FOOD & DRINK

🥯 Suddenly there are NYC-style bagel joints fighting it out to be the chewiest, most schmear-loaded and authentic around…and the crowds are seemingly insatiable

Primrose Hill’s much-anticipated new opening, It’s Bagels, has been causing scenes of well-behaved pandemonium over recent days.

Having played a masterful promo game on socials and in the press, the first dedicated store for the brand - which originally began as a pop-up at North Rd’s Caravan Coffee Roastery Brewbar last summer - has almost proved too successful.

With this monster queue videoed snaking quite literally around the block at 9am last Saturday, local chatter is all about 1-hour waits and mixed-up orders, but we nevertheless can confirm that the bagels are pretty damn good (see below) if you try and visit off-peak, when you might even get a seat.

It doesn’t look like Regent’s Park Rd’s sudden explosion of bagel mania is going to quieten down anytime soon either, as established local bakery Roni’s are preparing to open imminently just across the road, in the former site of La Ferme restaurant.

Roni’s has grown from the West Hampstead original to currently boasting six branches dotted across this part of North London, and are also famed for their own chewy bagels, so they’re already big in the game.

New Yorkers have seemingly forever complained that you ‘can’t get a decent bagel’ in London, so perhaps this particular food myth is finally being laid to rest right here and now.

Established operators like Daniel’s up on Finchley Rd, Panzers over in St John’s Wood may have something to say about that, of course, but with a stylish NYC-influenced interior, It’s Bagels is definitely raising the game - and they’ve clearly struck a chord with London’s trend-driven food obsessive flocks.

EVEN MORE BAGEL NEWS

• 🥯 Perhaps sensing the opportunity, mini-chain BBagel (who you may know from Tottenham Court Rd or Old Compton St) are preparing to take over the defunct Burger King site on Camden High Street next month.

• 🥯🥯 Meanwhile another locally-born bakery sensation - Gail’s - will finally be opening their new head office and training facility soon, offering breads, pastries and - yes, sourdough bagels - at Hawley Wharf.

• 🥯🥯🥯 Stoke Newington’s bagel deli and Middle Eastern breakfast champs The Good Egg are also soon to arrive in the increasingly impressive line-up at Stables Market North Yard.

KIOSK

We 💗 magazines, and coffee, and lovely new ventures on the high street - so this spot is ticking ALL the boxes

News & Coffee is the Barcelona-founded enterprise that’s rebooting the humble street kiosk for the modern era.

There’s nothing remotely radical about offering nice things to read alongside doses of caffeine in a small booth on the pavement - that trad news stand routine been going on for over 150 years.

But the hyper-curated experience of these new kiosks (you’ll find one outside Holborn tube and the other, pictured above, on Chalk Farm Rd just up from the Roundhouse) is thoroughly of the now.

The mag selection draws on best of the new wave of design-led lifestyle, fashion and special interest titles you may be familiar with if you’re a fan of magCulture (who’s podcast we raved about here), while the coffee is their own blend, available fresh by the cup or in cold brew cans, plus there are pods and beans to take home.

Unlike some other European cities that cling on, London’s newsagents, stands and cheery Evening Standard vendors have largely been obliterated by the move to digital, so N&C establishing two new franchises here in Camden is also a great signal for how we can reimagine the high street, as retail faces the same disruptive digital forces.

Find out more about these two stylish new streetside pit-stops on their website, where you can also catch live DJ sessions that pipe through from News & Coffee stands in Marseille, Barcelona or elsewhere.

• 📰 As our longer-term readers will remember, Camdenist loves print media and we produce occasional magazines of our own - here’s the last edition as a PDF (you’re welcome) - if you’d like to help us produce the next one, as a contributor or a sponsor, do get in touch.

CAMDENIST INTERVIEW

Exploring friendship, epiphanies and transgender acceptance with Sophie-Grace Chappell

It’s the last in our engaging series of interviews with a few of the guests speaking at the HowTheLightGetsIn festival - which means the event is upon us!

Last chance to get tickets for a 20% Camdenist discount below - and see you at Kenwood for talks, comedy and music all weekend…

This week, we’ve been speaking with Sophie-Grace Chappell, the UK’s first and only openly transgender academic philosopher, about some important ideas that are close to her heart.

She gives a talk tomorrow morning on why we should pay attention to our everyday epiphanies, and explains why they should guide our actions.

We also caught her thoughts on the role of human friendships, and why trans voices are strangely overlooked in the debate around

Read the full interview here.

The world’s largest philosophy and music festival returns to Kenwood House all this weekend. Renowned as a hub for world-leading thinkers, Mercury-prize winning musicians and cutting-edge comedians, this year’s festival sees Ruby Wax, Alastair Campbell, Rory Stewart, Deborah Frances-White, David Baddiel, Michio Kaku and more lock horns over a packed weekend of debates, talks and performances. 20% off full festival tickets when booking here using the code CAM23

🍺 LOOK OUT! Camdenist has teamed up with our favourite pub discount beer scheme City Stack to bring their brilliant beer mat gift packs to HTLGI this weekend. Come and say hello, and make sure to buy a pack or two - they’re the perfect gift, whether that’s for a friend or loved one, or perhaps yourself…

CAMDEN DIARY

Tow path chic, cost-of-lunch crisis and AI prophecies

A new column charting observations and events from a week of life at work and play in the borough…

FRIDAY: To Primrose Hill to see what all the fuss was about over at It’s Bagels, mercifully swerving the aforementioned queues. Plumping for a jalapeño-infused schmear and some top quality lox in an ‘everything’, it was certainly impressive, as was the attention to detail of the NYC-styled interior. Full marks for the framed classic Nas LP Illmatic and the chunky Formica diner tables.

Seeing as the shop’s co-owner is acclaimed Vogue photographer Dan Martensen, the aesthetic of everything is spot on, which lends itself to social posts (and the roadblock crowds that they can generate). This TikTok’er also pointed out there’s a £13 bagel on the menu, which does raise questions over the spiraling cost of grabbing a bite at lunchtime. With many takeout boxes and streetfood dishes now hovering around this mark, many people are simply having to forgo such pleasures and pack a limp sandwich.

You can’t blame the operators, who will be pricing as keenly as their margins allow, but it’s still a fairly eye-popping gear change from a few short months ago. It’s Bagels obviously don’t all cost the premium price, and there’s a real drive towards menus with a range of price points going on at many places right now.

You’ll even find pockets of London’s lunch scene that feel a bit like stepping back in time, due to a combination of keen competition and - we can only assume - more sympathetic rents. Top tip? Head for Leather Lane Market, where the lunchtime stalls’ menus all seem to be happily stuck at 2021 levels.

TUESDAY: An invite to a fashion show on the Quayside at Hawley Wharf (pictured above), where STUD10, Lil’s Clothing and Monochrome LDN were among the recent London College of Fashion graduate designers involved. The wind was howling through the railway arches, but that kinda added a befittingly broody atmosphere to this inaugural outdoor runway event, which aims to reclaim Camden Market’s place at the heart of new looks, all during London Fashion Week.

The mix of excited well-styled grads and bemused cagoule-clad blow-ins crossing paths over daytime beers from neighbouring 3 Locks Brewery was suitably and uniquely Camden, that’s for sure. Even with the challenging elements, the waterfront here does make for a dynamic event setting, and its good to see things like this little show bringing a buzz to a corner of the sprawling Market that might be finally finding its identity after over a decade pockmarked by fire, total rebuilding and global pandemic. The clothes were really striking, too. Check the video for more.

WEDNESDAY: An 8:30am start at Holborn’s vast ping pong emporium Bounce (or rather, 90s den of iniquity The Leisure Lounge, as some of us will fondly/hazily first remember it). Midtown business org the Central District Alliance were running a panel discussion on how AI is going to impact the workplace, so it was inevitably a large turnout of the curious, the fearful and the evangelical.

UCL’s Anil Doshi was firmly in the last camp, and talked us excitedly through how fun and handy ChatGPT can be, as long as you always mark its homework. Then a mysterious box came to life containing a kind of hologram of another panelist, showing off his company ARHT’s admittedly impressive tool for upping the stuttering Zoom call game x10, mixing life-size video with in-the-room interactions more convincingly than I’ve seen anywhere before.

Despite all the AI and big tech talk, there was still a point where the audio failed, and he was ‘on mute’. It’s great that ChatGPT can write code and poems and complete grant applications, but when it can sort out the volume levels, only then it will have proved that it has truly overtaken all human intelligence.

MUSIC

3 hot gigs to crawl to this weekend and dance

•  🍻 Inveterate supporters of Camden’s music scene CMDN Live are running a free pub crawl tonight for everyone who buys a ticket to their indie and pop showcase at The Camden Club later in the evening. You’ll visit four watering holes and hear all about their rock ‘n’ roll history, then get to hear Clamber, Lyra, Belle Dame, and Pien! play live.

• 🎸 Over at Chalk Farm’s Roundhouse tonight and also tomorrow, Leeds finest, the Sisters of Mercy headline two shows, with over 30 years of live rock and pop performances, and the dedicated fans to match.

• 💿 It’s only the second ever time that NYC’s party Soul In The Horn with ‘the 45 queen’ Natasha Diggs has been in London, tomorrow (Sat 23rd) at KOKO. Ash Lauryn returns, alongside Glitterbox regular Melvo Baptiste and Brooklyn-based L3NI.

Gig highlights in association with Halibuts.com

FREE RIDES HERE

MORE GOSSIP & THINGS TO DO

• ➡️ The follow-up show to the currently extended run of David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away) at King’s Cross immersive venue Lightroom has just been announced as The Moonwalkers: A Journey with Tom Hanks. It’s the wraparound story of the Apollo missions, and opens in early December with tickets already on sale.

• ➡️ Sad news arrived this week that legendary local purveyor of books, Jon Privett, has died. He was well know as a fixture at both Archway Market, and the floating bookshop Word on the Water, now permanently moored in King’s Cross.

• ➡️ Camden’s now customary extension of Black History Month into a whole autumn season has been announced, with loads of events including supper clubs, music, art, storytelling, shows and celebrations to come.

• ➡️ While the PM might think it’s ok to roll back to ‘cutting the green crap’ once more, Camden Clear Air Initiative want to know your views on sustainability in the borough and beyond, with a quick survey.

• ➡️ Did you spot Eddie Redmayne and the crew shooting a remake of The Day of the Jackal late at night under the canal bridge at Camden Lock earlier this week?

📊 1-CLICK POLL

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