There must be something about hipsters and barbecue. How the beards, beanies and Birkenstocks gravitate to the smells of charcoal and rendered fat. Even when the word barbecue is translated to another language, as in Dalston where the Stoke Newington road is awash with mangal’s (Turkish for barbecue), they are here in full force. There’s two notable Mangal in these parts, denoted by the numbers one and two. They are very different, so should you find yourself getting your ones and twos mixed up I’d book a doctors appointment, or at the very least wear darker pants. Number two is opposite eart ..read more

The word value has appeared a lot on my timeline this week. If I were cynical I imagine the term might be there to gloss over some very average cooking by not mentioning the cooking at all, thus concentrating on amount of food for a set price as opposed to the quality of said food. If I were to be cynical I might even suggest that the reason why very few were talking about the food was because it may impact further invites and gifts in the future. But I’m not cynical; au contraire mon frere, I’m a ray of fucking sunshine, so of course I don’t think that. I trust implicitly that they’ve sat thr ..read more

I’m not going to be the first person to write about Six by Nico, that honour goes to, well, who cares. Nor will I be the last; on the evening I’m there – an hashtag ad, hashtag invited, hashtag freeloader affair with no bill – the place is chocca with Birminghams Instagram set. There’s Can’t Wait To Try This, and Looks Unreal and her sister Looks Great, Need To Get Here, Stunning, and the weird hearts for eyes emoji, but maybe that’s just poorly applied make-up given it does look like they dress in the dark. Each booked in, just like me, on the first available evening to be the first to talk a ..read more

Things you shouldn’t do halfway through a meal; check your hotel reservation in Leeds. Also things you shouldn’t do; panic and swear a lot because you booked it for the following week, followed by panicking and swearing outside when a few phone calls confirm that anywhere decent is either fully booked or trying to charge me £500 for a Malmaisson. Welcome to York, Carlo. I’m very sure Skosh are very happy to have you here, skulking and whining and wineing. It’s my fourth attempt at Skosh. There had been attempts some years ago after the Jay Rayner review, an ill-fated Yorkshire trip that coinc ..read more

I got a guitar. Granted, it’s a rubbish excuse for this blog disappearing to shit, but it’s the truth. My last guitar was in my teens, during that awful period when I thought I could front a trio of talented musicians by being their lead man, until Mr Livingstone put a knife through that idea by walking unannounced into the music practice room and bellowing “Carlo! If you’re going to sing in the band at least do it in fucking tune!”. Back then my repertoire consisted exclusively of True Love Waits by Radiohead, Karma Police by Radiohead, No Surprises by Radiohead, and Fake Plastic Trees by a l ..read more

I don’t think the guy on the counter wants us to eat here. I’m not sure he wants any of us to eat here. After queuing for the best part of fifty minutes – alone, I add, whilst my girlfriend makes the most of Soho’s retail – he’s telling the couple in front of me that it’s a twenty minute wait for the burgers to be cooked. I move into my spot at the til, he shouts that he’ll be back in two minutes, which ends up being over ten, this time to tell me that the cook time is now forty minutes. Too many checks on the kitchen he barks. Had he told the queue that the wait was over an hour we would have ..read more

Canary + Kitchen ticks all the hidden gem boxes. Out of town? Check. Only eight seats? Check. A style of cooking that’s unfamiliar and not seen much in this region? Blimey, pass the hidden gem washing up powder, I’ve just jizzed my hidden gem pants. Cheap corkage – or should that be cork cage – and a chef that serves up the dishes himself? I’m not sure I can take this anymore. Line it up. Add it to the all important blog pieces with titles like “ten restaurants half an hour away from Birmingham”, and “restaurants called Canary + Kitchen that you’ve never heard of… until now!”. We can’t claim i ..read more

It took a while to get to Indian Cafe Racer. I had a Deliveroo from them when they first opened, which turned out to be a not very good Deliveroo. So not very good that if memory serves me correct, and it seldom does, I ordered a second dinner from someone else. Fast forward a few months and Omar is on the phone suggesting I give them a look for Barney given that thingy from thingy thingy said they’re good, to which I explain the Deliveroo and say that maybe the other source isn’t one that I’d take as gospel, to which I think he disagreed on both points and told me to go anyway. Fast forward a ..read more

There are few strands of the internet quite as dull as the authentic cuisine corner. The very notion that you can’t experience a certain style of food unless it was cooked by someone born in that country, cooking their own hyper-regional dishes passed from generation to generation to generation. The idea that to eat the food you must do so within that community, like Chinese food in China town, or a balti on the Ladypool Rd. The latter proving one of the many flaws in the argument given that a balti is about as authentic to the sub continent as Citizen Khan. I do get it. There’s a time and a ..read more

I had a booking for Smoke when Stu got in touch asking if I’d be up for trying something different. He offered the chance to be the first customer to try the ‘Smoke at The Manor’ menu that’s running for the first two weeks of October in the main house whilst Smoke goes through a bit of a transformation. I agreed. Of course I did. Mostly because I love his cooking and also because I’m so unbelievably tardy on this blog nowadays that it gives me some form of deadline to pull together the writing. He gets a Guinea pig and you, both readers, get to hear about something you can book as opposed to a ..read more