Food, Fun, London

Bloomsbury Club Bar hosts BlackTail Residency

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We checked out the BlackTail Residency at the Bloomsbury Club Bar (BCB, 16-22 Great Russell Street, London) today and were very impressed. New York’s BlackTail has been created by the team behind the Dead Rabbit, which regularly gets ranked as the best or one of the best cocktail bars in the world. BlackTail itself is generally considered to have been the most anticipated and successful bar opening in the U.S. during the past year (it opened a few months ago). It emulates the American bars that sprang up in Havana during the 1920s Prohibition (not sure why some reviewers call the bar a speakeasy, which would be the improvised U.S. underground bootlegging version of the time, and quite the opposite in some ways, ultimate luxury versus greasy, badly-lit basements). The Irish duo behind the BlackTail, Dead Rabit’s co-founders Sean Muldoon and Jack McGarry, were inspired by the distinctive black tail […]

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Fun, London, London restaurants

London’s Best Greasy Spoon: Regency Café

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We used to live just around the corner from Regency Café for many years and while we’re trying to eat healthy, this Greasy Spoon managed to make us fall in love with it on first glance. Heck, I’m saying love, but it was more like an obsession! Located just a five-minute walk from Pimlico tube station (Victoria line) or St. James’s Park (Circle and District), and under 15 minutes’ walk from Westminster tube station (Jubilee line), this café still celebrates the 1940s style that was fashionable when it was opened in 1946. The outside tiling is art deco (even though not the grand style you might be accustomed to from architectural milestones like the Chrysler Building, more the robust type that you know from the former headquarters of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, adjusted for a small corner café).    It attracts a lovely mix of builders from […]

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Fun, London

Orchid Festival, Kew Gardens

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We’ve just come back from the Orchid Festival in Kew Gardens, which has started this weekend and will last until 5 March, so go get your tickets, don’t miss out on this great exhibition of fabulous flowers! Not that Kew Gardens wouldn’t already be awesome enough without any festivals or special events, but this Festival really tops everything we’ve seen so far at Kew Gardens, the variety of flowers on show and the dazzling beauty of many of these flowers is just mind-boggling. Kew Gardens have done a great job at curating this exhibition. We were thoroughly blown away by it, but it seems to work just as well for families and children, old folks, and even experts in the field, overhearing some of the conversations of bystanders. It’s also nice that you can venture into side rooms where ferns, carnivorous plants (the humorous label is “not so vegetarian vegetables”; […]

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Food, Fun, Sydney, Travel

The Baxter Inn, Sydney’s Best Cocktail Bar

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We met up with a few friends at The Baxter Inn, yesterday, a basement whiskey honky-tonk of great style and true awesomeness, half way between Darling Harbour’s Sea Life Aquarium and Pitt Street in Sydney’s CBD, and equidistant to Wynyard and Town Hall train stations in 152-156 Clarence St. The little brother of Darlinghurst-based Shady Pines Saloon, The Baxter Inn opened only a few years ago, but has already become the established star of the Sydney bar scene. The entrance is well-hidden in a dark backyard of an industrial building. Often the lines of admirers stretch all the way to the street, though, giving good indication of the direction of the entrance. The atmosphere inside is dominated by dimmed warm light, heavy wooden furniture, and – the center piece of the bar – a giant, beautifully backlit wall of whisky, whose upper shelves are only accessible by scrolling ladders, so […]

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