Shoreditch House

It's been strange being back in London, but not really feeling well enough to do much more than eat my way through a Creme Egg mountain and play with the hound. I've seen relatively few friends, confining myself to the odd supper or lunch in people's homes, with just a couple of outings.

Last week I hopped across town to Soho House's East London outpost, Shoreditch House, for a drink with a friend of a friend. He writes the tell-all, very funny and faintly obnoxious anonymous Cityboy column in The London Paper. I got to hang out with the charming, urbane and generous man behind the construct, rather than Cityboy. Thank God.

SH was crawling with, ahem, celebrities, although I use the word lightly, given that we are talking about Daisy Lowe, Mika and the cast of Shameless. Ms Lowe, in a mini crini and thigh high socks, was being filmed for some BBC documentary at a PR supper in the private dining room.

Cityboy pottered off into the night, & I went onto dinner in SH's Kitchen Dining Room with an old schoolfriend, where we were served some of the worst restaurant food I have eaten in London in years: gluey cauliflower soup (minus the listed truffles), soggy pizza, over cooked broccoli and uncrispy school dinner roast potatoes. The menu was curiously absent of anything that sounded delicious for either carnivores or vegetarians. I thought the whole thing shameful. And expensive.

We perked up when my NY ex-flatmate, the glam stylist Miss JD, appeared as if by magic at our table, fresh from the meal with Miss Lowe. A lovely surprise. And then we bumped into fashion photographer Chloe Mallett whom I shot with last Autumn. A quadruple friends bonus of an evening, which sent me off home with a welcome skip in my step because, if I had flogged across London purely to eat that rubbish* food, I would have been stomping home (via the chippie).

*High class reviewing term