When I visit restaurants, I try to focus my attention on the atmosphere, who’s there, how it’s decorated – and what the food tastes like. If I’m eating on my own, I usually record these observations in a Google Doc on my phone.

I also eat out without taking notes, both alone and with others. When I recall these noteless restaurant experiences, my memories usually have more to do with what I was doing and how I felt that day than anything else.

I can tell from my phone gallery that I ate this perfect curry goat and white rice on the last Friday of May. I was with a friend and we started eating in the restaurant’s shadeless seating area, but the sun was too strong, so we took our containers up to Brockley Station Community Garden, to sit in the shade. I know summer starts in June, but the weather that day was a sign of the searing hot weeks to come.

I also remember feeling stressed in the days preceding this lunch, through a combination of overwork and a frantic, unsuccessful flat hunt. The next morning, I left my phone at home and took a picnic blanket and my CD player to Hilly Fields, where I lay down, listened to Boards of Canada and fully switched off for the first time in weeks.

8-9 Coulgate St, London SE4 2RW

2. Mici at the Romanian food stall in Queens Market, Upton park

One Sunday in June, I went for a meandering four-hour walk between East Ham and the Isle of Dogs. I remember passing things like Newham Bookshop in Upton Park, a Ukrainian restaurant in Plaistow and a taxi repair centre in Canning Town.

Before I got to these places, I went to Queens Market, where I noticed a caravan repurposed as a food stall, with a grill next to it. I asked what they were cooking and they said mici, so I ordered three. I ate them standing up, from a paper plate, under an adjoining gazebo. I remember feeling good that day, because I was doing something that clears my head. I also have an unusually vivid memory of the mici themselves, which came rarer than I was expecting, and were incredibly juicy because of it.

Green St, London E13 9JJ

3. Rupchanda at Shokher Hari, Bethnal Green

In July I wrote about how I accidentally ate rupchanda at Shokher Hari, after being beautifully misheard when ordering chana dal. But I said less about the rupchanda I purposefully ate there a week later, after my sixth day of a 10-day intensive driving course in Erith, Bexley.

Other than taking pleasure in sliding the fish’s mild, firm flesh off its skeleton, I remember that I was hating learning to drive. My instructor was nice enough, but we were onto the nitpicking stage, where each lesson was three hours of being lightly told off.

I’m proud to say that I passed first time, four days later. Now that I’m officially allowed on the roads, I still regularly fail to get in the right lane, check my mirrors or look around properly while reversing. I know I’ll just get better as I drive more, but I often miss the days when I had a professional in the car with me to help me improve.

253 Bethnal Grn Rd, London E2 6AH

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In May, there was an article in The Observer about The Backbeat Club, a semi-secret illegal venue in the West End established during the 1990s, where you could drink, dance, watch live football and buy weed from people hidden behind plasterboard walls. The club occupied a four-storey warehouse just off Charing Cross Road, before expanding into EMI’s old recording studios nearby. By the time the operation was raided by armed police in 1998, it had been making £100k per month.

“This was a London of low rents, of affordable food,” wrote Tomo Delaney, the piece’s author, who was a regular at the club. “No franchises. No big chain coffee shops. The city had yet to be cleaned up.”

When I read Delaney’s account, I reacted the same way as when I heard about Hung’s, HK Diner, The Stockpot and The New Piccadilly, former central London canteens that would go viral if they were open today. At first, I was amazed that they ever existed. Then I felt jealous, of those that enjoyed a West End I never can.

Fortunately, this inexpensive version of London never really went away. It’s just mostly further out now, in diverse areas like Harlesden, Catford and Wood Green. It persists on high streets lined with independents, in Southall, Harringay, Deptford, Walworth, Tooting, Ilford and East Ham. It persists in South Bermondsey and Upper Edmonton, on whose industrial estates London’s weirder nightclubs operate today.

Fragments of the non-chain city can also still be found in the West End. I see them in the area’s parks, libraries, museums and other free spaces. I see them in the shops, pubs, cafes and restaurants that cost what you’d expect and no more, that have regulars and say something about where they are.

My list of 100 such places ranges from churches to swimming pools, record shops to haberdashers, vintners and basement bars to Italian delis and French patisseries. I wish I got to experience how this area used to be, but these places make me think the West End is actually still pretty good.

Contents

1. Outdoor public spaces

2. Indoor public spaces

3. Sports centres

4. Museums and galleries

5. Churches

6. Cinema

7. Record shops

8. Magazine shops

9. Bookshops

10. Specialist shops

11. Tea, coffee and food suppliers

12. Wine and booze shops

13. Pubs

14. Bars

15. Chinese restaurants

16. Sandwich bars

17. Cafes

18. Caffs

19. Bakeries

20. Ice cream and dessert places

Outdoor public spaces

I see the West End’s public parks and garden squares as great big gifts to this city.

1. Soho Square: A hangout more important to Londoners than Trafalgar Square, where people eat, sleep, drink, smoke and play table tennis for free.

2. The Phoenix Garden: Simply the most peaceful place to eat a packed lunch in Zone 1. I love its uneven pathways and various homemade benches.

3. St James’s Square Garden: In the 1700s, St James’s Square was a new development for dukes and earls. Some of its Georgian townhouses still exist; this beautified patch of land between them is open to the public five days a week.

4. St James’s Park: The funny thing about all the tourists in St James’s Park is that they act like they’ve never seen a pigeon before, when this wonderful green space is really a haven for wigeons, coots, moorhens, grey herons and more.

5. Green Park: There’s a lot to love about Green Park, but my favourite things in it are its still-functioning gas lamps.

Indoor public spaces

The West End doesn’t quite have multifloor lounges like the Barbican Centre or Royal Festival Hall, but there are still some places where you can sit down inside for free.

6. Charing Cross Library: This linoleum-floored library provides much more than books, offering daytime refuge for many, as well as a place to play mahjong.

7. West End Arts Library: A truly gorgeous, two-floor library, full of art, music, fashion, design and more. I once saw a guy reading musical notation here, silently conducting to an invisible orchestra. (Previously called Westminster Reference Library.)

8. Marylebone Library: Just a well-equipped local library, that makes you see Marylebone as a more central version of St John’s Wood or Hampstead.

9. Mayfair Library: I’ve only been here once, and I was surprised by its foot-worn mosaic, stained glass windows and the fact that Mayfair has a free space like this.

10. Royal Opera House: I’ve sat in the seating area by the Royal Opera House’s entrance a few times now without buying anything and have never been moved along.

Sports centres

Every now and then, I catch glimpses of people who appear to live in or near the West End and seem normal rather than ultra-wealthy. I feel like these two buildings attract a lot of them.

11. Oasis Sports Centre: If you didn’t know already, there’s a huge sports centre next to Covent Garden, with a gym, squash courts and a heated outdoor pool. You can swim there for £8.45.

12. Marshall Street Leisure Centre and Spa: If you didn’t know already, there’s also a huge sports centre in the middle of Soho, with a beautiful 1930s pool. You can swim there for £9.35.

Museums and galleries

As well as its green spaces, public buildings and local authority gyms, some of the West End’s exorbitance is offset by its free and less costly cultural spaces.

13. National Gallery: London’s Louvre, except you can just walk in for free. I highly recommend Frederick Wiseman’s forensic documentary about its inner workings.

14. National Portrait Gallery: “We look after the world’s greatest collection of portraits,” the NPG’s website says. Again, I find it incredible that you can look at them without paying anything.

15. Royal Academy of Arts: I love going to exhibitions at the RA, but I also really like looking at the antique doorbell by its entrance.

16. Institute of Contemporary Arts: It makes me happy that such a progressive space is on the same road as Buckingham Palace. The ICA’s a useful public building too and sometimes I pop in just to use its loo.

17. Sadie Coles HQ: I visited Sadie Coles for the first time to pick up a print copy of this London A-Z that I worked on, but then I stuck around because it’s such a captivating, whitewashed space.

18. Photographer’s Gallery: I’ve only been here once, to see a Peter Mitchell retrospective, and it was one of the best exhibitions I’ve ever seen.

19. The Wallace Collection: Again, I find it wild that this mansion full of chandeliers, Old Masters, pistols, daggers and scabbards is free to visit.

20. London Transport Museum: I’m not ashamed to say that my favourite part of this museum is its shop.

Churches

I see churches as another form of free museum. They are often the oldest building on a street and welcoming even if you don’t believe in god.

21. St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden: Last time I was here, I watched a free cello and piano performance.

22. St Patrick’s Catholic Church, Soho: I love how this church, between Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, seems to be permanently full of Catholic tourists engaged in quiet prayer.

23. Our Lady of the Assumption & St. Gregory Church, Soho: Another popular Catholic church in Soho, with beautifully aged carpets and a lovely fusty smell.

24. Notre Dame de France, Leicester Square: In the same way that St Peter’s in Clerkenwell was built for Italian immigrants, you may know that this church was built for Soho’s former French population.

25. St James’s Church, Piccadilly: Every now and then, I go into this church to look at the ornamental screen behind the altar, which features wooden carvings of things like fruit and sea shells⁣.

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Imagine that you’re a personal assistant to a celebrity who was recently interviewed by Vanity Fair. Their big profile came out in print today and you need to get hold of as many magazines as possible. Where would you go to buy them?

Now imagine that you’re a parent to a four-year-old demanding an issue of Peppa Pig Play Pack, for the stickers it contains. Imagine that you’re flying to Corfu tomorrow and want the latest New Scientist or Good Housekeeping, to read by the pool. Imagine that you just passed your driving test: you’re considering a used Volkswagen Polo, but want some advice from What Car? before parting with your cash.

Imagine that you want to buy any kind of physical magazine in London right now. Where would you go to buy it?

For a while now, the answer to these questions for many people has been places like Sainsbury’s or WH Smith (now TG Jones). But even though print has declined, it certainly isn’t dead – and neither are the independent shops that keep it alive. Here are nine such shops in London, where I’ve had a wonderful time buying loads of magazines.

magCulture

I think London has three types of magazine-seller. There’s the new and second-hand bookshops which sell magazines too. There’s the enterprising newsagents who have branched out into zines, literary titles and other offbeat independent publications. And then there’s magCulture, whose very reason for being is to ensure that printed matter remains a part of London’s daily life.

In terms of depth and breadth of selection, magCulture is hard to beat. On a recent visit to its EC1 home, I noticed newer, smaller mags like GUTS!, New Papers and Desi Art Mag mixed in with older, bigger ones like The Paris Review and The World of Interiors. But I was just as struck by the shop’s terrazzo floor, as well as its tilted shelves and angled spotlights, which draw attention to its stock like paintings in a gallery.

Importantly, magCulture also has places where you can sit down and read its wares, in the form of a comfy sofa and armchair. It’s clear that every bit of this space is geared towards the discovery and enjoyment of magazines.

It’s also funny that such an important shop is in an area that feels like it’s on the way to somewhere else. When I went to pay for a copy of The Guardian Long Read, I asked the person behind the counter if they knew why magCulture is at the bottom of a post-war housing block in this bit of Clerkenwell. They linked its location to the wider neighbourhood’s historic print industry and said that they like how the shop’s customers are those who deliberately seek it out.

270 St John St, London EC1V 4PE

New Cross Kiosk Newsagent

Every now and then, I get on the wrong Overground train without realising and find myself at New Cross station. When I do, there are two things I always notice: the still-functional public loos, and a handwritten sign above the news kiosk by the station entrance that says, “PLEASE DO NOT ASK FOR CHANGE”. In July, I decided it was time to pay this hole in the wall a visit.

New Cross Kiosk Newsagent sells titles that magCulture doesn’t, such as Hello!, Take a Break and TV Choice, along with things like Daim bars, SIM cards and Lost Mary vapes. It also stocks weeklies like The New Yorker and the New Statesman, which the guy behind the counter told me are his biggest sellers. As we spoke, I noticed several tattered issues of Asian Trader not far from where he stood, which describes itself as “the leading business magazine for convenience store owners.”

New Cross Railway Station, Amersham Vale, London, SE14 6LD

A T Terry News

As with carpeted local pubs, independent magazine shops have become a novelty because their more impersonal, samey alternatives have become so ubiquitous. But such businesses used to be unremarkable. I feel this novel ordinariness particularly strongly at A T Terry, a newsstand opposite the department store Liberty. I imagine many Londoners vaguely know A T Terry exists, and are glad that it does, but don’t use it regularly.

As far as I can tell, this open-air newsagent doesn’t even have a Google Business profile; I only found out its name by looking at its awning. I hope it does a good trade, given its location between Oxford Circus and Carnaby Street, in front of Spaghetti House. But I think it deserves more recognition for being an independent in a sea of chains.

1-4 Argyll St, Palladium House, London, W1F 7LD

Rayden Newsagent

As with Jerry’s coffee stall over the road, Rayden’s placement at the nexus of three N1 thoroughfares makes it a crucial part of Islington life. Its owner also clearly invests in his customer relationships: I once heard him wish a regular good luck for that night’s Aston Villa match. This Islington-Council-owned kiosk, as well as the entry above, reminds me of newsstands in New York. I love how this one is absolutely draped in magazines and newspapers, from Attitude, to Mojo, to The Irish World.

Intersection of Upper Street, Islington High St and Liverpool Rd, London, N1 0RP

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My actual diet has also consisted of nourishing, familiar things. For breakfast, I’ve felt like eating more scrambled eggs; for lunch and dinner, more cod, roasted sweet potatoes and cottage cheese. Outside of my flat, I’ve been eating even mushier foods, in shades of cream, brown and yellow, mostly at restaurants I know well.

I’ve been an open-minded eater since my teens, but I wonder if these changing desires mean that my tastes have narrowed, at least temporarily. In any case, I’ve embraced this shift to see if eating more soft, plain dishes would continue improving my mood.

By writing about this type of food, I also want to honour its complexity. Even when these dishes are gentle, they are the opposite of flavourless; they just don’t taste that strong.

Contents

Pongal

Congee

Chana dal

Pie and mash

Ackee and saltfish

Crumble and custard

Roshmalai

Pongal at Vasantha Vilas

As with Wong Kei and Scotti’s Snack Bar, I get a lot out of being a regular at Vasantha Vilas in East Ham. I first went in 2021, and have now written about it six times.

When I bring friends to this restaurant who haven’t eaten much Tamil food, I always tell them to get the mini tiffin. This platter contains a bit of everything, including something they’re likely to recognise, like a masala dosa, along with things they might not, like vada, idli and pongal. The sambar and chutneys also make it a fun, dippable meal, and I like to see if they save the lump of sweet, granulated halwa for dessert.

The food here makes me happy not just because of how it tastes, but because it consistently looks the same. It also reminds me of being with my aunts, uncles, cousins and grandma in places like Chennai, where I tried many of these dishes for the first time.

I love every component of Vasantha Vilas’s mini tiffin, but the pongal – a soothing dish of rice cooked in milk with things like cashews, cumin seeds and curry leaves – is the one I’ve felt like eating most lately. It’s a soft thing to eat, but each bite has areas of firmness and is a little different from the last.

This month has been the first time I’ve had the pongal here outside of a mini tiffin, which as a standalone dish comes as a mound rather than a scoop, with a depression filled with ghee. But I haven’t yet been able to resist ordering it as part of a two-course meal with something else. Last week, I had it with a lattice-like rava dosa, clearly a semi-liquid splatter only moments before. Then I came back a few days later to have it with an extra large and crispy dosa, as fragile as an ancient papyrus scroll.

As well as sheer drama, I’ve come to expect masterly sequencing from the food at Vasantha Vilas. Last week, the kitchen sent out my rava dosa just as I finished my last spoon of pongal, as if the person who cooked it was watching me eat. On Saturdays and Sundays, when I wake up and ask myself where in London I really want to go, it’s memories like this that make me decide to travel to East Ham once again.

206 High St N, London E6 2JA

Congee with shredded pork and century egg at Far East Chinese

Far East Chinese doesn’t seem to pop up on many lists, Reels or TikToks about Soho’s Chinatown, but I think it should, because it serves a great breakfast. I’ve written about the plain congee and salted bean curd here before; last week I returned to try its congee with shredded pork and century egg.

I had a bad stomach that morning and this bowl of savoury rice porridge brought me back to life. It was generally plain but not boring, with spikes of flavour and textural variety from the egg, pork strips, spring onion and matchsticks of raw ginger. The translucent, blackish-umber fragments of century egg, which looked to me like escargot, tasted profoundly yolky before dissolving in my mouth.

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In an age when most people listen to music over the internet without owning it, it’s bordering on absurd that there are still places to buy records, cassettes and compact discs. But they live on, and it makes me happy that so many of them are in London.

I like newer record shops, but I prefer this city’s older, more disorderly music repositories. For a while now, my favourite place to buy second-hand records has been Alan’s Records in East Finchley: a room permanently filled beyond capacity and run for decades by the same local legend, whose business has only become more important by refusing to change.

Alan’s is also just a great shop. He sells records you can’t find elsewhere. His stock costs less than it should. And his collection acts as an extension of a proprietor who has spent his life curating it. His is a true neighbourhood business, indivisible from the road it’s on, but a destination too.

One day, I will write or commission the most comprehensive list of London record shops ever published. For now, I want to draw attention to three other community record shops that I’ve heard DJs and collectors in this city talk about.

These businesses operate in the margins, which I think is partly why they’ve managed to stay unique for so long. They remind me of Alan’s – as weird, deeply local, uncompromising places to buy music – but by the same token, each one has its own personality.

Crazy Beat Records

Upminster is in the London borough of Havering, but it has the hallmarks of places beyond the M25. Like the Berkshire tourist town I grew up in, it has a Pizza Express, a Caffè Nero, a parish church, working public loos and a department store with a toy shop on the top floor. If I hadn’t come to Upminster to buy records, they would have been the last thing I expected to find.

I first heard about Crazy Beat in an interview with the DJ and producer Joy Orbison, which was published in Japanese and which I read using Google Translate. “Lately I’ve been thinking that the best record shops are in the suburbs, not in central London,” he told FNMNL. “For example, Crazy Beat Records in Upminster… It’s a collection of records that used to belong to people who were DJs.” After reading this, I thought Crazy Beat might be intimidating, or just for the heads, but when I went last week, it couldn’t have been more welcoming and unpretentious.

When I arrived, the shop speakers were playing “Wait a Minute!” by Willow Smith, followed by other radio-friendly songs by artists like Arctic Monkeys. By the front door, I noticed cuttings from a nine-year-old Romford Recorder article, next to a photo of a local football team sponsored by Crazy Beat and a sleeve for a medley of waltzes that came out in 1957. As I combed through releases by reggae labels like Jet Star and Ballistic Records, before encountering everything from Grateful Dead to MC Skibadee to Lauryn Hill, this shop’s philosophy became clear to me.

When I went to pay for a copy of Autumn Leaves by Bill Evans, I asked the guy behind the counter about his place of work. He told me that the shop had been around for almost 40 years and used to be more about genres like jazz and reggae. He said that over the years, different staff with different tastes had started to make their mark on the shopfloor, introducing new specialisms and giving each section its rich, hand-picked feel.

I told him I’d come here mainly after hearing about its classic house and UK garage selection, and he said those genres were among the shop’s biggest sellers these days. As backroom staff shuffled around behind him, he said Crazy Beat had over 100,000 items for sale on Discogs, and that the stock online is distinct from what they sell in-store. (In Upminster, you can browse over 10,000 CDs and records that aren’t available on Crazy Beat’s Discogs.) I asked him if the founder still worked there. “Yeah,” he said. “We can’t get him out of his chair.”

While I was browsing, I noticed a younger woman at a computer and a middle-aged guy in a plaid shirt and a cap with a large stack of records, working through them at a listening station. I thought they were collectors at first, but after they stepped behind the counter, I realised they were cataloguing material. Crazy Beat is a beautifully well-oiled machine, and I imagine its extensive online shop is a big part of why its physical one can exist today.

87 Corbets Tey Rd, Upminster RM14 2AH

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So this week, while I take a break, I wanted to revisit 10 pieces that capture what Wooden City is about. It’s just the shorter digest this week – I’ll resume publishing longer guides and articles on Wednesday 8 July.

1. My favourite London caffs part 1: Central

The first thing I published here and the product of half a decade of research. Parts two and three cover more ground, but I like this one most because of the introduction, and the fact that the entries show that central London is still good. Part three has the map.

2. 31 places in London to buy second-hand books

Sometimes I worry that this guide got overshadowed, because I published it early on and more people associate me with caffs. Wooden City now reaches a much larger audience, so if you’re a new reader, I want to make sure you know about this piece. I’m not aware of a longer list of second-hand bookshops for which the writer has been to every single place. Also more bookshops here and here.

3. A big day out in London’s indoor public space

My most popular free piece, which I think was the first time I recognised that my real interest lies in community spaces in general, rather than just old ones. I think more people should be celebrating buildings like these, that let you sit down inside without paying anything and do things like sleep, read and charge your phone.

4. Part 1: London’s traditional and specialist shops

Another early piece, that involved some very fun weeks of wandering around areas like Clapton, Sydenham and Shepherd’s Bush, going to loads of specialist shops. I’m really proud of part two as well, and am currently sitting on a long, chaotic spreadsheet of shops for an overdue follow-up.

5. 23 valuable community spaces in Lewisham

Catford was the first neighbourhood that I wrote about in detail, followed by Walworth. But I think I really hit my stride with Lewisham, which has so many important places that I found it very hard to stop adding new ones to this list. Part two here.

6. Who exactly ruins local pubs?

My thinking has evolved a bit since publishing this, but this essay is probably my clearest expression yet of some of this newsletter’s key themes, particularly the responsibilities that newcomers can have in a space with an existing crowd.

7. 100 of my favourite places in London right now

My most popular paid piece so far. If I wrote it again tomorrow, I reckon I could quite easily choose a whole different set of 100 favourites, which is precisely why I love running this newsletter.

8. The French House

I tried to make this piece of writing about The French House a critical review, rather than a three-part vignette. One way I did this was by reading a lot of Jonathan Gold, who I now realise kind of wrote vignettes. But I love really atmospheric writing like his, that focuses on smells and sounds as much as visual and gustatory perception, and actual criticism. I’m still figuring out whether the review format is for me, but if and when I write more of them, I think I want to continue doing so in this style.

9. 100 random old things to look out for in London

Wooden City is about community spaces in London, but everything I write is informed by looking hard at the details. I like doing this with objects as much as places, and it brings me great joy to know that this list has inspired people to look out for random old things on the street.

10. How to walk the city

After I published this guide, I got a WhatsApp from a close friend who said, “Loved today’s article. Clear, concise writing and genuinely useful.” This is exactly what I’m trying to do with Wooden City. I received similar messages from other other readers and was really encouraged by the overall response, especially for a piece that I initially thought I was taking a punt with.

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On three occasions last week, I walked through the Grade II-listed doorway of 41-43 Wardour Street, seated myself and ordered without seeing a menu, as a staff member deposited my free pot of jasmine tea. The third of those visits was the 100th time I’d been to Wong Kei on my own.

I go to this Cantonese restaurant all the time because I work near it most days and I think it’s the cheapest, best place to sit down and eat in the West End. I regularly choose it over my other lunch break spots because of its prices as much as its speed and efficiency. Some of my favourite dishes come out in seconds and like many customers, I usually pay at the counter when I’m done, rather than waiting an extra minute for the bill.

I have loads more to say about the vibe, crowd, history, hospitality and community function of this space, but I’m saving that for later. For now, I’d recommend the brilliant pieces on these topics by Angela Hui and Jonathan Nunn for Vittles, and by Elaine Zhao for Time Out.

In the spirit of Wong Kei’s usefulness, I thought it would be fitting to mark my 100th solo meal there with a practical list of the dishes I like to order. This piece is also a homage to the Wong Kei Tumblr, which inspired many of my menu choices, got me into dining there alone and reminded me to take a photo of everything I eat.

#173: Braised beef briskets on boiled rice

When I came across that indispensable Tumblr, I considered trying to replicate the project on Instagram, by working through every menu item myself. But I fell at the first hurdle and kept ordering the same dishes, such as the braised beef briskets on boiled rice. I return to this mellow Cantonese beef stew because I find it so comforting. It makes me imagine people in the kitchen cooking it with care and ladling it out of huge pots.

#155: Stuffed green peppers, bean curd and aubergine (with minced prawns) on boiled rice

I like three fried stuffed treasures because it’s such a fun dish to eat. I always begin with the heart-shaped lumps of minced prawn embedded in the green pepper slices, because they’re so satisfying to dislodge with chopsticks. After that, I move onto the wobbly cuboids of tofu, each one impregnated with a single prawn. Then, once the aubergine pieces have cooled a little, I tear them open at the exact point their soft flesh has been slashed, filled and fused together.

#169: Pork chop with chilli and salt on boiled rice

I started ordering the previous dish after seeing Jonathan Nunn say it was good. It’s a similar deal with this one, which I slept on until the Vittles Oxford Circus guide recommended “any of the pork chop dishes” at Wong Kei. I’ve taken great pleasure in these garlicky, cornstarch-coated pork slices since, which are balanced out perfectly by a mound of white rice.

#152: Sweet and sour chicken on boiled rice

Every now and then I walk into Wong Kei, see someone eating sweet and sour chicken, and have an overwhelming urge to order it myself. The kitchen pays a lot of respect to its glistening components, from the chicken, which is firm, tender and crispy all at once, to the pineapple slices, which taste as bright and vibrant as they look.

#135: Fried ho fun and beef with vegetables

Once, I ordered this perfectly gloopy, meat-and-two-veg dish while sharing a table with a guy I didn’t know, a setup any Wong Kei regular will be used to. This man was wearing headphones and watching something on his phone, over a bowl of wonton noodles. My fried ho fun and beef materialised in minutes – shockingly quickly for a dish that usually takes longer than most – but I didn’t think anything of it. As I photographed the plate, the waiter told me that it wasn’t actually mine and that my order would be out shortly. Turns out the wontons were the man’s first course, and he’d ordered some ho fun to follow. He understood the confusion and laughed, before taking his rightful meal and returning to his TV show. You can see my tablemate’s sleeve in the top left of this photo.

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I’ve been making a concerted effort to get to know north London better, and visiting Finsbury Park regularly has been a big part of that. I mainly go there to relax at the weekend, which is when I like to wander around the city.

I enjoy spending time in Finsbury Park because it contains loads of the types of business that some people say London doesn’t sustain anymore. It’s also near other neighbourhoods that interest me for the same reason, like Tottenham, Harringay and Stoke Newington.

Since 2024, places like Cafe Salaam, The Park Tavern and New Beacon Books have brought me here most. There are also many other N4 businesses that I plan to cover, from its butchers and bakers to the many dress shops and fashion boutiques on the remarkable Fonthill Road.

While Finsbury Park has things in common with its neighbouring areas, it actually reminds me more of Brixton, Whitechapel and Shepherds Bush, which I see as focal points of inner south, east and west London respectively. Like these places, Finsbury Park is in the middle of its part of London and has a major Underground connection, so it concentrates the energy of the areas that surround it.

I’m obsessed with this part of the city and I intend to keep visiting it for years. This newsletter celebrates three businesses that I now know well, all of which are on Blackstock Road.

Fish & Cook Stationers

Fish & Cook is a 136-year-old shop that sells things like art supplies, bingo scoring cards, display books, envelopes, learner plates, fuse beads, “no smoking” signs, rubber bands and vintage A–Z maps. I first learned of it last year, then I heard that it was going to close.

In October, I asked the man behind the counter about the history of the business. He showed me a photo of it from the early 1900s, before telling me that his father took it over nearly 50 years ago.

I’ve seen people buy notepads and get printing done here; I’ve bought an A–Z guide and a zippable, reinforced mesh plastic folder myself. Fish & Cook made me realise that I only went to chain stationery shops as a child, and that there weren’t any independent ones where I grew up. It made me realise that I rarely buy stationery now, other than the odd biro.

I try to be less romantic about traditional and heritage business closures these days. Writing about them, and speaking to their owners, has taught me that death and retirement usually coincide with their closure.

Things like new technology, rising costs and rent hikes certainly play into this, and can force proprietors of otherwise viable businesses to retire earlier than they might have otherwise, without a successor. My main worry is what replaces a stationer like this when it passes on, and what that means for this city’s overall supply of specialist shops if new ones like it aren’t opening up.

When I went to Fish & Cook last week, I asked the guy behind the counter if it was closing. He said yes, so I asked if he was retiring. “Sort of,” he said. “With everything going online it’s not worth it for me.”

As of this week, Fish & Cook is still open, and I’d highly recommend that you buy something there. Other independent stationers that I’m aware of in London include Dalston Stationers on Kingsland High Street, Morgan’s Stationery on Kentish Town Road and Newmans Stationery on Bethnal Green Road.

3 Blackstock Rd, Finsbury Park, London N4 2JF

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I have an album on my phone where I put photos of the best things I’ve eaten this year. I’ve been noodling with it for the past five months, trying to compose and order its contents so that each picture flows satisfyingly into the next, as I did with these 20 meals in January.

I like this format because it exposes commonalities between dishes and across cuisines. In this album, I’ve grouped together the clearer soups, for example, as well as things with rice. Some photos break the pattern, because I haven’t had anything similar to them lately, and I like that too.

Every time I thought about adding an image to this album, I asked myself, “would I feel comfortable if someone ate this dish because of me?” I usually knew the answer straight away, but on multiple occasions, I looked back at a photo with fresh eyes and decided to remove it, because I couldn’t say that I found it truly delicious.

I can also see that I chose a lot of these dishes because of their affordability, but there’s a few pricier ones too. Some are from restaurants I’ve been going to for ages; some I’ve been only to once. Some I’ve just started going to, and am now a temporary regular at.

Eating around this city is such a rewarding way to get to know it and I plan to make more albums like this. Here are the 20 best things I’ve eaten this year so far, and some of the threads that tie them together.

1. The Wardour at Bar Bruno, Soho

My favourite type of fry-up consists of egg, bacon, sausage and tomato, or the same four components plus chips. I don’t trust many spots to cook and serve all of these items well, mainly because of varying sausage quality and the frequent lack of respect for tomatoes in caffs. When I ate this set breakfast at Bar Bruno in January, it was the best I’d had in a while. I’ve eaten it twice since and I now realise I should have included it in this list.

2. Toulouse sausage with lentils at The Three Compasses, Clerkenwell

If I won the lottery, I’d buy a townhouse in Clerkenwell and eat a côte de boeuf and a crème caramel at Bouchon Racine every day. For now I’m happy to settle for the odd meal at The Three Compasses, an otherwise unremarkable pub with the same owners, and some of the same menu items, as the fancy French restaurant above it. I’ve tried a few things there so far, and this incredibly juicy Toulouse sausage was the first that fully transported me upstairs.

3. Loubia and adass with beef kefte at Kass Burgerz, Ladbroke Grove

I’ve got to know some people from Shepherds Bush and nearby areas lately, who have made me see west London differently. One’s a screenwriter called Hoagy, who told me to order a mix of beans and lentils with kefte from this Moroccan food stall on Golborne Road. It tasted indulgent but also deeply nourishing, and I felt like a local when I ordered it.

4. Bún riêu cua at Viet Rest, Deptford

I once read a Google review of this restaurant by a person extolling the virtues of its fresh herbs, north Vietnamese dishes and, particularly, the bún riêu cua. After trying the latter – a deeply satisfying noodle soup, fortified with tomato, crab roe, crab mince and congealed pig’s blood – I’ve never looked back.

5. Beef brisket noodles at Reindeer Cafe, Cricklewood

I’ve eaten at Wong Kei in Soho’s Chinatown over 100 times over the past five years, and these meals have introduced me to many Cantonese dishes. This anachronistic canteen has low prices for the area, and I’ve always been conscious that the dishes I like there might taste even better somewhere else. I’ve found eating the beef brisket noodles at Reindeer Cafe, six miles northwest, a thrilling experience for this reason.

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In December 2024 I started spending loads of time in Lewisham, the area within the borough of the same name. I’d lived nearby in Brockley for a while, and had a few favourite SE13 spots, but I didn’t know this busier, more diverse neighbourhood well.

After weeks of eating, drinking and hanging out in Lewisham, I decided to write about 23 community spaces there that struck me as valuable. I published a two-part guide in January 2025, covering everything from Lewisham’s outdoor market to its pre-Victorian churchyard, its Tamil and Ghanaian restaurants, its record shop, its Irish pub.

Back then, property company Landsec’s plans to redevelop Lewisham Shopping Centre were still up for review. But the scheme, which intends to demolish the existing centre to build things like 1744 homes, a new shopping mall and a green space on top, was approved by the council in October 2025.

Almost 11,000 Lewisham households are currently on social housing waiting lists, but this development only includes 98 homes for social rent. Over 4,000 people have signed a petition demanding more affordable housing from the scheme. At the time of writing, The Filigree, another controversial development in Lewisham, remains largely empty after flooding meant that over 400 new residents had to move out.

I learned some of this information by attending events put on by Lewisham Peoples Assembly, a group fighting against the plans. Last month I sat down with Faris Luke, chair of the assembly and organiser of the Save Lewisham Shopping Centre campaign. The conversation below is from March and the photos are from a rally I attended in April.

What struck me about Faris’s outlook is that he isn’t against change; his main demand is community-focused development. In the end, we ended up speaking about Lewisham and London more generally as much as urban change. This is an interview with a housing activist, but it’s also a conversation with a local person about the area they’re from.

Isaac Rangaswami: What’s the Save Lewisham Shopping Centre campaign about?

Faris Luke: It’s about trying to stop gentrification in Lewisham borough and guaranteeing affordable housing for new developments. People have different opinions about the building itself. Some people say it’s old and that we need to get rid of it. Some people really hold it true to themselves. For me, I’m somewhere in the middle, where I have a lot of nostalgia for the shopping centre and visit it almost every day, but it’s been declining as the years have gone by. There’s lots of shops that have closed down, and they aren’t in use at the moment. Regardless of our differing opinions, most people are against redeveloping the centre into luxury flats, which is the current plan. We either want the council to make sure all developments have at least 50% affordable housing or stop this one.

Isaac: There aren’t many independents in the shopping centre either.

Faris: Most of it is chains, yeah. It’s like the Model Market, or as it was called back in the day, Black Market, where they had suitcase shops, lots of different fresh food for cheap as well as locksmiths and other independent businesses, but they all closed down. I believe that with the shopping centre, the actual space is fine. We have had all these redevelopments all over Lewisham. A lot of them have proven that they aren’t for the people. They’re just for making a profit. They claim they aren’t demolishing the shopping centre. But in practice, they’re demolishing the majority of the centre, stage by stage.

Isaac: Until there’ll be nothing left of what it was.

Faris: Exactly. You could retrofit the car park to fulfil some other need. You have the big Citibank tower, which has been in disuse for a very long time. That could be reimagined. There’s lots of uses that you could do with the existing space, rather than demolishing it.

Isaac: What made you start the campaign?

Faris: I grew up here. And growing up in Lewisham Central, it has just been redevelopment after redevelopment. Change isn’t inherently a bad thing, but these things have mainly been expensive. As the years have gone by, it’s gone from mixed use to unaffordable. And I just looked at the plans. And I was like, out of 1744 homes, 20% is just not enough affordable housing. Lewisham is my home. I want people to enjoy my home the same way that I did growing up, and not providing enough affordable homes jeopardises that.

Isaac: That’s such an honest reason to do the campaign.

Faris: Another reason is that I did a module on housing at university in Leeds. And I wanted to apply what I learned to something meaningful. When I was younger, I remember all these students coming into Lewisham and I was like, “why are all the students here? They’re gentrifying Lewisham.” Fast-forward four years later, and I was the gentrifier in Leeds. And you know, I just felt guilty about it. I knew the position of what I was to the city – part of this bigger change making housing unaffordable in Leeds for locals. I wanted to act on it.

Isaac: Your campaign focuses more on developers and the council that’s facilitating them than individuals. Do you really blame students for gentrification?

Faris: No, but there is something I realised in Leeds. I was walking to the 24-hour Sainsbury’s in Hyde Park and I overheard these lads say, “why are these families complaining that we’re partying? This is a student area. You live here, if you don’t like it you should leave.” I just thought that was really a self-centred opinion. Not everyone that moves into Lewisham, into Leeds, as a student, has those opinions. But I think across the board, people that move to Lewisham, or move anywhere really, could do a better job with learning and adapting to a local area rather than forming a detached bubble. I don’t blame students, but I do think it’s definitely valid to say that gentrifiers could do a lot better to try to learn and live in the local area. But I think focusing too much effort on that is kind of missing the point.

Isaac: I think you have a responsibility to be a good guest when you’re a newcomer, because there’s existing people in those spaces. But the more I’ve studied these topics, the more I’ve felt like it’s a drop in the ocean compared to the sheer scale of change that developers can bring about. Sometimes it feels like telling people to recycle while corporations are drilling for oil.

Faris: It creates community conflict too. It’s similar to the arguments used by groups like Reform UK – like white working-class people being encouraged to turn against Asian and Black British working-class people or asylum seekers. Instead of it being that, it’s locals being encouraged to turn on middle-class gentrifiers and hipsters or whatever. But I think that’s quite reductive. I’m middle class, and I don’t like gentrification.

Isaac: If you got rid of trendy coffee shops, it wouldn’t stop gentrification.

Faris: It’s a tendency we have in this country to go after each other, rather than go after power. People move all the time. Places change all the time. That’s human history. You can’t escape that. What I think people should do is, if you move to an area, get to know the local people, go to local shops. Obviously, there may be new, hip places you can visit as well. But just check the old places out. Say hello, pop your head in, explore your neighbourhood, because, they may not be your ends, but it will become your ends after a while. Make this place that isn’t your home into your home. Then show solidarity with the locals who are more immediately affected by displacement.

Isaac: What is it about Lewisham that you want to protect?

Faris: Great question. All across London, we’ve been having similar scenes. Obviously, I’m biased, but Lewisham feels quite unique and has a spirit of London that has been slowly eroding over the years – words don’t do it justice but visiting does. It’s not like places in Southwark or Lambeth or Wandsworth or Hackney. It’s insane how much those places have changed. Lewisham, although there’s lots of new builds, it’s not as far into the process as other places. Lewisham still feels like Lewisham and I want to keep that spirit, rather than see it die like it has in so many other places in London.

Isaac: How have you seen it change?

Faris: Lots of students, the new builds. There’s been lots of shops that have closed, but it still feels very mixed, friendly and relatively easy-going for London standards

Isaac: Who do you think is responsible for the changes that have happened?

Faris: The council, mainly, by just allowing property developers to do what they want and not standing up to them. I mean, the property developers are the ones that are building, but the council’s the one that green lights it and says, “yeah, you can do this or no, you can’t do it.” They should be more ambitious in getting concessions out of developers if they want the public-private partnership model to really succeed.

Isaac: Is that who you blame for gentrification?

Faris: It kind of comes from everywhere. I do think the primary reason is just property developers and big finance wanting to make a profit. Landsec is 10% owned by BlackRock.

Isaac: I read that Landsec owns the Piccadilly Lights.

Faris: They own the Piccadilly Lights. They own Media City in Salford. They own Brighton Marina. They own the Trinity Centre in Leeds.

Isaac: What types of change do you think Lewisham would benefit from?

Faris: I think Lewisham would benefit from changes that were led by the people. In the short term, we just need more affordable housing. And if for whatever reason, it’s not viable, the developer shouldn’t try and seek to pursue it. I just think lots of councils are just too unwilling to try and contest developer power. In the long-term, I think it’d be good to expand cooperatives and community land trusts, and make it a noticeable part of the property market, akin to how social housing and the private rental sector housing are recognised. I think that would be a great way to do alternatives to development. I think retrofitting is cool, converting something from an old space into something entirely new. I think Lewisham could do a lot more retrofitting.

Isaac: What do you think of the modifications that the council is doing currently to the high street and the library?

Faris: I like it. It seems alright to me. I’m not against change. The library was quite old. I’d go there to study for my A-Levels. It’s just a very dated building, so I think revamping the library is not a bad thing. To make the high street look nice is a good thing. If it’s a benefit to the community, I’m for it. The community also needs to want it as well. Through official channels, there’s 600 people that support the shopping centre redevelopment. But through our petition, we have 4000 people that support us. The fact is that there’s lots of people that don’t want this redevelopment. They want change, but if you mention that there’s no affordable housing, then they agree that it shouldn’t happen. They either don’t want it to go, or they want change, but this is not the sort of change they want.

Isaac: What kind of places do you like that exist in Lewisham already?

Faris: Great question. So I really liked going to the library, but obviously it’s not open right now. There’s this Turkish restaurant called Levante – I have a lot of memories of going there. I really enjoy going down Lee High Road too. There’s the record shop – I love chatting to Aiden. Nearby, there’s a Lebanese takeout. It’s kind of new – everyone there’s just speaking Arabic which is nice. I didn’t know anyone, but they see me come in more and more. I haven’t been there in a minute, actually. But by a minute, I mean, like, a week. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the Joiners Arms.

Isaac: I love the Joiners Arms. I was really impressed by how diverse its customer base is in terms of both age and background. You see people in their twenties, their sixties, people in their work uniforms. It seems like a very valuable community space.

Faris: I don’t really like it at the moment because my friend stopped working there. But I had lots of nights out, lots of memories going when my friend did work there, going into lock-ins. There’s a 24-hour Turkish shop at the end of this road. I go there all the time to get bureks, or just do a bit of shopping.

Isaac: So you’re supporting the independents?

Faris: I do go to Sainsbury’s though.

Isaac: You can’t avoid it. When I wrote about 23 different spaces in Lewisham, only two of them were actually in the shopping centre, and one has since moved out. I think what I love about Lewisham is outside of the shopping centre, and what I’m worried about with the development is probably the halo effect. What do you think of the shopping centre more generally? Do you think it is a valuable thing?

Faris: Of course, but I think it is decaying a bit.

Isaac: Is that a managed decline?

Faris: I believe it’s a managed decline.

Isaac: I read that the M&S is leaving, which is always a bad sign.

Faris: It’s a red flag that a business as large as M&S is leaving regardless of how you feel about the shop itself. I do think the disruption that construction would cause was a big factor. I think the shopping centre’s important and the loss of M&S illustrates it perfectly, because it’s the centre. It’s part of the centre – the high street, the homes around it, the shopping centre, are all one thing. You change one thing, and it will impact the rest of it. Because of how huge the shopping centre is, changing that will impact the surrounding areas quite a lot, actually. The other places, I think may not survive. The Polish deli, will that survive? What about the Italian deli? The record shop? Or the little Jamaican takeouts?

Isaac: Do you see parallels between Lewisham and other areas?

Faris: Definitely. You know, everyone says about Elephant and Castle. If you were a developer, or a property owner, you succeeded from that. But if you’re an ordinary person, or a Black British person, or a Latin American person, you’ve lost out from that, and all the demolitions that happened.

Isaac: Do you spend much time in other parts of London? What other areas do you like?

Faris: Well, if we count Lewisham as here, then Brockley, Ladywell, Deptford, New Cross. I also really like going to Peckham and Stockwell, and have family up in Highgate/Archway.

Isaac: Do you ever go to west London?

Faris: No (laughs). I’ve been north-west probably only like 10 times. I don’t go often. It’s just so far away. Maybe I’m getting old, I don’t know.

Isaac: I love asking native Londoners questions like this, because they so often answer like this. You mentioned Wandsworth earlier? I thought that was interesting. Do you have a connection with the area?

Faris: No, I’ve just been there. Tower Hamlets is spiritually my second borough.

Isaac: What’s the reason for that?

Faris: I’m half Pakistani, so because of all the Bengalis living around those ways, there is loads of great fresh South Asian food to eat.

Isaac: I’m half-Indian!

Faris: Haha I wasn’t sure if you were Sri Lankan, because of your last name.

Isaac: Yeah my dad’s Tamil. That’s one reason why I like Lewisham.

Faris: Yeah there’s loads of Tamil people here.

Isaac: Yeah I moderated a panel last year that was catered by Everest Curry King.

Faris: Lewisham classic, that is.

Isaac: What parts of Tower Hamlets do you go to?

Faris: Well, obviously most of the Pakistanis you’ll meet are in Tooting or in Ilford. I like Whitechapel, Aldgate East, Bethnal Green, Shadwell – that’s a Bengali area. Gulab jamun is my favourite thing. It’s one of my favourite foods. I don’t know Sri Lankan street shops, but I know Bengali sweet shops. I just hop on the DLR. So I’ve hung out in Shadwell, Whitechapel, Aldgate East, Bethnal Green.

Isaac: Yeah sometimes I see Lewisham as so close to east London. All you need to do is just travel north for a few minutes, over the river.

Faris: If I was gonna live anywhere in London, if it wasn’t here, I’d move to Tower Hamlets.

Isaac: How do you think people from Lewisham compare to people from other areas? Is there a certain type of personality here that is different from other areas?

Faris: Good question, because this is a huge debate. North versus south. But then it’s like, how different are we actually? It’s great you brought that up. I think Lewisham has two different identities.

Isaac: Lewisham town or Lewisham borough?

Faris: Lewisham borough. Lewisham town is too small to really have its own cultural identity, beyond the different ethnic identities. Lewisham north – which is Brockley, Catford, Deptford etc – is more aligned with Southwark and Lambeth and is definitely the cleavage I come from. Social, outgoing and proud. On the other hand you have Lee, Downham, Grove Park and Bellingham which are more aligned with outer southeast London areas like Kidbrooke and Mottingham.

Isaac: What are those areas like?

Faris: I’m someone that has grown up in Lewisham. I’ve been to every part of Lewisham and I hang out in every part of Lewisham fairly regularly, except for Grove Park, Bellingham and Downham. I do not go to these places often, if I’m being totally honest. Basically most of my friends who lived in these parts of Lewisham have moved out.

Isaac: What is it about these areas that means you don’t end up in them naturally?

Faris: It’s just, well, it doesn’t help that the south is very disconnected public transport-wise. I’m connected to the DLR and close-ish to the Windrush line, so they naturally become my periphery, my zone that I hang out in. Catford is kind of the exception, because Catford Bridge is just literally just down the road. You can just walk there, but Downham and Grove Park are a lot more of a trek to get to.

Isaac: How would you feel if the shopping centre plans go ahead as they are?

Faris: I’d be very upset, because right now, they’ve approved phase 1A. And you know, phase 1A, luckily isn’t the majority of the development. There will be 117 market-rate homes, no affordable housing, and that kind of sucks, because that’s the only guaranteed thing. But in a way, it’s kind of a good thing, oddly, because it means they haven’t done phase two and three. They haven’t fulfilled any of the affordable housing promises already. Really with local elections around the corner, any future administrations should put their foot down and halt furthering the development plans i.e. phase 1B if they can’t secure at least 50% affordable housing. If it goes as it is, I would be very disappointed.

Isaac: What do you think that would mean for the area?

Faris: I believe that it will mean young people will be locked out of housing, because the development is built around an 8% increase in property values for the next 10 years. That’s the only way it’ll be financially viable and they’ll be able to turn a profit, if local rents rise by 8% every year. So it’s gonna displace a lot of people. It’s gonna really affect young people, Black British people and other minority groups as well.

Isaac: How has running this campaign been for you personally?

Faris: I’ve enjoyed it a lot. Every day is not the same. You know, today, I give an interview, I’m gonna film a video, and then tomorrow I’m gonna prepare for a film screening. We’re doing different things all the time. There’s loads of different work. Lots of my peers are working either in a hospitality job that they don’t care about, or they’ve started their career in some firm that they don’t really care about. I’m very fortunate to be spending my time doing something I care about. It’s been a bit of a personal sacrifice, however, in the sense that I’ve had to take a bit of time out from hanging out with my mates, made less money than others, while pursuing hobbies that I have intended to learn.

Isaac: What does community mean to you?

Faris: Community, for me, means that people are living in the same space as one another. They may not like each other, they may disagree with each other, they may come from different backgrounds. But the community always exists, even if it’s not a cohesive community, because community is just simply individuals that inhabit the same spot. Everyone that lives here is part of the same community. I believe it’s the responsibility of members of a community to protect it and grow it, and make sure that any changes that happen to it benefit everyone.

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I’ve seen eight documentaries by the late filmmaker Frederick Wiseman over the past few months. The second one was about the New York Public Library, and a scene from it has really stayed with me.

The scene introduces you to the people who look after the library’s incredible picture collection, where you can walk in without an appointment and browse over a million prints, clippings and photos. Unusually, the collection is organised by subject, which makes it perfect for researchers in creative fields, such as costume design. Comb through its 12,000 subjects, and you’ll see headings like “accidents – coal mining”, “bellboys”, “gardening tools”, “New York City gangs” and “voodooism”.

London contains similar temples of research. While this publication has covered libraries, reading rooms, radical bookshops and a shop people mistake for an archive, this is my first newsletter about archives proper.

Going to an archive and requesting items from its catalogue was an eye-opening experience for me. I want to go back to every place on this list, to look at more things and do deeper research. I also found out about other archives by speaking to staff at the three that I visited for this piece, which I plan to cover too.

For now, I’ve focused on how these places work. I was initially drawn to this trio because of their distinct study spaces, and the third entry is a library rather than an archive, with one of London’s most beautiful reading rooms. I want to make more people aware of these brilliant free spaces and their collections, as well as how easy they are to access.

Bishopsgate Institute

“Are you here to use the archives?” a friendly member of staff said the first time I stepped into the researchers’ area of the Bishopsgate Institute. I heard them greet over half a dozen people this way during my stay, as visitors entered this remarkable storeroom of maps, books, pamphlets, photographs and press cuttings, seconds from Liverpool Street station. Like me, none of them had booked in advance.

The hundreds of thousands of items in this collection relate to everyday people, as well as “individuals and organisations who have strived for social, political and cultural change.” This involves a lot of London history, so it’s basically my dream place. You can also find material about protest, feminism, socialist history, LGBTQIA+ history, the co-operative movement, the British fetish community and more.

The Bishopsgate Institute makes me feel optimistic about London. And as an operation, I was particularly impressed by how unstuffy it is. Staff talk you through how things work in a relaxed way. They’re happy to guide your research and answer your questions, of which I had loads. It’s an open-plan space – you’re in their office really – and you hear them joke around together as they work.

Rather than browsing its shelves, you find items here by searching the online catalogue and filling out a request by hand. On my first visit, I typed in “restaurants” and came across a pamphlet from 1943 assessing the community value of British Restaurants, the state-run canteens rolled out during World War Two. I made a request for that, as well as a 10-year-old paper bag from St. John Bread and Wine. When I handed over my request forms, I was surprised to find that staff retrieve the items for you immediately.

As this was happening, I was shown to a researcher table, surrounded by boxes, filing cabinets, a Tom of Finland cutout and a caged mannequin wearing a bondage hood. Shortly afterwards, a member of staff came over with the British Restaurants booklet, which made me realise that local government departments used to publish quite zine-like items. The St. John bag came in a paper folder, tied with a white ribbon.

While I was there, a younger person came in to use the researchers’ area as a workspace rather than for its collection, and was politely turned away. The institute does have a dedicated reading room, but unlike the researchers’ service, you need to book to use it. These two spaces are only small parts of this fantastic Victorian complex. The Bishopsgate Institute puts on social dances, acts as a wedding venue and even hosts exams. As I left, I passed a hall laid out with reclining chairs, in which people were giving blood.

230 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 4QH

MayDay Rooms

MayDay Rooms is next to London’s most beautiful church. The archive technically wasn’t open the day I visited, as staff were doing a big sort-out, which they’d announced on social media and I’d missed. But they still invited me up to floor two when I rang the buzzer, and a member of staff kindly showed me around anyway.

When I mentioned that I’d been to the Bishopsgate Institute the day before, he gave me a list of other archives in London. I remarked on 56a Infoshop and he said, “definitely check that out.” This guy then took me into a cupboard full of grey, brown and teal boxes, which seems to form the bulk of the collection. These boxes had labels like “LAWAS”, “poll tax rebellion” and “London Psychogeographic Association”. MayDay Rooms’ collection focuses on social struggles, radical art and acts of resistance. It goes beyond printed matter to include buttons, t-shirts, moving images and audio recordings as well.

After that, the guy took me to the meeting space downstairs, which is available at no charge to unfunded groups involved in radical political organising and/or radical self-education. I mentioned that I’d been to an event where someone from 56a Infoshop read his Vittles piece about food in squats, at which point I realised that this member of staff was that very person. We spoke more about the history of MayDay Rooms, the funding it receives from the Sainsbury family and how the archive works.

He downplayed the catalogue’s searchability, but it looks like a decent enough system to me. It sounds even more informal than the Bishopsgate Institute: you just say what you’re interested in and someone gives you boxes to look through. I love that you can also just show up here without making an appointment, as I did.

Reading up on MayDay Rooms later, I was struck by its fairness and transparency, as well the other facilities available. All PAYE staff are paid the same rate, regardless of the type of labour. The meeting space is open to funded groups and non-political organisations; there’s a screening room and a communal kitchen too. I can’t wait to go back and request some boxes to rummage through.

88 Fleet St, London EC4Y 1DH

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When I moved to London in 2015, I kept walking to clear my head. Then I took the habit further, by travelling to neighbourhoods that weren’t near where I lived, something I now wish I did more in Leeds. By 2019, I was wandering around different parts of London every weekend.

I still get excited every time I get off the train somewhere new, but I take these journeys mostly to relax. Lifting and setting down each foot in turn is the mother of all repetitive tasks, and I find that it makes my anxieties slip away. This doesn’t solve all my problems, but it does help me think less, stay off my phone and focus on the things around me.

Sometimes I do intensive, research-focused walks, but at the weekend I try to be looser and more playful. Over the years, I’ve developed a few techniques to stop any undue stress creeping into either approach, which I thought might be useful to share. So here’s my tried-and-tested guide to going for long, restorative London walks.

Contents

Choosing a destination

London resources to draw from

What to bring

What to wear

Travelling to your destination

Planning or improvising a route

Wayfinding

Listening material

Toilets

Travelling home

Some recommended routes

Choosing a destination

I have a few walking circuits that I do regularly near where I live and work, around local parks and pretty residential streets. But when I go walking further afield, I always plan ahead.

Often, that planning is as simple as choosing a primary destination, like a restaurant, and then choosing somewhere else to go afterwards. Two Saturdays ago, I travelled to Reindeer Cafe, a Cantonese restaurant in Brent Cross, then decided to walk from there to Willesden, via a pub and a mithai shop. The next day, I got the train to Somine, a Turkish restaurant in Dalston, then walked north for 90 minutes to Tottenham, via an Irish bar, before going down to Finsbury Park via Green Lanes.

I find it easy to choose a destination because I have loads of places that I want to visit already noted down. I visit places on a whim too, but I mostly draw from my various lists of pubs, shops and restaurants, which I’m constantly reorganising. The places that interest me most always rise to the top.

London resources to draw from

If you don’t keep lists of places that you want to visit, you should definitely start. They create a wonderful virtuous circle, in that you can replenish them by noting down new spots while checking out others. If you’re looking to furnish a list, obviously this newsletter’s archive is a great place to start. I’m really proud of my caffs, fry-ups, pubs, shops, old things, public spaces and favourite places guides in particular.

Eater London is another resource that I’ve used for years and has really influenced my approach. It closed in 2023, but still has an incredibly rich archive of cuisine and area-specific restaurant maps. Just a few Eater guides I still use include ones on Southall, Green Lanes, bakeries, Jamaican jerk and South Indian restaurants.

I refer to Vittles’s restaurant coverage more these days, where some of Eater’s spirit lives on. I regularly consult the Vittles guides to bakeries, central London and South Asian restaurants, along with its Six of One column and, more recently, its London Chinatowns and 99 best restaurants in London lists.

If you’re more of an architecture person, you should read Nairn’s London if you haven’t already. It will change how you look at the city. I also love Owen Hatherley’s The Alternative Guide to the London Boroughs, which has sent me on thrilling outer London excursions to places like the Heath Robinson Museum and Newbury Park Station Bus Shelter.

I spend a lot of time combing through Google Maps too. My main approach is to zoom in on a specific neighbourhood and search its radius using locally relevant keywords. So I’d pull up Shepherds Bush, for example, and then look at what appears when I type in “falafel” and “Somali restaurant”.

What to bring

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Today’s Wooden City is another bumper issue. This one’s about 50 of the best pubs I’ve been to since starting this newsletter.

There’s a Google map at the bottom with every entry on it, and the whole guide is best viewed on your browser or the Substack app.

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Over the past two years, I’ve written about old pubs, cheap pubs, food pubs, Irish pubs, more Irish pubs, Soho pubs, Walworth pubs, Catford pubs, Lewisham pubs and cheap pubs again. Mostly, I’ve tried to understand who these places are for and how they persist.

At times, I’ve found local pubs harder to write about than any other topic. I see them as particularly sensitive spaces, that foster unusually close customer relationships. The best of them are propped up by these regulars, who choose their pub over their sitting room, day in, day out.

I’m not a regular at any pub really, but I’ve been going to some of the ones on this list for years. Some I’ve never written about before, and are where I go with friends; some I’ve simply popped into on a whim, and been unable to leave. Most of them I’ve visited for this newsletter, on my own, while trying to answer questions like, “what parts of Brent are still Irish?” and “where can you drink cheaply in Zone 1?”

One reason I used to worry about publicising local pubs was that I didn’t want to damage their vibe. But I feel more relaxed these days, after thinking harder about what it means to be a good guest and who gets to be local as areas change. I like to think anyone can visit a new space, as long as they’re conscious of the people who use it already.

I have hundreds more pubs that I plan to visit, get to know and then write about. In the meantime, here are 50 of the places I’ve been to so far, that strike me as beautiful, locally important and hospitable to other newcomers like me.

Contents

1. Central

2. North

3. South

4. East

5. West

Central

1. The Seven Stars, Holborn: Unlike many drinking establishments that say they’re old, this low-ceilinged, pre-Victorian lawyers’ pub looks and feels as historical as it truly is.

2. Shakespeare’s Head, Clerkenwell: I love everything about this 1960s pub, from its period signage to its poignant side-street location. When I see it full of pensioners and twenty-somethings, it’s just how I imagine a “community space”.

3. The Cock Tavern, Somers Town: The first time I went to this close-knit, listed pub on the Ossulston Estate, which doubles as an RMT union meeting venue, I was surprised by how open it was to outsiders. Over the past couple of years, I’ve been back repeatedly to check.

4. The French House, Soho: This idiosyncratic pub could get swept up in its institution status, or turn its nose up at first-timers who don’t know that it doesn’t serve pints. But I’ve found it to be Soho’s friendliest, most accessible place to drink, especially earlier in the day.

5. Rose & Crown, Chelsea: A Sloane Square anomaly, with a jukebox, a pool table, flowery carpets, tie-backed curtains and stained-glass light fixtures. Last time I was there, there were several pints on for £5.10.

6. King Charles I, King’s Cross: One of my all-time favourites, with a progressive energy that matches the radical bookshop over the road. I recently learned that its handsome interwar interior was designed by the same person who did The French House.

7. The Boot, St Pancras: I feel like this tavern-like spot near The British Library, where men in sweatshirts and workboots drink Coors up at the bar, wouldn’t be out of place in a Pennsylvania steel town. Surprisingly, it attracts tourists too.

8. Sutton Arms, Clerkenwell: There are two pubs with this name around here, and I mean the one on Great Sutton Street. I first went with a new friend, who recommended it to me not long after we met. We later hung out in its straightforward drinking room for hours, over pints and pies. I now see it as one of EC1’s best places to drink.

9. The Cockpit, Blackfriars: In the past, I’ve been guilty of writing off the Square Mile. A momentous visit to this concise carpeted City pub and Wren’s most awe-inspiring church made me see it differently.

10. Pride Of Pimlico, Pimlico: One of the first estate pubs I got to know, impossible to disentangle from the brickwork village above and around it. I haven’t been to many other Zone 1 spots more visibly dominated by a local crowd.

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Today’s Wooden City is a special bumper issue about old things to look out for while walking around London.

There’s a Google map at the bottom, with all 100 entries on it. This guide is best viewed on your browser or the Substack app.

To get the whole list, you can subscribe to Wooden City below for £3.50 a month or £30 a year, which also unlocks writing on hundreds of other places and everything I’ve ever published.

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If you want to see what London was like a hundred years ago, all you have to do is take a look around. Many cities are old, but one reason I love London so much is that its history is just there, in the open air. You might call it a museum without walls.

I’ve been compelled to wander around this free exhibition for over 10 years now. For most of that time, I’ve taken photos of the objects that stop me in my tracks. This newsletter collects what I’ve learned from a decade of street research.

But I don’t really see this activity like that, because I find it so therapeutic. Nothing relaxes me more than walking from A to B, and recording the signs, objects and other functional artefacts I see along the way. From bygone ads and wooden paving to ceramic doorbell buttons and Victorian sewer ventilation pipes, I particularly love things that are ignored, obsolete or needlessly ornate.

Almost every item on this list could be described as “street furniture,” but I’m more interested in admiring these heritage objects than classifying them. They were put on the street for people to use, and I like how they help you visualise ordinary life in the past. Long before they gathered moss, and the elements wore away their features, people carved, cast, painted, assembled and installed these things. Some of them, like gas lamps and early post boxes, remain in operation.

This list and the map at the bottom contain my 100 favourites, but this collection barely scratches the surface of London’s history. Mostly I hope it makes you appreciate more random old things on the street, whether or not you were keeping an eye out for them already.

Contents

1. Boot scrapers

2. Cattle troughs

3. Doorbells

4. Doorcases

5. Drinking fountains

6. Horse blocks

7. Gas lamps

8. Ghost signs and hand-painted notices

9. Milestones

10. Murals

11. Parish and borough boundary markers

12. Penfold post boxes

13. Primitive street signs

14. Road signs

15. Shutter stopper figurines

16. Stink pipes

17. Urinals and public loos

18. Water pumps

19. Wooden bannisters in stations

20. Wooden paving and manhole covers

Boot scrapers

When there was more mud and manure on the streets, people used these upright slices of metal to scrape it off their boots. They tend to be in front of more important places, like churches, town houses and civic buildings.

1. 1 Flint Street, Walworth: Boot scrapers come in many different styles. I like this one, outside an old police station in SE17, because of its modest, mouse-hole design.

2. 31 Marlborough Road, St James’s: The exterior of St James’s Palace is lined with functional objects of the past, and I’m surprised they let you get so close to this one, which is between Pall Mall and The Mall.

3. 4 Duke Street, Marylebone: I could have included dozens of other boot scrapers here. I’ve chosen this one, shaped like a treble clef, because it’s more complex than most.

Cattle troughs

Over 150 years ago, the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association started installing water troughs made of stone all over London. As well as horses and cows, dogs apparently drank from them too.

4. Ray Street Bridge, Clerkenwell: When I walk from the West End to Clerkenwell, I often pass this evocatively placed trough, which I imagine was a final watering point for cattle drovers journeying to Smithfield Market.

5. 87 Hermitage Lane, West Hampstead: As with the trough above, I like this one because it’s in a poignant lay-by that I can really visualise people and animals stopping off to use.

6. Hyde Park, Westminster: I also have a million pictures of these troughs, and I’m including this one because it’s one of two double-length versions I’ve seen.

7. 17 Goldington Crescent, St Pancras: The other long one. As with most troughs, it’s been repurposed as a flower bed, but this is the only example I’ve seen people use as a bench.

Doorbells

It seems obvious that you push a doorbell, so it intrigues me that antique doorbell buttons are often labelled with the word “press”. I’ve seen similarly old bells that you pull, so maybe that’s why. In any case, it wasn’t that long ago that these things needed to be explained.

8. Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly: I particularly like seeing old doorbells outside of important buildings. This one gets extra points because the final “s” of “press” has been rubbed off, I assume through decades of use.

9. Chatham House, St James’s: Old-fashioned bell presses or bell pushes tend to be made from china. This one outside Chatham House is beautifully cracked.

10. Rules, Covent Garden: Newspaper critics have reviewed London’s oldest restaurant so much that doing so has become boring. But I have something new to add: one of its doors has an antiquated bell.

Doorcases

I’m also a sucker for doorways more generally, particularly Georgian ones with elaborate decorative features.

11. 25 and 27 Albury Street, Deptford: These houses are from the early 1700s, while the carved babies on their doors appear to be 150 years younger.

12. 3 and 5 Meard Street, Soho: These uniform terrace houses are from around 1732, and their doors are carved with acanthus leaves.

13. 4 Fournier Street, Spitalfields: This whole remarkable street is lined with fancy wooden doorways, but this one’s swirls, flowers and ears of wheat make it the grandest.

14. 28 Queen Anne’s Gate, Westminster: I’m pretty sure every house on this Georgian street has an intricate doorcase, but my favourite is actually a replica, which gives me hope that the art of door carving persists.

Drinking fountains

In an age when water fountains are generally utilitarian, I find it astonishing that they used to be so ornate.

15. Museum Gardens, Bethnal Green: This fountain has a plaque commemorating the tragic deaths of a houseful of women and children, and the passing stranger who ran in to help them.

16. St John’s Church, Hoxton: A fence has been built around this fountain in a really neat, pleasing way.

17. Whitechapel Road, Whitechapel: Like Rinkoff Bakery and the former premises of the Jewish Daily Post, this fountain is a remnant of the old Jewish East End.

18. Rosslyn Hill, Hampstead: This fountain isn’t in a park, outside a church or in front of a station. It’s just built into a wall.

19. Northampton Square Garden, Clerkenwell: This fountain is probably over a century old. I like the way it contrasts with the brutalist university building behind it.

Horse blocks

Another word for a horse block is a “mounting block”, because people use them for mounting and dismounting horses.

20. The Athenaeum Club, St. James’s: One of a pair, installed for the Duke of Wellington in 1830.

21. Hyde Park: Lots of horsey stuff around here. My mounting blocks album only had two entries before I came across this.

Gas lamps

Historic gas lamps still persist in the capital, and many can be found in the City of Westminster, despite the council’s best efforts to convert them.

22. Green Park: The more common style has these quail-egg-sized bulbs called “mantles”, which are made from a synthetic silk mesh coated in a flammable substance. Green Park has a lot of them, which makes it very compelling at dusk.

    

23. Albany, Piccadilly: If you prefer gas lamps with naked, bunsen-burner flames, there’s one outside this Georgian apartment complex. I’ve also seen similar lamps outside The National Gallery and the Charlotte Street Hotel.

24. Carting Lane, The Strand: London’s only gas lamp powered by sewer gas. More on its cousins lower down this list.

Ghost signs and hand-painted notices

If you didn’t know already, a ghost sign is basically an old advert. But I take it to mean other types of defunct, hand-painted notices too. Here are my all-time favourites.

25. Regent Remoulds, Poland Street, Soho: Just an incredibly clear, bygone piece of marketing, which is all the more impressive because it was once painted over.

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The first place I became a regular was Rock Steady Eddie’s in Camberwell, partly because I lived next door. I ate my weekend fry-ups there for a few months, then one Sunday I walked down to Walworth and decided to eat them at Mary’s instead. Then I became a Mary’s regular, before developing another breakfast relationship somewhere else.

These pivotal experiences happened in early 2019. By October that year, I was going to a different caff every weekend, but the best spots always called me back. When I thought about why I liked old caffs, and started posting about these places online, I quickly realised that repeat visits were a crucial part of how I understood them.

My interests have evolved since then, but I still interact with restaurants in pretty much the same way. First I find somewhere that appeals to me, then I check it out. If I really like it, I go back again and again.

By becoming a regular, even for a short time, I find it easier to look around, absorb the vibe, eat around the menu, ask staff questions, take discreet photos and get a sense of who a place is for. Here are three such places I’ve been revisiting lately, in Catford, New Cross and Ladbroke Grove.

Watandar Restaurant

When I started going to Watandar, an Afghan restaurant on the Catford-Lewisham border, it was a set of plainish rooms. In the years since, the space has accumulated a rich profusion of decor, and the vibes have got better and better.

Watandar is a restaurant, but it’s also a maisonette. I’ve mostly sat in its cavernous ground floor, which seems to bloom with new fake roses and fairy lights every time I go. Alongside all the pink petals and glowing LEDs, there’s a textile photo of a sloping pathway strewn with autumn leaves, not far from a round wooden plaque carved with passages from the Quran. This sunken dining room’s ceiling used to be white, but it’s now salmon pink.

By the doorway is a family of ornaments, including an owl, a rooster and four rearing horses. Below them is a mosaicked tandoor, near which balls of clingfilmed dough sometimes go to rest. When I pass this oven, the smell of fresh bread regularly suffuses the air.

I’ve seen Watandar evolve, but one thing that’s been a constant for me is the eye-opening quality of its food. I tried my first mantoo, chapli kebab and sheeryakh here, each deeply comforting in its own way. But it’s the Kabuli pulao, which I had twice last week, that has moved me the most. When this steaming mound of raisins, carrot strips and fragrant long-grain rice arrived in front of me for the first time, the proprietor saw the amazement on my face. “It’s the shanks,” he said, referring to the lower lamb leg hiding underneath. “Good luck with it.”

I usually go to Watandar just after it opens, when this man tends to be hoovering, wiping tables or finishing mopping the floor. I’ve been the only customer here, but also eaten alongside couples, families and groups of friends. A lot of the time it’s been me and one or two other solo diners, hunched over a karahi or the same vast serving of meat-concealing rice.

I like the food here because it’s generous and indulgent but somehow also light. I like how it’s neatly presented, but characterful enough to show the personality of its cooks. I like the atmosphere and ever-changing decor. But I keep coming back because everything tastes so good.

377 Lewisham High St, London SE13 6NZ

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If the price of a central London pint is getting you down, there’s a few things you can do. One is ditch the city centre entirely, and hang out in areas like Edmonton, North Harrow and Manor Park instead.

Another approach is to go to Wetherspoons. I’m suspicious of all chains, and this one’s bargain prices certainly undercut the types of pubs I love. But affordable luxuries are so rare these days that I reserve my judgement for the inventors of this high-volume, low-margin model. These giant, Walmart-like drinking rooms have regulars too.

If you’re more of an inner London person, and want to avoid the chains, there are still cheap pints to be found. One reason Walworth Road and Caledonian Road feel like they should be further out is that they have so many local pubs, some of which serve pints for under £4. I’ll always champion the affordable pints of Catford, Deptford and Lewisham as well, maybe because I live near them in zone 2.

Inexpensive pubs exist in zone 1, but there aren’t many. I wrote about five of them last year and today’s newsletter has five more, in Clerkenwell, Angel, Kings Cross, St Pancras and Nine Elms. The recent pints I bought at them ranged between £4.60 and £5.60.

I wish £5.60 wasn’t a cheap pint, and I imagine these pubs’ owners feel the same. Britain’s publicans have been trying to avoid passing on rising costs for years, and for many the government’s recent business rates U-turn is only a momentary reprieve. To be honest, I’m surprised that any inner London pub can afford to price its beer so low. These are all valuable spaces that deserve your support.

The Shakespeare’s Head

The Shakespeare’s Head in Clerkenwell is the first pub I ever wrote about. Since then, I’ve only grown more enamoured with this brickwork box behind Sadler’s Wells. The vibe inside is exactly what I imagine when I think of a “community space”. The last Sunday afternoon I was there, its landlord was moving between the pub’s chairs, stools and velour banquettes, shaking hands with people he knew and introducing himself to people he didn’t.

This is a horseshoe-shaped 1960s pub, with most of its original features intact. I love the weather-beaten Shakespeare portrait swinging on the post outside, along with the crisp interior signage and the unusual secondary shelf below the bar. The walls are lined with photos of actors, stage performers and regulars, clear evidence of who this pub is for.

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1. The restaurant

The first floor of The French House may contain central London’s most intimate dining room: a secretive yet well-windowed space, furnished with everything from wooden ceiling fans to Thonet no. 14 chairs, and resonant with soft piano, jingling cutlery and the occasional popping cork. You are reminded that in more private places, up above and down below, traces of an older Soho persist.

Today, this room attracts men in shirts and quarter-zips, talking about equity partners and weekends away with the kids. It attracts couples who order the champagne, as well as ruddy-faced gents wearing blazers with gold buttons, who end their coughs by loudly clearing their phlegm. It attracts curious Italian tourists, ladies in matching puffer coats and men with youthful, tousled hair and well-worn faces, ageing rockstars of their own lives who now eat lunch where they used to get pissed.

This room has seven tables, five of them for two. When I sat at one of them during The French House’s first restaurant service of the year, its Union Jack was fluttering in the snow. I decided to book a table here because I’ve been drinking in this building for ages, but had never eaten in it. I also wanted to experience its upstairs again, which I used to visit in my early twenties when it was another drinking room. Mainly, I wanted to understand who this place is for.

The cursive menu I was handed made me wonder whose job it is to write them out, and how many they have to do each day. It advertised things like Achill oysters, Middle White pork chop and Jamaican chocolate mousse. But I was here for steak frites, which I found on the specials board. I went for the 8oz Denver, a shoulder cut, recommended for a person dining alone.

The size of the room, and the pace of activity within it, made me think of The Yellow Bittern. As with a meal I ate there, I like how they deposit beautiful food in front of you without fanfare. At both I also like the calm service, and at The French House in particular, the way the taller waiter with thick glasses crouches down beside tables to get at the same level as diners. While I ate, I looked over to where I ordered my first Cidre Breton, more than a decade ago. An aproned member of staff sat at the counter and chatted with her colleagues, before carrying out an admin task over the phone.

An 8oz isn’t a big steak, which is just what I felt like eating that day. The same goes for the brittle, fork-resistant fries it came with, which I threw on my plate to soak up the horseradish, peppercorn sauce and blood. After that I had my first Paris-Brest, a choux pastry doughnut sliced like a bagel, pumped with enough cream to fill several eclairs. It was the perfect combination of soft, crunchy, rich, bitter and sweet, and I ate it far more quickly than I should.

2. The pub

Gaston Berlemont, whose Belgian father, Victor, bought the York Minster pub at 49 Dean Street from a German family in 1914, was born upstairs later that year. He became the landlord after Victor died in 1951, worked there until his retirement in 1989 and died a legend 10 years later.

There’s a compelling interview with Gaston in the Soho episode of the BBC programme Just Another Day, first transmitted in 1985. His trademark eyebrows and walrus moustache are at full growth; people drink absinthe and smoke cigarettes all around him; a bartender with a peroxide quiff serves customers in a leather vest. As Gaston joyously recounts various local murders, the history of Soho sparkles in his eyes.

The interviewer, who calls the business “Gaston’s” and “the French pub”, remarks how it never changes. “I’ll tell you why,” the landlord says. “Clientele is 98 per cent regulars… And they won’t have any change.”

The seats, beer taps, wallpaper and sign outside have since been replaced, but the ground floor of The French House remains the concise drinking room it was then. The divide between customer and worker still might as well be invisible, and drinkers naturally cluster around the bar, chatting with each other and those behind it. I reckon this pub now attracts more new drinkers than it used to, but its conviviality is still determined by the people who live or work nearby, and who keep coming back.

I think The French House’s present publican, Lesley Lewis, and her studenty yet worldly-wise bar staff, should get more recognition for making this happen. Lewis took over from Gaston in 1989 and is the third person to run the pub in its current form. The last four times I’ve drunk here, I’ve seen her sat up at the counter at the same spot, with a small glass of white wine. On every occasion, she’s been either chatting with a customer, briefing an employee or monitoring her pub.

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A note from Isaac: So far my approach for Wooden City guest pieces has been to commission people I know, who are obsessed with a certain type of community space. When I met Maazin Buhari last year, I learned that he worked for a think tank, was a champion of Tamil Muslim food and had done kitchen trials at two fancy London restaurants.

Later, when we went for lunch in Chinatown, he told me about his other passion: doing bodyweight exercises outside. Maazin’s piece today is about where he goes to pursue this hobby, how it’s helped him get to know London and the people he’s met along the way.

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London’s outdoor gyms

Callisthenics as community in Primrose Hill, Maida Vale, Poplar, Denmark Hill and Hackney. By Maazin Buhari

About two years ago, I found myself lost and alone in Marylebone. It was the beginning of my eighth year in the UK, and my third in London. I was in W1 because I was looking after my grandfather’s flat.

It was embarrassing to tell people where I was staying, and I tried to downplay it by joking that I lived inside the world’s biggest H&M. I felt guilty about being able to live so easily in central London, but I wasn’t that happy because I didn’t know anyone around there. This area, and its unnaturally commercial and transient nature, made me want to seek out more meaningful connections.

We make friends at school because we show up to the same place and see the same people all the time, and I was wondering how I could recreate the same thing. I enjoy sport, so I joined a few trendy run clubs, but often found them too slick, with an excess of gut-friendly sodas, high-protein oats and other consumable brand activations.

Deterred, I joined more well-established running and swimming outfits. The Serpentine running and early morning swimming clubs were easy to access, because I was so close to Hyde Park. I read about how open-water swimming could cure depression and convinced myself that going in the duck poo would give me eccentric friends, shred my body, and give me a new lease on life.

I swam with Bear Grylls, but other than the two weeks either side of summer, I found the water either too cold or too blue-green algae-infested to actually swim in. There had to be something that was less of an acquired taste than cold water swimming and more in tune with the rhythms of the city.

Here are the places where I finally found my people, as well as a form of exercise that suited me. Bear Grylls wasn’t at any of them, but they all made me feel like the city had embraced me with open arms.

Primrose Hill

One day, during one of my last Regents Park runs, I heard a bustle of activity. When I found the source of this sound, I saw people using monkey bars, a steel ladder, a crunch station, parallel bars and gymnastic rings.

They seemed to be having infinitely more fun than the runners, so I figured it was time to leave the lake and tracks, and spend my mornings here instead. The timing was fortunate, because I had just started going to the Commando Temple, an esoteric gym in Deptford. I was picking up a few callisthenic skills there; now I could practise them on my own too.

It felt meaningful to develop a new hobby that wasn’t tied to anything else in my life. On Saturdays, I would walk through Church Street Market, picking up half a kilo of dried fruits and nuts or some falafels, and loop around Lord’s Cricket Ground and Regents Park into Primrose Hill, where the sounds of Kano or JME would announce that the park was in full swing.

Primrose Hill has other things you don’t always find in parks, such as a very serviceable cafe, toilets and a big hill, as well as some great local walks. You could stroll down Regent’s Canal or up from the St George and the Dragon statue outside Lord’s along Prince Albert Road, which is filled with architectural treats. There’s plenty of white stuccoed pre-war red brick, as well as the beautifully dated Oslo Court.

Free, open functionally 24/7, easy to use and generally quite clean, London’s public gyms are also places you can find a diverse crowd, of different backgrounds and ages, all enjoying the same thing together without paying through the nose for it.

Kings Court, 31 Prince Albert Rd, London NW8 7LT

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The gap between 26 December and 31 December is a strange, woolly-headed time of year, but I don’t mind it. I use it to visit restaurants that are still open, in areas where Christmas is less of a big deal. I also use it to catch up on end-of-year lists, and music, films and TV that I missed over the past 12 months.

I offer this list of cultural recommendations in the same spirit. Cities are my main interest these days and every book, film and TV show I mention below relates to them in some way. As a Christmas treat, I’ve expanded my remit beyond London, to other places like Paris, Naples, New York, Los Angeles and Chengdu.

There are some potential present ideas in this list, but it isn’t meant to be a gift guide. It’s more about doing something for yourself. For those looking for something last-minute though, I do have something to recommend: a gift subscription to Wooden City, which you can buy below.

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Contents

1. Photobooks

2. Housing and gentrification books

3. London books about places and food

4. New York, LA and Southwest China books

5. Books about walking and wandering

6. Paris documentaries

7. New York and LA documentaries

8. Documentaries about other American cities

9. City films that aren’t documentaries

10. TV programmes

Photobooks

1. Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph by Diane Arbus: I’m drawn to photos of people doing normal things in cities, like working, relaxing or moving through public places. I love Diane Arbus’s photos because they go so much deeper, into intimate spaces, with citydwellers that go overlooked.

2. Pears by Cieron Magat: I like Cieron Magat’s work for the same reason I like Diane Arbus’s. I’ve followed his brilliant Instagram page for years and his sensitivity to the small dramas that play out on Britain’s pavements, high streets and shopping centres has shaped what I look out for myself.

3. A History of the East End by Chris Dorley Brown: I like the photos in this book for their sense of space, stillness and clarity, and the way older images are mixed in with newer ones. Lots of explosions too.

4. London in the Thirties by Bill Brandt: Simply a collection of moody black-and-white photos of pre-war London, many of them taken at night, depicting butchers, bakers and fur-wearing aristocrats.

5. Mixy: A Desi Pub by Hark1karan: After years of focusing on older businesses, I’ve become really interested in newer community spaces lately. This is one reason I loved this photobook about the food, people and conviviality of The Great Western, a desi pub that opened in Hayes three years ago.

Housing and gentrification books

6. Big Capital: Who Is London For? by Anna Minton: One of the most informative books about London I’ve ever read. If you want to understand why property is the way it is in this city, read this.

7. Estates by Lynsey Hanley: This book tells the story of social housing in Britain, in London and elsewhere. I include it here because it opened my eyes to the sheer volume of estates in the city I live in, and what an optimistic project the welfare state was before its erosion.

8. Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies by Leslie Kern: I thought this book would give me some answers about gentrification, and it did. But it also left me with so many questions that I had to read it again, in the best possible way. It’s been a massive influence on the way I think about urban change.

London books about places and food

9. Food Lovers’ London by Jenny Linford: I bought this book after seeing it in the further reading section of Ruby Tandoh’s All Consuming. I now keep it on my desk as a reference for when I’m researching London, its diasporas and the cuisines I want to know more about.

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Wandering around London is a skill that I’ve spent the last decade trying to refine, but I also walk to relax. I got into it as a way to recover from the working week, back when I did office jobs I didn’t enjoy.

My original approach was to travel somewhere, then walk for hours in a random direction. On every occasion my anxieties would slip away beneath my moving feet, but sometimes these blissful walks would end in failure. I’d find myself on the edge of a dual carriageway or industrial park, seemingly miles from the nearest station or bus stop, with a dead phone battery, a full bladder and no idea how to get home.

These days I always plan my walks. Often that just means having a point A and point B in mind, with room to improvise in between. But I increasingly devise ambitious, research-focused walks, with upwards of 10 stops, each one prompting intense observation and note-taking. I get a lot out of the latter approach, but it can also tire me out.

I’ve successfully turned my hobby into my job, but I don’t ever want to lose sight of why I started walking. So I still do looser walks too, which continue to calm me. A week and a half ago, I did one on a Saturday, in East Ham. It was particularly good, so I’ve decided to write it up.

This walk started at East Ham station, ended at Manor Park station and took most of the day. It stopped at a pub, a library, a mithai shop, two restaurants, two grocery shops and Joseph Merrick’s long-forgotten grave. I think it would be easy to replicate and I’ve plotted it on a map at the bottom of this piece.

When I arrived in East Ham, I went straight to Vasantha Vilas, the first restaurant I ever ate in around here. There are many dosa specialists on this stretch of road, and my allegiance to this one is partly down to the fact it opens earlier than its competitors. I often go to East Ham intending to walk further down this long high street and try another one of them, only to go back to Vasantha Vilas once more. I find the prices low, the service efficient and the food reliably good.

This visit was at 10.30am, when its concise dining hall contains more solo diners and pairs of friends than family groups. I ordered the mini tiffin, as I always do. You get all the key South Indian breakfast items, so there’s nothing “mini” about it. I love the sourness, tearability and absorbency of the vada, idlis and masala dosa, but my favourite components are actually the homely mounds of rice and semolina, in the form of mushy pongal and granulated sweet halwa.

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