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If there's one thing I've learned after nearly twenty years of writing about food in this country, it's that fine dining can happen pretty much anywhere. If Ormskirk, an otherwise unremarkable town in Lancashire previously best known as the childhood home of Marianne Faithful (and very little else) can in 2025 hold five Michelin stars then all bets are off - there's no excuse for anywhere not being a food destination. So let me introduce you to West Sussex, and specifically to the South Downs just outside of Horsham, where on the same short stretch of road sit no less than two Michelin starred restaurants. And although I'm sure Ben Wilkinson at The Pass has plenty to recommend it (another time, maybe), today I'm going to talk about Interlude at Leonardslee House, a local, seasonal, South African-leaning fine dining spot quite unlike anywhere else I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. They don't make much of the South African angle on the website - perhaps because if you're...
3 months ago

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More from Cheese and Biscuits

Studio Gauthier, Fitzrovia

Hard as it may be to believe from my supremely easy-going and liberal attitude these days (no laughing at the back), there was a time when I was, well, if not completely anti-vegan then certainly vegan-skeptic. To someone who once considered vegetarianism radically restrictive, veganism seemed like vegetarianism with the few remaining good bits (butter, cheese, cream, eggs) taken out, a path taken only by people who didn't really like food in the first place and were looking for a more socially acceptable word to substitute for "dietary neurosis". And certainly, there are cuisines that (for want of a better word) "veganise" better than others. Most of the SE Asian and Indian subcontinent handle veganism supremely well - certain subgenres of Indian food are largely vegan anyway, and I have it on good authority from a vegan friend who went on holiday to Thailand recently that he ate extremely well almost everywhere. Just don't try being a vegan in France - one member of my family recently asked for a vegan alternative to a set menu starter and was served pâté de foie gras, a substitution very much from the Nana Royal attitude to hospitality. Sushi, with its focus on fresh fish, doesn't seem like an obvious cuisine to lend itself to going vegan, but then chains like Pret and Wasabi have done so for a number of years already with their avocado and cucumber rolls. What if it was done properly, with a chef's attitude to detail and with real presentational flair? Studio Gauthier attempts to do just that, making excellent sushi that just happens to have no animal in it. Can it really work? Well, in a word, yes. The first thing to arrive to our table was this cute presentation of plant-based "caviar", the deception strengthened by being served in a little custom-printed caviar tin. The "caviar" itself was remarkably realistic - certainly the equal to the lumpfish roe you can get from Tesco, probably even nicer - and underneath was a layer of creamy, salty plant-based crème fraiche of some kind (probably made from nuts but don't hold me to that). It was all rather lovely, despite the vegan blinis perhaps not working quite as well as their butter and milk-based counterparts and also being somewhat burned. Passing the huge open kitchen a little later, I noticed one of the staff despondently picking through a pile of burned blinis for the occasional one that could be salvaged and used, so clearly something had gone wrong in the preparation that day. I'm sure they're normally a lot better than this. When it comes to accurately describing the actual sushi, I'm going to have a bit of an issue, as some of the very clever techniques they used to recreate the standard sushi sets are quite beyond my powers of deduction. But alongside avocado nigiri here are "salmon" and "tuna" nigiri made, I'm told from tapioca starch with more fake tuna urumaki, all of it more than convincing. What also helped was that the sushi rice was warm - a detail that plenty of "actual" (and far more expensive) sushi places get wrong. Another plate of nigiri featured chargrilled aubergine, piquillo peppers with passion fruit chutney and, in the centre there, "Green Dynamite" - crisp rice fritters topped with tofu "crab", and sliced jalapeño dotted with sriracha. Thoughtfully put together and each mouthful bursting with flavour, I think it was about this point that I completely forgot I was eating plant-based food and was just eagerly looking forward to the next thing to arrive. More "tuna" and avocado and truffled miso nigiri came sharing a plate with a bitesize inari - a spongey, sweet tofu thing stuffed with soft, warm rice. Inari are actually vegan anyway, so perhaps the success of this shouldn't be too much of a surprise, but it was still a very good example of its kind, and right up there with the caviar as one of my favourite things overall. With a couple of cocktails, the bill came to £43pp, more than reasonable for London these days, certainly for food which although doesn't contain any expensive protein did still clearly have a lot of work and thought gone into it. I'm just docking a couple of points firstly for the burned blinis, and also for slightly inexperienced service charged at slightly-over-normal 15% - we had to ask a couple of times for various things. Also, the room isn't air-conditioned which you could just about get away with when it's 28C (the day we visited) but once it goes over 30C, which it often does in London these days, you're not going to want to be there very long. Still, these are niggles. Even a committed protein eater like me had a blast at Studio Gauthier - it's intelligent, enjoyable food done well in attractive yet informal surroundings, and for not very much money at all. For vegans though, this could very easily be everything they ever wanted in a restaurant, where instead of having to choose between the only plant option (usually mushroom risotto, or something involving butternut squash) or going hungry, they can have anything they want from this enticing menu, and be just as smug and satisfied as their protein-eating friends anywhere else in town. And that alone has to be worth a trip, surely? 8/10

6 days ago 10 votes
Uncle Hon's BBQ, Hackney Wick

After traipsing halfway across London, dodging travel works and closed Overground lines and carriages with malfunctioning air conditioning and all the other things that make moving around this city on a weekend in the summer such an endless joy, it's equally annoying to find that your destination is good or bad. If it's good, you will bemoan the fact that somewhere worth visiting is so bloody difficult to get to, and seethe with jealousy of those lucky locals who have such a good place on their doorstep. And if it's bad, you wish you'd spent your Saturday morning and sanity going somewhere else. Uncle Hon's isn't awful. It's not great, but it's not awful. The brisket (sorry, ox cheeks) was over-tender to the point of mush (it would definitely not pass the competition BBQ "pull-test" and a bit too sweet. Pulled lamb had a decent flavour but a rather uniform texture - the joys of the "pulled" element of a BBQ tray lie almost entirely in finding little crispy crunchy bits of fat and charred flesh; this was just a bit boring. And some cubes of pork belly were decent enough in that Cantonese roast style but was yet more sweet, syrupy, mushy meat next to two other piles of sweet, syrupy, mushy meat and the whole thing was just a bit sickly. Iberico ribs were a bit better in terms of texture - they did at least have a bit of a bite and didn't just slop off the bone as is depressingly often the case - but I feel like Iberico has become a bit of a meaningless foodie buzzword like Wagyu, ie. nowhere near the guarantee of quality it once was (if indeed it ever was). These were definitely the best things we ate though, and were pretty easily polished off. Oh I should say pickles and slaw were fine, if fairly unmemorable, and a single piece of crackling weirdly lodged vertically into a mound of rice like the sword in the stone had a pleasant enough greaseless texture but was pretty under seasoned. Look, I can see what they're trying to do at Uncle Hon's - fusion American/Chinese BBQ food, bringing a bit of a new twist to what is now fairly ubiquitous London drinking-den fare, and with a bit more thought and skill it could have been, well, if not completely worth that awful journey but at least some compensation for your efforts. But after having paid £50pp for what is an only fairly mediocre tray of food plus 3 small extra pork ribs, we were left feeling fairly unhappy, not very satisfied and more than a little ripped off. 5/10

2 weeks ago 15 votes
Norbert's, East Dulwich

They're like the buses, these rotisserie places. You wait years for a decent, affordable spit-roast chicken in the capital, and then two come along at once. one in Holborn closed (where I would go at least once every couple of weeks back in the day), then Kentish Town, then Tooting, and then after hanging on for a year or two the final spot in St John's Wood shuttered. Hélène Darroze's Sunday roast (sorry - Dimanche poulet) at the Connaught, and while some of the starter elements were very nice (particularly a genius-level chicken consommé and Armagnac shot - hook it into my veins) the main event was overcooked, dry and disappointing. And, of course, stupidly expensive. Knave of Clubs (in fact I believe they opened within a couple of months of each other) is Norbert's in East Dulwich, a much more modest operation than that grand old Victorian pub in Shoreditch (I'm sure Norbert's won't mind me saying) but still aiming to apply intelligence and skill to the business of roast poultry. The menu is short - very short, just the aforementioned chicken with sides and a couple of starters - but then that's the whole point of a specialist place like this. This is not a restaurant that does chicken, it is a chicken restaurant, and if you're vegetarian, well, you can find somewhere else to eat. We started with taramasalata which in itself was lovely but the salt and vinegar crisps it came with was, I think, a flavour too far for the same dish, the astringency fighting with the seafood. Much better would have been plain, I think. But still, an excellent tarama. didn't like it, and was offered something else. In a hapless attempt to salvage both mine and the restaurant's mistake I offered to pay for the first wine anyway, so we ended up in the end spending a small fortune on wine, not all of which we ended up drinking. The chicken, though, was just about worth the stress. A healthily thick, dark skin packed with spice and seasoning, a brined but not in the least bit 'hammy' flesh, some excellent crisp fries that held their structure and flavour until the last bite, and a supremely crunchy, fresh salad. Perhaps it wasn't quite the same level as the Turner & George chicken from the Knave, for an almost identical price (salad and fries are extra here, but included at the Knave) but was still worth the journey. We also found space for some nice cheese from Mons cheesemongers up the road, a gruyere style from Ireland which was a perfect temperature. Which didn't help our £72pp final bill but as I say, most of that was wine, whether we wanted it or not. I'm in two minds about Norbert's. On the one hand it is perfectly acceptable chicken for not a huge amount of money and it's an unpretentious little addition to this corner of East Dulwich. On the other hand the whole business with the wine left us wishing the whole experience had gone differently, and yes it doesn't compare well with a certain other rival rotisserie spot in Shoreditch doing things a little bit better for pretty much the same price. I think I know where's more likely to get my repeat custom. We paid in full but didn't get a photo of the receipt. If you want to keep subscribing for free via email please sign up to my Substack where there may also even be occasional treats for paid subscribers coming soon.

a month ago 15 votes
The Knave of Clubs, Shoreditch

I wouldn't normally feel comfortable sticking a score on a place after sampling just 2 dishes from a menu, but I will make an exception for the Knave of Clubs for two reasons. Firstly, they have put the rotisserie "centre stage" at one end of the large dining room and that is what, I imagine, the large majority of their visitors will be ordering. Secondly, I bloody loved the place, so I don't think they'll mind me writing about it even without trying most of what their kitchens can offer. We started, though, with oysters - an extremely reasonable £20 for 6 large, lean specimens supplied with all the correct condiments. In a town when the average price per bivalve is hovering around the £5 mark (and in some cases is well above that), it's nice to know that there's somewhere still offering value like this. The same sense of value is evident in the rest of the menu. They really could charge a lot more for a whole chicken than £38, especially given the quality of these birds (from arguably London's best butcher Turner and George), and even if they didn't come with a giant helping of sides. For your money you get loads of chicken fat roasties, a nice sharply-dressed green salad, some slices of baguette and a little pot of light, homemade aioli. All of this generosity would have come to naught if the chicken itself wasn't up to scratch, but fortunately thanks to the provenance I mentioned, plus judicious use of brining (not too salty but just enough to ensure every bit of the flesh is tender and juicy), plus a really lovely chermoula spice rub, the end result was a truly impressive bit of rotisserie - the best pub roast chicken I've had the pleasure to tear into in recent memory; certainly the best value. We absolutely demolished the chicken then spent many happy minutes mopping up the chermoula cooking juices with the slices of baguette, and for a while, all was well with the world. The bill, with a £32 bottle of wine came to £51pp - you really can spend a lot more than this and get a lot less, and not just in central London. In fact the whole experience, including the lovely and attentive staff, made me forgive the only real complaint I have about the place - bloody communal tables. But the spots are spread out around them quite generously, and actually just gives me an excuse to return and try the bistro-style One Club Row upstairs in the same building, where chef Patrick Powell (ex- Allegra) is really stretching his wings. I bet it's great. Watch this space. P.S. Anyone who subscribes by email I am aware of the fact that follow.it have started to be very annoying and not posting the content in the body of the email, just a link to it hosted by them. I didn't ask for this, and am not making any money from it. If you want to continue receiving the full posts via email, can I suggest you subscribe to my substack here, where you can opt to receive the full posts via email, for free.

a month ago 16 votes
The Parakeet, Kentish Town

I'm going to start this post about the Parakeet, with - unfortunately (for them, and possibly for you) - a bit of a rant. Why is it that no matter how much money has been lavished on a place, no matter how starry the chefs, how extensive the wine list, how exclusive the whisky collection (the Parakeet has some very interesting bourbons), the beer offering is almost always absolute garbage? I've lost count of the amount of gastropubs I've turned up to for a pre-dinner pint that seem to think it's OK to serve an exciting, seasonal modern British menu with a straight face alongside Camden Hells, Moretti, Guinness and bugger-all else. There's nothing poisonous about any of these bog-standard beers, and not everywhere can be the Wenlock Arms, but honestly guys, it's not difficult - serve the mass-market crap if you must but why not have one or two taps available for something from Deya, or Verdant, or Signature, or Pressure Drop, or god knows how many other great independent craft breweries on your doorstep? Would it really kill you? So yes my evening at the Parakeet got off to a bit of a humdrum start, with a pint of something entirely forgettable, but I'll give them this - at least, unlike so many 'gastropubs', it's still a proper pub, with a handsome and tastefully restored high-Victorian bar area supported by banquette seating at least equal in size to the dining section. And they're both beautiful spaces, with stained glass details and dark wood panelling, the dining area theatrically unveiled with the raising of curtains at the beginning of service. They can do a good Negroni too, and know how to put together a supremely attractive Spring menu, with a lot of my favourite words - crab, asparagus, wild garlic, oysters - offered at prices that, these days at least, seem almost modest. The point is, the Parakeet are doing lots of things right and so when they do slip up it only serves to remind you how much better it would be if they'd paid slightly closer attention to the details. This, for example - described on the menu as "Poached oysters & sea buckthorn granita". Now I'm going to be generous and forgive the plurality as a typo, rather than anything more sinister, because it's £5 for a single beastie is pretty much the norm these days. But am I right in thinking "poached" means served warm? This was ice-cold and tasted raw - again, perfectly fine if that's what you want but not as described. And doesn't "granita" mean a kind of shaved-ice frozen affair? This was a very nice dressing, with what can be a sharply astringent sea buckthorn element tempered by apple juice, but I wouldn't call it a granita. Duck hoi sin tartlets were very pretty little things which tasted as good as they looked - bags of salty, syrupy hoi sin flavour and with nice soft chunks of pink duck. Crab lasagne bites contained a good amount of crab meat and a very seductive cheese-toastie style arrangement of textures. They were also something I'd genuinely never seen before on a menu, which for this jaded blogger after nearly two decades in the game is impressive by itself. Hopefully it's not too much of a criticism to say that this plate of artichoke, broad beans (properly peeled, thank you) and sunflower seeds possibly would have been better described and sold as a side, rather than a starter. It had nice shaved artichokes, plenty of big juicy broad beans and the seeds added an attractive crunch, but in the end there wasn't quite enough going on to justify itself as a standalone dish. Nevertheless, we did quite happily polish it off. The only real dud of the evening, food-wise at least, was the turbot. Under-seasoned, with an unattractive flabby skin and a strangely blobby-textured, soily flesh, it really wasn't a very pleasant thing to eat and was a poor advertisement for what can otherwise be one of the best fish to eat on the planet. The pickled white asparagus and grape dressing it came with, however, was lovely, which although hardly making up for the turbot did mean there was at least something to enjoy on the plate. Bizarrely though, considering the poor state of the turbot, this battered, deep-fried red mullet was an absolute joy. Inside a nice crunchy greaseless batter was a fillet of superb mullet, every inch of it properly seasoned and bursting with flavour. I'll forgive them missing to remove a few bones from one side - they were easily dealt with, and the masala and curry leaf sauce it came with was rich with tomato and spices. I know through bitter experience that red mullet does not always taste this good, so this was a surprise as well as a delight. Desserts were enjoyable, but didn't seem to have had the same amount of care lavished on them as the savoury courses. Chocolate mousse was tasty enough and a bed of crunchy puffed oats (I think they were) gave it a bit of texture, but it's not really the best chocolate mousse I've eaten this month (step forward, yet again, the Devonshire) never mind longer ago. Citrus Bakewell tart was slightly more interesting and I liked the fragile ribbons of caramelised fruit they'd draped on top, but the cake element was slightly dry and crumbly. Overall, though, the Parakeet are doing more things right than wrong, and if that seems like damning with faint praise it still puts them ahead of a lot of spots in town. I hesitate to mention service on invites like these but everyone seemed very enthusiastic, and kept exactly the right balance between friendliness and professionalism - they also passed the folded napkin test with flying colours. And although the food menu wasn't exactly at the budget end of the scale, they do offer a house white for £29 which is approaching a genuine steal these days. So yes, if I was going to spend this amount of money and take a journey across town for this kind of food there's a few places (not least the Devonshire, but also the Baring, the Drapers Arms and the Pelican) that would be ahead of the list. But if I was a local, I think I'd be pretty happy to have the option to visit. And perhaps that's all that matters. I was invited to the Parakeet and didn't see a bill, but totting up what we ate and drank from the menus comes to about £70pp which isn't bad really.

a month ago 16 votes

More in travel

London 2012 +20

Twenty years ago in a Singapore hotel, 54 IOC delegates voted to award the 2012 Olympic Games to London. Few saw it coming, the expectation was that the Games would go to Paris and that Seb Coe and friends had valiantly wasted years of effort. Instead the world came to Stratford to win medals and the Lower Lea Valley was duly transformed from a post-industrial backwater to a recreational and residential hub, and all in seven years flat. Trafalgar Square only London and Paris were still in the race, and a large expectant crowd had gathered to witness the opening of an envelope. When 'London' was revealed there was surprise, jubilation and a lot of ticker tape, then Heather Small stood up and sang Proud and the Red Arrows flew over. Lunchtimes have rarely been so consequential. Olympic-Park-to-be, trying to get my head round what might be going where. I bumped into film crews, BMX bikers and oblivious drunkards swigging from cans. I looked down from the Greenway across a swathe of instantly doomed businesses. I got as far as the bus garages, cash and carrys and nature reserves off Waterden Road, taking on the enormity of the transformation ahead. And on the way back I walked to the end of a cul-de-sac to find a German car company and a skip hire depot in the middle of what would eventually be the Olympic Stadium, and soon was. It was quite the day. after 10 years too, as you'd expect, but I'll keep it briefer this time. Also there have been several significant changes since 2015, starting here. This is the Abba Arena, erected silently during the pandemic and now playing to full houses in sequins and lace seven times a week. Technically it's a 'meanwhile' use, originally intended to be removed by 31st March 2025 and replaced by flats. Instead it's still standing because nobody kills a goose that lays golden eggs, and the owners of the Snoozebox Hotel nextdoor hope the day it finally ups sticks is as far in the future as possible. Back in 2005 all this was industrial estate with an emphasis on muck and auto parts, alongside the DLR's least significant halt. Since then the station has been massively upgraded, also relocated to dodge Crossrail, and all but one of the former warehouses has been knocked down. But even though the Games were over a decade ago not a single flat has been built within the Olympic footprint, only on land immediately outside, and a heck of a lot of empty hardstanding remains. It wouldn't surprise me if I returned in 2035 and found Pudding Mill neighbourhood still substantially incomplete. This is the Olympic Stadium, now the London Stadium because West Ham United still haven't found anyone willing to sponsor it. On the bright side it does have a proper legacy use because that was never a given, eventually reopening in 2016, and still packs them in for rock gigs and American football takeovers as and when. If you'd walked this riverside in 2005 it would have been a lonely experience, passing silos and the backs of warehouses while a guard dog barked across the water from a lengthy tumbledown shed. It was plain luck that the braids of the Bow Back Rivers spread wide enough here to accommodate the footprint of a world class arena, also pitch perfect for security, also always going to be an annoying walk from the nearest station. Today it's a joy to see the surface of the river still as alive with damselflies as it was 20 years ago, also a damned shame that the banks of wildflowers that peaked so memorably for the Games have been allowed to almost entirely fade away. February, with culture from the V&A and BBC due next year. This used to be a stripe of industries nowhere else wanted, from scrapyards and repair shops to battery stores and tyre mountains, before being repurposed for swimming and water polo during the Games. It's impressively busy along here now, partly due to office workers and students but mainly thanks to the arrival of Westfield just beyond. A massive mall on former railway lands was planned on this site before Jacques Rogge opened his envelope but the IOC merely turbocharged things and the UK's busiest shopping centre is the result. The Olympic Park itself is also reassuringly abuzz, even midweek, confirming that the speakers in that Singapore hotel room weren't being entirely over-optimistic. The fountains by the bridge squirt far less often than they used to, alas. This is the blue bridge, a single point of reference for those of us who remember how this area used to look. If I really concentrate I can remember a graffitied crossing beneath two tall pylons surrounded by secure fencing, just past Parkes Galvanizing Ltd, and now just look at it! I also remember Carpenters Lock as a derelict ruin I wasn't supposed to clamber on, and never would have guessed it would be fully restored to full navigational use. The fact barely any boats ever use it is alas irrelevant, although when I did my 2025 walk I was thrilled to see one of the lock gates raised while two official-looking gentlemen in Canal & River Trust polo shirts checked it out. Meanwhile nobody's yet found a good reason for the Orbit to exist, not since it was a useful viewing platform above a world-class sporting event for four weeks in the summer of 2012. If the world's longest tunnel slide failed to rake them in then a recent switch to the custody of Zip World is unlikely to cut it, especially with a greedy £5 booking fee on top. These are the northern parklands, arguably the greatest triumph of the post-Olympic legacy. Not only were they glorious to lounge in during the Games but they've matured since to become a wetland landscape of some beauty, complete with multiple kingfishers if you manage to get lucky. I wasn't thinking 'pandemic' when all this was created but my word it made my lockdown hugely more tolerable. That said the parkland has started to be nibbled away for housing on the west side, as was always in the long-term plan, as the neighbourhood of East Wick inexorably expands. There will still be a lot of grass left but it won't be as much as many people anticipated. Also the top of the mound beneath the Olympic rings used to have a much better view than this but the trees they planted 15 years ago are maturing now and the canopy is obscuring the horizon, with some way still to go. It is a shame the Manor House allotments had to move, split off to two less great locations, but what the wider public's gained here is immense. This is the Lea Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre with its dazzling blue outdoor pitch. I never walked this far in 2005, the A12 was too much of a barrier, so QEOP has also helped knit the community together. This Waltham Forest End does however feel somewhat underdeveloped, only coming to life when some massive hockey event descends and seals the place off. Also it was announced last week that the indoor tennis courts are to be converted to padel instead, which has caused a lot of angry players to make a racket, but the Park's recreational overlords have always appeared more interested in income than participation. Beyond that is the Velodrome, a timber beauty that far exceeds the cycle track that used to be here, and also the only Olympic residential neighbourhoods to have been completed so far. Never did I imagine when I wandered up here in the sunshine 20 years ago quite how amazingly it was all going to turn out, almost entirely for the better, and all because three more IOC delegates were persuaded to vote for London instead of Paris.

5 hours ago 1 votes
What's the best thing TfL ever did?

What's the best thing TfL ever did? anniversary poster series highlights several major achievements across the last 25 years, but they haven't released one for each year, not yet anyway. So I had a go at selecting annual highlights. 2000  Tramlink 2001  Bus Saver tickets 2002  Journey Planner / Trafalgar Square 2003  Oyster / Congestion Charge 2004  Legible London 2005  Accessible buses 2006  Baby on board badge 2007  Overground 2008  Priority seating 2009  iBus / New Routemaster 2010  Pedestrian Countdown / Tube aircon / Cycle Superhighways / Cycle Hire 2011  DLR Stratford International 2012  Olympics / Dangleway 2013  150th Tube anniversary 2014  Contactless 2015  Closing ticket offices / Bus Stop M 2016  Night Tube / Hopper 2017  Night Overground 2018  - 2019  Woolwich Ferry / Cycleways 2020  Essential Travel / TfL Go 2021  Northern line extension 2022  Crossrail / Barking Riverside 2023  ULEZ extension 2024  Superloop 2025  Silvertown Tunnel But which TfL thing is best of all? Let's take five years at a time and see if we can narrow it down. 2000  Tramlink 2001  Bus Saver tickets 2002  Journey Planner / Trafalgar Square 2003  Oyster / Congestion Charge 2004  Legible London We can discount Tramlink because that opened two months before TfL was formed. Pedestrianising one side of Trafalgar Square was radical by 2002 standards but feels tame now. 2003 is clearly where it's at, and I'm going with the introduction of Oyster as the revolution that made travel so much simpler and still does to this day. 2005  Accessible buses 2006  Baby on board badge 2007  Overground 2008  Priority seating 2009  iBus / New Routemaster 2010  Pedestrian Countdown / Tube aircon / Cycle Superhighways / Cycle Hire 2011  DLR Stratford International 2012  Olympics / Dangleway 2013  150th Tube anniversary 2014  Contactless This is a tough selection from which to pick a favourite. Air-cooled trains were a revelation in 2010, as we've learned again this week. Cycle hire arguably kickstarted an active travel revolution that continues to grow. I reckon 2012 pips them both though, not the eternal irrelevance of the Dangleway but the fear that transportation would be the Achilles heel of London's Olympics whereas instead it greased the wheels nigh perfectly. 2015  Closing ticket offices / Bus Stop M 2016  Night Tube / Hopper 2017  Night Overground 2019  Woolwich Ferry / Cycleways 2020  Essential Travel / TfL Go By rights Bus Stop M should be the highlight here, certainly given the paucity of some of the opposition. The new Woolwich Ferries were a floating disaster and rebranded Cycleways remain a confusing tangled web. I nearly picked 2016's Night Tube for the way it fired up the weekends, but I really have to go with TfL continuing to run a comprehensive transport network for not many passengers despite minimal fare income during a two year-long pandemic. 2021  Northern line extension 2022  Crossrail / Barking Riverside 2023  ULEZ extension 2024  Superloop 2025  Silvertown Tunnel This is a really strong list, as if Sadiq's TfL was finally getting into its stride and opening everything. And there can only be one winner here, 2022's utterly transformative Elizabeth line, which despite being ridiculously late Londoners can no longer live without. 2003  Oyster 2007  Overground 2012  Olympics 2020  Essential Travel 2022  Crossrail Oyster is the best thing TfL ever did. (unless of course you know better)

2 days ago 4 votes
TfL 25

Happy Birthday to TfL, who are 25 years old today. Celebrations started in January with a panoply of posters highlighting past successes, also scattered silver roundels reminding Londoners that Every Journey Matters. But the actual birthday is today, a founding date shared with the Greater London Authority because they're 25 too. Greater London Authority Act finally kick in. Ken's levers at this time were few and his budget small, but all the powers and public scrutiny we now take for granted started here. building's since been sold off as housing - to be more precise 169 flats and a health club - and I wonder if the current occupant of Room AG16 realises how historic their apartment is. Agenda and the Minutes for that inaugural meeting, and indeed of every Board meeting since. London's transport had been centrally controlled since 1933 when the London Passenger Transport Board was formed, followed sequentially by the London Transport Executive, London Transport Board and London Regional Transport. To the general public they were long known simply as London Transport. 25 years ago saw a switch to the more user-friendly Transport for London, a name recognising that the Mayor and Board were working on behalf of Londoners. What's interesting here is the italicisation of 'for' in the name Transport for London, this on every mention in the minutes and even in the three-letter acronym. It's always TfL, never TfL, a really powerful branding statement which at some point in the subsequent years was summarily ditched. TfL is no longer quite so for London as on the day it was born. It's clear that those present recognised this was a new dawn for London's transport, both in terms of public accountability and the potential for improving the lives of Londoners. That said there were in fact two meetings on that first day, a public one and a private one, because there will always be sensitive topics better not shared. Traffic Director for London   Dial-a-Ride The biggest omission from that list, if you look carefully, was London Underground Limited. It would be 2003 before this was finally transferred across to TfL control. The tube was held back to allow the government time to set up a public–private partnership model separating out trains and infrastructure, a PPP model they knew Ken Livingstone would vehemently oppose. This he did but it went through anyway, at least until infracos failed to deliver and by 2010 everything would be back in house. Bob Kiley was appointed in the top role. Fares would be a focus of the second Board meeting on July 27th. Ken took issue with the government's assumption that fares should increase 1% in real terms in January 2001, instead sticking to inflation-based rises on the tube and a fares freeze on the buses. He also expressed an aspiration to introduce a flat fare for all buses across London, rather than £1 for journeys in Zone 1 and 70p elsewhere. Meanwhile a decision was made to end the right of senior TfL staff to a company car, "with appropriate compensation in negotiation with the individuals affected". From a lowly start in a Westminster meeting room to today's back-slapping celebrations, the last 25 years have seen TfL grow from a fledgling organisation still finding its feet to a world-class brand-obsessed innovator delivering better transport to millions. It's been quite the journey, but then Every Journey Matters.

4 days ago 5 votes