Introducing We Love Food Junior | Restaurants, food & gadgets – tried, tested & rated by the next generation

October 1, 2017 by We Love Food Junior

Hello and welcome to our first We Love Food Junior post! We are a brother and sister duo, Oliver and Charlotte.

We Love Food Jnr | We Love Food Junior | We Love Food, It's All New Eat

It’s all about the filter!

So why junior? Charlotte and I (she says hi too) have been so lucky thanks to our Dad and Saff’s food blog (We Love Food). We’ve eaten at some fantastic restaurants, been to some really exciting holiday destinations and invited to an array of amazing parties, or ‘events’ as Dad calls them!

The idea for We Love Food Junior started when we popped into a pub to kill some time before visiting a friend of ours in hospital. The food on the chalkboard looked OK but Charlotte, the world’s fussiest eater, didn’t want any of it. There were the usual burger and chips, sausage and chips and nuggets and chips. Charlotte asked the question, ‘Why are the grown up meals so fancy and the kids ones so boring?’

For once Dad was stumped. He usually has an answer for everything. So we started chatting about starting We Love Food Junior – not just to find decent kids meals for Charlotte, but interesting food for me too. I’m much more adventurous with my food. For example, at Meatopia a few weeks ago, I tried the ‘Cheek, blood, squid and skin’ from Gill Meller of River Cottage and I loved it.

Charlotte became really enthusiastic about this new project, later she even made a We Love Food Junior Powerpoint presentation to highlight the benefits to us all. She led the way with the sales pitch to Dad, with ideas like: ‘let’s get crazy food from different countries like China and Wales’, which was later followed up by, ‘we can test kids kitchen gadgets, to see how easy they break?’ [Er no Charlotte! – Dad]. This theme continued with: ‘we can eat disgusting stuff like on ‘I’m a Celebrity’, and film us being sick!’ [Again no! – Dad].

Filming our reviews is something that Charlotte and I really want to try. I’ve been nagging my Dad to launch a YouTube channel for years but he always says that he’s got a face for radio (he thinks he’s funny). So we are going to give it a go ourselves, Charlotte in front of the camera and me doing the editing and the uploading.

We hope you’ll enjoy future posts to come, where we go around reviewing restaurants to find the best food for kids, whatever your preferred taste. We aim to make these posts as useful as possible.

So you know some more about us, here’s a little Q&A that my Dad asked us.

: Pizza on a bus!

: Four kids

: With the family!

The adventurous one…

Name: Oliver
Age: 15 (nearly 16)
Favourite restaurant: ‘Dishoom every time! Dad and Saff took us there once when they first launched their breakfast naan and I’ve been a massive fan ever since.’
Most requested home cooked meal?: ‘My Nan’s toad in the hole, sometimes only traditional British cooking will do.’
Guilty pleasure: ‘Eating Biscoff crunchy spread straight out of the jar. Just don’t tell Saff!’
Best meal/dish that you’ve made: ‘My ultimate Beef Wellington using fillet steak and some fancy pâté that was in Dad’s fridge. [You say ultimate, I say expensive! And that pâté was my special duck and pistachio pâté from Ginger Pig – Dad].
Favourite Chef: ‘Ben Ebbrell from Sorted Food. He’s a little nerdy but I love the way he keeps the other Sorted Food boys in check.’

Favourite YouTuber(s): ‘h3h3 productions and jacksfilms both are really funny and really well made.’
Ideal dinner guest: ‘Benedict Cumberbatch – I loved him in Sherlock and Marvel’s Dr Strange. Or Miranda Hart just to see if she’s as annoying as her TV character. [I’m with you there, son! – Dad].

: Stop wine-ing

: Special onion cutting glasses!

: I didn’t realise bread was so funny

The fussy one…

Name: Charlotte
Age: 13½
Favourite restaurant: ‘The Table Cafe. I love their breakfast waffles. Also the mini chicken cha han (without the amai sauce) from the kids menu at Wagamama or and their chill squid.’
Most requested home cooked meal?: ‘I could eat Saff’s ‘Nigella’ every day, all day. Once I had it for breakfast, lunch and dinner’.
Guilty pleasure: ‘Sleeping in and watching Youtube (Not at the same time)’.
Best meal/dish that you’ve made: ‘I’ve made crispy cream choux buns using Sorted Food’s recipe a few times and they are so tasty.
Favourite Chef: ‘Has to be Gordon Ramsay, the way he shouts at everyone is so funny.
Favourite YouTuber: ‘Joe Weller, as soon as I watched his Kitty video a few years ago I was hooked and he’s soooo handsome and was even lucky enough to meet him the other week! [Enough of the handsome! – Dad].
Ideal dinner guest: Joe Weller (again?) and Leondre Devries because one would make me laugh and one would sing. They are both so talented and handsome. [I said enough of the handsome! – Dad].
[OK then dad I was just being polite, I would have used ‘fit’! – Charlotte].