Anyone who visits London for the first time is sure to concentrate on eternal sights like Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and the British Museum.
21.07.2023 - 07:52 / roughguides.com / London
The East London borough of Hackney is booming, particularly with regard to new restaurants, cafés, bars and speciality delis. Alongside long-established Vietnamese and Turkish eateries you’ll now find a Swedish corner café, a Ghanaian pop-up and even a farmyard bistro . A funky restaurant aesthetic has emerged, characterized by bare bulbs, monastic wooden benches and fresh local ingredients artfully displayed. This is a guide to eating in the area, which will take you on a trail from old classics to new independent restaurants to some alternative choices that are well off the beaten track.
You’ll find foodie Nirvana every Saturday in Hackney at the stalls of Broadway Market: sample everything from Norwegian salmon to Gujarati snacks and cute American cupcakes and whoopee pies. Variety and quality are the key words, plus there’s a high bearded hipster count.
A social enterprise offering something a little different: cooking classes where a “Mama” from a different part of the world teaches you her home cooking. At a recent event in Hackney, Mama Thamara shared her love of vegetarian Sri Lankan food with a group of aspiring cooks. Future events feature Mama Susana who will teach you how to make a three-course Mexican meal, and Mama Esther spreading the word on Camaroonian cooking.
This bakery started life in a kitchen in the E5 area, and now occupies a vaulted railway arch near London Fields in E8. At the front of the space are trestle tables and a counter laden with Bakewell and treacle tarts, Eccles cakes, chocolate brownies and more. But the powerhouse of
is the open kitchen at the back, where you can see dough being stretched, pumelled and shaped into the sourdough loaves that are the Bakehouse signature product. Try their Hackney Wild loaf, and if you’re bitten by the sourdough bug take one of the Saturday cooking courses. These are very popular so you have to sign up in advance, but you’ll end up with your very own pain de campagne, ciabatta, 66% rye, and bagels, plus a sourdough starter to launch your bread-making career.
This is one of the longest established supper clubs in town, and aside from excellent cooking is distinguished by the fact that it’s a highly successful fundraiser for Médecins Sans Frontières. The club operates from Alicia Weston’s Hackney home, where each week Alicia and a group of volunteers create a banquet for guests. The themed suppers range from Diwali celebrations to Georgian and Syrian feasts to a Chinese night that contrasts the earthy food of peasant revolutionaries with lavish dishes from the Imperial Court. It could be the tastiest £45 you ever spend in Hackney – especially as £35 of the fee goes to charity.
The Vietnamese community has been part of the fabric of
Anyone who visits London for the first time is sure to concentrate on eternal sights like Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and the British Museum.
This month, ballet fans will have the rare opportunity to see the acclaimed Australian Ballet in London. As part of the company’s 60th anniversary celebrations, performances by The Australian Ballet at London’s Royal Opera House will be the only performances outside of Australia. The 2023 London Tour will be the first international tour for The Australian Ballet under the leadership of Artistic Director David Hallberg. It will be the company’s first return to the Royal Opera House after an absence of 35 years.
Supersonic speed – mainstream fares
Consumer Reports is in the business of rating and ranking everything, from refrigerators to running shoes. In a shift from its normal product-review routine, where the publication’s in-house experts do the testing and comparisons, Consumer Reports turned to its readers for a review of U.S. airlines.
On the landing page of a new website touting the consumer benefits of Alaska’s acquisition of Virgin America, which closed today, there’s this:
Without warning, Chef Patrick flicked his wrist and chocolate sauce flew across the table. As I and the other restaurant patrons jumped to cover the tops of our wine glasses, the chef smiled and began to throw together (literally) the night’s dessert on a white canvas, like an Italian Jackson Pollock. He sprinkled coffee cake and sunflower seed crumbs, then gently added lemon curd and cheesecake. For the finale, he slammed fist-sized tiramisu balls down on the table, sending chocolate debris flying across the canvas.
“Best airport” rankings aren’t typically the most helpful in terms of travel planning: If I want to go to Boston, I’m not going to head for Las Vegas instead because its airport is better. But those best airport lists do come in handy in two cases—when you have a choice of airport for your connecting flight, and when you can choose between multiple airports within a single metro area.
The late great Anthony Bourdain once said “without Montreal, Canada would be hopeless.” Of course this isn’t true as Canada has many charms but it’s fair to say that the Anglo francophone city is a sheer delight, from both a culinary and cultural perspective. This unique melting pot of cultures, set on an island in the St. Lawrence River, is the birthplace of Leonard Cohen, Mordecai Richler, Arcade Fire, Cirque du Soleil and jazz legend Oscar Peterson.
You don’t need a booming bank account to revel in Chicago ’s cultural coolness. Accommodation will cost you, but oodles of free things to do, discount ticket schemes, and relatively low cost of food and transportation help keep overall expenses in check.
You’ve already photographed the Big Five, sipped your way across Stellenbosch, straddled a camel beside the pyramids and now you’re looking for someplace new and different to feed your fascination with Africa.
A few hours’ drive from New York City (and just one hour from Washington DC), you’ll find Baltimore. Once viewed as a gritty seaport with a reputation for crime – a perspective reinforced by TV shows such asThe Wire – this Maryland city is now home to scores of millennials, magnetised by a lower cost of living and a quirky vibe.
In a city where it’s possible to pay up to US$250 for a rib eye steak, it is no surprise that most feel daunted at the prospect of visiting the pricy Russian capital, Moscow . Yet there are plenty of quirky cafés, hidden restaurants and expat haunts that will not break your budget. Here is a selection of some of the city’s best.