Frida Kahlo x Santiago Lastra — Mexican Art and Food at the Tate Modern

Of all the countries I've visited, Mexico is the one I'm keenest to return to. But in the meantime, I've been getting a taste of Mexican art, culture and food here in London thanks to the Tate Modern's current Frida Kahlo exhibition and a Frida-inspired food menu created by acclaimed chef Santiago Lastra.

Cliff Notes: A Perfect Day in Margate

As I walk along the Viking Coastal Trail from central Margate to Botany Bay, I can almost believe I am back in Sydney, following the Bondi to Coogee clifftop walk, rather than day-tripping on the north Kent coast. Both walks offer stark cliffs, sandy beaches and ocean pools, and sweeping sea views. It's about ten degrees cooler in Margate, of course, although still pleasant.

Five Days in Austin, Texas: Things To Do, Places To Eat, Drink & Shop

As I noted in my recent post about Austin's specialty coffee scene, I'd never been to Texas before this year and was pleased to have to opportunity to visit the state capital as part of a trip for work. 

NYC Part II: Chelsea Days, Williamsburg Nights

The rain had, if not stopped, then slowed down by Saturday morning, just in time for the arrival to New York of my brother and his wife. I woke up before I was due to meet the rest of my family and so went out inside of coffee and food. I bumped into my brother in the lift and we walked together to Black Seed Bagels, a purveyor of hand-rolled bagels on Elizabeth Street in Nolita. I was feeling a little fragile as a result of the rum punchbowl incident and the bagel with bacon, two eggs and cheese (on a poppy seed bagel, of course) sounded just what I needed.

We got our sandwiches to go and stopped for coffee at the new branch of Café Integral, also on Elizabeth Street. I've been to the original, located inside the American Two Shot store on Grand Street, a few times but the new stand-alone café was excellent. I had a cortado but I hope I'll find time to go back to try a pourover before I leave.

We spent the morning walking around the West Village and Greenwich Village, shopping and trying not to get blown away by the strong winds. Intrigued by the 'absurdly soft' tagline, I stepped into a shop called Marine Layer, and the clothes were indeed pretty darn soft. I ended up picking up a scarf and a sweater and promptly put both on under my jacket. 

We stopped for coffee at the West Village location of Aussie café Bluestone Lane, which has been on my list for a while. My hangover recovered even more after a very fine piccolo and a cold-pressed juice. The Carmine Street café is gorgeous too with their white-, mint- and turquoise-accented coffee bar.

After dropping into two of my other favourite shops, travel goods store Flight 001 (CLOSED) and the amazing bookstore that is Three Lives & Co, we made it up to Chelsea Market, which was incredibly busy. The Halloween decorations were out in full force, which didn't help with the crowd control, but we spent a happy hour browsing in the book shop, kitchen shop and the Artists & Fleas craft market.

We managed to nab a table at seafood joint and oyster bar Cull & Pistol (a cull being a uni-clawed lobster and a pistol being a clawless lobster). To start, we shared a dozen oysters and then I had a lobster roll, which was absolutely delicious. We also shared a bonus steamed lobster 'for the table', which was also very nice.

After lunch, I had a couple of coffee shops to hit. First up was Underline (CLOSED), which, as its name might suggest, is pretty much underneath the High Line. I had an excellent pourover and a peruse of several back copies of Barista magazine, before strolling along the High Line itself. It was, however, super-windy and so not exactly ideal walking weather. 

The second cafe on my list was City of Saints on East 10th Street. The coffee was really good — so much so that I bought a bag of beans (packaging designed by an artist local to their Brooklyn roastery) — and the baristas were incredibly friendly.

I headed back to the hotel to unload my purchases and caught an amazing sunset over Lower Manhattan. We then took an Uber to Roberta's in Bushwick on the off chance that there wasn't a two-and-a-half-hour queue for a table, but there was, so we got the subway back to Williamsburg and went to Fornino instead, sharing two giant margheritas with buffalo mozzarella and a brownie sundae. Plus, we didn't have to wait for a table.

Our evening's entertainment was a Dracula-themed improv performance by Entirely from Memory at Videology on Bedford Avenue. This was very funny indeed and the Videology bar is a great place to hang out with a (film-themed) cocktail and watch an old movie or take part in a trivia session.

Weekday Brunch at Friends of Ours (CLOSED)

Update: Unfortunately, Friends of Ours' Hoxton cafe is now closed. But you can still find them in Hyde Park.

When I took last Friday afternoon off work, I didn't have grand plans, but culture, coffee and brunch were all on my shortlist so naturally, I headed to Shoreditch. I had heard great things about Friends of Ours, a cosy, Aussie-style neighbourhood café located a few blocks northeast of Old Street roundabout. I was particularly pleased to hear that their brunch-ready menu is available throughout the week.

DC Part II: Pandas, Snow and WONDER

I'm back home in London now but after my holiday in Portland, I spent most of last week in Washington DC. As I was working most of the time, I didn't have much time to explore the city, so quite a few of my highlights are food- and drink-related but I managed to fit in a few non-conference-related activities too.

Etc — January 2016

I have decided to rename my monthly round-up posts "Etc" going forwards as I often found that the five things I included weren't necessarily my favourite things of the month — those tend to get their own posts — as much as things I've enjoyed but to which I hadn't dedicated a whole blog post. Here are my five picks for January:

1. Les Liaisons Dangereuses
I first came across Choderlos de Laclos's novel in the form of Cruel Intentions, which transports the story of scheming, cruelty and betrayal in 18th century Paris to the Upper East Side of Manhattan with spoiled, rich teenagers in the central roles; I was 16, OK... Cruel Intentions is actually a decent film, and it plays out like a scene-by-scene remake of Christopher Hampton's stage adaptation of the original novel. Although I've since seen the Stephen Frears film based on Hampton's script, I had yet to see Hampton's work on the stage.

By the time I realised that the Donmar Warehouse was putting on Les Liaisons Dangereuses with Dominic West and Janet McTeer in the central roles, it was already sold out. It still is and is only on for another two weeks, but it's worth giving the returns queue a go if you are keen to see the production — I tried one Saturday afternoon, and just missed out (there were four tickets and I was fifth in the queue), but kept checking back on the Donmar website and eventually got lucky.

It was definitely worth the hassle: although West still wasn't quite word perfect, he oozes charisma and stage presence, showing a greater depth of emotion in the denouement, and McTeer is brilliantly wicked as the Marquise de Mertueil — perhaps as good as Glenn Close in the Frears film. It was also nice to see Una Stubbs and Edward 'London Spy' Holcroft in supporting roles.

2. Randall & Aubin
I've walked past seafood restaurant Randall & Aubin, located on Soho's Brewer Street, so many times, but never got around to eating there. They don't take bookings on Saturdays or weekday evenings, but that is hardly usual these days. We went a few weeks ago for a family lunch on a sunny Saturday and what a feast it was. We shared some oysters, and then I had some delicious scallops with pancetta to start, followed by roast cod on pea mash (if you aren't in the mood for fish, there are plenty of meat options too). 

I definitely didn't have room for pudding but couldn't resist the cheesecake with salted caramel ice cream and didn't regret my decision. The staff were friendly and efficient, and the music was perfectly in keeping with the giant disco ball that hangs in the centre of the small dining room. Randall & Aubin has great food and great ambiance.

3. Oldboy
I've been wanting to watch the classic Korean revenge movie for years — long before the ill-advised American remake surfaced in 2013 — and happily, it popped up on Netflix recently. In Oldboy, a man (Min-sik Choi) is abducted in the middle of the night and kept in a shabby, furnished room for 15 years before he is freed without any knowledge of who kept him captive or why. 

The rest of the movie follows his efforts to try to find out — and to seek revenge on whoever did this to him. Yes, it's dark and often violent, but Chan-wook Park's film is a masterclass in uncomfortable tension and vengeance. It's clever, it's knowing and it's laced with dark humour. If you haven't already seen it already, I would highly recommend it — it would even make a nice double-bill with The Revenant.

4. Missing Pieces by Heather Gudenkauf

How well can we ever really know another person? This is the question Sarah Quinlan is forced to ask in Heather Gudenkauf’s new novel Missing Pieces. Sarah and her husband Jack have been married for 20 years and have a happy life in Montana with their college-age twin daughters. But when an early-morning phone call brings the couple back to Jack’s Iowa hometown, Sarah is forced to confront a battery of family secrets from Jack’s past. Jack clams up, forcing Sarah to don her former reporter’s cap as she looks into the brutal and technically unsolved murder of Jack’s mother in the family home some 30 years earlier and tries to work out if it links to a present-day murder.

Missing Pieces is a real page-turner — I read the book in a single sitting, racing through to solve the mystery. Gudenkauf’s protagonist Sarah is sympathetic and relatable as the sudden ‘outsider’ among her husband’s hot-headed and secretive family, but seemed a little too slow to pick up on the many well-sign-posted clues to be fully convincing as a former ‘hard news reporter’. There are plenty of red herrings too and a bounty of suspects, which means that even if you think you have identified the culprit, it is hard to be fully certain until the novel’s climax. 

It’s a fun and smart mystery, but Missing Pieces falls short when it comes to the relationship between Sarah and Jack, which feels two dimensional and poorly sketched. The circumstances of the story have introduced distance to their marriage, of course, but as we have never seen them any other way, it’s hard too care too much what happens to them.

Disclaimer: I received a pre-release copy via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

5. Lumiere London
For four nights in mid-January, a festival of light-based art installations took over central London. Lumiere London is over now, but it's possible that the Lumiere festival will return in the future, either to London or elsewhere in the country, so it's worth keeping an eye out on the website. King's Cross, where I work, was one of the main hubs of the festival, and I went to check out some of the installations. Among my favourites were Diver, which was set up next to the King's Cross Pond, and Litre of Light, a tunnel made from water bottles illuminated in rainbow-coloured lights.

On Saturday, I was in the West End anyway and so decided to stay to look at some of the Regent Street installations too. Janet Echelman's 1.8 London — a fishing-net-inspired sculpture that hung over Oxford Circus, rippling in an ethereal way, and gradually changing colour (the lighting was inspired by the Tohoku earthquake in Japan in 2011, which shortened the day by 1.8 microseconds).

Leicester Square was filled with a Garden of Light, and the Trafalgar Square fountain was turned into Plastic Islands. Although I had to battle huge crowds, I really enjoyed both evenings, which took me back to my annual childhood visits to the Walsall Illuminations with my family.

"Everything You Have Ever and Never Done"

I missed Nick Payne's play Constellations during its 2012 run at the Royal Court and I was even more disappointed to just miss its Broadway incarnation with Jake Gyllenhaal and the always excellent Ruth Wilson this spring. I like going to the theatre but I'm never very good at keeping on top of what is on, so I was pleased that I scanned the theatre section of last week's Time Out and noticed that Constellations was back for a limited run at the Trafalgar Studios and even happier that I managed to score some cheap tickets for the Saturday matinee.

Constellations tells the story—or, rather, stories—of Marianne (Louise Brealey), an astrophysicist, and Roland (Joe Armstrong), a bee-keeper, who meet at a barbecue. Marianne tells a weird anecdote about elbow licking, but Roland isn't impressed and they don't click. But then they meet at a barbecue and they do click. 

Above the stark black stage hang dozens of white balloons and every few minutes, different balloons light up and we see a different version of the same scene. The story moves along, sometimes incrementally and sometimes with long time-jumps, and we start to see different versions of their relationship that could have happened.

As in any relationship (or any possible version of any relationship), sometimes things go well, and other times, sad things happen. Intermittently, we also get snapshots from a time much further in the future. We see the same scene several times, but each time, there is slightly more dialogue and slightly more context, which allow us to gradually piece together what is happening.

It is a beautiful play, only 70 minutes long but extremely intense. It's often sad and moving, but it's also funny in places, particularly in some of the variations early on in the relationship. "I f*cking love honey," one Marianne tells one Roland; it's her delivery that's key. Constellations is also very philosophical, and Marianne's job as a physicist allows her to introduce questions of time and of infinite possible worlds. She talks about "everything you have ever and never done," and then later tells Roland: "We still have all the time we've ever had."

Marianne gets the best lines and she is, perhaps, the more interesting character, but Roland makes a great foil. The chemistry between Brealey and Armstrong is fantastic and essential for such a production to work. In some ways, the play reminded me of Patrick Marber's Closer; in particular, the scenes when Marianne and Roland argue made me think of the devastating break-up between Larry and Anna (portrayed wonderfully on-screen by Clive Owen and Julia Roberts). 

The work with which I drew most connections, though, was Laura Barnett's novel The Versions of Us, which I read recently. Both look at all of the ways characters and relationships could have developed—and maybe have even developed in other possible worlds—and highlight questions of fate, love and what forever really means.

I mentioned the minimalist set design further up, but the play is also visually impressive. It was a nice touch to have the black floor printed with a hexagon grid, which seemed to be symbolic of Roland's beekeeping work (which also proves relevant to the story), whereas the white flashing balloons represented, to me, the infinite universe that Marianne studies.

By the end of Constellations, I was feeling emotionally exhausted but curious. If you're in the mood for a beautiful and thought-provoking play about love, life and even theoretical physics, then do try to get tickets. Unfortunately, this run ends on 1st August, so you'll need to act pretty swiftly.

The Caffeine Chronicles: St David Coffee House

I take a bus bound for Honor Oak most days, but beyond pondering the U-less spelling of Honor (it seems to date to the 17th century, before British English exiled its Us to the colonies), I hadn't given the southeast London area much thought. On Sunday, though, I rode the bus all the way to its end point: halfway up One Tree Hill in Honor Oak. I was headed for Forest Hill, and yes, it is pretty hilly in that part of London. The clue is in the name, but central London is so flat that it's easy to forget about that little thing called altitude.

Before long, I arrived at my destination: St David Coffee House, a cheerful neighbourhood café near the Forest Hill Overground. I had heard that they served great coffee and even better brunch, and I wasn't disappointed. You know the brunch menu is on point when you read the first menu item and know you don't need to read on. 

Don't get me wrong; the other brunch dishes would have been great too, but how could I not order the poached egg, avocado and bacon on toast (£6.50)? Good brunch joints never make you choose between eggs, avocado and bacon. The food was excellent: the bacon was crispy and plentiful, the avo creamy and the egg the perfect consistency.

The coffee is from Square Mile and hand-brewed filter fans will be pleased to note that both Aeropress and V60 brew methods are available (£3); an iced version was also on offer for the same price. My Aeropress brew was very good, and I saw some nice-looking flat whites being carried out to other customers.

I almost caved and ordered a macchiato too, but it was time to move on and so I settled for one of Kooky Bakes' slices of awesomeness (I'm not sure the real name, but what else do you call a blondie-like cake with a pretzel base, chocolate, and various nuts?) to go.

St David is a friendly, cosy café with artfully mismatched wooden furniture and eclectic, retro décor. There are a couple of tables out front, but on drizzly days, you're better off sheltering indoors. They also serve dinner on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and often hold pizza nights.

If you're looking for a way to walk off your brunch, the wonderful Horniman Museum & Gardens is only half a mile away. The museum is free and houses a whole host of weird and wonderful natural history, art and anthropological objects, while the gardens have a lovely view over the London skyline.

St David Coffee. 5 David Road, London, SE23 3EP (Forest Hill Overground). Website.
Horniman Museum & Gardens. 100 London Road, London, SE23 3PQ (Forest Hill Overground). Website.

New York April Showers

I'm back in New York after the longest absence for some years (OK, only 13 months, but New York is very missable). My parents arranged a nice little family break over the Easter weekend. We arrived very late on Thursday night, which meant a long queue for taxis into Manhattan but a fast journey.

Yesterday morning, I eschewed my morning run in favour of some great coffee at Little Collins, which is on Lexington between 55th and 56th Streets. Little Collins is easily my favourite coffee bar in Midtown and they usually have a couple of different pourover varieties, as well as the most beautiful espresso machine. 

They also serve various Aussie breakfast dishes and sandwiches. I went for the (less Aussie) PBJ, which came with homemade jam and which was topped with coconut. Delicious. My coffee — a Colombian Tito Raúl — was top notch, as ever.

The next task of the day was to queue for on-the-day tickets for a show. After a half-hour wait of uncertainty in the rain, we eventually succeeded, of which more later. It was time to head downtown, but first we spotted a photo op with a Don Draper cutout on a bench near 50th Street on Sixth Avenue and some new street names in honour of the start of the (second half of the) final season of Mad Men this weekend.

The rain didn't interfere with my shopping in SoHo, although it wasn't very pleasant, but it did affect our ability to secure a table at a few of the restaurants I had earmarked. Instead, after a quick drink at the Spring Lounge, we went to a place called Tartinery, which, unsurprisingly, serves tartines, as well as salads, juices and sharing platters. I was in serious need of protein, so I ordered a cobb salad, which was really tasty. 

The basement of the restaurant is light and airy, with the tables centred around a tree. Tartinery is on a quiet block of Mulberry Street and is a great place to stop off for a quick, quiet lunch away from the bustle of Broadway and Spring Street.

By this point, I needed more coffee and so I wandered up Broadway to Hi-Collar, a Japanese coffee and dessert bar on 10th Street near First Avenue. There are only ten or so seats at the long, shiny bar, so I had to wait a bit to get a seat, but it was worth the wait. They offer a whole host of brew methods, and so of course I picked the most exotic: the siphon ($5.80).

Once you've selected your brew method, you need to pick your coffee variety, and I went for a single-origin Misty Valley Yirgacheffe from Ethiopia, which was from 1000 Faces Coffee. You can't beat a siphon for the theatre, but the coffee was great too, and it was lovely to sit and relax and the minimalist but beautiful surroundings of Hi-Collar.

I just had time to catch a subway uptown and get changed in time for our pre-theatre dinner at our family favourite, the Trattoria dell'Arte on Seventh Avenue. It's always hard to decide between the hundred-and-one-layered lasagne and the epic pizza (never mind the other menu choices!), but yesterday, the pizza won out. 

I had the margherita with burrata mozzarella ($25), which was delicious, and, to my relief, only very large, rather than the almost-too-big-to-fit-onto-the-table size it used to come in. The staff are all friendly and treat you like regulars even if it's a first time, and the food is very good.

We then fought through the heaving crowds of Times Square (the rain plus the fact that it's the Easter weekend make that part of town even more of a nightmare than usual) to the St James theatre, which you may recognise as the theatre in which the movie Birdman was filmed. 

We went to see a show called Something Rotten, a tongue-in-cheek musical, set in 1595, about two brothers who want to come up with an idea for a play to stop a certain William Shakespeare getting all the glory and all the money. They consult a soothsayer to find out what Shakespeare's most famous play will be so that they can steal the idea, and he comes up with...a musical called Omelette. 

Cue plenty of egg jokes, Hamlet jokes and, especially, musical jokes. Something Rotten is still in previews, but we had a great time and so did the entire audience, many of whom were on their feet and clapping within minutes. There are some good meta songs, good performances and a lot of fun. I highly recommend it!