Over rated & Over there

Every time I return to London I feel completely food-ed out. Although I am a good cook (I'm writing a cookery book and am obsessed with food), I eat or take out from restauants, bars & cafés in Manhattan maybe eight or ten times a week as my apartment is just too small for entertaining.

Many Manhattan-ites (especially the single 30-something variety) are in the same boat, which seems extraordinary to Londoners who eat out maybe once or twice a week: with a two course meal with a single glass of wine for one at, for example, Pizza Express (an average upmarket-ish chain) costing approx £30/$60, it's just too prohibitive to eat out in good restaurants frequently unless you have a generous expense account.

So in London we eat an enormous amount of more inexpensive cuisines: Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Malaysian, Indian and more. For me it's not just a financial thing, it's a taste in part fuelled by the travelling I have done all over the world, both for pleasure and as a travel writer for a Sunday broadsheet and a major glossy travel mag.

These small, often family-run UK restaurants turn out extraordinarily good food, equal to the dishes you are served in resturants, hawker stalls, markets and street corners in Bangkok, Mumbai, Cochin, Hanoi, KL, Singapore and the rest. The Vietnamese restaurants on the Kingsland Road in Hackney, Indian in Southall...Chinese in the West End...

And goodness, I miss this in Manhattan where the food from these cultures is sub-par every single time. Greasy, soggy Chinese; Thai green papaya salad with no balance of flavour and shockingly, no chili; a Madras curry with no heat and no perfume; flaccid pad thai; Pho with overcooked noodles; dumplings with wrsppers seemingly made of shoe leather. I just do not understand why it is so, so, so bad, so inaccurate. All the spice and chili is stripped out of iconic dishes, leaving them as pale imitations of themselves. The only exception to this litany of execrable food is Mexican, which explains why I eat Mexican food maybe six times a week.

Blogging Accolade

Well, aren't we all the cat's pyjamas?! I was very chuffed this afternoon to receive an email from Catwalk Queen telling me that my blog had been voted one of the top 100 fashion & lifestyle blogs. Especially chuffed when I discovered that only 20 of those blogs are fashion per se, and only ten of them are independent like mine. And how lovely to be in the company of some of the blogs that I admire hugely, namely my two fellow English fashion editor anony-bloggers DisneyRollerGirl and Mrs Fashion, and Queens Michelle & Marie of Kingdom of Style. You can see the rest of Catwalk Queen's Top Fifty here.

I know I've said it before, but I am continually astonished that my blog, with its schizophrenic content, ranging from restaurant reviews to catwalk reports via dating mishaps and insider gossip, which started off as a glorified letter home from New York to my friends & family in England, has found its own constituency. I love being part of the blog community, and appreciate every email and comment I receive... keep them coming!

All hail The Celtic Sheepskin Company

I adore classic shaped leather satchels for weekends. I have certain criteria: they have to made from stiff, hard wearing leather that will age well, be brown, have a long adjustable strap, a flap that fastens with a buckle and, above all, no over-designed bells & whistles. For years, I've been toting an old vintage one of my mother's, but it's been re-stitched together so many times that I doubt there is any original work left in it. Definitely time for a replacement.

As regular readers will know, I was enormously disappointed with the lame satchel offering from Boden, which got sent straight back along with their ill fitting & badly sized riding boots.

So, as I like to hand out projects rather than Christmas present lists, I put my sister on the case. She has the twin credentials of a truffle hound ability for sniffing out items on the internet and the time to do so. I can't say I actually expected her to find exackerly what I wanted, but was gobsmacked when she came up with the bag above which is so utterly perfect. (Although she's not quite so pleased: she has to buy it for me now.)

A mere £75/$150 from The Celtic Sheepskin Company, the Sennen satchel is even more pleasing as the company has strong ethical policies, is based in Cornwall where it employs local people in an area of high unemployment, and regularly uses organic and recycled products - even recycled wool in their womens' jackets. Impressive. Upon further investigation I discovered these fab ear muffs (£48/$96): I also like the Isabelle bag which is just £95/$190, and the Envelope bag which is just £20/$40 Best of all, no one will know where you got them from. Goodness, I am bored with logo'd bags.

Another Christmas card

Call me a humourless old bat, but I'm not sure I really found this e-card from fashion PR company Phyllis Walters particularly amusing.

A design Christmas...

I'm very impressed that so many companies have decided to send virtual cards this year. This card from Tom Dixon is quite my favourite so far.

ADDENDUM: A kind commentator directed me here, to product & furniture designer Jamie McLellan's wonderful illustration side project. For it is he who designed this fabulous card for Tom Dixon.

My new winter coat

Fur is a difficult call to make. I've been a vegetarian for 22 years, a militant one to start with but, as I've grown, learnt and mellowed, I'm a lot more relaxed now. I happily cook meat for all my friends, would raise children to eat meat, don't freak out if I find some meat in a dish I'm eating, taste my gravy, wear leather - and vintage fur.

Yes, as you're realising, consistency isn't my strong point. But I went vegetarian not because I am anti-meat, but because I was anti-cruelty. If free-range, organic meat had been available way back then, I doubt I would ever have considered vegetarianism. Nowadays, there's no personal reason for me to remain vegetarian and I suspect I may not be for very much longer.

But I always buy free-range and try to lead an ethical life. Where fur is concerned, I only buy vintage, from the 1950s or earlier. I like the idea of recyling, of not adding to the clothing mountain, or pumping chemicals into the atmosphere through producing artificial fibres. I also like being warm. (As my sister points out, in countries where there is a real risk of dying from cold, the fur debate doesn't exist.)

Few of us are consistent in our attitudes towards animal cruelty, bar vegans. After all just how many battery hen-eating, anti fox-hunting people are there? Tens of thousands, I know. Along with all the anti fur people who happily wear leather, sheepskin or shearling (which very often are not the by-product of the meat industry, whatever you may think). I think the point I am trying to make is, before making knee jerk criticisms of other people's ethics, perhaps we should all examine our own actions a little more carefully?

When I was considering how to keep warm in the New York winter, I looked at these, but disliked all the artificial fibres, and resented paying for something so unaesthetically unpleasing. Then on one of my regular eBay trolls, I came across the coat pictured here.

Not only was it inexpensive at £20/$40, I loved the waisted shape, flared skirt and knee length. Like all good vintage coats, it is beautifully finished, with an embroidered satin lining, braided seams, wonderful buttons, hidden furriers hooks, secret pockets in the lining, reflecting that this once was a very, very expensive coat. So, I bought it.

Indeed, before she died, my grandmother had difficulty getting her head around the fact that a mink jacket with glorious diamanté fastenings that might have cost the equivalent of two or three thousand pounds as a status symbol back in the 1950s could now be picked up for £30 on eBay and worn, as I did, with jeans and Converse.

(I think in the 21st century fur jackets only really work dressed down with trousers or denim, otherwise you can run the risk of looking trashy. I saw a girl on Fifth Avenue the other day wearing one with a pencil skirt and knee high boots, and the look had a whiff of streetwalker about it. Maybe if one was ultra groomed, with a salon fresh do, serious jools and Louboutins, a fur jacket could work with a smart skirt, but how many of us work grooming to that extent each day? So, with a wardrobe of dresses to cover up, and seriously cold knees, I am very excited to have found a long fur coat that doesn't fall from the shoulders in that Upper East Side/Russian/Mafioso/kept woman manner.)

Rambling

Thank you all so much for your get well wishes. It is so very cheering when one feels so comprehensively rotten. I am now tucked up in bed at my friend's home in Highgate. Once it was a village with a tollgate into London, perched on a hill overlooking the city, and today Highgate still feels separate from the rest of London with its Georgian and Victorian houses. I'm in the attic extension of one of those houses, in a bedroom with huge roof windows open to the sky, so that I can see the stars.

MY parents live in the depths of the country, where nursing care would be almost impossible to arrange, so I am, guiltily, imposing myself upon the staggeringly generous C. It is lovely staying with a family though: C and I have been best friends since we were 16, and I can hear Ollie, my three year old chocolate-smeared godson having his bath downstairs and his little sister Luella squeaking about. Although I am in my own guest suite, it has an open staircase so they can't resist crawling up the stairs to investigate what Aunty XX is up to. (Sleeping, in the main.) Ollie tried to feed me chocolate today. Very self-sacrificial of him. And impressed that he already equates chocolate with medicine.

Anyway, the prognosis from the surgeon is very good, although I can't sit, walk very far, wear trousers, or heels (the horror!) for maybe a fortnight. Luckily the fabulous District Nurse team will be visiting me in bed every day to look after me. The National Health Service is just beyond extraordinary. Coming from New York, I appreciate the NHS more & more each day. All this costs me not a penny. (Well, it does in taxes, but you know what I mean.)

Right. I have to do some sleeping. Lovely, lovely painkillers. Mmmmm.

Warning: brief blogging hiatus coming up

Gah. After the most tortuous journey imaginable, I am finally back in London. Three inches of frozen slush and an ice storm, combined with ungritted roads in Jersey nearly made me miss my check-in time slot. Not that it wld have mattered, as we sat on the apron for nearly three hours whilst they attempted to de-ice the plane. Then it took an hour to de-ice the luggage hold on arrival at Heathrow. Left home in East Village: 5.30am. Arrived at sister's in Hampstead: 12.30am. Not good.

Tomorrow 0730hrs I go in for the chop. I do hate general anaesthetics, and this is my fifth in two or so years. Still, I get to lie in bed for a week and, given the piteous central heating prevalent in England, that is probably the best place to be right now, considering it's bloody freezing. Even stuffing a snoring dachshund under the duvet last night didn't help much on the warming front. Thank goodness though for the thigh high socks I, um, liberated from my last catalogue shoot, and which are currently doing duty as bed socks in a wierdly quite sexy-looking kind of way.

Anyway, next despatch from my sick bed on Wednesday. xx

Vivienne Westwood to show second line in London

Following a nine-year absence from London Fashion Week, Vivienne Westwood is returning to show her Red Label's AW 08/09 collection on-schedule in February. The Red Label, which has not been shown during a fashion week before, was first launched in 1994 to appeal to a wider audience and is inspired by Savile Row tailoring and French couture. Vivienne's first line the Gold Label will be shown in Paris, as usual.

I just think it's shame that London's official show schedule is becoming the place to show diffusion and second lines: Marc the season before last, Stella's line for Adidas last, and now Dame Vivienne's. Is this really the way to boost London's reputation and get the foreign press in? I think not.

Christmas partying in NYC & Why we love the Beatrice Inn

gI sometimes wonder if I will ever attain proper grown-up status. Most of my friends in London are married, sprogged up and have vaguely sensible jobs. Me, I'm still behaving as I did in my twenties, and see no agenda for change in the near future.

Last night we had our Big Christmas Night Out. The four of us dressed up (frocking around the Christmas tree as BA put it), feeling all Manhattan sparkly & glam. The English contingent (BA, M & me) have a collective obsession with guacamole, which means that we tend to always eat Mexican food when we go out. (We eat Indian instead of Mexican in the UK: there is one national chain of terrible Mexican resturants - Chiquitos - and that's pretty much it.)

We love Rosa Mexicano because they wheel over a huge guac trolley to your table and make it fresh in a huge pestle & mortar in front of your very eyes. Dos Caminos have a guac station and La Palapa do a pretty good version too, & that's where we went last night. They also do pomegranate and blood orange margaritas. In fact the margaritas are so good that we were singing Christmas carols by the end of the meal last night.

We had lots of parties to go to after supper, but ended up hailing a white stretch limo (I know, I know, but ridiculous fun, & five don't fit in a cab here) to the Crash Mansion on The Bowery to see my great friend Julian (known as Shah), in town briefly to play a gig with hotly-tipped LA band Piel.

Unfortunately they weren't on 'till 1am, so we contented ourselves with a lot of dancing to the bands on beforehand. We were definitely the most over-dressed women in the room - and the only ones on the dance floor for most of the time - but hey, we like making a spectacle of ourselves occasionally.

And then we high tailed it to Beatrice again for more shenanigans. I woke up this morning with The Cure's Boys Don't Cry in my head and remembered doing rather a lot of air punching on the dance floor. Which probably isn't an enormously good idea in a very short mini tunic.

Lovely Doctor Who

I ADORE Doctor Who. It's by far and away my favourite-est ever telly prog. I love it more than CSI AND House put together. I love David Tennant quite a lot too. Yum. And I lust after the Daleks in Forbidden Planet up at Union Square, but can't quite bring myself to buy one. They are a little bit expensive for a very self-indulgent, self-gifted present. (It's not like shoes: at least you can wear them, even if I have been known to display a particularly beautous pair on my living room shelves.)

I am rather unhappy at present as I fly back tomorrow at 8am, very much against my will, for an op on Tuesday and, instead of spending next week being festive in Manhattan will be flat on my back in darkest North London unable to walk for a week. Therefore I am very happy to discover that there is an hour long Doctor Who Christmas special on the Beeb, with special guest Kylie. Bliss. There are always chinks in the darkness.

And this fabulous piece by the lovely Caitlin Moran in today's Times tells you all about it.

BFC announces NewGen Sponsorhip for SS08

The BFC has announced the Topshop New Gen sponsorship for next season. It's a timely reminder that critical adulation doesn't mean pots of money: young designers like Chirs Kane wouldn't be able to show without this funding.

Catwalk sponsorship: Christopher Kane, Duro Olowu, Erdem, Krystof Strozyna, Louise Goldin, Marios Schwab, MeadhamKirchhoff, Todd Lynn

Exhibition sponsorship: Anna Vince, Borba Margo, Charlotte Olympia, David David, Emilio de la Morena, Felder•Felder, Hannah Marshall, House of Holland, Justin Smith, Nicholas Kirkwood, Peter Pilotto and Poltock & Walsh.

I'm particulary pleased to see lovely Nicholas Kirkwood on this list. I've been a supporter of his since the get go. After he left Cordwainers, he worked for Philip Treacy, all the while planning setting up his own label in 2005. He is way in the vanguard of shoe design, setting the agenda for footwear design way before any of his competitors. This summer he won the prestigious AltaRoma Vogue Italia award for accessories design.

Shoes by Nicholas Kirkwood

Janet Collin Vivienne bag

This is the Vivienne bag from the wonderful Janet Collin, and my Christmas present to myself.Actually, my one will be in black, but I won't get it 'till I return to London for Christmas. Janet has a background in product design, and has worked on handbag collaborations with Louis Vuitton, Matthew Williamson and US brand Banana Republic.

Most famously she created some of Mulberry's most iconic bags, including the famous Jaquetta, Kiera and Cassidy styles. She has her own label, based in Newcastle upon Tyne England. Although I'm not a big fan of the 'C' word, celebrities like Madonna carry her handbags too.You can see more of her bags here.

Buggy Blogger

Having ISSUES with Blogger. My title picture has gone on a diet, & is a tenth its usual size, and a photo I sent as a test for Blogger mobile has, so far, failed to load. Thing is, I have no idea what the photo is... so apologies if any random photo has appeared overnight!

LLG xx

La Grande Bouffe

I have to stop eating. So far this week, I've eaten three courses for supper on Monday night at Waverly Inn, had hot dogs from Crif, Thai from Why Curry in the East Village, dumplings from the Dumpling Man, lunched through three courses at Gotham Bar & Grill, eaten supper at Teany, Moby's restaurant in the Lower East Side and finished off with cupcakes from the Sugar Sweet Sunshine Bakery.

Diet

Diet

Diet

Sod it.

I'll just wear Spanx

Adorable eBay bargain ($14.99!)

Trolling around on eBay I just came across this dress which I adore. It just says party to me - and I loathe the festive prediliction for acres of bare flesh, and bosoms spilling out of strapless tops: so much sexier to cover up with a suggestion. Unfortunately, Mother Nature saw fit to bless me with a very, very generous bust (perched on flamingo legs - dressing myself is problematic), and so it's never going to fit me. Please someone buy it! (And tell me if you do)

Close to the Bone jewellery collection launches

This is the beautiful Julio necklace from new London jewellery designers Close to the Bone. Set up by Angela Gosnell & Ila de Mello Kamath, they design unique jewellery using unusual combinations of semi-precious stones, seeds, knitting and crochet.

Everything comes beautifully packaged and they offer free delivery on Christmas orders within the UK, as well as the option to order customised variations of their pieces.

Karl Lagerfeld & Amy Wino

Oh for crying out loud. I am so fed up with Karl Lagerfeld's muse bandwagon. It seems like every other month he announces that some high profile female celebrity is his new muse. WGSN ran this quote today, "She is a style icon. She is a beautiful, gifted artist. And I very much like her hairdo. I took it as an inspiration. Because, in fact, it was also Brigitte Bardot's hairdo in the late Fifties and Sixties. And now Amy has made it her own style. So, when I saw her, I knew it was the right moment. Amy... she is the new Brigitte."

ACK. As I have said before, dear Karl would appoint Princess Fiona as his new muse if he thought it politic.

A Manhattan birthday

If I had to plan my perfect birthday party, then Thursday would probably have been it. I’ve never, ever been a fan of the restaurant/dancing model in London. It’s expensive: at least £150/$300 by the time you’ve paid for dinner, drinks & taxis, and the scene is so fragmented that any feeling of an intimate evening slides away, especially once you’ve had to engage with travelling half way across the city to get from a good restaurant to a half way decent club, one that isn't filled with drunk Royals, trustafarians, City boys, vomiting teens or sleezebag men.

Here it’s a completely different story. Manhattan is so tiny that you can walk from place to place, at worst hop in a $10 cab for a fifteen minute journey. Venues have a better mix of customers, as it’s cheaper to eat out, so good, stylish restaurants don't have that curiously London clientele: Russians, hedge funders and your parents' contemporaries. Frankly, Manhattan is just more fun, younger, hipper & cheaper(so long as you avoid the weekends).

I postponed my partying as L flew in from London the day after my birthday and I wanted to celebrate with her. So I invited fifteen friends to Soho House in Meatpacking on Thursday for pre-supper drinks from 7-9pm. L & I managed to arrive on time, & bagged the three over-sized squishy velvet sofas under the Ron Arad anglepoise installation in the middle of the Drawing Room, ordered Champagne for all, and hoped people would turn up. (Hipsters may raise a sardonic eyebrow at SH, but hell, there's plenty of room, the drinks are good, and you don't HAVE to talk to the i-bankers.)

And, thank goodness, everyone came. The boys looked a little over-whelmed at the sheer volume of ravishing females in stunning frocks. Then again, not unexpected as it was a fashion heavy gathering, including the beautiful designer Francoise Olivas (check out her wonderful collection here), and the girls behind Heidi Klein, in town to meet editors.

Seven bottles later, I staggered off with five girlfriends to Morandi in the West Village for supper at 10pm. Part of the usually dismal McNally stable (Pastis, Balthazar), the food here is actually good, and the wine list better than. There was a snapper in from New York Mag who cldn't keep his lenses away from the girls all through the meal.

We ate bruschetta with super fresh mozzarella di bufala, & a dish of fried olives. Nearly everybody had the special: a chicken liver risotto and I had a double order of the appetizer special: artichokes, peppers, more of that creamy mozzarella, tomatoes. Simple food, perfectly done, washed down with quite a lot of a very good Dolcetta d'Alba.

Half way through my gorgeous friend Christina arrived with a stupendous present for me: a wonderful, light as a feather, cream cash-llama scarf from her latest Oxenberg collection.

After blowing out the birthday candle on my chocolate hazelnut torta (thank you girls) we bundled up (did I mention it was snowing?) and walked through the narrow, tree-lined streets of the Victorian West Village to the Beatrice Inn for very naughty shenanigans.

Hidden away between some brownstones, at the top of the metal stairway to the basement entrance, the bouncers gave us the usual Beatrice line, “Whose party are you here for?”. The only obvious answer was, ‘mine’. After a beat they waved the five of us downstairs, where we found a large china greyhound to stash the coats & presents behind.

Beatrice, owned by Chloe Sevigny’s brother Paul, is a down & dirty dive bar & club with just two rooms filled with furniture & pictures seemingly scavenged from a carboot sale by a blind man, a tiny bar, and a pocket handkerchief dance floor & DJ booth in a grubby back room.

The hangers out are models, rockers, actors, film makers, hedge funders pretending to be rockers, and generally creative people pretending they aren’t enormously successful. There’s just one loo (with a useful-looking wooden table in the corner), everyone smokes like chimneys, and the music is a just-up-my-street mix of Pulp, The Clash, classics like Spirit in the Sky, and the dance music we jumped around to in the early 90s.

After flirting, smoking, drinking and a lot of dancing (flailing?), we tumbled out into the cold at 4.30am when the place closed. M was wobbling like a new-born foal on her super high heels so we found a nice boy to prop her up and we all walked back through the narrow streets to Perry to see her safely home.

In between dropping M & then CA off on W10th, I managed to get thoroughly kissed on a street corner by J, a very tipsy boy we had met earlier in Beatrice, who insisted on walking L & I back to the East Village. It’s always good to have a sherpa to carry one’s birthday presents, even if one does shut the door in his face on arrival with no, um, tip. (He so knew that was going to happen).

And oh dear, the hangovers the next day. (Lola, darling, however did you manage to get to work?)

I wore: the shortest ever black washed silk V neck, cropped sleeve tunic, with black matt 80 denier opaque Wolfords & my vertiginous black patent dominatrix Pierre Hardy platforms heels (so comfy I danced for three hours and then walked home in them), and a huge Giles gold studded black plastic bracelet. Bright pink lipstick and lots of messy blonde hair.

A short break...

Thank you blog-ettes for all the wonderful birthday greetings! There has been some bug with Blogspot and today I have discovered 19 unapproved comments in my moderation box which hadn't been emailed to me. But, worst of all, my laptop died on Wednesday and, busy like a bee, have not been able to get to a cafe to blog, write or file copy. Thank goodness tho for Blackberries, remote Facebook and, now, my flatmate's second laptop.