Dum Dum Donutterie, 1st April

After our filling (at least physically if not in terms of contentment) lunch/dinner at On the Bab it was time for dessert – a wander down to Boxpark to nab a doughnut. It was nearing 4 pm and I was under no illusion that we would have the pick of the bunch. Most of the doughnuts had sold out but they still had three flavours to choose from - an almond pistachio cronut, a creme brulee, and a morello cherry ring doughnut. I felt compelled to opt for the creme brulee while Stephen was enticed by the promise of cherry.

We took them home and Stephen finished his in about four bites and proclaimed he wasn't too impressed. He felt like he was eating an iced bun rather than a doughnut. I had mine and was also underwhelmed. I knew already that they were baked not fried and so expected a 'healthier' taste, but the dough to mine seemed very dry. I know they'd been sat there a while but still. The shell on top which mimicked the top of a creme brulee I actually thought was too sticky – it got all stuck in my teeth in an unpleasant way. It was filled with a vanilla cream though and this was its saving grace. Sadly, even making allowances for the lack of fat, they weren't a patch on Glazed and Confused's inventions. 

Not wanting ot give up on the place, I wanted to go back and try the thing I'd been seeing so much praise for on Twitter – the zebra cronut. And I ended up doing so when I got a hot dog from Coffee Dogs - they stock Dum Dum's wares.

This was definitely better than the doughnut I'd had - with chocolate cream piped through it. Had I not had a crodough from Rinkoff's I might have forgiven Dum Dums the creme brulee. But I had and Rinkoff's were a work of art. These ones were more akin to their bread brethren than their doughnut cousins and just lacked that indulgence I want from a doughnut. I wouldn't be so rash as to say I wouldn't bother with another but, for me, they're not hitting the spot.

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Coffee Dogs, 1st April

I don't really like burgers. While the rest of my family embraced them, I grew up eating hot dogs. And not the weird, slimy kind you get in cans over here, nor the banger in a bun that used to double as a hot dog. No, the real kind. The American kind. And I love 'em.

So even though there are more than a handful of places in London serving pretty good dogs, I will never say another one is a band one. If we had a hot dog cart on each corner, like they do in NYC, I'd be happy.

So it was with an open heart that I wanted to embrace CoffeeDogs to the scene. I had half a mind to get there over the weekend to enjoy a 10% discount but was too busy. Instead I made a pit stop there after work. They've just got a shack outside King's Cross station with a few stools to perch on - already feeling closer to your average hot dog in the States than the gourmet hot dogs a lot of places are serving. And there ain't nothin' wrong with that.

I ordered the Chicago beef pulled through the garden - beef frankfurter, chopped onion, jalapeno sport peppers, strip of gherkin, green relish and then the weird bits - cucumber, tomato and celery salt. All served in a poppy seed bun.

They also do burgers and frozen custards and concretes (oh - and coffee) but I spied a zebra cronut from Dum Dum Donutterie and had one of them for dessert instead.

So, the hot dog. Priced at £5.00 I thought it was just a touch more expensive than it should have been given the toppings. The other hot dogs were all cheaper than this, and I don't think the toppings you're given warrant the extra. Yes, the toppings - most were great - classic toppings for hot dogs that work well with the slightly smokey, briney flavour. Relish - check. Onions - check. Dill pickle - check ('tis what relish is made of after all). Jalapeno sport peppers - double check - they were great. And the celery salt - delicious. The cucumber and tomato? For me, a big no. I don't really want my hot dog to seem like a salad. The tomato was just about ok, but the cucumber? Just weird.

The bread was pretty good - soft like a hot dog bun should be and the poppy seeds were nice. It was just the wrong side of soft (or perhaps not quite wide enough) and tore a little in the middle as I was eating, making the last few bites a bit more awkward. Also, why have buns that aren't as long as the frank? Or, conversely, why make sausages too long for the bun?

Anyway, after having picked it apart, my final verdict is that actually, this was pretty good, capturing the essence of what a hot dog is all about - some simple but ever so satisfying fast food. I'll be back and I'll be giving the Concretes a go next time too. 

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Tongue Fu, 27th March

From the ridiculous Bright Club to the sublime Tongue Fu. 

I expected a similar format to Poejazzi or Bookslam - some spoken word type stuff and then some music, not for the two to be intermingled with each other, creating an absurdly brilliant night, that managed to somehow transport us back to the beat generation. This was in honour of the current exhibition of photos taken by Warhol, Burroughs and Lynch, from which our performers took their inspiration as to which of their pieces to perform. 

Two guests and Chris Redmond the organiser, treated us to some of their magnetic, emotive, funny and sexy spoken word poems, all set to music improvised by the Tongue Fu house band according to the beat or style set by the performer.

We were enthralled. Visuals added to the atmosphere, and evoked the sensuality or moods of the poems, and by the second half almost everyone was sitting on the floor as if it were a massive sit-in – of appreciation rather than protest.

First Chris kicked it off with a challenge - the audience shouted out three disparate styles of music for the band to mesh together (I think we had calypso, blue grass and cha cha) and over that Chris 'rapped' a welcome message. 

Then Toby Thompson took to the stage. This guy was, unbelievably, only 19, a fact only given away by his arms occasionally flailing about in the way young people who are a bit gangly do. His words though were much older than his years, such as pieces on missing a lover – imagining an absent toe to stroke – and then another one taking us on the best ever festival experience.

We then had Salena Godden, the doyenne of spoke word (I have been trying to get to her Book Club Boutique for an age). As she took to the stage with cool ease it was obvious she had not only been doing the spoken word thing for a long time, but had participated in Tongue Fu events before. 

We had a brief break during which we browsed some of the photography, and then we came back and did it all again, in the same order. Salena closed the show – after performing my favourite of the night 'Dear Winter' where she explains to Winter why she just has to break off the relationship she's been having with the season in favour of another – Spring, she brought the night to a close by freestyling a poem! Magnificent. 

Everyone in my group enjoyed it – we felt like we had witnessed something special (though no doubt it is always like this) and that maybe this was what it felt like to be a part of that beat generation – having your eyes opened to something you hadn't experienced before. 

If this has piqued your interest then you can catch them next month at Udderbelly. 

On the Bab, 28th March

On the Bab is a cute little Korean place on Old Street serving up 'anju' (food meant to be eaten with beer) plus a whole host of other Korean staples and otherwise.

Unfortunately, the food flip-flopped between tasty and tasteless or 'takeway Chinese'.

We ordered a range of dishes to try out all the different things they did. First to arrive were the kimchi jeon – a kimchi pancake, and the bibimbap with bulgogi beef. The pancakes - delicious and cripsy, working well with either the surprisingly light chilli oil, or the more pungent chilli sauce.

The bibimbap was pretty hopeless. We were advised to put some of the chilli oil on it, which we did but even this didn't really give it much of a taste. It all comes in a bowl and you're supposed to stir it all together, normally making sure it all gets coated in the flavouring. This had none, not even any lovely meat juices gathered at the bottom. Also, I'm sure when I've had it before it has come in a really hot dish, with a raw egg on top which cooks when you stir it in. This had a partially fried egg which was too cooked to really get distributed throughout and the whole dish was verging on cold. There was also rather a lot of it, which, when it's not that great, is not a good thing.

Next came the yangyum chicken which was a tale of two halves. The soy garlic nuggets really allowed the crushed peanut to come through and were nice and crispy, with a strong garlic and possibly lime flavour. The sweet and sour were also crispy but were too reminiscent of takeaway sweet and sour chicken for me, getting quite cloying and sickly after a while and overpowering any peanut. The garnish of julienned cabbage with a sauce was really nice though. I had ordered the 'small' serving (as opposed to extra small) and we must have had at least eight pieces - it was another substantial dish.

We ended on a high with the kimchi rice balls, bab twigim, which were packed with gooey cheese and came with a knock-your-head off chilli sauce.

I wanted to like this place, and hoped it would be a better alternative to Jubo, where we liked the chicken but didn't like anything else. But it was too much pot luck as to whether you would like what you got. And if it was really good fried chicken I was after, I would forgo both the Korean places and head to Clutch!





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Bright Club, 25th March

So, it turns out that the people who work at the National Trust aren't that funny.

Welcome to Bright Club, where I hope there are no rules about not talking about Bright Club or I'm about to seriously break them.

What I thought was going to be a series of talks about the speaker's pet love/area of special interest within the National Trust was, instead, basically an amateur stand-up night where clearly the people 'performing' had no prior experience and didn't manage to make us laugh that much through either being too nervous or just not actually very funny.

This is a little unfair. Some of them were. The last guy in the first half made us laugh about his Big Brother obsession and his visit to the Big Brother house and how that lead him to volunteer/intern (they're kinda the same thing) at the National Trust.

And the three in the second half were a notch above the ones in the first half again. First up was a girl's amusing presentation on her area of research – street art, including an idea I just loved, of instigating street art tours where you visit and ponder all the shitty, scrawled graffiti on the walls, ignoring all the famous pieces. 

More than one of guys 'on stage' seemed to use their 15 minutes as an excuse to have a rant about where they worked and get away with it in the name of comedy. So we heard a lot (a lot) about how 'frugal' the National Trust is, including one guy's anecdote about moving into a house infested with mice on the inside and rats on the outside, on National Trust grounds. Which was a vast improvement on the woman who stood up and jabbered on about dehumidifiers for ten minutes.

The last speaker was also particularly good, again following more closely the format I had been expecting and telling us about her research on early travellers and the exploits and discoveries they made, including live unicorns no less! (Something tells me these travellers were wont to get a little carried away.)

The compere, in contrast, Andrew O'Neill, was very funny, with quite a wicked sense of humour that I appreciated, even if some of the more genteel NT audience did not. 

I feel a little unfair judging Bright Club on this night alone as I don't think they usually get National Trust affiliates to come up and try their hand at comedy, so I think this was a bit of an experiment that didn't work. Normally (as some of them were in this instance) it is researchers only who share their projects and try to make you laugh at the same time. And this night is run by the same guy who organises Science Showoffs and that is very good.  But just to be on the safe side, I'll probably stick to Science Showoffs. 

21 Covent Garden, 24th March

There has been quite the furore about 'bloggers vs blaggers' and whether you can trust a blog's review if they've been treated to the meal/event/whatever.

To be honest, the number of places I get invited to are minimal, what I write about almost always comes out of my pocket and I've never really had to worry about how much I've been influenced by the 'free' aspect as I've always objectively liked the thing anyway. Plus I do always say when it's been comped and will freely admit that something free always is a bit better than something you've paid for...

To throw my two cents in, I think there is a big difference between bloggers who are invited to something and those who solicit the invitations and try to wangle, literally, a free lunch. I definitely don't do the latter, but I will take up an invitation now and again. This was one of those times.

I don't think I'm doing 21 Covent Garden a disservice when I say it's an 'everyday' restaurant. It's not the kind of place you'd go for a special occasion, although its setting and decor are perfect for a romantic rendezvous. Every table feels like it is its own private enclave and we were really impressed by what they had done with the place (apparently the cellar was previously disused and it was a pretty terrible touristy bar upstairs). The food is all Italian with the pasta all made in-house.

It's the kind of place that is good for Covent Garden - somewhere that a Londoner can go and know they'll have a decent meal, not some swill being served because the place is full of tourists, and they won't get ripped off.

Aperitifs

I was particularly impressed by the cheese/meat board. Special mention has to go to the chutney. I don't know exactly what was in it but it definitely had apples – it was like eating the inside of a spot-on apple pie and I could have scoffed this on its own. It was a delightful accompaniment to the cheeses. Please, can all restaurants serve apple chutney from now on?

There was one cheese on there I hadn't had before and swiftly became a favourite (a creamy yet firm, pale cheese – the one at the back), and we were particularly taken by the peppery finnochiona sausage. We ordered a bread basket to go with our platter – some lovely thin crispbreads, a couple of slices of baguette and some well made focaccia.

I must admit, I'd been out for lunch and after sharing this was already teetering towards being full. I had ordered a fish pasta dish to keep it light, not expecting the ridiculously generous portion that I was served. I enjoyed this dish - I thought the pasta was of good quality and found the buttery sauce unhealthily delicious. I actually just loved the pasta and veggies and sauce on their own – it didn't even need the fish, which wasn't quite as flaky as I would have liked.

Stephen had the lamb ragu which came with some focaccia on the side and also some new potatoes. Given that there were potatoes in the ragu this seemed carb overload and we barely touched the side dish. Stephen wasn't as happy with his dish as I was with mine. The lamb varied quite a lot in size so it wasn't all cooked to the same consistency – some of it was still a bit tough. The taste wasn't as light and tomatoey as we expected, reminding him of a thick tomato-based curry! More of a winter dish this one.

We didn't have any pizza but must admit the stuff we saw coming out looked good – the bases looked pretty thin and crispy anyway!

I really was utterly stuffed after my pasta but our waiter suggested we take a moment and then see if we couldn't fit something else in. Stephen and I decided to share some gelato. We had a scoop each of pineapple, orange and raspberry. These were a good, refreshing choice to end our meal with but not the best gelato I've ever had. The taste to all three was strong – no complaints there – but the texture varied; the raspberry was wonderfully smooth, the orange was the least light, with a consistency that made you feel you were cutting it, and the pineapple was somewhere in between. 

All in all I liked the place. The staff were very friendly and even though we might have had special treatment it seemed like the other customers were also getting a lot of attention. If you find yourself in Covent Garden and hungry, don't despair. 21 Covent Garden with its Italian comfort/home cooking is here for you, with a lovely, cosy and warm setting. 





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Videoke, 21st March

You've heard of Musical Bingo, you've heard of Last Man Standing, and if you haven't heard of new kid on the block, Videoke, then you better check yo'self! Cos they've done it again - come up with a belter of a night!

It's all based around the visual side of music – the videos, the album covers, dressing up as your favourite pop star and re-enacting either. But they also play some stonking music, and I got so caught up in dancing that I didn't end up making the most of the other fun stuff on offer such as the FREE face painting to make you look like your favourite artist, or recreating your favourite album cover – you in front of a green screen and then the photographer goes away and puts the detail in around you! 

But the really fun part of the night - the bit that had us all going 'oh that was so good! So GOOD!' was the music videos that were recreated. The effort they had gone through to learn the moves and to get the outfits right was magnificent. Top of the pops [videos] for me was Daft Punk's Harder Better Faster where the Videoke crew bravely tried to show each phrase by baring a body part.

Everything you Never had by Breach was also a good one. Here's the original:

and here's the Videoke version!

And Hey Ya was pretty brilliant too.

They also had 'Legs & Coq', a play on the dance troupe that used to appear on TOTP Legs & Co doing some dance moves in between the video set pieces. 

If you wanted to learn a music video dance yourself there was a lesson to learn the moves to Beyonce's Single Ladies before performing it up on stage yourself.

And, of course, there was a bit of a stage invasion (to LMFAO's Party Rock if memory serves). SO MUCH FUN!

Check out the Videoke YouTube channel to see the other videos they recreated. Genius.