Byron at The Intrepid Fox - W1

I always used to be a bit intimidated by The Intrepid Fox in Wardour St when it was a goth/metal pub - scary gargoyle hanging over the door, moody goths jostling you out of the way as they shuffled in, I was never ballsy enough to go in and see what it was actually like - which now I regret because it was a Soho institution that is no more (although they did move the crowd, the vibe and I think the gargoyle to that weird bar underneath Centrepoint - not quite the same).  Anyway - I thought it was going to be turned into flats (and maybe it is upstairs - I haven't noticed) but what actually transpired was that Byron, famed hamburger joint, opened a Soho outpost there.  Everyone raves about Byron's burgers and I had never been - given this location is a 5 minute walk from my work I'm not sure what has stopped me, perhaps because it is always so busy.  Anyway - today I went and man did I enjoy.  I had a blue cheese burger and it was SO good - it was lighter than most burgers and the meat was cooked to medium perfection.  The bun was great (often a let down) and I love a place where you get a pickle on the side.  The courgette fries were a nice touch and made me feel like I was edging towards that 5 a day.  The other half and I have been regular customers of the Gourmet Burger Kitchen in Battersea for over 6 years now and unfortunately we have experienced the quality go steadily downhill - particularly since it got bought and became a rapidly expanding brand.  It wasn't until I took my first mouthful of my cheese-burger at Byron today that I realised just how shite the GBK burgers are now in comparison to Byron's little beauties.  Whatever faceless conglomerate owns GBK now should be forced to dine at Byron so they can realise the many ways they are screwing up.  Anyway - go to Byron, it rocks (and you can drink a cream soda float with your burger, bonus!)

Nude Espresso - Hanbury St E1

So after recently visiting the Nude Espresso guys at the Rapha pop-up store in Clerkenwell I finally got around to visiting their cafe in Hanbury St in Spitalfields.  And very nice it is too - on Tom's advice I tried some of their cakes and had a lovely friand (the fact I am getting comfortable with ordering friands says a lot about how I am mellowing with age).  The coffee was spot on and the whole vibe of this place is great.  So as expected, a winner and in one of my favourite parts of London - I am a sucker for the Huguenot houses and wish Tracey Emin or Gilbert & George would ask me round for tea.  Having said that (oh cripes - I feel a rant coming on) on my visit to Nude and my wanderings around the area on that day I couldn't help but feel that Spitalfields has lost something.  I know I rabbited on about this in my post on Fournier Street but it struck me anew last week - in particular as I was walking through the market and was confronted with a Gourmet Burger Kitchen, a Wagamama and a Real Greek.  Why did we need that?  Wasn't there enough food on offer in the market already?  I didn't mind when the Square Pie Company moved in but why did we need every chain restaurant to follow suit?  I dunno - it just made me a little bit sad and a little bit wistful.  Having said that the area still rocks and perhaps you just have to go a bit deeper into Shoreditch or Bethnal Green or Hackney to recapture the Spitalfields of old? 

Cafe at The Bathhouse EC2

Surrounded by high rise office buildings behind the lovely St Boltoph's church near Liverpool St station, The Bathhouse is a weird one (in a good way).  I haven't been down to the basement restaurant/bar but it sounds cool - would be interested to hear any reports.  I have however visited the cute cafe, which is the only part of the venue above ground.  This place is actually an old Turkish baths - one of those built in Victorian times all over London (now mostly gone with the two remaining being the Porchester in Bayswater and Ironmonger Row in Shoreditch).  I realy liked the cafe from the moment I walked in - Motown vinyl playing on an old turntable, a friendly barista making coffee and delicious looking biscuits on offer (I had a chewy, gooey Florentine).  The coffee was good - not amazing but good (the milk was too hot which is always a big no no for me).  The cafe sees oddly out of place with the suity/city vibe of the area and that is part of it's charm - it seems like a slightly hippyish impostor in stuffed-shirt land and as such long may it proposer!

Just because...

http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/coffee/

Southwark - SE1

I love Southwark and Borough.  Of course the market is amazing - I do plan on doing a "best of Borough Market" post at some stage (which will definitely include the chorizo burgers - oh yeah) - but I really like wandering around the quiet streets between Southwark, Borough and London Bridge stations.  I only discovered Copperfield St (pictured) recently and it is so cute - tiny little houses, almost hobbit-like, opposite an atmospherically spooky church yard.  I spotted the run-down wooden-shuttered building in the other photo just round the corner in Great Guildford St - isn't it a beauty?  There are spots like this all over Southwark, you can really immerse yourself in "old London" here.  Southwark was a place of illicit delights in the 17th century - where Londoners would come to escape the moral confines of the city and a frisson of that vibe remains.  Any of you who have been clubbing under the arches of London Bridge station will agree I'm sure...  The cathedral is magnificent and has the most amazing statues.  I could easily live in Southwark and have often thought how nice it would be do wander to the market early on a Saturday morning to do your weekly grocery shop.  So if you haven't already, take some time to wander around Southwark and Borough - it's a hidden gem.

Nude Espresso at Rapha pop-up store EC1

I love a pop-up store and so I was intrigued to come across the Rapha Cycle Club pop-up on Clerkenwell Road.  Cyclists amongst you will already know of Rapha, the British cycle-wear brand.  I did not - but was impressed with what was on offer.  The best bit though was that Nude Espresso (from Hanbury St E1, near Spitalfields) has a temporary coffee station at the back of the store.  I was gagging for a flat white (had just tried to get one at Dose to find they were shut at 4pm - what gives?) so there was a touch of the thirsty man crawling out of the desert.  Anyway, a lovely chap served me the most magnificent flat white - as you can see from the photo, he is also a latte-artist extraordinaire but the best bit was how it tasted - sublime.  I can't wait to go and check out

 Nude - I still haven't made it there but now it is top of my list.  If you want to sample the pop-up variety of Nude or indeed buy some groovy cycle duds, you better be quick as I think the store is only in place until the Tour de France finishes on 25 July.

Brew - SW11

I have written about Northcote Road in Battersea before but wanted to mention a really great cafe there called Brew. We were early customers of Brew - in fact we were so delighted that a cool cafe had opened on a street that at the time seemed to only contain "baby friendly" cafes. It was owned by a lovely chap called Mike and served amazing salads, great cakes and half decent coffee. The vibe was cool and Mike made you feel like a valued customer. When he stepped back from the business and then ultimately sold it, we stopped going so regularly - mainly because by that time it had also got so popular that it was difficult to get a table (it's really dinky). A few weekends ago I met some friends (avec baby - very Northcote Rd) for coffee there and was so impressed with what I saw on the menu and then went back the following Saturday for breakfast. Man it was good - they have a sensational breakfast menu. Try some of these out for size - blueberry pancakes with caramelised bananas, creme fraiche and maple syrup, chorizo scrambled eggs on sourdough toast or my choice - spring time eggs, which were scrambled eggs with Persian feta, parsley and lemon. Oh yeah - makes your mouth water right? The eggs were great, the freshly squeezed juice of the day was amazing (watermelon, strawberry and pink grapefruit) and the coffee has really stepped up several notches - it was as good as you would get anywhere and quite a bit stronger than a lot of places, which I liked. This place is a winner - it does get crowded on weekends but tables seem to turn fairly quickly. My suggestion would be to go early or ideally visit during the week.

Sicilian Avenue WC1

A slightly surreal little slice of Italy in Holborn, Sicilian Avenue has always been a favourite of mine.  Designed and built early in the 20th century, it is a charming, but small, pedestrianised row of shops and cafes with a distinctly Italian flavour.  I haven't actually eaten at any of the cafes along here - they look cute, in a stereotypical Italian pasta joint kinda way.  One of these days I will check them out - the tricky thing for me is, if I am in that area and I feel hungry my natural instinct is to head straight for Bea's of Bloomsbury, which does amazing food and sensational coffee.  So for me, Sicilian Avenue is more about the visual and on that front it's a winner.

J. Sheekey WC2

I had wanted to go to J. Sheekey for ages. Whilst the press focusses on their celeb clientele, I had always heard that the food was amazing.  Well today, I realised my long-held ambition to go there and I can confirm the food is amazing. There was a slight wobble at the beginning as the waiter misheard my order for "beets" as "bisque" - however they were very apologetic and offered to swap. I chose to stay with the soup and it was lovely. For main course I had fillets of red mullet with a fried courgette flower and broad bean and plum tomato salsa. Oh man - it was goooooood. The red mullet was divine and the salsa was a perfect accompaniment.  The courgette flower, whilst tasty (in a fried food sort of way), was kinda redundant compared to the rest of the loveliness on the plate.  I could eat this dish every day, it was perfect.  I washed it down with a chilled glass of Stellenbosch Chardonnay (my other half is South African so I have learnt to love the Western Cape wines).  Given J. Sheekey is a sister restaurant of The Ivy, that restaurant's famous dessert of iced berries with hot white chocolate sauce was on the menu, so it seemed rude not to have it.  For those of you that have had this dish will agree with me I'm sure that it is dessert perfection.  J. Sheekey is a really lovely restaurant - both the food and the setting (I am a sucker for wood panelling) so all I can say is, save your pennies and just go.

L. Cornelissen & Son WC1

I am a sucker for art supply shops (and stationery shops in general actually) and one of my favourites is L. Cornelissen & Son on Great Russell St in Bloomsbury.  It is a wonderful shop - when you walk through the door you feel like you are on the set of a Harry Potter film.  Powdered paint colours are in tall glass jars, with weird names like Caput Mortuum (which adds to the magician vibe) and old fashioned wooden paintbrushes are hung in bunches on the wall.  There is an amazing selection of sketchbooks and other art supplies also.  I really love this shop - and of course it is my favourite 'hood, Bloomsbury.

Bubble Tea at Jen Cafe, Chinatown WC2

One of the things I love about Summer in central London is going to Jen Cafe in Newport Place in Chinatown and having a bubble tea.  Sometimes called pearl tea or boba (apparently in LA), this stuff is so weird but so cool.  You can have all sorts of different flavours - tea flavours, fruit flavours, sweet flavours like chocolate, but they all contain rubbery, sticky tapioca balls, which you suck up along with the tea, through extra thick straws.  Trippy huh?  There is so much to see and experience in Chinatown, even if it is relatively small.  I love browsing through the supermarkets like Loon Fung on Gerard Street and what better way to do it than with a bubble tea in your hand?  Once you're done, head to Imperial China on Lisle Street for dim sum.  I have yet to find my favourite bubble tea flavour but the one pictured is pineapple, which was really nice, although be prepared - these babies are really sweet!  My friend Rachel had mint tea, which tasted a bit too much like mouthwash so stay clear of that one...

Serpentine Gallery - Kensington Gardens W2

How cool is the Serpentine Gallery?  Such a great building, hidden away in beautiful Kensington Gardens, so in some ways ultra trad but then exhibiting the cutting edge in modern art and with an annual temporary pavilion built by a leading architect or designer (this year's is designed by Jean Nouvel).  The perfect mix really.  I recently saw the Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition, which was fantastic (I am a fan though - I know his work divides opinion).  Years ago I went to one of their swanky Summer parties (as a plus one mind you) and whenever I go back I remember my friend Sam and I getting drunk and leering at YBAs.  So make sure you go and visit - admission is free (I love that about London's galleries and museums) and they are open late on Friday nights during Summer.