When I was younger (and still to this day) I always wanted to eat cereal for dinner (coco pops and lucky charms mostly) and it wasn’t until After Hours popped up at Store Street Espresso last December that I realised that I had lacked imagination. The 8 year old me had never even contemplated the idea of a three-course dessert menu! I’m glad that the guys at After Hours didn’t suffer from the same lack of imagination and even more glad that they invited me down to see what it was all about.

So here’s the deal, every so often After Hours pops-up in great coffee shops (Store Street Espresso, Allpress and more recently Bird and Ballard) and work with innovative dessert chefs who have in the past included Free Company and Ben Spalding to create a menu entirely of desserts. Guests come along pick their three favourites along with cocktails and coffee and get stuck in.

For my trip to After Hours, the coffee shop was Allpress Espresso and the chef was Farokh Talati (ex Fat Duck, York & Albany).

Both, Neil (the arm in the photo below) and I, started proceedings with a Jerezana, a fitting cocktail to start a dessert marathon – Manzanilla and amontillado sherries with sweet and dry vermouth, vanilla bean syrup and orange bitters – I was a little worried it would be really sweet but it was nicely balanced and really delicious, that said I probably couldn’t have had more than one. The drinks menu also included a sparkling moscato, a sweet sauvignon blanc and a plum-infused sake (Neil tried this one later and wouldn’t shut up about it: “I wonder if i can come back and just have the sake”).

Bring on the desserts:

For my ‘starter’ I went for the pink grapefruit sorbet, lemon and tonic foam and negroni jelly. The sorbet was great, the brilliant taste of the grapefruit came through without being too strong and the foam added little flavour but managed to offset the coldness from the sorbet, the star of this dessert however was the seemingly unassuming cubes of negroni jelly (separately, two of my favourite things) – the two small bites of jelly gave a wonderfully intense flavour of negroni. I’m still pretty sure I could have eaten an entire bowl of the jelly alone (someone make this happen, please?).

The next dish was actually Neil’s starter (but my main) and as much as I was loving the negroni jelly I did have to stop myself from staring at it. This is by far the stand out dish of Farokh’s After Hours menu. This thing is truly incredible and looked so good that I *almost* didn’t want to crack into it to find out the beauty that was inside. The white chocolate ‘doughnut’ acts as a casing to a luxurious strawberry gel and paired with the cinnamon crumb it was a wonderful mix of textures and flavours.

I have a little confession to make before I go into the next dessert. As much as I try I’ve never been a huge whisky fan but like to think I am, so I ordered the dark chocolate mousse and single malt ganache, cherry gel and salted vanilla sauce when I should have ordered the affogato. For any whisky fan this cake is amazing, Neil in fact said this was his favourite of the night, just make sure you like whisky before ordering.

Neil ended his meal off with a coffee-filled affogato made from Allpress espresso, coffee ice-cream, crushed cocoa nibs and coffee beans. This would have been the perfect end to my dessert feast, but sadly I had to watch it being eaten instead.

After the desserts of epic proportions we kicked back, I grabbed an Allpress coffee and Neil had a Plum Sake (it’s amazing apparently) and ate some After Hours fruit pastilles.

As the guy who will often skip the dessert portion of a meal, I more than made up for it in this one meal – with the exception of the bad choice on my part, this was a truly amazing and unique meal and I can’t wait to see who After Hours team up with next!

After Hours is currently at Bird and Ballard (this is a great new coffee shop just by Old Street, if you haven’t been definitely worth a visit). Booking and payment in advance necessary, but it’s absolutely worth the £20 for the three amazing desserts, coffee and petite fours. Book here: http://afterhoursbirdballard.eventbrite.co.uk/

Also keep an eye out on their twitter for news of further pop-ups: @afterhoursldn

The sun is here and the season of roof tops, parks and street parties has finally arrived (for the time being at least).

This June and July, Hush Puppies are hosting a series of free ‘Dog Days’ parties celebrating the London Summer. They’ll take over a host of East London venues to bring you their chilled out easy-going parties. It’s all about sun, friends and music.

First up, on 22nd June, Dog Days will be bringing summery vibes courtesy of DJ Duo Bondax (check Soundcloud below) to Rockwell House’s rooftop, while MEATLiquor  fire up the barbecue for some of their classic burgers! Gather your friends, bring your own booze and chill out on a Shoreditch rooftop.

Apply for free tickets from: https://www.facebook.com/HushPuppiesUK

Following their impressive Winter Forest Bar at Truman Brewery back in October (my instagram here), Rekorderlig our now helping us celebrate one of the big events in the Swedish Calendar… Midsummer (usually involves drinking, dancing and daisy chains).

The Rekorderlig Midsummer House will be popping up in Victoria Park from 21st June to 5th July. You’ll be transported to that summerhouse you wished you owned, on a Scandinavian meadow over looking the lake, while drinking cocktails and a little bit of barbecue.

Disappearing Dining Club’s Norse by NorseWest will be serving up Korv med brod (literally Sausage with Bread) with scandi-inspired toppings including wild lingonberry, cucumber relish, prawn salad and Danish Remoulade.

Tickets are £10 (which includes a Rekorderlig and a dish from the BBQ) and on sale now http://rekorderlig.eventbrite.co.uk/

The Panoramic Series – London with Nick Jensen from Philip Evans on Vimeo.

I do love a London skate video, especially when they look as good as this. With the Panoramic Series Phil Evans has taken a different approach to his skate videos, he uses a panoramic mode resulting in a bigger focus on the location (for the simple reason that he’d need to be further away to shoot) and uses the sounds of London mixed occassionally with music to really give the video a London feel.

Everyone’s favourite Mexican hidden behind a sex shop is getting a little sister. Casa Negra, the new restaurant from the La Bodega Negra guys, will be open and ready to serve up home-cooked Mexican style street food in Shoreditch from 10th June.

Food will be along the same lines of La Bodega Negra with sharing dishes including mariscos (Mexican seafood), a mixture of tacos and carnitas de lechon (suckling pig). The decor digresses slightly from it’s big brother, no sex shop (I don’t think), instead it’s going to be an English twist on the Mexican restaurant – not sure what that means but looking forward to finding out.

To celebrate it’s new home, Casa Negra will be offering lunchtime diners (between 12 and 5pm) 50% off food from Monday 10th June through to Sunday 16th June.

Booking opens on Tuesday 4th of June at 12pm and is likely to be busy so stick this number in your phone - 0207 033 7360.

Make sure to keep an eye on @CasaNegraLDN for updates.

Casa Negra | 54-56 Great Eastern Street, London, EC2A 3QR

(main photo taken from @CasaNegraLDN)

Packed with genuinely useful features, effective metering, HDR and, perhaps the most interesting, the Zoe feature which let’s you take a very short video and then mess around with it (“retouch”) including removing objects from the frame (say if some tourist walks in front of the camera) or even take a sequence shot. The first image here was taken as a video and as it detected the moving image we could create the sequence shot – I’m looking forward to testing this feature out on some other subjects, any skaters out there willing?

Check out a few of my selected highlights of the day.

Sequence shot:

Panoramic mode

erm… my new Air Max 1s

HDR:

I got in a bit of trouble last time for not introducing my eating companions so here’s a quick introduction to my usual eating chums: Amber, our token vegetarian (which I often conveniently forget) who blogs wonderful photos from her life over on Code for Something; Nate, cat owner and the coolest Canadian (erm… possibly only?) I know; and Laura is an Essex born music fan who blogs her favourite tracks over here http://theotherllcoolj.tumblr.com/.

As much as I want to tell you how much I loved Honey & Co, our night actually began down the road in Goodge Street bar, Reverend JW Simpson. The sister bar (and one of my favourite after work bars) to Bourne and Hollingsworth, and has a similar decor (torn wallpaper and hidden toilet door) but with a slight private members feel (booking is often required – that said on this night it was empty). It’s definitely worth a visit but I must admit I’d probably stick to the original B&H which is just a couple of minutes towards Soho. After a couple of cocktails a piece where between us we achieved our five a day (gin, whisky, vodka, champagne and more gin), we wandered down to Honey & Co.

Honey & Co is a small (20 person? Be sure to book) restaurant near Warren Street – run by  Sarit Packer (formerly Executive Head Chef at NOPI) and her husband Itamar Srulovich.

There’s only one real option for starter and that’s for the table to share the luxury mezze (this is done per person so don’t worry how many people to share it with). The star of which (if you didn’t get from the introduction) is the Kamooniya (rough chopped chicken liver – I was very happy to find a recipe for this here, might even do a blog post in the future of me trying to make it) but there wasn’t a bad nor dull moment in the mezze (although our resident vegetarian possibly wasn’t too keen on the liver).

We each selected a different main course:

Me – Lamb chops, muhamra, puy lentils and lamb’s lettuce. (my first try at muhamra, I expected a harissa type sauce what I got was more subtle in flavour and far more tasty)

Nate – Pomegranate molasses chicken, cracked wheat salad wit pistachios and barberries.

Amber – Siniya roasted cauliflower, baced with a tahini topping, pistachios pitta bread.

Laura – Prawns with winter tomatoes and urfa chilli sauce.

While none of us were losers here, I think we all agreed that Nate was the clear winner – in fact his response on finishing was that it was “the best meal since the last supper” – I should probably admit that we went around Easter and this is a very delayed blog post.

By the time we got round to selecting dessert (the course Honey & Co had become famous for) we weren’t sure it could get any better. We shared two desserts between the four us, the first was of course the cheesecake (thanks Observer Food Monthly) and the second we harrassed the nice couple on the table next to us for their favourite.

The cheesecake was everything it had been hyped up to be (another Nate quote “How does this even exist?!”), luxurious cream cheese layered on top of Kadaif pastry which gave an amazing crunch to the dessert. Our second was whipped white chocolate with olive oil and pine nuts, if this hadn’t been served next to *that* cheesecake this would have been a truly wonderful dessert but the cheesecake.

All four of us came away saying that was certainly the best meal we’ve had in 2013, I’ve recommended it to anyone who has asked me for restaurant tips in the past couple of months and none who trusted me enough to go have been disappointed.

With a conservative one bottle of wine between the four of us the entire meal came to £128 (£33 each) before service.

Honey & Co | 25a Warren Street, London W1T 5LZ | Mon – Sat (closed early on Mon) – Booking Necessary

It’s the 30th Anniversary of Hi, How Are You? and to celebrate Daniel Johnston will be returning to London and bringing a group of special guests with him including Jeffrey Lewis, Emmy The Great and Norman Blake (of Teenage Fanclub) who will perform the legendary album (I can say legendary now it’s 30 right?), followed by a greatest hits show from the man himself.

I’ve seen Daniel Johnston twice in the past 6 years, the first time was an incredibly small show at The Brixton Windmill and then slightly more recently I saw him at Union Chapel. His shows aren’t an easy watch, you can no longer separate those beautiful lyrics (albeit lofi sound) of unrequited love from the large, fragile man standing in front of you, shaking. This fragility makes his shows unbearable, intense and beautiful all at once.

If you’re not a fan I really don’t recommend going but for those who are it could be something special.

Daniel Johnston | June 2nd | £20 – £25 | Tickets are on sale Friday 12th from The Barbican

(I cheated with the video below it’s not for Hi, How Are You? but I love it so deal with it – I’m sure he’ll play it in the greatest hits section of the show)

Tweat Up have so far actively encouraged feuds between rib joints, chilli chefs, gin brands and rum bars and they’re not done dividing London’s restaurants and bars on the battlefield, as next month they set up the ring for 10 restaurants/stalls/trucks to wrestle it out in Taco Wars.

If you haven’t been to one of these yet the deal is; buy a ticket, taste each places taco; vote which you think is the best. There’s drink (including some under the counter mescal) and vibes throughout. Ginstock was by far one of my favourite events of last year and so I can’t recommend this one enough.

The full line up is going to be confirmed next week (I wouldn’t wait for that though only 250 tickets will be released) but from the look of their Twitter we can expect at least a few of these London (and one Manc) Taco stars: Slider Bar, Buen Provecho, Luardos, Breddo’s Taco Shack, Wahaca, Luck Lust Liquor Burn, Mission Mariscos – don’t hate me if any of these aren’t on their I’m not even a messenger just an (tw)eavesdropper. Oh and Sorbitium Ices will be providing their hand made ice creams and hopefully choc ices

Make sure you’re ready to get your ticket on Thursday (11th April) at 12noon to get your ticket. Tickets are £35 a piece and include the 10 tacos and two beers/wine.

There’s no link to tickets yet so make sure you follow @Tweat_Up or us @owlondon before noon tomorrow. [probably better to follow Tweat Up - I always buy my own before retweeting :p]

TICKET LINK: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/event/6154380919/es2005/?rank=16

By the time I was born, Major Tom had been to the moon and back, Ziggy Stardust had already risen and fallen, The Thin White Duke had come and gone, but David Bowie was still converting fans everywhere and, even after a 10 year absence, continues to do so today with the release of his new album (Number 1 album this week in UK, beaten by Bon Jovi in the US though – not sure what that’s about).

It’s no surprise that the Victoria and Albert Museum’s exhibition on the man himself has broken records and is the fastest selling in the museum’s history. As someone who has seen it, let me tell you that it’s worth the time you may need to wait for your tickets to be fulfilled.

The exhibition is a magical exploration of a man playing with his identity in an effort to find out what makes him him and how to make the art he wants to make – something that he potentially never achieves but in an interview in the latter parts of the exhibition says he came close in the his self-reflective later years in Berlin, where he says it was “time to do what I want to do”.

One of the most striking things of the exhibition is the creative control he took on every aspect of his art; from designing album covers, conceptualising music videos and set design. It would be easy to think that he was probably pretty difficult to work with, but they were all clamouring to work with him and even those who I would consider the ultimate auteurs of their craft (Alexander McQueen for example) had the utmost respect and appreciation for his vision.

The exhibition doesn’t take you through the chronology of his life, and I’m not sure it would help at all if it did and would be far too pedestrian for someone so complex. Instead it takes you through the themes throughout his life (so-far at least), from his inspiration, his song writing processes and his stage performances. My three favourite moments of the exhibition was split up into these three themes.

The first was about pretention and how that influences you – strangely there was a point the was reminiscent of something James Murphy (who is one of my major musical heroes although in very different ways to Bowie) said, which was

“I read so much shit just because I wanted to seem cool… so if being pretentious got you to read Gravity’s Rainbow you still read Gravity’s Rainbow and as an older dude that’s part of your make up”

Bowie did something similar making sure the books he read popped out of his coat pocket but later feels it’s completely justifiable in the same way, if the pursuit of cool gets you to do something wonderful there’s certainly nothing wrong with that – or so I tell my teenage self as he readies himself to go out with Keruoac and Bukowski popping out my back pocket.

The 2nd was about The Verbaliser. This was new to me but Bowie used to use a computer programme that used to randomise phrases that he’d input and use the result as an inspiration for a song, in his words:

“[it was a way of entering] a dream state without the boredom of going to sleep all night or getting stoned out of your head”. 

The third of my favourite moments is walking into one of the final moments to be greeted by huge screens projecting live footage – I seriously recommend saving some time just to sit in this room for a while and contemplate the man after everything you’ve read, seen and heard.

David Bowie is… | V&A | 23rd March – 11 August 2013 | Tickets