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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.
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.
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.
In a world of sprawling Mercato Metropolitanos, Market Halls and Arcade Food Halls, the miniscule Holborn Food Hub is a reminder that food courts come in all shapes and sizes. I'm sure they had very good reasons for filling a space the size of a mobile phone repair shop with fully 3 different food vendors and a ludicrously antisocial arrangement of table and chairs all seemingly piled up on top of each other, as whatever they're doing is working - most days the queue at lunchtime stretches down the street. But we were lucky - and early - enough on a Thursday to bag a small table and order a couple of bits from the 7 Floor Malaysia Tea Room (the name is a bit of a mystery - maybe they started on the 7th floor of somewhere else, as Holborn Food Hub is very definitely on the ground floor). Chicken wings arrived first - robust, healthy things, properly jointed (no wingtips here) and with a lovely bubbly, crackly exterior. Assam Laksa was a giant bowl full of pineapple-spiked seafood broth, topped with sticks of cucumber and pineapple and onion and with a mound of thick Udon-y style noodles (I'm sure there's a Malaysian word for them, sorry) hiding underneath. The aroma as it moved around the room was incredible - and triggered a long-forgotten memory of visiting a hawker still in Kuala Lumpur back when I was just fresh out of university. Back then I probably ended up with something more timid like, well, chicken wings - but it's amazing how long the memory of smells linger as more or less everything else gradually fades. Beef rendang was impeccable - probably the best the capital has to offer, and I've tried a few. There is a surprising amount of very bad rendang in London (the Roti King version is awful - particularly odd when you consider the rest of their offering is decent) but this was doing absolutely everything right, from the complex depth of flavour of the sauce to the beautifully meltingly tender chunks of beef. Also worthy of note was the accompanying sambal which added a beguiling whole new set of umami flavours into the mix. Some slices of cucumber added a welcome salad element, fried shallots (I think they were) added crunch and salty vegetal flavour, and finally a hard boiled egg (because why not) completed the dish. Just like the Assam Laksa, if you were served this from a hawker stall in Malaysia you would be more than happy. There was no printed bill - the girl behind the counter just offered the contactless machine having seemingly done the total in her head - but £41 seemed perfectly reasonable for the amount and quality of food, and I should also mention the service which was so lovely and friendly it was like being invited to eat in someone's front room. Albeit a front room with way too many closely-packed tables and chairs. 9/10
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Observation: The music played on Sounds of the 70s on Radio 2 isn't what it was when Johnnie Walker was in the chair. Hunch: Bob Harris is playing older, gutarrier records. Hypothesis: He plays more records from the first half of the 1970s than the second half. Research: I went back to the oldest Sounds of the 70s still on BBC Sounds, listed all the records played and noted down their year of release. Songs included Metal Guru by T Rex (1972), Hotel California by The Eagles (1977) and Top Of The World by The Carpenters (1973). Method: I looked up all the records in the Guinness Book of Hit Singles to see when they first charted. If they weren't hit singles I checked their release date using Google and Wikipedia. Data: (click to view) Results: 1973, 1976, 1974, 1977, 1977, 1972, 1971, 1977, 1977, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1979, 1972, 1975, 1973, 1973, 1973, 1978, 1972 Rearrange in chronological order: 71 71 72 72 72 73 73 73 73 73 74 75 75 76 77 77 77 77 78 79 Analysis: 20 records were played. 11 were from the first half of the 1970s. That's 55%, a slight majority. Interpretation: Actually that's a lot of mid-70s. 16 of the 20 records were from 1972-1977, i.e. 80%. The start and finish of the decade barely got a look in. Supposition: Bob Harris was the host of the Old Grey Whistle Test from 1972 to 1978. Maybe he's biased towards that period. Further research: Obviously it makes sense to gather more data. Five shows are available on BBC Sounds. Best get data from all of them. 18/5/25: 71 71 72 72 72 73 73 73 73 73 74 75 75 76 77 77 77 77 78 79 25/5/25: 70 70 70 70 70 71 71 71 72 72 74 74 76 76 76 77 77 78 79 79 79 01/6/25: 70 71 71 73 73 73 73 74 74 74 75 75 75 76 76 77 78 78 78 79 08/6/25: 71 71 71 72 72 72 74 74 74 75 75 75 76 76 76 77 77 78 78 79 79 15/5/25: 70 70 70 71 71 72 72 72 73 73 74 74 74 75 76 77 78 78 78 79 Overview: That might be more balanced. I should tally up all the years and draw a graph. Insight: OK that's really quite well spread out. 102 songs were played so you'd expect ten songs from every year, and in fact every year falls within the range 10±2. Verdict: There is no significant disparity in the years represented. It seems the producers of the show are trying to be pretty balanced. BUT: What I did notice while compiling the data is that 41 of the songs played weren't in the Guinness Book of Hit Singles. That's 40% of the total. That's a very high proportion not to have been UK hit singles. Conclusion: Bob Harris is playing a lot of album tracks (and US hit singles). That'll be be why I'm enjoying the music less. Sounds of the 60s. ...and that is definitely unbalanced. Further observations: See also my in-depth 2020 analysis: Is there any pattern to the years picked on Pick of the Pops? Datasets for future consideration • The chronological spread of Radio 3's Composer of the Week • The geographical spread of locations for a) Any Questions b) Gardener's Question Time • The work schedules of the Radio 4 Today Programme presenters • The balance of history to science and culture on In Our Time • How often the same adverts come round on Greatest Hits Radio • How long since Smooth Radio last played True by Spandau Ballet • Locations for Radio 3's Choral Evensong • The most played games on I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue • The proportion of successful challenges that are hesitation, repetition and deviation. • The average score on The Easiest Quiz On The Radio • Frequency of Radcliffe & Maconie interstitials
Route 241: Royal Wharf to Hackney Wick (Here East) Location: London east, cross-Newham Length of bus journey: 8 miles, 50 minutes route 241 was extended from Stratford City into the Olympic Park. No fuss was made, no hordes descended. Buses which would normally have terminated outside Westfield instead continued via a wilfully tortuous route to the multi-storey at Here East, inevitably rammed with empty seats. The extension is designed to deliver a bus service to the East Bank, the cultural waterfront whose landmark buildings are currently half open. It also delivers a bus service to Sweetwater, one of the five post-Olympic neighbourhoods where currently nobody lives because not a single flat has been built. Arguably it's still too early for the extension to be useful and yet the change has been in the offing for well over a decade waiting for the right moment to launch. I first blogged that route 241 might be extended across the Olympic Park way back in July 2010 when the idea appeared in planning documents for the Orbit. Instead when Westfield opened in 2011 the 241 was merely extended across the railway to Stratford City bus station, leaving the 388 to take responsibility for travel to the top of the park. A specific extension to Here East first appeared in a consultation in December 2012, at this stage an aspirational change waiting for the Olympic Media Centre to be reopened. A firmer proposition appeared in July 2017 as part of a wide-ranging review of routes connecting to Crossrail, but bosses ultimately decided not to proceed. The emergence of a free shuttle bus for Here East employees in May 2017 likely delayed things somewhat, and a proper 241 extension consultation only emerged in May 2024 when Carpenters Road reopened. And now finally here we are, 15 years on, mostly needlessly. entire route, not just the extension, all the way from flat-stacked Royal Wharf. It wasn't terribly busy at that end either, this being another extension circa 2022 on a much-tweaked route. If the Thames-side incomers want to go to Stratford they take the DLR rather than slum it through Custom House and Plaistow, and only on reaching these parts do passenger numbers really start ramping up. I'm pleased to report that timetables at bus stops all appear to have been updated, or at least I never spotted one that hadn't. A yellow poster has also been added explaining the extension into the Olympic Park, not that I can imagine anyone in south Newham ever wanting to make use of it. Our accumulated load started disembarking at Stratford Broadway, poured off at the station and fully emptied out at Westfield, this being where the 241 formerly stopped. The twisty-turny extension starts here. ridiculously twisty, this the fault of the post-Olympic road network which never quite links up in an optimal way. Crossing from one side of the station to the other has already taken 7 minutes and now we face another loop to get from 'up here' to 'down there'. The first stop on the new extension is outside the Aquatics Centre, a stop in use since 2013 and now served by three different routes. It might feel like overkill to serve a swimming pool and a skatepark, but the opening of a whopping university campus alongside in 2022 means that 16 buses an hour is sometimes justified. OK, now the new bit. a grimy backroad lined by mucky businesses nowhere else wanted. Originally the 276 ran along it, mainly as a quick route to Hackney Wick, but was diverted through Bow instead in 2007 when all this was sealed off to build the Olympic Park. After the Games Carpenters Road reopened as little more than a service road, this time with the 339 wending its way through, this until December 2018 when the road closed again to enable the construction of the East Bank. Neither the 276 nor the 339 have ever returned and the backroad is now the province of the 241, whisking students and punters to all things cultural. A pair of brand new bus stops await. Onwards. map in the recent consultation, only two more round the corner that don't yet exist. 339 remains the better option if you're heading canalside. And when the bus finally climbs up to Marshgate Lane the really stupid thing is that construction teams painted BUS STOP on the road back in 2021 in readiness for this weekend, but no bus stop has been added. They even added an annoying kink in the adjacent cycle lane in readiness for a shelter, squishing the pedestrian gap to a bare minimum, but it turns out they needn't have bothered. next stop is a longstanding one, immediately outside the Copper Box on the main drag of Westfield Avenue. This time there are flats nearby, also flats under construction, also regular sporting events, a large food court and a shortcut across the river to Hackney Wick station. The 388 stops here and what's more it takes the direct 4 minute route to and from Stratford, not the circuitous 8 minute safari we've just endured. There's then no further stop until the terminus at Here East, even though it might be useful to fill the 600m gap to serve for example the new V&A Storehouse and adjacent facilities. Instead it's all the way or nothing, turfed out kerbside between yet another university and a multi-storey car park. Was it really worth it? It will be worth it one day, when the East Bank is finished and 1500 unstarted flats along the extension are complete. This is just TfL getting in early, while simultaneously getting in 13 years later than they first suggested. A fine balance needs to be struck, and somebody has judged that now is the time to push things further with three extra vehicles on the route, even if initially they carry mostly empty seats. In the meantime the 241 extension is a round-the houses route that doesn't yet go round any houses, thus generally unnecessary, and you're unlikely to be riding it any time soon.
I've been to see some art. Serpentine Galleries Giuseppe Penone: Thoughts in the Roots (until 7 September) [exhibition guide] Arpita Singh: Remembering (until 27 July) Serpentine Pavilion 2025 by Marina Tabassum (until 26 September) medical capsule, much enlarged, chopped up into four ribbed slices. The chops help embrace the open air but also let the rain in, as I discovered when I dashed inside during a cloudburst and realised I was still getting wet. The interior feels a bit like a waiting room, all peripheral seating plus the obligatory hot drinks offering at the far end. Vision 1, Functionality 0. Play Pavilion (until 10 August) White Cube Richard Hunt: Metamorphosis – A Retrospective (until 29 June) Richard Hunt. I really liked his late period plantlike spikes but could have done without the formative prequels. It's so purely presented that Richard and his oeuvre only really made sense once I'd watched the four minute looping video showing him hard at work in a cluttered industrial workshop. National Gallery The Carracci Cartoons: Myths in the Making (Room 1, until 6 July) (on a practical note the horrific queues that blighted the gallery last autumn have all died down - I waited no seconds whatsoever at the main entrance) National Portrait Gallery Stanisław Wyspiański: Portraits (until 13 July) Lines of Feeling (until 4 January) Photo Portrait Now (until 28 September) Newport Street Gallery Raging Planet (until 31 August) The Power and the Glory (until 31 August) visited recently and found it uncomfortable, not especially artistic and eminently skippable. I left reassured that all the photos were from before I was born so we've learned since, and unnerved that we might not have learned at all. Tate Modern UK AIDS Memorial Quilt (until 16 June) UK AIDS Memorial Quilt, created to commemorate lives lost in the 80s and 90s, is out of long-term storage and back on view for one weekend only. The Turbine Hall is the perfect place to lay out 42 colourful twelve foot panels remembering 384 people who died in the AIDS epidemic, commemorated here with love and creativity by their friends (and sometimes family). Some were well known names - Robert the photographer, Mark the activist, Christopher from Blue Peter - others shone brightly in their own corner. Each panel is unique, from simple symbolism to complex reminiscence, with red ribbons, rainbows and teddy bears frequently seen. In most cases you can only guess at the backstory from pictorial clues. It's the dates that really hit home, so many born in the 50s and 60s cut down in their 30s and 40s, and a few babies lost at barely two months for added shock. Some who've come to Tate Modern to see the quilts plainly remember the struggle first time round, and in a sign of quite how far things have moved on I also saw a teacher leading her primary class round the fabric cemetery and pointing out names and memories. If you can't pay your respects in person several panels are explorable on the Memorial Quilt's website. Bow Arts Gallery Bow Open: Connections (until 31 August) well chuffed to have had his systematic imprint selected. The most fun work by far is Campbell McConnell's 90 second video of medieval actresses repeatedly overacting. The space out the back is totally wasted. Try not to tread on the fabric snake. Halcyon Gallery - 146 New Bond Street Point Blank by Bob Dylan (until 6 July) The Beaten Path, which was also exhibited here, and there was his reinterpretation of my snap of Blackpool Pier on page 228... and 229... and 231. You have to smile, and I did just that all the way back out onto the Mayfair streets.
