IDEAL (UK)

1 week ago | idealmagazine.co.uk | Joseph Gann

East London’s London Fields is so clouded with clichés that even observing them is something of one. They put Monster Munch on their oysters here, the mad bastards. Their wine is turbid and full of sediment. Perhaps there’s something in the water here. There’s certainly something in the soil…London Fields – the grassy stretch, not the neighbourhood – is a sprawling plot that dates back to the 16th century.

1 week ago | idealmagazine.co.uk | Joseph Gann

From its humble beginnings in the 1790s as a residential area developed by Sir Charles Pratt, Camden has transformed into one of London’s most visited boroughs. Once home to Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw and JB Priestley, now it’s one of the most thriving multicultural places in the UK, with its almost 300’000 residents speaking over 140 languages and dialects between them, and the local council placing diversity at the forefront of its thinking.

1 week ago | idealmagazine.co.uk | Joseph Gann

Let’s park the Battersea/Clapham border debate once and for all, in favour of finding great food together and forgetting arbitrary quarrels about where one area starts and another begins. Instead, we’re here to break down barriers, borders and bread, all in the time it takes to wait for a train.

1 week ago | idealmagazine.co.uk | Joseph Gann

With a shiny new stop on the Elizabeth Line cementing its status as a TFL headlining act, Tottenham Court Road is now the eminent focal point for those wanting easy access to Soho, Covent Garden and Fitzrovia. But heavy is the head that wears the crown. Peckish passengers, starving shoppers and hungry day-trippers (yep, alliteration has failed us there) might just find that Tottenham Court Road station is a victim of its own success in terms of decent options of where to eat nearby.

2 weeks ago | idealmagazine.co.uk | Joseph Gann

Wedged between the gleaming, steaming towers of the City and the ever-evolving cliches of Shoreditch like some kind of glorious refuge from bullshit, Whitechapel occupies a unique position on the London landscape. This hard-to-define (we will now attempt to) East End enclave has long been an area shaped by generations of cultural exchange and preservation, with the Bengali community in particular leaving an indelible, edible mark on the area’s culinary scene.