Dear Readers,
Good afternoon, and welcome back to Capital Letter.
The weather has been sublime lately, and it is once again time to get out into your favourite parks and let the longer hours linger. We’ve got some warm weather advice for you further down the line.
For now, the most important piece of news to note is that the Official Capital Letter Map has been recently updated and revamped and the link is readily available at the bottom of the newsletter, just below the sign off, for paid subscribers only. We do hope you enjoy and use it, we’ve included some advice on how to get the most out of it in its new form. For those of you who aren’t fully paid up, we do recommend it, as this is just one element of a growing number of exclusive features you will not have access to. If you truly aren’t willing, that’s okay, and don’t fret, there will still be lots of lovely content to enjoy.
With that in mind, we’ve got some recommendations on music and theatre, thoughts on going out for breakfast and London’s most unlikely spa. There’s a trip to the latest boozer-turned-gastropub but we start with two top tips.
Fait du Soleil
As the weather is wonderful right now, the blue skies are set to continue all over the weekend. If you’re heading to the Heath and you want to swerve the crowds with their clanging blue bags of hummus and beers, then we know just the place, in fact, it’s probably the finest prospect in London, far fairer than Primrose Hill or Greenwich Observatory, and considerably more private.
Go past the milling tourists at Kenwood and head up the hill to the Dairy, and continue onto the tree line, and you will find yourself in the West Meadow, 20 minutes from a Tube station and on such a considerable incline that you will find yourself with few others for company, all while you take in the spread of the city before you.
Many north Londoners try to gatekeep the meadow – now, the secret is open to all.
What’s Done Cannot Be Undone
Located in Hoxton, The Macbeth is an old boozer recently reinvented as a gastropub by Jamie Allan, the chef behind The Plimsoll and Tollingtons. Many food-fluencers have been singing its praises, but is it actually any good? This newsletter cannot be swayed by a PR’s flattery, nor does it look fondly on the ‘pub model’ which restauranteurs seem to have embraced with unseemly haste.
We started with the smoked eel, which comes mixed with crunchy shoestring fries and a chopped egg. It’s a nice, light affair, though fans of the underrated ray-finned fish would be better served by the smoked eel sandwich at Quo Vadis. Salt cod fritters came next, which were delicious. The last small plate was the only underwhelming one: a thin, chewy pork steak covered in a thin curry sauce.
From there, we had the prego, a steak sandwich on ciabatta bread served in a rich peppercorn sauce. Phenomenal. The second was its pork cousin, the bifana. We don’t really care for food fascism, but here the cheese was just excessive. In a meal full of salt and rich heavy flavours, it wasn’t really what we wanted.
And my god, the salt. Taken individually, each dish – barring our pork steak – was pretty great. Eating them together became a war. Our tenacity called for pudding in the form of tres leches, a hulking dessert of white cake soaked in condensed milk and covered in vanilla whipped cream. It was the best thing we ate all evening.
So, is this a place we really recommend? Well, we wouldn’t recommend coming here for a complete meal. You absolutely can come in here for drinks alone, as the front section of the room is mostly for the drinkers. But again, there are better boozers to be had. To get the most out of this place, you have to embrace the gastropubiness of it all, and accept neither half of the portmanteau will be fully satisfied. You’ll find a decent pint and some nice morsels at The Macbeth, but you will not find a full, square meal.
Between the River and the Sea
The new show upstairs at the Royal Court is called Between The River and The Sea, and as the deliberately provocative title suggests, it’s about Palestine. It joins an interesting class of shows that have been on in the capital that have tried to contend with the events of the past several years. Palestine: Peace de Resistance, Walking the Tightrope, A Grain of Sand, In Transit, Return to Palestine, Nowhere and A Knock On The Roof which played at the Royal Court last year. Indeed, the Court’s programming on this front is, frankly, quite unusual. All these other shows – barring A Grain of Sand, which had a short run at the Barbican – only played in smaller spaces. You won’t find them making a West End transfer or appearing on NT Live any time soon.
So, is this one worth catching? We reckon so. Fundamentally, this is a simple, one-person show, so if you’re interested in big sets and spectacles, it might not be one for you. Crucially, however, its co-writer and performer, Yousef Sweid, is an excellent performer. Funny and captivating, it is incredibly easy to spend an hour in his company.
His life, on which the story is based, is equally interesting. As a Palestinian-Israeli-Arab-Christian, born in Haifa and living in Berlin, he is a man caught in the middle. Much of the pressure of the story is about the pressure to take a side, and not really knowing who one is when caught in the crossfire. The play works because, although Sweid’s experience is quite specific, that feeling of being unsure what to say, how to say it and how one feels is an increasingly universal one.
The production benefits heavily from Isabella Sedlack’s simple direction. With a microphone, Sweid conjures up his father, his childhood self, his friends, his children, using it as a prop to augment his physicality. And everything is kept light and simple, a fact that makes difficult conversations with his Israeli and Palestinian friends after 7 October all the more impactful.
The show has largely received its deserved plaudits, although some apparently found Sweid switching between characters confusing… we’re not quite sure how. But there is a fair critique to be made: this is not a starkly political show, its ending is open and rather sweet, and some of the more difficult questions are not fully tackled.
For our money, though, this isn’t really a bug, and it’s much more a feature. As Sweid opens the show by saying that this is not a story about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it’s a show about his divorce. As the story ends with a utopian vision of the Middle East his son has written for school, this feels like a genuine claim.
Our only problem came with the final conversation with the divorce lawyer. The analogy between his divorce and the pressure he feels to take sides over Palestine feels uncharacteristically forced. But otherwise, this is the epitome of successful one-person theatre: simple, funny, intimate and well worth a visit.
A Slice of Ham, Two Eggs and Chips
How many of our readers regularly partake of a breakfast meeting? You really should try it, for a new panorama of the city unveils itself in the morning, in the caffs, at Claridges and at restaurants like Maison Francois in St James’s, which at 8 o’clock in the morning is packed to the gills with gileted PE buccaneers tucking into buttermilk pancakes and bacon.
Now, Simpsons-in-the-Strand is making a big play for the company credit card-wielding early risers with a breakfast menu in the wood-panelled Grand Divan room that offers the ‘10 Deadly Sins’: prepare yourself for bubble and squeak, devilled kidneys, fried bread and a lamb chop alongside all the usual suspects, and for only £28.75.
On our visit on a Monday morning, the vaulting room was agreeably empty of customers, with only three tables taken, and a panoply of uniformed staff hovering, making the whole affair feel a bit like a deleted scene from The Shining. Somewhat ironically, this is London’s hottest ticket, and we really do recommend an early visit if you want to drink in the room without worrying about bumping into Piers Morgan or Joan Collins or any of the other famouses celebrating their visit to Jeremy King’s latest triumph on Instagram.
But who will be coming here for a 50-quid-a-head breakfast? We can’t see the Voguettes on John Adam Street wending their way over for a gutbusting repast. The barristers – who are very much local to the place – are WFHing these days. For now, breakfast at Simpsons is a wonderfully surreal affair, and we heartily recommend it to you.
Are We Recommending Cafe OTO? We Are Recommending Cafe OTO
Friday night has a bevvy of nightlife and musical options, but here are a couple you may have overlooked. The first is a night of Sahroui music at Jamboree in Kings Cross, an odd little bar/venue down a side street that’s a rather pleasant visit. The music looks promising with a headline act of Arfoud Brothers & Sisters, a 10-piece band from the Sahara (see the video below), and DJs until 2:30 in the morning. More of a classic party can be found on Commercial Road courtesy of Big Squeeze Soul. This one looks especially exciting thanks to the DJ talent of Charlie Dark MBE, a true legend of the scene. Lastly, if you wanting something more relaxed and arty, there’s the donut jam out in Peckham, a night of jamming where (especially post-midnight) a lot of London’s UK jazz scene congregates to play some pretty exciting stuff, all with live, equally improvised visuals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNHIOhwh7fg
On Sunday, the ubiquitous legends of UK dub Channel One Soundsystem are at Village Underground. They are an outfit that definitely attract one or two dub-obsessed wrong ‘uns, but they are truly class operators, and a great night of music is a guarantee. If you are dub-inclined yourself, the week after sees the one-year anniversary of Slick N Bobby’s monthly dub residency in Brixton – a unique affair for their dub sets, which feature a live band, rather than just the DJ’d stuff.
Monday night has an interesting prospect in cm.Peace, who are at Cafe OTO. As with all things at Cafe OTO, it can get quite weird, but often in an interesting way. This time, the pairing of a DJ and a sushi chef that together make up cm.Peace are at the venue for the whole weekend, with a big night of music to round off the bank holiday.
Spa Town
The Kilburn High Road is not one of London’s most relaxing thoroughfares. The most regular comment in the reviews of the Kilburn High Road’s McDonald’s relates to people having fights with the staff. The second most common refers to the number of crack addicts there are in the loos. However, it wasn’t always thus. The Kilburn High Road was once synonymous with rest and relaxation – the go to place for Londoners to relax and take the waters at the natural spa which bubbled up roughly where Kilburn High Road Overground Station stands today.
The natural hot spring was almost certainly known to the small community of nuns who existed at Kilburn Priory between 1130 and 1540. It was definitively rediscovered and commercialised at the end of the 17th century when the owners of the Bell Inn constructed a well and a pleasure garden to enable the public to relax. Other wells – such as those at Clerkenwell and at Sadlers Wells – were available, but Kilburn was thought to excel in its charm and rurality. In 1773, a London magazine called The Public Advertiser described the situation thus:
The waters now are in the utmost perfection: the gardens enlarged and greatly improved; the house and offices re-painted and beautiful in the most elegant manner. The whole is now open for the reception of the public, the great room being particularly adapted to the use and amusement of the politest companies. Fit either for music, dancing or entertainment. This happy spot is equally celebrated for its rural situation, extensive prospects, and the acknowledged efficacy of its water.
Today, the only remnants of what was once London’s premier health resort are the Old Bell, which is a Victorian building on the site of the inn which first capitalised on the natural spring and a plaque, on the other side of the railway bridge, just above the sign for Franco Manca, which alerts the visitor to the existence of the Kilburn Wells. Continue your stroll along the Kilburn High Road and breathe in the relaxing atmosphere of the place.
Well, that’s everything for this week, unless of course, you are a paid subscriber, in which case, scroll down for your newly updated map and some notes on how to use it. Otherwise, we’ll see you in a fortnight, a bi-weekly schedule that is soon to be shaken up, again for paying subscribers only! There’s never been a better time to go for it.
All the best,
TF
The Official Capital Letter Map
Just a reminder, as a few of you have been asking, that you can access the map on this link here. It’s just been updated and will remain so!
We thought we’d offer a couple of tips on all its glory too. The drinkeries and eateries are all fairly obvious – we’ve been there, we’ve liked it. We’ve added in a bit more specificity to the map, though. All proper boozers are marked with a brown beer mug; other drinking establishments get the ritzy red martini glass so you know at a glance what kind of drink is on offer. Likewise, the eateries have been categorised along that vulgar but efficient spectrum known as the price range. Green are cheap eats, reds are pricey, the yellows are in the middle.
You will also see a host of new icons dotting the map, which should tell you at a glance what kind of thing we’ve pinned. The funnest of these new icons has its own ‘layer’ on the map, and this is the ‘Historical Figures in London’ section. We’ve done Baldwin, and more are to come. Soon you will be able to trace history’s greats around the capital just by lining up the dots made by their portraits.
A reminder, if you are only interested in one aspect, or layer, of the map, you can turn them on and off with the little checkboxes next to each subheading. And finally, a promise that we are steadily working through and adding our own custom descriptions to each entry, so you know exactly what you’re getting.
There it is, the Capital Letter map. Do let us know what you make of it, and anything else you’d like to see added to it.