The Word of Ward

This pub is just down the hill from Hampstead Tube. Or just up the hill from Belsize Park tube. Take your pick. I think it is slightly nearer Hampstead though and you can walk down the hill rather than up. Which is a plus. Hampstead is always nice too and you might see a celeb.

This is a nice enough pub and one of the few places I regularly visit in Hampstead. The others are the Hollybush (which I will review one day) and the Flask. If it’s a nice day, which is rare is this soggy country, there are a couple of pleasant tables out front for superb people watching. There’s also a smallish beer garden out back which tends to be full of smokers. The main room is slightly odd in that it is split into two areas. The bar faces the window in a D shape. Behind the D is a seating area. Both areas have a slightly different feel to them but both are pleasant.

The main draw for me are the friendly staff and the food. Plus there’s a bus from in front of my house that stops in front of the pub 5 minutes later, but that might not be the case with everyone.

We normally go there on a Monday or Tuesday. For pizza. The pub has decided to not bother with a lot of different gastropub foodstuffs. They do primarily wraps and awesome pizzas. The wraps may be awesome too but I’ve never had one. On a Monday and Tuesday they do a two for one pizza deal, so you can get one of these bad boys for £5. Which is a bargain. The £20 I always subsequently spend on beer balances things out I guess.

Even without the pizzas, if you are in the neighbourhood, it’s a nice stop off. They have great music (Hendrix, Zeppelin), good beers (try the Sagres lager), friendly staff, and a unique chandelier made out of kitchenware. Enjoy.

(There’s also a Giraffe restaurant next door that does half price cocktails from 5-7pm Sunday to Thursday as well, if you want to start early. Just FYI.)

Hakkasan

As part of my wife’s 30th birthday bonanza, I promised her some of the finest Chinese food outside of Asia. She has a lot of Chinese blood coursing through her veins so I knew I had to pick something good. Hakkasan is definitely known for being one of the best. It even has a Michelin star. I’d been wanting to eat here for ages, so this seemed like a good excuse.

The entrance is down a slightly grotty backstreet/alley just off Tottenham Court that is full of slightly dingy late night bars and illegal drinking establishments. Fortunately, I’ve been drinking in these establishments for almost two decades, so had no problem finding it.

The entrance is pretty muted.  As you can see. There was a lady with a clipboard and a large man in a suit at the entrance. It felt like we were entering a club. She checked we had reservations and we were shown down the stairs. There were several smiley staff waiting to take our coats. Then another lady took us to the bar. The bar is pretty cool – long, dark, nice lighting, a bit futuristic mixed with the Orient. It is like a swanky place in Hong Kong or Blade Runner. We had a couple of cocktails which were £10 each (plus 13% service charge). A bit pricey but they were incredible and unique. Our cocktails were really different but both were some of the finest we had ever had. We were then shown to our seats.

The restaurant is divided into various rooms separated by woodwork lattices. The table have lamps hanging down low over the tables making it feel more intimate. There was staff everywhere, which made me a bit worried that they might be a bit overzealous but actually they got it just right. I hate when you are in a swanky place and feel like the staff are staring at you for the whole meal in case you might need something, it’s very off-putting. Anyway, they seemed ubiquitous but unobtrusive. I did feel it a bit unnecessary that there was a girl whose sole job seemed to just be opening the door to the bogs but maybe I’m being picky.

So, the food. I spent 21 years of my life in Hong Kong and I love dimsum. We ordered the dimsum platter to start and it was awesome. Truly, truly awesome! Each piece was bigger than normal dimsum but they were so well prepared and cooked, I was blown away.

For our mains Nim had the Sho Chu Atlantic stir fried scallops which were huge and tasty and came in a really nice sauce with mushrooms and onions. I had the unbelievably incredible Spicy Mongolian venison. Which was one of the best things I have ever eaten. I challenge you to find a better Mongolian venison – even in Mongolia. We also had jasmine rice and another couple of cocktails. Plus some morning glory which was fantastic but at £9.50 was £9 more than I used to pay when I lived in Bangkok. Which is not surprising I guess.

By this point we were stuffed to the gills so ended the meal with a couple of lattes.

Here’s how the bill panned out:

Dim sum platter – £11.50

Jasmine rice – £2.50

Morning glory – £9.50

Mongolian venison – £23

Sho chu scallops – £26

2 Caffe lattes – £6

4 cocktails – £40

Total: £118.50

With service charge: £133.9

Given that this is a top class restaurant with a Michelin star, superb food (really superb), impeccable service, and an amazing decor, the bill seemed about right.

I would highly recommend this place. I will be going back once my bank account recovers. It shows you just how good oriental food can be. And I have spent over half my life in the orient. Save up and go!

Last night I went to a bar/club/theatre/art/performance/thing called Shunt with my wife and some creative friends. It’s a very difficult place to categorize except to say that it’s fucking brilliant. Shunt are a ‘performance collective’ which sounds a bit arty or indeed wanky but it is truly a superb idea and I’m mildly annoyed that no-one has told me about this place before.

Beyond this innocent door lies untold wonders. Plus beer.

I have walked past the entrance a thousand times and never knew what it was. This website now gets over 100 people a day looking at it and I’m not even that sure I want to let you all know where it is but as you can look it up yourself, I suppose I might as well. At least then you can buy me a beer if I’m there. When you come out of London Bridge tube and start walking toward the escalators that lead up to the overland trains, you will see this door. Plus a small queue. There are no signs.

You WILL be asked for ID, which was actually pretty cool as that hasn’t happened to me since I was 17. It costs £10. Once you walk through the unassuming entrance you suddenly find yourself in a colossal underground vault. It is huge and sphincter-tighteningly impressive. From this point, a lot of it is hard to review because here lies the genius of Shunt. Every night different stuff happens in various rooms. First let me describe the space a bit. On entering, you will be faced with a long vaulting corridor with huge, high-ceilinged rooms branching off at either side. Sometimes it looks like this:

Sometimes like this:

Last night it was dark and lit entirely by candles.

In the rooms there can be anything. Bars selling beers and other bars selling cocktails are dotted around, as are cosy corners with small tables or couches or recliner chairs or anything. There is artwork in odd places and random performances from actors or artists or musicians or people who are a bit mental. When we entered we came across a room where a creative looking lady was doing a book/poetry reading to creative looking people. In another room there were comfy chairs and a cinema screen playing old black and white sci fi movies. And they weren’t all Metropolis.

One room held a theatre and there were loads of others with shows going on and interactive arty things.

A bar in one of many cavernous rooms.

Every night something different and interesting and random happens here. If you just want to have a quiet drink and soak up the huge cavernous atmosphere there’s plenty of hidey-holes for that too. At one point a guy appeared near us and started performing brilliant songs under a spotlight on his keyboard. He appeared like magic.

This guy appeared from nowhere. Sorry about the quality but my phone doesn't have a flash.

Here are some random pictures ruthlessly stolen from the internet of things that have gone on here in the past:

No idea what's happening but you can see the size and atmosphere

Another bar but with ladies dancing. Marvellous!

A band. Obviously.

Another random section of the HUGE Shunt bar/club/thing

Ok that’s enough. You get the idea. Shunt is a truly unique experience. A good and exciting one. It’s one of those places I always envisioned myself in. On drugs. With Jagger and Bowie.

It got shut down in November so that it could be turned into a load of shops. I hope the tedious peon that came up with that idea died in an hilarious accident worthy of a Darwin Award. Thankfully, it has now opened again but no one seems to know how long for. Hopefully at least another year. So check it out.

Here is a video that shows yet more stuff that has happened in the past. Some of it looks a bit mental but remember you only have to get as involved as you want to. There is a lot of room.

Pop Life at Tate Modern

This was a great exhibition. It is essentially about artists who mixed fame and the desire for fame and money with their art. These artists sought out as much publicity as they could and said ‘Balls! I love publicity and money’ to all the purists and critics who claimed they were selling out.

Jeff Koons and his rabbit sculpture.

The first room is like a tester or a sample. It contains Jeff Koons’ sculpture of an inflatable rabbit alongside video footage of an actual colossal balloon that he put in the Macy’s thanksgiving parade in New York. There is a video showing an Andy Warhol advert for TDK tapes and there is a human sized sculpture by Takashi Murakami of a manga chick with huge norks spraying out milk.

This is all just for starters.

The next room was dark with some florescent gem paintings by Warhol. This was followed by a room full of Warhol’s celebrity portraits which he did purely for the fame, kudos, and money. He even offered discounts if the celeb in question bought two. There is a bit of multimedia action after this as we are informed that Warhol linked the whole fame and art thing, and that all the Pop Artists that followed were going along with this idea. There more ads and movies and a scene from The Love Boat where the Cunninghams from Happy Days meet Andy Warhol on the Love boat. I kid you not. Talk about fucking surreal. I came away from these rooms with an increased appreciation for what Warhol was trying to achieve. Both as a publicity seeking artist and with ‘the Factory’ where he encouraged struggling New York artists to create work under his guidance. The Warhol rooms show just how influential he really was and the rest of the exhibition reflects this.

Soon after this is a small room where an artist called Richard Prince had a photo of a naked Brooke Shields at the age of ten. It was taken down day one as people complained that it wasn’t exactly art, more of a picture of a naked girl who later got famous. I think the complainers have a point. It was unnecessary. Even though he tried to justify it by giving it the pretentious title of ‘Spiritual America’ and presumably tried to make a point about child celebrity and exploitation (I couldn’t be bothered to read it), it was clearly a case of ‘Ooooh aren’t I shocking and controversial!’ I can’t be bothered with this sort of crap. In its place is a picture of an older Brooke Shields in a bikini. Which was nice but no more art than when I had a similar poster of a chick in a bikini draped across a Ferrari on my wall when I was 14. Perhaps I missed the irony.

Next up was a room where I really started to appreciate all the effort the curators had gone to with this exhibition. The entire room was dedicated to Keith Haring and his unique art. There was 80’s Hip Hop blaring, T’shirts and other merchandise, his art all over the wall, and a fully functioning shop with accompanying bored attendant. I wish I like his art more but the way the room was done really made me appreciate what ‘feeling’ it was that Haring was trying to achieve.

Keith Haring's "Pop till you drop at the Pop Shop"

After the 80s excitement of this room we were faced with a choice. Turn right down a corridor lined with 70s porn done by some chick that was apparently famous in the adult industry in the 70s and 80s. Or go through a huge door marked ‘Over 18s only. Extremely explicit imagery.’ Quite a quandary. After walking through the door we were indeed faced with an explicit image. Imagine a woman being fucked by guy with her on top and bent forward slightly. Now imagine her buttocks pulled apart and the guys legs spread and you looking the insertion with your head about a foot away. The result is that you are limited to seeing half a penis in a vagina and a woman’s arsehole. Take a photo and blow it up to a huge size. I’m no prude but a lady’s puckered rectum a foot across is not that attractive. This was the first picture in Jeff Koon’s Made in Heaven room. Apparently he started to take photo’s of an Italian porn star called Cicciolina (whom I sadly had heard of), then photos of him having it away with her. Eventually he married her. Isn’t that romantic? Anyway, the whole room is full of pictures of him cumming on her and her ramming didlos up her orifices. In the middle is a statue of him boning her. I found the whole thing a bit pathetic to be honest. It just seemed like an exhibitionist that has found a way to make tons of cash without labeling it porn. It is the talk of the town but is curiously missing from a lot of reviews. Here’s about the only tasteful picture I feel like including:

This is art not porn apparently. How controversial!

Then back out and down the 70s porn corridor, which by this point actually seemed fairly artistic. Even though it was mostly just pictures from Razzle.

Then you enter the realm of the Brit artists who follow the whole ‘I’m a celebrity artist ethos’. Obviously the prime contenders were Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin. I find Tracey Emin annoying and not in the way she is trying so hard to be. Hirst’s stuff was ok to quite cool. The ok stuff:

Look! Twins in front of dots! Genius!

The quite cool stuff:

Damien Hirst's False Idol

I know it’s a pickled calf with gold shoes but I actually quite liked it.

The next room was by Rob Pruitt and Jack Early. There are a load of really cool Blaxploitation posters featuring people like Martin Luther King and NWA and so on. All with Jackson 5 music playing.

After that there was yet another controversial piece of art as it showed a collection of pictures of Hollywood actors in roles where they played Nazis. There were a lot of people standing around saying things like “in which film was Clint Eastwood a Nazi?” (or Harrison Ford or Richard Buton or Tom Cruise or Ralph Fiennes, etc)  The controversy was pretty dumb in my opinion as none of the films were making the Nazis out to be good guys. Maybe I missed the point. As a collage though, I thought it was pretty impressive and mildly thought provoking.

Piotr Uklandski The Nazis 1998 Courtesy of AFPGetty images

The next couple of rooms were a bit unnecessary and shite in my opinion. One was a video of an artist called Andrea Fraser having really boring sex with an anonymous art collector on a video shot in a hotel room. The other was a stuffed horse with a sign that read INRI – apparently the sign that Pontius Pilate had hanging around his neck when he was killed. Which is just pretentious arty shit. One critic described this as ‘Flogging a dead horse’ which I found mildly amusing.

Maurizio Cattelan's Untitled dead horse with a stick in it

The final room was by Takashi Murakami and was brilliant. One wall was entirely dedicated to a colossal manga chick wandering down the technology and manga heaven of Tokyo’s Akihabara district. It was entitled: Giant Magical Princess! She’s Walking Down the Streets of Akihabara! (2009). In this room you learn all about how Murakami opened the Kaikai Kiki company where he effectively did a Japanese version of Warhol’s Factory. He churned out small manga toys which could be collected with gum in Japanese shops and did photography and videos of Japanese cosplay. Kaikai Kiki did something similar to Warhol in that it took in loads of aspiring artists and under Murakami’s supervision churned out art as business. There is even a music video featuring Kirsten Dunst as a hot manga vixen walking down the streets of Akihabara (like the mural) accompanied to a revamped version of The Vapours’ “Turning Japanese”. Loud and on a huge plasma tv. I loved this room. It was a great ‘cap’ to the earlier Warhol stuff and encapsulated what the whole exhibition was about.

This was a superb exhibition and I’m really glad I went. I came away with a greater admiration for Warhol and Murakami and a lot of the artists in between. Sure there were a lot of things I didn’t like or thought that the artists were just going for shock value, but as an exhibition charting ‘Pop Life’ and the mix of consumerism and money for art, it was fascinating. There was a lot more than I have mentioned but I though some of the highs and lows would suffice. A lot of thought had been put into this and overall the experience was a highly enjoyable one. Sadly it has finished now but if it goes on tour it is well worth checking out.

Next time I’ll try and review art before the exhibition shuts. Apologies.

I saw this the other day at the Wallace Collection. Which was a bit odd as I’m sure you’ll be aware if you have ever been to the Wallace Collection. The building is a couple of hundred years old and is full of old stuff. Old paintings, statues, suits of armor, antique guns and so on. Even the couches, fittings and banisters are ancient and frequently blocked off by red velvet rope. So it was a bit odd to turn a corner and leave a room filled with 17th Dutch masterpieces and see two long rooms filled with Hirst’s ‘Blue paintings’.

These paintings were done by Hirst himself! No assistants or anything. They are actual paintings too. I’ve never rated Damien Hirst much, so I thought I’d go and see what he’s like as a solitary painter.

To be honest, they were ok. That’s all. Sorry if you were expecting more depth but there you go. The blue skull at the top of this post was one of the better paintings. There were also three others that had a ghostly figure facing a kind of translucent blue forest that I particularly liked. The rest were just alright. There were strong hints of Francis Bacon but they were nowhere near his league.

These were my favourites.

So there you go. Fairly average would be my overall review. Some good bits but overall I left fairly underwhelmed. It was free and in a cool building I’d never visited before, so it was worth it.

This exhibition has finished now but the Wallace Collection is a brilliant place. I’d highly recommend it. There will be two big rooms with different stuff in it now as well.

The marvellous Garden Gate

If you sat down and totalled the amount of hours I have spent in this pub, then you have way too much time on your hands. In my defense, I used to live quite near. See the picture above? On the left hand side of the photo , just past where the tree is providing shade on the footpath, you can see the beginnings of a road that goes behind the pub. I used to live down there with two friends who liked a drink. So it wasn’t really my fault.

Anyway, the pub. It is situated in South End Green, which is an area down the hill past the Royal Free Hospital. The pub itself is really near the overland train stop for Hampstead Heath. Which means I have to walk past it every time I go to work, which can be pretty painful!

In the summer, it has one of the nicest beer gardens in London. In the winter it can be really warm and cosy with candles and couches and games and hot wine and so on.

The clientele is pretty mixed but tends towards well to do 20 – 30 somethings. But not always. Very nice atmosphere generally.

The food isn’t specular, no matter how many succulent sounding adjectives they chuck in the menu descriptions but the beer and wine come in wide varieties and are cheap. So who cares about the food. The staff are very friendly and efficient but if you get a sudden influx of people a queue for a drink can form alarmingly quickly. I have frequently switched from Guinness to lager purely because I’ve gotten bored waiting and can get a lager a minute or two quicker.

I once stood at the bar next to Simon Pegg in this pub and later had a piss at the urinal next to Chris Martin from Coldplay. So it’s clearly an exciting venue.

I would highly recommend this place. It’s a friendly local with a lot going for it. If you’re lucky you will meet the three legged dog that makes an appearance at the end of an evening too. I assume it’s with a human but never really noticed.

UPDATE: I went here last night and have to say that the food has massively improved. The burger I ate was top notch! My wife’s pork belly was pretty damn good too.

The Flask. Doesn't it look nice?

Address: Flask Walk, Hampstead
Directions: Come out of Hampstead tube and turn left down the hill. Flask walk is a pedestrian road on your left between a bakery and a North African restaurant. You should also pop into the 2nd hand bookshop on this ‘walk’ as it is really cool. (Narrow passages, piles of old books, eccentric but helpful owner, loads of great stuff.)

I decided to write this one first as I happen to be sitting in it right now. So it’s obviously pretty good.

The Flask is a pretty decent pub and probably my main drinking spot if I happen to be on Hampstead high street. It is divided into two sections in an old school kind of way. As you face it, there is a public bar on the left and a saloon bar on the right. The public bar is where the locals hang out and there is a flat-screen tv playing sport or news or something. But silently, which is a bonus. The saloon bar is where you would take a lady-friend and is bigger with lots of seats.

It is a Youngs pub and slightly pricey but you’re in Hampstead for christ’s sake. Everything is more expensive.

It is an old pub and therefore has character and everything. It has a lot of old pictures of Hampstead and Victorian drawings and that old style of opaque glass. It even has a fireplace. As atmospheres go, it is usually quite quiet and feels a teeny bit artificially old – like an O’Neil’s feels artificially Irish. That said, it is actually pretty old, 200 years in fact, but it has obviously been refurbished a bit. Maybe I’m being a bit unfair as it is nice, steeped in history, and nicely done out. Especially if you are near the front.

I’d recommend coming here if you happen to be out in Hampstead and the other half is shopping and you feel like a quiet pint. It is pricey but nice. Cosy-ish but a bit sterile. If you want an older more intimate atmosphere, I’d thoroughly recommend the Hollybush up the steep road opposite the tube.

The Flask is a decent place. I’m drinking there right now. Nothing more needs to be said.

Well, I went to the carnival. I last went about 8 years ago with my ex-girlfriend and a couple of her friends. None of my mates wanted to go. I drank a gallon of Red-Stripe, lamented the state of the toilets, saw about three floats, hated most of the music, loved all the food, and then when persuaded to go home at about six demanded a trip to the pub.

This time it was exactly the same, except I’m married.

I don’t know why I don’t really like the carnival. It’s probably that it just seem a lot of grief – crowds, shuffling slowly through dancing people, piles of rubbish and a massive walk to the tube. All for very little reward. If I want to see a load of drunk people I’ll go to Soho or a park. If I want to eat West Indian food, I’ll go to a restaurant. If I want big crowds, music, expensive beer, and an extended journey home where I have to walk extra miles for transport – I’ll go to a gig at Wembley. You rarely see that many of the floats and when you do, you get bored after 4 or 5 of them. Plus there are now so many police you get paranoid that something must be about to kick off at any moment.

My wife got her master’s degree (one of them) in Louisiana and she insists I will love the New Orleans Mardi more. It has the drink and food and music but you get the added bonus of women flashing their breasts. Introduce that to the carnival and I’ll change my mind.

I think I’d just be happier eating jerk chicken in a strip club. But then I could have told you that before I went.