A Nightmare on Maltby Street

I've had a pretty hectic week, but when one on my friends suggested a Halloween activity that a) cost only £5 and b) was a 10-minute walk from my home, it was hard to say no. Especially when movies, cupcakes and (spoiler alert) duffins were also on offer. Yes, that's right, we went to the Halloween movie night at Bea's Diner in Maltby Street. They show movies in their little arch underneath the railway tracks most Tuesdays, and tonight saw the turn of A Nightmare on Elm Street — the original, of course.

As I was going with several North Americans, they managed to convince me that everyone would show up in fancy dress, even though we're certainly not in Kansas anymore. Sure enough, we were the only ones to make the effort. And when I say effort, in my case this meant a pair of clip on cat ears that my boss brought back from China and some hastily applied whiskers.

The film started soon after 7.30 but we showed up a little early to save our seats and to get some food. As well as the usual sweet treats, on movie nights, Bea's also serves mac 'n' cheese and chilli cheese foot-long hot dogs. As the former was laced with mushrooms, I went for the latter and it was cheesy, spicy and very oozy. Delicious, in other words!

The cakes, meanwhile, were gettin' their Halloween on. I went for a peanut butter and blood jam cupcakes — I don't normally like too much frosting, but Bea's does it so well. In fact there was so much frosting that the cupcake took a tumble when I was trying to photograph it.

Then it was time for the lights to dim and the film to start. We all had a good laugh when we saw that Johnny Depp got the "introducing..." credit. So young, so young. I do like a good scary movie, but the trouble is that I first saw Scream in 1997, when I was 13 or 14 and long before I watched a lot of the other films in the genre it riffs so well. When I first watched Halloween, some three years ago, it just felt so dated and, well, not very scary. I knew all the tropes, I knew all the best lines and I knew the rules.

The same was true of A Nightmare on Elm Street. There were a lot of laughs, sniggers and eye rolls — and this was partly because of the Halloween-fun-time rather than movie-buff crowd — but the biggest scares came from those trippy '80s hairstyles and fashions. Oh, apart from when a train rumbled noisily along the tracks overhead. And when people sent a beer bottle skittering across the echoey warehouse floor. Don't get me wrong; A Nightmare on Elm Street is good fun, but for the post-Scream era, it feels so unsophisticated and the baddie, while visually creative, is too one-dimensional and simplistic; of course, this paved the way for the raft of sequels. Parts of the film felt like they had inspired Home Alone, while the ending was reminiscent of Inception with the whole "exactly whose nightmare are we in now?" thing.

It was a fun night, anyway, although now I just want to rewatch Scream for the millionth time.

A Soho Pilgrimage: Pizza Pilgrims Review

Ever since Pizza Pilgrims started selling their much-lauded Neapolitan pizza from a pimped-up Piaggio Ape van in Berwick Street last year, I've been wanting to find out if the pizza was as good as rumour dictated. But I never seemed to be in that part of Soho at the right time, and with the KERB street-food market so close to my office, I always had other options, including Homeslice and Fundi. Then, the pilgrims — brothers James and Thom Elliot, who did the most fun-sounding research ever when they took their van on a 'pizza pilgrimage' through Italy — opened a bricks-and-mortar pizzeria on Dean Street. Just opposite Pizza Express, of course.

Last night, a few friends and I were in Soho and in need of sustenance and so headed to Pizza Pilgrims. It was almost 7 pm and we were expecting to queue, but there was a free table of just the right size. At street level, most of the floor space is taken up by the prep station and the beautiful, tiled, wood-fired oven, although there are a few seats in the window. Downstairs, there are some more tables — the boys were a little disappointed we didn't get to sit at the foosball table. It was a lot more spacious than I was expecting, with minimal Italian decorations adorning the walls, including an illustration of the van, Concetta, and some cool lampshades made of mini Campari soda bottles.

The menu is divided into three sections: not pizza, pizza and after pizza. If you're after other types of Italian food, just go to Polpo or something. When we found out there was Prosecco on tap and that for £27 we would get one litre, enough for a good-sized glass for each of us, of course we ordered it. It would have been silly not to. The Prosecco was crisp and fruity, and just what was needed on a blustery autumn evening.

The pizza choices were a little trickier, but I went for the bufala — a margherita with buffalo mozzarella. Often, when you order a buffalo margherita, the mozzarella will be raw and the sauce will be replaced by fresh tomatoes, but this was just like the regular margherita but with even creamier and more delicious cheese. Our pizzas arrived swiftly and we weren't disappointed. With a thin base and puffy crust, you could really taste the wood oven. The cheese, as I mentioned was yummy and the sauce was also just right. Overall, it was quite similar to the pizza I had in Motorino, and it's definitely in my top three pizzas in London.

With some olives and a round of beers, the meal set each of us back just over £20. Not quite street food prices, but it would be unfair to compare a lovely meal in a restaurant to a boxed take-away pizza, and we thought it was very reasonable. You can get pizza to take away too, which just makes it easier to go back again soon. And again, probably.

Pizza Pilgrims. 11 Dean Street, Soho, London, W1D 3RP (Tube: Tottenham Court Road). Website. Twitter.

"Houston, I Have a Bad Feeling about This Mission"

As I left the preview screening of Alfonso Cuarón's new movie Gravity this evening, I was walking in front of a group of guys who were far from impressed. "I can't believe a film that was under 90 minutes could drag so much," one of them complained. I feel like we saw different movies, because after an hour and a half of edge-of-the-seat, compelling viewing, I felt physically and emotionally drained. I found Gravity nerve-wrenching and (literally) breathtaking — it took a good 20 minutes before my breathing was completely back to normal. As usual, I try not to give too many spoilers, but this is one of those films where the less you know, the more you will enjoy the experience.

When Gravity opens with a view of the Earth from way, way above, the first thing you notice is how quiet it is. No one can hear you scream, remember? Then amid the eerie silence, the faint crackle of a communications system kicks in, and we zoom out to see two astronauts, Dr Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney) trying to fix an imaging device on their space shuttle. Stone, a medical engineer, is on her first mission, while it's Kowalsky's grand finale. They're having a grand old time with mission control, back in Houston, chipping in with the odd instruction while Kowalsky banters away.

But then disaster strikes and some debris thought to result from a Russian missile strike destroys the shuttle, leaving Stone and Kowalsky tumbling through space, any contact with Houston completely ruptured. I saw the film in 3D and it was highly effective, especially in these opening scenes: you really feel as though you are whirling through space, as disorientated as Dr Stone. "You try keeping your lunch down in zero G," she complains, and I could sympathise!  It is as she starts to spiral around that we finally get to see a close up of her face, and she is terrified. Stone starts to panic, hyperventilating and using up huge amounts of oxygen, but thanks to Kowalsky's calm but authoritative instructions, coupled with some light banter and moderate flirting, he is able to grab hold of her and tether her to him. There are no other survivors on their shuttle: as they explore, things fly past them (and thanks to the 3D, past us too: a toy, a brace, a face. "I hate space," Stone mutters.

A number of problems remain, most notably Stone's rapidly depleting oxygen tank. Then, although they are relatively close to the International Space Station (ISS), Kowalsky thinks the escape pod thingy (technical term!) has probably been destroyed by the debris explosions, and the next nearest man-made structure is a Chinese space station some 100 km away. Oh, and there will probably be more debris in another 90 minutes. However, on the bright side Kowalsky knows where the Russians keep their vodka on the ISS, so swings and roundabouts...

I won't say anything more about the plot or the story, but suffice to say that it's a real nail-biter, but with a few funny moments sprinkled in to break up the tension. Clooney and Bullock are wonderful together. He is playing his charming, Nespresso Man: "I know you never realised how devastatingly good-looking I am until now, but you've got to stop staring and focus." When Stone and Kowalsky become separated, we follow Stone, but the conversation doesn't dry up as she talks to herself, and remembering what Kowalsky told her, to Houston, just in case they can hear her after all.

The film becomes a lot more philosophical at this point. Stone has an existential crisis — should she even bother to fight to survive? Would anyone back home even miss her? As Kowalsky kept saying, it's beautiful up there, and there's nobody up there who can hurt her. When she manages to contact a someone back on Earth through the radio, she begs him to pray for her, even though they don't speak the same language and even though she's never prayed before. This reminded me of Francesca in Canto V of Dante's Inferno. Francesca, who is doomed to be buffeted around by a "bufera infernal" as penance for daring to read saucy Arthurian romances with her dead husband's brother Paolo, begs the pilgrim to pray for her soul. As part of their punishment, Francesca and Paolo are bound together in a single body — not unlike the way Stone and Kowalsky tether themselves together in the face of the space storm.

Visually stunning, gripping and with great performances, particularly from Bullock, Gravity is one hell of a ride. I'd recommend seeing it in 3D — and I'm sure it would be even better at an IMAX cinema.

"You're Not Just a Fisherman"

For some reason, I've always tried to stay clear of Tom Hanks movies. I think it dates to when my parents made me watch Apollo 13. I was 11 and I don't know why it freaked me out so much, but perhaps if I just watched it again, all would be forgiven. I have made exceptions over the years, notably for Catch Me If You Can, which I really like. As such I hadn't planned to see Paul Greengrass's new film Captain Phillips, in which Hanks stars as the eponymous captain of an American container ship that comes under attack by a band of Somali pirates. But the movie's reviews were so positive — the O word being mentioned frequently — that I decided to give it a whirl this afternoon.

Captain Phillips is based on the memoir by the real Captain Richard Phillips of the extraordinary events that befell him back in 2009. I vaguely remember hearing about the story in the news at the time and the fact that Phillips had managed to write a memoir gives away a fairly big clue about the outcome of the film, but this didn't spoil the film in any way, or do anything to erode the incredible tension that builds up, especially in the closing act. It is a genuinely thrilling thriller, and I hardly noticed that it ran to 2h15, let alone minded the length.

As the movie opens, Phillips is tasked with captaining a container ship from Oman to Mombasa on the Kenyan coast. The cargo includes a large amount of food, fresh water and medical supplies, but Phillips has received an email alert to the recent increase in pirate activities off the coast of Somalia — near to where the ship is due to pass. Meanwhile, on the shores of Somalia, another captain is preparing to board his own vessel. Muse (Barkhad Abdi) picks his crew mainly on the basis of the gifts the men can offer him in return for the huge dividends they will surely reap.

Phillips, concerned by the alerts asks his first mate Shane (Michael Chernus) to run a few drills for the crew, to help prepare in the extremely unlikely event that they are boarded by pirates. But during the drill, Phillips spots a pair of dots on the radar that seem to be following his ship. Once they get closer, the binoculars reveal that they are a band of eight or so armed men in a pair of skiffs. And they are definitely heading his way. With a quiet calm, Phillips does everything he can to try to keep his men and his ship safe. After placing a call with an international maritime watch organisation, he tries to manoeuvre the ship in a way that creates large waves. One skiff turns back and the other pushes its engine too far and has to return to the mother ship.

Phillips suspects they will be back, and sure enough, the following day, one of the boats returns and Muse and three of his fellow pirates board the ship. Muse promises he doesn't want to hurt anyone and just wants money, but he is disappointed to find there is only $30,000 in the safe. While two of the Somalis hold two of the senior crew members hostage in the bridge, while Muse insists that Phillips lets him search the ship. He wants to find the crew members whose location Phillips swears he doesn't know.

Things escalate very quickly, and even Phillips' brave actions aren't enough to ensure a rapid happy ending. Rather, his personal ordeal goes on for many more hours and days. It's hard to say too much more without spoiling the story for those who don't know it, but Hanks and Abdi both put in fantastic performances. The chemistry between these two very different captains is superb, coming to a head when Phillips looks Muse right in the eye and says, with utter disgust, "you are not just a fisherman." There have been some criticisms, both of Phillips' book and of his portrayal in the movie, with members of the ship's crew criticising some of his actions as being reckless. I can't really speak to that; I just felt that Captain Phillips was a highly compelling, well-plotted and nerve-wrenching piece of drama, and although there isn't much competition yet, I think Hanks should definitely get an Oscar nod.

South Bank Stroll

October is, apparently, national apple month. And no, not because of the event in San Francisco next week that is expected to launch the next versions of the iPad and the iPad mini. Borough Market declared today Apple Day, and they were hosting a whole series of events, from theatre to strudel making.

I was on my way to the cinema and didn't have a lot of time, but I wandered through the market and picked up some Chegworth Valley apples and admired the autumnal festivities.

Further along the river, I stopped by Shopping & E*ting, a new pop-up café-bar and shop, which is celebrating the National Theatre's 50th birthday. You can pick up some food, including tarte Tatin and Scotch eggs, from the van outside and bring it inside to the shiny bar that forms the centrepiece of the shop. They serve coffee inside too, from a nice-looking La Marzocco machine.

Today, though, I was more attracted by the shopping side of things. They sell a carefully curated selection of stationery (much of it neon coloured, to my delight), stylish homewares and art- and theatre-themed gifts. I picked up a couple of presents, as well as some neon pink washi tape and a magnetic pink pencil for myself.

The pop-up will be there for three months or so — maybe more if the venture is a success. I plan to pop back to try the coffee and the nibbles. And possibly to buy yet another neon pink notebook. I can't not.

LFF 2013 Part III: Drinking Buddies

There's a whole lot of plaid in Joe Swanberg's new mumblecore film Drinking Buddies. Plenty of beards too, and trucker hats. Despite this, in this Q&A with Swanberg after the screening of his film at the London Film Festival tonight, one of the older members of the audience felt compelled to ask why the characters were using such old-fangled record players. Perhaps he was being ironic. Maybe Swanberg should have taken that final step towards hipster-dom and just set the film in Portland instead of Chicago. Who knows? After last night's surprise film, I was just happy to see an entertaining, intelligent indie romance about people sorta like me.

Drinking Buddies cast and crew: cinematographer Ben Richardson,
Anna Kendrick and Joe Swanberg.

Kate (Olivia Wilde) and Luke (Jake Johnson plus some epic facial hair) work together in a cool little brewery. The only female employee, Kate is one of Gillian Flynn's "cool girls" — she likes nothing more than going for a beer and shooting some pool with the guys. She has a boyfriend, Chris (Ron Livingston), with whom she seems to have almost nothing in common. Luke has a girlfriend too — Jill (Anna Kendrick), whom he's been dating since college — but despite this, there is obviously chemistry between Kate and Luke. This is polarised when the four go away together for a weekend at Chris's family cabin, when Kate and Luke just want to sit around playing drinking games while Chris and Jill want to go hiking, with wine and classy picnic sets.

The film explores the relationships of the two couples, but mainly focuses on the friendship — or is it something more? — between Luke and Kate. Nothing much really happens. There is a lot of sitting around drinking beer while having spectacularly inarticulate conversations about nothing much, or sometimes about important things that are hard to express. I thought all four lead performances were great, especially Johnson and Kendrick. Their characters' relationship and their issues felt very real. Wilde's character was a little harder to like, although I thought the actress's portrayal was three-dimensional and interesting. Overall, I liked the film a lot, and not just because I identified with some aspects of the characters. It was nicely paced, sharp and, well, realistic.

After the screening, Kendrick and cinematographer Ben Richardson joined Swanberg (who also played the part of 'angry guy in car') on stage for a Q&A. The film was born out of the way Swanberg was fed up of being condescended to in movies, particularly those about relationships. He wanted to make the kind of romantic film he liked to watch — and about people like him and the people he knows. I think he succeeded: it was intelligent, sharp and adult, but also sweet and funny at times.

As expected, it was revealed that there were no scripts. In fact, Kendrick noted that she didn't even get a written summary of the film ("I received zero paper," she said), just a brief phone call with Swanberg. There wasn't much in the way of rehearsals either, Swanberg admitted, as lots of the scenes were based around conversations the actors had had in real life, such as scheduling a time to talk about getting married. The lack of script also gave the director more freedom: it meant he didn't have to ask the actors to stop doing the things he liked about them, which contributed to his reasons for hiring them in the first place. Kendrick found remembering the choreography more challenging than remembering what her character would have to talk about in each scene. Where did that beer bottle go again? Still, if she thought she had it bad, just think of poor Ben Richardson!

This concludes my 2013 London Film Festival experience. Next year, I must try really hard to keep October a little freer in my diary!

LFF 2013 Part II: Surprise Film

As I left the screening of the London Film Festival's surprise film this evening, I overheard a northern woman saying how it "wasn't everyone's cup of tea." It wasn't my cup of cha either although I do think it was a good surprise film.

After three surprise films that ranged from tedious to mediocre to quirky, I took a year off last year, when, of course, they screened the biggest film in the surprise film slot for years — and the director and star turned up too. I was too lazy to do much research on this year's predictions, but I did check out i-flicks.net again, which had a big list of possibles, ranked in order of likelihood. The Wolf of Wall Street was my favourite on the list, but there were a few others that sounded fun, as well as a couple I really didn't want to see, notably One Chance.

Anyway, I headed off to Leicester Square for the 9 pm screening (as usual, I went for the later of the two, just in case the director or cast showed up), hoping for the best, but expecting the worst. There's something exciting and strangely liberating to have almost no clue about the film you are about to see. Twitter has come a long way since my first surprise film in 2009, though, and pretty much everyone seemed to be scouring social media in the hope that the people in the 8.45 screening would have tweeted. I was trying to keep my ears closed, but the guy sitting next to me said his friend in the other screening had confirmed it was a good one. Good!

LFF director Clare Stewart took the unusual step of playing a message from the film's director (who couldn't be there) before the screening, noting that if you couldn't work out what it was from that huge clue, you didn't deserve to be there. A little harsh for people who have no interest in, and therefore no knowledge of, martial arts. I didn't especially recognise the name of the director, Wong Kar Wai, although My Blueberry Nights was one of the first films I wrote about on this blog. And as there was no title in the opening credits, I only found out that it was called The Grandmaster at the end. We did at least get an appearance from Harvey Weinstein, who told us all how awesome the film was, but that if we didn't like the opening scene, we should probably leave (hardly anyone did).

As I say, I don't care for martial arts films, but The Grandmaster was stylish and flashy, with a great score, and I did get into it eventually, to some extent. I couldn't decide whether I wanted there to be one big, final fight scene, for dramatic reasons, or whether I just wanted it to end before I drifted off. There are only so many slow-mo water shots, slow-mo falling shots and slow-mo snow shots a girl can see late on a school night before fading. Obviously, these slow-motion shots were supposed to contrast nicely with the rapid-fire fight scenes, but I would have preferred fewer of the latter too.

The Grandmaster is about Ip Man (portrayed here by Tony Leung), who went on to train Bruce Lee; I have at least heard of the latter... The film opens in 1930s China where there is a big rivalry between martial arts factions from the north and from the south. Our hero, who comes from Foshan in the south, has some fights and wins most of them, but loses to the daughter of the beautiful Gong Er (Ziyi Zhang). The encounter haunts Ip Man for years to come, even after he is forced to move to Hong Kong in 1950, following the Japanese invasion, to try to support his family. In Hong Kong, he meets Gong Er again; she is working as a doctor, having vowed to honour her father (who was killed by another martial artist) by never marrying, never having children and never teaching anyone their art. There are more fights. Some vengeance.... Er, that's it.

I feel like The Grandmaster probably isn't a bad first martial arts film to see, but it hasn't really encouraged me to delve deeper into the genre. I knew too little about martial arts and about Ip Man and even Bruce Lee to really appreciate the film fully. So, I'm a little disappointed, but at least this year the film was of a high calibre — it's Hong Kong's entry for the foreign film category of next year's Oscars — it just happened to be part of a genre I don't like.

LFF 2013 Part I: Don Jon

The 2013 London Film Festival is almost over, but for me it's only just begun, as the three films for which I got tickets are all being shown this week.

First up was Joseph Gordon-Levitt's directorial début Don Jon. As he also wrote the film and stars as the, er, titular character, I was fairly hopeful that JGL would put in an appearance at the film's UK premiere in Leicester Square tonight, and sure enough, as I arrived just before six, having rushed from work, he was making his way across the red carpet.

The security folks asked us to wait while the real paparazzi did their thing, which meant I ended up with a fair few shots of the actor-director's rear (not bad!) before he finally turned around and we were allowed to go on in. My contributions towards the objectification of the male form may be of interest to those who felt the movie missed out on the opportunity to deal with the converse — the objectification of the female form.

LFF director Clare Stewart held a short Q&A session with Gordon-Levitt before the movie, although he didn't seem to be in the mood for a deep and meaningful discussion. But he was charming, witty and funny as he discussed the "loveable rogue" he plays and praised the BFI, complaining about the lack of similar government-funded film institutions in the US.

As for the film, it's a sort of bastardised hybrid of Don Juan and Jersey Shore. As Don Jon opens, we are treated to a high-octane montage of boobs and bums: in adverts, in music videos, on the red carpet. Everywhere. Then we meet Jon (Gordon-Levitt), our anti-hero and kingpin in his little New Jersey posse. His friends call him The Don (but of course). He doesn't like many things, he tells us; just his body, his car, his friends, his lady friends, his family, his church. Oh, and his porn. He's seriously addicted to online porn and even the little start-up noise his computer makes has the Pavlovian effect of turning him on. This doesn't stop him from going out with his friends and bringing home a different woman each night, but after she lies deep in a post-coital sleep, he sneaks away and fires up his computer. Each Sunday, he runs into his church, late for the service, and then confesses his sins of the week, waiting for the Hail Marys to be doled out (he later translates these into pull-ups and weight reps). Needless to say, Jon is a far cry from Cameron James in 10 Things I Hate About You.

He feels something is missing, though, and when he meets the glamorous Barbara (Scarlett Johansson) in a club one night and she refuses to go home with him, he wonders whether building an actual relationship with a woman might help him get past his addiction. And initially, it seems to work. He and Barbara have fun and they fall in love. His parents (Glenne Headly and the hilarious Tony Danza) adore her too — well, lust after is probably more accurate than adore in the case of his father, who can barely contain his, er, praise for Barbara's, er, wits, as he and his son sit at the dinner table in their matching wife-beaters.

Although Barbara is demanding — her most problematic demand being that he stop watching porn — she also wants him to do better for himself than his job "in the service industry" and he starts taking an evening class, where he meets the troubled Esther (Julianne Moore). After catching Jon watching porn on his phone during class, she tries to befriend him, although at first he rebuffs her efforts.

But will Jon ever learn to stop watching porn and love real women or is he doomed to a lifetime of slow bandwidth and used tissues? Some may argue that Don Jon is a shallow film that has missed an opportunity to cover some really meaty issues, but that's OK. It's entertaining and funny, and sometimes even sweet. Jon is a douche but he is indeed a loveable rogue and you find yourself wishing him well, even when he acts like a tool or, at least, like a naughty puppy that doesn't know better. It really is the Gordon-Levitt show here, but there were some other good performances, and some nice uncredited cameos from people like Channing Tatum and Anne Hathaway in the various clips from movies and adverts seen during the course of the film. Overall, then, not a bad directorial début.

Lighthouse Leaps and Premium Pizza

The weather forecast suggested we should expect rain yesterday, but it was beautifully sunny, so we drove up the coast road to Antibes. There's a lovely, bustling produce market on Sunday mornings, and the town has some nice shops, including an excellent English-language bookstore. We had lunch on the sun-bathed terrace of the Café des Chineurs, where I had the pesto gnocchi. My pasta was good, although described less amusingly on the menu than the croustillant de chèvre chaud, which involved "hot goat cheese its sheet of brick." My mum ordered it anyway and it was very tasty!

To walk off lunch, we walked back through the town, past a regatta that was taking place, and up a relatively steep and rocky path to the Garoupe Lighthouse. To encourage you along the way, there were little paintings depicting the run up to Jesus's crucifixion — just in case you thought you were finding the journey hard. Or something. In any case, the views from the top were pretty impressive, although you can't go inside the lighthouse.

We made it back to Cannes in time for sunset, enjoying some bubbly on the rocks near my parents' flat. The sunset over the Esterel mountains was pretty dramatic last night, as it often is at this time of year.

Last night, my mum prepared a whole feast for dinner, with food from the market in Cannes, starting with prawns, followed by an absolutely delicious medium-rare fillet steak with sautéed potatoes and roasted peppers, and finishing with hand-made chocolate and nougat from a shop in Antibes. I definitely ate too much, but it was all so good.

As my final day was on the short side, I only managed a quick run this morning before packing up and walking into Cannes. We had lunch at an Italian restaurant just off the rue d'Antibes called San Telmo. Finding good pizza in France in general and Cannes in particular has always been a challenge, and although our family favourite, Le Vésuvio, is lovely, the pizzas are only adequate. San Telmo did a lot better, and after we had polished off our starters — two shared platters of burrata, cherry tomatoes, rocket and ham — it was pizza time. I stuck to the margherita and am pleased to report that it was very good; certainly the best I've had in Cannes. The base was thin and crispy, with a puffy crust, and the cheese was a good mozzarella and non-greasy (two common problems with French pizza).

We just had time to walk back to the flat and grab our bags before it was time for me to catch the airport bus. It was another dramatic sunset this evening and although I hate Gatwick Airport, it does at least deliver me back to London Bridge efficiently, so I can't complain too much. And now I'll just have to get used to staying in the UK for the next few months, until I book my next adventure.

Mediterranean Meditations

After a day of rain in London, on Friday evening I headed down to Gatwick and caught a late-night flight to Nice, where my parents were waiting to whisk me away to their flat in Cannes. I hadn't been to the Côte d'Azure since last year's soggy film festival and it was nice to be back. After a croissant and a run along the Croisette yesterday morning, we headed to the beach with the French equivalent of hot dogs (mini baguettes and skinny saucisses). Although it was very sunny, the wind made it a little too nippy for me to swim, unlike my brave/mad parents.

In the afternoon, I wandered along the shops of the rue d'Antibes, although as usual, didn't buy anything. After smartening up, we took a taxi to Antibes, where we went for cocktails on the terrace of the Hôtel Belles Rives, a favourite haunt of Fitzgerald et al. My cocktail, the Gatsby, involved gin, lychee liqueur and violet syrup and was fruity and beautiful, and we sat and watched as the sun dipped below the Esterel mountains.

We had a table booked for 7.30 at the hotel's restaurant, but, it turned out, the person who took the booking hadn't told us that it was a special 'Bacchus' themed evening, with five courses, each paired with a premium wine. This didn't sound too terrible until we discovered we had to wait until all the other invités had arrived, which could be as late as 9 pm. Oh, and there would be une petite explication of each wine before we could tuck into each course. This sounded like a rather longer evening than we had planned, but the hotel staff handled it well, letting us have our cocktails with their cocktails, and booking a table at their sister restaurant at the Juana Hotel. The food was nice enough at the Juana, although a little less exciting than we were expecting. The pudding was my favourite part: a delicious chocolate and praline cake.

Without five courses of wine, getting up for an early-morning run was less painful than it could have been. I ran the first mile gently with Papa and then sprinted back along the Croisette after a couple of leaps on Sunrise Beach to invigorate us for the day ahead.

New York Nibbles Part II: Burgers and Scandi Fun

By Monday last week, I was facing a burger crisis: I'd been in New York for over three days and hadn't had one yet. We had hoped to go to The Marrow after our High Line stroll, but they only do their burger at brunch, it turned out. After some searching — of souls and of the New York Times Scoop app — we ended up at Monument Lane in the West Village. I must have walked past this place dozens of times, but never looked in, which is a shame as it's a lovely, old-fashioned neighbourhood tavern. As luck would have it, it was Monday and Monday is burger night, which means you can get a bacon cheeseburger and a beer or glass of wine for $15. Um, yes please. The burger was excellent — juicy and perfectly medium rare, and with lovely crispy bacon. It slipped down nicely with a refreshing Youth on Fire (vodka, lavender tea and pink peppercorn). I was impossibly full but as soon as the waiter mentioned the chocolate and peanut butter cup with caramel popcorn, I couldn't say no. I only ate about half, but it was as amazing as it sounds. The brunch menu looks great too, so I'm sure I'll be back. It's such a cosy, intimate place, that it would be lovely in winter.

Burgers are, it turns out, just like buses: after Monday's indulgence, I had a second on Tuesday night at Diner. Well, I could hardly say no to white cheddar, could I? The burger wasn't quite as good as at Monument Lane — it was more medium-well than medium rare — but still tasty, and the experience was great. The restaurant is inside an old diner car near the bottom of the Williamsburg Bridge. As it was such a hot evening, we sat outside, which had fewer trimmings but just as many hipsters. It's the kind of place where instead of a menu, the waitress tells you what they have and makes notes on the tablecloth for you. As well as the burger (which, thanks to the darkness, didn't look good in any of my photos), we shared a salad to start. I say salad, but really I mean duck confit with toasted baguette and duck fat, plums and rocket. It was delicious. The cocktails were of the blokey persuasion — I had the Saint Sebastian, with tequila, hibiscus, lime and chartreuse. Diner is a very cool place with that wonderful casual-chic Brooklyn vibe.

The final stop on this mini culinary tour was to Acme in NoHo. It's so close to the hotel we've stayed in twice that we've walked past it a bunch of times, and thought about eating there almost as many. Don't be put off by the quirky blue and red sign talking about cajun cooking: inside, it's very classy, and the menu is more New American with a large squeeze of Scandi. Having raved about New York tacos all week, I persuaded my partner in crime to share the fish tacos to start and we were both bemused when they turned up encased in a grassy taco holder. Served with dill and smoked salmon, they were good, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the quirky presentation. For my main course, I ordered the chicken, roast potato and egg, which showed up in a giant tagine. The chicken was so tender and juicy, but the eggs were the real winner. It seemed like they had been gently poached and then flash fried for a few seconds. Either way, they tasted great. The cocktails were pretty good too — with a few girl-friendly gin-based offerings, unusually for this trip.

Normal, London-based blogging service will resume soon, but first I'm going to Cannes for a long weekend with my parents. My life isn't usually anywhere near this glamorous, I swear.

Monument Lane. 103 Greenwich Avenue @ West 12th St (West Village). Website. Twitter.
Diner. 85 Broadway @ Berry (Williamsburg). Website.
Acme. 9 Great Jones Street nr Lafayette (NoHo). Website.