Bad Egg, City Point, Moorgate

The City of London is a bit of a dead spot for decent eating, especially if you do not have a big corporate expense account. Bad Egg, situated in the semi-mall in the sanitised bowels of City Point, is a bit of an anomaly. With its stripped back industrial look and neon signage, it would be more at home in Soho or Dalston. But it's here, surrounded by Wagamamas and Pitcher and Pianos for the undiscerning City crowd.

Considering the buzz about it, thanks to its delicious sounding menu and the fact that it's owned by the Smokehouse's Neil Rankin, it's surprisingly not heaving on the payday Friday evening we visit. That said, it's only been open a month, it's a freezing cold January night, and they've only just started taking bookings in the evening. That's a good move - I imagine punters prefer the certainty of a table if they're heading to a neighbourhood with few other decent options.

Bad Egg is well worth the trip. It's a fancy, innovative take on the short order diner, with a menu of American, Mexican and Asian flavoured dishes. It's quite simple: there are eggs, burgers, ribs, fries, tacos and side salads, but every dish is a couple of levels above what you'd expect.

The ribs were incredible. The meat was slow cooked and full of deep flavours, then deep fried to give it a crunchy coated bite. One big rib is your portion, and there was lots of meat and not much bone. I ordered the buffalo rib, with a spicy peppery sauce and a blue cheese dip. A classic combination and well done. My friend had the Korean rib which was smothered in a sticky soy, ginger and gochujang sauce.





Korean flavour make a good few appearances on the menu. We order pulled pork and kimchi fries, which have big pulls of moist, smoky, pungent pork, coated in a kimchi dressing rather than discernible bits of kimchi. Very nice.



The selection of side salads was an impressive counter-balance to the salty, meaty dude food. A Korean slaw was a spicy, zingy kimchi-led salad, with a nice combination of textures thanks to the slimy kimchi and crispy cabbage. A kale and shiitake mushroom salad was our highlight of the plate (any 3 salads for £10), it came in a sweet gingery dressing and topped with toasted hazelnuts.



Neil Rankin has been keen to quash talk among pundits that this is some gimmicky egg themed restaurant. I've got this far without mentioning them, but the eggs are great and they make some stunning appearances in the dishes. The Bad Oeuf burger is a thick medium rare beef patty in a brioche bun, mustard and pickles. But a soft egg yolk and a cheese fondue on top of the patty elevate this beyond your wildest dreams. I'd become a bit jaded with gourmet burgers, but this was something special.



The nduja cheese and fried egg fries are a spin on dirty or chilli cheese fries. The yolk was deep orange and runny, and when chopped up and folded into the molten cheese was something special. The cheese was styled like that plastic Kraft cheese, but I suspect the chefs made it themselves from a carefully chosen combination of real cheeses. My only disappointment of the meal was that the nduja - a spicy, spreadable sausage from Calabria - was not more prominent. I love its strong flavour, but I didn't feel there was enough of it in the dish to really taste its unique fiery punch, especially against the strong flavours in other dishes.



On the Mexican side, my friend's chilaquiles - corn tacos loaded with a fried egg and generous quantities of, salsa, guacamole and goat curd, which was a mild offset to spicy peppers. Another friend's "chicken fried" fish tacos were tasty, but more a snack than a main dish.



Cocktails combine top quality spirits and offbeat mixers and result in surprising concoctions. My Argy Bhaji combined curried apricots, ginger beer and Kamms & Sons liqueur. The gin cocktail combined clementine and sage, and the fantastically titled Misplaced American Arrogance arrogantly mixed Illegal Mezcal and smoky liqueurs for an out of this world taste.

Bad Egg didn't plan on doing desserts, but a waiter said they were working on a dessert menu now. Wise, I think, as a salty, meaty gorging is neatly followed by a sweet kick to power you home, and a lack of decent options in the area means you will need to travel a couple of miles for something half decent. We enjoyed their dulce de leche and peanut butter milkshakes. One between two is certainly enough.

Weekend brunches start in mid February, and it will be worth making the trip. We loved pretty much everything about Bad Egg, and I'll be back to try more from the menu. Now that you can book in the evenings, I suspect more people will venture over for a good filling. We ate well and had a couple of drink each, and it came to £31 a head including tip, which seemed a fair price for the quality, quantity and location.

K-MEX and Kimchinary, Hackney

I make my friends and colleagues wince sometimes when they ask about my weekend food plans. Twice recently the answer has been "I'm going to a K-Mex pop up in Hoxton". Rightfully, it raises some eyebrows, especially when I explain it's Korean-Mexican fusion food and it's all the rage on the LA street food scene.

Bear with me, though, because there are good reasons for KMEX being an altogether Good Thing, not just some flash in the pan fad designed to get the twitter mob cramming into pop-ups.

So it all started in Los Angeles, which has huge Mexican and Korean populations, each with their own delicious street food offerings. Cooking in California has a long tradition of fusing the influences of its diverse populations together with its amazing capacity to grow the freshest and tastiest vegetables known to humankind. It was only natural that some people were going to clock that kimchi goes great with cheese, that coriander, avocado, lime and chilli united the cuisines, and both bad long traditions of slow cooking cheap cuts of meat with all manner of delicious fragrant spices.

When I was in California I ate some of Dante Fried Chicken's Creole-Asian-American-Latino fusions, had korean fried chicken and waffles, Chinese food fused with modern European, Asian style chilli cheese fries, Indian burritos...all incredible, exciting and not just an excuse to grab a headline on the latest natty fusion.

Over in London, Kimchi Cult were at the vanguard frying up kimchi with burgers at Chatsworth Road Market, making their own bulgogi fries and fried chicken at pop ups. Kimchi Cult has moved up to Glasgow now and, rumour has it, is looking to open a restaurant.

I am most excited about Kimchinary, run by Hanna Soderlund, who has been representing at Kerb and Street Feast with her *unbelievably* delicious Korean-style burritos and tacos. Think fillings like slow-cooked, K-spice infused ox cheek, Korean pulled pork, kale and miso aubergine, served with kimchi fried rice, cheese, sour cream, Asian slaw, and crispy, sharp Korean pickles.



They are my absolute favourite street food lunch at the moment.

Hanna did a 7 week long residency at Catch on Kingsland Road recently, and I made it along to the final night to eat my way through the whole menu.

We shared dubboki - spicy, chewy, glutinous rice balls, and bulgogi nachos - think aromatic beef, with cheese, sour cream, and guacamole. Both utterly addictive.





The main draw, though, is Hanna's hand-pressed tacos, which work nicely in a sit-down setting - which are slightly harder for me to stuff in my bag as a cycle back to the office on my lunch than her burritos. There are all manner of exciting flavour combinations, such as cornflake fried chicken with sweet corn, Korean pulled pork with lightly pickled cabbage, ox cheek and tongue, and griddled squid and celariac.





The spread was incredible, with each taco a complex but perfectly balanced mix of flavours and textures. I brought a big pack of K-mex newbie friends with me, and all were blown away by every dish.

The pop up is now over, but you won't have to wait too long to try Kimchinary indoors. It seems Kimchinary is getting together with What the Dickens to open a proper indoors spot under the railway arches on Morning Lane in Homerton, which is happily less than 10 minutes walk from my flat. Follow their respective twitter streams for more news as it comes.

And it seems more Korean-Mexican fusion is brewing across London. I went last week to a popup dinner by Kome at Dead Dolls Club, and a variety of dishes got the K-Mex treatment. I particularly enjoyed seared tuna tostadas, where the gloriously fresh tuna meshed deliciously with tasty fermented vegetables, spicy sauces, fresh chilli and toasted sesame.



Also good were bulgogi fries - with aromatic beef, cheese, salsa, and lots of spring onion, which were hoovered up embarrassingly fast.



Even I have been trying my own hand at K-Mex, and now always have coriander, spring onions, sesame seeds, sriracha sauce and kimchi on hand to give a bit of a twist to certain dishes.

My message to you is this - don't be put off by the word 'fusion' or the fact that kimchi is fermented cabbage. Embrace this exciting food, and in particular, get down to Kimchinary, whether at Kerb, Street Feast, or whenever she opens her kitchen in Hackney with What the Dickens.

Candela Clapton, Lower Clapton Road

I never ever thought I'd write the words "I'm eating ceviche on Lower Clapton Road". And there I found myself on a cold January night, in a bustling bar with balearic-y beats and live Spanish guitar gently strumming behind me, eating ceviche and drinking a Hawaiian craft beer.

The venue was Candela Clapton, a new Latin themed bar/restaurant in the space that the ill-fated (and very lovely...) Riley of Clapton occupied earlier in the year. It has big sheet glass windows that make for good people-watching, walls stripped back to the original Victorian tiles, and a nice big bar. Cacti on the tables and some tropical houseplants mark its departure from a pared down slacker bar to something a bit more exotic.

Candela is owned by a friendly, enthusiastic guy called Lukasz, and Abdullah who owns cult Clapton Pond grocery store Palm 2. Lukasz used to run a beach bar in Barcelona before travelling around South America, so knows a bit about how to create a party atmosphere and cook up some hispanic tinged food.

The menu is evolving day by day as they try out new flavours. Lukasz told me they'd be doing something with salmon and tequila the next day. So far Candela doesn't seem the place for a full sit down three course meal - the dishes are bar snacks of various sizes. You could get nachos or fried Southern American roots (yams, plantain, cassava) to share, or a burger, or guacamole, or indeed, you can sit and nibble on ceviche on Lower Clapton Road.

We tried to do all of the above, and were absolutely stuffed.

We kicked off with the ceviche and the root chips. The ceviche (£6) was fiery and zesty, and had more cucumber, onions etc than you'd get in some of London's fancier Peruvian joints, but was more like the rustic ceviche people would prepare at home.

The root chips (£6) were nice - thinly sliced, not too oily, and served with a bit of guacamole and salsa. The portion did feel slightly short for the price.

Next came the burger (£8), which was great. It was cooked to perfection, really flavoursome meat with decent seasoning on the outside, served with avocado and manchego in a nice onion-y roll. It was served with a few root chips.

The nachos (£8) came with a really deeply flavoured chilli con carne - infused with coffee and chocolate. It was better than your average, but maybe a bit more focus on interesting cuts of meat (still dreaming of the brisket and pork belly chilli I had at The Plough), and a bigger portion of the chilli would justify the price tag, although the guac, salsa and sour cream were generously served.

The food was decent (although some portions could be a tiny bit bigger), but it was really the vibe that made it for us - it's refreshing to have enthusiastic, friendly, exuberant types, rather than po faced beardies, serving you for a change. I think Hackney could do with more of the former and less of the latter. A genuine *sad face* when we didn't stay for a cocktail afterwards instead of indifference.

I'll be back for cocktails and to taste different things on the menu as it develops. Maybe, just maybe, you'll squeeze a dance out of me. But for now, welcome to Clapton, Candela.

On the road in California

Driving all around California you realise how much local life and food culture revolves around the road. A whole discipline of marketing and architecture developed around luring drivers in off the road, and new iterations sit alongside original Googies all along the roads.

Household name chains - like Denny's, Wendy's, Taco Bell - all seem to mostly exist out in the middle of nowhere, on a cross-section, where its convenient for people to meet and, crucially, parking is free. Nobody likes to pay for parking.

The ultimate Californian roadside eating experience is the cult SW chain In-n-Out, serving up affordable and delicious burgers, fries and shakes decades before muppets like us were standing in the cold, queuing to get into MeatEasy. This is the real deal, and there's not a carefully-crafted beard in sight. Just regular families getting served by super efficient, politely scripted staff in pristine uniforms.

The official menu is short and simple - one burger or two (their Double-Double is the inspiration for MeatLiquor's Double Bubble), cheese or not, fries.

But their cult status rests on the loyalty of their customers who know about their "not so" secret menu. It's basically the same core ingredients, but varied up. You could have a triple burger, a grilled cheese (extra cheese, no meat - their veggie option), grilled onions instead of fried, or their Animal Fries - which is fries with their sachet sauce, topped with melted cheese and grilled onions.

We ate twice on the road, and once, late at night, we drove through the In-n-Out in central Hollywood for a surreal LA experience. It was packed at 1.30am, and we enjoyed their faultlessly polite and efficient service while teens hung by their cars slurping down milkshakes.



Motels are a big part of the scene too - outside the big cities and picturesque lodges in the countryside, tourist accommodation is centred on the idea that you're just passing through on your way between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The same chintzy accommodation could cost you £200 a night in ritzy-parochial Carmel-by-the-Sea but £60 100 miles down the coast in San Simeon. But the most famous of all lodgings is the incredibly kitschy Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, midway between California's most famous cities.

It's like something from a Disney-drenched dream of fibreglass seashells, grottos and caves, swirly carpets, winding staircases, turrets and lots and lots of parking for people coming in off the motorway roaring past outside.



We stopped for lunch and had fittingly kitschy pineapple and chicken sandwiches, prawn salad with copious volumes of thousand island dressing, and pink champagne cake.





Fellow diners were retro roadtrip fans, local ladies doing birthday lunch, all served by vintage tattooed ladies. One of those "only in California" places.

Our final roadtrippin' destination was Santa Barbara, which is a well-heeled university town 100 miles north of LA. We shunned its fancy seafood, yachty seafood restaurants, for Los Agaves,  the city's top Mexican taqueira, by the coastal highway.



We had the best Mexican food we've ever ever ever had - mine was a shrimp and halibut enchilada, topped with pineapple, served with a mango salsa, red rice and local cheese. All for $13. Venture a little bit off the highway and you can avoid the dull chains and have some really good food at a very good price.

Eating Mission

Hackney is a great place to live as a food lover, because it offers such variety. As a neighbourhood in transition, there are so many parts to its history and culture that lead to tasty food - Vietnamese, Turkish and Caribbean restaurants from waves of people who settled here, fancy innovative restaurants, greasy spoon cafes, greasy luxe junk food. It's all here.

So when I stay in other big cities I seek out neighbourhoods that have similar characteristic. The Mission is San Francisco's neighbourhood in transition. A veritable multicultural hub where people from all walks of life seem to rub along just fine. Happily, it has one of San Francisco's best micro-climates: it is often sunny while other parts of the city are shrouded in fog and drizzle.

The Mission did us very well for eating, and here are some of my favourite spots. See also my street food post for more Mission treats.

Taqueria Cancun
It's no shadow of a lie that you can't move in Mission for amazing Mexican food. Mission Street in particular is home to dozens of brilliant taqueiras, some open 24 hours a day, serving up fresh and authentic Mexican food that would have Londoners queueing around the block and throwing money at. We ended up at Cancun on our first night in a jetlagged fug, and had shrimp burrito, pork carnita super tacos, and the veggie equivalents.



It was good honest Mexican comfort food at its best, incredible ingredients, creamy thick slices of avocado, punchy home made salsas and constantly replenishing taco chips. This is probably bog standard as far as Mission taqueiras are concerned, but it was lovely, warm, fresh and filling.

Mission Chinese Food

It's a concept screaming out for wider adoption - ramshackle DIY vibe, innovative and punky spins on Chinese food. We had cumin rubbed pungent lamb ribs, thrice cooked bacon and rice cakes, curried fried rice with pork, crab and pineapple, and some small plates with different coloured potatoes, pickles and heirloom tomatoes, pickled peanuts, pickles. All very on trend locally sourced, seasonal, old cuts meets Asian spices and flavours.

As you might expect, it's walk-ins only, but works a bit better than London because there's a list and you get a well approximated waiting time, so it's enough time to get a drink somewhere warm while you wait. Although maybe we have queues in London because we like queueing?


Limon Rotisserie
"It's our version of Nando's" a San Franciscan very incorrectly told me. No, it's so much better. Sure, it's a mid-range mini chain serving up (rotisserie, in this case) chicken. But Limon is renowned for it's affordable, tasty ceviche. We had their mixed cold ceviche (prawns, calamari, white fish), their mixed hot ceviche (all of the same ingredients, but FRIED, and served with a spicy, aromatic dippy dressing.  Some of the best I've had, and at a fair price.



The chicken was tasty, as were the sides of fried yucca, sweet potato fries, truffled mac and cheese, and a so so San Franciscan deconstructed Russian salad with purple potatoes, local beetroot, shredded carrot, avo and aioli. We also enjoyed expertly mixed, frothy pisco sours. If only Nando's Dalston mixed up a good pisco sours. If only.


Bar Tartine
San Francisco is famous for being the birthplace of California cuisine, which is all about eating locally and seasonally, but blending the influences of indiginous and incomer. It tends to be pretty pricey, but there's good value to be found. We opted for Bar Tartine for our final meal in San Francisco, following a recommendation from a trusted foodie.





The combinations were so complex and specific that I've long forgotten them. The pictures speak for themselves, really, but some of the highlights included: salmon three ways in buttermilk; seedy, herby flatbread with amazing hummus and dukkah; assortments of pickles in jars; kale with seeds and homemade yoghurt (so so SF); tripe in a paprika broth; and cheese dumplings in a chanterelle stew.



The waiting staff were incredibly knowledgeable, the vibe jovial, the winelist very nicely put together with lots of local Californian wines. It was the perfect place to experience San Francisco's haute cuisine without breaking the bank.

Hello Kreuzberg

North Eat Eats went to North and East Berlin over the weekend - except compass directions don't mean too much in Berlin these days. It's all in the name of the 'hood, and the sub 'hood or kiez - a particularly effective German word to describe a micro level neighbourhood centred around shops, bars, cafes and restaurants.

I used to live in Berlin, and I go back to visit my friends there whenever I can. It's such a dynamic city, always changing, always building. I studied at the Humboldt university, researching my dissertation on East German political identity after the fall of the wall. At the time Ostalgie was big - a nostalgia for East Germany, as it was. Goodbye Lenin had recently been on the screens, and many bars and restaurants were decked out in a kind of Soviet kitsch.

But always changing, Berlin's bar and restaurant scene is coming into its own. I'm going to do a short series of posts covering the exciting offerings in the different nabes.

Kreuzberg
Kreuzberg is one of my favourite districts - it's where my wonderful friend Elizabeth lives, which is where I stay in her apartment in an old jam factory with her excitable white alsatian, Pip. It's the Turkish heart of Berlin, and was an enclave of rebellion in the former West Berlin. It's still scruffy and rebellious, but it's increasingly home to some great restaurants and bars.

We visited Daniel Brühl (yes, he of Goodbye Lenin fame!)'s tapas bar, Bar Raval,  just opposite Kreuzber's Görlitzer Park. It's a big, open, informal affair, all high ceilings and open kitchens. We were there with another old friend, and a friend of Elizabeth's who runs Feast down the road in Neukölln - all proper foodies. 

The food was definitely a cut above. We had some very high quality classics - chorizo in cider, tortilla, jamon, manchego, padron peppers. 


 Some of the more interesting stuff including a spiced lamb tartare on bread with pear and caremalised onion - exquisitely combined, lightly battered aubergine stacks with honey, avocado and tomato tower, chicken and ham croquettes - the chicken was brown meat, oozing flavour, almost pungent.





We had so much food, cava, coffees and desserts, and the damage was 25Euro a head before tips. The service started off a little cool - at one point the waitress poked a bit of fun at me for taking photos of the dishes - I explained I keep a food blog. Suddenly the service defrosted, explanations were given (busy day yesterday) and free shots brought over. Ha! Don't let that put you off - Berlin isn't known for its service, but the tapas here is EXCELLENT. Reservations pretty much necessary on Friday and Saturday nights.

Mexican Food is getting big in Berlin - and there's a number of nice little taqueiras opening, crowding out the touristy tex mex. Last time I was in Berlin I went to Santa Maria (utterly excellent, also in Kreuzberg). This time we checked out Ta Cabron on Skalitzerstr.

The margaritas were excellent, as was the guacamole.

We both ordered the chocolatey chicken mole in a burrito. The chicken mole itself was delicious, but the burrito itself was not so well composed - it was more of a wrap, sour creme and salad served separately, and the other fillings lacked panache - not enough coriander, black beans, tasty salsa.






A top recommendation for drinking in Kreuzberg is the John Muir cocktail bar on Skalitzerstr. We went for a couple after dinner one night (cocktails are a big deal in Berlin), and wow - these were some of the most interesting cocktails I've ever had. John Muir has a monthly changing menu, changing with the seasons.

I had a Narcissist - gin, lime, creme de violet and ginger beer - it was fragrant, sweet and out of this world in a Willy Wonka kinda way. My other call was the Number of the Beast, priced 6.66, which had crushed blackberries and a bitter slice of liquorice, leaking into the cocktail like engine oil.

Mexican food getting simpler

I've made it my new year's resolution to improve my skills in Mexican cooking. This came about following many trips to Wahaca, a fantastic meal in Berlin, and many outstanding burritos about London. The quality of Mexican food you can eat out has come on massively in recent years; yet my cooking had not. I love the fiery spices, the ubiquity of coriander (up there with dill on my herbs top 10), the tangy flavours, the slow cooked meet, the avocados, the limes. I love the ceremony of making up a wrap, the colours, the combinations. But I felt that my cooking of it was stuck in Tex Mex, I was using my own techniques without seeking to understand some of the science and structure of Mexican cooking.

I'd been dropping hints for Thomasina Miers' Mexican Food Made Simple cook book for a long time and when I didn't get it (again) for Christmas (the outrage!) I bought it for myself. It's beautiful, informative and encouraging. 'Simple' is not a cop-out at all; rather, it explains the ideal ingredients and tells you how you can substitute accurately by using combinations of more readily available ingredients, and takes you through how to make some of the larder staples with just a few speciality peppers, for example. Once you've got the basics, you can easily put together some really exciting, authentic dishes at your local shops.

So last weekend I set about making my first Mexican food made simple. It was a Sunday and I had a whole chicken that needed using up. Rather than making a classic roast, I decided I'd make some kind of roast chicken burritos. With a couple of bunches of coriander and a packet of chipotle peppers from Lupe Pintos in Edinburgh, I set about my task.



I'd seen that so many recipes required a chipotle paste, I made that first. The dried chipotles were boiled in water for almost an hour, their steam filling the house and making us all cough at their potency. The smoky smell I recognised from BBQ sauce (love that stuff), so I'd already learned something. After a while I drained the peppers, mixed in white wine vinegar, lots of garlic, onion, salt, sugar and tomato purée and blended down to a paste. The house smelled amazing, although in the end I didn't actually need to use the purée for this meal. Well, at least it's in a jar now and ready for the next one.

I made a 'green rice', where you purée (notice a theme here?) lots of coriander, parsley, spinach together with garlic and onions, a splash of water and a pinch of salt, cook the paste and then mix in rinsed basmati rice before adding a mild stock. It was like cooking a pilav, and ended up very smooth, fragrant and tasty. I also made a smoky salsa, use the chipotle paste I'd just made. And when it came to the guacamole, though I'd made my own a hundred times, I carefully followed the steps set out in the book - a little lime then, a little later, a little chili first, then more in a bit. It was really, really very good. A lot of people don't like recipe books, believing them to stifle creativity and intuition in the kitchen. I agree to an extent, but I think it's always good to be open to learning from others and then build on your intuitive skillz!!



The finished product was delicious - the flavours all so fresh and light, the perfectly roast chicken going excellently with the fragrant green rice, the luscious guacamole, the zingy salsa and the slightly tart sour cream. The best wrap I've ever had. Lots of smiles on the other side of the table too.



Now that I've done that dry run, I should be ready to put on a super Mexican spread when hosting a dinner party in a couple of week's time!

New job, new lunch

Just last week I started a new job at Shelter, so I've moved from the heady well-heeled heights of Muswell Hill to the bustling, urban, trend-setting pavements of the Old Street area. It couldn't be further removed from Muswell Hill's child-friendly cafes and tapas restaurants - Old Street is bang in the epicentre of London's work economy - with offices for massive global corporations, super trendy media agencies and charities all standing shoulder to shoulder with independent cafes, shops and thriving markets.

The Shelter building is right next to Whitecross Street Market, which has stalls serving lunch every weekday, and a full blown food market on Thursdays and Fridays. I was amazed by the scale of the market and the sheer number of workerbees of all walks of life queuing up at their favourite stalls for a tasty lunch to eat back at the desk.



Being a spendthrift Edinburger, I'm usually all about the packed lunch and try to avoid frittering away my money on cold, factory-made sandwiches. But with all this on my new doorstep, I have resolved to treat myself to lunch out once a week (if I'm being good). So last week I went to Luardo's burrito van, which I had read about in Time Out's article on London's best burritos. I joined the (very long) queue and waited patiently, like a good Brit, to place my order.



Back at my desk, I unwrapped the foil and sunk my teeth in. The pork was generously portioned and so tender it melted in my mouth. It was full of fresh coriander, piquante salsa, rich cheddar, rice, sour cream and luscious guacamole. It more than filled me up and had me wanting to try the other fillings, including the beef, which had sold out by the time I got to the truck.



With so many great stalls to visit, I'm going to make my mission to try all of Whitecross Street's offerings a regular feature.