People: Bearded lady

Spotted at Dalston Kingsland train station. She sat on the wall, put on a beard, took out her mobile phone, held out her arm in front of herself, and took a picture. Then she disappeared in a puff of pink smoke to the music from the Twilight Zone.

Lounge Bohemia: Great, but lose the Wallpaper*

In this city, the quest for the new and exciting drinking experience never has to end. For when one amazing bar closes, another opens.

Ok so Lounge Bohemia's been there a year already but it takes time to get to know about tiny concrete bunkers like this. I'd seen it mentioned before, but we finally decided we had to go after meeting the owner (I think?) at the History of Food event (that I'll eventually get round to writing something about).

 

My 'Tree Sap' came glued to a small tree stump which was interesting - and heavy. I liked it but Michael thought it was incredibly sweet. He just wanted to show off I think because he's gone a whole week without having sugar in his coffee. To prove that he no longer needs sugar, he had the Beet Punch, which, rather than an injury proffered by a root vegetable, was a really quite delicious concoction of beetroot and, can't remember, some other stuff. A friend said it tasted like something you drink at the gym. Not sure what kind of gyms he goes to.

Some really lovely touches in there. Loved the menus inside the old books, the giant plastic water jugs on all the tables, the 40s/50s style waitresses, toilets hidden inside the walls, bar staff that aren't afraid to take the piss out of you. Oh and not forgetting the little canapes you get on arrival. Minimalist to say the least but really tasty and free (our friends paid for theirs and were a bit upset to have paid £3.95 for what were more make fun of your bouches than amuse bouches). Still quality produce though. 

In one dangerous moment the sight of a magazine rack holding nothing but Monocle and Wallpaper magazines made me cringe and threatened to burst my Bohemian bubble. It was just so at odds with the name. Completely ruined my image of Karl Marx sitting in the curvy concrete cave-like corner penning a thought-bending, movement-launching paper. The rest of the furniture (bar that curvy hanging metal light that surely must die out some day) I would quite happily have in my house. If I had a house.

Magazines aside, a fantastic find, def going back (when I've eaten at Pizza East first). After spending two and a half hours nursing one cocktail, I feel I owe them a return visit.

Signs: Hair today...

Seen on a hairdresser's in Islington. If they're as unskilled with their scissors as they are with their pen, stay far, far away.

Cafe no Mi

This is such a cute little place, and even though it's at the over-populated top end of Baker Street it feels a little undiscovered. It seems to have completely escaped the internet too, even google maps street view. (Hold on, seems like it used to be called Japanese Deli, here it is.) 'Home cooked Japanese food' it says, and it really feels like it. Having spent time in Japan I can attest that this really does feel like someone's asked you over to their house for tea. 

I've had the tofu burger, and today the tempura. Ok so it was soggy but it's not a deep fat fryer type place and was still tasty.

£5.50 for a bento with rice and two salads. 50p extra for brown rice. And they have onigiri like you'd find in a Japanese school kid's lunchbox. Far better than the plastic wrapped Samurai sushi ones (although I have to say I have a bit of a thing for them). It's hitting the edges of the prices you want to pay for this food but worth it for the freshness and authenticity. And it's good to support small quality places like this who can't afford to cut prices like the big chains can.

Update 18th August: Passed by it yesterday and it is being cruelly ripped apart by builders. Yet another one bites the dust. Shame.

Food: Truffle chippings on pasta logs

Oh dear. £19.50 this thing cost. After looking up loads of truffle recipes, I settled on the simple approach. Pasta, oil, truffle shavings, fork. 

Michael firstly laughed when I showed him the small hard knotted black lump (you spent 19.50 on a lump of wood??). Then we took a bite of my creation and looked at each other (while Michael gauged how precious I was about this dish) and both burst out laughing. Mmmm, it's like wood chippings, Michael said. It was true, I couldn't taste a thing. I tried so hard. I pressed it against the roof of my mouth, chewed it twice as long, added salt, pepper, but still nothing. Just a slight mouldy tinge from the hard outside bark bits. How I do love a bit of fungus on my fungus.

The inside looked pretty though.

I think I might try heating up the rest of it, see if that makes a difference. Boo to stupidly expensive but completely tasteless food products that the world says you have to love.

Primrose Hill: picnic in paradise

Hard to believe looking outside at the dark hanging rain clouds that a couple of weeks ago, Primrose Hill looked like this:

A perfect place for a sunny Friday evening. Perfect therapy for a week spent nervously at a desk. Michael was late, so was forced to lie still, for a blissful hour, in the sunshine. Oh the hardships of life. In my hallucinogenically relaxed state, I spotted many interesting things in the sky. This little baby chick for example...

Wishing to cheer up a harrassed, London-weary Michael, I procured some of the finest picnic goods I could find (on my walk from Marylebone to Primrose Hill, through Regent's Park. Had spotted this incredible sushi place earlier in the day, behind Baker St station, so went back for the most giant box I could find. Haru it's called, and it's so secret that there's only one mention of it on the entire internet. I have to say, one of the finest boxes of sushi I've had in London. Fresh, sharp, delicious. And not too expensive either. I categorically decided there and then never to lay my hands on a tray of sad pink sponges sitting on rice rocks from Tesco et al ever again.

Plus of course the compulsory MandS not just any picnic fare - settled on greek meze, veg, strawberries and blueberries. Drink was Breton cider found in a Nicolas shop after refusing to buy Magners in Tesco (anyone Irish will tell you the same - it's Bulmers, you're supposed to drink it out of a 2 litre bottle on a roadside when you're 15).

  
Sigh, looking at it now I can still smell the grass and taste the sashimi as I sit at my sad plywood desk.

Food: Open up to sesame

My first foray into the dark and murky world of tahini. Well worth it. Even if I did discover to my discomfort that neat tahini sucks all the liquid out of your mouth. 

Here was I thinking it was just 'the extra ingredient in houmous that you can never actually be bothered to go and find'. But no. It has multiple uses apparently. So Ottolenghi says in his deep fried cauliflower recipe in the Saturday Guardian. Ok, that sounds like a pain in the a^*se to make. Let's give it a go.

Firstly, need tahini. This is easy to get when you live out East or probably anywhere in London to be fair. However, I could only get the Greek version, which Lord Ottolenghi of the Giant Meringues declares inferior to the Middle Eastern one. Feck it, I bought the Greek one. But then I got creeping doubts... what if, what if this little improvisation ruined the delicate balance of flavours. And it would all be down to my own laziness. Goddamit. So had to go and find middle eastern version.

Also had to somehow locate the impossible sounding pomegranate molasses. Yeah, sure, between the cornflakes and the salad cream in aisle 6. I sometimes think that Ottolenghi adds untraceable ingredients so that most people can never quite make anything to the standard that he does. Maybe he makes them up. Waitrose looked at me like I was a crazed woman and humoured me (because they're so nice) by calling the store manager. More confused looks and points to the kosher shelf (ooh, beetroot horseradish, bought it). Then I go further down Edgware road and find an amazing Lebanese shop with three types of the stuff. Green Valley it's called. Although I did once buy a bag of flowery leafy fancy tea that had crawlies in it from there, I am growing more in love with this shop.

The hardest part was finding all the stuff. After that it was a pleasure to mix it all together in a gloopy mess and dollop it over some fried cauliflower. I thought it was me who had discovered the secret delight that is fried cauliflower, fried so long it turns brown and almost crispy and takes on a new amazing flavour. But it seems the middle easterns got there first. 

So yeah, tahini, interesting new taste. Especially when combined with an impromptu (but bloody delicious) cocktail that Michael spontaneously invented, inspired by our Courvoiser History of Food outing the other night - brandy, cassis, orange juice and Galliano.  

Only trouble is that I'm now left with two jars of of the runny brown stuff and a boyfriend who, after loving it the first night, has now told me he doesn't actually like it much.

March of the penguins

Arrived at Highbury and Islington (Can we shorten this mouthful please? Hislington? Hilton?) yesterday morning to find the Victoria line had been stopped. A highly empathetic tfl guy stood at the top of the escalators, blocking entry and shouting "If you're going north, go to bus stop X, if you're going south, go to bus  stop (just wrote pus stop, good name for acne cream) Y. I will not be answering individual questions."

Which is when of course all thoughts turn to terrorist threats, and feet turn smartly out of the station.

So I headed off down Upper Street with the rest of the suited booted frowny crowd. The queue at the bus stop looked like about five busloads worth so I thought a morning stroll would be a better idea. Amazing that my one stop, four minute train journey from H&I to King's Cross took 35 mins to walk.

Excitingly though, I passed this this little old italian shop, Olga Stores, with a handwritten sign outside ‘black summer truffles’. Thought I’d see how much they were. She said 15-20 quid each. I said, ha, you must be having a laugh. Then she said, well let’s see how much they are and weighed a couple and the lowest one was 16.50, next up was 19.50. And I thought to myself, ha, you must be having a laugh. But what I found said was, yes please I’ll take the big one.

Well you only live once. And it would be a terrible shame to never have eaten a truffle. Carried it to work in its little plastic bag, and realised it looked like I’d picked up someone else’s dog’s, em, doings. A friend of mine said I have to keep it covered up or I'll have all the town's pigs after me.

Now just need to figure out what to do with it.

Food: Cod centrale

 

Ever since I worked at a fairly fancy restaurant (Oxfords, Southampton) I have been a bit obsessed with the central symmetric stacking plate technique. It may be a little bit noughties (2000s? Turn of the millennium?) but I still like it. Was quite proud of this one. Maybe a little pallid, and maybe the tomatoes could have been a bit more dainty, but tasty all the same.

Grilled cod topped with fried spring onions (latest discovery, less breath stinking, crispy, mmm) and mint, sitting on couscous (shaped a la inside of small bowl) with yoghurt, mint, cucumber, tomato, salt and cayenne pepper.

Sauce that tomatoes are sitting on was leftover Ottolenghi tahini sauce we had on fried cauliflower the night before.

Looked nice from above:

I have really got to stop photographing my dinner.

People: Going underground

 

This morning all the pinstripes on the tube made me think of prison bars.

Literary Death Match: Word up

I love love love these events. This was the second Literary Death Match I'd been to, but still amazing. Bit of a shame that it moved to the more pretentious (and pricy) Concrete (in the Tea Building) from the Book Club. It felt less illicit in the carefully coiffed industrial surroundings. But oh well, still a nice venue, and actually this time we had a comfy picnic table rather than a square foot of floor.

Because we got there so early we were lucky enough to have a quick chat with Todd Zuniga, the brains and mouth behind the operation, and editor of Opium Magazine - and general fast-talking, are you on speed or something? entrepreneurial genius. Amazing to meet someone so passionate and excited and energetic - and also so completely genuine and disarming. Clearly destined for great things. Turns out from reading an old interview that he's never done any illegal drugs, but talking to him you are convinced that no one could keep up that level of energy for so long with out some sort of white powder. Hm, sugar maybe... He came over to us first actually, to find out if we'd been to one before and what we thought of it. Clever. On the spot market research. While you're talking to him, his eyes involuntarily dart around the room, I guess looking for the next conversation, and yet he's still totally interested in what you're saying, and fires questions at you before you can deflect them his way. We did find out he lives in Paris though. And that he gets his hair cut in San Francisco.

But yes! Simon from Trevor and Simon was one of the judges! From Saturday Live! Swing your Pants! So cool to see him, and jump back into my 5-year old self. I was a bit sad it wasn't the more handsome Trevor but Simon turned out to be absolutely hilarious, as another judge (Sun journalist, boooo) said, "outfunnying" them all the way. After the first girl read a piece about losing her virginity at 27, he said it reminded him of himself, and that, after he lost it in his early 20s, he got it back again until his late 20s. Very quick, very funny. His yellowing teeth and perma-bottle of beer did say that perhaps he doesn't hasn't been sticking purely to children's activities over the years. How hard it must have been for him to be taken seriously after spending so many years as half of an idiot duo. Time for a comeback methinks.

Todd Zuniga as always was an amazing host. He has this incredible ability to make it all look shambolic, while miraculously keeping things running smoothly. And he keeps it entertaining, rescuing any filling any silent holes with a ridiculous aside.

And the literature? 80s themed. Seven minutes long. Sex (lack of), music and ping pong. Not exactly Dostoevsky, but fun all the same. Usually seems to be more of test of comedic strength than anything. At the last one I went to, a girl recited serious poetry she didn't write, in the style of the shipping forecast, and the tumbleweed was tangible. I loved Clare Pollard's poetry. Not usually my thing but she was mightily impressive. Really gets under the skin of people's inner thoughts, in a wonderfully clever wordy way. Also brilliant was the guy relating tales writing hip hop lyrics as a young Bangladeshi Londoner. Hilarious. Don't know why he lost in the first round against a guy who spent seven minutes describing the workings of computer ping-pong, but anyhow. 

Doesn't matter though because there are no winners or losers. The guy who won (Mr Ping Pong) did so because his side of the room was able to name more 80s tunes than the other side. Left happy and inspired, leaving the 80s disco for the young ones. Can't wait for the next one.

Signs: What does it all mean?

Seen on Columbia Road, politely stuck high above a road sign. Couldn't figure out what it was supposed to mean. Either:

a) A type of person that is widely disliked by Hackney people because of its tendency to drive up house prices

b) A profound hatred of places that teach art

Most of all I couldn't figure out why someone went to the trouble of printing stickers to speak this message.

It could (quite possibly) be that I'm way out of the loop about the latest social movements in London.

People: Weedy in tweed

Saw this guy in Highbury Islington tube a couple of weeks ago and had to take a pic. He also had a rather fetching moustache.

Then someone told me that there was a tweed bike ride through London lately so guessing that was the reason for the pipe smoking clay pigeon shooting get up. Hoping that was the reason for it anyway.

Blurriness of pics = keenness not to be caught stalking.

Food: Summer veggie orgy

A happiness inducing feast of summery goodness.

• Mashed carrot with roast, ground coriander and cumin seeds, yoghurt, orange and lemon juice (and zest) and fresh coriander.
• Broad beans with fried onion and chips off a block of parma ham.
• New potatoes with mint and teeny chopped purpley spring onions (and ill-advised anchovies).
• Roasted chicken quarters marinated in yoghurt and loads of other stuff I can't remember. 

Most of it happy produce from the cute little famer's market that just arrived in the primary school near Broadway Market (so new I can't find it anywhere on the internet). Sunday 10-2 I think. Aha, found it.

Yum.

Signs: You can't, you can't, you can't (spell)

Such a shame that some people will persist in making Irish people look stupid.
Seen outside the Cock Tavern on Mare St.
 

Seven Sins: Shoreditch Church

Ok, so: a woman in a leotard, brandishes a whip and strides around the altar in stilettos. Her whipees, four girls in gold hotpants (are they in or something? that's the second post that's featured them) and lion masks, dance jerkily as Florence and the Machine blares from the speakers. A bearded lady in red tailcoat with much boobery spilling out of a black corset looks on from the front pew. A man in bowler hat with white face and painted black rings around his eyes looks on morosely from the back pew. This is odd. Exceedingly odd. 

This take on the seven deadly sins in Shoreditch Church doesn't exactly add anything new or thought provoking, but it has plenty of fairy lights, a huge amount of bizarrity and only a small pinch of discomfort. Actually I was expecting more of that. Especially as it began with said bowler-hatted ghoul stealing my handbag. I sat in my pew and felt many pairs of eyes looking at me. Then I saw him holding my bag aloft, yawning open, contents (oh good jesus, what's in there???) threatening to fall onto the cold stone floor. I had to chase him out of the church to get it back. When got back to my seat, a smug middle-aged woman sitting beside me on her own turned to me and said smugly, "well it is participatory you know," as if I was supposed to just laugh knowingly and let him walk off with my bag for the sake of art.

So basically we were led around the church to watch each sin being performed in ever more imaginative ways. A world of sex, drugs and... well, dance music mostly. Four of them were in sideshow tents and the rest played out on the main stage. My catholic guilt (the eight sin?) was horrified at a woman in fishnets writhing around four men playing cards on a table where the altar should be. But my enlightened modern woman self felt the religious setting was perfect. Actually I think they could have made it more excrutiating than it was. One person was subjected to being lipsticked and some were dragged up to dance with afrobots (in the picture above), but nothing too far from the comfort zone. And I'd imagine we were all warmed up to it by the very fact that we were there in the first place. I think it's finished now, but if it comes back again, definitely worth a look.

Posted exhibition: A fitting send off

More art! An opening of the exhibition Keep me posted in Wilton Way. Loads of people plus tiny old post office not such a good combination - free fancy eastern european beer and sparkly fizz a smashing one. Billed as having Tracy Emin and... who cares? Who ever gets past the words Tracy and Emin? A little bit sneaky though as they were selling stationery she had designed. Art tip: when you're a nobody having an exhibition, sell Tracy Emin books and you can then put her name on your flyer and thusly guarantee a full house.

London Fields: How I love thee

A really rubbish poem that doesn't really rhyme...

To London Fields,

You are my favourite green space

Of the week

The leafy city refuge

That I seek

When I've spent the day

At my desk

And need to look at a tree

And reflect

When I've eaten too much

In my house

And need to get out and

Sweat it out

When I've drunk too much

On Friday

And need to breathe fresh air

On Saturday

When the sun's beating down

And it's hot

And I can't stand being stuck

In my flat

When we're having one of those

Sunny weekends

And I need a barbecue and ciders

With friends

When my head's in a state of chaos 

Complete

And I need to be somewhere 

That's not a street

When I want to see a new old movie

From the Film Shop

And fancy a little stroll

On the way

You are there.

But please don't have any more shootings.

With much love.