Randomness Guide to London

Morning RGL readers! Apologies if you've been having trouble accessing the site, hopefully it should be working again now. We're rounding off the year with Swan Books in Upminster as our featured article. They've got a large children's section, plenty of local history books to peruse, and as you can see from the photo above, a cavalcade of different fonts on their shop frontage.

There are new pages for two small cafes: Roome, a smart establishment in Herne Hill with large teapots but small cup handles, and the New York Deli, situated not in New York but a mere 3,747 miles away in sunny Dartford.

The Black Horse in Bexley has had an update following a visit to make sure the carpet is still there, while after multiple name and location changes, vegan cafe Vitao on Oxford Street has now closed.

Finally, the Panton Street Odeon has reopened as the Odeon Luxe Haymarket. Apparently it will stick to showing the more unusual cinematic releases, as it did before, but you can now enjoy them while sat in an expensive-looking reclining chair.

That's it from us until 2018 - see you then!

Evening RGLers! After last week's Good Beer Guide pub deluge, here's what's been happening everywhere else.

Our featured article is for Mr Chilly, who is neither an underprepared arctic explorer nor an anthropomorphised ice cream but a small North Indian restaurant near North Harrow station. Try the biryani!

We've got lots of new articles. Let's kick things off in Morden, with a branch of Wimpy and the Morden Hall Bookshop, which sells second hand books from an old National Trust building in the park. Up the Northern line a few stops is Vijaya Krishna, a South Indian restaurant in Tooting, while back down in the other direction there's Bamboo Basket, a Chinese/Malay tea shop and cafe in Epsom. Ram's in Kenton is a veggie (and Jain-friendly) Indian restaurant that has a buffet with unlimited puri (mmm, delicious carbs), while all the way over in Eltham, the Yak and Yeti does a reasonable lunch deal.

Of course there are some pub updates too: the Duke of York in Surbiton and the Albert Tavern in South Norwood (both owned by Greene King), the Cape bar in Wapping, the Cricketers pub in Croydon (great for tram watching), the Barley Mow in Epsom, the Villiers Arms in Oxhey (as confirmed last week, Oxhey is indeed a real place) and the Railway Tavern in Bexley. I judge it would be quite a challenge to create a (theoretical, even!) pub crawl to visit all seven of those in one day, even though you would be unaffected by the temporary closure of the Gospel Oak to Barking line (it's shut until next February).

Finally, some closures to report: Italian restaurant Tentazoni has moved from Bermondsey to Notting Hill, while the Charlotte in Crayford, the Dover Castle (a Sam Smith's) in Marylebone and the branch of Spirited Wines in Putney have all closed.

Hullo all!

This week's featured article is for the White Hart in Stepney (not to be confused with the other White Hart a few hundred yards further down the A11 by the Whitechapel Gallery). The featured White Hart contains its own microbrewery so you'll have plenty of fresh beer to drink if you visit, and some decent food to soak it up with.

Aside from our Cockney drinking den we have a very Brentwood-focused week for new pages. Pub-wise there's the Brewery Tap, a small pub that does not have its own microbrewery as far as I can tell; the Rising Sun, which is in the Good Beer Guide and will do you a pickled egg; the Spread Eagle, which does scones and coffee as well as real ale, and a traditional boozer in the form of the Victoria Arms, which I'm pleased to report possesses a carpet. Elsewhere in Brentwood there's the Chicken and Frog, a children's bookshop, and Japanese food at Sushi City. The latter plays techno covers of Terence Trent D'Arby - I'm sold.

Finally another non-Brentwood addition: USSR Ltd in Leyton, which appears to be a Russian version of Aldi? I will admit to being intrigued both by the concept and the name! I wonder if they play techno versions of Дима Билан?

Evening everyone! This week's featured article is for Bubbles and Tea, a small vegan bubble tea cafe in the Stratford Centre. If you're not sure what bubble tea is, there's a helpful sign on the front of the premises!

Freshly written up on RGL are articles for the Japanese Canteen in Holborn (serviceable greasy noodles) and the newly opened Everyman Cinema in Canary Wharf. There's also an update to the page for Ravi Shankar, one of the better Indian restaurants on Euston's Drummond Street, following a recent lunch visit.

There's some to-ing and fro-ing around Tottenham Court Road and Waterloo: Book Warehouse has moved a few minutes down the road on Lower Marsh, and now occupies the top floor of Gramex Music Shop. Also on the move are Korean restaurants Woo Jung and Po Cha, both having moved from the shadow of Centrepoint due to the Crossrail works. Woo Jung is now on New Oxford Street while Po Cha find itself opposite Gramex on Lower Marsh, in the old premises of Marsh Ruby (now closed). Their former Centrepoint neighbour Assa has closed for good, however, as has the Old Justice in Bermondsey.

Afternoon everyone! A slight hiccup disintegrated last week's blog post, which would have had Nunhead's Beer Shop as the featured article. Who knows what Ewan would have written about this new micropub/bottle shop? Well, he wrote the article being featured so you can have a decent guess. Instead I will tell you about this week's featured article, which is for Vijay in Kilburn, a South Indian restaurant which claims to be the first such restaurant to open in the UK (in 1964). It does a decent mathanga erissery along with other vegetarian, meat and fish specialities. Apparently the Indian cricket team have been known to pop in for a biryani following a hard day's batting at Lord's...

There are updates to the articles for the George pub and Mirch Masala (both in Croydon), and the Riverside Bookshop has moved a few yards from Hay's Galleria to Tooley Street. Meanwhile, Swedish haunt The Harcourt has closed for refurbishment until June 2015, and has relocated to the nearby Duke of York (so Eurovision fans will still have somewhere to watch Melodifestivalen this spring).

A whole bunch of closures to report: the clanging chimes of doom have clung for the Marquis of Wellington and Royal Delight (both in Bermondsey), the Iron Duke inside Victoria station (now replaced with The Beer House Victoria - you can probably guess what font its sign uses without even clicking), the Hobgoblin in New Cross (now reopened as the Rose Pub & Kitchen), Broca Food Market in Brockley, Books For Amnesty in Hammersmith, the Duke of Edinburgh in Upton Park, and the Prince of Wales in Hillingdon. I don't think you could have watched Melodifestivalen in any of those places.