Blind Gin Tasting at The London Gin Club

Somehow, I've made it this far without paying a visit to The London Gin Club, a temple devoted to the worship of the juniper berry in The Star at Night pub, just steps from the hustle and bustle of Oxford Street. This weekend, though, a fellow gin fan was in town and it seemed like the perfect time for some reverence.

Inside, the bar has a cosy, vintage feel with low lighting and retro signage on the walls. It was lucky we booked a table, because it was already full at 6.30 on a Friday night.

At any one time, The London Gin Club has several different tasting menu options, two of which tell you in advance which four gins you will be sampling. However, in the country of the juniper, the blind gin tasting flights are king, and so we both ordered the four-gin blind tasting, which was £26 (LGC members get a small discount). There were, I think, gin cocktails and single G and Ts on the menu but we didn't get that far.

The waitress brought over our eight small numbered vials of gin, a couple of bottles of Fever Tree tonic and an assortment of garnishes. We also got our first two glasses and were encouraged to smell the gin and taste it neat before adding tonic and the garnish we thought was most appropriate.

I had a fair bit of gin-tasting practice during Dry Ginuary, but I'm not sure how successful I was at the blind tasting. I could definitely taste differences between the four gins, but I wasn't very good at describing the flavours (beyond "junipery" and "citrusy").

I had hoped that at the end we would get a nice printed "answer sheet" listing the gins we tried and the tasting notes, but instead the wait staff just scribbled the names down on a sheet of paper. Less ceremonious, but still useful. We both agreed that our favourite was the number three, which was the G'Vine Floraison gin, which was clean, fruity and very drinkable. My second favourite was number two, the Geranium Gin that had turned up in Ginvent, followed by Hayman's 1850. Number four, Elemental Cornish Gin, was my least favourite: it tasted too harsh and bitter for my liking.

The blind tasting was great fun and I highly recommend it. I'm pleased to have discovered the G'Vine, for instance. When I go again, I will peruse the menu and select a couple of gins I would really like to try instead. Four G and Ts is also quite a lot to drink in 90 minutes, even with a few nibbles (the antipasti plate of meats, olives and a tiny amount of bread was reasonable value at £8). The only minor problem with our evening was that the vintage clock on the wall was actually 15 minutes slow, which meant we had to rush to finish our last G and T before yielding our table to the next guests, which was a bit annoying. Next time (and there will be a next time), I'll check the time on my own phone. Time flies when you're having gin!

The London Gin Club. 22 Great Chapel Street, London, W1F 8FR (Tube: Tottenham Court Road). Website. Twitter.

Coffee Dog Day Afternoon

As part of the continued regeneration of King's Cross, the former eyesore in front of the station has been converted into a pleasant square on which a couple of circular kiosks have opened up recently. One of these is Coffee Dogs, which launched this week. I looked them up last year, tempted by their Shake Shack style and Shake Shack menu, including hot dogs, burgers, coffee and frozen custard "new to the UK from Coney Island, USA." Now, Shake Shack may beg to differ about the "new to the UK" claim, but I liked the idea of having such an eatery so close to my office.

I spotted on Twitter that Coffee Dogs was offering 10% off everything during their soft launch, so we went down at lunchtime yesterday to give them a try. There was a bit of a queue — in fact, some of my co-workers were just in front of us in line and not being all that patient given that this was Coffee Dogs' second day of business — and the ordering process wasn't too efficient. I was sympathetic, however: King's Cross is very busy at lunchtimes, and it just takes a few shifts to get everything running smoothly. This is why restaurants do soft launches.

We ordered a couple of British bull dog hot dogs (Cumberland pork sausage with fried onions and mustard), and some garlic fries, a vanilla milkshake and a dessert to share. Our food arrived pretty promptly and we made a beeline for a bench in the station square. The hot dog was really good — sometimes hot dogs can have a very synthetic texture, but these were  really meaty and sausagey. The bun was a little bland, but no one really orders a hot dog for the bun, and the poppy seeds were a nice touch. The fries had a nice garlicky flavour but, in an ideal world, would have been slightly crispier. The milkshake was a little more disappointing: the texture was right but the flavour was a bit weak.

I had wanted to get a frozen custard — the King's Cross, with chocolate and vanilla frozen custard, Oreos, cookie dough, pecan nuts and toffee sauce sounded amazing — but I was worried it have melted by the time I was ready for pudding and I couldn't face queuing twice. However, the doughnuts (courtesy of Dum Dums) had already caught my eye and I decided it was high time that I finally tried a cronut. The oh-so-stripy zebra cronut was very tasty: the dark and white chocolate topping making a nice sweet contrast with the croissanty layers. Next time, I'm definitely trying the white chocolate and pistachio doughnut.

I didn't need any coffee today and a soft launch probably isn't the best time for a coffee snob to test out a macchiato, but Coffee Dogs' "art of good coffee" infographic bodes well.

Our little fast-food feast set us back about £14 (including the 10% discount). Not super-cheap, but not too expensive either. I am interested in finding out how good the burgers are because I'm not really a huge hot-dog fan and I'm always looking for new burger options in King's Cross. Hopefully, with a few more days' practice the kinks in the service will be ironed out and my minor quibbles with the fries and shakes will be fixed. The soft-launch period runs until Sunday 30 March.

Coffee Dogs. King's Cross Station Square, London, N1C 4AP (Tube: King's Cross). Website. Twitter.

The Caffeine Chronicles: New Row Coffee Review

"Purveyors of kick-ass coffee," reads the landing page of New Row Coffee's website. I'm partial to good coffee, as well as to the use of the word "purveyor," so I had to go and check out their café, which is located on a quiet side street — New Row, funnily enough — between Leicester Square and Covent Garden.

New Row is tiny inside, with only a couple of small tables and a handful of bar stools for perching. There are a few seats outside too, which is great for sunny, if cool, days like last Sunday when I stopped by. As well as the usual La Marzocco espresso machine, they have a tiny brew bar for preparing V60 pourovers with a different coffee variety each day. They also serve a selection of cakes and pastries.

I ordered a pourover du jour, which was a DuKunde Kawa from Rwanda, and a pastel de nata, and grabbed a seat in the corner.

The coffee was very good: light and very slightly fruity, but with enough kick to keep me going through the rest of Sunday. The custard tart was delicious too. Interestingly, they also make their own almond milk each morning. I've been finding that I'm slightly sensitive to lactose for the past year or so, which is part of the reason I've been on such an Aeropress and pourover kick, and although I put almond milk on my granola, I'm not sure I'd like it in a macchiato. One day, I'll have to give it a whirl.

New Row Coffee also happens to be in a part of town that is heavy on coffee chains and not exactly over-run with great independent coffee shops, although there are a few other options nearby. The window seats are great for people-watching. Basically, it's a lovely place for a brief respite from the hustle and bustle of the West End, and serves really good coffee too. Thumbs up!

New Row Coffee. 24 New Row, London, WC2N 4LA (Tube: Leicester Square). Website. Twitter.

Last Will and Testament

I don’t often write about TV — I tend to watch only two or three shows at any one time — but the latest episode of The Good Wife is a biggie. If you haven’t watched the episode, look away now and go and watch it, because huge spoilers will follow.


I started watching The Good Wife soon after its début in 2009 and it soon replaced Mad Men as my favourite TV show. I love the combination of the case-of-the week (which satisfied my legal leanings), the drama and slow-burning relationships among the characters, and the political sub-plots. It’s the only show I go out of my way to watch while I’m on holiday — most memorably, I watched the emotional rollercoaster of season four’s penultimate episode on my iPad in an infinity pool in Costa Rica last year. But I digress.

For me, the relationship between Will and Alicia has always been central to the show. Not just the romantic and passionate aspects, but their friendship and their history too. It has always felt like this relationship was end-game, so I didn’t mind too much that we didn’t get to see many scenes of them happy together in season three (although this season, while the two have been at odds, we’ve been able to enjoy a few more in the form of wistful flashbacks to happier times). There would be further exploration in the future, I assumed, even if things didn’t end the way I hoped for.

At the start of this season, Alicia and Cary left Lockhart Gardner to start their own firm, taking some of their clients with them and leaving Will with a huge sense of personal and professional betrayal that has been at the core of all of this season’s key plots. At the time, the writers explained that it was a way of keeping Alicia and Will’s relationship interesting, but now we all know that the real impetus was that a year ago, Josh Charles, who plays Will, decided to leave the show. Julianna Margulies, who plays Alicia and who is also a producer on the show, did manage to talk him into staying on for 15 more episodes to give Will a good send-off. But now this season doesn’t just look like the exploration of new depths of the relationship between Alicia and Will, so much as Will Gardner’s swan song.

I was suspicious when there was no resolution to episode seven's case-of-the-week. It was a typical ‘Will’ case, where he truly believed in the innocence of his timid, young client, Jeffrey Grant, and, firing moral outrage from all cannons, was willing to do anything to get the murder case against Grant dismissed. Eight episodes and several months later, the case has come to trial and Will is doing his damnedest to refute the damning DNA evidence against Grant. But in his desperation to win and to clear his client, he misses the warning signs that Grant really, really doesn’t want to go into solitary confinement, even though he is being assaulted in general population. Just like the court guard misses the fact that his gun is within easy reach of an increasingly panicked Grant.

Cut to Diane in the next courtroom and what sounds like gunshots. Or was it a false alarm — the judge's gavel? No, it was gunfire. A distraught Kalinda (someone give Archie Panjabi another Emmy) and Diane make their way to the hospital and discover that Will was DOA. Kalinda tries to call Alicia, but she’s stuck at a particularly cringe-worthy correspondents’ lunch and isn’t answering her phone. Kalinda eventually gets through to Eli and when she explains why she’s calling, Eli knows Alicia has to take the call. We have to wait until next week for her reaction to the news. The scene mirrors the season one finale, where Will tries to call Alicia just as she is about to join Peter on stage at the launch of his re-election campaign. Eli sends the calls to voicemail, deleting one of Will’s two messages — the one where he says he loves her and wants to give their relationship a shot — a sub-plot that occupies much of season two.

I knew the death was probably coming when I read the first line of the note to the fans posted on the Facebook page by writers, but "the loss of Will Gardner" was somewhat ambiguous to my optimistic mind and throughout the episode, I kept hoping that he wasn't going to die. I certainly didn't think the death would happen that way. When explaining their motivation for the death, the Kings noted that deaths are often sudden and unexpected, and you don't always get the chance to put your affairs in order or say your goodbyes. That's fair enough and Will's death will impact all of the main characters in plenty of interesting ways. It doesn't mean I have to like it. 

Will's character is central to the show and his relationships with Kalinda and Diane are just as important as his connection with Alicia, and although I will continue to watch the show, I feel like its best years — or, at least, my favourite years — will be behind me. (Incidentally, season five has been one of the best.) Even if it turned out that Will and Alicia weren't each other’s true loves, it would have been nice to get some resolution either way, after investing nearly five seasons in their relationship. Given the show's history with missed calls and voicemails, I am hopeful that Alicia might discover a message from beyond the grave, but otherwise, we might never know. But I do at least know to take off my eye make-up before the inevitable grief-fest of next week's episode.

The View from The Monument

I love a good skyline view and since the viewing platform at the Shard opened last year, I've been meaning to go and check it out. However, the £25 ticket price and the fact that you only get the view through glass mean that I haven't exactly been in a rush, either. Meanwhile, I walk, run or ride past The Monument several days a week on my way home from work or into town.

Standing at just over 200 feet, The Monument — designed by Christopher Wren in the late 17th century to commemorate the Great Fire of London — is much shorter than its south-of-the-river neighbour, but it also costs only £3 to go up. To the consternation of some tourists, there are no lifts, just a winding spiral staircase with 311 steps, but this just adds to the fun.

Walking home this afternoon, it was a sunny day and I had my camera with me, although not my zoom lens, so I figured it was as good a time as any to enjoy the view. The staircase is very narrow, but I enjoyed my climb to the top. It makes you feel like you've earned the view.

At the top, the walkway is very narrow — it becomes very crowded once there are more than 10 people on the platform — but although there is a chain link fence between you and a 200-foot drop, you are at least out in the open. Indeed, it was quite cold and windy up there today. I started making my way anticlockwise around the walkway. First up was the City — the Gherkin, the Cheesegrater and the  Jaguar-melting Walkie Talkie.

Then, round on the west side of the platform, you can spy St Paul's and the BT Tower. Although the fence did allow me to poke most of my camera's lens through the gaps, the fence did manage to intrude in some photos. If you don't have a big DSLR lens, you'll probably be fine.

Isn't the "copper vase of flames" on the top gorgeous in the sunshine? The sky really was that blue this afternoon.

And then you see the Shard. One of the reasons I prefer to go up the Top of the Rock than the Empire State Building in New York, because when you visit the former, you get to see the latter. You can also see the Strata building at Elephant & Castle.

As you look to the east you can see Tower Bridge, Canary Wharf, and my flat. Well, OK, technically you can't see my flat without binoculars, but it would be just to the right of the top walkway of Tower Bridge.

Finally, it was time to climb back down. It was a very pleasant way to spend 40 minutes and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a nice view of London in a more relaxed setting and with a much cheaper price tag than the View from the Shard.

The Monument. Fish Street Hill, London, EC3R 8AH (Tube: Monument). Website.

The Caffeine Chronicles: FreeState Coffee

UPDATE: FreeState Coffee has now permanently closed.

In the 2010s, it's refreshing to see an independent coffee shop bucking the trend and taking over the premises of a former Pret A Manger, especially in a neighbourhood like Holborn, but that's just what FreeState Coffee did. FreeState is located on a grand block of Southampton Row, just north of Holborn station, which means that every time I have taken the 168 bus to work, I have been reminded that I still haven't managed to try out the coffee.

Sunday was beautifully sunny in London and so I took my camera for a walk from Bermondsey, over London Bridge and through the City to FreeState, which is lovely and light inside, thanks to floor-to-ceiling windows. The furniture looks like it comes from Lassco: characterful wooden tables and chairs and old theatre or cinema seats.

As well as the usual espresso drinks, the staff will whip you up a V60 pourover from the special brew bar. They also sell drippers, Aeropresses and Siphons, which is always a good sign.

I ordered a medium V60 brew and took a seat at one of the tables while it dripped. The coffee in question was a Rwandan Gisuma, which was fresh, clean and slightly fruity. Just the pick-me-up I needed after a late night celebrating my friend's 30th on Saturday night.

FreeState also serves a selection of sandwiches, pastries and sweet treats — including scones and jam — and it's a cool, chilled out place to hang out in a part of town that isn't exactly teeming with good coffee purveyors (although there are a few other options).

FreeState Coffee. 23 Southampton Row, London, WC1B 5HA (Tube: Holborn). Website. Twitter.

A Week in Food and Drink

A week ago, I was enjoying the last meal of my New York trip: a lobster and shrimp roll at the Ocean Grill on Columbus Avenue. I've had a fair amount of other food and drink fun this week in London, though. Here are a few of the things on this week's menu.

1: Ocean Grill's lobster and shrimp roll.

2–3: On Thursday night, I went to Honest Burgers with some friends from work to try out this month's special burger: the Brew Burger, a collaboration with BrewDog, which comes with Comté cheese, beer-candied bacon and beer-fried onions, as well as the usual medium-rare-as-standard patty, and rosemary-salt chips (£11.50). It was juicy, meaty and delicious. Although I don't like to drink beer, there were some really nice flavours coming through in this burger. The special used to include a special BrewDog beer for a few more pounds, but fortunately for me — a non-beer-drinker — they had run out of beer. Instead, I opted for a house cocktail, involving Boxer gin, apple and cucumber. Refreshing and delicious.

4: When I go to New York, I like to bring back some coffee beans and this time, I bought a bag of Brazilian Monte Cristo coffee from Irving Farm. I had a couple of pourovers with this variety while I was out there — how could I resist a coffee that had peanut butter in its tasting notes? — and have been enjoying the coffee in my Aeropress at home this week.

5: Regular readers will be aware of the SoLoDo Running Club my friends and I have, which ends with a stop at St John Bakery on Druid Street for a post-run doughnut. But I had heard that St John might have an SE1 rival, in the form of Bread Ahead in Borough Market. I tried Bread Ahead's caramel custard doughnut with salted honeycomb topping and the rumours are true: it was epic. The most pleasure you can have in SE1 for £2.50. Go to their stall in the market early to avoid missing out.

6: When I walked past Free State Coffee in Holborn yesterday afternoon, I realised that I still hadn't tried the coffee there. As it was such a lovely sunny day today, I walked over and enjoyed a V60 pourover in their sunny Southampton Row café. A full review of Free State will be up on my blog next week.

7–9: Last night, a group of us went to The Happenstance, near St Paul's, to celebrate my friend's 30th birthday. Like its sister restaurants, which include The Folly and The Fable, The Happenstance offers excellent and creative cocktails and tasty food in casual-cool surroundings. Surprisingly, given its City location, the prices are also very reasonable. I had a strawberry and lavender mojito (7) and also tried the 'skinny superfood collins'. I didn't care about the skinny or superfood properties, but gin, basil, raspberries, blackberries and lemon juice is my kind of cocktail. My main course was one of the specials: roast salmon with roasted baby gem, crushed baby potatoes, peas and sweet chilli sauce (8). It was beautifully presented, very tasty and, at £12.95, good value. For pudding, I couldn't choose so I shared the pudding shots (9) with my friend. These consisted of small portions of the chocolate brownie with strawberry ice cream, the knickerbocker glory (chocolate ice cream, honeycomb and cherries) and the white chocolate crème brûlée. Delicious!

The NYC Caffeine Chronicles: March 2014 Update

Finding good coffee in Midtown Manhattan, where I was staying on my recent trip, used to be challenging but I didn't do too badly on the coffee front. First, I discovered two new-to-me branches of old favourites within a few blocks of my hotel: Ninth Street Espresso's branch in the Lombardy Hotel on East 56th Street, near Park, and Gregorys Coffee on East 55th Street, near Madison. Most mornings, I would run in Central Park and then pick up coffee and tea from my family from one of these two venues. Sadly, Little Collins was just that bit too far to go before breakfast.

At Gregorys, I had a lovely Aeropress brew of a Guatemalan coffee called La Bella — this mini-chain always manages to combine efficiency, simple style and great coffee in touristy (and thus good-coffee-deprived) areas.

I loved the sleek, monochrome look of the coffee bar at Ninth Street Espresso. Their brewed coffee was really good, and I had good reports from Dad about the cappuccino — espresso with milk, as they call it here.

A new coffee discovery for me this trip was Toby's Estate on Fifth Avenue, near 21st Street. Toby's is narrow inside and super sleek with white walls, white cups and a gorgeous white coffee machine. I tried a pourover — a Colombian Andino — which was rich, smooth and nutty, just how I like it.

At the back of the shop, which is connected to the adjacent Club Monaco, is another room filled with a carefully curated selection of books and fresh flowers for sale: a really lovely place to browse.

Saturday involved visits to new-to-me branches of coffee bars I've visited before: Irving Farm's wonderful, circular bar in the middle of Grand Central Station's dining concourse. Although the roundness makes queuing a little complicated, they brewed me a delicious pourover in a dripper so beautiful that I would have bought it had it not been out of stock. In the vain hope that more coffee would help my body to recover from the bacon-fest that was Saturday brunch, I also grabbed a pourover from Blue Bottle's Gotham West Market branch.

I wanted to pick up a bag of Stumptown beans before I left, but didn't have time to go all the way to the Village, so I paid a visit instead to Ports in Chelsea, which I thought used Stumptown beans. When I got there, though, they seemed to be offering up bags of their own beans instead. I had already had a lot of coffee that day, so I opted for an espresso, which was smooth and flavoursome, and the small espresso bar was a cool, laid-back place to chill out for a few minutes on a busy Saturday. I'll have to try their beans some other time!

Ninth Street Espresso. 109 East 56th Street nr Park (Midtown East). Website. Other locations.
Gregorys Coffee. 551 Madison Avenue nr 55th St (enter on 55th St; Midtown East). Website. Twitter. Other locations.
Toby's Estate. 160 Fifth Avenue nr 21st St (Flatiron). Website. Twitter. Other locations.
Irving Farm. 89 East 42nd Street nr Park (Midtown South). Website. Twitter. Other locations.
Blue Bottle Coffee. 600 11th Avenue @ 45th St (Hell's Kitchen). Website. Twitter. Other locations.
Ports. 251 West 23rd Street bet. 7th & 8th Ave (Chelsea). Website.