Padella, 19th September

I’ve been itching to get to Padella. I never used to be a huge pasta fan, but ever since having some silky smooth and buttery pasta at Vasco and Piero, I have been searching for other Italian places to give me the same experience (preferably for less money).

Padella is the fast-serve pasta place from the guys behind Trullo. It’s small and trendy, and doesn’t take bookings so queuing is the name of the game. Unless you can get there early. At 6 pm on a Monday we could have waltzed in except for the fact that one of our number was late and they only seat complete parties. As the clock ticked by to 6:30 we were getting antsy – we had an Escape Game to get to at 7:30 and were running out of time to eat! We were considering suddenly saying we were only a four after all but the girl seating people took pity on us and let us have a table as long as we ordered for our friend while we waited. Luckily, just as we sat down, she turned up. 

The good thing about this place is that pasta is a quick dish to make and even the one which required a bit of  a wait (mine) was only 15 minutes or so. We were in and out in half an hour! Which might be slightly annoying if you had queued for over an hour in the first place but really suited us.

The butternut squash and sage butter ravioli I think spoke to most of us, with all of us considering it at some point. That was partly why I ended up choosing the cacio e pepe so that we didn’t all have the same thing. Plus cheese and pepper are two of my favuorite things. The Late One had slow cooked tomato sauce and my friend Amy tried crab for the first time, in linguine.

We had some beautiful bread with olive oil and creamy, squidgy burrata drizzled with even more olive oil and a plate of the spinach, anchovy and chilli to entertain us during the short wait.

When our plates arrived, I cannot pretend I did not have food envy. My plate seemed like a very small portion of ugly worms. Pici is a pasta I hadn’t had before and is, apparently a thicker, tube like form. Looked gross. But tasted very nice. Just cheese and pepper could have been a bit claggy and overly stodgy but it wasn’t at all. Each, chewy piece of pasta was nicely coated but there was no excess. I do wish the portion had been maybe a quarter to a third bigger though.

I had a taste of the tomato dish – as tomatoey as you could wish, and also a bit of the ravioli which instantly filled my mouth with the saginess of the butter. Lovely.

I feel like Padella is more of a lunch place, although if you wanted you could make more of a meal of it by ordering pretty much all of the pastas on the menu and treating it a bit like tapas. And look! Pasta is an anagram of Tapas. Can’t be a coincidence…

Best LDN Walks, 5th March

Best LDN Walks was brought to my attention via Twitter – someone I know had been on one of their walks where they find all the seven noses of Soho and me and Charlotte, the girl who runs it, got chatting and lo and behold, we organized for my meetup group to go along to one of her walks. She has about 11 different routes, but the ones that stood out as most appropriate for my group were the Sex, Drugs and Sausage Rolls and Haunted Pubs tour. I went with the sex.

We met at London Bridge where the scene was set – North London in days gone by was the posh bit, and South London was where things got interesting – where the drinking and the partying and the fornicating happened. Then we wended our way through Southwark and Borough, with Charlotte telling us the more salubrious history of the places through which we travelled. I have been on a few tours in my time (Duck Tour, Ghost Bus Tour) not to mention being generally interested in London’s history and landmarks so expected that I would know a good chunk of what we covered already. And yes there was quite a lot that I had either visited already myself, or had heard of, but there was more than enough that I hadn’t to make it worth my while. Charlotte seems to be a sponge, continually researching and discovering the hidden histories of London. For example, we stopped off for a drink about halfway through at a lovely pub and she got us all ‘singing’ a Tudor drinking song she’d only just unearthed. We didn’t know the tune but we muddled along anyway.

We heard all about the wicked Bishop of Winchester and his poor Geese (prostitutes), and visited the famous Crossbones Graveyard where they were buried. We went through Borough Market and learned the origins of many a phrase such as ‘umble pie, being dirt poor and pulling your leg (that one particularly gruesome – it comes from when young urchins would be employed to ensure that someone just hanged was actually dead and not faking – by pulling on their leg). We passed the site of the original Globe and paused for thought by the wonderfully gruesome Clink and its ‘mascot’ hanging outside (the inside of the Clink is definitely worth a visit). There was a healthy dose of death as well as the fun stuff – we had started off being shown an old map of London which clearly marked all the decapitated heads put up on London Bridge as warnings.

Fittingly, for such a tour, we ended up near a lovely pub into which we all bundled for a nightcap. I know I speak for the whole group when I say Charlotte was a welcoming and entertaining hostess and we all had a brilliant time exploring the seedy side of London yore. 

Leyshon Brothers, 2nd February

Saturday night was the last night of Leyshon Brothers' bonded warehouse (for now) so in some ways there's not a lot of point in me blogging about it because you can no longer go. However, when I put it on the list as soon as I heard of it, I didn't realise they were about to enter their last week of existence. And if it's on the List, blog I must. Also, it has been so successful by all accounts, that I would bet money that they will return in some other guise at some point.

We were told to arrive by 8 and say the password to the man on the door. It's all meant to be very hush hush. Of course, by the time we arrived, there was something of a queue and we didn't even have to utter the  secret phrase to be let through the gates.

(c) Carolyn Mundie

As we went in we were given tickets to one of the 'shows' and told to explore. I must admit, of all the vintage-themed nights I have been to, I have never felt like I was stepping back in time so completely. The cobbled lanes, the shabby decor and the effort to which the 'punters' had gone with their garb. As you wandered these Victorian streets you passed the Sloe Gin Snug where Francesco entertained us as he concted our sloe gin and prosecco cocktails. 

We then made our way past the street games on offer and up into the Queen Victor pub where a range of more usual drinks were on offer and a magician was meandering through the crowd performing some impressive close-up magic. I stood right there as he made cards and coins appear, change and disappear in my friends' hands. And I can honestly say I have no idea how he does it. Well, I have an idea, but under close scrutiny, it was impossible to see how the trick was achieved.

(c) Carolyn Mundie

After a quick bout of street games where I failed to throw the penny on the plate and thus win myself a prize, we went over to see what was going on in the 'Music Hall'. This was where the shows were taking place and the first one was just starting. Not wanting to end up seeing it twice, we made our way back to the other side to wait our turn (we had a ticket for the second show).

Unfortunately, once we'd played the street games, there was very little entertainment on the pub side. It was cool being in such Victorian surroundings but once you'd explored everything the only thing left to do was drink as you would normally in any pub. They had a fortune teller on hand but she was apparently so thorough with everyone the wait was something like an hour. And it didn't really sound like her fortunes would have convinced me to believe in the paranormal.

Soon enough 10 pm rolled around and we went over to take our seats in the Music Hall for the show. It started with a sing-a-long with the old Joanna, singing coarsely to modern pop songs like Madness. There was a little burlesque skit (not as high quality as that at the Boom Boom Club, say), plus the magician we'd seen earlier working the crowd, and a strong man. Sitting towards the back, I have to say that I didn't know how impressed to be with the strong man - the materials he was bending could have been floppy plastic for all we knew. But, luckily, my friends were sitting near the front and brought his finished works out with them - some pretty tough stuff. I was impressed. 

The finale of the evening was a rather eccentric act to say the least. A man with clear operatic talents serenaded the crowd... while stripping down... to nothing but a balloon banana and a pair of balloon testicles. Which he duly popped. 

After the show was over, the entire crowd was rounded up into the music hall for a patriotic sing-song. Being only half-Brit myself, I was at a loss for most of these songs. I've never sung Jerusalem in my life, and only vaguely know God Save the Queen and Rule Britannia. The rest of the crowd were doing a rousing job though, being lead alternately by a 'cockney geeza' and the opera singer (who treated the crowd to a literally dazzling view of his particulars, all trussed up with lights, before donning clothes once more, much to our relief).

And then the evening ran its natural course culminating, of course, in a DJ spinning the decks on the gramophones. I didn't know what a penchant the Victorians had for 70s disco! To be honest, it's not my favourite music in the world but it was good for getting the crowd going and I'll take most any opportunity to have a dance.