I’ve been eating so good, I’ve got to write about it!
One of the perks of doing this newsletter week in and week out is having a never ending list of the most fabulous spots in London to try out. Doing this for a few months has prompted whether I should start sharing my thoughts on where I go. It’s also a good way to circle back to the places I share here and give a retrospective of whether it really makes The B-Side cut. By the end of the year, I’ll be making a 2025 “best of” list, so what better way to work towards that project than be documenting each experience as I go.
So without further ado…
Osteria Angelina, Shoreditch: a fusion menu anchored by pasta perfection - restaurant review
When two cult favourite cuisines entangle in a culinary affair, it’s a question of magnet poles repelling or meeting. At Osteria Angelina, it’s two brushstrokes in different colours that make a beautiful picture.
Margarita Month at 108 Brasserie & Bar | Marylebone | All Month
This month, 108 Brasserie & Bar has reimagined its margarita menu around one thing - heat. Choose your chilli: jalapeño, habanero, cayenne, ghost pepper or let the spinning wheel decide. There’s also a four-drink flight, from bright pineapple-jalapeño to smoky mezcal with ghost pepper.
Dante at Islington Arts Club | Islington | Weekends
Chefs Louis Korovilas and Taylor Sessegnon-Shakespeare serve a weekly-changing Italo-French menu, from broadbean orzotto with glazed chicken wing to beef carpaccio with oyster mayonnaise. Candlelit, aubergine-walled and deliberately unhurried, it’s a space for slow dining, where hospitality feels personal and the cooking quietly sidesteps London’s formulaic menus.
Café Ciel at The OWO | Whitehall
In the grand courtyard of The OWO, Café Ciel quietly replaces Café Lapérouse. From Shaheen Peerbhai, the Le Cordon Bleu-trained founder of Fitzrovia’s Miel Bakery - it moves between precise pastries, brunch plates and evening cocktails. The glass pavilion setting remains, but the mood is softer and more grounded, offering a gentler kind of luxury that sidesteps the fanfare of the hotel’s headline restaurants.
Kruk | Peckham
In Peckham’s old Bar Story space, childhood friends Rob Willcox and Josh Lyons have opened Kruk - a Thai restaurant built on hand-pounded curry pastes, house-fermented ingredients and mirrored menus for both omnivores and herbivores. Dishes range from fried chicken with prickly ash and yellow sriracha to red jungle curry with chalk stream trout. The terrace is generous, the cocktails playful, and the mood closer to a gathering than a formal dinner.
King’s Cross Summer Sounds | Coal Drops Yard | 7 - 17 August
Coal Drops Yard marks ten years of Summer Sounds with eleven days of live music, dance and open-air performance. Evenings bring two-hour sets from folk to jazz to opera, with Family Sundays running into the afternoon. Highlights include YolanDa Brown’s Bob Marley tribute, the English National Opera and upcoming talent Rosa Cecilia. Free to attend, it’s best enjoyed early, drink in hand, as the courtyard fills.
Junk | Marylebone
French smash burger import Junk has opened a second London site. The menu stays tight: cheeseburgers with up to five patties, a truffle-laced double, and crisp panko chicken bites. Puffy cookies from Paris round things out. It’s bigger than the Soho original, but the formula’s unchanged - straightforward and indulgent.
