Tag Archives: London
Vietnamese summer rolls – gỏi cuon
My three-and-a-half-year-old son is going through a really exhausting, fiesty, “f*ck you” phase, which has been dragging on for months. He wakes up, usually in a terrible temper, and starts shouting NO at anything we suggest. We have to be on alert for biting, kicking and hair-pulling. He’s wise to us bribing him, and […]
Olio, the food sharing app
I absolutely loathe wasting food. I’d rather shoehorn an extra slab of toast into my mouth, or someone else’s mouth, than see it go in the bin. The idea of discarding anything edible is like a stab to the heart. I’ll often eat pieces of my kids’ discarded fish fingers that have dropped onto the […]
Food banks need YOUR help
Food banks shouldn’t exist in this affluent country. But they have done since 2004, after years of bonkers governmental austerity policies, recession fallout and wage freezes. Not to mention the myriad of administrative complications people experience when waiting six weeks for their Universal Credit benefits to kick in. There are so many people in desperate […]
Xu, Soho
Photo credit: Wallpaper* I have a long-anticipated theatre and dinner invite in Soho with my pal G. She booked tickets five months ago, it will, it MUST happen bar someone getting struck down by chronic piles / amnesia / insert bad thing. But first I have to get to Soho. It’s like negotiating release from […]
Brown and Green Cafe, Crystal Palace
(My son’s table manners don’t exist yet.) What would we do without this place in Crystal Palace? Especially those of us with kids? Honestly, there aren’t many eateries for people with chaotic, shouty offspring to go for a meal where you are NEVER judged for being audacious enough to eat out WITH YOUNG CHILDREN. Uptight […]
The Nordic Bakery
I rarely get any time to myself, ever. That’s just how life is when you have two small children who are as ever-perplexing and unpredictable as tiny, furious dictators. Any time to be alone is like gold dust – even if it means a dental appointment. A bus or tube journey where I don’t have to […]
Brunswick House Cafe
Ever experienced the delights of the Vauxhall Roundabout in South London? It’s a sprawling, huge endless loop of busy roads, with a bus station plonked right in the middle looking like a metallic Soviet space structure. Railway tunnels house warren-like nightclubs, storage facilities and the odd cavernous restaurant, such as Nando’s. The Vauxhall Tavern holds […]
One night in Peckham
I do love a visit to Peckham, even though these days it appears to have more in common with Notting Hill, what with property prices smashing through the roof. I should know, I tried to buy a house here five years ago, and bid a hasty retreat! In Peckham Rye there are now boutiques selling […]
Theo’s Pizzeria
I’m having an affair with a restaurant called Theo’s. I mean, I am inside my brain. I spend a lot of time lusting after their Neopolitan-style pizza, when perhaps I should be thinking about doing something important like, um, opening my boring mountain of post and reading about insurance. Theo’s pizza makes shivers go up […]
God’s Own Junkyard
What is this apparition of heaven? Last week I found myself in a neon paradise, standing in a warehouse in North East London, surrounded on all sides by rainbow-hued signage. I thought I’d died and floated off to psychedelic nirvana. God’s Own Junkyard is a shimmering Aladdin’s cave of new and salvaged retro neon signage, […]
Toast & Butter 