It's all gravy

Despite my Brutalist London map only being published at the tail-end of last year, there has been a sense of growing worry around managing to see everything on the #brutaltour. Not, as you might expect, because of my inertia and poor planning, but as the realisation that many of the buildings/estates on the list – including Robin Hood Gardens, Thamesmead, and the recently sold Welbeck Street car park -  have been marked for redevelopment or are in the process of being demolished.

This was a fact that became all too apparent when I went to Google Keybridge House, an ex-BT telephone exchange once voted the ugliest office block in London that even Nikolaus Pevsner described as ‘foreboding’ – to find not only had it been condemned, it had already been razed to the ground.

Fortuitously, the sense of failure of not being even a third of the way through and already usurped by the plot to turn ‘Nine Elms’ into an extension of London's playground for the rich, was soon replaced by a lucky discovery. American artist Rachel Champion had been commissioned to create a garden using the rubble from Keybridge House, and it was on display through June as part of the South Bank Chelsea Fringe Festival. Which is how I came to be up bright and early on a Saturday, weaving past the Friday night stragglers in the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, on my way to try and salvage the situation (badum-tish). 

New Spring Gardens was, as promised, a 'garden' made of rubble in one of the railway arches on Newport Street. Whatever your thoughts on the hulking monolith from which this pile of concrete was wrought, I found it pretty poignant, standing amongst the clumps of grass and piles of brick dust, thinking of all the other buildings that may soon join Keybridge in a ignominious end.

As we were in the area, we took a little detour to see Jeff Koons's exhibition at the Newport Gallery. Officially titled 'Now', I unofficially christened it 'But, is it Art?', which was also the question I asked the Ewing every time she stopped to look at the exhibits (and a fine example of putting my art history degree to good use).

I think she was pretty happy when I left her in peace to look around the motley collection of plastic garden chairs, porn and stainless steel 'balloons', and went on a recce to find somewhere for a, well needed, beer. That somewhere was the Zeitgeist, Vauxhall's very only German pub, where all draught beers are a fiver a pint and pretzels grow on wooden trees on the bar. Now that's the kind of interactive installation I'm interested in.

At the risk of repeating myself every time I actually get my act together to write a blog (finally trek somewhere ‘on the radar’/ look at some concrete/eat lunch/have an ice cream), an afternoon in the Zeitgeist beer garden meant I was looking forward to finally visiting the original Clapham branch of Flip and Dip for dinner. 

Prior to our visit I had already spent a considerable while pouring over the glistening patties and squeezy cheese on F&D's social media feed, and in a saturated (boom) market it’s a testament that their offerings still manage to stand out  - mainly thanks to the addition of sliced roast meat (lamb or beef) and troughs of dipping gravy, based on LA's french dip sandwiches, that accompany their signature burgers. 

The drinks are notable too - we enjoyed jugs of Sambrooks Wandle, brewed down the road in Battersea and tin cups of extra thick Cherry Ripe milkshake, based on the Antipodean cherry and coconut chocolate bar, that got the Ewing grinning/grimacing.

The Flip and Dip, with roast beef and extra green chilli, was, hands down, the best burger I have had for a long time. It wasn’t easy to eat, nor was it dignified, but the combo of double beef (both perfectly cooked to a blushing pink) cheese sauce, pickles and chillies, with judicious dipping in to the drippings - saved from roasting their huge joints of meat - between bites (in case of bun disintegration), proves that southern girls love gravy, too.

Apparently, some people apparently don’t rate the cheese sauce - lurid orange stuff, that oozed like a magma flow down my wrists as I held my burger aloft – these people are wrong. It’s wonderful gloopy stuff, that can also be requested smothered across your fries, although we left ours naked for better gravy penetration. Only a great deal of willpower and my last remaining shreds of dignity stopped me licking the tray after taking this picture.

I have also decided - following my last blog and with the reasoning that I needed something to cheer me up after a ‘turbulent’ few weeks in the real world - that all blog posts over the summer (which is supposedly going on right now, if you haven’t noticed) will end with ice cream, Because everyone loves ice cream.

As there aren’t any puds on offer at Flip and Dip, we took the tube back to the Edgware Road, where the sultry humidity made it the perfect opportunity for booza al haleb, a pistachio-studded Syrian ice cream with the addition of mastic that gives it a ‘chewy’ texture while stopping it’s descent into a milky puddle in hot climates. 

A useful trait for a frozen dessert both in Damascus or sitting sweltering by the fountains at Marble Arch, from under who’s marbled columns I could just about see the Grade II listed Centre Point. The Seifert designed tower block may remain a divisive building - Pevsner called 'coarse in the extreme' - but it gives me comfort that there's still a future for concrete.

Moo and Modernism too

I usually find family occasions fraught with difficulty. Not, as you may think, because I don't like my my relatives - in fact, quite the contrary, I love spending time with them - but more the difficulty in finding things that are going to please everyone, with ages ranging from six months to sixty something, especially when it comes to eating. 

A case in point came recently when I found everyone would be descending on East London for a mini reunion. My first thoughts, after the excitement of seeing everyone, of course - turned to Tayyabs lamb chops, Beigel bake's hand carved salt beef and Orange Buffalo's spicy wings. Well, at least until I heard my cousin - a former globetrotter who now has two young children under five - suggesting to my aunt 'chain restaurants are good, all children like chips'.

 

He's right of course, chains can be great and there's plenty of examples where I'd be more than happy to eat fried potatoes with the young ones (sadly not me anymore). So when my aunt sent me the details to our reservation at Moo Cantina - a mini chain with a branch on Brick Lane and a meat-centric menu - for our family lunch, the steaks were high (boom, boom).

Things got off to a good start with a large bottle of Quilmes, a popular (a pretty much the only) Argentinian beer. As with a few weeks ago, when I was chugging cans of PBR along side my fried chicken, it's  sweet, malty beer that doesn't have much going for it on its own, but when served cold slips down deceptively well alongside grilled meats and salty foods.

The sharing starter board, given an atmospherically fuzzy glow through my grease-speckled camera phone lens - was a tasty and interesting assortment of Argentinian chorizo sausage with roasted peppers and onion, lightly battered fingers of fried squid with garlicky mayo, hunks of baguette with a punchy chimichurri sauce and disc that resembled a pancake, but was comprised of gooey, grilled provolone cheese.

It was nice to see chancho, a hunk of grilled pork collar, on the menu, and it didn't disappoint. Served simply with a sauce criolla - a fresh onion, pepper and tomato salsa - a rocket salad, and a side of excellent sweet potato fries, and all with change from a tenner.

We also sampled couple of incarnations of the eponymous 'free range beef sourced from lush grass fed cattle'. Firstly a flank steak - 200g, grilled and served with a salad and fries for £12 at lunchtime, which proved a well-flavoured strip of meat, served with charred edges and a nicely pink centre. There was also the Lomito Porteno a rib eye sandwich with roasted peppers and provolone cheese advertised on the menu as 'one of the top ten sandwiches in the UK'. While I'm not sure who made the pronouncement, I'm pretty sure my cousin Will was in agreement.

While tempted by the smoke sausage platter, served with the curious addition of guacamole, in the end the Ewing attempted to compensate from the previous night's excess with the 'seasonal' salad. Thankfully chunks of avocado meant she didn't miss out on her vitamin E, alongside flame grilled peppers and fresh peppers, and crisp chicken strips, all nestled on a bed of well-dressed leaves (insert joke about East London fashion here). 

The younger contingent were also well catered for with a very good grilled chicken sandwich, stuffed with mozzarella and tomato; Moo burgers and chips; and a big platter of nachos to share. We also shared some interesting sides including the Salad Olivier, a kind of ensalada russa of diced boiled potato, carrot and peas, dressed with mayo; and a Revuelto Gramajo, a dish of scrambled eggs with 'onion, ham, peas and fries'.

Who could resist the lure of a desert named Sweet Tony, a toffee and chocolate mousse with cream and strawberries. Certainly not the Ewing, who enjoyed it, although not as much as my Uncle enjoyed his carajillo (coffee with cognac, or in his case, amaretto) the beloved beverage of Spanish bin men, served here in wine glasses and a steal at only four pounds.

From being somewhere central, where we could all get together and eat chips and drink wine, Moo ended up exceeding all our expectations. While the food was decent, and decently priced, where they really impressed was with the charming service. From stowing our assorted luggage, to re-configuring the furniture, to expertly dividing sandwiches to stop pre-teenage squabbles, and being delightful with baby Louis, nothing was too much trouble.

While the rest of the family rolled, contentedly, back towards Stoke Newington, we took the opportunity to chalk off stop three of the Brutal Tour with a visit to One Moorgate Place, home of Institute of Chartered Accountants' Hall. More accurately we where here to see William Whitfield's 60's extension, constructed in a Modernist style that's quite at odds with the Victorian neo-Baroque styling of the original building.

When I was growing up our neighbours, who lived directly opposite, decided to paint the front of their garage with large colourful blocks that resembled a Mondrian painting. Which might have looked pretty incongruous on a warehouse door in backstreet in Whitechapel, but rather less so when attached to a house in leafy Buckinghamshire.

While I’m not sure their impressionist recreation was quite to my parent’s more modest (not modernist) tastes, I was rather a fan of the bold colours that brightened up my dreary provincial view; which is exactly how I felt when I saw the Brutalist extension to the Hall. The incongruousness of the addition is, for me, the epitome of what makes the juxtaposition of London’s architecture – this time as part of the very same building - so thrilling. 

You can read more about the whole building here. I'm just waiting for the currant refurbishment works to take place so I can go for lunch at One Moorgate Place, the restaurant found in the basement of the hall. I wonder if they serve chips...

More Buildings and a Camden Bird

 

So I came back to Camden; the scent of poppers and jerk chicken; the bobbing sea of electric-dyed hair and shiny piercings that glint in the sunlight reflected off the Regent’s canal. It’s almost enough to make me feel nostalgic for the mornings spent pouring over bootlegged records and cones of chips and afternoons drinking lager in sticky-carpeted pubs. *almost*.

On this occasion there was little time for reminiscing as we were heading for brunch at Bird – the third branch of the fried chicken and doughnut mini-chain - before schlepping out to the far North west corner of the borough for the second stop on the Brutaltour.

Even better, they were having a delayed soft launch on our visit, with 50% off food for the weekend. Although our eagerness to eat chicken and drink beer, coupled with a delay in opening their doors, meant we had half an hour to browse the market and reminisce about our misspent youth. Although in my heyday it was more about Cyberdog and Nirvana T-shirts as opposed to the posh coffee and nitrogen ice cream I enjoyed on my last visit.

Anyway, back to brunch, and Bird stands out on the Kentish Town Road with its bright orange crest of a sign. Inside is kitted out with all the exposed brick and strip lighting you could wish for, although the tunes were resolutely old school, the highlight being Ja Rule and J Lo’s ‘I’m Real’ a song that not only does The Ewing know all the words to, but had also invented a little dance as she sang along. The best entertainment while waiting for our food.

The hipster-ness is cranked up to eleven with a beer menu that offers PBR, the sweet and fizzy American lager from Milwaukee that has found favour with the new beard and plaid generation who work in urban lofts rather than sawmills. It may have all the complexity of a pint of R Whites but, like the lemonade, when served ice cold it makes a great foil to spice and grease.

The waffles served with my fried chicken were delicately pale, like my Irish ancestors (I, sadly, inherited the pink gene), and I feared undercooked clagginess. Thankfully, my suspicions were unalloyed as the ‘doneness’ was spot on; crisp without and fluffy within. They also paired very well with the crisp-crusted chicken and side of smoky maple syrup - a winning combo if you like that sweet and savoury thing.

In comparison the star of the show, the fried chicken, was somewhat lacklustre, which was a shame as the whole concept hinges on it. It wasn’t bad, per se, but at seven quid for a drumstick and a small chunk of breast, it didn’t compare to a recent visit to Chick N Sours and was probably on par with the fast-food variety box I may have drunkenly consumed last weekend. Wings fared better and I liked the Nashville extra hot sauce, even if it lacked the powerful chilli punch the name suggested.

Sides wise, we both hungrily fought over the cheesy korean cheese fries with house kewpie mayo and gochujang glaze - which were excellent, although conservatively portioned – but the pickled cucumber was a bit of a let-down, featuring a few wan slices of fruit in an unremarkable dressing that made me want to visit Silk Road where they know how to smack a cucumber up.

While the Ewing was disappointed they didn’t run the full gamut of deserts offered at their other branches – including the retro banana split with squirty cream – I was more than happy they had freshly baked doughnuts, and even more so when I saw one of the daily flavours was cinnamon sugar. For me this was the highlight of brunch; a fluffy orb of warm dough, generously stuffed with vanilla ice cream and decorated with plenty of strawberry sauce and the aforementioned aerosol cream.

The bill came in at thirty quid, which included tip and a seventeen pound soft opening discount for the food. Decent value with the money off, but had we paid in full I think the phrase cheap at half the price would have been more apt. Still, not a bad option if you’re in the area and with a fried chicken and blue collar beer craving.  You can also grab fresh doughnuts to takeaway, available fresh daily, from 11 until sold out.

After lunch we made the second stop on my Brutalist architecture adventure that took us over Primrose Hill (it's windy there, but the view is so nice) to the magnificent Alexandra and Ainsworth Estate.

After first seeing the estate featured in the final episode of Prime Suspect I've wanted to visit Rowley Way and, even on a steel grey February afternoon, it didn't disappoint. Like it or loathe it this is an estate with real character, from the grey and green concrete to the bright blue railings. There's also a huge number of palm trees and tropical plants on the balconies, giving a whole new meaning to urban jungle.

This distinguished development was designed in 1968 by Neave Brown of Camden Council's Architects Department as an attempt to eschew the high rises that were cropping up across the capital and an answer to London's social housing shortage. Completed in 1978 the estate is constructed from site-cast, unpainted reinforced concrete, so beloved of the brutalists, and in 1994 became the first post-war council housing estate to be Grade II listed.

Instead of building up into the skies, he favoured a Ziggurat design of successively receding split level maisonettes, each with their own private outdoor area. This design also means the higher block directly adjacent to the railway line acts as a noise barrier that blocks the noise of the trains.

A must see for any modernists, and if you fancy seeing what's behind the frosted glass, look out for Open House London in September where selected flats on the A&A Estate can often be visited. Find out more about the place - including a chance to watch 'One Below the Queen: Rowley Way Speaks for Itself', a film featuring the estate's residents - link.