Randomness Guide to London

Evening RGL readers!

This week's featured article is for Namak Mandi, a Pashtun/Peshwari restaurant in Tooting. I spent a good half hour down a Wikipedia rabbit hole after googling the difference between Pashtun and Peshwari, and ended up learning (a small amount) about the post-colonial implications of the Durand line! Incredibly complex history aside, there are some tasty-sounding menu options at Namak Mandi, including enormous Afghan naans.

Also based in Tooting is Khani Cuisine, an Indian/Chinese (i.e. Chinese food tailored for Indian tastes) cafe, for which we have a new page. Also new: Queens is a pleasant locals' pub in Upton Park (no real ale but there is a pool table). I imagine it will become much quieter on match days following West Ham's move to the Olympic stadium. Finally, there's a new page for Norbury's Cappadocia Ocakbasi, a Turkish restaurant who are very generous with their lahmacun.

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.