People: Lone London rangers

Saw both men in the same day. Felt poignant but not entirely sure why.

 

Wilton Way Coffee Shop: Caffeine, cake and cosiness

Can there be anything better than this sight...

accompanied by this...

together with a lazy Sunday afternoon?

Wilton Way coffee shop near London Fields is a gorgeous thing. (Are all good things in London called Wilton's?) It manages to get everything right. Woody but not too woody, cool but not to cool, busy but usually not too full. The coffee is fantastic too. It's owned by the Climpson's people I think, but the quality of the coffee seems to be better in Wilton's. I only live a few streets away but I actually want to move to nearer this place because it adds such a nice neighbourhood feel to the area. Then there's the wacky second hand shop next door that's always good for a browse (although I never quite want to buy anything - except the old photo albums, but can't quite justify £20 a go).

Even though I don't go very often it's just nice knowing it's there. A little pricey but worth it to feel completely at home, in the company of good coffee and food.

Aubin & Wills Cinema: Pull up a foot rest and enjoy the show

Cinema doesn't get more comfy than this.

In the usual weekly bid to escape the dreaded Sunday feeling, we took ourselves off to the new Aubin and Wills cinema in Redchurch Street to see The Illusionist. It's along the lines of the Electric Cinema in Portobello, but less of the leather and more of the living room. Comfy couches, cushions, foot rests, even blankets for the knees. Nice. I can personally recommend seat A5, front row, dead centre. Basically, you're in the movie yourself. And of course, as in every good living room, there are wine coolers beside every chair.

Which of course makes you buy a bottle of wine. Rose in our case (rosay, not sure how to make an accent). The toilets are like something out of a horror movie, but apart from that, Aubin and Wills is now firmly added to our cinemas of choice list. Along with the Rio, the Electric and that amazing massive cinema in Chelsea that I think is a Curzon. Oh and that Cineroleum thing that I need to go to while it's there.

Yes and the film was great too. An artpiece more than anything, so beautiful. And sad. But mainly beautiful.

Megafaun: Megamusicians, megabeardy, megabrilliant

A.ma.zing. I've been having long, serious conversations with myself to find out if this really is the case, or if it was the two and a half pints of coke I'd drunk, but I am thinking that this may well have been the best gig I have ever been to. One of those nights where you wonder how you can possibly walk into an air-conditioned lobby the next morning, and let the lift doors close behind you. There's a life out there to be lived, hands to be clapped, feet to be stomped.

Such are the cruel temptations of live music.

My own incredible profundity aside, however, Megafaun are truly one of the best bands you could hope to see live. Dry the River supported and I had actually quite liked these young spindly minstrels (the singer had a strong voice, was suitably riddled with nervous ticks and, though a few parent/forest/bible references too many, his lyrics were lovely and clever). But when the musical equivalent of the Marx Brothers came on, the anguished singer/songwriter act suddenly looked really quite silly. These guys had no time for maudlin. They stood there like they had just walked into your bedroom and wanted to get you out of bed with a tune. Didn't care what you thought, just gave you their hearts on a plate and let you make what you will of it. Made me crave America, where men are men and you are who you are and if you want to sit and tell a stranger on the train about your divorce and your hernia operation, then you do, and that's that.

They started with some kind of weird but mind-blowing prog-folk thing, long, with gratuitous one-note guitar solos. Sounds odd but really worked, started slow then built and built until suddenly you found your heart had stopped. Up to this point you think they're an intense bunch of musos who take their art very seriously indeed. Until they open their mouths. (And the great thing is they're all as vocal as one another.) They chatted about shoes, hats, the Slaughtered Lamb occult light... actually I can't remember what else but I remember laughing a lot. None of them seemed to have any ego at all, just a willingness to have a laugh and play some tunes.

They finished by unplugging their instruments and huddling at the front singing gospel songs, so that no matter where you were in the room you felt like you were round the campfire with a few mates. At one point I thought we might never leave the room again because none of us would let them stop playing. Me and Michael went up to them like schoolchildren afterwards telling them how much we loved them, we couldn't help ourselves. Phil Cook the banjo player said with a massive grin on his face, "we're just friends having fun", and actually you'd believe him.

Food: Pasta with various green things

Don't be fooled, this is not the scrapings of an overgrown garden, nor the inner workings of my brain (though a close likeness) but my latest attempt at an Ottolenghi 'three more ingredients than you can really be bothered to add' special. It's fried courgette salad from his new book Plenty, a little pressie from Michael. Not that he wants me to make him delicious meals of course, purely for my own delight.

Whizzing up herbs with oil and salt and pepper into a sauce was an exciting revelation. What was not a revelation was that I still don't like parsley. I have tried to come to terms with it, chefs seem to love the stuff, but I just find it abhorrent and bitter and no just abhorrent.

Another revelation was tubey springy pasta. Great fun altogether. If it didn't taste that amazing sadly (no parsley next time, add garlic/onion/something to make it taste of something), at least it was fun to play with.

Foto8 Summer Show: A great bingo photo, and some others

It's nothing to do with the fact that Michael has a picture in it, at all, no, not at all, but the Foto8 Summer Show in Host Gallery is the unmissable art event of the summer, if not this century.

In particular this picture of a woman playing bingo from the series Bingo & Social Club (buy the book here) is stunning. Positioned just above the couch on the left hand side, you can spend all the time you (will undoubtedly) need contemplating its monotone beauty and compositional genius.

Asides from that, there are some incredible pictures and it's a feast for the eyes, and it's free, and it's just across the road from the lovely cycle-cafe Look Mum No Hands for an in-depth post-exhibition discussion (and cake).

My particular favourite was the one of the caravan and the birds (number 148 in the slideshow at the bottom). Fell in love with it. Also liked the one of two naked squatters in a bath - stood out from the others somehow in its oddness (no. 37). The one of Brighton pier was pretty breathtaking too (no. 144). Oh to have £2,000 to spend on such things. Perhaps if I stopped buying £7.50 cocktails I might be in with a chance.

Very few of them had actually sold though, which just shows the difficulties in selling photos these days. I suppose it's fair to say that not many people want pictures of anguished people on their walls, and many of them, though beautiful, were quite difficult to look at for a few minutes, let alone for an eternity, looking at you accusingly in your living room. 

The next important exhibition of the year is, of course, Bingo & Social Club at Outside World Gallery in Redchurch Street in the first week of November as part of East London Photo Month 2010. B&Q has well and truly run out of plugs.

Spa London: Just don't tell anyone

So Michael's German (and an Ossie at that). For this reason I have spent many days of my life naked in various hot naked rooms. This, together with a year spent displaying my white skin to the shocked onsens of Japan has transformed me from a heat and nudity averse Irish girl to a confident spa siren. To a point where they are now well and truly essential to my existence. But they're so goddamn expensive in London. Like they're supposed to be a luxury reserved for the River Cafe classes rather than a basic human right. 

Which is what makes Spa London such a breath of fresh (eucalyptus-scented) air. Look, its web address is even a .org, so it's officially a charity, selflessly devoting its life to forcing miserable, overworked Londoners to bloody well just chill out and cheer up. It even says so itself...

Me and Michael are now trying to go here every few months or so as part of our intense programme to live and work in London and stay (in some way) sane. We think of it as some kind of garden area for our flat. It's just down the road, is a very reasonable £18.50 a three-hour session, and is perfectly adequate for our needs. So you can't have a mojito (you wouldn't want one anyway, you'd die) and you can't sit on a roof terrace (you wouldn't want to anyway, it's just off Mare Street) and you can't have a gourmet lunch (unless paninis do it for you) but it's got everything you could possibly want in a little spa escape. Two steam rooms, a sauna, a plunge pool, buckets of ice, even an authentically tiled tepidarium and caledarium. Tepidarium. That word always makes me laugh. Like they should also have a Littlebitchillyarium and perhaps a Fuckinghelli'mhallucinatingarium too.

There's even a little chill out area where you can drink cucumber water, read Triathlon monthly and sit on a big wet patch that someone else left behind on the comfy chairs. Well spas do bring people closer together. 

We're very happy we found this place. To be honest, I'd pay the £18.50 just to shuffle around in a fluffy white robe and slippers for three hours (though I feel the NHS could arrange that for me for nothing). Last night when we emergd into the evening sun of Bethnal Green we were so relaxed we couldn't even hear the police sirens any more. The run down pubs took on a new quaint charm. The herring salad I bought from the Russian shop on Cambridge Heath Road looked not like a foul array of food-coloured pickled sourness, but like an amazing exotic treat (it subsequently gave me heartburn). We're now just hoping not too many other people find out about our little bubble in the blocks of concrete.

Hummingbird Bakery: Mmmmmmmmmmmmm

Ok so I've never actually been to the real Hummingbird Bakery, but I do have the cook book. Therefore I will make it come to me. 

I've made these lemon bars several times now and am a little bit in love with them. Just don't overcook them, and remember (which I didn't) to press the base up at the sides so the lemon goo doesn't run underneath and give you some kind of goo-biscuit-goo sandwich. Serve with strawberries, an espresso, and preferably a nice big meal first. Also good for a cheeky breakfast.

Katzenjammers: Prost!

There are fewer cosier places in the world than German beer cellars. So what a joy to discover Katzenjammers in Borough Market on a dull Sunday afternoon. Yeah so it's tacky, yes there are girls walking round in ill-fitting durndls, and yes, it's slightly overpriced, but they still manage to create that everything is alright with the world feeling that personifies Bavaria.

This feeling could of course have nothing to do with a small wooden tabled filled basement and everything to do with the above. This is Paulaner dunkel, and is very tasty. Something I would never drink at home or in an English pub, but here (and in The Dove) it's like an old friend. One and a half of these and everything is beautiful. London is suddenly the best city in the world, with the most incredible sunsets. My we are lucky to be alive.

The food's nice too, warm crisp pretzeln, sausages, cheese, potatoes, big hunks of pork with knives sticking out of them, the echt thing. No better place to forget the week. Overdo the Jaeger bombs though (as the stag party beside us did), and you may not necessarily feel the same.

The Complete History of Food: With these fois gras Ferrero Rocher you are really spoiling us

 

Was so looking forward to this. The latest turning inside out of Bompas and Parr's incredible brains. This particular peek into their magnificent minds was terrifying.

 

A doctor first welcomed us to his dusty parlour, introduced his talking reindeer and declared I had too much black bile and Michael had too much phlegm.

 

For this, he prescribed a trip to an old wooden ship in a basement. Once we crossed the eel-infested swamp to reach it, I was presented with a remedy of fig with beetroot sauce and a spiced brandy cocktail and Michael was given the very medieval combination of crostini with lemon brandy. 

We were then taken in a time capsule to the future, located on a roof terrace covered in string, where we were given a fois gras Ferrero Rocher ball and a brandy champagne cocktail that fizzed in your mouth, not your glass.

Next stop was the 50s, where we were treated to a delicious, calorie-free scratch 'n' sniff TV dinner.

Then, to remind ourselves of the crimes we had committed to our bodies, we were sent to have a bounce around in the insides of our stomachs.

 

Next, off on a stroll...

 

...to the iguanadon for dinner. 

Naturally.

Downstairs again for the finale.

 

Jelly. On a giant rotating cake.

 

With whale vomit on the side.

Which wobbled pleasingly...

 

And was served with a generous quaffing of pretty much neat brandy

(watched suspiciously by a fellow food historian)...

...in a rennaissance setting filled with sugar sculptures in subtle shades of pastel...

 

...and a magic thumping table that wobbled your jelly to your own heartbeat. 

 

And thus ended our fabulous adventure in foodieland.

Or did I just make that up?

Bistrotheque: We forgive you! 10-fold!

I embarrass myself sometimes.

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Anchovies (plural)

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Maxine Gallagher	28 May 2010 13:56
To: Bistrotheque
Hello, I finally made it to dinner at Bistrotheque on 13th May for my boyfriend's birthday. I've been wanting to go for ages as I've heard great things, and we only live up the road. The food was mostly great and the service, though a bit slow was friendly and good. However, I wanted to complain about the starter. I do realise that food costs money, and quality costs even more, and I appreciate that you serve up top produce - my lamb chop was extremely good. But we ordered the 'pan-fried anchovies' for starter and were very disappointed with the result. We wanted to share it because we weren't all that hungry and wanted to save space for the main, but what appeared was a joke. Well it made us laugh anyway. We received a mound of lettuce (fine, dressing nice) and one anchovy perched on top. I looked again at the menu on my table and it clearly said anchovies. And to make things worse, it wasn't even pan fried. At the time we laughed it off and happily cut the sad little anchovy in half, and I think we actually found another half lurking amongst the greens, but really it left a bad impression of your restaurant, and left us feeling cheated. I know it's a small matter, but just want to bring it to your attention. We don't spend £80 on meals that often, but I've been to enough restaurants to know that it's really not fair to charge someone £8 for one anchovy. Regards, Maxine

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Re: Anchovies (plural)

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David Waddington	28 May 2010 16:49
To: Me
Hello Maxine Thank you for your email. Im so sorry to hear that your salad didn’t live up to expectations or even the menu description - quite clearly it was lacking in the fish department! So please accept my apologies. Its really frustrating for these things to happen when its a special occasion and also for us, as our kitchen is capable to send great food. But mistakes do happen and we are grateful for feedback. With this in mind please accept an invitation from Pablo, Tom and I to return to Bistrotheque for dinner for two on us. Drop me an email to let me know when you would like to come along. Have a lovely weekend. Best Regards David

When I showed Michael my email, he just said, "Oh no, did we really cut the poor little anchovy in half…how could we do that?" Which is a fair point. But he didn't complain when the very nice guys at Bistrotheque asked us back for dinner. 

We went last Friday and it was absolutely spectacular. I had a growing sense of unease leading up to it. How could I be so greedy? Their crime was only giving us a small starter, how could we take a free meal from them? And worst of all, what kind of 'special ingredients' might the chefs put it in our dinner, especially for the couple at Table Whingebag. I've worked in restaurants before, I know how it works.

When we got there I offered to pay for half, but was told the manager insisted. Uh oh.

I needn't have worried (I think). Even if there were unspeakable additions, we couldn't see any, and the meal was perfect from start to finish. I had a seafood ceviche to start and Michael had (because I ordered it for him so I could try it) a ham hock terrine with scotch egg. Everything on our plates looked and tasted gorgeous. He even had several anchovies sandwiched between his ham and his hock. Several!

My photos are really rubbish because it got darker but the food only got better. Crisped moist seabass for me, with chickpeas and tomatoes, soft and tender steak and tangy Bearnaise sauce for Michael - and chips for me to steal (as is a girlfriend's duty).

I tried really hard to resist dessert and not be so greedy but I couldn't. Perfect little slice of tart lemon tart for M and roast plums (peaches? shit too much rose at this point) with mascarpone for me.

Had a nice chat with the manager, god I've forgotten his name too, that must have been good wine. So lovely (and Irish, good man). He said they don't get many complaints and wanted to remedy this one. They did. There was definitely an all round feeling of more love and generosity in this meal compared to the last one. I must put a gushing review on Yelp immediately to quell my guilt. Or maybe a few Hail Marys will do.

Off Broadway: Shaken and stirring

Rarely a week goes by without a little restorative trip to Off Broadway. Been to a couple of their film evenings too which are fun. Best on an early weekday evening before the crowds descend. Sadly the lady with the amazing hair and jewellery (who shouts at you if you don't say 'please') no longer seems to be there. She made the most incredible cocktails. Her and that cute American guy with the hat who has also disappeared. Still, I think the rest of them are getting better. There is, of course, no worse feeling in the world than a cocktail that isn't perfect.

The strawberry marguerita we had last Saturday was perfect however, and inspired me and Michael to go home and make several more of our own at home. Which is probably why I didn't get out of bed until midday on Sunday...

Chocolate trifle: A guaranteed hit... but oh so nearly a flop

Chocolate muffins spread with cherry jam, topped with tinned raspberries 

(when you can't find morello cherries)...

 

Plus booze (lots of)...

 

Plus mascarpone and custard...

  

Plus melted dark chocolate...

Equals a nearly completed Delia Smith's cheat's chocolate trifle,

a pretty simple dessert that always goes down a treat...

But cream that won't whip = recipe for disaster.

Found out that my bowl in which I was trying to whip said disobedient cream was too warm. Who knew? Internet forums apparently. Where would an amateur cook be without them? Just like where would an amateur hypochondriac be without health forums?

Spent literally 40 minutes at 11pm trying to whip 'whipping' cream and still it was the consistency of tap water. Arrrgh. Went across the road to our lovely 24-hour shop man, gave him a whopping £1.99 for another pot (worth it for the nice smile I always get) and it still didn't work. In a tantrum I flung the bowl on the counter and went to bed. I only punished myself of course, waking up to a nice congealed bowl of rancid cream to clean.

I shall be putting my bowls in the freezer three weeks in advance next time.

However, the trifle went down very well at the dinner party it ended up in. I finally found cream in their local shop that acceded to my whipping. And so ends the trifling tale.