The Time Out London blog team

We’re big fans of Islington’s The Pocket, which launched less than a year ago and was named (by us!) as London’s best new pub that opened in 2025.  As well as serving delicious ales and delightful ciders, the pub has a decent snack selection, which largely focuses on scotch eggs and sausage rolls. ‘No reservations. No green food. No shit beer. No terrible modern music,’ the boozer says. However, as of March the pub is set to open up its upstairs room to serve a slap up lunch and dinner courtesy of super supper club, Big Plates. It’s possible that some green food might make an appearance.  Chris Coulson Big Plates’ month-long Saturdays-only residency will serve up a menu dedicated to ‘powerful gravies and robust puddings’. There will be snacks of pork and prunes and confit leek with walnut and Worcestershire sauce, as well as a starter of mince on focaccia with brûléed egg yolk, and mains of Piedmontese onions, pork schnitzel, and butter chicken pie. For pudding you have the very difficult choice of deciding between a chocolate and stout steamed pudding, and slab of banoffee pie.  The residency takes place on March 7, 14, 21 and 28. It’s four courses for £40, and you can score your tickets here. Lunch seatings take place at 1pm and dinners at 7pm.   Big Plates is the tasty project of chefs Josh Ebsworth and Hannah Larkin, who’ve worked everywhere from Cloth in Farringdon and Half Cut Market to Lucky & Joy. Their thing is ‘classics with cheeky riffs’.  The Pocket, 25...

At the end of last summer, storied Soho jazz club Ronnie Scott’s revealed that it would be opening a new venue. Named Upstairs At Ronnie’s, the 140-capacity venue will open above the current club and boast enhanced sound and lights systems. Upstairs at Ronnie’s will mark the first time that the space above Ronnie Scott’s has been used since it closed for a revamp in 2024. The venue promises to be an intimate, ‘world class’ performance space with Yamaha and D&B Audio systems, as well as plush interiors with plenty of dark wood and fancy upholstery. Now we finally know when the venue will open and its opening lineup. Jazz-heads, mark your calendars for Friday February 6, which is when Upstairs At Ronnie’s will open with two events. The first slot (5pm-8.45pm) will be occupied by soul and jazz singer Dana Masters, with the ‘late late show’ (11.15pm onward) set to be from Cuban band Viva Cuba. Image: Ronnie Scott’s Between February and April, the music lineup for Upstairs at Ronnie’s will sprawl beyond jazz and soul into funk, rare groove, gospel, classical music and musical theatre, as well as host music conferences. Musical highlights include the Ronnie Scott’s Gospel Choir, Tawiah, Joe Webb, Ashley Henry, Bill Laurance and Charlie Stacey, while composer David Arnold and actress Juliet Stevenson will take part in talks.  You can find the full lineup and buy tickets on the Ronnie Scott’s website here. 🎷 The best jazz clubs in London, according to Time Out. Get the latest...

The City of London, particularly in the darks days of January, can be awfully grey. Grey skyscrapers, grey suits, grey pavements, grey skies... you get the gist. But at the end of this month, there’s a brand new festival arriving to inject some colour into the financial district.  ‘Vibrance’ will light up Roman ruins, medieval churches and secret gardens across the Square Mile on Thursday January 29 and Friday January 30 from 5.30pm until 8.30pm.  Created by Guildhall Production Studio, it brings together more than a dozen artworks and live performances by emerging artists from Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Photograph: Guildhall Production Studio Guildhall Yard will be illuminated with a series of different large-scale projections; St Gile’s Cripplegate will host an something called an extended reality installation, which combines sound, light and virtual reality (VR) technology to create an otherworldly effect; St Alphage London Wall and Garden, meanwhile, will host live music performances merging opera and electronic music.  A stone’s throw away, there’ll be a sonic installation at Salters’ Garden which will guide visitors down a route with speakers hiding in the greenery. Finally, Milton Court will come alive with visual lightworks that organisers say will reflect on ‘inner-city life and its impact on the human experience’.  The whole thing is completely free and there are no tickets needed – just turn up and wander around the kaleidoscopic light and sound scapes...