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 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).

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.

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.