Leaving London

I can map this city in layers. The food eaten; the shops and cafes I’ve loitered in; the people I’ve loved; the otherwise mundane benches and phone boxes that have been the scenes of important conversations and epiphanies. I could tell you about bickering with a now-absent friend over whitebait in a family-run Italian before I even moved here. I could sit you down in the pub where my heart burst with love for my mother. I could give you a run-down of what the bridges have meant to me, and recant tales from the very different new years eves I’ve celebrated. The Soho tattoo parlour where I got books inked into me. The train stations that have led me to new adventures. I could show you the city that shaped my life as I grew from a fresh-out-of-uni innocent moving to the big city to hopefully a more fully-formed woman, with a pair of santoku knives I refer to as “my babies” and more than a handful of stories to tell. Continue reading

Eating out: KERB Camden, London

There’s one thing in particular that made it a dead cert I’d head to KERB Camden when it opened this week: I’m a total sucker for a good Instagram picture. I’m far from alone from this, and you can call it voyeuristic or narcissistic or any other kind of -istic, but as a generation we love to keep an eye on what other people are doing and share what we’re up to. We love it even more than mums on Facebook love sharing baby photos or inspirational quotes. More than sexists love hounding women off Twitter. More than Thailand holidayers love using photos of themselves next to drug-addled tigers on Tinder to show how well-travelled they are. Eating out: KERB Camden, London // The Dinner BellThat’s how much we love posting photos of lattes and avocados and our own faces (this remains the best quote on selfies).

So as much I’ll roll my eyes at restaurants saying their food is “Instagrammable”, I’m happy to use social media to find new things and places. Which is exactly what happened with Blu Top ice cream (pictured above), which serves up ice cream cookie sandwiches slathered in sauce and lured me to the KERB Camden street food market launch.

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Eating Out: Ladies Love Beer at Neighbourhood

We all do different things to unwind. I can’t fathom going for a run to clear your head, or playing first person shooting games for hours. But one of my old post-work rituals was befitting of someone about 40 years older than me and the opposite gender – a nice quiet pub, a pint of ale, and a book. Shoes off and feet up on the sofa like I lived there, it was a sanctuary away from work stress and, crucially, out of the tiny flat I lived in. It’s also where I became “a beer drinker”.

There’s this idea, somehow, that women don’t drink beer, that all we really want is a white wine or maybe a G&T. But, although an adolescence that featured only Fosters or Boddingtons should have put me off, I can attest firmly to the fact that we quite like a pint, too.

Neighbourhood3So of course, when an email landed in my inbox about the Ladies Love Beer night at Neighbourhood, near Stratford, I was quick to confirm that I’d be there with bells on.

I went into the event a little sceptical – purely because my taste is quite specifically the darker, richer end of the spectrum. I’m not into “hoppy”, or “citrus”, and I’m certainly against lagers, which to me often taste more like they should be in the back room of a doctor’s surgery in a sample pot. So I headed off to Very East London, and I was pleasantly surprised. Continue reading

Birthday best bits – or, “that time I spent a week eating almost non-stop”

Each year I experience three weight spikes. Holiday. Christmas. Birthday. It’s inevitable, and it’s earned.

True to form, the majority of birthday presents this year revolved around my two main interests, books and food, including what I seem to have decided is called “cocomond and almonut butter”. This year was particularly good, with a parade of meals out – that sounds fancier than it was – and a whole load of new discoveries. We’ll be here forever if I run you through it all, so instead, here’s my best bits.  Continue reading

A Guide to London’s (many, many) coffee shops

I

made the mistake a couple of months back of impulse buying a book while on a Sunday mooch around the city. I do this quite a lot, but it’s rarely a mistake (I said rarely. Looking at you, Cloud Atlas). But, having wandered into Angel after a visit to the Ray Stitch haberdashery, the lures of Waterstones and coffee were too strong and I ended up walking out with the London Coffee Guide*.

Coffee

You  know what’s in the London Coffee Guide? Recommendations, broken down by area.

You know what’s abundant on the internet for free? Recommendations, broken down by area, with loads of photos and personal notes.

As much as it kills me to admit that a book might have been made a touch redundant by the wealth of information online, it’s true in this case. So, here’s a few of my favourite ways to find out about London’s best coffee shops. Bring on the flat whites, chilled out music, and cosy nooks. Continue reading