Straight Up London

Chishuru is a West African restaurant in Brixton Village market, following on from a supper club run by head chef Adejoké Bakare, and located thanks to her winning a competition that has given her a unit for six months. It is one of the most enjoyable restaurants I have been to in this difficult year

“Modern British” food is supposed to be the fusion of traditional British ingredients and dishes with new flavours and ways of cooking. Well, maybe. For me, it’s more of an “I know it when I see it” thing. The “modern American” done by Shoreditch’s Two Lights, allegedly, is harder to place. Pickles, fried chicken, yes

There is a great pleasure in walking to and from a restaurant. I moved house recently and whereas Black Axe Mangal was the closest restaurant to my house before, the Hero of Maida is now just two or three minutes’ stroll from my front door. The Hero of Maida is a gastropub – one of

The Begging Bowl was one of the first really high-quality Thai restaurants in London, since joined by places like Som Saa, Kiln and The Smoking Goat, which have brought some of the flavours of Thailand’s north alongside the curries and bright, fresh salads most of us are more familiar with. These northern flavours often centre

For some reason, London’s restaurants find it extremely difficult to do good buffalo wings. No matter how good somewhere is in other respects, their wings will likely be slimy, soft and coated in some sweet, sickly, tomato-based sauce. I have no idea why this is. Buffalo wings in America, even at chain restaurants and dive

I used to live right by the Compton Arms, but in 33 months I never once went there. And yet, in the three weeks since I moved flat, I’ve been there four times. One reason is that the once-crusty regulars pub has been taken over by hipster millennials, and revamped. In: morello cherry goses, revolving

To get the first half of the review out of the way immediately: Beer + Burger Store is an excellent beer store. They serve a wide range of beers I’d like to drink, from milkshake IPAs to kettle sours, to spontaneous fermentations; and a wide range I’m less interested in but appreciate the existence of.