Hong Kong - hello nice to meet you

And so it begins... I have been in Hong Kong a month now and I wrote this just before collecting Jen - half jet lagged to death - at the airport.

I've spent the last month going through a bit of a readjustment and it is not only because of the heinous humidity, the small women who bully me when I try to get on and off the MTR and the fact that work thinks it is my new girlfriend so I should spend all my weekends with her (my office is actually the reflection above).  Hong Kong is, just like London, one of the few truly world cities.  And because of that it is not a simple place to be.  For everything that is inspiring about it there is also something which is awful.  It is nothing like a city such as Paris where you can just drift around and bathe in the beauty.  Instead it demands effort.

Restaurant Review: Eastside Inn in Smithfields (or my last meal in London)

One of the best things about leaving London was that it gave me an excuse to meet up for expensive meals with great friends. Obviously as I was leaving London money was no object and I had to go to fancy places (I just didn't tell Jen). Most of these meals I didn't blog as sometimes you want to go to meal, not analyse, to give up on the critique and just let it wash over you.

Restaurant Review: Kennedy's of Goswell Road (fish n chips)

What is your favourite type of meal? What do you truly love? For me, it is good grot. I have a soft spot for formica clad cafs and traditional rough edged food served in rooms full of cab drivers.

Restaurant Review: Koya in Soho

Do you actually care about udon?  Do you actually know what good udon tastes like?  I know what bad udon tastes like but good udon?  That has as many variations as pasta.  Just look at wikipedia if you feel like being bored by some obsessive fooding (here). Being in Hong Kong is making me approach food differently.  It is making me realise that I just don't know enough and what I think is good, well, might not be.

Everyone is in agreement that Koya is good.  Everyone raves about the udon.  However, stop for a minute and think about steak instead.  Everyone thinks they know how steak should be ordered. Medium rare right? But go to Argentina.  A place which is born of steak, grows steak, is fed by steak on a day to day basis and how do they serve it? Well done.

Restaurant/ Bar Missing: Frank's Cafe and Campari Bar in Peckham multistory carpark

It is strange that when you are abroad you don't miss the things you think you will.  What I am really missing right now at 10:00am on a fine 85% humidity morning in Hong Kong is those esoteric things you can only discover if you are a native (or read the Londonist.com).  One of the best such things last year was Frank's Cafe and Campari Bar which has just restarted in Peckham's multistory carpark.  One of my best friends - Clair - a rather superlative poet (blog here) is planning on having her birthday there and is trying to persuade people that Peckham is worth it.  My contribution to this is some pictures of its opening last year.

Restaurant Review: Shoreditch House in Shoreditch

I'm going to channel Vice magazine for this review - Shoreditch House is astounding.

The boys and the girls who go to Shoreditch House are vivid creatures.  The girls gleam like calves fattened on their parent's wealth.  The boys are skinny in skinnies with their general ignorance flattened down and crammed into tight jeans and capped with a satirical smear.

London Notes: Part 5 - canals

This is my last post on London proper and not just its restaurants for a while as, well, I no longer live in London.  My few brief posts on the London I love so much have been the posts I enjoyed writing the most but they have also been the ones that have required the most effort, the actual thinking about the writing, the dedicated trips to get pictures.  And there was so much more I wanted to say.  There may one day be further entries and if they did come they would revel in the views from Crystal Palace, the Inns of Court, fry-ups in formica cafes, Columbia Road Flower market, the glory of London's parks, the art scenes in Deptford, Peckham and New Cross and a (cheating) guide to punting in Cambridge.

This final "London Note" is on London's canals which admittedly are not as grungy as New York's Gowanus Canal or as glamorous as the Canal du Saint Martin in Paris and aren't as resplendent or as prevalent as everywhere in Venice.  Still, they just sit there in the background, hidden away below road level or under bridges, tucked at the edges of parks or at the backs of expensive rows of houses. And they provide the perfect retreat from what London is now and a glimpse back to a canal barge and coal ferrying industrial past.

Cafe Review: Italo deli in Bonnington Square

Despite having lived in Bonnington Square when Italo deli first opened I never managed to visit it (for Bonnington Square generally here).  You see, we kept different hours.  Off I went to work at 9am, they opened at 10am.  Back I came from work at 7:00pm-ish and they always seemed to be closed.  It was infuriating beyond belief.  Delicious deli food, in the same square where I lived and I couldn't ever manage to get to it in time.

Well a couple of years later and they are open on weekends and I also had a spare week drifting around London so I got to visit it several times.  And it is perfect.  It is small and the shop overflows with bits of this and that.  You can make special orders and they will source it.  What is best about it is that it is seasonal so your cooking (and eating) can ride alongside with the seasons.  When there is sun there are tables outside where you can eat portuguese custard tart, drink Monmouth blend (I think) coffee and eat their daily menu.

Cafe Review: Brunswick House Cafe in Vauxhall

I've been boring recently.  Very boring.  Rushing off to Bar Boulud, Chili Cool, Koya, and everywhere else everyone else is going.  Now I don't regret that (the meals at Chilli Cool and Koya at least) but, well, it isn't exactly novel.

Fortuitously I was driven back to my parent's house in Vauxhall due to impecuniosity prior to moving to Hong Kong and found that Vauxhall has changed a bit since I last lived there.  I have done a post on Bonnington Square previously (here) which is one of the few outposts of civilisation in Vauxhall.  There is now a new one, Brunswick House Cafe.