The Joint - Seven - Sean's Bar

Thursday January 30th - I'm currently excitedly planning a Summer trip to New York, Toronto, Chicago and Minneapolis (all recommendations welcome!), but after yet another wonderful evening out in Brixton last night, I was left wondering whether anything across the pond could compare.

Yesterday began as it so often does in Brixton, at Craft Beer Co for a couple of beers.  I enjoyed a Thornbridge Sequoia & Evil Twin Nomad Wit, and Max started with a Thornbridge Chiron.  If you haven't made it to one of the Craft bars around London, put it on your to do list.  There are quality drinks besides beer, but try a few samples of their 20+ taps and you might just be converted.

Max always brings back fun gifts from his travels abroad, and he impressed both me and the Craft Beer Co staff by presenting me with a box of 3 bottled beers from the Shiga Kogen microbrewery which is situated in a Japanese ski resort - pretty niche.  They are one of the few breweries in Japan to grow their own ingredients.

Shiga Kogen beers - a microbrewery in a Japanese ski resort

Choosing where to eat in Brixton Village / Market Row is always difficult (for all the right reasons), so we took the advice of Burgaffair and Gordon Ramsay (see below) and sat ourselves down at The Joint.

The menu is short and simple - a few sides (onion rings, riblets, sweetcorn, wings, hushpuppies etc), two types of slow-cooked pulled pork / shredded chicken in a bun/wrap and BBQ ribs.  It's BYOB so pop round to Market Row Wines and pick up some cheap bottles of Brixton beer or refillable wine.

The sides are cutely presented in little bags with tags, and the Drink Me... mint-infused water is a nice touch. The onion rings were delicious - covered in a delicate batter and an indulgent BBQ sauce.  To celebrate Chinese New Year, they are currently serving special pulled pork wontons with a BBQ sweet chilli jam dip - highly recommended.

For mains, we both went for the Asian BBQ 16-hour pulled pork in a bun which comes with coleslaw, pickled ginger, chilli, spring onion and salad.  Sounds pretty great, but lots of places are doing tasty pulled pork options, so The Joint have mixed things up by infusing a sourdough (not brioche!) bun with fig and giving it a vanilla glaze.  A bonkers idea but they have pulled it off.  It might be on the sweet side for some, but personally I was very taken with it.  The initial sweet flavour quickly gives way to the pulled pork and chilli.

The portions are enormous for £7 but I managed to polish it off pretty quickly.  Beware - it is a fairly messy meal, but they do helpfully provide a mountain of napkins.  Staff were very friendly, service was good, and the oddly appropriate chart music kept us from freezing on the outdoor tables.  

No trip to Brixton is complete without a £5 cocktail from Seven.  I have already mentioned them twice on The List, so I'll go one better this time and mention them twice in one post!  Not only are the drinks an absolute bargain, the bar itself is stunning.  Even the corridor has been transformed into a beautiful, candlelit hallway, with foldable chairs efficiently hanging off hooks on the walls.  We stopped here for a Honey Chilli Margarita and a Ginger Beer Basil Mojito before moving on elsewhere, but we did return later on!

Max and I were joined by local Luke and flatmate Maggie (3rd & 7th on Team List respectively) in Sean's Bar, a cosy watering hole which pops up at night in the popular Rosie's Deli Cafe, round the corner from Seven.  The drinks are simple but well executed by the eponymous Sean and his team, all to a banging soul soundtrack, every Thursday-Saturday 6-11pm.  

UPDATE: Sean's Bar has moved out of Rosie's Deli Cafe.  Rosie is running a similar bar in the evenings currently.  Sean runs Sean's Thai Bar in Balham and is looking for a new space in Brixton.

There are only a few tables so it can be very busy, but it can also empty very quickly.  It doesn't really matter as the atmosphere is great however full it is.  Sean & co are a friendly bunch and keep themselves amused choosing the next tune.  We had a serious Barry White session yesterday, which I continued with at home. A friend texted me this morning saying that Spotify had notified him that "Matt has been listening to a lot of Barry White". I recommend starting with Sha La La Means I Love You - off you go.

I stuck to £4 G&Ts whilst Maggie went for an Old Fashioned from the £6 cocktail list.  They are mostly classics (Negroni, Sours etc) but they do a couple of specials - Quince Tom Collins was on offer yesterday. Local Brixton beers are also available for £4.

There are also several tempting food offerings including "Rosie's" Reuben Sandwich and Truffled Macaroni Cheese.  Maggie's Roast Pumpkin, Prosciutto and Walnuts was beautifully presented and disappeared quickly.

We could have stayed all night, and perhaps another time we will (late night lock in with Sean & Barry?), but we decided to pop back to Seven for one more as Maggie had never been and we were so close!  Sean's Bar is a wonderful addition to Market Row - go and check it out!

Back at Seven, we returned to our corridor and I decided to splash out and go for the £7 Smoked Ale Old Fashioned - Walnut Bitters, Wild Turkey Honey, Buffalo Trace Bourbon and London Pride Ale - aged in Buffalo Trace Barrels and Smoked with Wood Chip Smoke.  We joked that for a hefty £2 more we expected the full barrel experience, but they went one better and brought it in a skull shaped bottle filled with wood chip smoke.  The drink was part shisha, part old fashioned and the smoke-filled bottle went round the table several times.  Go and order one whilst they still have it on the menu, they change it quite often!

It's worth noting that Seven have one of the few toilets in Market Row - Wishbone opposite also have one. Also, Sunday nights upstairs at Seven are currently the home to Sunday Skool, an evening of wine tasting and tapas run by A Grape Night In aka Laura & Kiki - two wine lovers who were responsible for several exciting popups last year.

Brixton went above and beyond as usual - I'm proud to be a Londoner when there is so much quality and innovation on show all over the city.  I'll leave you with some Barry (email readers click through to the blog if you want to join in):

Popcorn Flip

Guest Post - After an incredible night at Monkey Shoulder's Malt Jockey event back in March, I was devastated when I realised that I couldn't make it along to their Popcorn Flip event a couple of weeks ago. Instead, I begrudgingly sent along Team List regular Tim and his brother Matt to cover the event:

Thursday November 21st - After a cheeky beer cocktail at The Jones Family Project (read more here), we arrived at the Popcorn Flip address, only to find a piece of paper on the gate directing us around the back. Having dived down a couple of alleyways and arrived at the side entrance to a seemingly abandoned warehouse, expectations were confused to say the least but any doubts were quickly vanquished upon entry. Having donned our protective boiler suits we entered the arena head on into a cannon firing popcorn at us. "Sorry," said the man dropping popcorn into the cannon. He wasn't.

The decor inside consisted mainly of novelty sized movie themed props including a giant directors chair, a giant box of popcorn and a few rows of cinema seats.

There was a bouncy castle, with the entire surface covered in a couple of inches of popcorn; a popcorn "ball pit", filled 2 feet deep with popcorn for people to lounge in, and a stall of popcorn (actually for eating) available in over 20 flavours ranging from the regular salted or sweet all the way to goats cheese & walnut, madras curry, and tomato & mozzarella.

There were a number of stations around each of the rooms serving a selection of cocktails, all based on Monkey Shoulder whisky, who were running the event. The Old Fashioned was particularly delicious and we even had the chance to try our hand at making them in the "make your own" sections. If the girl is reading - the one who said to our cocktail instructor "That guy definitely just put more than 2 shots in", after I'd poured my own whisky - time to take a long hard look at yourself. 

Finally, there was the main drink of the evening, the "Popcorn Flip" itself. This consisted of whisky, a (secret) popcorn infused liqueur and an egg (thus making it a Flip).  It tasted great, particularly as we were lucky enough to get our hands on the final two of the evening to be served. Kudos to the barman who responded to our "I think you forgot to put the whisky in this cocktail" plea by just getting out some shot glasses and joining us in having a nip of Monkey Shoulder. 

Keep an eye out for the next Monkey Shoulder popup event by following them on Twitter, liking their Facebook page, or signing up for updates here.

Kitchen Table

List Dad Guest Post - Matt wrote above my first guest post on 30 September that this would hopefully be the first of many offerings from me. Whilst on the surface this sounds like a compliment or, at the least, a ‘buttering up’, I’m not convinced. Could it be that, having set such a fast pace with his dazzling succession of reports from the front line of London bars, bistros and street food, he wants others to share the burden?

There are several potential elephant traps from my point of view. 

For example, how to describe food without ending up in Pseuds Corner? Does anyone remember Jilly Goolden who stuck her nose into glasses of wine on the original Food and Drink programmes in the 1980s before coming out with phrases such as oodles of freshly turned manure laced with the aroma of a camp fire plus the occasional hint of wellington boots? 

And how does one define a great meal as opposed to one which is good or adequate?  I believe I know when I have had a really outstanding meal but am unsure of my ability or qualifications to put it into words. Could this be why the legendary A A Gill and Giles Coren spend two thirds of their reviews philosophising about anything other than the food or the restaurant in question? 

And, speaking of Adrian Gill, he once said of a certain food guide:- 

It’s no accident that the legacy of 100 years of Michelin is not just an emaciated, inhospitable French table but the legion of score-settling adjective junkies populating unreadable Internet blogs. Nerds who photograph their lunch as a bedroom metaphor for feelings and a simile for friends. (Vanity Fair - November 2012) 

Ignoring these words of warning, I will plough on, beginning with a comment on the lists of best UK restaurants which have been appearing on the Internet or falling out of the Sunday papers with great regularity over the past weeks. There will always be the same few restaurants near the top but, lower down, the divergence of opinion is remarkable. How can Dabbous be at number 11 in the 2013 National Restaurant Awards and not in the top 100 of others? In passing, at number 1 in the NRA list is The Hand & Flowers in Marlow, Buckinghamshire which I am visiting for the first time in January. This may have missed out on other lists because it is a pub. 

Kitchen Table, the restaurant I wish to recommend this week, has only featured in one list seen by me, but it stands apart from other eating places not just for the quality of its food but for its theatricality. Chef James Knappett has taken the concept of a chef’s table offered at other top restaurants and has turned his dining room behind Bubbledogs into one big chef’s table where nineteen diners sit round the kitchen on leather high chairs at a horse-shoe bar. 

James (late of Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley and Noma) is a most engaging host and is happy to chat to his guests as he and his team prepare twelve to fourteen courses, describing why he has chosen the combinations of flavours and where he has bought, found or foraged the ingredients. On our night, for example, there was foraged wild garlic and a dish of sand eels (not cooked there before) with nettles.

James Knappett (credit: Paul Winch-Furness)

The menu varies daily, and follows the current fashion of describing each course (on a blackboard) with one or two key words. When we visited, one of the most intriguing courses was beetroot and liquorice. This turned out to be a fabulous pudding comprising a warm beetroot cake, sorbet and meringue matched with liquorice ice cream. James explained that this came about because he snacks on liquorice as he cooks and can’t resist trying it out with other ingredients he has to hand. 

This is an experience like a great night out at the theatre, with the best seat in the house.

The Jones Family Project

Wednesday November 13th - I rarely write something up this quickly, but I felt compelled to after such a pleasant evening.  The Jones Family Project is officially opening on Monday 25th November when you are of course all otherwise engaged watching me perform with the Kensington Symphony Orchestra in the brand new Milton Court venue in the Barbican.  Therefore, you need to head on over to Great Eastern Street between now and then for the soft opening (with 50% off food) so that we can chat about it after my concert.

I was invited along to the opening party by co-founder Anna Watts after befriending her on Twitter. Anna has worked in the food and drink industry for a while, having set up the Rocket restaurant group with her husband Duncan and friend Amit Joshi back in 1999.  The three of them have teamed up again to open a friendly restaurant and bar set over two spacious floors near Old Street.  The name is an invention rather than a reference, alluding to the fact that working so closely day after day with the same people creates a close-knit family vibe.  The surname has no particular significance, it just seemed right to Anna & Duncan, the parental figures of the new Jones Family!

List Leader Natalie got the nod to be my +1 after reaching 100 points on the Leaderboard last week. We made straight for the bar and perused the cocktail menu that has a lot of fun with the family motif. The section titled "Uncle Albert does like his ale" is right up my street with Stout Daiquiri, Chivas Bitter and Beefeater Cider to choose from.

As well as a great cocktail list, there is an impressive back bar full of interesting spirits, two craft beers on tap (the wonderful Beavertown Gamma Ray APA and their own Jones Lager brewed for them by Meteor), and a special wine dispensing device.  James, head of the relatively new Cleveland Bay Vodka, was the first of several friendly guests to chat to us at the bar - I look forward to trying his product soon. Gins are out in force with Botanist, Gin Mare, Butler's and Bathtub all making an appearance.

The family theme runs through the décor too, with several attractive house structures hovering over tables, and Granny's Dining Room set up downstairs.

Granny's Dining Room will apparently be redecorated regularly, either to fit with something seasonal (e.g. a ski-lodge) or with a bespoke design requested by guests.

Granny's Dining Room

The Library

There's plenty to excite on the food menu, including Duck Egg Scramble, Ginger Pig steaks, Truffled Macaroni Cheese, and an array of tempting desserts.  Canapé versions of some of their dishes were brought round throughout the evening.  I was particularly taken with the baked Medjool dates stuffed with chorizo & wrapped in bacon, served with white bean, piquillo and tomato sauce.

Puddings are very affordable at £5 and you need look no further than Anna's Triple Chocolate Brownie served with vanilla bean ice cream and salted caramel sauce - incredible.  Natalie was understandably cross when I accidentally kicked one out of her hand.  Luckily, a member of the extended Jones Family was on hand with reserves.  I can also highly recommend the Olive Oil Chocolate Mousse with crushed chocolate cookies, honeycomb, raspberry syrup and fresh raspberries.

We randomly got chatting to Heather and Emma Jane from Gertrude & Ivy (Digital Marketing & Event Management) whose office is round the corner from my flat.  Heather writes her own SW London food blog and coincidentally used to live in my building - small world.  Anna (owner and brownie creator) came over to chat to the Gertrude & Ivy girls and kindly took us on a little tour, starting with her favourite cosy tables behind the sliding doors (a clever device for closing off a section).

There is a mix of art around the place, including a collage of classic board game bits and pieces made by Anna herself.  The ladies' toilets have backwards writing on the wall which you can only read properly through the mirror, and the gents' will hopefully soon have moustaches on the mirror so that you can line yourself up for a Mo-vember selfie.

We had a quick look around the upstairs bar which is beautifully designed.  The indoor trees look wonderful and the lighting is superb. There is free Wifi available all day (from 8am-midnight Mon-Fri and 10am-10.30pm Sat-Sun), and one table in the corner is even set up as an office space for anyone that wants it, as long as they get a coffee at some point! The use of music stands around the place also adds to the homely feel.

Your new office

We left Anna to entertain her other guests and went back to befriending the rest of the Jones Family. The "family" tag isn't just a gimmick, the staff were working as one, and were all incredibly friendly and helpful.  Patrick behind the bar, Beth on the floor, Cristiano in the kitchen and several others made us feel very welcome, and it is that kind of service that makes you want to return!  I hope they have a successful first year.