This week's featured article is Som Saa, E1 6BD, a well-regarded Thai restaurant that I've been meaning to go to for ages, just on the Spitalfields/Whitechapel border. However, luckily an RGL correspondent has done so, and plenty of positives resulted, albeit clustered along the sour/salty ends of the taste spectrum. Kake also tantalises readers with a suggestion of weird over-intimacy but we shall have to imagine.

Three new articles:

* Lituanica, a Lithuanian restaurant in the charming and delightful eastern oasis of Beckton, and part of what sounds like a Lithuanian department store. Expect potatoes and meat.
* Cafe Le Jardin in Whitechapel. It's a decent greasy spoon, though it is unclear whether there is indeed a garden, but the map doesn't suggest any.
* North End Tavern in Worcester Park. Welcoming yet fairly standard as these kinds of things (chain pubs in suburbia) go.

Welcome back. I was off ill yesterday so I present this week's update a bit late, sorry.



The featured article is Ponchokhana, E1 1DB. Not in fact some kind of Mexican-equestrian hybrid, this is instead a Bangladeshi cafe, which has good rice and flavourful fish in the fish curry, though we daresay their other food is also worth trying. Good prices too.

Three new articles! Andu Cafe in Dalston does Ethiopian vegan food, with a really sour injera. Brazil Express is a Brazilian cafe in Stratford, which also offers some grocery items for pao de queijo fans, lovers of preserved hearts of palm, and other exotic things. Finally, there's Eddie's Cafe in Addiscombe, a greasy spoon which does greasy fried things as you'd expect.

There's an update to The Fox, friendly craft beer hub in Dalston.

One reported (but thankfully temporary) closure is The Ladywell Tavern, a tavern in Ladywell. It's being refurbished, we hear.

Welcome back!



This week's featured article is Great Queen Street, WC2B 5AA. It's a restaurant and bar in the shadow of the Freemasons' HQ and has some great food even after all these years. Good for treating the parents.

There's one new article, being Rio's Britannia Cafe in South London's Norbury. Does what a greasy spoon is supposed to do, albeit without pork.

Our reported permanent closure this week is Ergon, a Greek restaurant and deli in Marylebone.

The featured article this week is The Ashburnham Arms, SE10 8UH, a small Shepherd Neame pub in Greenwich with good fresh beer. However, it does seem as if the locals prefer wine. None of that craft beer guff here.

There are fully four new pages this week: Cote d'Azur, a French-Mauritian fusion restaurant in southern Croydon (try the crab soup); Squires, a Nigerian restaurant in Dagenham (look out for some pounded yam); Upney Cafe, a greasy spoon in Barking (you know what to expect); and The Royal Albert in Crystal Palace. This last one is another traditional locals' pub, though there are increasing numbers of locals who probably want something more gastro, so hopefully it will hold out for a bit yet.

Finally, the David Lean Cinema in Croydon has reopened in its original location of the Clocktower.

Hello there, sorry for the delay. Kake tells me what's in the charts this week and it always then gets lost in the depthless mess that is currently my inbox. So this week's featured article is...



... the Ship and Shovell, WC2N 5PH, a charming and slightly hidden little pub, one of the few remaining outposts for Hall & Woodhouse (aka Badger) beers in the capital, as yet unsullied by any word of "craft" or the like. Just a row of handpulls dispensing classic and well-kept English bitters and pales (or "boring brown ales", though I don't mean that as any disrespect: I love the BBB). The pub is rather more interesting for its unusual twin-site arrangement, taking up buildings on both sides of the little alleyway. The north has the main bar, the south has the "Crow's Nest" upstairs.

Our one new article this week is for Garden Community Cafe, a community-focused greasy spoon by Prince Regent DLR out there past Canning Town.

Two reported permanent closures are The Old White Bear in Hampstead (which we felt had gone downhill since it was Ye Olde White Bear and was a proper real ale pub), and The Clifton in St John's Wood, one of very few pubs in the area and a delightful little getaway, so it's particularly sad to see this one go.

Finally, two more impending pub closures. There's The Star, also in St John's Wood because clearly nobody is drinking there anymore, or (more likely) property is worth more as residences. And then there's The Sekforde Arms in Clerkenwell, which your correspondent only visited for the first time a couple of years ago, and what a delightful unpretentious boozer it is, serving tip top Young's beers, and now sadly looking like it'll become a restaurant after only 185 years of sterling service to drinkers.

But at least there's a couple of reopenings, both following refurbishments, and both out in Twickenham: The Prince Blucher and The Eel Pie.

This week's featured article is Woo Jung, WC2H 8LH, a Korean restaurant near Centre Point in that tricky little area between WC1 and WC2 that I usually call St Giles, some developers call Mid Town, but for convenience we'll just call Covent Garden. There's a little stretch of Korean places along here, so you can come here if you can't get into the others.

New articles are: Cafe Kozzy, a greasy spoon in Holborn; and Tufnell Park Tavern. Sure, it's a tavern and it's in Tufnell Park, but it's more than averagely child-friendly. On the downside, it's a bit big and airy in there, and they don't know how to pull a pint, but at least they have real ale.

Reported closures are Favela Chic, a Brazilian bar in Shoreditch which turned into another Brazilian bar a year or two back; and The Oporto, a pub by Westferry station in Poplar which is now called The Westferry Arms and may be much the same, though we haven't been since the change of name.