Brunch on the Towpath at The Lighterman

I've been eating a lot of brunch lately (yes, even for me). Let's face it: with less pleasant six-letter words that begin with br- dominating the headlines, we've all been needing some comfort food. A group of girlfriends and I try to go for brunch together once a month — more often when our schedules permit — and our latest destination was The Lighterman in King's Cross.

A Cracking Brunch at The Good Egg

Stoke Newington is surprisingly difficult to get to from Bermondsey especially, it turns out, when there are part closures on the Overground and there is a road race taking place in the City. Nonetheless, I had been wanting to go for brunch at The Good Egg for some time and so I made my way as far as my bus would take me (Newington Green) and walked the last mile or so through leafy N16. It probably goes without saying but my brunch was well worth the journey.

A Slice of the Action at Mamma Dough, Peckham (CLOSED)

Update: Mamma Dough's Peckham pizzeria has now closed, but you still find them elsewhere in South London.

One of the main reasons I prefer to travel around London by bus or on foot is because of the potential for spotting interesting-looking new restaurants, cafes and shops — in familiar and less familiar neighbourhoods. A few weeks ago, on the way to Model Market in Lewisham, I noticed a pizzeria that was about to open in Queen's Road, Peckham. Mamma Dough has already established restaurants in Honor Oak and Brixton but it was great to see the sourdough pizzeria opening up a little nearer to home.

My brother, sister-in-law and I went to check out the new Peckham branch on a rainy Sunday lunchtime. Mamma Dough is located on an unassuming stretch of the busy Queen's Road, a block east of the Overground station. There were a few other diners while we were there but it wasn't busy; I suspect the inclement weather, combined with the slightly off-the-beaten-track location, may have been to blame.

The main section of the restaurant is light and airy, and has a rustic style, with long wooden tables and colourful art on the walls. There are a few smaller tables in the back near the pizza oven.

The drinks menu was relatively simple: a few south London beers (including Kernel and Brick Brewery), several well-priced wines, and several soft drinks, including homemade ginger ale (£3.50), which can be made 'hard' with rum or bourbon for another £2.50. I had the soft version and it was delicious and very gingery.

As for the food, sourdough pizza is the only main course option, with the six pizzas ranging in price from £6 to £11. We shared a meat plate to start (£8), which came with really good-quality cured meats, sourdough bread and pickles. The plate didn't go that far between the three of us, but the price was still reasonable. The bread was particularly moreish, although I was trying to save room for my pizza.

We all ordered the same — off-menu — pizza: a margherita with buffalo mozzarella and nduja (£8 + an nduja supplement). And how did it perform? Very well, as it happens. Pizza Pilgrims is still my favourite London pizza purveyor but the quality of the ingredients at Mamma Dough is really excellent: the mozzarella was creamy and rich, the nduja spicy and meaty, and the tomato sauce very flavoursome. 

The pizzas are also pretty large; they are thin too, and with a much crispier crust than at Pizza Pilgrims. The slight sharpness of the sourdough base contrasted very nicely with the creaminess of the cheese. Unsurprisingly, I ate my whole pizza, despite its size; the crusts were much too good to leave.

There were a few puddings (tiramisu, affogato, brownie and ice cream), but nothing particularly appealed to me (also, I was full). I did have a macchiato, which was fine, although it was served rather too hot and thus slightly bitter.

Mamma Dough's Queen's Road location is a little out of the way, but within easy reach of Peckham, Brockley and New Cross, and is well worth the trip: we all agreed that the pizza was really top-notch.

Mamma Dough. 179 Queen's Road, Peckham, London SE15 2ND (Queen's Road Overground). Website. Instagram.

Taking a BAO — Restaurant Review

My visit to the Netil Market outpost of BAO last summer left me craving more of the Taiwanese restaurant's titular bao — pillowy soft white steamed buns with incredible fillings. BAO's main home in Lexington Street, in the heart of Soho, is always busy; the small restaurant only has about 30 covers and there is often a queue and when I've passed, I've either been in a rush or with a group of people, both of which make dining at BAO either difficult, if not impossible.

On Saturday, though, the stars aligned because I had plenty of time and it was raining — naively, I assumed that the rain might curtail the queue, but alas, the usual patient crowd was gathered on the pavement opposite BAO. 

Before long, one of the servers brought me out a copy of the menu to peruse while I waited, which definitely helped, although I had mentally eaten most of the dishes by the time it was my turn to head inside. The turnover is quite fast and the wait time was about 20–25 minutes wait for one or two people, and a little longer for larger groups.

I took my spot at one of the seats around the central bar — there are also a few tables at the back, near the kitchen, but I enjoyed watching the drinks being made. As well as the 'checklist' I had been given in the queue, there was a separate menu that explains all the different bao. I asked the waitress how much I should order and she said about three bao per person, but instead, I went for two bao and a couple of small-plate starters (xiao chi).

Although the pineapple and bay soda (£3.75) sounded great, I'd just drunk a bottle of pineapple juice and settled for a foam tea (£3) instead: a golden oolong tea served cold with a creamy foam on top. It looked like a mini lager, but was refreshing and surprisingly tasty. I also had a peanut milk (£2), which is exactly as it sounds; I could definitely have drunk this all afternoon. There are a few cocktails, wines, sakes and beers on offer too.

Food-wise, I started with a scallop (singular) with yellow bean garlic, which was £3.75 but well worth the price: my scallop was large and flavoursome. In what would become a theme of the meal, I wish I'd ordered another one (or two). The trotter nuggets (£4) were also a real treat: crispy on the outside and surprisingly tender on the inside. I dipped them in the accompanying green chilli sauce and ate them whole because I was a little squeamish about what the insides might look like.

I have one word for the bao — wow. I had already tried the classic (braised pork with peanuts, greens and coriander) at Netil Market, and although it was right up my street, I decided to branch out by ordering the confit pork (confit pork belly, pork sauce, hot sauce and shallots; £4.50) and the fried chicken (with Sichuan mayo and kimchi, served on a sesame bao; £5). 

Both were superb — the pork belly was so juicy and tender, while the fried chicken was perfectly crispy and paired well with the spicy accompaniments. If I had to pick one favourite dish, I think it would have to be the fried chicken bao, but as you can probably tell, by the time I'd finished, I was already plotting what to eat on my return visit, including the pudding bao (a fried bao with Horlicks ice cream).

Sadly, though, I was getting full and the kitchen was about to close (they shut between 3 and 5.30 pm), so it was time to bao out. I paid about £25 including service for my small feast — not cheap but very reasonable given the quality of the food. And if you can't face waiting in line, maybe BAO's second branch, which opens in Windmill Street next month, will ease the queuing situation. One can but hope!

BAO. 53 Lexington Street, London, W1F 9AS (Tube: Oxford Circus or Piccadilly Circus). Website. Instagram.

Five Books for Your Summer Reading List

I've enjoyed quite a few books recently that I think would make good holiday reads. There are two thrillers in the mix; two novels about friendship — and particularly the difficulty of sustaining friendships as you grow older and grow apart; and a love story. 

I sometimes receive pre-release review copies of upcoming novels via NetGalley, but this doesn't affect my decision to review a book or my opinions of it in any reviews I do write. I've added an asterisk to the titles below for which I received a review copy from NetGalley.

Dear Amy by Helen Callaghan*

In Helen Callaghan’s debut novel Dear Amy, Margot Lewis balances her day job teaching classics to the often unwilling teenagers of Cambridge with her role as the titular agony aunt for the local newspaper. She is also going through a divorce and has quite enough on her plate when a letter arrives addressed to Dear Amy, signed by Bethan Avery.  Bethan disappeared from Cambridge as a teenager some 20 years earlier and her disappearance was never solved. 

Meanwhile, another teenage girl, Katie, who is one of Margot’s students, has also gone missing. With the help of a criminologist, Margot tries to find out who is really writing the letters and whether they can help her to find Katie or Bethan. But Margot, solitary and somewhat isolated, has demons of her own and her efforts to unravel the mystery may yield more than she bargained for.

Although an engrossing read with plenty of good, well-executed twists, Dear Amy isn’t a classic thriller. Instead, it’s a well-paced, reflective mystery with a complex and sympathetic heroine. In tone and theme, it reminded me of Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories, which also happens to be set in Cambridge. The Cambridge setting was an added bonus for me: like Margot, I experienced both gown and town in Cambridge, and Callaghan shies away from the university stereotypes to offer a more realistic picture of the city as a whole, beyond the honeyed stone walls of the colleges.

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware*

The Woman in Cabin 10, Ruth Ware's follow-up to her 2015 debut In a Dark, Dark Wood, is just as addicting and twisty as its predecessor. Although it loses momentum in the final act, it is a fast-paced, entertaining read with a troubled central character whom we aren’t sure we can trust.

A burglary in the house of travel journalist Lo Blacklock leaves her mostly uninjured but severely shaken. A few days later she heads off for a press trip on a luxurious Scandinavian yacht where she mingles with a cast of characters that wouldn’t seem out of place in an Agatha Christie novel: the charismatic and wealthy owner of the boat; the shifty hack; the ruthless magazine editor; and the obsequious crew. 

Woken one night by a commotion in the titular cabin 10, Lo witnesses a disturbing incident. She starts to investigate but someone doesn’t want her to get to the bottom of what she saw — or what she thinks she saw. Someone who will go to any length to stop her learning the truth.

The novel is told from Lo’s perspective but to add to the suspense, her narrative is interspersed with Facebook messages and news stories. I think these could have been cut, although they do speak to one of the central questions of the novel: should we believe Lo or is she lying or, perhaps, confused? The cruise loses steam towards the end, but the story is such a page-turner that I sailed on regardless.

Invincible Summer by Alice Adams

The title of Alice Adams' new novel is taken from a Camus quotation, but Invincible Summer draws on the worlds of physics and finance as much as the arts. The novel opens in 1995 as four friends graduate from Bristol University. Lucien, charismatic and cool, goes on to be a club promoter; his sister Sylvie, beautiful and bohemian, drifts from job to job, trying to find her place in the world; Benedict stays on to do a particle physics PhD; and Eva launches into a high-flying banking career. They are optimistic about their futures and the tenacity of their friendship.

Each chapter then jumps forward in time — sometimes by a few months, sometimes years. They struggle with their careers and their love lives — Benedict and Eva in particular wrestle with their complex and usually asymmetrical feelings for each other — but they also struggle to keep in touch as their priorities change and their lives carry them further apart.

If you've read David Nicholls' One Day, you may well think this story sounds familiar and it is. The two novels even cover similar chronological periods and the similarities did jar at times, although One Day is more focused on romance than friendship. Nor are the characters in Invincible Summer always particularly likeable, but they are complex and true-to-life and I genuinely cared about what would happen to them. 

I also thought the novel offered a realistic and convincing portrait of long-term adult friendships. Some of the chapters — particularly those depicting Eva's job on the trading floor — are a little technical but on the whole, Adams' novel is engaging and authentic, never straying into mawkishness. 

Rich and Pretty by Rumaan Alam

In Rumaan Alam's Rich and Pretty, Sarah is rich and her best friend Lauren is pretty. Sarah isn't ugly and nor is Lauren poor, but somehow, a classmate's careless characterisation of the pair when they were teens ends up defining their friendship, although the descriptions are mostly beside the point. 

The girls have been friends for two decades but, by their early 30s, they struggle to find time to see each other in their busy Manhattan lives. Sarah works part time for a foundation but expends most of her energy trying to plan her upcoming wedding. Lauren has a burgeoning career in magazine publishing and is uncertain she'll ever meet a man she wants to spend her whole life with.

The themes in Alam's novel are not dissimilar to those explored in Invincible Summer and the novel asks the question of whether you can call someone your best friend if you only see her a few times a year and have little in common with her. 

But Lauren and Sarah do have a wealth of shared history; indeed, Lauren muses that her "friendship with Sarah has always been about nostalgia." And although the two often fight and disagree, they forgive each other and move on as their lives continue to diverge. I'm the same age as Lauren and Sarah and identified more strongly with Lauren, but I think the novel will speak to a lot of people in the same age bracket.

There are a few instances of clunky writing in Rich and Pretty (the description of cashmere sweaters in — presumably — J. Crew was particularly overwrought: "the bag weighs nothing because the sweaters weigh nothing"), but overall, Alam's novel is smart and funny, and it offers a convincing and intimate account of female friendship. When I reached the end, it left me craving more: I wanted to spend more time in the company of these flawed but genuine characters.


If I Forget You by Thomas Christopher Greene*

Thomas Christopher Greene's second novel, If I Forget You, calls to mind the Pascal quotation Tu ne me chercherais si tu ne m'avais déjà trouvé (you wouldn't seek me if you hadn't already found me). At an expensive New England liberal arts college in the early 1990s, baseball scholarship student and would-be poet Henry falls in love with wealthy, WASPy Margot. 

They have a passionate romance that is brought to an untimely end. Two decades later and, still unsatisfied with relationships that never lived up to the excitement and intensity of first love, they both still think about the one that got away. "If poetry is the search for significance," Henry muses, "then the stubbornness of love must be its fullest expression."

Flashbacks told from both characters' perspectives fill in the missing pieces of their pasts, while in present-day New York, Margot and Henry seek each other with an increasing desperation. But will they get a second chance or is the die already cast? Greene's prose is elegiac and elegant. 

Both Margot and Henry are artists — she a painter and he a poet — and Greene captures their diverse modes of thinking and imagining with expert precision as they explore themes of love and loss. If I Forget You isn't the most cheerful of summer reads but it is thoughtful, beautifully written and very different from Greene's debut.

Paris: A Specialty Coffee Guide

UPDATE: I returned to Paris twice in 2017, once in March and once in September, each time adding a number of specialty coffee shops to my map.

The last time I was in Paris, back in November 2012, I was surprised to discover, after decades of mediocre coffee (or worse), that it was possible to get good specialty coffee in the city. Unfortunately, a hectic day trip meant I could only go to one coffee shop, La Caféothèque, a sprawling, characterful café in the southern part of the Marais.

A Great Weekend in Paris

My office is a five-minute walk from the Eurostar's London terminal in St Pancras and yet I take the opportunity to hop on a train to Paris for the weekend all too rarely. Before the ill-fated trip to the city I had planned for my parents last November, my last visit was in 2012 and that was only for the day. 

Mindful of this, I headed off on the 18:01 Eurostar from St Pancras on Friday to stay with friends in Saint Germain. With news of floods and strikes, I was worried that I might be jinxed, but the train pulled into Gare du Nord a few minutes early, without any evidence of disruption.