Launching LARDO

LARDO launch party

LARDO London

The opening of LARDO, our new pizza and charcuterie restaurant is only a day away now, and so we decided to say thank you to all those lovely people who’ve helped us get it this far in the best way we could think of – with beer and pork! It’s been a month of scrambling to get everything finished but we’re over the moon with how the space has turned out, and this was a chance to share it with everyone else.

Anyone who’s opened a restaurant will tell you exactly the same, but it really was down to the wire – we were busy polishing and cleaning and prodding the disco oven into life right up until the point when people started showing up. It didn’t seem to matter. Our brilliant staff kept everyone fed and watered despite being surrounded by our hungry and thirsty friends. We served our guests slices of our fennel pollen salami, and our chefs Damian and Christian sliced fatty porchetta between chunks of bread. The late stayers were treated to slices of lardo pizza. All of you lucky people will get a chance to sample this over the next week.

It seems slightly unreal actually – two years on from the start of our road trip around the USA, when the spark of the idea happened, and we’re finally there. During that trip, when we met a bunch of people who were making closer connections between the farmer and the chefs, it seemed like a logical step to try and create a project which does the same in London. Living in this neighbourhood, we’re constantly meeting folks who are making or baking or growing something fresh and tasty, and we hope to get lots of this locally grown produce into the food that we’re serving.

We open Monday 9th July – come down and say hello…you can book online on our Facebook page, or just drop in…

Some pictures from the party (more on Flickr):

LARDO launch party

LARDO launch party

LARDO launch party

The art of the bartender

The American cocktail has history. From the time when people mixed their booze with hard spirits so that they didn’t get sick to the moment when alcohol was banned completely but really only went underground, there has always seemed something compelling about the relationship of flavours that the great cocktail makers are privy to.

Good cocktail people are worth travelling to find. Lucky then, that we’ve done some of the hard work for you.

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Our American journey: redux

Firmly back in the land of reality now, after nearly two months off the road and back into the normality of our old routine. It’s easy to let the memories of our amazing trip fade back into he recesses of our minds but the truth is that 8000 miles through the heart of the USA does have a way of changing a person! Both E and I have returned invigorated and in my case slightly more hirsute – but grateful for the opportunities that lie in front of us both. It’s time to change things up.

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Walter’s Dogs are the stuff of legend

Pretty unbiased opinion, then. On the way back from the boondocks, and on the road into le Grand Pomme there is a hotdog stand called ‘Walter’s‘. And it sells tasty little snack-sized wieners that you can buy by the trio to give you a quick fast food fix.We added fries and a malt shake and believe me, it was something special. We’ve since discovered that in 2001, Walter’s hotdog was voted the No. 1 in America. Believe.

Again, our Roadfood book comes up a winner: if you’re ever traveling through the US then it’s a must-have. It’s pointed us in the right direction (nearly) every time…

Wildwood Pork ‘N Beans

More campfire cooking goodness for y’all: we stayed at a somewhat spooky, if family-friendly campsite while in Virginia and cooked us some stewy porky food that will stay with me for the rest of this trip and beyond. Certainly my memories of the place we ate it in will…

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Wax and vinyl

America loves an augmented attraction. It’s not enough to have a 215 feet high limestone archway surrounded by beautiful waterfalls and pine-scented woods. No, what’s needed here is a massive gift shop, a Toy Museum, a Haunted Museum, a reconstructed Native American village and a cowboy riding a dinosaur. Yep, that should do. Oh wait. Actually, we need more. Welcome to the weird world of the Waxwork Museum in Natural Bridge.

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campsite fish


As we’ve travelled on this long (so far by my reckoning getting close to 8000 miles) road, some of the best food we’ve experienced has been on our campfire. I realise that might sound slightly big-headed, and it’s not meant to be: it’s just that after clocking your 410th Waffle House or Arby’s and realising that you might have to manage eating in one because you’ve got more distance to cover and no time to discover something more satisfying. Continue reading

Night on Huntingdon Beach


We had some ever-so-tipsy-fun the other night while we were camping in Huntingdon Beach State Park. Once we’d eaten a tasty grouper dinner, we headed down to the beach for some long exposure photography shenanigans. With E as the (willing, it has to be said) model we made some images using the existing moon-and-star-light and the reflections of the incoming tide. More pictures after the jump (or here, on Flickr). Continue reading

Americana Music Festival in Nashville

Drummer for The Defibulator

Americana: when you hear this word you’d be forgiven for thinking of rootsy, earthy and possibly ever-so-slightly chintzy American ‘stuff’. I’d never heard it used solely in the context of music as a genre but that might be because I’m a Limey, and wouldn’t have had reason to. Anyways, we were introduced to this style of music as being ‘kind of singer-songwriter but doesn’t have to be, lyrically deep and usually played by musicians with life experience’ by a new Nashville friend, Mr Jefferson Fox. Continue reading