Lambchops at GUNPOWDER, A Dangerous Encounter in India

Many things are said about what it’s like landing in India for the first time. People say it’s an assault on the senses. People warn you about the heart-breaking poverty. And of course there’s the sweltering heat.

Stepping out of Delhi airport as a young backpacker in the 90’s, it was of course all of these things. But first things first: I had to deal with a more unnerving, if revealing, introduction to this incredible, if often unfathomable, country. Collapsing onto the hot sticky seats of the airport bus, an array of alarming signs accosted my tired jet-lagged eyes:

Cinnamon Buns & Childhood memories, SOLLY'S BAGELRY (Vancouver)

"In the mind’s eye, a fractal is a way of seeing infinity.”

James Gleick, from Chaos, 1987

“We saw shadows of the morning light

the shadows of the evening sun
till the shadows and the light were one.”

Jane's Addiction, from Three Days, Ritual de lo Habitual, 1990.

By opening time at 7am, the smells of warm dough and coffee are already swirling around Solly's bakery and the place is a buzz with bagel worshippers, bleary-eyed commuters, and caffeine-fixers. The counters burgeon with bagels high-stacked in assorted pyramids: poppy-seed, sesame-seed, onion, cinnamon and plain. But my senses are invariably drawn to the inviting tray of cinnamon buns and chocolate babkas; cuboid confectionery etched with characteristic spirals; an array which bedazzles the eyes with an optic illusion of rotating bakery. They are alive. They are calling me.

Tacos at SANTO REMEDIO, Travels Down Ol' Mexico Way

It was the summer of ‘95 and I was a 20 year-old medical student wannabe-beat-traveller journeying down Mexico way searching for soul, spirit, tequila, tortilla, dust, desert, nature, adventure, and the wild ol’ mariachi songs of love, tears, hope and death. But not a full-stop. Jack Kerouac didn’t do full-stops and, at that time of my life, the work of this 50’s Mexico-junkie beat-poet was my numero-uno travelling companion. On The Road and Lonesome Traveller: such stories fizzed with words that flowed off the pages like a roaring torrent of energy and life and the beat-spirit pummelled into my brain with force and power and off I went.

On The Road with the ROVING CAFE & the Nomadic Community Gardens

Nomads. We are all nomads at heart. The first humans were hunter-gatherers, and that primal seed still lies somewhere deep inside us.

My own inner nomad started on a trip to Alaska, half a lifetime ago. From Vancouver, three nights atop an open ferry deck, stars above and whales in front (...magical, but bloody freezing…), took me to the old frontier towns of Alaska’s Pacific pan-handle. There, hitching the open road, the jaw-dropping wilderness, the quirky characters, and the exhilarating freedom opened up a can of Kerouac and a crate of Grateful Dead and I was never the same again.

Mash at PITT CUE, London's Evolving

Evolution. Some say the zenith of human intellectual thought and scientific method. The proposition that life evolved through natural selection of the fittest genes, that humans arose over millennia and not created from dust, has forever changed our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world. Whereas the Big Bang theory ripped up Genesis chapter one, Evolution did it for chapter two, putting it squarely in confrontation with religious Creationists ever since. And here we stand today, in a world deluged in violent conflagration between the forces of progressive rational scientific enlightenment and those of a fanatical mediaeval barbarism.

Anyway, on perhaps a lesser scale, there's also a spot of evolution going on in London's food scene.

Ode to Charoseth

Jewish cuisine. To some, an oxymoron. To others, the warmest cosiest hug your stomach could ever have.

Either way, laden with heavy carbs and cloying fat, regular consumption guarantees a lifetime of Gaviscon dependency, with the very real possibility of major cardiovascular surgery by the time you're 60. Or even 50.

But not all Jewish cuisine is the same, there being a rough division between Ashkenazi (communities originating from Eastern Europe) and Sephardi influences (from Spain, Portugal, North Africa and the Middle East).

My family’s origins are Ashkenazi, coming from Latvia and Belarus, amongst others. I do wonder what led my ancestors - back in the day - to settle in these bleaker lands in lieu of warmer, gentler Southern climes...

Mutton at APOLLO BANANA LEAF, Scores On The Doors WTF?

Some restaurants aspire to three-Michelin stars. Others set their sights on glowing press reviews, perhaps a Fay, Jay, Grace or Giles. A TripAdvisor Certificate or perhaps a Time Out award.

However, in the bustling saturated world of restaurant evaluation – what with all those annoyingly excitable bloggers armed with camera phones [eh humm cough]– there is still one code of merit which rises above them all. What is this cherished accolade, you may wonder, that make countless eateries across the land festoon their frontages with its myriad shiny green labels.

Scores on the F**king Doors. What is that about?