Category: Drinking

Jun 30

Meze fun from Istanbul to Leytonstone

Well apologies again for the lengthy silence (but also many thanks to the 30 odd daily visitors checking out Sajarina even without any new posts – you rock my tiny webstat counting world!) As you might have guessed I have been further East than usual, to Istanbul. It rocked, in a big old buildings, iznik tiles, sunshine and baklava kind of a way, which is one of my favourite ways, truth be told.

Topkapi palace in Istanbul

One of the many things I love about London (and any ethnically diverse city I guess) is that you can go away on holiday, eat and drink tasty things and then find somewhere to buy them when you get home. So today I had lunch with a friend in the Meze Cafe on Church Lane in Leytonstone. I’ve been there a few times before and I like it a lot, from the prettily painted but distractingly phallic gourds hanging from the ceiling to the incredible tat-encrusted mirrors – it really is worth getting up close to these, the one I was next to today had a glow-in-the-dark star gluegunned onto it!

Though I’ve liked all the other stuff I’ve had there, I haven’t tried their meze platter yet. Today I was warned off it because it was too much for one person, and given the size of the house special salad they brought me instead I think they may have saved my life. I could have eaten myself into sweet auberginey oblivion, but instead I just pushed myself to the brink with broccoli, cauliflower, peas and almonds. Mmm. I had a satisfyingly dark and sludgy Turkish coffee as well, which with my friend’s latte and two gargantuan salads came to £10.90. They also do sandwiches, jacket potatoes and that sort of thing, as well as some hot dishes like moussaka for about £6. And it’s another of those wondrous unlicensed places, so you can bring your own alcohol, with no corkage.

This sort of thing makes me really happy. Although the rent in Leytonstone seems to be generally cheaper than in Stratford, I’ve moved from a shared house to solo living, and my disposable income has taken a knock. So far though, I’ve still been able to eat out pretty regularly because there are a few good, cheap options available, the Meze Cafe being one of them. Long may it live, and bring meze to the people!

PS Will be posting about Ichiban at some later date, and have already had a recommendation for the Singburi Thai. I’d love to hear any other suggestions!

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Posted in Drinking, Eating, Leytonstone

May 05

Dancing bots in Bethnal Green

Bank holiday weekend, woo! An East End accomplice called on Sunday night and asked if I wanted to go the Box Bot B Movie Bank Holiday Nightmare at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club. I said something along the lines of ‘hell yeah!’ and off we went.

Giant robot at Bethnal Green Working Men's Club

Unfortunately we arrived too late to make ourselves cardboard box ‘n’ tinfoil robot outfits but there were a few botting about when we got there. There watched some, uh, performance art, and jumped around to a punky electro band called Toy Toy. Not sure who the red-haired robot DJing just beforehand was but she played Talking Heads, The Slits and Le Tigre so I was joyful :-)

Other attractions included a montage of B movie clips showing on a big screen, and a ‘laboratory’ bar which hadn’t really made much of a departure from a previous incarnation as a gazebo (although it was artfully draped with tinfoil). You could choose from a range of mysterious liquids in chemical colours with names like ‘Brain Fluid’ or ‘Essence of Monster’ (in case you were wondering, if you mix them they taste of fruit salad chews) There were also free flying saucers and some dangerously twisty straws. Around midnight there was a prize-giving for the best costume, which revealed that three girls had come as Stepford wives – really nice concept, but it was a shame that they were just in everyday Bethnal Greenwear (The Pipettes have a lot to answer for…)

It was a superfun night, given a wonderful delirious edge by the fact it was a *Sunday* night. And we were, you know, *OUT*. Truly I’m living life on the edge.

PS Admit it, you were tempted by the 300 flying saucers for £8.89 link, weren’t you? If you have just finished entering your debit card details, well, I salute you.

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Posted in Art, Bethnal Green, Dancing, Drinking, robots

Mar 03

Banana latte lady

Click. Click… Click? Ah, the sweet sound of another power cut. Whenever this happens, and I get interweb withdrawal shakes, I head over to Roman Road market and to Chicchi internet cafe. I’m not sure exactly what their internet policy is now – it used to be if you bought anything over £1 then you could use the internet free for an hour. But when I was there last weekend I had been online for a good hour and a half before I noticed I’d overrun and nobody came to pester me.

This easygoing approach to internet time is just one thing among many that I love about Chicchi (pronounced ‘kikki’ apparently, the Italian for ‘beans’) As well as excellent, tasty and reasonably priced pasta and salads, you can buy intriguing teas with exciting names. Clear favourites in the name stakes are Gunpowder Qing and China White Jade Butterfly. Who wouldn’t want a cup of tea that sounds like part of a kickass crime-fighting team?

Chicchi also takes milkshakes to a whole new level. Strawberry, chocolate, banana? Sure, they’re there, for your casual milkshake drinker. For the ever-so-slightly-more-adventurous there is delicious coconut or dashing hazelnut. But the milkshake drinking pro you can wet their whistle with peach & vanilla, pistachio & hazelnut, or chocolate & cinnamon. Even sick milkshake obsessives are catered for with a strange mutant creation: chocolate & strawberry. That’s right. In the SAME GLASS. If you think that sounds exciting, you should see their waffle menu. Take a moment to let that sink in. Waffle. Menu. I’m just going to link right to it.

The lovely Chicchi people (and they are lovely – smiley and friendly) take a similar approach to their coffee. It is damn fine coffee, needless to say, but I like strange flavours in mine. And rather than pedestrian hazelnut, cinnamon, vanilla etc… I can walk right into this little cafe and order a banana latte, without shame, without needing to explain myself, or meet the confused and pitying gaze of some hapless barista. Not here. It’s up on the board, on their list of syrups, as is coconut. Is there a greater joy than feeling accepted, and loved like this?

Also a brief little shoutout to AMT Coffee (they have a stand in Liverpool Street station, so it counts as east endy) I heart you! You make similar strange concoctions such as banana lattes, hot apple with cinnamon, cherry flavoured yogushakes and the adorable froffee. And, at the request of your customers, you went completely fairtrade years ago, way before it was cool. If there is one thing that would improve Chicchi for me it would be fairtrade coffee. Happy fairtrade fortnight!

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Posted in Bow, Drinking, Eating, London, Tea

Feb 16

Eating out in sunny Stratford

Picking up from my last post about why Stratford doesn’t completely suck, I consider the fine dining options available to Stratfordians. Once this is done I can get on with blogging about places I like to go to to get away from Stratford without feeling too guilty…

Don’t come here unless you really love Pizza Express. There’s not really anywhere else to eat out except fast foody joints like Nando’s, Pizza Hut, KFC et al and a couple of good curry houses. On the subject of which, India Gate, we love you! Thank you for shamelessly currying our favour (geddit?!) with your endless freebies – not one small sweaty bag of salad in our takeaway, but two! Praise be! In all seriousness we like them a lot. Tasty food, friendly staff, a discount if you’re a member of the cinema… They have stolen our hearts away from the Spice Inn, who comically refused to serve my friend her beer in a pint glass, we assume because they were afeared her spindly ladywrists would snap under the weight of all that manliness.

Another place we sometimes go is a gastropub type affair called King Eddie’s. It’s a bourgeois oasis on Stratford Broadway. I’m not slamming the fact that Stratford is poor here, but the contrast is shocking, I’m still not totally convinced that the door isn’t just a portal to a pub in Hampstead. If you ever want a concise visual representation of social inequality and lingering class divisions (and let’s face it, who doesn’t?) go for a drink in King Eddie’s, then go over the way for a drink in Wetherspoons.

In spite of myself I love it though. It’s a beautiful pub, an ex-coaching inn with green walls, a saloon bar and many quiet corners. Sitting with a good friend and some mulled wine or cherry beer in a dark and cosy nook while it pisses down outside is up there in my top ten loveliest things to do. I warn you though, it’s not cheap. It is still cheaper than most places in the centre, but once you’ve adjusted to Stratford prices it seems extortionate. The food is consistently tasty, traditional English fare, using seasonal gourmet-type ingredients but doesn’t offer much for vegetarians unfortunately. The wild mushroom risotto is delicious, but that’s often all there is for my not meateaty friends.

Our final dinner destination, although we more commonly go there for lunch at the weekend is the new Londek Cafe. It’s right at the top of the Grove, if you head towards Maryland station from Stratford centre you’ll pass it on the left. Londek serves Polish home-cooking, and is full of Polish people eating it, so one can only assume they’re doing it well. I certainly like it a lot. The staff have been very friendly, not to mention surprised, as me and my friends troop in on a regular basis (and once ordered one piece of every kind of cake – all in the interests of research, you understand).

Again they’re not brilliant for vegetarians but there are two or three different options. It is incredibly cheap – a plate of extremely filling pierogi is around £3.90 – so you could eat like a king for well under a tenner *and* they have no license to sell alcohol so you are welcome to bring your own free of charge. We had a fairly raucous night a while back fuelled by cheap wine and cabbage parcels. It was awesome.

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Posted in Drinking, Eating, London, Stratford