North London - Camden - The Camden Head

During my quest for the awesome-est pub in North London I decided that the route from Camden High Street to Junction Road would be the best place to start.  Camden is about a 20 minute walk from my office on Tottenham Court Road, making it even easier to decide on a whim that going to a pub on a Tuesday night is a brilliant idea.

I feel a bit old (like my parents) admitting this, but I absolutely love comedy nights, which The Camden Head puts on Monday and Tuesday nights.  Comedy here will set you back a mere £3 or £5 for 2 tickets.

We came quite early so grabbed we a pint and some food first. Even though I'm the American and the BF is the Brit in this equation, my pub meal of choice is always fish & chips while his is a burger. (WTF?)

Fish & Chips, £7

Classic Burger £7

Now in honesty, for a pub menu some of the items are taking the piss (wild boar & apple burger, pies that replace meat and beans with leak and butternut squash) but I will fully admit I am a repeat offender for their food.  So much so, that when Whitney Dunlap came to visit me from Ohio, I made sure to take her there.

Inside The Camden Head 

It's a beautiful pub with wooden interior and deep sunken sofas, books and board games for entertainment making this pub resemble a family lounge. And it's no wonder that it felt so cosy and comforting - The Camden Head was voted as having the best staff in 2010!  There's also a great photo of Camden High Street on the wall from 1903. 

You may have noticed that I've gone on for a bit about the food and neglected the comedy night.  I've only gone to their comedy night once, and maybe I came on an off night, but it wasn't that great of an experience.  We spent £5 to sit in a crowd of maybe 7 people, 3 of whom were the acts for the night.  I've been to free comedy nights that were astoundingly better.  

I love The Camden Head; the food is delicious, the atmosphere is relaxed and the cider on draught is crisp and refreshing. Definitely one of my must-visit pubs.

The Camden Head can be found at:

100 Camden High Street

London

NW1 0LU

Nearest Tube: Camden Town

Central London - Fitzrovia - 三峡人家 (SanXia RenJia)

I have a weird obsession with Chinese food. I'm not sure where or why it started but I have some form of pork, noodles and/or rice at least twice a week.  Because, I love it so much, I'm very particular on how it's taste. Some people love the Chinese food in London's Chinatown, but I always feel like I'm eating something cooked in dirty bath water! I tend to prefer the shops that are a bit outside of Central, but I have been surprised before.

My office is on Tottenham Court Road, in the heart of tourist trap London so we have our fill of fast food and chain restaurants in the area. If you head a bit North, to Fitzrovia, Goodge Street pours over with smaller establishments and a variety of flavours.  As Chinatown is quite close to my office, I wasn't too keen on trying any of the places nearby - assuming they would taste like Chinatown restaurangs. One day I finally made the leap!

There are two Chinese restaurants on Goodge Street: one that has a buffet and where everything is written in Chinese characters. I went for the one that was written, 三峡人家 (San Xia Ren Jia). My little bit of Mandarin told me that said, '3', 'something about a mountain', 'a person' and I didn't know the last character. (Google translate says '3 gorges? wtf!?)

Inside, it tends to be a relaxed atmosphere.  There are large, circular tables, great for sharing dishes when you're in a big group. The rest of the building is an open plan, so it's not a very intimate setting for those looking for a quiet date.  The menu is about a million pages long.  I've read it a few times and I still dont see my standard Pork Chow Mein on the list. No worries, I ordered it anyhow and it was still prepared.

As I was on my lunch break, I was in a bit of a rush (I don't have actual lunch breaks, I work straight through them most of the time).  It took about 10 minutes, but that was an acceptable wait.  The food tasted exactly how I wanted so it passes my Can You Make Pork Dishes? test. My only problem was that for £5.50 it was a fairly small serving. I get a delivery from Crouch End that can feed me for three days on £5.50!

San Xia Ren Jia does offer student discounts and special menus during lunch, so perhaps it finds its value in portions with those special offers.  It is also a Karaoke Bar and from it's menu, it proclaims to have bubble tea! We all know how much I love bubble tea. :) They weren't offering it when I went there so I'm not sure if that's still true. Their style of cooking is self-described as 'Authentic Szechuan, Cantonese & Hunan Cuisine'.

As there is a lack of Chinese restaurants that I like in Central, I have and will continue to go there. I just hope I can get some bubble tea soon, and maybe about 33% more food in my takeaway box!

SanXia RenJia can be found at:

29 Goodge Street
London
W1T 2PP
Nearest Tube: Goodge Street

www.sanxia.co.uk

A bit of structure for the ramblings

I think the first rule of writing, as cliche as it sounds, is to write about what you know. Unfortunately, I have learning schizophrenia so it's pretty hard to pick one thing to write about. I'm still going to write about things that I love; politics, music, gigs, food/cooking, festivals, dancing etc. - but the things that I know right now are pretty precise.

To do this, I now have a trusty gear of writing items:

MacBook, iPhone 3GS and blank paged book from Paperchase

And photo taking thing:

HP R742

I'm hoping this helps me to track all of the things that I want to write about more (so long as I have it on me at all times). I have to get in the habit of using them, and that can be pretty hard when you haven't been doing or caring about it on a regular basis for a while.

Anyhow, structure is the name of the game, so I've had to decide what it is exactly that I know about and feel comfortable writing.  I love and know social media, I am pretty much the poster child for all things on the interwebs, so it shouldn't be too hard for me to write about that when it comes up. I love living in London, and I've always wanted to live abroad. Granted, I wanted to be on a beach in warm weather but I suppose the British Isles is as close as I will get to that. I also love people, in particular people watching and I tell you some of the best people to judge watch are those that live around where I do in North London.  So, I've decided I'm going to focus on the people, places and things in the area where I live - because it's what I know best.

I can go on for ages about why I love this bit of North London, but to be honest it all comes down to one thing: it reminds me of home. And by home I mean the place where I spent 8 years of my adult life on my own without my family, not the city where I just went to kindergarten - high school.  Even more, North London reminds me a lot of The Short North but bigger, and well, in London, England rather than Columbus, Ohio - which makes this a glorious place.

Since moving to Upper Holloway and out of bumfuck-nearly-Essex-Leytonstone I've been able to take the bus home which is a nice 20-ish minute ride rather than the 40 minute Tube ride.  On the bus I pass through some of my favourite places which will be the bits that I'll discover while living here and hopefully inspire me to write on the bloggy space.  Things you can expect, or at least the places that have caught my eye on the bus ride home: 

Camden Town

• The Camden Head
• World's End
• Camden Rock and figuring out that giant Sainsbury's next to it!

The Camden Town/Kentish Town bridge

Kentish Town

• Jews for Jesus - yes, this is a place and a real thing
• Abbey Tavern
• The Oxford
• The Kentish Town bridge over the tracks
• This place that calls itself Delicious
• Junction Tavern and all things 'Junction Road'-ish (I want to know the history of this bit)

Tufnell Park to Archway - once you get here everything looks a lot more local, i.e. there's the butcher, there's the guy that fixes your bike, there's the baker, etc

• Tea Pot House
• Rustique literary cafe
• Shaolin Temple
• Junction Cafe

Hornsey Road

I'm really interested in learning more about this area and seeing what it was like 50 years ago. It reminds me a bit of Lorain Avenue back in Cleveland. I also like how church steeples seem to depict the separation of the old villages.  Looking at the layout of cities/towns here, it's interesting to think how they could have been.  Today, everyone's rocking their Arsenal kit as they walk around North London, but you can see the history of the town beneath the modernity of its residents.  I've always liked the idea of local shops and cafes over chains so I'm really excited to learn more!!

Plus heaps more locations of course, as there are plenty of other places to discover in these areas as well as the walk from Upper Holloway through Islington to Angel! I love it, I love it, I love it so much over here and I want to make the most of it while I can.

And so, I leave you with a few cool photos from my daily scenery of Upper Holloway

The church at the end of my road

The view towards Archway

More of the church at the end of my road

Bridge over the tracks to my close

Artwork on the bridge

Artwork on the bridge, i suppose inspired by the train below the bridge