The Brixton Love Affair: Rosie Lovell

Posted on 29. Apr, 2010 by Stephen in Brixton, Food

Tea and Cake with Rosie by Helena Lee

The love affair started almost six years ago when Rosie Lovell went looking for somewhere to set up a cafe. “I got the bus to East Dulwich and got straight back on again. Prams,” she says, eyes wide, “A lot of prams.” She flew over to Brixton instead and stumbled upon an empty unit in the market. “…and I was like – it’s amazing – I love it!”

The best restaurant in south London?

Posted on 29. Apr, 2010 by Stephen in Clapham, Food

Success again for Adam Byatt nearly a decade after he made Clapham North a gourmet destination. Jennifer Sharp charts his progress

Spring sunshine streams through the window and Adam Byatt is a happy man. His restaurant, Trinity on Clapham Common, has the low purr of contented lunchtime customers; his first cookbook, How to Eat In, is published today; he has just chaired the judging panel of the Annual Awards for Excellence organised by the influential Academy of Culinary Arts; and on the weekend, he will brush up his street cred with a return to BBC1’s Saturday Kitchen, cooking and sparring with presenter James Martin. Not bad for a 35-year old from Essex who left school at 16 without much to show for it and, by his own account, was ‘a bit of a yob, a troublemaker’.

Streatham Food Festival

Posted on 29. Apr, 2010 by Stephen in News, Streatham

The Streatham Food Festival, taking place from May 15 – 22nd, is a celebration of the best food and foodie things to be found in the neighbourhood, with restaurants, pubs and bars, retailers, cooks and great events firmly at its heart.

Martin Bright on London’s New Deal for the arts

Posted on 29. Apr, 2010 by Stephen in News

Just over a year ago around 60 prominent figures from Britain’s cultural institutions and the entertainment industry gathered at No. 11 Downing to discuss the implications of the economic crisis. They were there at the invitation of Maggie Darling, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer’s wife and Cabinet ministers James Purnell and Andy Burnham.
This was the birth of New Deal of the Mind, an organisation that grew
out of an article I wrote for the New Statesman in January 2009
arguing that Britain could learn from the cultural projects of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1930s America. This work
creation scheme spawned artists Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock as
well as writers Saul Bellow and John Cheever.