A bird’ s eye view of food and drink in the
It’ s Tourist Time and your Gull’ s favourite season when we birds get busy and clear the streets of the best leftovers we can find. Leaving the chips and kebabs for the teen gulls, your Gull has swooped down to Seven Dials in search of richer pickings at pop ups at The Canopy and Puck.
Now, the gulls were all a-squawk when word got out about the closing of 64 Degrees with its superior snacking opportunities for the more discerning scavenger. So, to find the Great British Menu winner himself popping up at The Canopy in our very own Dials this late summer was greeted with the loudest of caws. This man can cook! Your bird is waddling in his wake as he plans his next restaurant experience later this year.
Popping up at Puck, Marc and Amy at Sedap are following the London trend of excellent Malaysian street food with tofu satay, nasi kerabu and oyster mushroom rendang giving a modern spin on the traditional fare. Your gull can report that the kuih dadar, the rolled crepe infused with pandan juice and filled with grated coconut in Gula Melaka is the kind of dessert to make a bird’ s spirits soar. Expect regular pop ups there throughout the autumn.
Happy now?
Of course the big news round here is the opening of Ikea. My friend Ben rang me up the day before the opening. He lives in Kemp Town which is miles away from Churchill Square but he’ s very fit.
“ I’ ve got a proposal for you. You’ re not going to like it at first, but there is a reward.” At this stage I do not have the faintest idea what he is talking about.“ Really?”“ A potential reward.”“ They’ re opening a new Ikea. And they’ re giving out vouchers to the first hundred people who show up on the day.”“ And?”“ Well, most of them will be for £ 1. But there will be one for £ 10,000, and one for £ 1,000. So if we turn up together we have double the chance of winning a ticket.”“ I presume there’ s a catch.”“ Well, they’ re vouchers you can only spend in Ikea. And you have to go on their website
With a taste of the East in her beak, your Gull catches a thermal over to The Lanes, stopping briefly to sniff out Patio, the new deli / wine bar / café /’ cool place to hang’ replacing Grocer and Grain on Upper Gloucester Road. Opening at the end of September, it promises to be a much-needed tasty space to meet by the train station.
Landing in Ship Street, your Gull finds Bookie, founder and executive chef at Namo Eats at The Eagle and junior co-owner at No No Please has just finished a stint at The Sidewinder and opened her own restaurant, Namo at 24 Ship Street. On Thai small plates with seasonal ingredients woven into the dishes, the menu is largely from her home in the north of Thailand and reflects more of who she is than she’ s been able to show under the wing of the previous establishments. Your
and register as a friend of Ikea. Or family or something. But you have to register, cos if you don’ t, you won’ t get the money, and if you cock that up, I will never forgive you. Ever.”
He suggests that I get there at 6.30am, 7 at the latest. I try to explain that I am more likely to go to bed at 6.30am than get up at 6.30am, and he tries to explain to me that one in a hundred odds of getting £ 10,000 aren’ t only not bad, but they become better if they are reduced by half. It might mean only £ 5,000 each, but that’ s still not to be sneezed at, especially considering the initial outlay.
But the outlay for me is too much. That is, the early start. I sleep in, and put my phone on Do Not Disturb just in case he tries to ring me.
Later in the day I get in touch. Did he go there in the morning? He did.
“ It was incredible. The whole of Churchill Square was packed. There would have been
Gull was particularly pleased to hear that she plans to bring her Thai cookery classes to Ship Steet, making it a place where people can enjoy good Thai food and share stories of the culture and roots behind it, just as Great Uncle Gulliver used to do for us young gulls on the back of his travels.
A sated bird, full of excellent scraps and meaty stories of culture and enterprise, your Gull glides home against a setting sun, tucking a happy head under a weary wing. The tourist season may soon be winding down, but the scent of Octoberbest is already nestling in her nostrils and feeding her dreams.
Nicholas Lezard
no chance we’ d have got even one of the £ 1 vouchers. You know, even if they’ d brought the Turin Shroud over to Churchill Square, with the Pope making a personal appearance, they wouldn’ t have got more people there.”
So my decision to have a lie-in was vindicated. A few days later, I popped down to Churchill Square to see how it was all going. I also fancied a bedside reading lamp. The queue, on a Thursday, at noon, or noon-ish, was not the longest I’ d ever seen; but it looked like a good twenty minutes, at the very least; and I’ ve never been that much of an Ikea fan anyway. But at least, in Brighton, they’ re making good use of vacant premises( the old Debenhams, where I would buy shoes and bedding and curtains); unlike – and allow me to bring it back to this – those bastards at the Co-op, and their plans for expansion at Seven Dials.