Souk Medina

Souk Medina is a very atmospheric Moroccan restaurant in Covent Garden, spread out over a number of cosy, decorated rooms.

A bellydancer had the hen party at the table next to us up and dancing away in the centre of the room.

Unfortunately, the service was incredibly slow. We were not even offered menus initially and had to find them from a nearby waiter workstation.  However, when our order had finally been taken the food itself arrived very quickly. We went for a range of small starters and most of them were quite spicy.  This was no problem at all for me but was a bit of an issue for my dining companion.

I think the fact that we were sat with a hen party gives a hint to the fact that this restaurant is clearly aimed at and patronised by tourists, which may explain the poor service.  Nevertheless, the look of the restaurant is lovely and more then made up for the rather haphazard service for me.

The Maple Leaf

As you might expect from the name, the Maple Leaf is a Canadian pub in Covent Garden.

They serve Canadian beer, English cider and show Irish sports on TV.  Despite being the heart of the West End, the pub was pretty quiet when we visited on a Thursday evening which meant that we were easily able to get a set and also have a conversation at a normal volume.  These are two things that are not always easy to find in a Central London pub.

Lord of art

Goncalo Mabunda is an artist from Mozambique who creates art installations and sculptures out of decommissioned weapons, from AK47s to rocket launchers.

He is also part of an art collective who have had their work displayed in the British Museum (I have posted about that exhibition previously in my blog).

I was lucky enough to attend the opening night of the exhibition at the ever enjoyable Jack Bell Gallery.

Brazilian Music in a tunnel shaft

Who doesn't love a good underground gig?

The Brunel Museum`s world music series was literally below ground in a tunnel shaft.  It gets my vote for "best place to go to escape a heat wave / hide from a zombie apocalypse."

After a brief talk about the history of the site (at one point it was home to London`s first, and one assumes last, underwater brothel) we listened to the hypnotic beats of Adriano Alewale`s large range of percussion instruments, accompanied by Diego Rio on guitar. There was even a small bar set up in the shaft!   I didn't partake in any alcoholic drinks however as the staircase down the shaft would have been somewhat challenging to negotiate whilst tipsy.

Africa Centre big weekend

The Africa Centre has been in Covent Garden since the 1960s and,they recently had a big event in Covent Garden market showcasing talented, up and coming African musicians.

Acklam Road food market

There are endless markets and specialist food shops in London and the more I travel through the city, the more I realise they are too numerous to blog about. From Peckham to Shepherds Bush, if you need to buy food, clothing or material from a particular country, you are spoiled for choice.

Still, I will keep adding them to my blog when I have the time. So first to West London and to the little collection of food stalls under the Westway, where you can buy Portuguese, Polish and Venezuelan food, amongst other cuisines.

Grad

Grad is a new Russian art gallery that has opened in Fitzrovia, showing art from both Russia and the UK.

They had a very interesting recent exhibition about Russian-made tourist posters from the 1930s.  The posters were in glass frames so there is a bit of glare in my pictures but you still can get an idea of how the posters looked.

 A poster aimed at German tourists

 A proposed design that was never made into a poster at the time

Two poster emphasising Russia's cultural achievements

These posters were contrasted with how Russia was portrayed in internal propaganda.  The two styles of posters were very different.  In the external tourism posters the beauty of the landscape was emphasised and a romanticised vision of glamorous women and fast cars was shown.

Internal propaganda focused on spreading the communist message. Images of planes were used in a purely military sense.

An external Russian tourism poster, aimed at the French market, featuring a plane 

An internal poster featuring images of planes.

These two posters use images of planes.  In the first poster the viewer is positioned at the same height as the plane and is able to view the whole of Europe.  The internal propaganda poster show the plane above the people looking up at it, literally cutting them off from the skies.

A though-provoking exhibition.

Blue Lagoon

Blue Lagoon is a Thai restaurant in Haymarket that participates in the Taste Card scheme, hence my visit!

Not much else to report really. Tasty Thai food in a non pretentious setting, which is as much as anyone can expect from the West End.

N is for Nigeria

Another dinner with the dining group, this time at a Majestic, a Nigerian restaurant in Brixton.

Overall eating at this restaurant was quite a somewhat chaotic experience. 

None of us had any idea what Nigerian food was like so we didn't really know what we were ordering.   The waiter made sure that he took our names when he wrote down our orders so that he could just call the name out 'Starbuck's style' when he brought the food.

We were quite a large group and our orders ended up being taken in two turns, so that our food arrived at quite different times.  Fortunately, my meal was one of the first to arrive.  The name system hadn't made it out into the restaurant with the food so it was a bit of a free-for-all trying to figure out whose food was being brought out.

 We had this mysterious palm wine, which was actually non-alcoholic.

A Nollywood film kept us entertained in the two hour wait between arriving in the restaurant and the food arriving.

My meal. The sauce was super spicy!  I forgot to write down what it was though!

Our meal was accompanied by live music which was quite loud but entertaining.

Romanian and Russian shop Bruce Grove

I don’t think I’ve seen any exclusively Romanian shops in my world tour of London until heading up to the Tottenham area.  But I have to say that London is so huge that really for all I know there are loads of Romanian stops in parts of town that I’ve never been to.

Culture in Defiance - Continuing traditions of satire, art and the struggle for Freedom in Syria

There is currently a fantastic exhibition of 'art as cultural rebellion' from Syria being shown at Rich Mix on Bethnal Green Road until 23rd November 2013.

Key themes of the exhibition are nonviolent resistance and the power of culture.  As one of the artists states "You can actually deal with everything that is scary through laughter."

Some of the images in the exhibition were very scary and powerful.  Definitely worth checking out.

 Photos by Muzaffar Salman, a photojournalist who has worked for Reuters and the AP

 Hama 30 by Khalil Younes

Alshaab Alsori Aref Tarekh (The Syrian People know their way) - Anonymous Poster Collective of 15 Syrian artists and  activists.

By Yasmeen Fanari

By Khaled Barakeh

New Crackers

New Crackers is a rather curiously named Lebanese deli on High Street Kensington.  I thought I'd include it because it sounds a bit like a nightclub that the guys from 'The Office' might go to on a work night out...

Mex Fest

-This weekend was MexFest, a celebration of all things Mexican in London from music to food.

I went along to an exhibition at Rich Mix but I think I got there a bit too early, as I think there was supposed to be kind of soundscape later in the day.

There were a few nice photos of Mexico nevertheless so here they are.

  Cenotes, Yucatán

 Day of the Dead, Michoacán

Light from the Middle East New Photography at the V and A

No photography was allowed in the Light from the Middle East exhibition unfortunately, but it was a great exhibition of the work by 30 artists from around the Middle East.

 

More information about the artists and the exhibition can be found on the V and A website: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/exhibition-light-from-the-middle-east-new-photography/about-the-exhibition/