I really want to dance
An XL edition of Stocktake, sent from Luton airport
On Friday night I dined at Little Duck The Picklery and realised that the last time I ate there, it was 2019. I’ve been favouring the group’s newest outpost Camille, and their Soho stalwart Ducksoup, neglecting the option that’s walking distance from my home. At LDTP they add pickled padron peppers to their gilda, which is a smart variation.
After dinner, we strolled to Ellie’s where 74% of the crowd - including Amelia Dimoldenberg - smoked Vogues outside. It’s a good spot for anthropological (outfit) analysis, and after one drink, we walked to Three Sheets, via a peek into Bauhaus and a deliberation of the queue at Roses of Elgabesus. We later returned to Ellie’s for way too many martinis (3 olives, £8 each).
Surveying the Kingsland Strip - the half a mile of bars thriving south of Dalston Junction - it’s fair to say that the always out-out Dalston I moved to in 2016, is back in full swing. The only thing missing is a great place to dance.
Enter Om, a new nightclub from the team behind Brilliant Corners, "mu", Giant Steps and Idle Moments. Where Village 512 once was, we’ll soon have a club open from 6pm-6am every Friday and Saturday. This marks the third site Amit and Aneesh Patel will run in a patch less than 200m long on Kingsland Road – clever. Om’s branding is hot, the sound system will be hotter, and I can’t wait to dance there.
THIS WEEK I WAS TOLD
Jackie O’s order at The Carlyle: Cobb salad, gin and tonic and a cigarette. Alone for lunch, twice a week.
Three well known London chefs are “kickers”. Imagine a) choosing to kick your colleagues and b) kicking becoming a thing you’re known for. Enough.
Women are pushing back on their age going to print. As noted by a New York Times writer, it’s becoming more common for subjects to avoid answering how old they are, or to circumvent the fact checking process. We place way too much emphasis on achievement by a certain age, so I say this is fair game. But what do I know? I’m only 24.
NOTABLE NOURISHMENT
Nicolas Nuvan is brilliant. It’s worth reading this uplifting New York Times feature. Apparently he’s 36.
Selfridges is building an invite-only members club on its fourth floor. Set to be named 40 Duke and opening in Spring 2026, £100m has been secured to design it.
I visited Corner Shop and learnt it’s the first piece of a giant puzzle. A hospitality-living mecca is coming to Temple in 2026.
As other European cities before it have fallen, Athens too succumbs to the smashburger. I’ll admit, the interiors of One Burger are ingenious – an abandoned plot turned space age cave by Snarkitecture.
Each week I learn of someone else on Ozempic. The US is light years ahead of the UK on this, and the unstoppable
- who thrives in conducting refreshing surveys to provide answers for questions of the zeitgeist - dove into patterns of GLP-1 usage from 1039 respondents. The results are staggering.Yorkshire Tea is making iced tea. New this summer, Lemon or Peach & Raspberry flavours offer a homegrown alternative to the boycottable Lipton and Nestea.
Chef and hospitality management roles risk being removed from the skilled worker visa list. In the year leading up to March 2024, 6,203 chefs were granted skilled worker visas in the UK.
If The Bear met Call Me By Your Name, would we get Don’t Call Me Chef? I’ve long been paying attention to Take Away Agency in Paris, a creative agency for culinary stories, and they recently produced a short film with Clotaire Poirier following him along on his pop up cheffing journey.
Bloomberg now has a newsletter on the Business of Food. There are three editions so far on climate change, supply chains and consumer trends in America, Europe and the UK. It looks dry to me, though our beloved giant strawberries make an appearance.
Graydon Carter thinks your Substack is too long. Excellent headline and conversation between EICs on i-D, which sent me down several rabbit holes.
Another grey haired NYC legend featured on i-D yesterday. Keith McNally, interviewed by Nicolaia Rips. I’m halfway through his memoir and I liked this line: like plays and films, restaurants work best when they create their own universe.
MAD is demystifying the sustainability of ingredients. A new content series made for the hospitality industry, with the first issue focusing on salmon.
asked for the things that bring me joy. Explore Dalya Benor’s smart selection of contributors and read my Pleasures list in full.
Fashion writers are skeptical about Gucci’s jelly Marmont bag ads. Not so inventive, these renditions look digitally created and hark back to Dead Hungry’s Bottega Veneta jelly designs from 2021. There’s also the bad copy: “more than just a bag – it’s a craving”.
Everyone wants to be Belmond, or get into bed with Belmond. Their content and activations are unmatched and admiration is at an all time high since the launch of the Britannic Explorer and Sam Youkillis’ trip to Peru. I don’t know anyone who’s paid for a Belmond experience.
This bread bag has over 13,000 likes. Two questions: will the love for Jolene ever wane? What does this say about our collective nervous system? One answer: Studio Frith is behind Jolene’s iconic branding.
Angela Hui is offering unlimited dumplings. Book into Eat Momo on Tuesday night for all you can eat momos at £35pp. A portion of sales will go to Ele Elna Elak, on the ground supporting displaced children in Gaza.
Cavan Power O’Keefe is at Hector’s this Sunday. The perfect place to lunch in London’s (fifth) heatwave.
I’m a Louis Thompson fan girl. If I wasn’t in Mallorca this weekend, you’d find me eating jelly and cream at Quince.
Aren’t we all tired of the endless stasis of cultural peacocking?
Tell a friend about TGITE and follow @the.goal.is.to.eat. More soon!
More info on the kickers pls!?