Penny Blood's Black Book » East

Pogo Cafe

Penny Blood — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 07:58:27 +0000

Now Pogo Café is a full on no frills vegan cafe and is where I come when I don’t want to feel like I’m in London. It’s the sort of cafe you’d find somewhere uber-liberal like Eugene, Oregon. On the other hand you could find it extremely irritating if you were the type to take all that anti-establishment crap seriously. They go to town with the shredded carrot, but it’s all so satisfyingly healthy and cheap. You’re unlikely to stumble across it unless of course you are unfortunate enough to live near by or you’re a street level drug dealer or one of 5 kids to a white trash single mom. What I’m saying is, this is a dodgy street, where delinquents walk down the middle of the road refusing to move for cars and where kids half my size look like they’re gonna kill me just because I don’t wear jewellery from Argos.

www.pogocafe.co.uk

76 Clarence Road, London E5 8HB
020 8533 1214
Wednesday – Saturday 12.30pm – 9pm Sunday 11am – 9pm

The Last Tuesday Society

Penny Blood — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:49:37 +0000

Now here is a collection of weird shit. So taxidermy and monkey skulls I get, but Labrador’s testicles in jars? It’s hard not to like it here, I mean there aren’t many places where you hear the staff shout, “the ocelot fur coats are in the kid’s coffin under the mortuary table in the back room with Aleister Crowley’s skull and the Vagina grafts” now are there? The stream of people asking what is and what isn’t real must do their head in though. Upstairs there is a conventional gallery but downstairs is Viktor Wynds wet dream, the extensive overspill of his house of madness. With dark red walls and cabinets full of his collection of classical ivory figurines randomly (?) placed next to a key chain of a teddy bear blowing his brains out and a set of goliwogs mixed with shrunken heads and prosthetic limbs. The Last Tuesday Society additionally hold a series of talks on subjects ranging from Hypochondria to Syphilis to bed bugs by renowned speakers who although have a list of great credentials on paper often have a tendency to waffle. I think half the time they are just people Mr. Wynd wants to meet. The shop is a ‘window display’ so to speak for the Last Tuesday Society which hosts debauched and fabulous fancy dress and masquerade balls at different locations throughout the city.

http://www.thelasttuesdaysociety.org

11 Mare Street, London, E8 4RP
07947 049814
Wednesday – Sunday 12pm – 6pm

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Le Grenier

Penny Blood — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:46:25 +0000

Le Grenier appears to be the official retailer of 70’s Crockery. Full sets of brown and orange tea cups, sugar pots and tea jars interspersed with eclectic jewellery, retro furniture, exciting knick knacks and old record players in suitcases which are so pretentious it makes me want to throw up. This shop probably survives in large part to people thinking that they will start their own collection of vintage clutter inspired by the immaculate style of this shop, so they start by purchasing one of the gaudy tea sets, but once they get it home and realise how badly it goes with dated Ikea furniture it gets stuck in a cupboard and never sees the light of day. Two years later said tea set ends up in a charity shop where it is bought by a similar posh second hand shop and the price put up by 1000% where it is then purchased by a younger generation of same people. It’s all part of the upper middle class circle of stuff.

www.le-grenier.com

146 Bethnal Green Road, London, E2 6DG
07720 890 393
Monday-Saturday 12pm-7:30pm; Sunday 10am-7:30pm

Favela Chic

Penny Blood — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 22:44:19 +0000

There is nothing I love more than taking a Third World theme and throwing a shit load of money at it thereby creating the ideal place for posh kids to hold their birthday parties all the while discussing their current holier-than-thou missions with the red cross, UN or whatever. The theme is in the title and I can surely say it summarises the place entirely apart from the fact that it is absolutely nothing like a favela or anywhere else in Brazil for that matter. However salsa music, disco balls, furniture that looks like it was washed up on a beach, flea market lamps, kitsch paintings and wallpaper, graffitied bathrooms, staff dressed head to toe in American apparel and imported Japanese trainers, cocktails and delicious Brazilian inspired food with exterior walls covered in carpet is good enough for me.

http://www.favelachic.com/london/

91-93 Great Eastern Street, London EC2A3HZ
020 7613 4228
Tuesday – Thursday 6pm-10pm Friday – Saturday 6pm-11.30pm

Hackney Pearl

Penny Blood — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:54:57 +0000

Hackney Wick is clearly on the up and the Hackney Pearl is definitely a symbol of that. Oh don’t worry the area still looks like a deserted wasteland only fit for amateur fashion shoots, but salvaged Formica tables, school chairs and copies of the observer are a slap across the face reminder of where we’re at now over in the Wick. For quite a while people seemed reluctant to open any kind of business as the area was rife with gypsies who’d been kicked out of (sorry re-housed), Stratford. However so far so good as the Hackney Pearl looks to be attracting all the RIGHT KINDS of people. The staff here look like extras from (all and any) music video but are really friendly all the same. The food here is great and the carrot cake is off-the-scale delicious. It’s the kind of place where they cook muffins there and then and leave them on the counter as if your mum just made them, awww sweet, that just tickles me. The spacious interior is styled so perfectly it rivals any established café in London. I’m so proud of it being in my very own Hackney Wick.

http://thehackneypearl.com/

Hackney Pearl, 11 Prince Edward Road, Hackney Wick, London, E9 5LX
0208 510 3605
Tuesday – Saturday: 10am until 11pm Sunday: 10am until 6pm

Beedell Coram

Penny Blood — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:51:12 +0000

Easily my favourite ‘junk shop’ in London. Beedell Coram is stocked full of Victorian paintings, taxidermy, antique furniture, books, postcards and old medicine jars all lovingly displayed with no order or thought to presentation whatsoever. When she’s not drunk in the Golden Hart pub next door this is where ?????* collects her miniature tea sets, the ??????* buy their master paintings before they deface them, where ??????* has bought the odd taxidermy dome and ???? and ?????* purchase a human skull or two. The owner Andrew Coram is a gem in himself, with his gold earring and an east end sales man grin he alone makes it worth a visit.

*I have omitted the names of those guilty out of respect for the proprietor and his gracious message concerning the privacy of his clients. This little antique shop can hold its own without name dropping anyway.

86 Commercial Street, London, E1 6LY

F. Cooke

Penny Blood — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:41:51 +0000

One of the last remnants of the pre-gentrified Broadway market, F. Cooke dates back to the days before the street was thick with Cypressa vans delivering organic goods. When I politely ask if I may take a photo, I get an obvious “aye roll along” with a weary sigh and a “what’s it for?” “My blog on pla….” “Oh another blog, yeah ok just a couple though”. It helps having a rubbish camera as no one takes you seriously. F. Cooke is a beautiful and authentic old pie and mash shop with all the original tiled walls, marble topped tables and metal and wooden benches. Being a vegetarian there is nothing I can actually eat here, I may just order a coke. I just love the fact that you would never find anywhere that resembled a place like this outside of London, well Britain any way.

9 Broadway Market, London, E8 4PH
020 72546458
Monday – Thursday 10am-7pm Friday – Saturday 10.30am-8pm

The Eagle

Penny Blood — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:49:44 +0000

This was the first so-called ‘gastro pub’ in London started by one of the Eyre brothers. That is the main reason I like it. It looks much the same as all other gastro pubs but being one large room with the bar along one wall and lacking any nooks and crannies it somewhat lacks an element of ‘cosiness’, although in it’s favour it does look like a pub rather than an over-gentrified ‘gastro-pub’.* The food however is great. I love ordering fish and getting the whole fish. I generally inhale my food so picking through all the bones gives me something to do for an hour and a half. Like all good gastro pubs the menu changes daily and attracts all the kind of people who live and work in the area thus not feeling too cliquey like local residential pubs.

*Note that I have no problem what so ever with over-gentrification, I’m not going to pretend that I like being surrounded by poor people.

159 Farringdon Road, Farringdon, EC1R 3AL
020 7837 1353
Monday-Saturday 12-11pm Sunday 12-5pm Lunch served Monday – Friday 12.30-3pm
Saturday-Sunday 12.30-3.30pm Dinner served Monday – Saturday 6.30-10.30pm

Fika

Penny Blood — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:28:11 +0000

A night out with Drage is one of my favourite ways to spend an evening. He’s the perfect male, just effeminate enough to not only cite but tell the difference between good jeans and lesbian jeans, yet you wouldn’t catch him standing in front of a mirror, feet turned slightly inwards pulling at the corners of his t-shirt stating “I’m getting fat”. Drage is far from fat but wouldn’t care a whole deal if he were. He ordered the gnocchi. Fika is such a perfect little restaurant (aside from the near dealbreaking fact that I can see part of the kitchen due to the lack of a concealing door). It’s small and cosy prompting Drage to point out that “it’s all very relaxed, I don’t feel tense at all” as he purposely strokes the astro turf cut-out of a stag drinking a cup of tea stuck on the wall. The food is Swedish – some of it fairly typical: meatballs, reindeer salami, that kind of thing – and delicious. They do great hamburgers and a vegetable and bean grilled umm….mush thing, I don’t know quite how to describe it. It was great though, it’s all real comfort food. I thought, or was scared even, that everything would be pickled: pickled this, pickled that but actually pickled was barely even on the menu. Although it wouldn’t be Swedish without pickled herring. It’s a bit like a little Swedish cabin with wood planks on the walls and a simple yet chic theme involving astro turf. It’s like a comfortable film, in fact it’s the “Small Time Crooks’ of restaurants. It’s definitely a favourite. They never did close the bloody kitchen door though.

It looks like a shed I know.

http://www.fikalondon.com/

161A Brick Lane, London, E1 6SB
0207 613 2013

Monday – Thursday 12pm-11pm Friday 12pm-midnight
Saturday 10.30am-midnight Sunday 10.30am-10.30pm

Counter Cafe

Penny Blood — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:23:15 +0000

You might think that there wasn’t much in Hackney Wick and that’s because there isn’t apart from a lot of unemployed people who call themselves artists. Anyway for months i’d been going to a fairly nasty cafe as there wasn’t anywhere else. Then a great little place opened up, eclectic and quirky, like sitting in a film students living room and serving great food and proper coffee too, sadly it had to close as the Irish gypsy’s, sorry “travellers” kept nicking their stuff. In light of this I was so pleased to discover the Counter Cafe as it’s a great cafe by all standards. Hidden away deep in Hackney Wick, next to the canal and surrounded by artist warehouses, it’s a bit like London’s answer to Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It’s still pretty industrial but ever so slowly on the rise as it’s right on the border of the Olympic zone. The cafe itself attracts all the locals from builders to artists but mainly artists. I generally refer to it as “the Posh cafe” due to the exposed brick walls, wooden counters, leather chairs and fancy menu serving everything from soup and salad to posh sandwiches and Eggs Benedict. The fact that it’s owned by artists, run by artists and caters to artists (although the prices don’t) will give you a good idea about the place*.

* It’s clean though.

http://www.thecountercafe.co.uk

4 Roach Road, London E3 2PA
07952 696 388
Monday – Friday 7.30am – 5pm (Thursday 11pm serving Tapas)
Saturday 8.30am – 5pm Sunday 9.30am – 5pm