Penny Blood's Black Book

Koenig Books

Penny Blood — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:51:36 +0000

Koenig books houses a collection of wanky art books with beautiful covers and a selection of artistically out of focus photographs. It does have a huge selection though so if you do have £50 to burn on a book you will look through once then leave around to use as a coaster you will no doubt find something here. The basement houses all their less glamorous art books (the ones not published by Phaidon), collections of titles on each main stream artist and artistic movement which art students buy to plagiarize in their 3rd year thesis. Only reason I go is that the owner has a pet pug which is sooo cute.

80 Charing Cross Road, Leicester Square, London WC2H 0BF
020 7240 8190

Le Grenier

Penny Blood — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:24:25 +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

Alfies Antique Market

Penny Blood — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:58:33 +0000

Situated on a street which is home to a scummy street market selling stolen toilet paper and knock off household products with old immigrants and market people yelling at each other and groups of Eastern European and Asian kids hanging out in intimidating groups cutting school is Alfies Antiques Market. A vast cavern of Antique shops, several stories high, there are hundreds of vendors inside specialising in everything from Victorian jewellery to vintage lace, antique paintings, 60’s furniture with the odd junk shop or two thrown in. I can spend hours here, mainly because most of it is expensive and once engaged in a conversation over the price of something that despite the fact is £600 out of my budget I get a kick out of selling working his ass of to convince me it’s a really good price. There is a café too which is a highlight.

http://www.alfiesantiques.com/

13-25 Church Street, London, NW8
020 7723 6066
Tuesday – Saturday 10am-6pm

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

Spiazzo Italian Foodhall

Penny Blood — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:45:30 +0000

In Los Angeles, there is a Jewish cafe/restaurant called Canters which is a staple in old Hollywood. It’s full of screenwriters in big white trainers and khaki shorts writing C-list scripts about zombies (there’s a huge market for zombie films in LA). It’s bright and full of booths and the staff are older than most of the buildings.

The Italian Foodhall doesn’t have the history and only a fraction of the atmosphere of Canters but a fraction all the same. Italian rather than Jewish, the deli has shelves stacked high with all that lovely Italian confectionery in amazing packaging, biscotti, amoretti biscuits, dark chocolate, marzipan sweets etc… The restaurant has high-backed red leather booths providing ample privacy and space, something you just don’t find in London since real estate prices force proprietors to pack in the customers. The food is that kind of home-cooked variety you see on American sitcoms and adverts, bruschetta piled high and bowls of olives and buttery ciabatta. The staff look Italian but that’s about it.
26 The Broadway, Crouch End, London, N8 9DE
020 83476065‎

http://www.spiazzo.co.uk

Lemon Monkey

Balham Bowling Club

Penny Blood — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 14:00:19 +0000

It may be way down south, miles from anywhere but the Balham Bowling Club is the best pub ever. It’s pouring with rain and I had to cut an epic breakfast at Little Georgia with Morgs short as the night before I had the stupid idea that Sunday lunch at the B.B.C was a good idea even though it meant trekking down from Bethnal Green in monumentally shit weather. And just as I get there I get a call saying that they are all still at home eating gluten free pancakes, that’s bloody great. So out of 8 people I’m the only one here, what a loser! Not to worry though this place is just great, there’s nowhere quite like it. It’s decorated in a theme somewhere between an old school and a sports club, like a set from the History Boys with gaudy furniture and tapestries, basically one giant junk shop neatly arranged. There are billiard tables and Chesterfield couches and big rooms with lots of nooks and crannies to sit in. Only thing is it’s not very cosy but at least it’s not crowded.

7 Ramsden Road London, SW12 8QX
020 86734700
Monday – Saturday 9am-6pm

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 to 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

Cafe Picasso

Penny Blood — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:53:43 +0000

A Chelsea institution and a perfect place for celebrity spotting. Every walk of life comes here from supermodels to actors to tourists, to rich locals and down and outs. It’s a pretty standard London cafe, a bit dowdy but charming as it hasn’t changed since the sixties with the usual stodgy caff food. A few years back whilst doing an internship at Storm Model agency up the road I used to frequent Café Picasso to get soggy chips for one of the bookers who I downright couldn’t stand and therefore resented this job above all else. Model bookers are generally VILE BEASTS who I would gladly knock off the face of the earth with the long arm of the lords mighty wrath. I would love to be one though. Likely as not you will see Bob Geldoff here too, he was always a bit of a fixture as I used to work next door at (I’m embarrassed to say) Prime Time Video (which in my defense was cool in those days) and I don’t think a day passed when I didn’t see him there. His wife’s a bitch by the way. And he never returns his videos on time.

http://www.dinos-restaurants.co.uk/picasso.htm

127 King’s Road, Chelsea, London
020 7352 4921
Monday – Saturday 8am-11pm Sunday 8.30am-11pm

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

Central Perk

Penny Blood — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:39:59 +0000

Well it had to be done, when I heard about a Central Perk cafe (an exact replica of the one from friends) opening for two weeks only just off Carnaby street (despite my better judgment) I had to pay a visit (solely for the purpose of this blog you understand). So on Friday afternoon I wandered by thinking I would stop and get myself a free cup of coffee. Anyway as it turned out like hell I would, the queue went around the block and was ten people thick! So today I made another attempt and turned up at 8.45am. Well I was surprised to see that there was still a queue but at least this one was manageable (some nice people in the queue asked me to take a picture of them next to the Central Perk logo – I said no, they thought I was joking, it was awkward). Well I was disappointed, so if you didn’t make it there you didn’t miss anything. It was like a film set but in a bad way, basically it was cheap. It was created as a promotional idea for the 15th anniversary of the TV show. This I don’t get as the show ended 5 years ago, and the coffee is free so I don’t know exactly what is to be gained from it. When I asked the girl working at the counter if they had any drinks besides coffee she snootily pointed out that it was “a coffee shop”, I don’t need to tell you how retarded that statement is. The atmosphere was most determinedly ruined by all the Dorothy Perkins wearing office girls in cheap shoes taking photos* like they were 12 years old before they had to trudge off to their boring jobs.
* Yes I know, obviously I was one of the photo takers as I had to get pictures to post here so I have an excuse.