Straight Up London

A few months ago I moved to Brixton by accident, and I’ve been slightly frustrated by it ever since. (I thought I had moved to Stockwell but realised a few weeks in that I was only about five minutes away from Brixton High Street.) Of course it is a hip area with quite a few nice restaurants

I tried really hard to think of an angle for this review – a discussion of the rise of American soul food in London, for instance, or of how a restaurant focusing on one type of food can be a blessing (cheaper, better quality, less potential for regret) or a curse (because you’ll always end up comparing

It is a mark strongly in favour of The Lockhart that its menu has changed almost completely between early 2014 and now and yet looks equally beautiful across the board. Everything now, as then, is a perfectly-balanced mid-point between sophisticated modern London dining and hearty, warming southern USA staples. Whereas then your mains options were shrimp and grits,

Camberwell is having something of a moment, perhaps even more so than all of the other ‘up-and-coming’ South and East London hotspots. In the last year or so it’s gained the fantastic Camberwell Arms, Theo’s Pizza, which gives Franco Manca and Pizza Pilgrims a solid challenge, and now Queen’s (which replaces a nail bar by the

London isn’t too badly off for barbecue these days. If you want a pile of tender, juicy smoked meat you can do a lot worse than Miss P’s; Smokestak has you sorted for giant hulking ribs; Pitt Cue handles the virtuoso experimentation side of things; I’ve heard great things about The Rib Man’s rolls at Euston station;

For the last couple of years I’ve fantasised about living in a shipping container converted into an apartment. They look cool, one would be about the size of a small studio flat, and you’d have thought that they’d be quite cheap. Maybe these are the solution to the housing crisis? So far the closest I’ve

After hearing Ben and Philip fantasise for months about going, I was pretty pleased with myself for making it to Bao before them. A Taiwanese steamed bun restaurant that started life as a stand at the street food collective Kerb, Bao has quickly built a reputation as one of London’s most popular restaurants, with a long queue

For most of my life I didn’t believe people who said that they preferred brown chicken meat to the white stuff. To me, the thighs and legs were greasy, fatty offcuts that you ate with a roast chicken to remind yourself that, like all good things, the breast and skin came with a price tag.

Som Saa tried its hardest to stop me from eating there. When I first tried going back in May it turned out to be closed for a private party, and ended up at the disappointing (and expensive) Rita’s instead. After a few months of sulking I decided to try again. This time, Som Saa turned an “hour