Salt Beef, Gin, Etc: Mishkin's Review (CLOSED)

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).

"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 (CLOSED)

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 — E 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. 

E 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 E decided to have the same as me instead. They need to work on a more appetising 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).

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 criticising 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.