I’m slightly obsessed with kooky-foodie architects Bombas & Parr, the London-based company behind the rather fabulous St Paul’s jelly.
The walk-in breathable cocktail is their latest theatrical food experiment, and it’s being unveiled today on Ganton Street. They're using the same technology as Anthony Gormley’s Blind Light at the Hayward Gallery – which was quite an unsettling and disorienting experience.
It also involves donning a special protective suits before walking into a mist of gin and tonic water. To further enhance the ‘inner cocktail world’ experience, the interior will be decorated with giant limes and oversized straws. Once inside you can order food from a special menu that compliments the cocktail.
And by the sounds of it, Bompas & Parr are just getting started. Harry Parr says, “I’m interested in states of matter. Here we’ve vaporised a cocktail. In the future I would like to make a liquid banqueting table. In the 1905 Gondola Banquet the Savoy Hotel was flooded and the meal was eaten on a floating gondola surrounded by live swans with dessert presented on the back of a baby elephant. That would be the ultimate meal.”
While we’re waiting for the liquid banqueting table, feast your eyes on some of the other edible creations in Bompas & Parr’ s portfolio… I adore the bespoke tiered jelly display – perfect for wobbly wedding celebrations!
Alcoholic Architecture
16 to 18 April and 23 to 25 April
2 Ganton Street
London, W1F 7QL
Opening hours:
5pm – 11pm
Tickets £5, available from www.jellymongers.co.uk
There’s much to love about living so close to London’s Borough Market. It’s become our little Saturday morning ritual, where we take it easy and wander around the stalls, check out the new produce, and make a beeline for Konditor & Cook for a “real” coffee (because Monmouth's always too busy). But sometimes? I’m not quite sure how living in such close proximity to cheesy heaven, aka Kappacasein’s raclette stand, is advantageous for my arteries.
The premise for a Swiss raclette is ridiculously simple: a white carb celebration of melted Ogleshield cheese, new potatoes, baby gherkins and pickled onions. But it’s also ridiculously delicious – and the long queues are a testament to this fact. The plus side of the waiting time is that you get to watch the whole mesmerising raclette-making process, which involves scraping hot, bubbling cheese onto your pile of potatoes and gherkins. Oh lordy!
I especially love the acidic, crunchy baby gherkins, which contrast beautifully with the creamy, cheesy potatoes.
They also make the most unbelievably good toasted cheese sandwiches with Montgomery cheddar, onions, leeks and garlic on Poilâne sourdough.
Kappacasein is at Borough Market on Fridays 10am-6pm and Saturdays 9am-4pm, and can be found just opposite Southwark Cathedral.
Borough Market
8 Southwark Street
London SE4
Nearest tube: London Bridge
Click here for a Wee Birdy map.
In part two of "My Secret London", Urban Junkies Style Editor Martina McHowat tells us her favourite London destinations for gifts, stationery, beauty and food. It will make you dream of Icelandic mud and stationery with tiny beefeaters…
Best for interiors and gifts?
Lifestyle Bazaar on Newburgh Street always has a cool selection of lifestyle bits. Urban Outfitters and Muji are good for knick-knacky gifts, and the Magma product shop next to the book store is great for unusual finds. And I’m looking forward to seeing what H&M does with its homeware offering, slated to arrive in February.
H&M homewares range.
Best for stationery?
I do love Liberty’s stationery department, as much for their own line of note cards, diaries and address books, as well as the range of designers they stock. Smythson do great correspondence cards and stationery which you can have personalised, and their current Giles collaboration is a fashion-lover’s dream, with design sketches on the front and neon pink and green tissue-lined envelopes.
Best for beauty?
I get facials at Elemis off Bond Street, which is like a little sanctuary in the middle of potentially the busiest shopping district – not that you'd know it! It’s all quite South-East Asian feeling which I love, and Amanda gives the best tri-enzyme resurfacing facials – sounds hardcore but is really gentle.
I also love Sjal skincare, you can get it on www.cultbeauty.co.uk (also love their website, finally a site you can believe in completely, full of things properly tried out and reviewed).
And if you’re ever in Iceland, try out the hot springs at Blue Lagoon which have pots of this amazing silica clay mask dotted around – you just slather it on and float about. They’re doing it in tubes now for us poor souls who can’t be there in person.
I’ve just come back from Compton Hair in Covent Garden where I tried out their Brazilian Keratin Hair treatment, and it may well change my GHD-dependent life – after leaving it in for three days, my usually wavy, frizz-prone hair is down to a quick morning blow dry and it still looks straight and soft. I didn’t think it was possible!
Other London favourites?
I’m a bit obsessed with Columbia Flower Market on Sundays. The prices are just silly compared to what you’d pay in town, and the street is just stunning filled with every imaginable kind of tree, bush, shrub and stem.
Even better though, is that one side of the street is choc-full of some of the coolest little boutiques in the city; Cerise for jewellery, Suck & Chew for vintage-style sweets in jars and pocket money bits and Treacle for cupcakes and cool kitchen/homewares. I also love Far Global and Nom for the collections of Far Eastern antiques and bits & bobs. They have that lovely incense-y smell and everything inside is authentic and comes with a story.
Best London souvenir?
I try and stay as far away from the tacky souvenir shops you tend to find down the dodgy end of Oxford Street; nobody needs a Union Jack G-String. Instead, try Muji’s ‘London in a bag’ full of wooden London landmarks like the London Eye and St Paul's, and now they’re doing rather fabulous little ‘London transport in a bag’ containing little painted wooden buses, black cabs and tubes.
I also like Julie Bell’s stationery, which come in beautiful boxes and have London icons embossed on them – beefeaters, buses or phone boxes.
Best for food?
Sophie’s Steak House on the Fulham Road – it’s a lovely, homey but chic feeling place with no reservation policy, so you turn up, get given a number which flashes up on a board above the bar, and wait over delicious cocktails. Lots of exposed brickwork, lightbulbs hanging loose from the ceiling and old train carriage luggage racks above the tables. And it’s not unusual to see Sophie herself wandering around serving steak, which by the way, is divine. They’re just opened in Covent Garden too. Go!
For all addresses and a Wee Birdy map of Martina's secret London, click here.
Check out Martina's London Fashion Week coverage at Urban Junkies, which includes designer interviews, backstage images and a competition to win the Ultimate Swag Bag.
With a reputation for displaying cakes “like jewels” (The Goddess Guide by Gisele Scanlon), it didn’t take long for me to sniff out The Parlour at Sketch when I first arrived in London.
Located across the road from Vivienne Westwood on Conduit Street, it offers an avant-garde setting for taking tea. Think traditional private men’s club complete with dark-wood panelling meets edgy gallery with odd-matching furniture and a chandelier fashioned out of Angelpoise lamps. It’s the sort of place where a live bird in a Victorian wire cage is replaced by a mini LCD screen playing looping clips of the real thing. And the toilets? Let’s just say that Kubrick wouldn’t be disappointed.
I was delighted to discover that said cakes were, in fact, exquisitely displayed in a carefully lighted glass showcase, and considering the location and setting, a reasonably-priced menu. Here, a delicious cream tea (fruit scones served with jam and clotted cream with a choice of tea) is £7.75 per person, compared to £10.75 at Liberty. Afternoon tea is also competitively-priced at £18.50 for the traditional line-up of assorted finger sandwiches, fruit scones served with jam and clotted cream, a selection of pastries and choice of teas.
The tea menu offers an excellent range catering for all tastes, with traditional blends and herbal infusions starting at £3. My pick is the deliciously-fragrant Jasmine Silver Fur for £4. There’s also a rather handy free Wi-Fi service, which I noticed quite a few people taking advantage of on both occasions I visited.
Just keep in mind that despite the fabulous cakes and edgy gallery setting, the service is notoriously snail-paced. But what does that matter if you’ve got all the time in the world (or a few emails to write). And did I mention the toilets?
Sketch
9 Conduit Street
London W1S 2XG
Tel. 020 765 94500
Nearest tube: Oxford Circus
Click here for a Wee Birdy map.
“I believe that it is customary in good society to take some light refreshment at five o’clock.”
- Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
Tea at Liberty is of one the little places I like to keep up my sleeve whenever I want to treat myself and escape the maddening crowds of Oxford and Regent Streets. Situated on the ground floor of Liberty, right next to the all-too tempting handbag department, the tea shop is an elegant indulgence in all manner of tea and cake goodies. Tea is taken very seriously here at Liberty, with a menu packed with over 30 different blends and a range of fruit tisanes.
There’s a fine selection of light meals (the Welsh rarebit is a tasty savoury affair) and sweet things (classic Victoria sponge cake, fruit loaf cake and meringue served with clotted cream and rose petal jam).
My favourite tea-time treat is a pot of freshly brewed English Breakfast (£2.95)
with hot buttered crumpets and strawberry jam. Here, the crumpets come square,
light and fluffy, the most perfect accompaniment to a lovely pot of tea. Liberty use traditional Burleigh earthenware in the classic
Willow design to serve tea and cake. (And if you really like it, the entire Willow range is available to purchase upstairs in the kitchen and dining department.)
There’s also a cream tea for £10.75, which includes scones with jam and clotted cream, served with tea or coffee. And if you really wanted to splash out, there’s the Liberty Champagne Afternoon tea, including champagne, finger sandwiches, cakes, scones and tea or coffee for £25.75.
It’s difficult to avoid being seduced by
the lyrical descriptions of the hand-tied flowering tea range, which
will set you back by a rather hefty £6.95. But seduced, I was, by Flower Jewel,
which was described as “tender hand-picked white tea crowned by a delicate and
bright pink amaranth flower. The dancing petals blissfully open as sweet
jasmine scents this captivating elixir. Tantalizing the palate with its vibrant
freshness and clarity, surrender into this everlasting ambrosia.” See what I
mean? It actually WAS the most delicious and beautifully fragrant blend I’ve
ever tenderly sipped, but I was a little disappointed that the hot water was
added before it reached my table. I really wanted to see the petals ‘magically’
open! You kinda want some sort of entertainment value for your £6.95, eh?
Tea at Liberty
Great Marlborough Street
London W1B 5AH
Tel. 0207 734 1234
Nearest tube: Oxford Circus
Click here for a Wee Birdy map.
Click
here for more shops in W1.
This traditional café-deli is one of my favourite places to relax with a good cuppa and a sandwich after hitting the shops on Marylebone Lane. The shop itself dates back to 1900, and it still retains that old-fashioned charm of the village grocer.
I really dig the old-school caff set-up inside, complete with ‘60s laminate tables and folding leatherette chairs. The place gets packed during lunch hours with local workers flocking for the daily fresh soup and line-up of delicious sandwiches (my pick is egg on rye, but the Austrian liptauer and kummelkase are legendary).
A good cuppa, egg sandwich and Time Out … happy, happy.
The walls are stacked with jams, chutneys and relishes, but I’m here precisely because it’s the antithesis of your Prets, Starbucks, Café Neros, et al. You’ll always find Paul Rothe and son donning their traditional white deli coats behind the counter, and the tea is a straight-forward, no-frills, honest-to-goodness brew. I will never grow tired of this place, it’s an absolute London gem.
Paul Rothe & Son
35 Marylebone Lane
London, W1U 2NN
Tel. 020 7935 6783
Nearest tube: Bond Street
Click here for a Wee Birdy map.
Opening Hours:
Monday to Friday 8am – 6pm
Saturday 11:30am – 5:30pm Sat
Closed Sunday
Click here for more shops in Marylebone
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