Weekend roundup for 29 April
Featuring made-up places, massive tables and mother art
As it’s the first of the May bank holidays on Monday, there will be no LiB that day. To make up for it, we’ve got a few heftier-than-normal news items to kick off this week’s roundup, and we’ve nudged the paywall down to just before the Arts & Culture section.
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P.S. RIP to Jerry Springer, who was born in Highgate tube station in 1944.
News bits
🤦♂️ It’s pretty difficult to make us feel any degree of compassion for Met Commissioner Mark Rowley, but if anyone can do it it’s the MP for Ashfield and Tory deputy chairman, Lee Anderson. The former coalminer (who has, in the past, called for the reinstatement of the death penalty and roped his mates into staged doorstep encounters), used to be a Labour councillor but defected to the other side after he was suspended for “placing boulders to deter travellers from setting up camp”. Since then, he has claimed that a good meal can be made for about 30 pence day and backed up his claims by using his (poorly paid) staff as political footballs. He’s also not a fan of protestors.
This last fact became even more evident on Wednesday when ‘30p Lee’ was tasked with ‘grilling’ Mark Rowley during a session of the home affairs committee. As you’ll see in the video below, Anderson began by unsuccessfully trying to bait Rowley into admitting he’d witnessed instances of racism, homophobia and misogyny during his career, before pivoting to accusing the commissioner of being lax on the protesters outside parliament. In return, Rowley accused Anderson of not understanding the law. And he’s right. The police can’t just “move these people on” because politicians find them annoying, and the fact that the deputy chairman of the Conservative party doesn’t know that (or, more likely, feels that there should be another law for people like himself) is, frankly, terrifying.
The Met, and particularly Rowley, need to be held to account and asked some very hard and pointed questions. But all Anderson did this week was attempt to stage a ‘gotcha’ moment in order to further his own profile. And he couldn’t even manage that. It doesn’t bode well for his forthcoming GB News show, for which he is reportedly being paid £100,000 a year.
📽 Back in February we wrote two articles about how the Curzon Mayfair cinema was under threat from its landlords and a development company who had been trying to evict the cinema from the building since 2016. This week, the CEO of the Jersey-based holding company 38 Curzon Lease (which itself is part of a set of companies owned by the secretive, Russian-born Belgian oligarch, Vladimir Zemtsov) laid out their plans for the building at an exhibition in the Sheraton Hotel on Park Lane. Those plans involve creating a “vibrant venue serving the wider community,” and “include an in-house restaurant and bar” as well as a cinema that will “offer a range of ticket prices,” (although they don’t say where that range will start) along with “a commitment to showcasing independent and local filmmakers, as well as hosting premieres and cultural events, such as operas.” Meanwhile, Time Out (which called the plans ‘good news’ when they were first announced back in February) was imploring its Twitter followers to sign the petition to save the cinema, and Steven Spielberg joined the group of celebs calling for Curzon not to lose control of the cinema.
🚅 The ‘final milestone’ of the Elizabeth line will be reached on 21 May, just a few days before the one-year anniversary of the line opening. From the 21st a train will run roughly every two-and-a-half minutes between Paddington and Whitechapel at peak times and anyone coming “from Shenfield in Essex and east London will be able to travel directly to Heathrow Airport without needing to change trains for the first time”.
🛵 Between April 16 and 21, 60 moped drivers from food delivery companies were arrested “as part of a government crackdown on alleged immigration offences”. 44 were detained by the Home Office, pending their removal from the UK, while the remaining 16 were released on immigration bail.
🚨There’s a chance that Brixton Academy could close for good after the Met requested the council to strip the venue of its licence, saying it had “lost confidence” in the venue’s operator, the Academy Music Group. A council sub-committee is meeting in a couple of weeks to discuss the license, meanwhile “AMG has also submitted its own application for a change to its license, dated March 22, which would keep the venue open if successful.”
😶🌫️ A new study by City Hall has shown that the air in every London borough breaches World Health Organisation guidelines on nitrogen dioxide. Of the 1,823 sites measured, all of them exceeded the WHO’s recommended nitrogen dioxide limit of 10 µg/m3; and the UK legal limit (40 µg/m3) was exceeded in 14 boroughs. The single highest level (almost three times the legal limit) was found in Brent, on Harlesden High Street.
🚁 Last year was the busiest year in the London’s Air Ambulance 30-year history, with almost 2,000 people treated. Depressingly, bullet wounds and stabbings were the most common injuries, while Westminster, Lambeth and Tower Hamlets were the areas with the most call-outs.
💽 HMV is coming back to Oxford Street. In fact, it’s coming back to 363 Oxford Street, where its flagship store was from 1921 until 2019 when the company went into administration. The new shop is going to be called… HMV Shop.
🏗 Michael Gove is really dragging out this decision over the Marks & Spencer on Oxford Street. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities was supposed to deliver a verdict on whether the building should be bulldozed or retrofitted round about now, but this week they announced that a decision “will now be issued on or before 20 July”.
🏊♂️ It looks like east London could have three more outdoor swimming spots within the next year or so. Redbridge council has promised to open a 25-metre pool open in Valentine’s Park in Ilford by next August, Waltham Forest council is planning a lido on a sports field in Leyton, and Hackney council is looking to put in a beginner’s pool at a wild swimming reservoir in Stoke Newington.
🗺 If it wasn’t behind a paywall this FT article on London’s made-up neighbourhoods would have been our ‘Long Read of the Week’ because, not only is it a great article, but it’s written by Helen Barrett, who we interviewed for our Where Do You Go? series just over a year ago.
Food and drink bits
☕️ On the day we published the first in our new series highlighting London’s most beloved but potentially ‘fragile’ businesses, Federation Coffee in Brixton Village announced it was closing after 13 years, “as a result of unaffordable rent rises from their landlord, Hondo.”
🌮Award-winning taqueria Homies On Donkeys has officially moved in to Leytonstone. After a successful Kickstarter campaign, the winners of ‘Britain’s Top Takeaways’ have gone from their eight-seater spot in Walthamstow to a fully-fledged restaurant on Leytonstone High Road. The soft launch started this week and runs until May 5. If all goes well the new spot should be open to everyone after that.
🥩 Chophouse Blacklock is joining Hawksmoor and Dishoom and opening a new location in Canary Wharf. Slots for their soft launch have already gone, but judging by the booking system on the website, they will be open proper from 15 May.
🍽 KERB’s summer street market is coming back to the South Bank next month, and this year they’re adding ‘The Table’ a “70 metre long, bright red banqueting table” that can seat 200 people and which will be served by a curated list of vendors, including Portuguese sandwiches from Santa Bifana, Korean bao buns from Eat Lah and ramen and dumplings from Sen Noods. The Table will be open, outside the National Theatre, every Wednesday to Sunday, from 12 May.
🌍 While you wait for the new Chishuru to open in Fitzrovia, you can still catch chef Adejoké Bakare’s at her forthcoming pop-up at the Globe Tavern in Borough Market. From 9 May to 1 July, Joké will be in the Globe’s kitchen “trying out new dishes for Chishuru” and collaborating with some of her “chef pals” including Guan Chua of the Nyonya Supper Club, Anna Higham of Quince Bakery, and “crème brûlée cookie genius” Chloe-Rose Crabtree from Honey Pie Baking.
🔥 Apparently chef Ferdinand ‘Budgie’ Montoya has scrapped plans to crowdfund a home in Kingly Court for his Filipino fine dining concept Sarap Bistro, and is instead going to “launch a Filipino street food concept next month within Market Halls Oxford Circus”. It’s going to be called Apoy, and will “specialise in barbecue skewers grilled over charcoal and served with steamed rice, atchara (pickled green papaya), and a choice of dipping sauces”.
🤴 In what might be the most contrived Coronation tie-in ever, that DC Comics-themed restaurant near Piccadilly has launched “a Park Row Royalty Menu” that includes cocktails called The Clown Prince and the King Of The Seven Seas. There’s also something called ‘pulled pork taco whiz’ although we’re pretty sure there’s no royal family connection there.
🧂 Normally, when we write up these news items we have some understanding of what is going on, but with this one… Well, we’re just going to have to tell you what we know and let you try and fill in the blanks. If you visit the M restaurant in Canary Wharf right now then you and up to six guests can “dine in one of [their] new Himalayan Salt Pods”. You can choose from the ‘Wagyu Pod’ and enjoy beef “dry-aged in Himalayan salt for up to 35 days, so you can fully immerse yourself in this perfectly indulgent experience” or the ‘Regeneration & Relaxation Pod’ where you can “experience the many health benefits of Himalayan salt first-hand, surrounded by lush greenery while you dine”. Both pods “come equipped with speakers, so you can play your own music”. Honestly, if you have any idea what is going on here, please let us know.
👍 In restaurant reviews this week: Jay Rayner came down hard on Cavo, the restaurant that’s in the basement of the Outernet (“a restaurant the size of a Swindon call centre, only with more glassware and napery”). Neil Davey went to visit HUMO on St George St for The Week and loved it so much that he predicts a Michelin star by this time next year (“This was a quite extraordinary meal [even though] the team really like to explain the ingredients, the influences, the detail”). And Kate Ng visited Porte Noire in Kings’ Cross, which isn’t new but is owned by Idris Elba. She liked the wine, but found the food “somewhat disappointing” and didn’t seem to enjoy being “surrounded by tech and finance bros, all bro-mancing one another over glasses of wine and charcuterie boards under low lighting.”
Art and culture bits
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