FOOD & DRINK

Booze-free boozing (without making a big thing about it) really is now possible.

As you may have been reminded - either by an evangelical participant or your own sense of despair six days in - some people are doing a thing called Go Sober For October this month.

Nothing reveals the tortured Great British relationship with alcohol quite like the number of cheery annual initiatives during which the goal is to stop consuming the stuff altogether.

You can even get sponsored for all that inaction, but with 58% of us reportedly drinking for the express purpose of ‘getting drunk’, you could say it’s an achievement of sorts.

However, the welcome rise of grown-up alternatives to ethanol-based drinks is slowly watering down this absurd all-or-nothing approach to moderation, meaning that a night out now offers a genuine choice of boozing, abstention or indeed - 😱 - a little bit of both.

LOW OR NO - SOME LOCAL PLACES TO TRY

• 🍷 The Club Soda Tasting Room on Drury Lane is London’s epicentre of the sober-curious scene, hosting weekly alternative beer, wine and cocktail nights, the LGBTQ-friendly event Queers Without Beers, and running courses to help you drink (or not) more mindfully. Their shop is stocked with loads of cutting edge bottles worth trying, such as Everleaf’s non-alcoholic aperitifs and the impressive range of Moderato 0% wines.

• Over in Marylebone, alcohol-free beer brand Lucky Saint recently acquired their very own pub, pouring their eponymous beer on tap alongside the traditional alcohol-based pints. They have a seriously big selection of other AF drinks available, too, pushing the boundaries of what a proper pub visit can be about.

• Camden High Street’s bring-your-own-bottle underground speakeasy BYOC is an ideal place to go booze-free. Simply take in your low or no alcohol faves and let their in-house mixologists work up the libation creations that are truly worthy of a big night out.

• Hop on the Overground to a railway arch in Hackney Downs to find a completly alcohol-free taproom, courtesy of LOAH beer. Their full fruit-inspired range is available on draft, alongside art and vinyl records for sale, too, all served up in a bright ‘n cheery interior.

CULTURE

Stroll freely amongst the sculptures

The big guns of the art world descend upon Regent’s Park this week as globe-trotting contemporary art fair Frieze celebrates the 20th anniversary of its London edition.

As usual, alongside the big ticket(ed) tents showcasing all the hot new work, plus historic pieces at the accompanying Frieze Masters show, everyone can enjoy the totally free Frieze Sculptures currently dotted around the Royal Park.

That website also offers a handy map and an audio guide to the different pieces and the artists behind them, including Hank William Thomas ‘All Power to the People’ (pictured above) plus 20 others, which remian in situ until the end of the month.

• 🥳 It’s the return of that happy local collision of arts, culture and science that is the Bloomsbury Festival from 13th - 22nd Oct, where the neighbourhood’s enviable collection of institutions and independents celebrate their existence and locale via a programme of live music, dance, talks, art, comedy and fragrant street food.

• The media firepower of the BBC’s Introducing Live talent showcase has helped sell out the 2023 Roundhouse Rising Festival (12th - 14th Oct) which packs in panels, feedback sessions and open mic opportunities for aspiring young musicians. You can, however, still join the waitlist and try your luck for the free tix…

CAMDEN DIARY

Samosa adventures and a vision of the future

Camdenist’s regular column charting observations from a week living, working and playing in the borough…

FRIDAY: Despite the frustrating banality of so much day-to-day life, sometimes that whole outlook can get turned on its head and we seem to have imperceptibly shot forwards to actually be living in something resembling ‘the future’. That’s what it felt like sitting in the Samsung KX store (a shop that doesn’t sell any physical products), having hired a (dockless GPS-enabled) Forest e-bike on the street to get there, and sipping on a non-alcoholic mocktail (see story above) to mark the launch of Camden’s 2023 Black History Season.

It wasn’t so much the dazzle of the huge hi def 8k AMOLED screens or the baked-in diverse, inclusional approach (complete with BSL singing) to counter the usual back-slapping-bloke drinks reception model, which ushered in the start of Black Owned London (BOLO) Fest that did it, although that all certainly helped. It was more the overall feeling of a new understanding of what work, creativity and success even means today, and how we all wish to engage with that.

While the list of upcoming Black History Season events read as fairly unfathomable, overwhelming and confusing, former Mayor Sabrina Francis revealed why they are collectively so important, telling us of the clueless ‘all businesses matter’ messages she receives in response to the BOLO initiatives.

Obviously, in the actual future you’d hope the slow march of equality would render such things happily redundant, but until then, this is all the stuff that hints and nudges us towards progress.

WEDNESDAY: To Drummond Street, where Camden Green Loop were organising a night billed quirkily as the Samosa Walking Tour. The premise was simple; tempt a load of food fans down with the promise of free deep fried delicacies, in the process reminding them about this famous South Asian food strip, which has been so badly impacted by upheaval from the ongoing National Embarrassment© known as HS2.

Free food always means excited diners. We joined a gaggle of them inside Gupta’s, the Indian sweets and savories shop whose Punjabi-style samosas have been called ‘the most authentic in London’ in the Evening Standard. They were indeed damn good. We then all crammed variously into Masala King, Diwana’s and Ravi Shankar, too, ending up at the other end of the road in the green-lit subterranean dining caves under Chutney’s, who’d laid on one of the street’s legendary eat-till-you-drop buffets.

A celeb judging panel, including Empireland author Sathnam Sanghera, dished out an award - to Diwana’s - for the best samosa of the lot. They were very pleased. The manager had earlier told us he’d been working in the restaurant for 35 years, and that the menu had changed even less than the wood-paneled decor, which is so firmly 1970s that it surely needs some kind of listed historic status.

The whole occasion, with its delightfully excited attendees, cramped and totally unreconstructed dining rooms, and the abundance of choice for classic, mostly vegetarian cuisine did the job at hand well. A reminder of an almost lost era of eating out pre-fast food chains in London, where beloved, rustic backstreet gems piled high keenly-priced healthy meals for packed tables of grateful devotees. Now it really is up to us all to use ‘um or lose ‘um, and Drummond St still offers the full experience.

• 🍴 Remember the Camdenist guide to all of Euston’s best restaurants can be found here.

MUSIC

4 x gigs to try on your doorstep this week

•  🎸 For the joy of simply typing out their name, let alone their stoner metal oeuvre, we suggest Newcastle’s Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, who will be smashing the proverbial granny out of The 02 Forum in Kentish Town tonight.

• 💃 King’s Cross best-kept-secret backstreet venue Jamboree hosts Flaminco Trio! this Sunday night (8th), with a raw expression of the artform incorporating dancers, musicians and vocalists.

• 🎤 Grammy-nominated Nigerian R&B and Afrobeat fusion don Tay Iwar lands at another King’s Cross venue, the Scala, this coming Tuesday (10th Oct).

• 🧥 Clothing brand Stone Island are back at Roundhouse on Thursday (12th) for another of their occasional free parties in association with C2C Festival, this time with the mighty Floating Points appearing alongside Deena Abdelwahed and Olof Dreijer.

Gig highlights in association with Halibuts.com

FREE RIDES HERE

MORE GOSSIP & THINGS TO DO

• ➡️ Solid gold long-time nutty local musical heroes Madness have just released their first new LP in 7 years, Theatre Of the Absurd Presents C’Est La Vie, complete with a first single with viral vocal rendition by none other than Dame Helen Mirren DBE, and tickets for a sort-of-intimate local gig at KOKO on Wednesday Oct 18th for those who pre-order a luxe bundle of music and merch now.

• ➡️ As mentioned in a previous newsletter, egg-celent 🙄 Middle Eastern all-day breakfast specialists The Good Egg are opening in Chalk Farm Rd’s historic North Yard this week - and there’s 50% off all food until Sunday, plus 100 free Knafeh Ka’ak (crispy pastry dripping with thyme, orange syrup and cheese) up for grabs from midday today if you can get your act together in time…

• ➡️ Barely a fortnight since they had unseasonal sun-seekers queuing round the block, all-weather unheated swimming pool Parliament Hill Lido is now in winter mode, complete with the reopening of the on-site sauna.

• ➡️ Also up that way this Sunday (8th) is the World Record-breaking annual Heath Conker Championships, which sees a competitive conker showdown alongside live music and plenty more, all afternoon.

• ➡️ Sign up here, now for a spot to attend a free panel discussion (on Tues 10th Oct) from speakers who champion community action, and the ways they’ve found to deliver projects that serve health and prosperity of locals in Camden, and beyond.

📊 LAST WEEK’S READERS POLL RESULTS

Has HS2 ripped the heart out of Euston?

Yes - it's such a terrible shame
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 57%

No - the area has been carved up by railways many times before
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 27%

Maybe - if they cancel HS2 perhaps something exciting might happen instead
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 16%

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