Il Bordello

I l Bordello is an Italian in wapping high street. It's name obviously refers to a whorehouse but it's interior does not really reflect this, unless it is a reference to the generosity of the portions! The food here is large, heaving with garlic and delicious. It is not high end or delicate but home cooked, old fashioned I talian, the extensive Pizza list does not contain goats cheese for example. It is medium priced, about £20 a head, but I would recommend skipping starters and pudding, leaving room fo rthe vast mains. Olives are good, again a generous amount and will do as a starter, they are served prawn cocktail in an ice cream sundae glass with cocktail stick with frilly bits of paper adroning them. They are also laced with garlic. I love this restaurant, but so do amny others so it is advisable to book, it also means that it is generally a fairly noisy, buzzy place, not necessarily the place for an intimate conversation. I generally find the waiters spectacularly grumpy but somehow it adds to the charm, which is not my usual angle on grumpy waiters, the warm adn lively atmosphere must somehow make up for it. Another tip, generally when I go here I have garlic leaking from every pore for several days afterwards so don't go with on a first date or when you may have to impress someone the next day.

Bermondsey Kitchen

Bermondsey Kitchen is a restaurant, not surprisingly, in Bermondsey street. It is our local which is a blessing and a curse, mainly because it is so good but not cheap. Starters are around £6 and mains from £10 to £15 with excellent puddings at £6. The food is fantastic, often tasting so much better than it sounds on the page, a tabbouleh with toasted flat bread tasted sublime, with lots of fresh lemon and slivers of crispy, toasted flatbread buried in the tabbouleh. They generally have two vegetarian options all of which have been of high quality. We went there once and had home made raspberry ripple for pudding, somehting that my husband still talks and dreams about but which we have sadly not come across again. The waiters are friendly, the atmosphere warm and relaxing and the winelist good and in line with the food prices. A fantastic local restaurant and if I had to choose I would say that it just pips the Garrison in terms of food quality if not in decor.

De Gustibus

De Gustibus is a breadshop in borough market, although breadshop is a little prosaic for such a place, they describe themselves as artisan bread makers, and so they are. I just bought a granary loaf there (yes it cost £2.50 but I have gone over the expensive bread threshold and there is no going back) and it smells and looks so delicious that I am already looking forward to tomorrow's breakfast. They specialise in bread as you would expect but they also had some very good looking sandwiches there and some hugely tempting chocolate brownies...next time.

Joan as Policewoman

So we went to see Joan as Policewoman at the Shepherds bush Empire. And on a week night too. The EMpire is faded and but comforting and we always go up to the first tier so that we can go and sit down, particularly as Joan is not a moshing kind of girl. The first support act, Loney Deer, were from Sweden and were pretty good in a spangly sort of way, the second, whose name I think was Andrew Bird was not so good. He was interesting though, which can be a bit of a curse. He played many instruments and then somehow sampled them all together, layering them one on top of the other. This sounds quite good and it was to start with but it all began to feel a bit like bedroom experimentalism (if you see what I mean) and a tad dull. Then came Joan. She looked fab in a silver jumpsuit type outfit and hair all tousled like Chrissie Hynde but prettier. She was particularly strong on audience banter which gave it a good atmosphere, although there was a little pocket of people chatting at the back which was distracting, but not as distracting as the poeple 'ssshh'ing them. Her voice is superb; strong and with a good range, she sings likes she means it. The only slight negative was that the songs are uneven, and I found this on her album too. Someof them start promisingly and then meander a little or go on too long, although Eternal Flame is a real crowd pleaser. All in all it was pretty good, mainly because of her charisma and voice, but the songs themselves would not send me running to listen to more, which is a shame.

too much chatter?

Recently went to a talk at the ICA by Andrew Keen who has written a controversial book called 'Cult of the Amateur'. Essentially Keen's argument centres around Web 2.0 (user driven sites such as facebook, blogging, twitter etc) adn the so called democratisation of the internet. He argues that this new media poses a threat to our cultural values and understanding, web 2.0 is responsible for the downfall of our newspapers and means that nayone can contribute to the mass of information which we all have acces to. THis may at first seem like a good thing, but is it really? Keen says not, Journalists and others are paid and valued because of their vast experience and knowledge of a specific subject whereas anyone can blog or contribute to Wiki. The hapless user is therefore unable to tell whether any of the information that they are soaking up is 'true' or worth ingesting. Does all of this endless stream of web based chatter actually add up to any sort of worthwhile conversation? Again Keen things, on the whole, not. Anyone can now send out their undigested thoughts into the ether and anyone else can pick it up and churn it back out as a fact. Worse still, those poeple who originally made a living by trading their opinions or reporting the news are now increasingly unable to do so. People expect this information for free. No one is in charge of monitoring the information that we have access to and mostly we are unaware who is behind the stuff that we read or download. It is this anonymity that he is partuclarly suspicious of, when we pick up the Telegraph we expect it to be right of centre, when we pick up the Guradian we expect it to be leftish. When we read a blog or find an unspecified news source who is writing it and what is their agenda? The argument that drives this debate on is partly an old one: who should decide what is worthwile and what isn't? Is this new wave of blogging and social networking the end of the old elite dictating what we believe and think? Or is it the breakdown of a valuable and trusted structure which is being replaced with an endless stream of chatter and trivial opinion?

I think that this is an interesting and valuable debate to be having but it is perhaps, in the end, a pointless one. This is happening, I am writing all of this on a blog after all, and most likely no one will read it, but all of this stuff is not going to go away. The debate we should be having is how to adapt to it. How will newspapaers survive and if they do what do we want them to look like? Does it matter that a large section of our news and information is written by amateurs? Will that old division between amatuer and professional still exist and ultimately does it matter?

Menier Chocolate Factory

The Chocolate Factory is a converted chocolate factory in Southwark, near Tate Modern, which now houses a theatre, gallery and restaurant. I've visited twice now and never yet been to see a play... Last time we went it was for food. We were early and were directed to a cosy little sofa area behind the dining section to have drinks, which made a change from having to stand by the door or perch on an unfeasibly small chair at the front of the resaturant. The place has a good, warm atmosphere and the building itself is impressive, all wood floors, exposed brick and beams. The food was good, reasonably priced (about £18 a head with drinks), generous portions and tasty. Although we nearly all had veggie burgers so we hardly sampled the breadth of the menu but hey we liked it anyway. Not the most delicate of cooking but comforting and well cooked. The only minor complaint was that the full menu wasn't being served until 8, so we chose from a smaller version, whcih restricted choice somewhat. This may be something to do with the fact that this is primarily a theatre and so it didn't trouble me too much and I would definitely go again, may be even see a play while I was there.

veggie restaurant

222 Veggie Vegan is a vegetarian (No!) restuarant near west Brompton tube. We went there last Friday for the first time. The food is great, fresh and not the usual veggie food trying to be meaty food, no vegetarian lasagne or fake sausages (although I do like those), except for a token burger. I had crispy pancakes with abrocolli and some kind of cheesy tofu filling, which I am doing a poor job of describing but which tasted good, not in small part due to an excellent rich tomato sauce. The puddings were delicious, we had banana and walnut cake with vanilla ice cream. All the food is home made, no heatng up or buying in and is reasonably priced. The only slightly less than rosy thing about it all was the decor. If you are familiar with veggie restaurants then you will know that there seems ot be a connection between veggie food and bare neutral walls, pine furniture, folksy easy listening music and overly tall, thin owl like waiting staff. Surely there must be an opening somewhere for a decadent vegetarian restuarant, all red velvet and purple walls. Who says you can't eat tofu whilst listeneing to pink floyd!?

Scotland

We have just returned from a (very) small Island in Scotland, surrounded by impressive scenery, actual wildlife (cuckoos that sound just like cuckoos - if you see what I mean), plush accommodation and all very middle of nowhereish. Lovely. However it means two things: one, I am unable to write about the usual hanging around town things as I saw no one except family (and that is a whole other blog in itself) and did very little except walk and lounge, and two that although I had a fantastic time, I did in fact sigh a little sigh of relief when we arrived back amongst the concrete and the shops.

Also I have lost my phone to computer cable and can't transfer pictures which means that the visual aspect of this will be a lot less interesting until I find it.

Designers at the ICA

We went to the ICA to see a design show/discussion, Joff's idea as he is doing a product design course. I was sort of interested and sort of dreading it. My dread was confirmed when we arrived for a 7 pm start only to sit for half an hour wathcing 2 (very young) blokes with deisgner head stubble, fiddling with their laptops. When one of them got out his phone and was playing with both at the same time I was ready to leave. Eventually they started and their communication skills matched my expectations, not good. However once they got round to showing their work it was a completely different story. The event is set up to showcase mainly digital designers and their pet projects, in other words the things they would like to be doing when they are not designing car ads. The presentations we saw ranged from a short film, an idea for a digital art display, an interactive table and a truly astounding car ad (yes I know, it was a car ad but it was amazing). All of the designers were men and all pretty much looked under 30 and all seemed to be running their own companies. Easy to knock, but the skill they displayed was really impressive, it involved hour upon hour of doing complicated things with computers which I inherently think of as dull and tedious, mainly becuase I don't have a hope in hell of understanding it, but the work they produced was very creative and changed my opinion of both computer geeks and designers.

Broadband

After six months in the dial up wilderness I am back on broadband (hence the sudden burst of posts) and it is sooo good to be back.

Zodiac - it's a killer!

The film Zodiac has had nothing less than 4 star reviews and so I was looking forward to seeing it with great excitment, however after 2 and a half hours of watching it my excitment had turned to head nodding boredom. I admit I was tired already and I do have a habit of falling asleep in films with anything less than ear drum shattering jaw dropping action (although I like to think of myself as an arthouse lover, I think I am naturally more of a blockbuster type). This is a film about the fruitless search for a serial killer, who may or may not have killed anything from 4 - 40 people. They don't find him. Which would havebeen ok if anything else actually happened, like character development or stuff like that, but no such luck. A disparate group of police (or cops as they say over there) pursue the Zodiac as he taunts them with a seemingly endless chain of letters and codes to break (nothing duller than watching someone crack a code on film - witness the DA Vinci Code). They start off obsessed and end up obsessed and fired. Yes, the detail is impressive, the look of it inviting and the first 2 murder scenes are pretty scary, but that is not enought to carry over 2 hours of mumbling, bumbling interminable searching.

A Matter of Life and Death

A Matter of Life and death is currently on at the National and is an adaptation of the Powell and Pressburger film of the same name. The play is done in association with Kneehigh Theatre
and as a result is a blend of music, physical theatre and circus style aerobatics. It is a story of a2nd workd war pilot who falls in love with a young, attractive radio operator called June, just before he falls to his death. The dead man who is due to 'collect' him and take him 'upstairs' fails to do so and he lives, only to meet and fall in love agian with June. The conundrum then is whether he should die as he was supposed to or be spared to pursue true love. The play ends with a trial to decide his fate. It is generally exciting and innovative, using an impressive team of actors to sing, dance, dangle from harnesses, ride bicycles round the stage and literally play with fire. None of this is done simply for effect and the atmosphere created is one of a distorted tiem and shifting reality. The only off note is sounded by the decision to use the end trial to give a stream of polemic about the random and awful nature of war, and the idiocy of being spared simply for love. The women of Dresden appear to plead their case as they have also lost loved ones, an addition for a modern audience who presumably can now consider the position of the bombed German citizens , which may have been unthinkable in 1946 when the film was made. However, this rams a point home too forcibly and unnecessarily, sounding clumsy when the rest of the production is so spot on.

Coffee@bermondsey street

is a coffee shop done in 'bermondsey street' style, which means it is almost all organic (presumably inluding the staff) decorated in breeze blocks, coloured concrete and bits of lego, has wireless internet access and advertises oats milk! Having said that I actually really like it, the food is good (flalafel wraps, houmus and spinach ciabatta, good cake) the coffee strong and the staff a little floaty but generally pleasing. There are copious free papers lying about and you can access the internet on some dinky little computers at the back if you don't have your own teeny weeny notebook to use.

Imli

advertises itself as Indian tapas, which basically means that it isIndian food, although in the modern sense of the phrase, in small portions. This means you can taste a wide variety of dishes or have to order a lot depeneding on your point of view...It also means that you can order things like a bulgar wheat and yellow bean salad alongside more traditional dishes such as samosas, which in my opinion is a refreshing alternative but to some may be an unforgivable transgression. Anyhow, we ordered six dishes plus a pudding and 2 glasses of wine and it came to £32 and was very tasty. We had to queue for 15 minutes but it was worth it - good value, good fod and a bubbly atmosphere, but may be too risky for lovers of a good old chicken tikka masala. Oh and they do decent vegetarian dishes too.

The Garrison

The Garrison is a gastro pub on Bermondsey street, a street bristling with gastro pubs. The Garrison is decorated in what can only be described as shabby chic style, with the emphasis on chic, tassled lampshades, wall paper and distressed wooden tables with mismatched chairs. Perfect for city dwellers who want a country pub but can't be bothered to go to the country. The food is good and hearty but not cheap (about £10 for a main course) with good vegetarian options. Service is friendly and the atmosphere relaxing. It is always busy and tables are nearly always reserved but you can often occupy a table before its reservation time so the earlier you go the better. Recommended, but only if you like the whole gastro pub thing.

Veggie sandwich special of the week

at Pret is egg mayonaisse, baby spinach and sun dried/blushed/tickled tomatoes, on granary bread. Lovely, creamy egg mayo, tangy tomatoes and spinach was fresh. Egg has a tendency to flop out and tomatoes drop onto your lap so tuck in a napkin!

An Endangered Restaurant

Valentine's dinner at the Neal Street restaurant on...Neal street. It is basically the posh flagship restaurant of the Carluccio chain. And when I say posh I mean that it is also expensive (over £40 a head) but very delicious food - Italian meat, fish and pasta with the most enourmous olives you will have ever seen and the oiliest, saltiest bread, yum. Anyway, we had a great dinner, service was excellent and not too sickeningly Valentine-ish. The main point being, if I could get to it, that the restaurant is closing on March 17th due to the building being redeveloped, so if you want to spend some money and eat some good Italian food in smart surroundings, do it quickly (and eat a smalllunch as it is very filling). Ah yes also it is particularly famous for its mushrooms, so if you are a funghi fan then you really had better go before it shuts.

Going to Borough Market

is very crowded and also very expensive but somehow it doesn't seem to matter if you pay £7 for dried figs, you can convince yourself they are the best dried figs you have ever eaten, and perhaps they are. The food all looks delicious as you glimpse it through the throng and there are so many free samples you can almost cobble together a free lunch, starter, main course and a variety of desserts, albeit all in tiny morsels. Best days, ie more food and more people, are Friday and Saturday, still going strong at 4pm.

Coffe, Cake and Kink

London's only (so they say) kinky coffee shop. They sell coffee, tea, cake and erotica and pride themselves on being risque. In fact the atmosphere is more like having tea at a strangely comforting Aunt's house and the tea comes in generous pots which are more than enough for one. The service is solicitous and the cake delicious.

Bread

The bagel bakery on Brick lane has excellent Chola and rye bread. It is open at all hours, meaning that you can buy a soft, fresh, crusty loaf of rye bread with carraway seeds at 10.30 at night - if you wish to.

Boating

Todays activity...going to lunch by boat. caught a boat from Masthouse pier to St. Katherine's Dock and walked over Tower Bridge to the design museum. The boat goes by Canary warf and has great views as you approach Tower Bridge. You can take this boat all the way to Savoy Pier, past Tate Modern and London Bridge.

good cake

Tate modern members bar has good sandwiches, salads and excellent cake (pictured), particularly carrot. Also does strong coffee and has a fantastic view, seats outside when the weather is better. They open late on Fridays and maybe saturdays (check) and is the perfect place for a glass of wine after work overlooking the city and facing St. Pauls. You have to be a member (my membership has currently lapsed) which isn't cheap ( about £60 a year) but you also get free entrance to all of the exhibitions and private views (for an extra 20 quid).
Tate modern also does art.

toilets

anybody needing the loo whilst out and about should visit the ICA on the Mall. There is a fee to go to the exhibits or the bar but the clean, well furnished toilets are right by the entrance and free! The exhibitions are sometimes a little bare, incuding the high profile BEcks Futures but they do have some interesting talks and the odd juicy film preview. If you are not a member then you can buy a day membership which is basically a ticket to whiever event you go and see plus access to the bar...and more toilets.

Running in the rain

Just been for a run in the misty rain. I was relctant and needed to be coaxed but it was excellent - very bracing! running route was along the river from Island gardens towards sth Quay and back along the road. Was very picturesque, including the noisy and smoky Tate and Lyle factory.
see route not long but long enough for me.

Ray's Jazz cafe

Ray's is part of Foyles book shop on the Charing cross road, you go in through a separate entrance and up some stairs. It is a jazz music shop and cafe. I don't like Jazz ( I know, I know, all music is Jazz and you shouldn't label good music, blah, blah, blah... I still don't like it) but I do like the cafe. Narrow wooden tables, large pot plants, trendy, nerdy looking types on tiny laptops at the benches by the windows, good sandwiches, great coffee and excellent cake. The service is slow but you just have to go with it. The toasted paninis are really good, particularly the cheese, tomato and rosemary, they do a tasty humous and roasted pepper wrap and the coffee is good and strong, not like a milky bedtime drink. It can be difficult to find a table but get there early enough and it shouldn't be too tricky.

Pret a manger

Although the design museum does superior sandwich and cakes, clearly you may actually be in a different part of town nd need another option. Pret is good value, fresh food with a wide variety of options, particularly for veggies with their veggie special each week. I particularly recommend the egg mayo and roasted tomato baguette or the posh cheddar and pickle. The cakes are not so good though, small and wrapped in plastic. The coffee is good, though not as good as at the design museum but is the best chain place for lunch when generally roaming around london.

More lunching

Not so good, for any type of sandwich at all, is Starbucks. It is expensive, the egg ones taste vinegary and the cheese ones have slimy mayonaisse thickly coating the cheese. The coffee is okish but more milk than coffee.