
Visitors are invited to immerse themselves in this decadent celebration of chocolate. Marvel at chocolate sculptures, watch chocolate cooking demonstrations and taste a variety of exciting new flavours, unexpected pairings and classic favourites from Britain and around the world. £10 in advance, £12 on the door, children £5.

Chocalligraphy Kids Workshop, 13 Oct, 10.30am-12.30pm, Rococo Chocolates
An innovative children’s workshop at leading London chocolatier, Roccoco Chocolates. Organisers promise plenty of good clean fun – with aprons provided. And the best chocalligrapher wins a prize. Free, but booking is essential

Chocolate Safari: From Virunga Park to Park Lane, 10 and 13 Oct, 3.30-5.30pm
Food writer Sudi Pigott leads an Original Beans chocolate safari  through the “wilds” of Park Lane. Taking in savoury and sweet dishes at three of Mayfair’s leading restaurants, interspersed with a short history of chocolate. Participating restaurants and chefs: Andre Garratt with Fred Sireix, Galvin at Windows; Theo Randall at Theo Randall at The Intercontinental; and Regis Curan at Nobu. £40

Cacao Revolution, 9 Oct, 6.30-9.30pm, Mint Leaf Restaurant & Bar
Great chocolate needs great cacao. Members of the newly formed Direct Cacao organisation and other guests discuss issues facing the chocolate industry and how we can create a revolution to protect the world’s cacao resource. £10

Choc Tales from Dean Street, 11 Oct, 6.30-8.30pm, 68 Dean Street
World-class chocolatiers pair up with talented cocktail makers in this period property to present a unique cocktail and chocolate experience. Damian Allsop, Paul A Young, William Curley, Artisan du Chocolat, Rococo and The Grenada Chocolate Company are all participating. £45

Hotel Chocolat Supper Club, 12 Oct, 7pm, Roast+Conch
The Boucan Supper Club is a delicious introduction to Hotel Chocolat’s exclusive “cacao cuisine” style of cooking. Held at Roast+Conch in Covent Garden, the four-course dinner will feature cocoa throughout and served with matching wine. £75

Mexican Chocolate Feast, available after 5pm throughout Chocolate Week at various branches of Benito’s Hat
This fabulous feast features a main, dessert and cocktail and pays homage to the cocoa bean’s heritage. Dishes include chocolate chicken mole burrito, chocobrownie cake and Mexican chocolate martini. £15.95 per person

Paul A Young at The Folly, launches 8 Oct, The Folly
Master chocolatier Paul A Young has teamed up with bar and restaurant The Folly to run a pop-up shop throughout October. Buy luxurious sweet treats, enrol in a masterclass or drink winter-warming hot chocolate

The Chocolate Dream Package, throughout Chocolate Week, available at The Marylebone Hotel, The Bloomsbury Hotel and The Kensington Hotel.
Three Doyle Collection hotels are offering a chocolate dream package which includes accommodation, chocolate cocktails , chocolate themed dinner, a chocolate gift, breakfast and 20% off Demarquette the chocolatier. From £290 per couple

The East India Company, open Mon-Sat, 10am-7pm and Sun, 11am-5pm Sun
The flagship shop of the historic East India Company will be marking Chocolate Week with some delectable tastings in-store. Try chocolate covered fruits, nuts and coffee beans, or have a sip of the wonderful drinking chocolate made in a stylish hot chocolate kettle. There are also beautiful chocolate boxes, and plenty of unusual chocolate bars, biscuits and even sugar. Free

Will you be indulging this Chocolate Week?

Images by Mark Baynes.

Were you there? Don’t forget to add your photos to the Visit London Flickr pool.

To celebrate the Diamond Jubilee year, the festival was launched with an ice sculpture of a giant diamond. The free festival takes place today and tomorrow at Canary Wharf - don’t miss it.

London Ice Sculpting Festival 2012, Canary Wharf, 13-14 January

Last weekend’s London Design Festival saw hundreds of galleries, venues and temporary events across the city showcasing the best in architecture, art and design.

As part of the festival, Icon Magazine hosted the Icon Build Off, a temporary event in one of the vacant sites in Central St Giles.

Celebrating their 100th issue, the magazine asked several leading architectural firms to re-imagine famous landmarks in Lego. The results were varied, ranging from a Rockefeller Centre raised up 20 storeys, to a melted mass of Lego bricks that once resembled Frank Lloyd Wright‘s Fallingwater. All seven of these models were on display.

The main reason for attending, however, was the long trestle table piled with Lego where visitors were asked to create their own architectural marvels. Never underestimate the draw of Lego, whether to a three or 33 year old! After finishing, would-be starchitects were invited to upload a photo of their work to Facebook, or else put it on display with the other works. The results were on the whole impressive, and the process frenzied and highly addictive.

Despite the Icon Build Off having closed, many London Design Week events are ongoing, including David Chipperfield‘s Two Lines outside the Royal Festival Hall, and The Power of Making exhibition at the V&A.

See more London Design Festival pictures and add your own to the visitlondon.com Flickr pool.

Were you there? Add your photos to the Visit London Flickr Pool and tag them “Thames Festival” to appear above.

London is home to plenty of Malaysian restaurants and once a year, you can experience the best of them in one place.

For the second year running, Malaysia Night is transforming Trafalgar Square into a Malaysian Pasar Malam (night market) where a selection of the capital’s Malaysian restaurants will offer up authentic Malaysian dishes from stalls on the square.

Sample Malaysian street food-inspired dishes including laksa, nasi goreng, satay and beef rendang. You can even buy Malaysian ingredients if you’d like to recreate some of the dishes at home.

You can also enjoy some traditional Malaysian entertainment with performance, arts and crafts.

This year’s Malaysia Night is taking place on 23 September  so put the date in your diary now.

See what happened at last year’s Malaysia Night:

Malaysia Night, 23 Sep 2011, Trafalgar Square www.malaysiakitchen.co.uk

This video of last year’s festival highlights, which included dancing, bee-keeping and street pianos, gives a taste of what to expect:

This year’s festival theme is Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific.

• Catch Brent’s St Patrick’s Day Parade from 4pm at Willesden Green Tube, followed by Irish folk dancing, music, a market and children’s activities. Willesden Green Library, 17 Mar
• See Irish dance superstars Up & Over It as they present an alternative St Patrick’s Day celebration at the Hackney Empire. Enjoy an electro-pop ceili after the show. 18 Mar
• Feast on Irish smoked salmon courtesy of Irish artisan smoker Frank Hederman at Selfridges (10am-5pm) and the Wright Brothers Soho Oyster House (5-7pm). Talks and tastings, 17 Mar
• Party in The City with Irish pies and half-price Guinness at Agenda bar. 17 Mar (half price St Patricks drinks until 9pm).
• Hear the sounds of Ireland as St Martin-in-the-Fields mark St Patrick’s Day with a programme celebrating Irish music. 17 Mar
• Sip on a Jameson Irish Mule cocktail at Zigfrid von Underbelly in Shoreditch, plus DJs and Irish dancers, 17 Mar
• Have a drink in one of London’s best Irish bars (and tell us whether you agree with our choices).

How are you celebrating St Patricks day? Let us know in the comments below.