Selection Box – #1
Recommendations, events, and the best pub set menu in London
Hey. Hi. Hello.
Should we skip the bit where I offer a mumbled apology for what is, let us be honest, an objectively hilarious near-six month gap between posts? I think so. Given that I have been doing a fair bit of enthusiastic lurking on the platform, I know that the only thing that Substack seems to have an inexhaustible supply of – beyond dormant, cobwebbed accounts, circular discussions about the soul of Substack, and (apparently) copy that has the telltale, featureless gleam of generative AI-use – is lots of writers endlessly explaining away the infrequency of their posts.
There has barely been a fortnight since May when I haven’t optimistically scrawled ‘Seconds day?’ into my diary. Yet, each time, I have been overridden by events, scuppered by deadlines or, more simply, I just haven’t had the time or creative energy. Picky was published in hardback. There were truly special events that I will never, ever forget. I made my sweaty-palmed, first cannonballing entry into the choppy waters of cooking on live TV. And quite a few purportedly lovely reviews from writers and outlets that I really respect (pathetically, I am one of those authors who, beyond picking up the vaporous gist of them, doesn’t really have the constitution to read reviews). I was busy, basically. And then, when I wasn’t, I was mostly in South Holland coaxing my reluctant progeny onto rollercoasters, shovelling in warm poffertjes or listening to football podcasts while running past palatial canalside properties and startled herons.
The upshot is that lots of the cultural recommendations and capsule restaurant reviews I’d intended to talk about here now feel wildly out of date. A somewhat belated encounter with the exhilarating, one-of-a-kind AngloThai? Some Quality Wines bifana lust? An acutely bewildering hour or so in the expensively curated, post-Erewhon thrum of Corner Shop? All of it will have to keep until a planned End of Year Awards bonanza that will, if my established newsletter writing pace is anything to go by, likely plop out some time around May 2026. Until then, here are some more recent meals, shards of cultural ephemera, and appearance details, loosely grouped together as a (hopefully) returning series I’m calling Selection Box. Prise the lid off, take a big huffing sniff of the sparkly-wrappered confections inside, and enjoy.
Big love and much more soon.
Jimi
x
Legado
Sometimes the consensus around a Big Opening feels so sharply defined that putting forward any sort of take on it is basically pointless. I hadn’t actually read anything substantial about Nieves Barragán Mohacho’s trans-Iberian Shoreditch extravaganza before going. And yet, as someone moving in food-obsessed circles, the main thrust of opinion about it – the food is very good, the menu is extremely large, the ruinously high bill lands with all the softness and subtlety of a rampaging bull – had made its way to me by osmosis; magically beamed into the brain like an unsolicited U2 album.
All I will add to the conversation is this: whatever you may have half-absorbed about Legado does not do justice to the urgent brilliance of actually eating there. Battered monkfish nuggets and the known universe’s greatest pan con tomate; rich, mackerel meatballs bobbing in a clean, nuanced jamon dashi; the brain-breaking, decadent wonder of a deep-fried, chard and cured beef toastie. To sit in this featureless new-build unit beneath a railway bridge – transformed through a liberal hosing of cash into a lived-in, ruggedly glamorous farmhouse taberna – is to be almost overwhelmed by the breadth, skill and boldness evident in each detail. I have to cop to the fact that it was an invite lunch. But the fact that I’ve not been able to stop recommending it to people tells its own story. The multi-speed massiveness here is the point. And it is rare that a self-consciously big ticket spot with an £85 signature dish (the quarter of burnished suckling pig, so succulent that, in an indelible flex, it is theatrically chopped at the table with the blunt edge of a plate) also feels like somewhere you want to duck into for a six quid Estrella and a pintxo or three. This is how you do it.
Singburi
Yes, yes, alright. I know I just said that I’d nudge anything that felt too out of date towards the fly-tipped hinterland of this planned End of Year Thing. But, thanks to aforementioned workload and a desire to wait for the discourse dust to settle, I only made it to Sirichai Kularbwong, Alex Gkikas and Nick Molyviatis’s gently polarising east London reboot of the wildly acclaimed Leyton Thai cafe last month. Is it too basic to say that it struck me as a place where the exhilarating heat and light of the cooking isn’t quite matched by the warmth of the environment? An uncompromising neighbourhood test kitchen misbadged as a destination blockbuster? (The presence of Legado, literally next door, doesn’t help.)
The fragrant, juicy wild ginger chicken thigh is outrageous; the twice-fried aubergine pad phet is, without question, one of the most joltingly pleasurable £14.50 plates of food in London. All the same, there is something about the utilitarian space and curt, dessert-free offering (bonus gripe: I wasn’t drinking when I went in and I just don’t understand why a restaurant wouldn’t have an alcohol-free beer on the menu in big old 2025) that felt a bit cold and airless. That said, the fact Singburi 2.0 inadvertently touched a live third rail of impossible expectation and weird possessiveness around regional Thai shouldn’t be held against it. Push aside the food scene chatter, and the cumbersome lore of the original, and what remains is an affordable, inventive, high-grade canteen, capable of moments of rare, piercing deliciousness.
Marjorie’s
From Speedboat Bar’s fryer-bubbled cosh of molten pineapple to the seasonal reappearance of FKABAM’s crimped puck of deep-fried mincemeat, we’re long past the point where an irreverent, elevated riff on the McDonald’s apple pie is in any way surprising. However, at Marjorie’s, they have managed to bring something new to this, tongue-scorching high-low party. Here, the requisite golden, deep-fried oblong comes squiggled in a rich bread caramel and filled with a spurting payload of Comte cheese and quince jam.
Unexpected. Fun. Characterfully French in a mildly transgressive, determinedly modern way. As a dish, it’s pretty much the perfect encapsulation of Michael Searle, Josh Anderson and head chef Giacomo Peretti’s Foubert’s Place hymn to a certain mode of alluring, lightly eclectic bistronomie-coded dining. It is a place of sexy, flickering candlelight, savoury mega-lozenges of chicken liver rocher, butter-frothed plates of poached chicken rice, and grilled enoki mushroom, recumbent on a delightfully off-beam, impressionistic splat of smoked egg yolk and tart fermented berries. You absolutely have to go. I should offer the disclaimer that it has been one of the featured restaurants in my Soho Food Scene videos. But I can promise you that I would not be anywhere this effusive, or unequivocal, if I didn’t think it was a very, very special opening.
The Marksman
Devilled chicken and kohlrabi salad. Smoked ham, egg and chips. Fish pie and buttered Cornish mids. For over a year now, the weekly Worker’s Lunch special announcements from The Marksman have been flashing up on my phone like insistent, especially lurid sexts. The point is this: I’d had quite a while to think about this improbably good prix fixe – a rotating, highly photogenic comfort dish, plus a small drink, for just £15 on Thursdays and Fridays – and build it up in my mind to an impossible degree.
All the more impressive, then, that the long delayed reality of the deal, on a recent Friday, didn’t just meet expectations but sail clear over them. Perfect, spoonably tender slices of pork belly slumped on silky mash; shimmering pan gravy flecked with shreds of chopped prune; an added sidecar of exceptional pickles and beef and barley buns because, well, why not. Light tumbled in onto the scuffed wood, domed creamers of Guinness and a contented dining room, all having slightly augmented versions of the same dish. The idea that this is a golden age for set menus in London is one I want to return to. And at this hugely underrated dining pub on the Hackney Road (currently in the midst of celebrating its 10th birthday and also boasting equally bargainous curry and steak night deals) it sparkles especially bright.
Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur
My standard move with enticing upcoming art exhibitions is to look into booking tickets at the precise moment that they are unavailable or the show is just straight up about to close. Not so in this instance. Early in the summer we did a bit of a speed-run (abbreviated by school pick-up time, obv) around Grayson Perry’s takeover of The Wallace Collection.
Oriented around the work of an invented artist called Shirley Smith, it’s a total multifaceted riot of a show that recontextualises classical works from the collection while also exploring outsider art, obsession and ill mental health with real ebullience, cheek and vitality. It’s now into its last week or so (it ends on 26 October) – I’d implore you to check it out if you can. And also, to listen to Perry’s especially terrific audio guide.
Here We Go
Can I assume that someone in your life has told you, with mildly terrifying intensity, just how good The Ballad of Wallis Island is? The heart, gasping hilarity and emotionally satisfying gorgeousness of that film led me – via what may be every single podcast interview that the creative team behind it have conducted – to this corner of the expanded Basdenverse.
Featuring writer-creator Tom Basden, a murderer’s row of an ensemble cast (Katherine Parkinson, Alison Steadman doing a Scouse accent to differentiate her character from Pam Shipman) and a joke-spraying sitcom atmosphere that manages to be enjoyably familiar (essentially, the spliced DNA of Modern Family, Gavin & Stacey and The Office) without feeling totally derivative. Worth iPlayering in the painful current longueurs between traitorous Alan Carr reaction shots. And the recent announcement of a forthcoming New Year’s Special and fourth series is enormously exciting.
Chop Chop
One of the most pleasing developments of late summer (and said holiday in the Netherlands) was the rediscovery of my fiction reading mojo. I have torn through Percival Everett’s James; thrilled at Colin Barrett’s Wild Houses and ended Natasha Brown’s Universality with an intrigued but befuddled frown. However, the title that I am currently reaching for most is a recipe book.
Specifically, Chop Chop: Cooking the Food of Nigeria by Canada-based food writer and educator Ozoz Sokoh. I’m indebted to Ruby Tandoh – author of the ridiculously good All Consuming – for bringing Sokoh to my attention. And I can hardly do justice to what a necessary, exciting and truly groundbreaking piece of work this is; an exhaustively researched, crisply authoritative and beautifully designed compendium that goes beyond jollof-oriented cliches to contextualise and codify a cuisine that even Nigerians do not always fully understand or appreciate. Utterly essential.
Autumn Events
After a year that has seen the entirely imaginary Picky-mobile hurtle everywhere from Worthy Farm to Hay-on-Wye, my 2025 programme of events will (likely) end back in London. First up, I’m at the Southbank Centre on 29 October as part of the London Literature Festival.
Then, a month later on 29 November, I’ll be at Peckham Levels as a participant in the second edition of the SE London Bookfest. I’m really looking forward to both events, mum has promised to make some puff-puff, and I still have some of the Settlers t-shirts and tote bags that I want to give away to anyone who might want one. Really hope to see some of you there.
Broadsheet
Had quite a dangerous amount of fun at the ridiculously lavish and glamorous Broadsheet London launch party at Motorino. Very excited to have a column in its first print edition too. It is about NY-style pizza/smashburger/rotisserie chicken fatigue but it is also, crucially, about the reasons to be very excited about autumn’s frenzied jamboree of restaurant openings. If you haven’t got a copy then you can find out where to grab one here.
The Infatuation
I also had a couple of pieces of (oh god) content with The Infatuation London come out: a Spots video, featuring some of my go-to recommendations, and an interview about my favourite African and Caribbean Restaurants in the capital. The fact that one of my choices in that second piece was Kaieteur Kitchen – currently in a state of existential limbo thanks to the enormously concerning sudden eviction of food businesses at The Castle Square development in Elephant and Castle – is hugely dismaying. Here’s hoping that Faye Gomes’s cooking can live on in some form (a proposed solution, spearheaded by Southwark Council, is encouraging) and that this serves as a reminder of the battles raging all across the country to preserve imperilled, vital community spaces.
Seconds FM
I have also finally created a Seconds playlist. You can find it here – it features Geese, Baxter Dury, Loaded Honey, Lady Wray and other recent preoccupations – and the plan is to update it on a monthly/whenever I can be bothered basis.
Finally: did we all know that there was a Padella opening on Kingly Street in Soho? Because there seems to be a, well, you get the idea…
Until next time.
Big love.