Turntable, Holborn

Studio!!! 

Sazeracs and old soul sounds: Turntable should be up my street. BITD when I used to DJ, nipping off to New York on Friday and returning to London on the Sunday night red-eye from JFK with a suitcase full of pre-release 12-inch discs was a monthly routine. I'm thinking of taking to the decks again: like the Valentine Brothers say, Money's Too Tight To Mention (he says, before HMRC gets any ideas ) and at various hip launches where the client has coughed up serious dough and booked a rare groover - as opposed to some celebrity's brat offspring/ precocious 'model', paid £10K just to press 'play' on an iPad  - I frequently find myself thinking "'Useless'" (Kym Mazelle) and how my record collection is stuffed with way better "Stuff Like That" (Quincy Jones ft Chaka)  So, I'm keen to visit this new vinyl-only DJ bar whose playlist is collated by Jazzi Q of Soul II Soul, big in the 90s. The sort of tracks I'm hearing - Phyllis Hyman, Linda Clifford, Gwen Guthrie, Cheryl Lynn, Shalamar, and a sprinkling of Motown - are guaranteed floor-fillers so It's A Shame (as The Detroit Spinners sang it)  that I don't want to "do a little dance, Get Down Tonight". Clearly, I've picked the wrong evening; it's not exactly heaving like Paradise Garage in its prime or about to wrest the disco crown from Studio 54. Maybe there's a secret door to a VIP lounge where Liza, Jerry, Bianca, Andy, Calvin, Halston, Grace, Divine and the gang are partying like it's 1979? Named after classic soul cuts of that decade, Turntable's street level bar's £8 cocktails  - Jungle Boogie (rum, Mandarine Napoléon and kumquat) and Ain’t No Sunshine (Aperol, grapefruit, rosé wine and blood orange)... but no Evelyn 'Champagne' King cocktail - are fair enough but the austere, claustrophobic, downstairs dance bar is way too (Barry) white; stark and boxy, unlike the late great growler's loin-locking smoochers, it's neither sexy nor Chic -  more joyless Norwich nightclub circa Joy Division tonight. Will I come back and order South Asian street food staples - Malay chicken, hot and sour fish, or lentil and aubergine curry -  to eat to the beat? Tempus fugit! I'm off home to mix Manhattans, Boogie Oogie Oogie round my sitting room, and hatch my big comeback plan.

7 - 9 Norwich Street EC4A 1EJ 7112 9179  http://www.turntable.london

Made In Brasil Boteco, Chalk Farm

I have never been to Brazil. Odd, given that any native I have met has invariably been sunny delight - no more so than the fun-lovin' trannies that hung out in a club I DJ'd in Paris when the weren't floggin' their fake fannies in the Bois de Boulogne. Another salad days stint, slinging hash in Downtown Manhattan's Sounds of Brasil, left me with a taste for feijoada, caipirinhas.... and the music. To Jorge Ben, a regular performer at the NYC diner/ dancehall, I learned to bossa and samba like a carioca; although some heavy lubin' of dem done-in lower limbs will be needed should you demand a demo. While carnival in Rio, and Niemeyer's modernist architectural gem Brasilia, are on my bucket list, for now, there's this new NW1 'boteco', a sister to Camden's original Made In Brasil. With over 12,000 found in Belo Horizonte alone, the boteco is a bar where street food is usually also served. Here, lurid airbrushed street art in a series of steamy saloons, and an all-weather verandah, provide a convincing backdrop for live bands and DJs spinning samba, bossa and mod beats Brazilian. The main draw? Juicy Rio-style rinses - tropical fruit-flavoured caipirinhas, all the more rewarding when offered at £4.50 on happy hour. With over 250 different brands, the bar boasts the biggest display of cachaça in Europe, I'm told. Discover Brazil’s national spirit in martinis such as Acai Berry or Cafezhino (£7.25) Made with juniper berries, crème de violette and maraschino -  Santos Dumont, named after the Brazilian flying machine inventor who astonished Parisians by looping the Eiffel Tower in 1901, is the bar's take on the Aviation. Order share platters from £15 and tuck into ‘petiscos' (tapas) such as cassava and salt beef balls, palm heart salad, peppered squid with aïoli, salt cod cakes, grilled halloumi and vegetable skewers that, fortunately, I am no longer forced to serve, to pay the rent on a cockroach-infested walk-up in Manhattan's Avenue A and 1st, a no-go, crack-fuelled, violent slum as dangerous as any Rio favela back in the day.

48 Chalk Farm Road NW1 8AJ 7267 4868 
(adapted from my review at www.squaremeal.co.uk )

 http://madeinbrasilboteco.com 

Far Rockaway, Shoreditch

When I lived in New York,  reliant on the kindness of strangers, my Brooks Brothers shorts and Sebago deck shoes' days were spent at East Hampton or Fire Island Pines...the latter, as close as I ever got to Queens...as in the borough that's home to that big-in-the-1960s pleasure beach at Far Rockaway (the inspiration for this vast new Shoreditch bar/ diner on the site of the old Elbow Rooms) as opposed to the Greenwich Village People variety. Here, in eye-bleedingly busy Slush Puppy-tone colour-clash, it's the New York scene circa Basquiat, Keith Haring, Shannon's Let The Music Play, Flashdance and neon-lovin' fashion designer Stephen Sprouse that is referenced. Welcome to 1983 - complete with skateboard sculptures, album sleeve collages, a library of 4,000 Marvel comics and a DJ booth made from old ghetto blasters. To my been-there-got-the-t-shirt-and-framed-it eyes, it's all a bit ersatz - like that other 1983 NY phenomenon, Madonna - but although this is not, by some stretch, my idea of the coolest Shoreditch bar, I like its pose and swagger immensely. It's full-on, frenetic and fun (and not aimed at me, doh!) For the weekend TOWIEs that pour into the 'Ditch from London's equivalents of Far Rockaway (Southend/ Clacton/ Canvey Island), however, I'm guessing this big brash commercial brute, open until 2 am, will become the go-to DJ party shack, fuelled by lemon meringue pie, peanut butter cup, and purple haze cocktails, frozen margaritas (how very 1980s!) crack baby shooters and hot bitches (Babicka vodka, passion fruit, peppers, vanilla sugar and black pepper) at £7. In the diner - think post-disco Happy Days - pizza, franks, clubs, mac'n'cheese, meatball hero, wings, ribs, cheesecakes and brownies are the sort of eats avaialble 24/7 Stateside that remind me how, had I stayed in America for good, I'd be the size of Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and Staten Island too by now.
97 - 113 Curtain Road EC2A 3BS 8305 3090 http://www.farrockaway.co.uk

The Longroom, Clerkenwell

It must have taken them all of 5 seconds to come up with the name, but 'The Longroom' succintly sums up this new Smithfield pub. All sepia tone butch wood and tiles, its  Victorian warehouse vibe would work well as a location for a Whitechapel-esque whodunnit. Marooned in acres of space, the only punter in the place on a Sunday afternoon, I'd be spooked if the bartender were the spit of Jack The Ripper or Sweeney Todd. Reassuringly, the closest fictional reference I have for the small friendly Spanish chappie behind the counter is Manuel from Fawlty Towers. I can almost see the 'Que?" thought bubble form, cartoon comic book-like above his head, when I ask for a Virgin Mary - a January de-tox  must.  After a protracted pasa doble that is going nowhere, I finally seize the bull by the horns, suggesting I make the bloody thing myself. Smithfield's meat market (plus a quick raid on Gail's Bakery) is the larder for the principal ingredients of a terse menu's mainstay, salt beef on sourdough. Moist, tender, flaky, if slightly overpriced at £7.50, it's better than beer rarebit - more of an upmarket cheese toastie, of the sort whipped up by posh pished students around midnight. Soups - tomato or leek and potato- are similarly prosaic. No; the real stars here are the beers. Draughts include Meantime’s Yakima Red and ruby rich Highlands hottie, Black Isle Organic Porter. There's an interesting range of bottled brews  - Red Church Hackney Gold and Orchard Pig Charmer cider - and decent enough wines at won't-break-the-bank prices. Would I go back? If I lived or worked locally, yes...whenever I felt a sudden urge for a salt beef or Rubens sandwich. Having existed entirely on those - or pastrami offcuts when I was down to my last dollar as a sofa-surfing youth, living in squalor opposite Katz's Deli in Manhattan's then filthy-funky East Village, let me tell you; such occasions are few and far between.  

18- 20 John Street EC1M 7336 6099 www.thelongroompub.com

Barrio East, Shoreditch

I once shared an apartment with two Latinos in downtown Manhattan. Boy, when one hot-tempered Puerto Rican falls out with his even more volatile lover over over a hickey he's attempting to pass off as hives caused by a fiery Scotch bonnet pepper, the collateral damage makes Hurricane Sandy look like a storm in a teacup. Furniture trashed; clothes shredded; but more distressingly, a hail of broken black vinyl raining down on Broadway twenty floors below, chucked from our windows.  Hector Lavoe; Ralfi Pagan; Willie Colon; Celia Cruz; Orchestra Harlow; The Fania All-Stars: all were smashed to smithereens on the sidewalk as Romeo the Ricky Martin lookalike set about cheating Chico's prized record collection with a vengeance. Such a waste. I owe my great interest in all musica latina to those rowing roomies. In underground dance clubs in unfashionable Zip codes, they really got me into it those Nu Yorican beats, patiently teaching me how to dance salsa like I was raised in San Juan (from the knees down and with clenched butt cheeks). That I heard the DJ drop some of those old skool beats is reason enough for me to commend Barrio East  - numero tres from the hombres behind Islington and Soho’s smaller Barrios.  I dig this cool cantina's dime store plastic kitsch and zingy fiesta colours. Me gusto mucho its glass pineapple scone lights - I want, I want, I want!  Holed up in an old caravan, we load up on street food and £8.50 tropi-cocktails - Gingerbread Colada and The Hoodrat (vodka, chill, red pepper vanilla and apple). On the Boom Boom Room’s busy dance-floor, Shoreditch scenesters attempt (and fail miserably) to shake it like J-Lo and Marc Anthony back in the day. I'd have paid good money to witness that barney - and the shredded clothes from Barney's -when those two firecrackers were splitting up. 

141 Shoreditch High Street E1 www.welovebarrio.com