Salt Beef, Gin, Etc: Mishkin's Review

Update (June 2016): Mishkin's is now permanently closed.

I jumped on the Polpo train pretty early and have visited all of the first four restaurants in Russell Norman's too-hip-to-be-a-chain mini-chain at least twice. Somehow, though, Mishkin's, an English take on a hip, New York Jewish deli, has eluded me thus far. Located on Catherine Street in Covent Garden, it is also the only restaurant in the clan that allows you to book in the evenings, which caught me unawares when I made last-minute plans with a friend last night and we were told that tables and the lovely red, diner-style booths were booked solid until 10 pm. Luckily, you can eat at the small, well-stocked bar and because it's a Russell Norman joint, the bar is a very cool place to sit. And in case it isn't clear, Katz's Delicatessen, Mishkin's ain't.

Mishkin's: Salt beef. Gin. Meatloaf.

We arrived at 7.15 and had to wait about 20 minutes for two bar stools to become free, which I didn't think was too bad for a Friday night, although the queue had grown by the time we left. While we waited, we sipped some excellent cocktails, most of which were gin-based, which is perfect for me. I chose the Clover Club (Plymouth, raspberry, lemon), which was pink, tart and strong. The glass in which it was served was elegant but it's a shame it wasn't a longer drink.

Mixing up my Clover Club. Pretend you didn't see the Carlsberg can.

When we were seated, we were faced with the problem of deciding what to order. Lots of things sounded good but I kept honing in on the more British dishes--the fish finger sarnie, for example, and the fried egg and chips--and I felt I ought to order something more venue-appropriate on my first visit. Luckily, my companion hails from across the pond and was able to translate some of the menu items. In the end, we decided to go for mac and cheese with salt beef, which the menu designated as "to share." The bartender told us we'd probably need another dish though, so we also ordered half a salt beef sandwich with cauliflower slaw on the side. Actually, we would have been fine with just the mac and cheese and a side of mushy peas or chips (the latter looked amazing), but we managed to eat most of our meal. It all tasted great to me (I'm no expert) and my American friend concurred. The only problem was that we had no room for pudding, which is a pity because I was really keen to try the warm choc chip cookie with ice cream and to see what Bananas Foster looked like.

Mishkin's, like its sister restaurants, manages to be both hip and relaxed at the same time, which can be rare in central London. The food and drink was excellent and the prices were pretty reasonable. One of the confusing thing about some of Norman's other restaurants is that the combination of small and large dishes on the menu means that it can be tricky working out how much food to order, but the Mishkin's menu has just main course and pudding options. If there are two of you, the bar is a lovely place to sit, but if you're in a bigger group, I would recommend booking a booth.

Mishkin's. 25 Catherine Street, London, WC2B 5JS (Tube: Covent Garden). Website.

Glossybox April 2012 - Au Naturel

Once again, it has been a long wait between Glossyboxes. I got my March box about six weeks ago. The Glossybox team explained that delays were due to the four-day Easter weekend and, as someone who works for a weekly publication where four-day weeks just mean five days of work in four days, I do sympathise. But it would be nice if the timing was more consistent each month.

Anyway, let me give a quick update on the products in my March Glossybox. I am not a perfume person so haven't used the Narciso Rodriguez sample. I'm still working my way through my existing Molton Brown shower gels and haven't got to this sample yet, but I will definitely use it eventually. I've been using the YSL serum every evening and haven't noticed much difference (I am lucky not to have many lines or wrinkles); I've used about two-thirds of the sample. I love the Burberry Lip Mist and wear it all the time: it's a pretty, peachy nude colour, which goes with everything, and it's also very moisturizing. I've used a bit of the Clarins body cream, but only because I have such a big body cream/moisturizer backlog that I feel I have to work through it.

Onto the April box, then. Well, April turns out to have been the cruellest month for me, Glossybox-wise, and although the products were all pretty nice, there were, once again, too many moisturizers for me; more specifically, too many moisturizers for dry skin, which aren't compatible with my oily-combination skin. This month, the theme was "natural beauty," with five "natural" beauty products in a biodegradable box (the packaging was particularly gorgeous this month). Here are the products I received:

April Glossybox. Top: Inika eyeliner. Bottom (L-R): Figs & Rouge balm, Monu collagen cream,
Burt's Bees body lotion and Caudalie SOS serum.

1. Caudalie Vinosource SOS Thirst-Quenching Serum (10 ml). I got another product from Caudalie's Vinosource line in the beauty box I ordered from the now-defunct Carmine last year. It was too intensive for my skin type and I didn't really like the fragrance (this SOS serum has a similar smell). I might give this a go once I've finished my YSL serum from last month's box, but even though it is supposed to be non-oily, a quick test indicated that it probably isn't suitable. £29 for the 30 ml full size.

2. Inika Cosmetics Organic Eyeliner in purple minx (full size). This is my favourite product in the box and the only one I'm really looking forward to using. Purple minx is a really pretty, deep aubergine purple colour. Apparently, it has a "rich and creamy consistency unparalleled in the world of natural liners." I don't know about that but it does apply really nicely and is very pigmented. £11.75.

Inika eyeliner in purple minx. Figs & Rouge balm in cherry & vanilla

3. Monu Moisture-Rich Collagen Cream (50 ml full size). The label says "for dry, very dry or dehyrdated skin" so I know this isn't going to be far too rich for me. I love the smell (it contains rose and geranium essential oils) and it is a full-size product, which is a shame because I probably won't be able to use it. I may try to give it away as a gift, though. £17.50.

4. Figs & Rouge balm (8 ml full size). I thought this was just a lip balm at first and although it smells really nice (cherry and vanilla) and feels lovely and tingly on the lips, I am quite devoted to my Vaseline cocoa butter lip therapy. Actually, though, you can also use this on the hands, face and body. I wouldn't put it on my face but I might use it on my elbows, perhaps, if they were dry. It's also a little smaller than the Vaseline lip therapy tins and the packaging is much prettier too, so I'll probably keep it in my on-the-go make-up bag. £3.29.

5. Burt's Bees Naturally Nourishing Milk and Honey Body Lotion (70 g). What was I just saying about the surfeit of body lotions in my life? Dear Glossybox, that's enough body moisturizers (ed). I do like a lot of Burt's Bees products and this has a really nice fragrance (milk and honey, in case the name didn't give it away). I may even move this to the front of my body moisturizer queue, ahead of the three or four other body moisturizers I've received in past beauty boxes. Praise indeed... £9.99 for the 190 g full size.

Total value of the products in this month's Glossybox: about £48.20. There were some fairly high-value samples in this month's box, which included three full sizes, but given that I only love one product (the eyeliner), like one (the balm), and will use one other for the sake of it (the body lotion), the value to me is much lower. It is definitely worth more to me than £12.95, though.

Overall rating: 2/5. This box has been the most disappointing, not because it didn't contain nice products, but because of two problems. 1) There were too many of a similar type of product (i.e. moisturizing products) suitable only for one skin type (dry to very dry). 2) The over-represented product category is one that doesn't appeal to me. My skin is quite fussy and I don't like to mess it around by trying out new moisturizers, especially those designed for people with the opposite skin type to me. I understand, of course, that these beauty boxes are all about the luck of the draw and while I got lucky in my first few months, the past two haven't been so good for me. It would be nice if Glossybox started personalizing the contents based on people's beauty profiles sometime soon, although I can imagine that will be very difficult to implement.

"Hanging on in Quiet Desperation"

I almost didn't go to the preview of Café de Flore this evening, even though it was free and in a cinema near my office. The description on IMDb didn't really tell me anything about whether or not I would enjoy the film:

A love story between a man and woman. And between a mother and her son. A mystical and fantastical odyssey on love.

On the basis of this, I thought the film would be some sort of francophone version of The Time Traveller's Wife in which the titular existentialist-hangout-turned-tourist-trap-café would serve as a TARDIS, allowing the characters to travel through time and space as they carried out their "mystical and fantastical odyssey on love." I was wrong, of course, although having seen the film, my prediction doesn't seem quite so wacky. My main advice for anyone who goes to see it is to watch carefully — especially the small details — and to enjoy the journey.

Montréal. 2001. A 40-something DJ (Kevin Parent) is playing in his swimming pool, laughing with his beautiful younger woman and his two daughters. Don't be fooled by the seeming perfection of his life, because he's dealing with a number of problems. In the meantime, though, he flies to the UK for a gig. People dance at Fabric (or wherever) while he mixes the Doctor Rockit electro version of the song Café de Flore. It's all very arty: blurry shorts of a group of young people at the airport. Lights. Sad music. Electronic music. Etc.

Meanwhile, in Paris, some 30 years earlier, a beautiful young woman (Vanessa Paradis) gives birth to a boy with Down's syndrome. Forced to raise him alone, she vows to do all that she can to ensure he lives long past the expected 25-year lifespan. He is her whole world and she will do anything for him. You can tell it's the late 1960s because everything seems sepia-tinted and because of the record player, which is usually playing the son's favourite song, Café de Flore. There's a record player in our DJ's apartment too, though. Music is super-important to him: it connects him to his first wife and serves as a weapon through which his tween daughter exacts revenge on him for leaving her mother.

And so we alternate between 2001 and 1969, with many other flashbacks, dreams, nightmares and long, languorous shots thrown in for good measure. Sometimes, we see two goth teenagers, a sad-looking girl and a boy who thinks he's Robert Smith. They listen to Pink Floyd and The Cure. The DJ tells his shrink all about the pictures of her, whoever she is.

It is difficult to say much more without spoiling the film but suffice it to say, it wasn't anything like what I was expecting. Café de Flore is lyrical, beautiful, haunting and enigmatic. Vanessa Paradis stands out as the determined 1960s mother, and it's hard not to be charmed by her son (Marin Gerrier). The soundtrack is fantastic — an interesting mix of The Cure, Pink Floyd, a couple of versions of the titular song, a few sigur rós tracks and this gorgeous song called Le Vent Nous Portera (Sophie Hunger's cover of a Noir Desir track). Incidentally, the café hardly features in the film; I thought I caught a glimpse of the signature green-trimmed chairs and tables at one point, but that was about it.

There may be some spoilers in the rest of this post, although I try not to go into much detail about what happens and what it might all mean:

Towards the end, Café de Flore began to feel a bit David Lynch lite. Writer-director Jean-Marc Vallée hits you over the head with his repeated shots, imagery and motifs. Children in the back of a car, an angry woman pounding the horn of her car in rage, the teenagers looking at each other adoringly. The dreams and dream-like sequences. The mysticism. The foreshadowing. The somewhat confusing achronological storyline. At some points, you might well wonder whose drug-induced hallucination you are going into, to paraphrase Inception, but I don't think the puzzle of Café de Flore is that simple. And actually, I don't think this film necessarily needs to be interpreted or decoded in the same way as Mulholland Drive, although the "mystery" of how everything connected together kept me gripped almost until the ending.

Shedding Light on Buckingham Palace

My plans for the evening were cancelled and so despite the inclement weather, I found myself hopping on a bus to Grosvenor Place, of all, er places, in search of a photo op highlighted by Londonist yesterday. In honour of the queen's birthday in her Diamond Jubilee year, The Prince's Foundation for Children and the Arts is projecting a series of portraits of the queen and children's self-portraits onto Buckingham Palace until 11.30 tonight as part of the Face Britain project.

Hardy patriots enjoying Face Britain's Buckingham Palace projections.

By the time I got to Buckingham Palace, it was pouring with rain and I was a little worried about my camera but because we are such a patriotic nation, there was a good-sized crowd outside, taking photos and watching the images change. Actually, most people were probably tourists and professional or would-be pro photographers, but still.

It looked very cool and I took a whole load of photos, assuming--as with the projections onto Senate House in Nowheresville for the university's 800th birthday--that this probably wasn't a sight I would see again. My favourite photo is probably the top one, with the couple sheltering under their Union Jack brolly. And yes, I did have to wait about five minutes for the Union Jack background to reappear on the palace, hoping that the couple wouldn't move on in the meantime! I've included a couple of other photos too, to give a better idea of what the blinged-up palace looked like.

Upstairs, Downstairs: La Bodega Negra Review

La Bodega Negra ('the black store'), which opened near Leicester Square a few weeks ago, is a tale of two restaurants; both serve Mexican food but each has its own floor, entrance and style. At 16 Moor Street, you can enter into the more casual, diner-liker cafe, which serves tarted up Mexican street food and fruity cocktails. The Old Compton Street entrance (painted black and with a 'sex shop' sign, which doesn't really narrow it down very much in that part of the world) leads down into the dark, sleek basement where bigger and pricier dishes are served.

La Bodega Negra, Moor Street entrance

Two friends and I decided to go for the no-bookings cafe last night. We arrived at about 7 pm and the place was bustling, but we perched at the bar and enjoyed a cocktail while we waited for our table. My watermelon margarita was very good--fruity and sweet but with enough kick to set the right sort of tone for a Thursday evening. The service was a little inconsistent--Balham Babe and I got our drinks quite quickly but it took our other friend nearly 10 minutes to pin down a bartender. After a hectic day in the office, I had lost all sense of time by this point, but we probably only had to wait about half an hour until we were seated at a nice, cosy corner booth.

Watermelon margarita; other flavours and
frozen margs are also available.

The menu isn't huge in the cafe; basically, you can have various forms of street food (tacos, quesadillas, etc) or, if you're in the mood for something meatier, there are steak and roast chicken options. As La Bodega Negra feels like a brunchy sort of place, I decided that huevos rancheros at 7.30 pm was perfectly acceptable. The dish--two fried eggs with black beans on a tortilla--was pretty tasty, although with very little in the way of carbs, I might not have found it filling enough had I been hungrier. You could opt to have it with bacon or steak but I'm quite fussy about my bacon and didn't want to risk it. BB was thinking about having one of the quesadillas but we weren't sure what huitlacoche was. A quick Google suggested it was a corn fungus, although the word 'truffle' did also appear in the search results. We asked the Hispanic waiter and he concurred that it was 'corn fungus,' so BB decided to have the same as me instead. They definitely need to work on a more appetizing translation of huitlacoche: 'Mexican truffle' perhaps. Our third amiga ordered the prawn tacos, which were pretty but small, although with decent-sized portions of beans and rice on the side, the portions seemed about right. We did also order some corn chips and guacamole to share, but the aforementioned spotty service meant these didn't arrive until we had nearly finished our main courses.

I wasn't really tempted by any of the puddings, although if I had been hungrier, I might have gone for the panna cotta with hibiscus fruits. It's a shame that churros feature only on the downstairs menu and aren't on offer in the cafe. We had to order the bill twice, which we didn't mind, because we were happy to sit and chat, but the people waiting for a table might have been less pleased. The bill, when it arrived, came in a decorative box, which is original, I suppose!

Bill-in-a-box

Overall, we paid about £20 each, which included a cocktail, corn chips, main course and service. This isn't too bad, given you would pay a similar amount at Wahaca and La Bodega Negra is a much cooler hangout, with its old-style posters and intimate, candle-lit setting. The food, drink and ambiance were very good and it was only the service that let the side down a little. Nonetheless, I plan to go back to try out the tacos and another cocktail or two in the near future, and when the buzz has died down a little, I'd also like to check out what goes on below the stairs.

La Bodega Negra. 16 Moor Street, London, W1D 5NN (Tube: Leicester Square/Tottenham Court Road). Website.

Cabin Fever

You know the characters: the good girl (Molly Ringwald Neve Campbell Kristen Connolly), the slut (Anna Hutchison), the jock (Emilio Estevez Chris Hemsworth), the brain (Anthony Michael Hall Jesse Williams) and the stoner (Judd Nelson Fran Kranz). You know the story: the five of them head off to an isolated cabin in the woods for a weekend of fun and frolics, but their holiday soon turns out to be more the stuff of nightmares than of dreams. So far, so standard. But Drew Goddard's new film Cabin in the Woods is anything but standard, and there as many twists and turns as, well, a Rubik's Cube.

Time Out London gave Cabin in the Woods a rare five-star review, explaining that the film "doesn’t so much set out to reinvigorate horror as pick it apart, analyse it, laugh at it and then blow it to smithereens just for kicks." The reviewer cites examples of films that have revolutionised the horror genre for better (Night of the Living Dead) and for worse (Scream). This put me off because Scream is one of my all-time favourite films--it is clever, it is funny, it is ironic and it is knowing, but it also works very well as a twisty, twisted thriller--although when I got to the end of the review, I realised Tom Huddleston was criticizing the sequels/spin-offs/rip-offs it spawned, which is fair enough. Time Out also says that Cabin in the Woods is "the funniest horror film since Evil Dead 2, the smartest since New Nightmare and surely one of the most breathlessly entertaining, original movies of the year." I agree with the third part and, perhaps even the second part, but I think "funniest since Evil Dead 2" is a bit of a stretch. There are laughs, sure, but not very many. Overall, though, I enjoyed the film a great deal. If you plan to watch it, I would advise you not to read the rest of this post, as although I try not to spoil too much in my reviews, it is the kind of movie where it is best to enter with as blank a slate as possible.

At the very beginning of the film, we see two guys in a generic office building getting some coffee and complaining about some technical problems they seem to be having. The title card pops up and then we cut to the ill-fated fivesome as they prepare for their trip and hit the road. An unpleasant encounter with a creepy gas station attendant doesn't put them off too much and before too long, they are diving into the lake next to the cabin, getting drunk and playing truth or dare. There's a really creepy basement with all sorts of weird shit, from music boxes, to masks, old diaries and other items that wouldn't look out of place at the Black Museum. Oh, and did I mention the two-way mirror the brain, Holden, finds behind a gruesome painting on the wall in his bedroom?

These scenes are inter-cut with scenes at the office we saw earlier and it soon becomes clear that the people in the office are able to exert some control over the cabin and its environs. They can raise the temperature to encourage the girls to get their kit off, they can release pheromones to encourage them all to get it on, and they can make Bad Things happen. It's all about free will, the office people say, and the Famous Five must make decisions that may influence their chances of survival (given how much control the office people have over the cabin crew, this is somewhat dubious, but whatever helps them sleep at night).

But to what end? Is this some kind of reality TV show? A Hunger Games-like set-up? There are elements of both, for sure, but the fact that the film was written by Goddard and Joss Whedon may provide some hints at the direction it ultimately takes. Personally, I would have preferred a more Hunger Games-esque movie but that may just be because I'm more interested in alternate realities and near futures than full-on supernatural horror. That isn't to say I didn't enjoy Cabin the Woods; I thought it was exciting and compelling and I enjoyed the game of spot-the-horror-movie-tropes: a hand grasping through the earth, characters breaking Randy's rules for surviving a horror film, and so on. Ultimately, though, the final twist seemed anti-climactic and not very surprising (again, this is mainly due to my taste in films)

Crime and Punishment

The State of Texas executed 17 people in 2010, just over a third of the total executions in the US that year, and yet almost everyone Werner Herzog talks to in his new film, Into the Abyss, from the families of victims, to the former chief of one of Texas's death row facilities, seems to be uncertain about the use of the death penalty. Most are against it.

I am a big fan of The Good Wife and I also read and watch a lot of crime and legal thrillers and one thing that is usually important is the notion of innocence. Some of the best episodes of The Good Wife involved twists where the innocent-seeming client Alicia Florrick and her firm are representing turns out to be guilty, or vice-versa. There was a great episode with a last-minute, against-the-clock death row appeal, too. Legally, of course, it doesn't matter to the law firm whether their clients are innocent or guilty (although it does help if they are innocent), but dramatically, our perceptions of innocence or lack thereof are important.

But Into the Abyss is a documentary, not a drama, and questions of guilt and innocence don't really come up; they are beside the point. In the film, Herzog profiles Michael Perry, who in 2001, at the age of 19, was convicted of murdering a 50-year-old woman, Sandra Stotler, with his friend Jason Burkett, because they wanted to steal her two fancy cars and killing her seemed to them to be the most straightforward way of doing this. Perry was sentenced to death and Burkett, who was also convicted of murdering Stotler's teenage son and a friend, is serving 40 years in jail. We find out later that it may have been Burkett's father's moving testimony in court that saved him from the death penalty.

When Herzog talks to Perry, it is eight days before his execution but Perry seems fairly calm, even though his father recently died; Perry found religion in jail and is convinced that there is something better waiting for him on the other side. Later, we see him proclaiming his innocence--he blames Burkett and Burkett blames him--but he is resigned to his fate. Herzog then allows a local detective to introduce the details of the crime and the crime scenes, and then speaks to the siblings of the victims, Jason Burkett, Burkett's father, the man who used to run the Huntsville death house and others involved with the crime, the victims or the business of putting people to death. Both men are uneducated and clearly had difficult upbringings, we learn--Burkett had a lot of medical issues and his own father was frequently in prison, where he is currently serving a life sentence. Perry had left home and was living out of a car boot until he persuaded Burkett to let him live with Burkett temporarily.

Herzog doesn't appear on camera and there is no voice-over, just a few intertitles and Herzog's interviews. He does not state his own views but then he doesn't really need to because his interviewees so often put them into their own words. Lisa Stotler-Balloun, the sister and daughter of two of the victims, is still clearly devastated about what happened to her brother and mother, the tragedy made so much worse by the fact that she lost many other close family members in tragic circumstances in the space of a few years. She hates Perry and Burkett for taking her mother and brother from her but even she states that life imprisonment would have been enough and that executing Perry wouldn't bring anyone back. The two men did something terrible and they should pay for it but not, the film argues, with their lives.

Into the Abyss is a sad film and although its subtitle is 'a tale of death, a tale of life', perhaps 'a tale of death and of miserable lives' would have been more accurate because it doesn't seem as though anyone who appears in the film has led a happy, fulfilled life. Although Herzog's opinions are evident throughout, this is no Michael Moore polemic. It is understated and moving, shot through with a raw, brutal honesty, and I really liked it.

One Good Turn

Given that I don't like bikes and I'm not particularly fond of kids, The Kid with a Bike (Le gamin au vélo) may seem like an odd film choice for me. But there aren't many great films out at the moment and, faced with a choice between several different arty and/or foreign films, I decided to go for the new movie from Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, mainly because I was at the première at the Cannes Film Festival last year. And, in case it isn't clear from my photo in that blog post, when I say "at," I mean "watching the stars arrive at the Palais des Festivals through a chain-link fence."

Cyril Catoul (Thomas Doret) is the eponymous kid, who is indeed seen on his bike for about 60% of the film. He spends another 10% of the film trying to get his bike back from various would-be thieves and another 10% running away or just plain running. Abandoned by his crap dad (Jérémie Renier), who wants to start a new life with no kids or bikes, he is taken in to a children's home but he is far from happy and is constantly trying to escape and to try to find his dad. He doesn't believe his father could really have abandoned him. By chance, he meets Samantha (Cécile de France), a hairdresser, who, after seeing quite how distressed Cyril is, helps him get his bike back and agrees to look after him at the weekends. This is no straightforward happily ever after, however, because Cyril still insists on meeting up with his father, even though he might not like the outcome, and Samantha's patience is tested when Cyril falls in with a bad crowd, led by the charismatic Wes (Egon Di Mateo), who seems to like Cyril but whose criminal activities aren't the best influence.

De France is key to the strength of the film. She is great as the caring Samantha, who really doesn't want to regret doing the right thing. Doret's troubled Cyril is suitably sullen, angry and devastated; I didn't always like Cyril but I did always sympathise, especially after seeing his useless father, who is symbolic of everything that has ever gone wrong in Cyril's life and demonstrates why the boy finds it so difficult to trust or care for anyone. At 87 minutes, The Kid with a Bike is a fairly short film and it is tightly edited, although there are a lot of scenes of Cyril riding his bike looking sad while melancholy music plays in the background. It wasn't one of my favourite films of the year so far but I enjoyed it more than I imagined.

Easter Eggscursions

Because it's a four-day weekend in the UK, the weather isn't allowed to be pleasant. There was a bit of sunshine on Friday, when I managed to photograph these grassy bunnies hanging out in the spring flowers outside the Dorchester Hotel, but since then it's been grey, rainy and fairly cold.

Easter bunnies outside the Dorchester

Nonetheless, I did one of my favourite runs this morning, taking the Tube to Waterloo, running along the South Bank to Tower Bridge, crossing to the North Bank and then heading all the way along to the Bridge and back to Marylebone via Sloane Street and Hyde Park. I like running along the Thames but 15 minutes is about all I can handle on the South Bank, especially on a busy Sunday morning with thousands of tourists enjoying the, er, grey skies. Once you're past the Tower of London, on the north side, the route is clearer until you reach Parliament Square; after that, the Thames Path is much quieter.

Shard, eh?

As far as I could tell, none of the shops were open but Knightsbridge was still rammed. I was quite amused by Harvey Nichols' new concession, Harvey Nickers, but it was closed so I couldn't investigate further.

Harvey Nickers

And in the absence of more spring-like weather, I bought some pretty tulips on Friday, which are at least brightening up my flat.

Perhaps the most surprising thing of all about Easter Sunday is that I haven't eaten any chocolate. Funny how times change.

The Caffeine Chronicles Part IV: Updated London Espresso Bar Favourites

It's been over a year since I mapped my favourite espresso bars in central London. Since then, I've discovered a number of new places and my coffee standards have also risen--latte art is no longer sufficient to win me over! So, I have revised my previous map and come up with a list of my current top ten favourite espresso bars; four were on my 2011 list and six are new.

The only two coffee bars where I haven't linked to a review or mini-review on my blog are, ironically, the ones I have visited most often. The Espresso Room is a common lunchtime destination for me (and a key source of my ground coffee). They do really great coffee and the staff are very friendly, although a) there is hardly any seating and b) they can get a bit confused if you try to order too many things. On a sunny day when I don't mind perching on a seat on the pavement, the Espresso Room is often my first port of call. As for Fernandez & Wells, this was one of the first purveyors of fine caffeine I discovered in London. Now that there are more options, I don't go there quite so often, although its Beak Street location is very convenient for a post-shopping pit stop.


View Updated London Espresso Bar Favourites in a larger map

On to my top ten (bold represents a new addition to my list):

• Prufrock Coffee. 23-25 Leather Lane, EC1N 7TE (Tube: Farringdon or Chancery Lane). Website. Twitter. Review.
• The Espresso Room. 31-35 Great Ormond Street, WC1 3HZ (Tube: Russell Square). Website. Twitter.
• Tapped & Packed. 114 Tottenham Court Road, W1T 1JD (Tube: Warren Street). Website. Twitter. Review.
• Sensory Lab (soon to be known as Workshop Coffee Co). 75 Wigmore Street, W1U 1QD (Tube: Bond Street). Website. Twitter. Review.
• Kaffeine. 66 Great Titchfield Street, W1W 7QJ (Tube: Oxford Circus or Goodge Street). Website. Twitter. Mini-review.
• St Ali (soon to be renamed Workshop Coffee Co). 27 Clerkenwell Road, EC1M 5RN -- just off the eastern edge of the map above (Tube: Farringdon or Barbican). Website. Twitter. Mini-review.
• Store Street Espresso. 40 Store Street, WC1E 7DB (Tube: Goodge Street). Twitter. Review.
• Fernandez & Wells. 73 Beak Street, W1F 9SU (Tube: Oxford Circus). Website. Twitter.
• Borough Barista. 60A Seymour Place, W1H 7JN (Tube: Marble Arch). Website. Twitter. Review.
• Flat White. 17 Berwick Street, W1F 0PT (Tube: Tottenham Court Road or Leicester Square). Website. Mini-review. 

The list is roughly in order but I tend to like each place for different reasons--Flat White is quite low down, for example, because it's so hard to get a seat and the Borough Barista made the list mainly because it is an espresso bar in Marylebone (hooray!). I also created a few sub-categories; it should be easy to see which place is my new favourite!

• Top three for macchiato: Prufrock, the Espresso Room, Kaffeine
• Top three for service: Sensory Lab, Prufrock, Store Street Espresso
• Top three for drinking-in:  Prufrock, Tapped & Packed, Fernandez & Wells

The Caffeine Chronicles Part I: The Department of Coffee & Social Affairs review
The Caffeine Chronicles Part II: AeroPress review
The Caffeine Chronicles Part III: Prufrock Coffee review

The Caffeine Chronicles Part III: Prufrock Coffee Review

On the way back to the office from DoCaSA on Thursday, I had planned to stock up on ground coffee at the Espresso Room but noticed Prufrock Coffee, hidden behind a market stall on Leather Lane. Prufrock has been on my coffee to-do list for a long time but I had always assumed Leather Lane was much further east and so never got round to visiting. As soon as we entered, I knew it was my kind of place and even though we didn't sample the macchiato, I knew the coffee would be very good. I went back this afternoon to check out how Prufrock checked out against my gut reactions.

As is normal in Clerkenwell, Leather Lane was much quieter today than during the week but there were several other customers in Prufrock and one of their regular coffee training courses had just let out, so there was a nice ambiance but plenty of free tables for me and my crossword. I ordered my usual double macchiato and, as is usually a good sign, I got to say when there was enough milk (a long splash or a short dribble, in my case). The coffee was really good--rich and almost chocolatey--and had I not already had a mug of AeroPress this morning, I might well have been tempted to have another. You can also sample various fancy brew methods--Syphon, AeroPress, and so on.

Macchiato plus brownie bite

There are a selection of sandwiches, pastries and cakes on offer. The brownie was great and you can also buy a brownie "bite" for 50p, which is perfect for people like me who find it hard to resist a good brownie but don't always have room for a whole one. The designs on the take-away cups are also really cool: the four-legged bunny is for the 4 oz cup, the six-legged flying insect is for the 6 oz cup, and the eight-legged scorpion appears on the 8 oz cup. You can also buy t-shirts with the bunny on but I seemed to fall between the small and the medium and so procrastinated the decision for now.

Four legs espresso, six legs flat white, eight legs Americano

The staff are knowledgeable and very friendly and Prufrock is a really nice place to hang out. It reminds me of Everyman Espresso and some of my other favourite New York espresso bars, in terms of design and ambiance. Now, if only they would open a branch in King's Cross or Marylebone (not that it would be as cool in either)...

Prufrock Coffee. 23-25 Leather Lane, London, EC1N 7TE (Tube: Farringdon or Chancery Lane). Website. Twitter.

Check out my map of my top 10 London coffee bars here and read more of my 'Caffeine Chronicles' reviews here.

The Caffeine Chronicles Part II: AeroPress Love

I used to be able to function on a single espresso per day but now, I usually need a second caffeine hit. I've been very pleased with my Bodum French Press, but there are a few minor problems with it: 1) it's messy and takes time to clean and 2) it's rather fragile and my overzealous attempts to clean the grounds into the bin have resulted in two broken French presses in as many years. When looking into other options, the one that stood out was the AeroPress, which falls halfway between a cafetière and a filter coffee maker. I'd seen one for sale in the super-hip Everyman Espresso in the East Village last year but never got round to finding out more.

After a bit of online research and a test drink at Sensory Lab, I decided to go ahead and buy one. I ordered from Cream Supplies, and was able to test it out this morning using Square Mile's Sertão coffee, which lived up to the promise of the "intense sweetness of rich toffee and creamy milk chocolate" in the flavour notes. A lot of reviews talk about the "cleanness" of the taste of AeroPress coffee compared to coffee prepared in a French Press, and this is true--there was no sludge left in the bottom of my mug but the coffee still had a rich, smooth, flavoursome taste.

AeroPress starter kit

In the kit, you get the AeroPress (two plastic cylinders--the plunger which slides inside the chamber--and a cap, which holds a flat, circular filter and which twists onto the bottom of the chamber), 350 paper filters, a stirrer, a funnel and the scoop. Before you start, you put a filter into the cap and screw it onto the bottom of the chamber and rest on top of a mug. Some of the reviews I read suggested running hot water through first to warm up the mug and lessen the effect the paper filter will have on your coffee. You then put two scoops of ground coffee into the base of the chamber, fill up to the number two mark with hot but not boiling water, stir for ten seconds and then insert the plunger, applying slow, steady pressure for about 30 seconds until the plunger reaches the bottom of the chamber. This is supposed to be the equivalent of a double espresso but it's not the kind of espresso I like so instead, I make an Americano by topping up my mug with hot water. You then twist off the cap over your dustbin and a neat "puck" of coffee falls straight out; you need to give the bottom of the plunger a quick rinse but everything else is self-cleaning. Easy.

L: Put a filter in the cap, screw the cap onto the chamber.
R: The AeroPress set-up and some Square Mile coffee

The system works by using air pressure to push the coffee through the microfilter, which means the coffee doesn't come into contact with anything apart from the filter paper (unlike the French press, where the metal plunger does touch the coffee). More specifically, as they say on the AeroPress website:

Using the ideal water temperature and gentle air pressure brewing yields rich flavor with lower acidity and without bitterness. Total immersion brewing results in uniform extraction of the ultimate in full coffee flavor. Other coffee makers drip hot water on bed of grounds, over extracting at the center and under extracting at the edge.

Finito!

I couldn't take any photos while I was making my coffee but if you want to know more about how the AeroPress works and to see it in action, check out this YouTube video of Gwilym Davies, World Barista Champion of 2009, doing a demo.

The Caffeine Chronicles Part I: The Department of Coffee & Social Affairs review
The Caffeine Chronicles Part III: Prufrock Coffee review

The Caffeine Chronicles Part I

It is now the Easter bank holiday weekend in the UK and I should probably be celebrating chocolate but instead, I have a few coffee-related posts planned. This is the first, part II is here, part III is here and this is part IV.

It was too cold for eat.st today and I needed some ground coffee for my new caffeine toy, so we decided to hike down to Clerkenwell to try out a new (to me) coffee shop on Leather Lane, the Department of Coffee and Social Affairs (now permanently closed). I liked the look of the place and a promising Time Out review suggested there would be high levels of caffeine satisfaction.

Lunchtime at the Dept. of Coffee & Social Affairs

Leather Lane was busy and hard to navigate this lunchtime and DoCaSA was also bustling but we managed to grab a partial table and ordered a pair of double macchiatos and some sandwiches. The sarnies were nice, if a little pricey for their size: I had mozzarella, tomato and basil on focaccia (£4), which was tasty but probably wouldn't have been filling enough had I not been on my third coffee of the day by this point. As for the macchiato it was pretty good, although it felt as though too much water had been run through and there was a very slight burnt taste to my drink. I might have fared better with a single, perhaps. Overall, the coffee was still good but not NYC-standard.

DoCaSA's double macchiato

With its exposed-brick walls DoCaSA is a funky, friendly place to caffeinate or take lunch. I wouldn't necessarily go out of my way to go there for the coffee (there are plenty of great espresso bars in the area) but DoCaSA has been added to my London database as a cool place to hang out with a macchiato and/or refreshments.

The Department of Coffee and Social Affairs. 14-16 Leather Lane, London EC1N 7SU (Tube: Farringdon or Chancery Lane).

Heads Will Roll

The joke was on me this morning. No, not an April Fool's Day joke--just a simple reading comprehension error. I had a ticket to a preview screening of Headhunters, the latest Scandi-crime thriller, at the Ritzy in Brixton. With no Victoria Line this weekend, I had to get up pretty early to ensure that the meandering number two bus got me to the cinema in time to get a seat. But when I rocked up at the Ritz at about 9.45, I was told (rather bluntly) that the cinema was closed. Oooookay... Another employee came over and explained that the preview was actually at 11, not 10. Oops. I retreated to the only coffee shop on the Brixton Road, a trying-too-hard-to-be-hip Costa. Luckily, I had a book to read; unluckily, it was This Is Life by Dan Rhodes, which proved rather too scatalogical for me.

Eventually, 10.45 rolled around and I took my place in the cinema. Headhunters is based on the book of the same name by Jo Nesbø, whose series of books starring the flawed-but-brilliant Norwegian detective Harry Hole, are usually seen with stickers proclaiming Nesbø as "the next Stieg Larsson." I read Headhunters a few months ago and although I quite liked it, I preferred the Harry Hole books. I guess "brilliant headhunter who uses interviews as a means of obtaining information he can use to burgle the candidates" is a more original character than "brilliant but troubled detective."

The headhunter in question is Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie) who, as he keeps telling us, is only 1.68 m, and has a serious case of short-man syndrome. He's convinced his beautiful, tall girlfriend Diana (Synnøve Macody Lund) will leave him for a taller man and to compensate, lives in a house he can't afford and buys her trinkets that are pricey enough to give his bank manager a heart attack. To supplement his income, he has a little burglary racket going: whenever he interviews someone for a job (and these jobs are usually CEOs for multinational companies), he subtly gets the candidate to reveal whether they have any expensive art, whether the wife/cleaner will be at home and which alarm system they use. His buddy Ove, who works at one of the alarm companies, then disables the alarm for a few minutes, allowing Roger to go inside and steal the art, replacing it with a fake. Ove nips over to Sweden to sell it on the black market and everyone wins.

But Roger soon meets his match in the form of Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a tall, handsome Dutchman whom Roger wants to place in the top spot at the company of one of his clients. He may also be sleeping with Diana--oh, and it seems there may also be a temptingly valuable Rubens painting lurking in Clas's aunt's flat. It should be a simple snatch-and-grab operation for Roger but things soon spiral out of control and he is forced to go on the run, wondering if he can trust anyone in his life.

Headhunters is hard-going and it's very violent but it is also pretty funny, or at least darkly comic. There is a lot of blood and gore and bashed-in faces, but there are lighter moments, including a disgusting but also rather funny (odd) scene that, echoing my earlier reading material, was a little too scatological (I'm not sure if it was worse in the book or the film; both were pretty bad). Equally, there are two obese twin policemen, who reminded me a lot of Thompson and Thomson, who add some levity to the film. The plot is as twisty as some of those mountain back roads shown in the film. Having read the book, I knew what was coming but I can imagine that some might find it a little too convoluted. The other problem is that none of the characters is remotely sympathetic; Roger, the anti-hero, is arrogant, greedy, selfish and insecure and for much of the film, I didn't really want him to have a happy ending. Not that I was rooting for anyone else either. Still, the unlikable characters annoyed me less in the film than the book; maybe this is because I only had to put up with them for 1h40 in the film, or maybe the book's first-person narration by Roger was too much for me.

Overall, Headhunters is a slick, fast-paced and clever thriller. It isn't for the faint-hearted--or those who are about to eat--but I thought the blackly-comic and quirky scenes brought a nice balance to the ambition, gore and violence.

Marylebone in 8-Bit Splendour

When I was working out how to get to Brixton in the morning in the absence of the Victoria Line, I noticed that Google Maps has a really helpful new feature. Look how easy this makes it to navigate around Marylebone:

NoMaRo for the NES

Who would have thought central London could look so green? Sadly, I don't think Google Maps' 8-bit feature will be sticking around too long. Ah, well. Happy April 1st, everyone!

8-bit Marylebone Station in StreetView mode