London Beauty Queen: Desk to Date

London Beauty Queen: Desk to Date: "Living in London and having a pretty hectic social life I spend at least three nights a week attempting to brush up my face from a day of wo..."

This is such a brilliant idea! Buying first thing tomorrow...

Give it some Scin

You guys have every right to feel cheated here. On two counts in fact. Firstly, Scin isn't even in SW6, it's a trendy day spa on Great Portland St (also branches in Notting Hill and Liverpool apparently!) near where I work. Secondly, I am not the beauty buff of this outfit. I will gladly hand over that mantle to Sarah. I hadn't even had a facial before. Yep... it shocked the beauty therapist too. At the grand old age of 23 I have never ever had a facial, and it was high time that changed... all in the name of research, and grabbing a good review, of course!

Don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm some ugly troll who lives under a rock, or that I have no concern over my appearance whatsoever. It's just my focus has always been on the clothes. As long as I'm clean (I am clean most of the time, promise!), well dressed, and have applied a splash of mascara and the obligatory concealer on, I've generally been happy with the results. But when one of my many coupon website subscriptions offered me the chance of a facial at Scin, a really luxurious looking little place on the same road as my office, I leapt at the chance to see what the fuss was about.

And boy, what a thing I have been missing.

I am a total convert.

In fact, I fear my new love for beauty treatments is going to send me bankrupt. There are facials, massages, manis, pedis, threadings, extensions... a whole plethora of fun little treats for me to try and that will (hopefully - I'll let you know how it goes) leave me feeling relaxed, and that little bit more beautiful.

So back to Scin. I walked in to what looks like an ordinary one floor hair or nails salon. There's loads of bright white, fabulous designer wallpaper in sandy shades, and trendy damask print, and a gorgeous smell that just sets you right at ease, and reassures you of the quality of the treatment. Now, I work in marketing, so I know all these little tricks. But, so far, so good. If they've got all these little details right, you'd hope the service would be right up there too. And, hey, I'm a complete sucker for aesthetics, and I think the guys at Scin got it bang on.

I was quickly led down into the lower-ground floor. A dimly-lit warren of corridors with plus carpet and more of that gorgeous scent (I wanted to find out what it was, but there wasn't a candle in sight). The waiting area is just a little nook really, but the sofas were really comfy and there was loads of current magazines to browse. Not that I had to wait long. My beauty therapist was along promptly and I was shown into a gorgeous little treatment room.

I quickly outed myself as a facial virgin and the lady could not have been sweeter. She immediately asked if I'd rather enjoy the treatment in silence, or whether I wanted her to briefly talk through the steps as she was going along. In the name of education, I chose the latter, and I'm glad I did. She was completely unobtrusive, just quickly outlining what she was applying and what benefit it would have, each time she switched product. I'm sure it's a skill all (good) beauty therapists hone. But she had just the right level of engagement: a friendly chat as we entered the room and I got ready, and again as she ushered me out of the room at the end, plus the odd well-placed compliment throughout. Lady - I know I don't have "simply gorgeous eyelashes" but after a long, hard week at work, that totally made my day!!

But what did I think of the treatment? After a Thursday night out on the tiles with my workmates (why do I do this to myself? I work in a cruel, cruel industry) I'm afraid my skin was pretty shocking. It was dry, there were pimples, it felt tired. I came out looking and feeling totally rejuvenated. I'd heard horror stories of therapists attacking pimples like they were lurking cockroaches, but despite the state of my skin, the "squeezing" part of the ceremony was barely less relaxing than the rest, and after a quick inspection I think she really did get most of the yuck right out. At the end my skin felt hydrated, beautifully peachy and soft, with that gorgeous dewy sheen that I think looks so much healthier than the matt finish foundation provides. Most of my pimples had been raised to the surface (I'm told this is normal, and part of the extraction process) and by this morning had actually disappeared. Best of all, I felt totally relaxed and pampered, and I think this is half the point, the reason why people get so hooked. The fact that you can take an hour to yourself, at the end of a long arduous week, at an urban oasis in the middle of a hectic city, is just pure, self-indulgent bliss.

Will I be going back? I'd love to, and certainly will once I get a payrise. I got a fantastic deal, and I loved my treatment, I'm still not sure I could justify it to myself at the full whack of around £60. But, if you've got that kind of money spare, and are looking for a luxuriously self-indulgent hour of bliss in trendy (yet relaxing) surroundings, PLEASE do treat yourself.

Scin Spa

220 Great Portland St, London

Nearest tube: Great Portland St

Treatment: 1 hour Murad facial

All photos: London Beauty Review

KEITH BARKER-MAIN Drinks London Dry (Tanqueray 10, preferably): The Rose, Fulham

KEITH BARKER-MAIN Drinks London Dry (Tanqueray 10, preferably): The Rose, Fulham: "What was once the less-than-tip-top Fulham Tup is on the up and hopefully, not a trace of local tabloid titillating tosser Terry. Re-brande..."

Sloaney Pony serves up a treat and no chinos in sight

This was a Thursday night dinner with 2 friends who work in a very well known night club in Chelsea. Both awesome aussie girls resulting in one of the most funny evenings I’ve had in a long time. Aussie Girl #1 suggests The White Horse for a Fulham pub dinner. I have never eaten here and so was curious to see how the food compared to its rivals on the P Green triangle.
We sat in the candlelit back ‘restaurant’ and got stuck into the bread basket and drinks...half an hour of gossiping, hilarious drunken stories and giggling later we ordered from the diverse menu (there was also an impressive specials board which included pheasant, steak and salmon).
The food was proper, hearty pub grub- I had a venison pie with mash which was the perfect choice considering the sub zero temperatures outside. Aussie girl #1 had the sea bass, which she said was delicious, and Aussie girl #2 had the duck salad (she is dieting, much to the annoyance of the waitress who was repeatedly asked for various sauces on the side, the least calorific drink and a sugar supplement-her patience knew no bounds.)
The drinks flowed, the conversation become more lurid, the tummy’s became fuller and we became increasingly merrier, so there was no question that another round of drinks and pud was ordered (a peppermint tea for driving Aussie #2). The pudding was decadent and without question freshly home made- I shared the crumble with Aussie #1 which was a bit too sweet for my liking but the custard was very good.
We left full, fat and very happy and not bankrupt- one of the most pleasant surprises of this girls dinner was the bill, a very reasonable £24 each...big thumbs up to the not so sloaney pony.

As close as you get to Rome in Fulham

Friday Night Dinner with a girlfriend who has recently returned from her gap yarr- Paggy's!

This is one of my favourite restaurants in Fulham, when you walk through those red doors after a grey rainy day having crawled through traffic on a smelly 22 bus, there is no question that you will leave with a big smile on your face :)

The staff are hilarious, whether it's your first or 100th visit you are treated like an old friend, promptly offered a drink and some delicious oven baked garlic bed. The menu is diverse, offering authentic and tasty Italian dishes- the parma ham chilli pizza is seriously warming after a cold day.

We chatted for ages, gossiped while sharing a carafe of their house white (drinkable).

If you go on a Friday night there is pumping dance music and big tables of birthday parties shrieking with laughter- not ideal for young families but for a 20 something in Fulham, the perfect way to unwind after a week at work.

Good service, good quality ingredients, diverse range of dishes and very reasonably priced. We shared calamari to start (delicious) then had 2 pizzas, a carafe of wine and 2 pots of peppermint tea (not very rock and roll....) and the bill came to £20 each! Jess and I have also been previously and been given free lemon cello if you're feeling more daring than peppermint tea!

Paggs we love you!

Photos our own

Svetlana- No Russian Roulette

And so the obsession with beauty salons in Fulham continues- thanks to my amazing voucher from mylo deals, I have 4 treatments to enjoy at Svetlana, a very pretty little beauty salon on Wandsworth Bridge Road. My first appointment was for a manicure and pedicure which I took on a grey January Saturday afternoon.

This salon is decorated in a girlie pink style and you get an instant warm welcome by 3 lovely Eastern European ladies. They take a genuine interest in you, ask you relevant questions (I have a facial booked too, so they were advising me as to the best treatment for my skin, being very motherly and kind)

Things I like about Svetlana:

The staff- sweet, friendly, kind

The decor- not like other nail bars this is a notch above with amazing state of the art pedi chairs with all over massagers, very comfortable without being a super duper swanky yummy mummy Chelsea salon

The magazines- all this month’s- this is very rare, so plenty of reading material

Atmosphere- they have music gently in the background, the ladies are smiling and they even teach you Russian words if you ask them!

The nail polishes- they used Essie, they were all new and had the new 2011 Spring colours, I hate it when the nail polish is obviously years old and rubbish quality

The efficiently and quality of the manicure/pedicure- I had two lovely ladies doing my trotters and fingers at once- both were equally careful, using good quality moisturisers, they exfoliated my legs, gave me a hand and foot massage, and took great care in the painting- 5 days on and no chips at all on the hands which I think is impressive!

They are not very cheap- but worth the money if you don’t have an amazing mylodeals voucher- a manicure and pedicure is £50, they also have some quite snazzy treatments such as slimming, seaweed body wraps and Karin Herzog oxygen facials.

Bananas for the Banana Leaf, Battersea

I'll admit it straight up. This restaurant is not new to me. I doubt this review will be impartial. This really is one of my favourite places to eat. It's basically a much more authentic version of Wagamama's, but works along a similar model, and the fact that there's a queue outside every night of the week is testament to the quality of the food. The Banana Leaf has been on Battersea Rise for quite a few years, and has gone from strength to strength: apparently they've now also opened several new outlets across London.

So back to the one on Battersea Rise. This was the location of a long-awaited reunion with a friend from Uni, who has been working in Balham but lives miles away in North London. Clapham Junction seemed like a great intermediate place for us each to get to from work, and I jumped at the chance to go back to the Banana Leaf.

Luckily, we'd arranged to meet fairly early, at 7 o'clock, and managed to beat the hordes. But the queue did build up pretty quickly afterwards, and this was around 7.15 on a Tuesday evening. As I mentioned, the model is fairly similar to Wagamama's. They serve a variety of Asian food (the menu is actually really quite big, and you can have most styles of main with at least 5 kinds of meat) and diners sit along big, communal benches.

As always, I opted for the Banana Leaf Platter. This is a really good value-for-money option which lets you add rice, an asian side salad, corn cakes, and spicy prawn crackers to selected mains (and there are about 20 applicable options) for just £2.95 extra. I had chicken with thai basil and chilli jam whilst my friend opted for Thai green curry. We started with some spicy prawn crackers and satay sauce, but I have sampled some of the other starters on previous occasions and they are all delicious, and surprisingly imaginative considering the expectations one has of a 'canteen' restaurant.

The grub is plentiful and delicious. The kind that leaves you really upset to be so stuffed. The service was really prompt (although I hear reports that it can be a little too prompt - especially with the billing) and all in all there's a really buzzy atmosphere. You wouldn't go here for a romantic dinner, but the food is great, and it's the perfect place for a week night catch up with a friend. Just remember to get here early!

The Hurlingham Pub and Kitchen - a solid Saturday afternoon choice, but not for romance

The Hurlingham is one of our local pubs, a mere 5 minute stroll from the flat, and yet for some reason it's somewhere we never go. I think having another pub just 5 doors down from the flat doesn't help but I've always been intrigued by the Hurlingham because it offers a different great deal each week night, from quiz nights with discounted beers, to half price wine night to half price burger night (the Hurlingham Burger has got quite the reputation in Fulham!)

The other reason I'll always have a bit of a soft spot for the Hurlingham Pub and Kitchen is that it was the scene of my first date with the boy, so it only seemed fitting that when he was down from the frozen North we return to the place where it all began for some half price burger action.

The Hurlingham is a fairly mainstream pub, but with some really cool, quirky little touches. Think models dressed as divers hanging off the wall, really random artifacts dotted around the bar and fun little vintage posters hung up around the place. All mixed with the standard big screens showing Sky Sports, a fairly typical dining area and a really cute little garden area at the back. Helpfully, a lot of this little area is covered and there's one lovely little nook where you almost feel as if you're in your own little pagoda.... almost!

Anyway this being January, there was no way in hell we were going to eat outside, constantly interrupted by the fairly constant stream of girls heading out for a gossip and a fag. In a fit of organisation (not so random, I'm a compulsive planner) I'd gone in a few days earlier to reserve a table by the fire. And unfortunately, this was the first instance on which the pub fell down. We walked into the pub bang on the dot of 8:30 only to find that some of the other guests had patently ignored the 'reserved' sign and occupied our table. The sign was still there for all to see, but the pub had taken and delivered their order without thinking to ask them to move. By 8:30 the pub was pretty full (burger night always gets big groups of rugby lads in) and so the only table left was one of those horrid high surfaces with bar stools, clearly designed for watching sport, downing some beers and generally anything but dining.

Determined to enjoy our evening, we sat down and got the drinks in. Given this was a Tuesday, it had to be the burger, right?! The whole evening had been dedicated to it. So we were pretty disappointed that on Burger night of all nights, the pub informed us that they couldn't provide us with those home-cut chips I'd been looking forward to all day. The waitress was very sweet and apologetic, and we were offered either mashed potato or extra salad as an alternative, but it was a disappointment none the less.

I personally enjoyed my burger, there was just the right amount of bacon and cheese on top, but the boy is a bit more fussy than I am and was disappointed to receive a well-done burger having requested his meat medium-rare.

All in all we had a pleasant evening, nothing more really. The staff at the Hurlingham are great, but there were a few disappointments on the night itself. This is a real shame, as it's a great place to get the beers in and watch the sport, and always seems to do a roaring food trade on Sunday. Yet, I don't think I'd go back to dine again. The local competition (the Sands End and The Ship) is just a cut above, although also charge much dearer prices.

I'm a total coupon maven. My not-so-secret guilty secret is that every day my inbox is flooded with a selection of offers from Groupon, Living Social, thedailychic.... pretty much every coupon site out there. Each morning starts with a battle of the wills between my greedy sleep-addled brain and the debit card that is currently burning a hole inside my wallet. My eyes pop at the prospect of getting 60% off that full body, deep-tissue, antioxidising massage that I definitely do not need, my trigger happy fingers hop, skip and jump through PayPal and before I know it I have a stack of voucher codes I'll never get round to using.
So after wasting hours of my life (and getting a few angry looks from my boss) perusing thousands of vouchers entitling me to everything from a £10 manicure in Croyden, to a £100 IPL course in Fulham Broadway (more on that later) I began to wish I could aggregate deals on an even-more specific basis that just 'London'.

Tra-laaaa! Introducing my new all-time favourite deals website! MyLoDeals susses you out deals practically by postcode. So now, much to my joy (and my boss's relief), I'm presented daily with three deals right on my doorstep. For instance, today my humble co-author bought two out of three deals (a £40 spa package including manicure, pedicure, facial and massage from Svetlana, and a £23 cut and blowdry from Copper) and we've worked out that she could walk to each from home within 10 minutes! There's no way you'd waste coupons that easy to redeem.

It's also incredibly useful when you've dedicated your spare time to exploring and reviewing pretty much all your girly local services (a tough job we know, but somebody's got to try out all those massage and nail bars....) to get a healthy chunk of your bills!

We'll let you know how all those haircuts, manicures and waxes work out for us!

Joe's Brunch Brasserie

I have been here a few times, usually with the same girl...there is a reason for this.

The first time we went in the Summer of 2010, we were sitting outside, sipping house white wine spritzers and the waiter came to take our order. My friend visibly melted. The waiter is an aspiring actor bad boy type and has bulging muscles and...... is also Irish, cue swoon. So we finish our salads, she barely eats hers (mine was average and quite overpriced) and goes inside to the loo about 10 times to get a glimpse of him. We are ready to leave and still no joy, this is where I get roped into traipsing inside with her number on a piece of paper asking him to call her....he looks totally unfazed as I expect this happens a lot to him.

Anyway he did call, they did meet up, and we still go there for overpriced Saturday lunch when we feel like some people watching on Wandsworth Bridge Road, and Irish aspiring actor flirting. The food is mediocre, but in the Summer there is always a fun and buzzy atmosphere, much less so in the Winter sadly.

Joe's Brasserie

130 WANDSWORTH BRIDGE ROAD
FULHAM
LONDON SW6 2UL 

Duke on the Green - Low key Friday night drinks

This pub gets quite a bad rep, mainly for its location. I semi like it, it’s walking distance so I end up there more than I would ideally like.

The wine is nice, the gin and tonics are also nice....overall the pub is quite....nice. There is no tangible character or unique selling point, the crowd is varied, we always hope to meet some nice looking men, and never do. There are usually some drunk guys outside in the smoking area, the bar staff are very friendly (one was a little too friendly with my sister, I think he was the manager). It is always busy with people drinking red wine and playing board games....but overall it is underwhelming, however, it does boast a prime location. I will go and try the food and come back to you.

Duke on the Green

235 New King's Road
Fulham
London
SW6 4XG

Nails fit for a Princess

my friend enjoying her pedi

Ok so a little background- I am quite obsessed with nails, hands and feet. I have had several pedicures in the South West area and try to treat myself once a month, however, it is so expensive. I also own an array of nail polishes and shamefully get excited when Chanel release a new limited edition colour.

My pedi habit was revolutionised when I found Princess Nails near Fulham Broadway. It’s cheap, it’s thorough, it’s quick and makes for a perfect Saturday afternoon activity with a friend. The chair/bed things you sit in give you a nice massage, they have Radio 1 blaring so you can bob along to the latest hits and a selection of, albeit out of date, trashy magazines. They also do beauty treatments; the pretty dark haired polish girl that does the eyebrow tinting is also very good.

Prices- start from about £15 for a pedicure, £6 for eyebrow tint

Princess Nails

131 Walham Green Court, Fulham
London, SW6 2DG

Date with the Ex Boyfriend- The Ship, Wandsworth on a Tuesday night.

The reason I state the day is because this pub has many personas, depending on the day and time. I will do a separate review for a Sunday night as it is a completely different experience.

Dinner: We ate- Steak for me (£20), burger for him (£15ish)

Drank: Yummy Sauvignon Blanc for me (3 x large glasses, not sensible but I had had a long day at work), corona beer for him

The food was good, it is expensive for pub grub, but the meat was good quality, cooked to request and served with a good portion of salad, tomatoes, mushrooms and chips- Very filling. The Ex said his burger was good, although not one of the best he has had apparently.

The restaurant room at the back of the pub is quiet and intimate (there is a massive roaring fire in the middle of the room so take layers and pre book a table not next to the fire to avoid a sweaty betty situation).

It is a good pub for a first date as is not too busy and has cosy corners for privacy, but then after dinner you can move into the main bar area for more of a buzz. The crowd was a bit random and eclectic which made a refreshing change from the horary henries....I would go again, but after pay day.

The Ship
41 Jews Row, Wandsworth
London. SW18 1TB

T: 020 8870 9667
E: ship@youngs.co.uk

Girls' Dinner @ Del'Aziz Fulham Broadway

My friend chose this location for a school girlfriend reunion because she once went there on a date and was impressed with the belly dancer. 

We were 6 girls who were best friends at school and now spread across the globe (Italy, Berlin, various travels along the way) so rarely get together as a group. One common factor still remains 7 years on, a love of white wine and so we were set for some Moroccan food, belly dancing and good times.

Decor: Semi-Authentic

Service: A bit computer says no (we ordered the set menu and when we couldn’t face pudding we asked to have a drink instead- at which point we faced a true Little Britain response).

Food: Filling, fun, flavoursome - we each had a variety of options from the set menu (quite reasonable at 3 courses for £19.50). Big portions so bring your appetite and some Extra gum as it is quite garlicky.

Overall Impression: Perfect for this type of event - the relaxed atmosphere lends itself perfectly to a group - we were noisy, up and down from the table for fag breaks, taking pictures, telling rude stories, none of which seemed to faze any of the staff or other diners.

They belly dancer wasn't there- this was disappointing.