Fishing in the Market - Applebees, Borough Market

Dieting is an ugly word in the small New Zealand town where I'm from. People don't talk about or understand the concept. They certainly don't do it. So when I met the Northerner and Heavy D at our old favourite the Golden Heart for a couple of after work sharpeners, and explained to them that yours truly was 'counting calories', they were sceptical to say the least. 'It's a health thing' I claimed as I sipped on my cranberry and slimline tonic and looked longingly at their lime topped lagers.

Disbelieving friends aside, the other challenge I've encountered is finding 'good food' to eat that meets my carefully prescribed menu plan. When bread, red meat and chips are off the menu it tends to eliminate a lot of my favourite casual eating haunts.

Fortunately fish is one of the recommended dishes and happens to be a personal favourite, so having sufficiently bored my two friends with my nutritional conversation points , the Northerner and I rocked down to the wonderful Borough Market and dropped into Applebees.

This place does fish, shellfish and more fish with a serving of steak thrown in for good measure. No hip or pretty young things here, but a good collection of locals and people celebrating Friday night lights, which gave it the necessary buzz that the Northerner and I look for in a post-drinks eating place. The food was superb, the drinks were top quality and fairly priced, and the service was flirtatiously inefficient which worked just fine for the tipsy clientele. It's not as loud as nearby Black and Blue, as upmarket as Roast, nor as busy-crowded as Wright Brothers Oyster Bar, but it's a fine little venue nevertheless, and a hands down winner on the fish front. Whether it worked for my diet will be revealed in Monday's weigh-in.

Watching the Apprentice

The Rock Star’s return from a two-week sabbatical down under was as good a reason as any to head out for drinks. Friday night lights saw us going back to the Golden Heart, the unassuming little boozer that is a mecca for East London hipsters. And us of course. Friday night hummed as fashionable young things influenced by but clearly not witness to the New Romantic movement of the 80’s, worked themselves into a collective frenzy as wine, lagers and vodka flowed with abandon. One of the groups of pretty young things near us even honoured that time-old tactic of producing a litre bottle of vodka from her bag to top up her gang’s OJ’s and tonics. Quality. The Rock Star and I unintentionally grabbed the attention of the local junkies, who seemed attracted by the fact that we were paying for our own drinks and therefore clearly in the money. After humouring them for five or so minutes whilst trying to work out exactly what they were on (I thought Heroin, the Rock Star thought Crack – like we’d actually be able to tell the difference) we ushered them on their way and headed inside. One of them actually pointed out that I dressed / looked like one of the Blues Brothers. Worse still I think she meant the short fat one.
The Northerner showed up and after a couple more drinks, her and I ambled on down to the Hoxton Apprentice in Hoxton Square. Set in a Grade 2 listed Victorian primary school building the Apprentice is a charitable restaurant set up to help the long term unemployed back into work. A predecessor to the Jamie Oliver gig, it is not as flashy and pretentious as Fifteen, albeit equally as well-intentioned. Given the setup the food can be mixed, and the cocktails a tad on the ‘sweet’ side. Nevertheless as ever our school dinner on the night was pretty damned fine, and a cracking bottle (or was it two?) of Pinotage more then compensated for any inconsistencies in the menu. It certainly made assembling flat-pack furniture the following morning rather difficult.
I’m not normally one to promote ‘good cause’ entertainment ventures, but one I would support is the Hoxton Apprentice. Superb location, warm service, and in the case of the Northerner’s main and my dessert, some very good dishes on the menu. And if you want to carry on drinking there are plenty more venues dotted around the Square a mere stumble away, some of which will no doubt feature in this blog at a later date.

East is Best

Nothing cuts through class barriers quite so effortlessly in London as the local pub. Around Spitalfields where I frequent, are a fine collection of old boozers where fashion designers and creatives, newly poor bankers and original East Enders all get merrily drunk together with that Dunkirk spirit that is unique to the British. This is not a London that fans of Richard Curtis movies would recognise and is probably all the better for that.

The Northerner was out with some of the fashion set on a pub crawl of Gay Soho, so the call went out and Heavy D (formerly Big D, lest you were wondering), the Caister boy, the Engineer and yours truly all descended upon the Golden Heart on Commercial Street. The Golden Heart effortlessly mixes together old East End locals, with the creative and financial services set that have encroached on its territory, and manages it all with aplomb. An old fashioned jukebox and a steady flow of beers saw the crew singing along heartily to Rod Stewart's greatest hits - something I feel we managed very well, although I don't think the collection of French designers sat next to us thought so. And people say the French have sophisticated tastes.

From there we stumbled up Brick Lane, with the obligatory stop at the legendary Brick Lane Beigel before finishing the night at the Shoreditch version of Beach Blanket Babylon. This place gets some bad press and I'm not quite sure why. The place is more Peaches Geldof then Alexis Chung, and there's an awful lot of Class A action going on in there which I guess isn't everyones thing. However Heavy D certainly appreciated the pretty young things bouncing around the place and a great DJ throwing some good tunes down , accompanied by a steady flow of cocktails kept the crew entertained for several hours of mayhem.

One final point. I'm not sure that the crew's 'undercover polic chic' style suited the vibe of the place. Or any place for that matter. I am very sure it won't catch on. Next week we'll try the estate agent look.