Tagged: london

Yo, YO!

YO! Sushi aftermath

What role can a few cheap televisions and a motorcycle have in establishing of one of the most successful restaurant chains in the world? A pretty big one, actually – when setting up YO! Sushi with almost no financial backing or investment, Simon Woodroffe was able to negotiate extended payment terms with a supplier based on the fact that he had the support of Honda, Sony and All Nippon Airways. Years later he remarked that, actually, these brands had only provided him with some very limited sponsorship. To the tune of the items mentioned above, in fact.

Despite these humble beginnings, the chain is now sixteen years old and I can’t imagine that any of you haven’t been to one…which makes my task – reviewing the original YO! Sushi restaurant – a difficult one. So what’s the angle, I hear you ask? I was attempting to convert a sushi hater. In many respects, my girlfriend and I are a perfect match – we both love Americana, we both act as if we’re about sixty years old and we’re both total foodies. Except for sushi. Despite my efforts to get her enthused about sushi, she remains completely ambivalent about it. So, my mission was to show her that there’s more to YO! than just some cold fish.

YO! Sushi pork ramen
Pork Ramen

The original Soho YO! is a little different to the average department store incarnation of the chain. While these tend to be open and airy, the original is darker and feels more tucked away – you definitely get more of a sense of Orientalism and ‘otherness’. I can’t think of a better example than this than the fact that you have to wave a fan to attract the attention of servers, rather than just pressing a big red button as in most YO!s.

katsu selection

I rolled out some of my longtime favourites, like Salt and Pepper Squid (‘Ok, I like this one.’) and a Katsu Selection (‘That bit tasted like a Chicken McNugget, but the rest is amazing.’). We also tried a couple of newer dishes like a Beef & Garlic Teriyaki dish that was out this world and Ramen, which is to Miso soup what Sheldon Cooper is to Ryan Gosling. The former did cause some trouble with chopsticks (‘You better not post that picture.’)…

chopstick struggle

but ultimately resulted in smiles all round.

YO! Sushi blog

We came away very content and very full – clearly, people who complain about being hungry ten minutes after eating sushi aren’t doin it rite. Either that, or they’re not dining on the dollar of the almighty YO!bot. Thanks very much to the team for inviting me down – I’m pretty sure we’ve managed to convert the little woman which means we’re now, if anything, TOO compatible. If you haven’t been down to the Soho YO!, I thoroughly recommend it – it is the original, after all, and original is always best.

PREVIEW: SebastiAn, Surkin, Unicorn Kid @ Koko, Camden

Once upon a time, long before I wrote a fashion blog, I used to be a music reviewer-cum-DJ-cum-club promoter. My coup de grace was convincing a then semi-popular minimal techno producer called Kanio to play at a house party I was helping to throw. Not that throwing a house party on Manor House Road required much ‘help’ – it was more of a case of ‘play music, and they will come’. My career as a DJ was fairly shortlived – I played a few parties and opened for a few friends with names much bigger than my own. Most of the clubs I performed in (and I’m hoping this is a coincidence rather than a direct result…) have since been shut down. The truth is, I was more a fixture on ‘the scene’ than anything else. Like a 21st century Bez.

However, one thing I (usually) managed to do pretty successfully was predict where music was heading – I was listening to French electro and minimal techno, albeit most of it culled from the collections of DJ friends, long before Urban Outfitters played it instore and I’d already seen Deadmau5 twice before his oversized head ever popped up on Radio 1′s Essential Mix. Two artists I maintain never really got the credit they deserved are SebastiAn and Surkin. While labelmates like Justice and Uffie soared to the top of the charts, it took a long time for SebastiAn and Surkin to become much more than ‘cult favourites’. I’m massively excited to see them bring their ‘weird but it works’ blend of dirty, bass heavy electro and DIY punk/metal aesthetics to London next weekend.

I’m also hugely excited to see my homeboy Unicorn Kid, who I’ve previously written extensively about bring some homegrown talent to what is otherwise a very French stage. This gig will be one of the first at which Sabin is playing ‘live’ rather than just mixing, though whether this means he’ll be bringing out the modded Game Boys remains to be seen. Judging from his latest single, Feel So Real, a mash-up of his own Chrome Lion with Love Decade’s So Real, the Kid clearly knows how to make something fresh and exciting out of tracks both old and new.

Tickets are now on sale here – http://bit.ly/PWOhyl. In case I haven’t convinced you yet, you can find some choice cuts by some of the acts performing below. Oh, and if you do end up buying a ticket, let me know – I’m currently going stag. That’s how much I love these guys.

Disclaimer: Because I’ve previously written about Unicorn Kid, the guys putting on this night invited me down to check it out for free. Don’t be crazy enough to think that that compromises any of what I’ve written above.

Vogue’s Fashion Night(mare) Out

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

I never used to ‘get’ quotes about the difference between fashion and style. You know the ones I mean – about how one can be bought and the other is innate, that sort of thing. I always thought it was just the sort of inane fluff that bloggers put in their Twitter bio because they can’t come up with anything coherent to say about themselves. Last night I discovered that I was wrong.

The title of this blog is probably misleading, as it implies that I didn’t have a good time at FNO. I did. I hung out with Sian, founder of Domestic Sluttery and one of my new favourite people ever, saw lots of cool stuff and drank free alcohol. Too much alcohol, given it was a school night. But there’s no point in me just writing another ‘I did this and I met blah and it was fun’ Fashion’s Night Out review, because (God knows) there’ll be enough of them around by Saturday night. Yes, FNO was unlike any shopping experience I’ve had before, but there was a very dark side to it all. That’s what I want to talk about.

My experience can be neatly summarised by the following statement – on my way to the event, it felt like everyone was looking at my outfit (which wasn’t even that extravagant) out of the corner of their eye. Once I got arrived, I didn’t get a second glance. Or, in most cases, even a first. Girls in neon bodysuits and dudes with haircuts like 17th century monks were suddenly not only present, but commonplace. I realised something about the extent to which Fashion is a bubble, enforced by the fact that Old Bond Street and the surrounding area was literally cordoned off, and I began to feel like I had stumbled into an aviary full of exotic birds.

Tiffany & Co, price on application.

Much of the enjoyment I derived from the night came from the fact that items were laid out as if they were pieces of art – types of fabric, patterns and elegant designs transcended the status of mere clothes, bags, accessories, and become something much more. I described my experience on the night as being more like a trip to a museum or a sociological study than going shopping, and I stand by that. But ultimately, I came to be so overwhelmed by the (presumably subconscious) focus on dehumanisation that the whole evening felt a lot like holidaying in the Uncanny Valley – I came across people pretending to be mannequins, designs that the world has seen imitated at market stalls so many times that even the real article no longer seems genuine, shoes that mimic the appearance of the feet of Gypsy Cobs horses, puppies that I can only presume have been genetically modified to be tinier than nature ever intended. Though, to be fair, Tinkerbell was pretty cute.

The atmosphere was startlingly similar to that of a zombie film. Clutching freebies, Champagne flutes and minuscule gift bags, people shuffled from flagship to flagship, seemingly no longer aware that £430 is not an acceptable price for a t-shirt. As for the staff, they seemed to fall into one of two camps – the first demonstrated palpable anxiety, presumably terrified that they were going to mess up one of the biggest nights of the year. The second was made up of those who have been infected by the arrogance and superiority of their bosses to the extent that have forgotten, or have learnt to repress the fact, that at the end of each day they have to return the clothes on their backs to the shelves and make their way back to a bedsit in Clapham.

This was par for the course for the rest of the night; a lot of things felt falsified or obscured. Everyone seemed determined to project the mask of self confidence and bluster that they’ve been practicing for so many years, but insecurities were only ever a second glance away. Many of the participants were evidently so desperate to cling to their collective youth that they had botoxed and liposuctioned themselves to the point of deformity.

The best managed to walk the line of simulacrum convincingly enough that they seemed to possess an ageless, Dorian Gray-esque quality. The worst had clearly become content to descend into the grotesque long ago. I watched a grey haired man making his way into an exclusive club, clinging onto a zimmerframe as zealously as the platinum blondes holding onto each of his skeletal arms. I saw a woman with Gucci sunglasses not oversized enough to cover the pallid skin of her face, which had been surgically lifted almost to breaking point. I saw greed and bitterness everywhere, individuals stricken with a desperation to be ‘happy’ that the best part of them had given up finding long ago.

What I saw on Thursday evening was Fashion, not style. It was beautiful, and deceptive, elegant, and elitist, enticing, and rotten. And it had nothing to do with who I am or what I want to be.

Post-Apocolympics.

It took most Londoners a while to warm to the Olympics. More weeks than I care to remember were spent bemoaning debts, security concerns, travel problems and all those other signs of impending doom that LOCOG were bringing down on us. But then something happened. When the much-feared multicultural, multi-lingual swarm of locusts finally descended, we all realised that they weren’t locusts at all. They were people. Smiling, happy people who were genuinely excited to be in London. From here, things only got better. The opening ceremony was pretty cool (although I must have missed the Harry Potter movie in which Julie Andrews kicked Voldemort’s ass), we won some medals, we suddenly had no qualms about gathering in pubs and living rooms to collectively cheer on plucky individuals we’d never really heard of a month ago.

A confession – I’m not in love with London. I’ve lived here for just over a year and I frequently find it frantic, caustic and unfriendly. And I’m not the only one – I recently read an article warning visiting Americans to make a note of any friendly pubs they found, as they’re far from the norm. A friend from Newcastle recently returned from an ill-fated trip down south, vowing never to return again (she definitely won’t succeed – she’d miss me too much). Don’t get me wrong; I’ve met some wonderful, interesting, welcoming people in the past twelve months that I’m honoured just to have stood in the same room as. But that doesn’t change the fact that, at its core, the city is depressed. Except that the London I’ve seen in the past sixteen days isn’t the one I’m used to.

Not too many years back, I had a bit of an episode. My personality has an obsessive compulsive element that threatened to disrupt my life by pulling my mind into a depressive corner, which isn’t the easiest place to escape from. Though I now consider myself to be ‘fine’ (aside from getting irritated when people think having their desk organised is ‘LYKE SO OCD’) I feel much more attuned to the emotions of others and can tell pretty easily when people are in a dark place. A huge percentage of Londoners seem to be suffering from a chronic version of what I suffered from. The feeling that nothing is ever good enough, that nagging feeling that everything is bound to go wrong, is written off as British modesty or self deprecation. Self-medication with drugs and alcohol is downplayed as part of the ‘work hard, play hard’ dialectic. Introversion, unwillingness to make eye contact with strangers and a compulsive need to be forever wearing headphones (iPod, therefore iAm…) all fall under the heading of the ‘urban experience’. The undercurrents of anger and despair, that erupted during last year’s London riots, have merely been glossed over.

In the past two weeks, I have seen a change. Team GB, the Olympic spirit, whatever you want to call it, has brought us together. That may sound clichéd, but it’s the truth. Epic rivalries between nations have displaced the smaller scale arguments that plague day-to-day life, and they are good natured and respectful instead of petty and acidic. Youngsters have seen that, whatever background they’re from, they can make good. And no, I don’t believe that’s just wishful thinking – with the latest study estimating that 90% of Brits watched at least some of the Olympics, there must have been a positive impact. Sure, all of the bad stuff is still there – recession, the daily grind, the fifteen things the Daily Mail found today that give you cancer – but everyone’s been more willing to just…make the best of things.


Just because the Olympics is over doesn’t mean that we have to go back to the way that things were. True, we’re off to a bad start with that Closing Ceremony (I think we set the world record for most whingy tweets per minute last night), but it doesn’t have to be the end. If we can hang on to that thing that makes us want to be friends with strangers rather than ignoring them and that sense that, actually, everything probably WILL be ok in the end then…well, the rest is easy.

Westfield London is still running their #IWASTHERE competition until the end of this week. If you have any inspiring London 2012 stories to share, check out the deets HERE and tweet them HERE. You could win £25,000 for your trouble, which is a pretty spicy meatball. Even if you don’t win it’s still worth a go; might make you feel all warm and fuzzy.

Christian Louboutin Opening @ Design Museum, 30/04/2012

Last night I somehow found myself at the VIP opening of the Christian Louboutin exhibition at the Design Museum, rubbing elbows with Bip Ling, Alexa Chung (kidding, they had people to stop the likes of my elbows getting anywhere near Alexa’s) and err…Christian himself. It took about six seconds for me to start feeling underdressed.

There are people who would protest shoes being in an art exhibition. I am not one of these people. The English actor Peter Ustinov once said that “if Botticelli were alive today he’d be working for Vogue.” If you want to go a little more lowbrow (and I always do), The Devil Wears Prada‘s Nigel states in a monologue that “fashion is greater than art because you live your life in it.” (Side note: A good 60% of the men in attendance looked a lot like Stanley Tucci.)

One of the highlights of the exhibit is a 3D burlesque show (like Tupac at Coachella but…more boobs) featuring Dita Von Teese. I tried to take a video, but I have an iPhone 3GS so it looked absolutely terrible. Sorry. For Louboutin, sex and shoes are inextricably tied – ‘What’s sexual in a high heel is the arch of the foot, because it is exactly the position of a woman’s foot when she orgasms…so by putting your foot in a heel, you are putting yourself in a possibly orgasmic situation.’ Whether or not you buy into that philosophy, the fetish section of the exhibition definitely pushes the borders of fashion and, indeed, art.

Something strange happens when you’re around the work of Christian Louboutin. You start to get this feeling that everything you know is wrong – how else can a man who spent his youth sneaking into movie theatres and watching showgirls have created one of the most iconic symbols of recent history (both in fashion and popular culture)? How else can old Guinness cans and fish tails inform design in such a way that it makes women want to part with thousands of pounds? It is, for want of a better word, magical.

Is it a coincidence that Andy Warhol also began his illustrious career in the art world sketching women’s shoes? Maybe. Or is there something inherently artistic about the curve of a shoes? Louboutin himself thinks so – “When I do a shoe, I want a woman to look at how beautiful it looks, not how comfortable it looks.’ The fact that most of us will never be able to be afford a pair of Louboutins makes their appreciation as art even more grimly appropriate. But standing in a room with hundreds of them, it’s difficult to be too sad. A lot of themes appear in that big room – theatre, entertainment, sex; they’re the obvious ones. But there’s much more going on than that – an exposition of the creative process, history, industry, beauty, love. It’s all there – you just have to look for it. For of those of you who are interested in shoes – go and look at the shoes. For those of you who are interested in art – go and look at the art.

Warner Bros Studio Tour – The Making of Harry Potter (and meeting the cast…)

I’ll just start by saying that today was one of the best days I’ve ever had. If that doesn’t set the tone for a preview, I don’t know what does. Yes, I’ve been excited to check out The Making of Harry Potter at Warner Bros Studios for months, but I was also expecting all of the problems that typically come on opening days – bad parking, inadequate tour bus shuttles, stressed out staff, big crowds etc etc. I got NONE of them. The staff were not only incredibly helpful and pleasant, but also genuinely know their stuff – from cracking jokes about Fawkes (those jokes that are lame, but the teller knows they’re lame so it’s fine) and discussing the intricacies of models to pointing out areas that you could easily miss.

That same care and attention has clearly gone into reassembling the sets – it’s a bit of a cliche, given that it’s obviously the desired effect, but it does feel like you’re stepping into one of the movies. It also feels smaller than it does in the movies…another cliche, sorry. Well, except for the clock tower (picture below); that was MASSIVE.

The tour is incredibly well structured in that you take in all the sets, costumes and props before moving on to check out the creature workshop, animatronics and model section. I know, I know, this sounds as if it could be really dull but I promise it’s not. From the creepy Voldemort foetus and Luna’s lion mask to a replica of Hagrid’s head and a terrifyingly realistic Buckbeak that moves around, there’s no shortage of things to see.

'You're a wizard, Harry.' 'Alright, don't get ahead of yourself.'
Totes leaned over the barrier and gave him a stroke.

One of the final rooms in the tour (yes, I know I’m skating over things, but that’s only because photos and a few words really can’t do the tour justice) holds an enormous  scale model of Hogwarts Castle that is simply stunning. Unfortunately, it’s probably the closest most of us will ever come to arriving at the castle for the first time. Wow, could I be any more of a geek…?

I was also lucky enough to meet some of the cast, who were attending for a special red carpet event that I’d been invited to, and get my childhood copy of Philosopher’s Stone signed by Tom Felton, Rupert Grint, Evanna Lynch (who kissed me on the cheek, thus making my life complete), Warwick Davis, David Thewlis and Bonnie Wright. The cast were all incredibly charming, each one signing enough autographs to give them a bout of RSI and chatting with the crowd. I made Tom Felton laugh and everything.

See?

We also talked about shoes – apparently this was the only part of his outfit he had assembled himself, so he was happy that I complimented them. I’m not sure why I complimented them – apparently being around celebrities makes me so nervous that I start complimenting their shoes.

Tom Felton's shoes.

If you’re a fan of Harry Potter, film or art, I can’t recommend checking out the studio tour enough. At around £25 it’s not a cheap day out, especially given you have to leave through the gift shop, but it’s a magical (wow, almost got through this post without making a lame magic pun) way to spend a day. It occurs to me that this whole reads like a sponsored post, but it’s actually not; it’s actually that much fun. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to eat my chocolate frog.

Review: MEATliquor, meet suckers.

I’ve been waiting to try Meatliquor for months. Like real, honest to God, months. It is, therefore, just possible that my unrealistic expectations compounded with obscene amounts of Twitter hype mean that I’m being a harsh critic. Still, it took twice as long for us to get our meal as it did for the Titanic to sink. And that’s never a good start to a review.

We arrived at the restaurant at 7pm on a Thursday to find a queue of around 50 people, which took an hour or so to clear. This wouldn’t have been so painful if the queue hadn’t been full of hipper-than-thou douchebags looking at each other’s trashed shoes and trying to decide who was the most boho. The very air was thick with breathy murmurings about new underground German techno nights and places to get the deepest V-necks known to man. But that was fine, I’d expected all this.

meatliquor
Meatlqiuor Interior

On entering the restaurant, it was much smaller than I expected. I had been hoping for a pseudo-derelict Gotham City-esque ballroom (note to restaurateurs – build this, and I will come every night.) but instead found a large bar whose decorators seemed to have used Charles Manson’s Tumblr for inspiration. Still, I get what they’re trying to do and it works, especially alongside the eclectic musical mix of bass heavy tracks by artists like Kele Okereke and Joy Division.

We ordered our food – wings, bacon cheeseburger, dead hippie (a double patty burger) and fries to share. And then we waited. And waited. And waited. Everyone else’s food was arriving, so we questioned whether the order had gone through. It hadn’t, and another waitress offered us cocktails on the house. We went for a Donkey Punch (lol), a fizzy gingery concoction, and a Mai Tai that were both amazing. Like ‘The Savoy’s American Bar amazing’.

A generous helping of wings eventually arrived (though they still took about fifteen minutes after we lodged our complaint) and they were…fine. I don’t see how people can go wrong with wings, but these were far too dry for me. Still, I was just glad enough that our food was on its way. Or was it? Around an hour later, we had to complain again (hello, more free cocktails) and it quickly became apparent that the order for our burgers hadn’t gone through. Fantastic.

meatliquor 2
Dead Hippie Burger

Another half an hour later, our burgers arrived in the hands of an extremely apologetic waitress (not our original waitress, who seemed to be avoiding us…) who told us that our entire meal was being comped, which was nice. Again, the fries were…fine. I regret not going for the jalapeno covered chilli cheese fries, because what I got was only just better than McDonald’s fries. Mind you, I do like McDonald’s fries. The burgers were admittedly pretty good, but no better than a great diner burger. After waiting around for three and a half hours, I expected a lot better than a great diner burger. About three bites in, I realised that I wasn’t even really hungry anymore. Hunger had tagged out and gone home, and that feeling in my stomach was now just disappointment. We left the restaurant close to midnight in a haze of more apologies. Although not one of them came from our original waitress.

Ok, I get it – apparently it’s now ‘cool’ not to offer reservations. But if you insist on doing that, at least make sure that every customer receives service that’s efficient, lightning fast and friendly beyond belief. The service we received (from our original waitress, at least) was none of these things. Sorry I’m not toe-ing the party line and raving on Twitter about how amazing Meatliquor is, but it’s really not all that. It’s just…fine. Try the Hard Rock Cafe instead; fewer hipsters and you might get home before midnight.

REVIEW: Little Mix at G-A-Y, 17/12/2011

Note: this was originally published here

‘Are you gay?’ is the first question a girl in a flowery dress at the bar asks me only a couple of minutes after I get into G-A-Y at Heaven. ‘What do you think?’ I reply. She pauses and looks around at the throngs of sweaty (some already shirtless) men before answering ‘You don’t look very gay.’ I tell her that I’m not, and she says ‘So what are you doing here?’ And it’s a good question. This is my second time at G-A-Y, having come down to see Janet Devlin just a couple of weeks ago. Last time I came down with an old friend, but this time I’ve ended up here on my own. And it’s totally surreal.

The cheering is deafening when the band finally come on stage, though a few do people leave the dancefloor muttering about how they’re ‘like so cringe’. Something that didn’t always come across on the live shows is just how much energy the band has – they bounce around like a bunch of five year olds who’ve just been told they’re going to Disneyworld. Being in the same room really does intensify their qualities; Perrie’s huge voice seems even stronger, Jesy and Leigh-Anne seem even sassier and Jade is even more utterly adorable.

Even more amazing is how smooth the band seems already – they open with the sublime Don’t Let Go, already their signature song, which feels like it could have been written for them. They then break straight into club anthems Don’t Stop the Music and Super Bass, the latter of which Jade introduces – ‘apparently it’s funny when you say it in a Geordie accent, so next we’re goin’ to play Soopa Bass.’ The group already move completely in sync, and their vocal harmonies are only getting more polished. This is nowhere more evident than in their final song, which is (of course) their first number one single, Cannonball.

One of the most striking things about the evening is the cross section of the fanbase it reveals – as well as the gay twentysomething guys and straight teenage girls dancing and cheering, I also spot thirty something drag queens, mothers out with their daughters and the odd straight guy who has been totally swept up by the experience (though I bet a lot of them will still insist that they hated it and their girlfriends dragged them along). I could make a lame pun about there being a great ‘little mix’ of people right now…am I better than that? Clearly not.

‘God, this place is going downhill,’ slurs a bleached blonde skinny guy at the bar. ‘What do you mean?’ I ask him. “They used to play Patrick Wolf and Robyn, now it’s just X Factor and whatever other over produced commercial shit they can find.” I cautiously tell him that I only came down to see Little Mix and the expression on his face mirrors the groups of guys who retreated to the bar as soon as Little Mix came onstage. “Well, each to their own, I guess. But they’re far too kitsch for me.” And with the revelation that my new favourite band is too camp for a gay guy wearing a Madonna t-shirt ringing in my ears, I order a bottle of water and jump in a taxi home.

Dr Martens, First and Forever Festival.

I know, I know, I haven’t blogged in ages. I promise I have some cool stuff coming up soon to make up for it.  Like this, for example - http://firstandforever.drmartens.co.uk/competitions - go try to win some free tickets to this three night festival at Barfly.  There’s something for everyone – Kids who listen to too much Joy Division; you’ll probably enjoy British Sea Power, hipsters who listen to ‘old Alexisonfire’ and first pressings of The Number Twelve Looks Like You; Rolo Tomassi, and twentysomethings with flicky fringes who have a lot (too many.) band t-shirts; The Blackout.  If you don’t fit into one of those categories, I’m not sure how you found my blog.

And in case you’re like ‘oh, but I never win anything!’ (whinge.) there’s a bunch of free gigs listed there too – all the bands sound like they should be on the Topman soundtrack, and they’ll probably be the next Mumford & Sons or Two Door Cinema Club or whatever so you should see them now before they get big.  Except Hawk Eyes (formerly Chickenhawk), who sound like they should be on Jackass or a skateboarding video game soundtrack.  In a good way.