Sirin Kale

I expected it to be hot behind the service counter at Kiln, of course I did. The restaurant is literally named after a furnace, after all. But I didn’t expect it to be quite so hot. Enormous buckets of charcoal merrily crackle not 30 centimetres from where Kiln’s fashionable young staff prepare the restaurant’s northern Thai cuisine. Chefs, dressed all in black, weave expertly along the galley-like, open kitchen, seemingly impervious to the threat of third-degree burns should they misstep and knock into one of the charcoal-filled taos [clay burners, imported from Thailand] sizzling in front of them. Facing them, at a long, steel-topped bar, sit the patrons, lined up on leather stools. Photograph: Rob Greig I’ve gone behind the scenes at the Soho restaurant, which has just been announced as Time Out’s Number One in London, to see what makes it so special. And it’s proving more hands-on than I was expecting. In the kitchen, head chef Meedu Saad shows me how to prepare Kiln’s signature dish of clay pot-baked glass noodles with Tamworth pork belly and brown crab meat. I place the pork belly slices in the base of the clay pot, before spooning crab meat over – don’t pack it in too tightly, or it forms a seal and prevents the delicious pig fat from rendering through the dish – and then pat a generous handful of noodles into the bowl, like I’m putting a child to bed. I finish it off with a garlic chive garnish, a ladleful of soy-basedsauce and anothe

When I arrived at Imad’s Syrian Kitchen off Carnaby Street on a Thursday night, the place was packed. People were dunking pillowy pitta bread into creamy hummus wherever I looked. The tables are close to each other, so if you’re not careful you may elbow someone as you reach for your third scoop of pomegranate-flecked baba ganoush, but that makes for a buzzy atmosphere. The room is inviting, with large blue-framed windows looking out at the bustling bars and restaurants of Kingly Court.  Founder Imad Alarnab ran three successful restaurants and a number of juice bars and cafés back in his native Damascus. His businesses were destroyed in the Syrian war, and he made the perilous journey to the UK via Calais, where he slept outside a church and cooked for his fellow refugees. In 2015, he arrived in London and ran supper clubs while fundraising for the refugee charity Choose Love. Eventually, he crowdfunded £50,000 to launch his first restaurant. The flat, deep-fried discs of falafel crunch in the most satisfying way imaginable Imad’s Syrian Kitchen offers updated versions of traditional Middle Eastern dishes – fattoush, kebabs, shish tawook (grilled chicken strips) – as well as innovations such as vegan hindi, a dish of grilled squash and pine nuts, and a halloumi noodle salad. And of course, falafel. But these aren’t the stodgy balls you get in supermarket wraps: they’re flat, deep-fried discs studded with sesame seeds that crunch in the most satisfying way imaginable, and wil

Objectively, it’s probably quite nice that your friends care enough to invite you to multiple home-cooked Christmas dinners in the early weeks of December. Friends are nice! (Or so I’ve been told). But there are only so many Brussels sprouts covered in jugs of microwaved gravy you can stand before your jeans get too tight and the flatulence gets career-ending. So, how do you stomach endless plates of festive grub, day after day? We asked Randy Santel, a professional competitive eater. ‘The night before a big food challenge, I expand my stomach with a large meal that’s mostly vegetables. The next morning, I go for a brisk 30- to 45-minute walk to get the blood flowing and the food moving through me, so I’m more likely to feel hungry sooner. When it comes to the Christmas meal, my tip is to eat the meat first while it’s still warm and juicy – it doesn’t go down as smoothly once it cools. Then move on to the vegetables and carbs. “The wall” is a big mental thing that all competitive eaters struggle with. You want to eat more, but your body says no. Ultimately, it’s okay to take a break.’  Can’t face cooking on December 25 with a hangover? Here are 52 London restaurants open on Christmas Day.

Once upon a time, a Londoner went to Winter Wonderland, and it was freezing out and the drinks were expensive and the queues were long and that Londoner vowed they would never go to Winter Wonderland again, deeming it a tourist attraction. Then, the following year, the Londoner’s relatives/friends from out of town were visiting London again, and the Londoner found themselves grinding their teeth in the cold, smiling for selfies while shivering uncontrollably. How best to have fun next year at Winter Wonderland? Take lessons from Mark Wood, an arctic explorer, of course. ‘Cover ground. Movement is a way of keeping warm. Focus your mind somewhere else to distract yourself from the cold. I may be in a freezer, but my mind can drift to warm beaches and palm trees. You can keep your heart rate down by relaxing, and it’s a great way to conserve energy: embrace the cold and enjoy the moment – think: snow!’  Mark is the Chair of the Explorers Club, GB and Ireland Chapter Fancy braving it and getting festive? Here’s our guide to Winter Wonderland.    

Dante named nine circles of hell, but I think he left one out: Oxford Street on Christmas Eve. If you’re a last-minute kind of person, follow these tips to extract yourself from Christmas shopping hell, with sanity intact. Stay safe, move fast and next year, do your shopping online. Former SAS soldier Ollie Ollerton tells us how to get the job done fast and well... ‘A worthy combatant takes time to prepare for their mission, which will make sure they return home victorious. Define what you need and where to get it before you deploy. When on Oxford Street, 70 percent of your enemies will be complicating the process by using mobile phones. Ensure yours is securely stowed, allowing you to have all senses firing. Walk with conviction and allow nothing to disrupt your presence. Domination is key to mission success. Debrief once you leave the battlefield, cross-referencing your plan against the execution. Once extracted, Oxford Street is not somewhere you want to return to until 2018.’ Ollie is the CEO of Breakpoint. Need inspiration for the perfect last-minute prezzie? We’ve got you covered with our immense Christmas gift guide.

I can’t be the only Londoner who’s nauseated by the mere thought of cheap pub wine come mid-December – but how else are you going to get through all those interminable work parties and Christmas drinks meet-ups, let alone whole days with your family? We asked, Ben Trattles, an Ibiza club rep, to solve our dilemma. ‘As well as a two-litre bottle of water by your bed, a Lucozade and a takeaway the day after the night before, I’m a firm believer that a Smirnoff Ice around midday takes the edge off. Plus, it’ll give you a taste for it later on in the evening when the drinking resumes.’ Ben is the managing director of Summer Takeover. Your round? Get them in at one of London’s most cosy pubs.

Had TS Eliot been alive today, he might have titled his seminal poem ‘The Wasteland’ differently: ‘Portrait of an office on December 27’, maybe. If, like me, you’re too stingy to waste your precious annual leave in the period between Christmas and New Year, you’re going to have to get good at faking it – work, that is. And who’s good at faking it, apart from your girlfriend? Actors! Here’s one actor, Michael Spicer, for some sound advice on this topic. ‘The first sign of being busy is the sound of your keyboard. If your boss can hear you typing, they know you’re hard at work, so pull up a blank email and get cracking. If you’ve got nothing to type, I recommend using the lyrics to your favourite song – it will ensure a steady flow of words for that nice rhythmic tapping sound. I once typed out the whole of “Rubber Soul” in an afternoon. I sounded so busy. If you really want to make an impression, arrange an entirely spurious meeting with a friend, pretending they’re an important associate. As long as they’re dressed appropriately, are sober and have no intimate history with you, this is a surefire way of looking busy and important.’  Finished ‘working’ for the day/week/year? Here’s how to do Christmas in London properly.  

Christmas season means Christmas parties, which – in turn – means less time to spend on the important things in life: eating alone in bed, watching Netflix... But how do you leave a party that’s going nowhere, without offending your host? We asked someone who knows a thing or two about escape routes – Scott Andrew Selby, a heist expert. ‘To ghost a party in style you have a couple of options that match up with high-end diamond heists. There’s the slow, methodical approach. Wear basics – dress so no one will notice you’re missing. Talk to everyone at the party so it’s established that you have been there. Then slip out a window or the back door. Or there’s the big splashy distraction. Here, you would tip over a punch bowl and make a big show of it. Cry out in dismay. Blame yourself. March off to the kitchen and come back with towels. Now everyone knows you are at the party. This is when you take off. Even those who spot you leaving will think you are slinking away to clean yourself up.’  Scott is the author of ‘Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History’. Looking for the perfect Xmas playlist for a party that doesn’t suck? Here are the 50 best Christmas songs.

…according to Alex Saunders, 27. Fatbergs can be as hard as concrete… ‘You’d think a fatberg would be soft, being mostly made of congealed fat, but they’re actually really hard to pull apart. We just discovered a huge one in a sewer in Whitechapel, and we had to use a saw to cut through it – that’s how hard it was. When you do cut into it, you find it’s stitched together with sanitary items.’ …and they smell like two Glastonbury toilets had a baby ‘Having stood over a manhole for the best part of a day, I’d say a fatberg smells of rotten eggs mixed with a foul-smelling public toilet. Maybe throw some rotten meat in there too.’ Fried chicken is partly to blame… ‘Our modern lifestyle is definitely a contributing factor. We love a bit of fast food, we have fattier diets, and those things didn’t exist back in the Victorian days when the sewer system was built by Bazalgette and his engineering team.’ …but wet wipes are the biggest problem ‘People love to wipe their bums with posh wet wipes, and they’re the worst! They’re the building blocks that allow fat to stick together. We’re telling people only to flush the three “Ps” down the loo – pee, poo and paper.’ Unblocking London’s sewers is hard work, but surprisingly fulfilling ‘The Whitechapel fatberg is one of the biggest we’ve ever found, and it’s turning out to be a bit of a monster to get rid of! I know that no one says, “I want to run a poo network when I grow up,” but when I reflect on what we’ve achieved, I feel so proud.’ S

April 2017: 30-year-old Debi Ghose – best known by her DJ name DEBONAIR – surveys the huge crowd in front of her in the cavernous space of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall and permits herself a smile. ‘It was definitely one of the standout gigs of my career,’ Ghose remembers of the evening she spent playing rare cuts to 10,000 people in one of London’s most high-profile cultural institutions. The night was part of an event curated by NTS, an online radio station that broadcasts from a sticker-covered hatch in Dalston’s Gillett Square. A resident DJ on NTS since it began in 2011, Ghose has gone from getting booked by a listener to playing Panorama Bar (situated atop Berlin’s legendary Berghain club – the DJ equivalent of entering Valhalla). Her ascendancy runs in parallel with the growth of the station that helped accelerate her already-burgeoning career. Clandestine stations have clogged London’s airwaves since the 1960s. Stations like Kiss, Rinse and Kool FM were amplifiers for British underground culture in the ’80s and ’90s – playing genres like jungle, garage and grime that were ignored by commercial stations. The reaction was huge. DJs often needed two phones because the lines for shows would get so full, and if a station threw a party, thousands of people would show up. ‘We developed this culture out of nothing,’ says Rinse FM founder Geeneus, ‘and kept on pushing until the mainstream embraced it. Pirate radio was one of the biggest influences in our country and it has never

Two words, my friends: bladder training. That is, unless you want to end up in the dreaded Carnival spiral: needing to wee, beginning the torturous hunt for a toilet, losing all your friends in the process, blissful urination, relocating your friends, downing a drink in blessed relief that your ordeal is over, then needing to wee again. Urological surgeon Professor Hiten RH Patel says: ‘Obviously, try and limit how much you’re drinking. It’s also a good idea to drink fewer bladder irritants – like caffeine or alcohol. And bladder re-training exercises like Kegel pelvic floor exercises will help improve bio-feedback, which can decrease how frequently you need the toilet.’ He says it’s also worth trying ‘timed voiding’, aka practising not going to the toilet immediately when you need it. Everyone loves homework, right? Heading to Carnival? Now you've got the toilet situation under control, get clued up on everything else with our handy guide.  

There’s something about daytime drinking that induces narcolepsy in even the hardiest of us: devout clubbers used to staying up all night fall asleep after precisely three shandies in the sun. But how to get rid of that brain fog you get after an afternoon smashing cans in the park? Kari Poikolainen, doctor and public health professor says: ‘Alcoholic beverages are best enjoyed in the evening. The harmful effects on the brain are stronger in the morning and afternoon. Eating reduces the brain effects because peak alcohol level will be lower than in cases when no food is consumed. But a light lunch is better than a heavy one unless you are planning to have a nap. Salads, sandwiches, vegetable soups are good for people who want to remain active after lunch. And avoid especially sugary alcoholic drinks.’ Need some food to soak up the booze? Temper founder Neil Rankin shares his tips for how to improve your disposable barbecue game.  

If you were to distill the essence of Hackney into a perfume, it would probably smell like the designated barbecue area in London Fields (with a top note of chicken shop fumes). While Americans fire up sleek six-burner stainless steel beauties with bespoke condiment racks, British people poke sad-looking burgers on disposable barbecues with twigs – and that’s what makes us great, folks. But how to get the most out of that £3.50 disposable grill? We asked barbecue pro Neil Rankin, founder of Temper and purveyor of all things meat. How can you get the most out of a crappy disposable barbeque? ‘To grill food well, you need thick grill bars that retain heat. Disposables don’t have that, but they're still an okay heat source for indirect cooking. Try buying a few of them and hanging or placing your meat further away. I’ve cooked a whole chicken in 30 mins before using five disposables hung around it like a tandoori oven.’ Which is the best cut of meat to go for? ‘Thick steaks are the best all-rounder and you're least likely to mess them up as you don’t need to be worried about undercooking. For the pricey cuts, sirloin is the easiest to cook but I prefer flank. It’s cheaper to buy the best quality flank steak than the worst quality sirloin. Cook it hot and fast.  Are there any quick and simple marinades you can make al fresco? ‘Mix equal amounts of Sriracha hot sauce, sesame oil and soy sauce. I add marinades and sauces after cooking as they make a mess of your grill and don’t he

There’s no escaping the moveable greenhouse that is the London Underground in summer. Is there anything worse than feeling sweat trickle down your back leg as you jam your face into someone’s armpit whilst ramming yourself onto the central line at Mile End? Short of moving somewhere that’s walking distance from your work (lol), the easiest way to avoid spending an hour a day feeling like you're in a sauna is switching up your route. Ditch the older lines that go deepest underground, because they’re the hottest. The Bakerloo is the worst, followed by the Central line. The coolest? District, Circle, Hammersmith & City or Metropolitan are all blessedly air-conditioned. If you have to get on the Central line, here’s an ingenious tip: put a bottle of water in the freezer overnight, then carry it with you in one of those cloth tote bags. Press it on the back of your neck, roll it across your face or just hold on to it to keep cool. Got more summer problems? Here's how to make cocktails in the park when you're bored of G&T tinnies. Plus, we asked a professional photographer how to take an actually good sunset snap.