Weekend roundup for 27 May
Featuring old school sandwiches, super boats and magic-lantern slideshows
This week’s roundup contains gin-flavoured ice cream, cumin burps and an explanation of what that big blue spiky thing is in the photograph. Plus, as there’s no Monday issue next week because of the bank holiday, we’ve lowered our paywall a bit (steady on).
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News bits
🚨 It was announced this week that a London Policing Board is going to be introduced to “oversee and scrutinise the reform of the Metropolitan Police”. The board will be chaired by the mayor who said that he was “looking for board members from across London's diverse communities and representing a range of expertise and lived experience, who can help me oversee and drive the changes Baroness Casey has identified, for the benefit of all Londoners.”
👮 Meanwhile, the accounts of ridiculous coronation arrests just keep coming. It seems that 14 people who were arrested on the day of the coronation on the suspicion of being Just Stop Oil protestors, were actually just in a rented workspace in Whitechapel for “a seven-hour seminar about the theory, history and practice of non-violent protest”.
🧮 It was also revealed this week that, when the Met said they had strip-searched 99 children in 2021, what they actually meant was they’d strip-searched 271 children. That “incorrect” figure apparently came about due to a “data transmission error”.
🚲 TfL has published its official road safety data for 2022, which shows that 101 people lost their lives on London’s roads last year. Seven of those were cyclists, that’s the lowest fatality figure on record (not counting the lockdown years), however the number of cyclists seriously injured has increased by 42% against the 2005-09 baseline average. On Wednesday morning, the first cyclist death in London this year occurred on Fitzroy Street in Fitzrovia.
🚇 After the Elizabeth Line strike was cancelled this week, RMT members have voted by 96% in favour of extending their mandate to continue taking strike action (unions have to re-ballot their members every six months for industrial action to continue). RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: “TfL cannot continue to simply wish this dispute away and the government which has drastically cut the funding to London transport budgets, shares a great deal of responsibility for this continuing impasse.”
🚦 Meanwhile, the way-too-early mayoral election nonsense continues to spout out more transport ‘pledges’, with perhaps the most ludicrous being Dan Korski’s “radical plan” to '“switch off red lights between 10pm and 7am”. Soon after this ‘plan’ was revealed a No. 10 spokesperson said, “I don’t think this is something the Department for Transport are working on, given the impact it would have on traffic and road safety.”
🔉 A much more sensible pledge came from another Tory hopeful, Samuel Kasumu, who “vowed to name and shame boroughs that prevent the local economy from flourishing” by closing venues, or not allowing new ones to open, because of noise complaints from residents. Kasumu told the Standard “No offence but it’s London… It’s the most cosmopolitan, most dynamic city in the world. So you know, deal with it.”
🏨 On Tuesday the Guardian ran a report that claimed up to 30 families face being removed from a Travelodge in Enfield “and being placed in alternative temporary accommodation as their rooms have been booked by other people during Beyoncé’s Renaissance world tour in London”. Apparently, this has happened before, “as Travelodge rooms can only be booked for 28 days at a time and families have previously been moved to other accommodation at short notice when the council failed to rebook before rooms were snapped up by people attending big local events”.
🏚 The BBC has spoken to some of the residents of 53 Agar Grove in Camden, which has recently been “deemed not fit for purpose by surveyors” after cracks appeared in the walls, timber frames were found to be rotting and floors collapsed. Both people the BBC spoke to paid around £900k for their properties back in 2019.
🍬 The Standard is back on the Oxford Street Candy Store story (it must be good for SEO or something). This time they’re intent on finding out “who is behind these companies”. They do this by going into one of the shops and politely asking someone who works there. This does not get them very far. Where’s Ross Kemp when you need him?
🏭 The Guardian has picked up on the story of the Omega Works warehouses in Harringay, where redevelopment plans are threatening to make more than 100 people homeless.
🛳 A £25 million “super boat” has landed in Newham’s Royal Docks, where it “hopes to play host to high-end weddings, conferences and exhibitions”. And it won’t just stay in Shad Thames, the plan is to make stops off at “six piers in Greenwich, Southwark and Tower Hamlets”. The owners of the boat have already had to withdraw a licensing application to serve alcohol until 2am “after hundreds of people sent objections to Newham Council,” but they must have some reason to be optimistic: they towed the thing “300 miles from a shipyard in the Netherlands”.
🛏 There’s a mattress vending machine in King’s Cross station now.
Food and drink bits
✖️ New research has shown that London is losing one restaurant, pub or nightclub every two days. The number of licensed premises in central London has fallen by 15.6%, since March 2020, while the average for the country is 12%.
🍸 The National Portrait Gallery has revealed more details about that “underground cocktail bar” they’re installing as part of their epic refurb. Called Larry's Bar (after Sir Laurence Olivier) the ex-coal storage spot will have a secret entrance on Charing Cross Road, 100 portraits from the gallery's collection on the walls, Martinis & Masterpieces nights on Fridays and Saturdays (access to the gallery plus “a flight of mini cocktails”), and a food menu that includes “the luxurious Larry’s Lobster Roll served in a buttery brioche bun with a lashings of Exmoor caviar”. It opens on 22 June.
🥪 If you read Wednesday’s issue then you’ll have seen mention of the fabulous Paul Rothe & Son sandwich shop in Marylebone. Coincidentally, the FT profiled the shop this week, and there’s plenty of gorgeous photos of the place alongside descriptions of their homemade prawn mayo, mackerel pâté, and roast topside of beef.
🍦 The Gelupo Gelateria on Archer Street in Soho has been closed for over a month. But this week they reopened, just in time for the nice weather, with “a bold new menu board” that includes flavours like ‘yoghurt & lemongrass and kiwi’ and ‘gin & elderflower’. Plus, they’ve got an alcohol license now, so you can have a wine, spritz or cocktail with your cone.
🍔 Staying in Soho for a second: Yet another burger place is trying its luck in London - but the twist at Wonderland will be that both carnivores and vegans are catered for. That means separate friers and grills for the vegan and meat-based dishes, a menu that includes homemade plant-based ‘beef’ patties as well as the grass-fed, Aberdeen Angus ones, and the option for dairy-free milkshakes. Wonderland is due to open on Old Compton Street on 13 June.
🇪🇸 Up to now, if you wanted to try Broken Eggs’ perfectly made Spanish tortillas you had to be within the delivery radius of their dark kitchen in Fitzrovia. But as of next week, you’ll be able to visit their bricks and mortar restaurant on Foley Street where there’ll be cheeses, charcuterie, and bocadillo sandwiches to go with the oozy egg and potatoes. Soft launch is 5 June.
🍺 South London pub news now. First, the Earl of Derby in New Cross is reopening after being refurbed by its new owners, Parched, the group which also owns places like Peckham’s The White Horse and The Railway in Streatham. At the Earl they’ve installed a “pub restaurant” called Gengelly’s which will have “proper pies and chargrilled meats and fish” on the menu alongside the Sunday roasts.
👸 And in Tulse Hill, the Queen of the South finally opened its doors this week. This refurb was done by the team behind the Prince of Peckham, and from what we can tell from their IG, it looks great. Plus, they’ve got White Men Can’t Jerk doing the food.
🐕 Vogue has a feature on George, the Mayfair members club that’s been designed by Richard Caring, “alongside his wife, Patricia.” Worth a look just for the picture of Richard Caring, his wife, his dog… his hair… and his teeth.
👍 In restaurant reviews this week: Jay Rayner has been to Everest Curry King situated amongst “the emerging tower blocks around Lewisham station” to find out why the locals call it “the best thing about living in Lewisham”. Jay declares the food to be “the snacks of so many gods” and goes home “burping the rich aromatics of [the] spice cupboard” thanks to a soft drink made with cumin. In the same week, Jimi Famurewa went to Al Kahf, a Somalian restaurant in Whitechapel (do we sense the influence of Vittles here?) and called their cooking “pound-for-downturn-pound, some of the most viscerally brilliant food in the capital”. At the other end of the spectrum, Grace Dent went to the Midland Grand in the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, which she describes as giving off “very Marie Antoinette’s boudoir vibes, as well as Liberace in Las Vegas and Elton John’s 50th birthday party ones”. The chairs, meanwhile, are “plump and sumptuous” and the staff are “all bright, friendly, not remotely up themselves and clad in beautiful frock coats”. We’re pretty sure she enjoyed the (expensive) food too. Finally for this week, William Sitwell reviewed Socca for the (paywalled) Telegraph and gave it four stars without seeming to like it all that much: “Fab on paper but in actuality another typical Mayfair enterprise. A perfectly decent restaurant but one that, in the scheme of things, feels more like the Artful Dodger, glancing and dancing up and down South Audley Street”. He even manages to start one paragraph with the sentence “But what of the Albanian?”.
Art and culture bits
🖼 The big arts news this week was Tate Britain’s rehang, and the general response was one of intense dislike. In the Telegraph, the rehang (which was done with the guiding principle of “relating art to society, Britain to the world and the past to the present”) gets a two-star review for being “so stubbornly obsessed with historical facts that it seemingly regards artworks as little more than dusty sources about traumatic past events”. And in the Guardian it’s the same score next to the damning summary of “vacuous, worthy and fundamentally dull”. ArtReview calls it “A zombie social art history” in which “crappy works take up space just to make a point”. But then the Standard give it four stars and calls it “a masterclass in how to refresh a museum” while the Times uses words like “compelling” and “powerful”.
🚂 The Guardian is much more generous in its review of The Waiting Room, Sarah Sze’s installation at Peckham Rye station, which seems like it’s going to be one of the must-see things in London this summer (it closes in September). The Guardian describes it as a “kaleidoscopic magic-lantern slideshow for the smartphone age” that is “astonishing” “beguiling” and “exhilarating enough to make you miss your train”.
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