Leman Street Tavern, Aldgate

In what was once the colourful heart of the old Jewish East End, the pogrom continues unchecked. Championed by a megalomaniac Mayor who has the interests of Brexit Boris, not London or Britain, at the heart of his cold calculating heart; Goodman’s Fields is yet another shining example of the shiny boxy bland ghettoes to greed that are disfiguring our city, robbing it of all originality and charm. At the entrance to this new 'luxury' slum, Geronimo Inns has splashed out a tidy sum on its latest trough and watering hole, Leman Street Tavern. The same £1.5 million would just about buy a banker a pad here - although possibly not one with a view of the equine civic 'art' that announces it. This is a blessing in disguise: two bronze stallions frolicking in a stream are the sort of trashy 70s sculptures only Beverley from Abigail's Party or deranged deceased dictators, the Caesescus, would brook in their front yard's brook. Geronimo Inns' ('a group of proper pubs with an eye for the different and the delicious’) newbie is comfy, colourful and serviceable… but for ‘different’ read 'design-by-numbers after various punchier postmodern bar-brasserie-gastropubs.' ‘Delicious’? That'll be Macon-Lugny on a list that largely sits south of £30 and offers two dozen choices by the glass for sunny day stragglers drawn to a generic pavement terrace  onto a chronically congested A-road. Fill up on bar snacks of black pudding sausage roll, baked Camembert with buttered soldiers, and potato and leek hotpot. Dine on crab gratin followed by pork faggot, greens and mash, with fried milk and poached rhubarb for afters at  LST, the sort of mid-market one-size-fits-all gaff I imagine morning TV Haribore eye candy Susanna Reid might fancy. Me? I'm off to grittier gaffs on nearby polyglot Brick Lane...before the Curse of the Developer destroys it too. 

Goodman’s Fields, Leman Street, E1 8EY 3437 0001www.lemanstreettavern.co.uk 

Buster Mantis, Deptford

I'm with Simon Jenkins who, in the Evening Standard, regularly rails against the trashing of London's skyline. With that ugliest of blots on the landscape, Boris Johnson, as cheerleader-in-charge, tacky towers - 'planned' with no thought to scale, context or locality are - are going up faster than will the wall between Mexico and the USA should another greed-driven buffoon, Donald Trump, gain power. In which case... God bless America!  God save humankind! And "Allahu Akbar! At least those nukes Teheran and Daesh didn't have in their arsenal have turned those darned towers to dust!" Built not for the good of actual Londoners, the developers' odious erections are 'designed' for the enrichment of the spivs and money launderers (and complicit cash-guzzling councils) that are ripping the city's social fabric asunder with their state-sanctioned giant Ponzi scheme. Even gritty Deptford is not immune from the spread of cancerous concrete carbuncles. Gordon McGowan, phlegmatic Anglo-Jamaican owner of Buster Mantis (named after Sir Alex Bustamante, the British-born MP that became Jamaica’s first PM) worries about how the regeneration will impact his 'hood. Set in two previously derelict railway arches, his post-industrial, (late-night) DJ bar/ kitchen /arts and events space, unlike the 'luxury' apartments now rising in numbers around it, has both heart and soul, however. McGowan’s Caribbean upbringing is evident in his start-up's concise range of £7.50 cocktails that major on rum - Orange Dark and Stormy; Mama’s homemade punch; Lychee Mojito etc and Mad Ting, a gin, whisky and brandy island iced tea. A reasonable selection of wines, London craft beers (and Red Stripe, natch) work with pepper shrimp, wings or saltfish fritters with aïoli, followed by jerk chicken, rice and peas (£8.50), jackfruit burger or jerked pork belly, red bean puree and sweet potato mash all made with love. Film screenings and community-focussed events are set to follow. I pray there still is a community for Buster M to tap into once Deptford is re-populated with the kind of high-living clones that aspire to charmless chicken coops in grim gulags that recall 'a Moscow suburb' as Simon Jenkins rightly says. 

3 - 4 Resolution Way, SE8 4NT 8691 5191 www.bustermantis.com 

Sky Pod, The City

Towering egotist Boris Johnson's architectural legacy will be a London skyline raped willy nilly by the filthy erections of willy-waving  'starchitects.' Could-be-anywhere skyscrapers thrown up by spivvy developers and financed by tin-pot despots from the Gulf to Guangzhou, these shameless shrines to Mammon are a depressingly familiar sight today. I don't dig Victorian pastiche. I'm no fan of mock-Georgian. I am not Prince Charles. Modern buildings per se are not my enemy: hello Hadid, Zaha; F off Farrell, Terry and take your tawdry towers with you! "But, hey! The little people will love any sub-Dubai crap outcrop as long as it comes with a cute nickname" reason the urban planners that have the ear of the mop-top Eton Mess in charge at City Hall. Today, I've scaled the 37-storey 'Walkie Talkie' (more of a 'molar implant' to my mind), a grim grey Goliath whose daft design meant the summer sun, reflected in and magnified by its concave curves, melted Mondeos parked outside. Nor is Oliver Wainwright, The Guardian's architecture critic, smitten: 'As a literal diagram of developers' greed, it provides painful proof that form follows not function but finance..poking its unwelcome bulk into the skyline from almost every possible vista." Like Kim Kardashian, only in concrete and glass, then? On the plus side, I suppose, the building's upper levels host a leafy new London belvedere; an indoor sky garden consisting of two vast banked swathes of sub-tropical foliage. Serving it, is an island cafe-bar run - like restaurants Darwin and Fenchurch on levels 36 and 37 above (both of which are blessed with more intimate bars, nota bene) - by caterers Rhubarb. In addition to those armed with bar or restaurant reservations, the aerial arboretum is open daily to the public; cue queues at the lobby level airport-style check-in. Order an £11.50 cocktail - Thyme For Tea, Chelsea Garden; or Autumn Breeze (vodka, pinot noir, falernum, beetroot and apple juices) - and the sort of snacks you'd expect of posh wedding canapé slingers such as Rhubarb as you watch the tourists coo over the "Oooh, aaah, Barb-a-ra!" wraparound views . Open until 2am, Sky Pod is undeniably cool ... as in, climate- controlled to the point where wooly blankets and hot water bottles are provided gratis. Cool in the other sense? Only if you're a fan Center Parcs and crass glass carbuncles.
20 Fenchurch Street EC3M 3BY http://skygarden.london/sky-pod-bar