One of the staggering things about Clerkenwell is that you're always a stomach rumble's distance from eating well. Doesn't have to be a big name like Moro or St John - the unfancy Bavarian sausage house 'Kurz und Lang' by Smithfield Market is as fine a spot as any if you're in the mood.
The latest newcomer to Gastronome's Corner is The Modern Pantry, housed in a pair of Georgian buildings on the lovely St. John's Square, opposite the bright lights of the Zetter. One of the buildings used to be a steel foundry; now they're both slicked up in steel grey paint and look prim and proper.
It's pitched as more than a restaurant - pah, anyone can open one of those. This is an all-round lifestyle destination. Open seven days a week from breakfast time onwards, there's a cafe downstairs, plus a shop selling items from the restaurant kitchens for punters to take the Modern Pantry experience home with them, from pastries to full pre-prepared meals. Upstairs is the restaurant proper, though it's not clear how or if the food differs from the cafe.
The chef-owner is New Zealander Anna Hansen, formerly of The Providores, the acclaimed fusion restaurant in Marylebone High Street. So you'd expect the cooking to be good, and it is.
The menu changes regularly, with a line-up of far-flung ingredients - from Manouri bruschetta to Maury jelly, whatever they may be. As my dining preference is several smaller portions rather than one large one, I like the 'small plate' option. The chorizo, date and feta fritters, served with tamarind yoghurt, are particularly good. And I especially love the ice cream, which is inexpensive (£1.50 a scoop) and delicious - sate your sweet tooth on the hokey pokey flavour. Plus, the wine list is strong, and as international as the food, with excellent manzanilla.
But there's something about the place which doesn't spark a passion - I've eaten there twice, but neither occasion made me want to linger. AA Gill was particularly withering in his review for The Times, and the ever-excellent Marina O'Loughlin had similar reservations in the Metro.
I think they have a point: The Modern Pantry is matt and grey at a time when people's fancies have changed to homey and comforting in the kitchen, as in much else. Given the huge number of options around Clerkenwell, does this one have enough to make it a favourite and fill that large space from eight in the morning to late at night? I'm not sure.
Sunday, 2 November 2008
Sunday, 22 June 2008
Sunday, 18 May 2008
Vinoteca
Last night I visited one of my favourite haunts. Unfortunately, it seems to be everyone else's too - that's why we waited 50 minutes before being assigned a table.
Vinoteca - at the Smithfield end of on St John Street - has become one of the area's best-loved destinations: bar, wine shop and restaurant. Modelled on the vinotecas and enotecas of Spain and Italy, it has an impressive stock of wines - and, even better, a passionate, knowledgeable staff to tell you about them.
It also runs an impressive kitchen serving up a limited but excellent selection of food. There's a Mediterranean influence but you're as likely to find traditionally English ingredients in there, with ham hock, pigeon, beetroot, horse radish and Gressingham duck breast alongside Serrano ham and olives. Tapas or racion sized portions are the future as far as I'm concerned, and I rarely opt for the main courses, preferring one or two of the smaller plates - less chance of getting bored - and of course it leaves room for something sweet afterwards (very important).
Vinoteca - at the Smithfield end of on St John Street - has become one of the area's best-loved destinations: bar, wine shop and restaurant. Modelled on the vinotecas and enotecas of Spain and Italy, it has an impressive stock of wines - and, even better, a passionate, knowledgeable staff to tell you about them.
It also runs an impressive kitchen serving up a limited but excellent selection of food. There's a Mediterranean influence but you're as likely to find traditionally English ingredients in there, with ham hock, pigeon, beetroot, horse radish and Gressingham duck breast alongside Serrano ham and olives. Tapas or racion sized portions are the future as far as I'm concerned, and I rarely opt for the main courses, preferring one or two of the smaller plates - less chance of getting bored - and of course it leaves room for something sweet afterwards (very important).
Vinoteca also runs a series of winemaker dinners, presided over by wine growers and makers, plus their bi-annual wine tastings - heady afternoons in which over 50 wines from their portfolio are available to taste between the hours of midday and 4pm. The next one is the Winter Portfolio Tasting.
As you can tell, Clerkenwell Dweller likes Vinoteca - a lot. So much so that she even features on the website.
New museum tells Clerkenwell story
Popping out to Finsbury Library in St. John Street with my usual overdue books yesterday, I noticed a new addition to the building in the shape of the brand new Islington Museum. It's so new and shiny, in fact, it was only opened last Monday.
And it's not bad. It may be compact and fairly superficial in terms of history, but it does a decent job of telling the story of Islington and constituent areas such as Clerkenwell. Collections are based on twentieth-century artefacts from local people, including a mass of Arsenal souvenirs from a fan's collection, cinema and theatre ephemera, and wartime paraphenalia. Oh yes, and a bust of Lenin, who took visiting revolutionaries drinking in the pubs around Clerkenwell Green after work in the building now known as the Marx Memorial Library.
Most interesting for my money though are two library book covers defaced by Joe Orton. He and his lover Kenneth Halliwell used to plunder library books, collage their covers into subversive forms, and replace them on the shelves to surprise browsers.
The opening exhibition (until 7 June) is dedicated to 'Clerkenwell: Change and Continuity'. Future exhibitions will include a display of photographs to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of Lubetkin's Finsbury Health Centre (from 7 August).
Saturday, 17 May 2008
Throwing away the packaging
Stir-crazy on a drizzly Saturday afternoon, I popped out for a stroll down stately Amwell Street - where people go when they're too old for Exmouth Market. It's a wonderful thoroughfare of eighteenth-century houses, with a cluster of great shops and illustrious Irish rock pub Filthy McNasty's (where Pete Doherty once pulled pints).
After dallying amongst the art books in the excellent Amwell Book Company, I popped into Unpackaged. Apart from occupying the former Lloyd's Dairy shop with its original gilded fascia, the shop is celebrated as one of the most innovative 'green' businesses in London and has been nominated for a category of the Observer Ethical Awards (winners will be announced on 5 June).
The concept is simple: sell lots of lovely organic and, where possible, Fair Trade wholefoods, household cleaners, spices, tea, coffee and sweets, all loose and without packaging. Shoppers bring their own containers or pay for a bag or bottle to fill with their chosen products, and bring it back next time they go shopping. All products cost 50 pence less if you supply your own receptacle.
It's a neat idea, though hardly new - every provincial shopping centre always used to have a 'scoop your own' shop selling loose goods from slightly scuzzy bins. But brought together here with sustainable, fair trade and organic principles, it makes a compelling and affordable alternative to shopping in your local supermarket. Plus, the range of goods is outstanding - from risotto rice to limescale remover, via cacao nibs, goji berries and spirulina (whatever that is).
I came away with some virgin olive oil dispensed from a giant vat and a bag of fancy muesli. It's not exactly cheap, but the quality is excellent - plus you have the added reassurance that it isn't costing the earth.
After dallying amongst the art books in the excellent Amwell Book Company, I popped into Unpackaged. Apart from occupying the former Lloyd's Dairy shop with its original gilded fascia, the shop is celebrated as one of the most innovative 'green' businesses in London and has been nominated for a category of the Observer Ethical Awards (winners will be announced on 5 June).
The concept is simple: sell lots of lovely organic and, where possible, Fair Trade wholefoods, household cleaners, spices, tea, coffee and sweets, all loose and without packaging. Shoppers bring their own containers or pay for a bag or bottle to fill with their chosen products, and bring it back next time they go shopping. All products cost 50 pence less if you supply your own receptacle.
It's a neat idea, though hardly new - every provincial shopping centre always used to have a 'scoop your own' shop selling loose goods from slightly scuzzy bins. But brought together here with sustainable, fair trade and organic principles, it makes a compelling and affordable alternative to shopping in your local supermarket. Plus, the range of goods is outstanding - from risotto rice to limescale remover, via cacao nibs, goji berries and spirulina (whatever that is).
I came away with some virgin olive oil dispensed from a giant vat and a bag of fancy muesli. It's not exactly cheap, but the quality is excellent - plus you have the added reassurance that it isn't costing the earth.
Monday, 5 May 2008
The stones of Clerkenwell
I can't wait to have a thumb through the two latest volumes of The Survey of London. Published last month by English Heritage as part of their epic project to map the architecture and topography of London, they're going to be the definitive historical guide to Clerkenwell, unravelling the stones like Ruskin did for Venice.
Volume 46: South and East Clerkenwell focuses on the more historic area, centred on the Green and Clerkenwell Close, tracing its history from medieval monastic stronghold to modern loft-land.
Volume 47: Northern Clerkenwell and Pentonville, on the other hand, explores the 18th- and 19th-century planned developments from Exmouth Market and Rosebery Avenue north to Pentonville, the Angel and Islington High Street.
Coming in at a hefty 800 pages, they're not exactly beach reading, but they do have hundreds of black-and-white and colour photographs to leaven the scholarliness.
If, like me, you can't (won't) stump up £135 for the pair, try the local history section of the library or hang on until later this year, when the whole series will be available online.
Friday, 25 April 2008
Tales from Clerkenwell
Peter Ackroyd is a fabulous man. Literary biographer, novelist, historian of London, he's Clerkenwell's most learned and lively scholar, as well as a one-time resident and Three Kings regular.
In the spirit of enhancing my knowledge of Clerkenwell, I've just finished reading Ackroyd's 2002 novel The Clerkenwell Tales. It pulls together many strands of his enormous learning - medieval language and literature, social and religious history, and a street-by-street knowledge of Clerkenwell - in the framework of a medieval mystery novel.
It's 1399, and Henry Bolingbroke is leading his army against Richard II. Meanwhile Dominus, a secret group of clerics and city leaders, is in cohoots with an apocalyptic religious sect led by a mad nun. Spicy stuff, and in the wrong hands it could have turned out like The Da Vinci Code.
Ackroyd takes the characters from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and imagines their lives in London. Except they turn out to be rather different to Chaucer's pilgrims. The Wife of Bath, for example, is not Chaucer's good-time girl cannily working her way through husbands and their fortunes, but a brothel keeper in Turnmill Street, notorious home of medieval stews and bawdhouses, pimping a 13-year-old girl to an elderly lawyer.
It's amazing for local detail - like the labyrinth of tunnels between the convent and the priory for clandestine assignations, and the mystery plays held on Clerkenwell Green. Acrkroyd immerses you in a radically alien understanding of the world, in which your doctor will read your humours and prescribe green ginger, poached eggs and marigold juice. There's lots of farting and appalling table manners.
Historical fact and fiction melt into an authentic whole. But as a novel it's only partially successful. The rapidly changing point of view - following a multitude of different characters - means there is no central character to invest your emotions in. And the need to explain words or interpret beliefs often gets in the way of the plot, encumbering the emotional development of the novel.
Not a bedtime page turner, but it would be hard to find a better way of imagining yourself into Clerkenwell 600 years ago.
In the spirit of enhancing my knowledge of Clerkenwell, I've just finished reading Ackroyd's 2002 novel The Clerkenwell Tales. It pulls together many strands of his enormous learning - medieval language and literature, social and religious history, and a street-by-street knowledge of Clerkenwell - in the framework of a medieval mystery novel.
It's 1399, and Henry Bolingbroke is leading his army against Richard II. Meanwhile Dominus, a secret group of clerics and city leaders, is in cohoots with an apocalyptic religious sect led by a mad nun. Spicy stuff, and in the wrong hands it could have turned out like The Da Vinci Code.
Ackroyd takes the characters from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and imagines their lives in London. Except they turn out to be rather different to Chaucer's pilgrims. The Wife of Bath, for example, is not Chaucer's good-time girl cannily working her way through husbands and their fortunes, but a brothel keeper in Turnmill Street, notorious home of medieval stews and bawdhouses, pimping a 13-year-old girl to an elderly lawyer.
It's amazing for local detail - like the labyrinth of tunnels between the convent and the priory for clandestine assignations, and the mystery plays held on Clerkenwell Green. Acrkroyd immerses you in a radically alien understanding of the world, in which your doctor will read your humours and prescribe green ginger, poached eggs and marigold juice. There's lots of farting and appalling table manners.
Historical fact and fiction melt into an authentic whole. But as a novel it's only partially successful. The rapidly changing point of view - following a multitude of different characters - means there is no central character to invest your emotions in. And the need to explain words or interpret beliefs often gets in the way of the plot, encumbering the emotional development of the novel.
Not a bedtime page turner, but it would be hard to find a better way of imagining yourself into Clerkenwell 600 years ago.
Sunday, 20 April 2008
Cooking without tears
What I love about Clerkenwell is discovering the unexpected just around the corner. A wonderful Christmas present was a voucher for a group cookery class run by a company called eat drink talk.
On investigation, the company turns out to be based just around the corner in St John Street, a few doors from Tesco. The courses are hosted by a vivacious blonde Canadian called Jennifer Klinec, in her immaculate loft apartment in a former shoe factory.
Arriving for a 'cuisine of the Middle East' class, we are invited to take off our shoes, wash our hands, and settle down with a grapefruit and basil mojito - a recipe which will definitely be making an appearance at home. There's ten of us in all - men and women, all 20- and and 30-somethings in couples or on their own.
Cocktail in hand, we sit back while Jennifer gets to work on a menu which includes spinach, walnut and feta fatayer (triangular parcels, a bit like samosas), an aubergine dip, chicken pilaf, and - yummiest of all - plump golden pastries called tahini spirals.
Part demonstration, part DIY, the class is a great lo-effort introduction to ethnic cooking. With just the right amount of activity - lots of therapeutic dough rolling and artistic sprinkling of sesame seeds - it's not too taxing for straight after work. When each creation comes out of the oven, we get to eat it. Plus, unlike an ordinary cookery school, there's no washing up - Jennifer's assisant whizzes round clearing used plates and utensils.
Jennifer is not professionally trained, but that's a plus - her extensive travels and huge knowledge of food anchor these courses in reality. This is not fancy restaurant food which ordinary mortals can't reproduce. We learn the difference between bruising and muddling, the best types of pastry brush to use (silicone, not hair), how to tell counterfeit saffron from the real stuff, and where to buy Middle Eastern ingredients in London.
At the end of the evening we leave relaxed, well fed and inspired by a new spirit of culinary adventure, ready to track down our nearest purveyor of pomegranate molasses. This would be a great event for a team away day, a hen party or just a present to yourself. Yum.
On investigation, the company turns out to be based just around the corner in St John Street, a few doors from Tesco. The courses are hosted by a vivacious blonde Canadian called Jennifer Klinec, in her immaculate loft apartment in a former shoe factory.
Arriving for a 'cuisine of the Middle East' class, we are invited to take off our shoes, wash our hands, and settle down with a grapefruit and basil mojito - a recipe which will definitely be making an appearance at home. There's ten of us in all - men and women, all 20- and and 30-somethings in couples or on their own.
Cocktail in hand, we sit back while Jennifer gets to work on a menu which includes spinach, walnut and feta fatayer (triangular parcels, a bit like samosas), an aubergine dip, chicken pilaf, and - yummiest of all - plump golden pastries called tahini spirals.
Part demonstration, part DIY, the class is a great lo-effort introduction to ethnic cooking. With just the right amount of activity - lots of therapeutic dough rolling and artistic sprinkling of sesame seeds - it's not too taxing for straight after work. When each creation comes out of the oven, we get to eat it. Plus, unlike an ordinary cookery school, there's no washing up - Jennifer's assisant whizzes round clearing used plates and utensils.
Jennifer is not professionally trained, but that's a plus - her extensive travels and huge knowledge of food anchor these courses in reality. This is not fancy restaurant food which ordinary mortals can't reproduce. We learn the difference between bruising and muddling, the best types of pastry brush to use (silicone, not hair), how to tell counterfeit saffron from the real stuff, and where to buy Middle Eastern ingredients in London.
At the end of the evening we leave relaxed, well fed and inspired by a new spirit of culinary adventure, ready to track down our nearest purveyor of pomegranate molasses. This would be a great event for a team away day, a hen party or just a present to yourself. Yum.
Sunday, 16 March 2008
Beginnings
I've been struggling to start a blog for ages. What to write about though? I'm a voyager, lover of foreign-ness, and lapsed travel writer, and my first thought was to write a blog which documented my travels and travel writing.
But there are so many travel blogs; my travelling for 250 days of the year comprises riding on the Docklands Light Railway to the sterile skyscrapers of Canary Wharf; and in an age of heightened environmental angst, trumpeting world travel no longer seems very acceptable. Plus, the best blogs always document the specific and the local - albeit with a global reach.
So it struck me: write about what's on the doorstep. So this is a micro-travel blog - about you what find without actually leaving home. And in Clerkenwell I couldn't ask for more complex subject matter. Its history is long and tumultuous, populated by characters including John Oldcastle, Oliver Cromwell, Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Berthold Lubetkin. More unusually, its present is no less compelling. Clerkenwell has some of London's best bars, clubs and restaurants; a clutch of the world's greatest architects; some of the best contemporary city dwellings; a plethora of interesting characters; and one of London's village-iest areas.
To forestall cavilling at a later date: this blog won't observe geographical boundaries too closely. Clerkenwell is a conveniently nebulous area. If there's a good story, a great building or a must-visit pub in Smithfield, Islington or Mount Pleasant, it won't stop me poaching it to write about.
To write this blog I'll be visiting libraries (how fortunate that the London Metropolitan Archives are just a few streets away); poking my nose with justification into local businesses; badgering luminaries; and sampling local hostelries. And if anyone ever reads this blog and wants to append their own thoughts, I would love to hear from them.
I can't wait to find out more. A baby blog is born.
But there are so many travel blogs; my travelling for 250 days of the year comprises riding on the Docklands Light Railway to the sterile skyscrapers of Canary Wharf; and in an age of heightened environmental angst, trumpeting world travel no longer seems very acceptable. Plus, the best blogs always document the specific and the local - albeit with a global reach.
So it struck me: write about what's on the doorstep. So this is a micro-travel blog - about you what find without actually leaving home. And in Clerkenwell I couldn't ask for more complex subject matter. Its history is long and tumultuous, populated by characters including John Oldcastle, Oliver Cromwell, Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Berthold Lubetkin. More unusually, its present is no less compelling. Clerkenwell has some of London's best bars, clubs and restaurants; a clutch of the world's greatest architects; some of the best contemporary city dwellings; a plethora of interesting characters; and one of London's village-iest areas.
To forestall cavilling at a later date: this blog won't observe geographical boundaries too closely. Clerkenwell is a conveniently nebulous area. If there's a good story, a great building or a must-visit pub in Smithfield, Islington or Mount Pleasant, it won't stop me poaching it to write about.
To write this blog I'll be visiting libraries (how fortunate that the London Metropolitan Archives are just a few streets away); poking my nose with justification into local businesses; badgering luminaries; and sampling local hostelries. And if anyone ever reads this blog and wants to append their own thoughts, I would love to hear from them.
I can't wait to find out more. A baby blog is born.
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