Golden Bee, 17th October

I was really surprised by Golden Bee. Depsite having it on my List, I really expected to end up disappointed by the place – I imagined it would be full of suited banker wankers and the prices would be too high. I was wrong. Prices were pretty decent - £8.50 for most cocktails, although the selection didn’t exactly make me go weak at my knees. I had a lemon tarte flute (vodka, limoncello and Prosecco) but it was a little too heavy on the limoncello, making it a little bitter. A beer and a wine only came to £8 which is really not bad at all for a rooftop ‘City’ (just) bar.

The rooftop really is where it’s at - it reminded me of the White Isle even though I've never been there, and I wasn’t the only one to say so (I assume the others who said so, had been). Palm trees and sunset hues give it this ambience. And the heaters are potent enough that even if it had been chilly, we wouldn’t have minded being outside. And so, everyone was loving it… until it started raining a bit and we were all herded downstairs whether we wanted to admit defeat or not. Suddenly it was way too cramped for comfort. This was basically our cue to leave – although I have to say that even then, with one bar less to service everyone, it didn’t take me very long to get served at the bar.

As long as there's no rain on the way then I would head here in mild or chiller weather – especially if I wanted to impress.

Dark Sugars, 12th October

Dark sugars is an Aladdin's Cave of chocolate delights, with a slightly exotic flavour to them. Spices such as cardamom and cinnamon make an appearance, as well as stem ginger and the now fairly standard chilli chocolate. The way the chocolates are laid out in earthy buckets from which you scoop them up, and the fact that many are irregularly shaped, not perfect spheres of glossy ganache, but dusty and rough, makes you think of prehistoric Africa rather than the traditional pretty chocolate box. Although they do have an area where the chocolates are all laid out prettily as well. 

Such rustic setting doesn’t mean that the prices aren’t similar to other high end chocolatiers however. I bought 9 of these beauties and it set me back £9.45!

I treated myself to the following:

Irish kiss with pipette

Pink champagne

Morello cherry

Stem ginger and honey

Milk chocolate nougat

Chilli chocolate

Overdose

Cognac

Liquid sea salt caramel

The Irish kiss came with Baileys in its pipette and I was pleased with the alcoholic hit in my other boozy chocs. The chocolate is definitely of good quality with a very rich taste – they’re not kidding when they call their pure chocolate truffle an Overdose. It’s nice to see some unusual ingredients being used - even if I played it pretty safe in my selections. 

It's also nice to see a bit of a different aesthetic to the traditional chocolate shop, and I'd happily go back and trough a lot more of these when I fancy giving myself a treat!

Olive, 12th October

This place is more local caff than Meditteranean café. Cheap and cheerful is the name of the game here – with basic tables and chairs and a few paintings on the wall to avoid it becoming too drab. They've managing to be bother a permanent place and a street food van. Their famous known value-for-money pizzas are cooked in a dedicated van parked up outside the café. 

This is what brought me to the place. I can’t claim that the pizzas here are exactly authentic, but they’re more than a cut above your average pizza takeway joint. They have a thin base, nicely crisped but where they differ from a more Italian pizza is that they’re not shy of loading the thing with toppings, rather than a few artfully arranged ingredients. I had the Mexicana – jalapenos, peppers and chilli flakes, which also, surprisingly, came with a great deal of rocket. It was a tasty pizza, cooked well, if not as spicy as I would have liked. The cheese was nicely stringy and there was plenty of it, a little more tomato on the base wouldn’t have gone amiss. My 12-incher (which at first I thought I wouldn’t finish – how naïve of me) was only £5!

The café seems to be a friendly place, with clearly quite a few local regulars. One young lad came in to say hello, explaining he hadn’t been in for a while because he’d had a falling out with his friend. His friend had nicked something from him - friendship over! The guy behind the counter counselled him to forgive and forget but the lad was having none of it. You don’t steal PS3 controllers from your mates!

It was pretty empty when I went in but a steady trickle of people ordering pizzas to take away arose, and a group of local hipsters came in for a catch up and a pizza each (making me feel a lot better about my greedy guts having a whole one to myself). They also have sandwiches and a surprisingly varied amount of coffees to order. 

Is this pizza that you would walk through fire in order to have just one bite? No. There’s nothing ‘artisan’ about it, no bleating on about locally sourced ingredients. But it’s tasty and no-nonsense and I’d happily pop in here again to satisfy my pizza cravings. 

Liberty Cheesesteak, 11th October

The humble cheesesteak gets a few outings in London but it's not anywhere near as ubiquitous as the burger or hot dog. And it deserves to have a little more fame for it is quite delicious to eat.

I was alerted to the fact that Liberty Cheesesteak were doing their own authentic versions from a stall at various markets by one of my favourite blogs, the London Review of Sandwiches. This sounded amazing. And it was rather good - I blame my eyes being bigger than my belly on the way I began to flag and consequently not enjoy it to the full.

These guys are doing it right. They have ever so thin cuts of beef which they grill and chop up before your very eyes, mixing it all up with grilled onions. You then have a choice of three cheeses - their home made cheese whiz, provolone or American. I chose the whiz for authenticity's sake, and then they stuff it all into a proper, US-style sub. You can have a half or a whole, and as I hadn't eaten anything yet that day I went for a whole one. I shouldn't have. There is a surprising amount of meat put into that thing and I got barely over halfway before I reached saturation point. There was too much meat, the cheese had got a bit overbearing and claggy as it cooled. I had to admit defeat. But not total defeat as I saved the rest of it and had it for dinner later and enjoyed it all over again.

For it is very enjoyable. The bread is soft and squidgy, the meat has just a tinge of pinkness in parts and is delicious even on its own. The cheese whiz I wasn't completely convinced by. It did go well here with the meat, but I think I would have preferred the provolone which is a classic melty cheese, rather than one that begins in a melted state. I also probably would have liked to add some hot sauce but my sub was all wrapped up in foil before I had the chance.

But apart from those minor quibbles I commend them for doing a real US favourite, in no-frills proper style.  

London Cocktail Week/El Nivel, 10th October

I’ll be honest – I like most of the places that I put on my List, because I put them on my List for a reason. I think they sound good. But every now and again something doesn’t quite live up to my expectations. And so it was with El Nivel, one of the bars we went to, to round off London Cocktail Week.

London Cocktail Week, if you didn’t know, is a week-long festival of cocktails. Hundreds of bars all over town participate and either create a cocktail or offer an existing one for only £4 if you have bought a wristband. On top of this, they have masterclasses, mixology sessions and pop-ups going on all over the place. I didn’t manage to go to any of these, but I did get to sip quite a few cut-price cocktails, which makes it all worthwhile.

First on the list was El Nivel, a bar specializing in tequila and mezcal but whose licensing restrictions mean you also have to eat while drinking there. That was fine with me. The menu sounded pretty good and I liked the sound of the LCW offering. And it was good. But for a Mexican bar it was rather devoid of atmosphere. I had tried to book but the booking system said it was full so we chanced it. We managed to get a seat and to be honest, while there were plenty of people there, it was never completely full the whole time we were there. Even with it more than half full though, it seemed rather quiet and subdued. Especially considering it was 8pm on a Friday night. Even thought it aims to be 'one of the best new bars in London', this place is really a quiet restaurant with a good drinks selection rather than the other way around.

We ordered the special LCW cocktail, a fizzy little tequila number with coctel de marisco to eat and then got another plate each. I really enjoyed the seafood cocktail – they didn’t skimp on the shrimp or scallop and it all tasted fresh and juicy in a salsa equivalent of marie rose - a tomatoey 'sangrita' sauce. My plate of tres chiles beef was also enjoyable, served with sour cream and tortillas to create little tacos if you wished. I had five of these and there was plenty of beef to eat on its own as well. It had quite a rich, savoury taste, a Mexican stew. Service was a little hit and miss – we ordered two glasses of red, for white to turn up. When we sent that away it took a good long while for the correct drinks to show – we had to check again they were on their way.

If you want a very quiet drink and bite to eat then head here, but for some reason quiet + Latin don’t go together in my mind so I probably won't make it back here.

However, after this we went to some much livelier places. First we went into Adventure Bar. Kind of on accident as we actually wanted to try out Dub Jam. This was exactly the kind of place I would normally avoid. Lots of drunk people dancing to mainstream music but I must admit there was something about the place that was likeable.Our cocktails were really tasty and came with a cute fortune cookie. It was called the Appleton Dreamcatcher and was made up of Appleton Estate Rum, black raspberry liqueur, vanilla, apple and passion fruit. It didn't taste too complicated and was easy to drink. The fun everyone was having was quite infectious and everyone seemed pretty friendly, especially the bar staff, so had it been a bigger night for me, I could happily have stayed and joined the dancing revellers.

I would say - not true.

However, my friend and I really wanted to be able to talk and hear each other so after one, we went upstairs to the buzzy but quieter Dub Jam where we had a really lovely rum punch, which was sprinkled with either nutmeg or cinnamon and made it very hard to sip slowly. At first the bartender warned us they were all out of tin cans in which to serve them (some scallywags keep nicking them) but he managed to procure a couple from somewhere so we got the full authentic experience. This place is really barely more than a hole in the wall but it’s a fun one, encapsulating sunny vibes in such a small spot and I’d happily go back.

Finally, we went over to the Big Easy and had the prettiest mojito I’ve seen. It was too dark to take a good picture and do it justice but it was a cocktail which seemed to have a ball of lime sorbet in the middle. Hands down one of the most memorable ways to serve this classic cocktail and a really good blend of sweetness and refreshment. Now my favourite mojito – I hope they do these all the time and not just for London Cocktail Week!

And so we concluded our cocktail self-tour. Can’t wait to do it again next year.

Slamboree competition

You may remember a couple of years ago I went to the excellent London Remixed festival in Shoreditch, showcasing a huge range of alternative music spanning everything from electro-swing to gypsy punk and more.

Well, if you liked the sound of that then you’re probably also going to like the sound of this – Slamboree, with Caravan palace doing a DJ set, being held at the ElectricBrixton on November 15^th from 10 pm until 6 am. It promises “hyper-immersive, circus themed, bass fueled, off-the-scale mayhem” from the likes of Dr Malaka, the Rumpsteppers and DJ Chris Tofu. There’ll be plenty of electro swing, Balkan beats and mashups to get your feet stomping all night long. It really does sound like one hell of a party.

And if you like the sound of that, then you’re going to love this: cos I’m giving away a pair of tickets! All you have to do is follow me on Twitter and tweet (or retweet) the phrase “Wham Bam thank you Slam-boree! I want those tickets @ginglesnuff @slamboreeMusic!” Or, you can Like my facebook page and comment on the competition post with that same phrase. 

I will then pick a winner at random from the entrants (You must be 18 or over to enter). Competition closes at noon on November 13^th and I will notify the winner via Twitter, and you’ll be put on the guest list for Saturday’s all-night extravaganza. (Please be available to go - no prize substitutions available.)

Salon, 8th October

Apparently, in this era of knowledge at your fingertips, people are craving curated content more and more. We want to put our trust in someone to deliver reliable and interesting knowledge and there are a spate of events that cater to this. One such would be the Lost Lectures which aim to make learning a night-time affair. Another, is Salon London. Each bring together experts or people of note in their field.

Salon does this by having mini-seasons in which they will have several salons on a theme. This season’s was Crime and Punishment, and the event I went to was on Punishment. Apart from the overselling of tickets and the fact that my name wasn’t down, even though I’d already checked with them by email to make sure it was, I thought this was a really enjoyable and well put together evening.

It differs from the Lost Lectures in a few ways, and it was for these very differences that I preferred it. Instead of bite-size introductions to a topic, cramming in six or seven acts into the night, Salon gives each speaker a good thirty minutes to talk. This allows them to really get into a subject, yet it’s not so long that they lose momentum. Each of our speakers did a really good job of sticking to their time limit and keeping our interest. And the nature of the event is such that, even though there is a short Q & A section, you are encouraged to mingle and chat to the speakers during the intervals.

So. Crime. Punishment. Big themes. Controversial themes. So controversial that I cannot in fact tell you much about our second speaker, save to say she was well placed to reveal some very interesting things about our prison system. Before she got up we were told that ‘Chatsworth house rules’ would apply. I didn’t really know what that meant, but it meant I can’t tell you too much on the content of her talk. It was basically focusing on the reasons behind imprisonment, and how well we actually achieve those things by imprisonment. Not exactly 'thought provoking' as a lot of it lined up with what I have begun to believe anyway, but it did give you more food for thought on the subject.

But before that we had an interesting presentation on the Fine Cell Work company, an organization that gets long term prisoners involved in fine needlework, hand stitching various products. It gives these long term prisoners something of value to do, something to take up their time on which to concentrate their mind, which might otherwise be unhealthily distracted. And then these items are sold, and the prisoners are paid for their work. Working with prisoners, as it turns out, is not the easiest of tasks. Everything must be hand delivered to them, and the same is true of the completed projects. Apart from the good that they’re doing in terms of rehabilitation, they are producing all sorts of pieces, from their very popular pillow cases (the componenets of which were passed around the audience) to grand works of art such as quilts through which prisoners expressed how they feel about their lives. They take commissions as well – logos, tapestries, whatever you might want.

We ended on an extraordinary performance from a comedian, Wil Hodgson who basically told us a story. A story of a man who was hanged and of all the various characters that were involved in his hanging. We were literally walked through how he came to be there and what happened in front and behind the scenes of a typical hanging in the 1960s - a true hanging. Wil was quite the accomplished raconteur, weaving a story (taken from his show You Will be Taken from This Place) that was historically fascinating, told with a pinch of humour, and ultimately left you feeling rather unsettled and disturbed. Which is just how I like all my intellectual evenings. Plenty to mull over.

I have already bought tickets to one of their birthday celebrations next month when they will be taking on Acid House and Rave culture. If it’s anything like this was, I am in for a treat.