The Lord Palmerston is a solid gastropub. Usual fayre, spartan look. It did however have a good line in locals and banter, which became evident when the various rugby types were barred from the pub for supporting the wrong team, and roundly abused ac[…]

Hardcore, but they don’t know the score
Midnight. Berlin. You want to go a club. You see the sign:

It looks the part. Reassuringly brusque bouncer. Cool Berliners moving to German art-rock sounds.
And then you here a cheer go up.
A song start[…]

The Newton Arms, Holborn
What a difference an hour or two makes. Squeezing my way in to this pub on Friday at half six I was pretty sure it was the worst boozer I’d been to in a long time. With precious few tables (though a lot of stools) and a[…]

THIS MEANS YIYOU!
viz it is LESS THAN A WEEK till chinese new year – passing out of the horrible year of the monkey into the generally better-favoured year of the rooster – so here is what to EAT: “sweet steamed glutinous rice pud[…]

EXPERIMENT: YOUNG’S ‘ORDINARY’
The question was, what happens when I drink exclusively Young’s Ordinary of an evening? The location was The Plough, Museum Street. And the occasion was Alan handing over some flyers. The results[…]

Save Our Pubs {please}
“Book warns of last orders for ornate boozers“, writes Polly Curtis
in the Guardian.
English Heritage document the 250 alehouses still left replete with their original Victoriana glories (inc. London’s Black F[…]

diet a success: dieter scarily skeletal etc:
possibly the best aftermath-offshoot of the south beach diet is that i am allowed ALL THE SHELLFISH and FISH i can eat!! (well, it doesn’t quite put it like that, but i am supposed to eat allowed st[…]

Brandwatch Special: Girls Allowed
I suspect marketing people are a bit divided over Yorkie’s now-quite-long-running “NOT FOR GURLS” campaign. Innovative? Yes. Patronising? Probably. A joke worn thin through repetition? Well…. […]

In La Porchetta on Saturday I reverted to type and had one of my favourite pizzas, Pizza Speck. It is a simple, crisp dough which has gorgonzola and speck ham on it. No tomato, nothing else. Quite salty truth be told. Not very vegetably.
And then it[…]

BLOG WHAT YOU SEE
After once seeing a certain chocolate bar in the shop round the corner, and then never seeing it again EVER in my life (expect me to blog the full story when I have access to a computer at the same time I have access to several bott[…]