november-2010

Here, the new Dessert
Bar at William Curley’s
in west London is a
new way to eat sweet
WE ARE
15
LONDON
IS WHERE OUR
STORY BEGAN 15
YEARS AGO, BUT
THE CITY HAS
CHANGED A LOT
SINCE THEN. ALAN
RUTTER SPENDS
A WEEKEND
IN SEARCH OF
THE NEW
FRIDAY
Ask 10 different Londoners what’s cool in
town and you’ll get 10 different answers
– this is a city that’s constantly changing,
thanks to an endless supply of restaurants,
bars, shops and galleries that want to be the
latest, smartest addition to the capital. When
all is changing around you it can feel good to
have a proper base, so for this trip I left the
anonymity of hotel rooms behind and chose
instead to stay in the Town Hall Apartments
(from €157, book at hotels.easyJet.com).
Based in Bethnal Green in the east of the
city, the apartments were well away from the
tourists and within walking distance of the
capital’s hippest venues. Wonderfully restored
with marble staircase and art deco interiors,
it made for an ideal home from home (if
your home is a perfectly on-trend shrine to
modern luxury).
But there’s more to London than the east,
so before I got completely absorbed by the
East End, I zipped across town to visit the
Lisson Gallery (29 & 52–54 Bell Street, NW1,
WEEKENDER | LONDON
tel: +44 (0)20 7724 2739). Art dealer Nicholas
Logsdail established this gallery in 1967 with
an explicit mission to showcase pioneering
and cutting-edge art. My visit didn’t
disappoint, with haunting works by Serbian
video and audio artist Marina Abramović
(which runs until 13 November).
The capital’s art scene isn’t always so
dark, and in search of a bit of light relief I
headed into the West End and discovered
the Lomography Gallery just off Carnaby
Street (3 Newburgh Street, W1, tel: +44 (0)20
7434 1466). The ubiquity of smartphones
and post-production apps like Hipstamatic
have fuelled a – particularly urban – trend for
casual, from-the-hip, snapshot photography.
It’s a scene with a long heritage, and the
Lomography Gallery is the place to go to
discover its roots. Named after a former
state-run Russian optics manufacturer,
the Lomography movement champions
exactly this kind of shooting style. You
could spend hours looking through the local
examples of lomo photography and the
cameras themselves, but instead I fl ipped my
Hipstamatic on and set out to snap London.
The last time I visited one of the plush
Samarqand restaurants it was in central
Moscow and I was in the company of dolledup,
ostentatiously wealthy Russians. The
chain’s latest outpost is in Marylebone (18
Thayer Street, W1, tel: +44 (0)20 7935 9393),
but the clientèle is similar, with expats seated
around the low-lit, elegant interior. The
modern Uzbek menu is a unique addition to
the London restaurant scene – expect tasty,
if heavy, dishes like minced lamb dumplings
and lagan noodles in a vegetable broth.
If Samarqand brings a new cuisine to
London, master patissier and chocolatier
William Curley has come up with a new way
of enjoying an old favourite. New Yorkers
have been going out for dessert for years,
but the Dessert Bar at Curley’s Belgravia
shop (198 Ebury Street, SW1, tel: +44 (0)20
7730 5522) now means that Londoners can
do the same. Open until 8pm on Fridays
and Saturdays, you can eat at home or
elsewhere, and then step into town for an
indulgent fi nale. Particular highlights are the
basil-infused ice cream with a blackcurrant
compôte, and Toscano chocolate mousse with
green tea crème brûlée. After petit fours it’s
back to Bethnal Green, and bed.
SATURDAY
Cutting from Shoreditch High Street to the
top of Brick Lane, I headed to Redchurch
Street. At fi rst glance it looks like an
unpromising side street, but in the last year it
has become London’s hippest thoroughfare,
and now is the time to visit before it takes
that step too far to becoming gentrifi ed.
15 TH BIRTHDAY ISSUE | TRAVELLER | 55