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.

Evening RGL crew!

This week's featured article is for the Ivy Leaf in distant Dartford. It's a Good Beer Guide pub so there's plenty to drink, as well as that holy grail of pub menus: a decent fishfinger sandwich. Remember how much Sean Connery wanted the holy grail in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade? That is roughly how much I want a decent fishfinger sandwich on an average day.

Some new additions have arrived as well! Soul Flame is a good quality Turkish restaurant in Putney; the Rendezvous Cafe in Beckenham serves their tea on the strong side (unless you make a point of telling them otherwise), while down in Purley, Cafe Blue and Mekan offer cooked breakfasts and Turkish food respectively.

Finally, the InSpiral Lounge veggie cafe in Camden has morphed into a completely different veggie cafe - i.e. they are still extremely unlikely to offer me a fishfinger sandwich.