The Time Out London blog

Yes, we’re well aware that the sunshine we’ve had of late might be our lot for this summer. But we can enjoy it while it lasts – and nothing quite beats the triumphant taste of burnt bangers in the great outdoors. So if you want to get a barbie going but don’t have a garden, here are 11 places in the city where you can get your sizzle on.  A post shared by Amy-May Wallace (@amymaywallace) on Jun 14, 2017 at 1:42pm PDT Highbury Fields, Islington We’re all for killing two birds with one stone, and at Highbury Fields, you can chargrill your chicken thighs on a sunny day while your quads feel the heat too. Just remember that sunscreen. You want your food crispy, not yourself.   London, you look lovely today ☺️ #London #Islington #Holloway #Summer #CaledonianPark #CaledonianClockTower #BlueSkies #Nature #Park A post shared by TARA MILLINGTON 💋 (@taramillington) on May 22, 2017 at 4:00am PDT Caledonian Park, Holloway Caledonian Park has got so much time for your barbequing endeavours, it even has a Grade II listed clock tower. Use it as a handy timer for your grills – or to see how long the sun stays out to play. Cantelowes Gardens, Camden This little Camden gem is tucked away from the hustle and bustle you’d normally expect from

If tucking into a book and a slice of cake is your idea of happy, these London bookshops might just be your cup of tea.   Anna Thornton London Review Bookshop Cakes are serious business in this highbrow Bloomsbury bookshop and bijou tea room. They’re handcrafted in-house by shop founder Terry Glover, and the icing on the cake is that you can order bespoke, hand-painted ones for weddings and birthdays. Try the showstopper: lemon myrtle, caramelised apple and camomile cream cake. 14-16 Bury Place, WC1A 2JL.  We're feeling musical this month at Travelling Through 🎷🎶 Why not pop by for one of our June events? #Waterloo #Southbank #London pic.twitter.com/UGkG9ArYAu — Travelling Through (@Trvllng_Thrgh) June 13, 2017 Travelling Through It’s a bookshop for globetrotters but you’ll definitely want to stop and put your feet up for cake and a cuppa. Serving culture, art and books, Travelling Through is the perfect place to escape the hustle and bustle of Waterloo – for balmier days, there’s a walled garden downstairs. 131 Lower Marsh, SE1 7AE.   The royal treatment you can get @BookandKitchen, the best cafe and bookstore in London! #weekend pic.twitter.com/uEluKFbYML — Jakub Krupa (@JakubKrupa) June 4, 2016 Book & Kitchen A mecca for bibliophiles and cake lovers, this eclectic Notting Hill bookshop is also a café, art gallery and events space, with su

On June 18, director John Landis will be in town to host a concert at the Royal Albert Hall dedicated to the work of film composer Elmer Bernstein. In 1981 Landis wrote and directed one of the best films ever set in our city, for which Bernstein provided the score. A lot has changed since ‘An American Werewolf in London’ was released, so these images are a bit of a trip down memory lane, but here are all the places that feature in the much-loved comedy-horror mashup.  The Black Swan, Ockham Okay, we’re cheating with this one as it’s in Surrey. But c’mon, it’s less than a mile outside the M25 and is way too good to leave out. The Black Swan was used for the interior of The Slaughtered Lamb, the isolated Yorkshire boozer where backpackers Jack Goodman and David Kessler encounter a pentagram and some very cagey locals – including two much-missed legends, Brian Glover and an incredibly young Rik Mayall. London does have its own Slaughtered Lamb pub; you can find it on Great Sutton Street in Clerkenwell. Chiswick and West Brompton After a hasty retreat from The Slaughtered Lamb, Jack and David are pounced on by a werewolf. Jack is killed but David survives and is transferred to London where he recovers in the fictional St Martin’s hospital, suffering some seriously WTF nightmares along the way. Two old hospitals were used for St Martin’s: the now demolished Chiswick Lodge, which was in Netheravon Road South; and the Princess Beatrice on the corner of Old Brompton and Finb

After a spell of great weather, we Croydonites are usually on the lookout for more ways to spend some time outdoors without having to trek up to town. If you can’t squeeze on to the terrace at Boxpark Croydon, here are some alternatives to camping out in a pub garden when the weather gets good.  A post shared by Jo Irwin (@_theladylondon) on May 26, 2017 at 12:17pm PDT Yoga on the roof of Centrale Shopping Centre Don’t worry: this isn't about performing your best child’s pose in a parking bay. After last year’s success, Lost Format Society is back and has taken over the top of Centrale’s car park. It may not seem the obvious choice for catching some late afternoon sunning, but there’s a bar, a cinema and a pretty nice vibe. The music’s good, the sun lasts late into the evening and there’s the customary giant deck chair for all your Instagram needs.  To top that, on June 11 they’re starting up yoga sessions on Sundays, in the sun. Slightly more appealing than in the basement of a gym, eh? Bring your own picnic to Beddington Park  You could be forgiven for thinking that the sometimes overlooked Beddington Park is too picturesque for Croydon. The meandering River Wandle and chocolate box St Mary’s Church are perfect for pretending you’re a million miles away from the centre of town on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Better still, they’ve got public barbecue stands. So grab some mates, some sausages and some beers and hav

What are this town's top toppings? Which pizza players whack the whackiest things onto their dough in the most brilliant ways? Take a bite out of these bad boys available by the slice or pie...  1. The Full Moon Slice at Voodoo Ray’s Photo: Andy Parsons       It sounds like something your flatmate’s friend who slept on the sofa for five months and tried to grow mushrooms in the bath would have cooked up for Glastonbury. But no: the mayonnaise pizza is real, and a slice of it can be yours. Voodoo Ray’s wildcard option (it’s only available after midnight, for obvious reasons) features bacon sprinkles, marinated tomatoes and mozzarella, all held together by splodges of cult Japanese mayo brand Kewpie. The one for… Mayonnaise-loving werewolves. £4 (slice). Get a 22" pizza and four cocktails for £35 at www.timeout.com/raysbaroffer.          2. TSB at Yard Sale Pizza   A post shared by Yard Sale Pizza (@yardsalepizza) on Aug 28, 2016 at 8:20am PDT     Not to be confused with the banking giant, Yard Sale’s TSB is all the reason you need to eat your greens. Manchego and pine nuts are the supporting acts for leggy florets of tenderstem broccoli (hence TSB), gorgeously charred. And if you finish your veg, it’s totally fine to have one of their freshly baked brownies for dessert. The one for… Chlorophyl nuts. From £9.50.     3. XO pig cheek, collard greens and crackling furikake at Homeslice   A post shared by Homeslice (@homesliceldn) on

  Nathan James Page     We asked you to share the most embarrassing things that have happened to you in the work place. Get ready to blush. 'I vommed into my handbag, and a colleague unwittingly offered to carry it. He then proceeded to ask me out while carrying a bag of puked-up curry.' I pushed my boss into a swimming pool.' 'I vomited and shat myself in front of a class full of students.' 'I was having a catch-up with my boss in the canteen when they started playing Salt-N-Pepa's 'Let's Talk About Sex'. Very loudly.' 'Working late, I walked into the boardroom to find two male, married senior executives pleasuring each other.' 'IT picked up a group email I'd sent asking who was buying the MDMA for the office Christmas party.' 'I shouted "Oh fuck!" on a conference call to thousands of my fellow employees.' 'I got caught going for the five-knuckle shuffle in the office darkroom.' 'I had a sex toy delivered to my office on the day that the admin decided to open everyone's post for them.' Now tell us: what's your most heartwarming London story?

Even before Arcade Fire spent an entire album bemoaning the 'endless suburbs stretched out thin and dead' the 'burbs have had a bad rep, but one German photographer has managed to find beauty in towering pylons, low terraced brick houses and overused sports fields.  Philipp Ebeling did a ten-day, 250km circular walk around London's outskirts to document the places 'too far from the inner city to feature in the story of London, not far enough out to be leafy suburb and commuter land'. He captures the bits of the city where you can probably still get a coffee for under £2, where the sky isn't reflected in glass-paneled skyscrapers and abandoned spaces aren't turned into street-food markets (yet).  'London Ends' is a love letter to places like Tottenham, Barking, Catford, Woolwich and other areas forgotten by the guidebooks but inescapably real to the great swathes of people who live here. Ebeling told Time Out that when he first arrived in London, at 19, from a small village in Germany he found the city overwhelming: 'You never feel like you really know the city because it is so spread out and the many centres are very disconnected. It took me years of exploring until I had a more complete picture of the city in my head. The crazy thing about London is you can always find a new and different neighbourhood or street where there is something new to discover.' 'London Ends' is available to buy from FishBar, a gallery in an old fish and chip shop. Check out some of the photos b

It's been a hot spot for sex shops, gay clubbing and posh restaurants, but Soho might owe its weird name to another, older London pastime. ‘The origin is uncertain,’ says Hazel Forsyth, senior curator at the Museum of London, ‘but according to popular mythology, “so-ho!” or “so-hoe!” was originally the cry of the huntsman.’Hundreds of years ago, the area now covered by Soho was uninhabited land, and a popular hunting spot for the capital’s great and good. In a 1563 account, historian John Stow describes how the Lord Mayor and his hunting party caught a hare, ate it for dinner at the chamberlain’s banqueting house then went back out to chase a fox just for fun. There is another Soho, of course. But New York’s SoHo is boringly named after its location in Manhattan, south of Houston Street. Would they have chosen that particular name if ours hadn’t existed already? I think not. Copycats. Check out the best restaurants in Soho.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so it's no surprise that time-pushed and communication-averse Londoners are relying on emojis to get the message across. After all, why pick up the telephone when a tiny picture of two glasses clinking will do the trick? But which emojis are Londoners using the most? Perhaps the eye roll for Underground delays, an umbrella to represent the city's standard weather, or the aubergine for... y'know. Surprisingly it's none of these – the most popular emoji in London is the 'crying with laughter' face. You know the one – usually preceded with 'lol' and named as Oxford Dictionaries 'Word of the Year' in 2015. 😂 According to Emojipedia, other popular emojis that Londoners search for on their online archive include the Union Jack flag, love heart, smirking face and party popper. Can we blame Brexit for the number of people using the Union Jack flag emoji? We'll never know. But judging by these findings, Londoners are a flirtatious and patriotic party crowd.  Did you know you can now get London emojis including Sadiq Khan and the tube roundel?

Apologies in advance to the majority of you who’d rather not think about the levels of filth floating about in the tubes you board, but we’ve got new figures to share with you, and they ain’t pretty! Responding to a Freedom of Information request, TfL has recently revealed that seats on seven of the tube lines never get washed with shampoo. Those using the District, Circle, Northern, Piccadilly, Hammersmith and City, Jubilee and Metropolitan lines, you’re in for a dirty ride. The only lines to get a little scrub are the Bakerloo, Central and Victoria lines, and even they only get shampooed every six months to a year. If that’s brought you out in a cold sweat, find solace in the knowledge that carriages get a basic clean every night, seats are hoovered regularly, and covers are replaced if soiled. The floors get a sweep and the poles a spot clean every night, and mopping takes place every two to three days along with a thorough wipe down on the poles. A TfL spokesperson said: 'We’re committed to providing the best possible service on London’s transport network. 'Although cleaning regimes vary across the Underground, each line has a rigorous cleaning schedule in place, for both the interior and exterior of the trains, to provide a pleasant environment for our customers.' Still, maybe getting a seat on the tube isn't that appealing after all.  A few years back, Time Out set out to find out how clean the tube was. Watch the dusty results below:   In other underground ne

Between all the passive-aggressive notes and the hallway grunting, a quality relationship with your neighbour can be hard to come by. But it's not totally impossible. Check out these three websites that can help rebuild neighbourhood morale, one click at a time.   A post shared by Streetbank (@streetbank_share) on Nov 20, 2014 at 8:53am PST Streetbank So you’re hosting a party next week and you could really do with your neighbour’s barbecue set (not that you’ve been peeking into their garden or anything like that). Streetbank has you covered, listing all manner of tools and whatnot available to borrow in the local area. The exchange of services is also encouraged, which may include language tuition or advice on a range of interests, so even budding competitive dog groomers can find inspiration. Users are also able to declutter their cupboards of forgotten items, such as that dust-covered film projector you haven't used since 'Finding Nemo' came out on DVD. Team London Want to make a difference but don’t have the time or money to fly halfway across the world? With Team London, you don’t even need to leave the comfort of your own borough. There’s a wide selection of roles on offer, such as child mentors, conservation workers and choppers/stirrers of nutritious surplus food for the homeless. It doubles up as a handy platform for charities to enlist local help. You’re guaranteed to meet fantastic, like-minded people and you can even collect badges to show off about your vo

London’s got Russia on the brain, and not just because of world politics or the centenary of the Russian Revolution. Grumbling about oligarchs is a major pastime these days, but Russian London isn’t all posh bars and mansions in Belgravia. There’s also a young, creative, trust-fund-free Russian community running dumpling-obsessed supperclubs, film pop-ups, art shows and start-ups. Of the 300,000-odd people of Russian descent in London, about half were born in Russia. The expat population has spiked in the last decade, leading to the jokey name Londongrad. But we’re an internationally minded bunch. When we do hang out together it’s usually to enjoy a nostalgic meal of pelmeni, or to do good. The London-based charity Gift of Life, for instance, helps cancer patients with fundraising events starring Russian classical music and theatre stars. It’s a long way from ‘Meet the Russians’. Sasha Raspopina Did you know? The Russian spring festival Maslenitsa, also known as ‘pancake week’, is widely celebrated in London in the last week of February. It’s a great time to feast on blini! Sasha’s favourite Russian places in London Home to Russian and post-Soviet art and photography, Calvert 22 Foundation in Shoreditch also has a bookshop stuffed with publications on everything New East, from brutalist architecture to Gosha Rubchinskiy. If you’re hungry and adventurous, look out for appearances by the Mince & Dough Russian Canteen, a pop-up serving some of the best Russian dumplings in