It's often hard to avoid the glamor of the many award shows taking place annually throughout London - but there was one show at the top of FDL's diary.
The S.Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants awards in London was a glitzy affair and FDL were there to witness it all - bringing a live stream video to thousands of people around the world. All of this was reported live as FDL blogged from the event, so for a full list of winners or facts and figures about the awards click here.
In 2011 London was home to literally thousands of traditional and innovative, one off dining experiences.
We visited the National History Museum for an interesting night discussing the future of food and met with Daniel Creedon, head chef at The Archipelago restaurant, known for serving exotic delights such as locust.
We were served an insect tasting menu coupled with talks from Stuart Hine, an entomologist at the museum.
We travelled also to Canary Wharf to eat with the chef collective, The Young Turks. They were hosting a pop-up restaurant in a high rise building that would soon be demolished to make way for the 2012 Olympic games - an exciting evening and event.
When Ferran Adrià's elBulli restaurant closed in July it was a sad day shared by many in the industry. One of the most creative restaurant teams had served their last meal and this left somewhat of a void. So when FDL got wind that an elBulli menu, prepared by Paco Roncero, would be served atElton John's annual charity ball, we had to be there. From liquid nitrogen experiments to spherification olives and elBulli themed cocktails - we got it all.
Hitting the winter, colder months we started to feel a little blue and went in search of a cure for melancholy. This led us to the Recipes and Remediesevent at the Welcome Collective - an evening designed to examine 16th century remedies and present them with a modern twist. We were served a whole array of dishes, created by the food designers Blanch and Shock, each one to ward off different ailments.
We also examined how the British attitude towards high end food has changed over the past decade as we visited the Taste of London festival and received some interesting observations from the restaurant critic, Jay Raynor. We then headed to Taste of Christmas to ask Jamie Oliver and other chefs to give us their tips for the perfect Christmas dinner. We received some great ideas for turkey, goose and even some advice on how to make Brussel sprouts taste amazing.
And how could we visit the big smoke without sampling the traditional English custom of fish and chips - gourmet of course....
