One Night Stanzas

BREAKFAST

Goji, Goodramgate, York

Fully vegan? Nope, this is a veggie place with vegan options. But you can tell that they really care about veganism and vegans aren’t just an afterthought.
Specialism? They don’t have one — literally everything is brilliant. However, I’m going to go ahead and give them extra extra brownie points for having creative vegan breakfasts. A vegan breakfast (let alone a good vegan breakfast) is a rare thing.
Prices? Very reasonable.
Do I need to book? If you’re in York for only a short time and want to make sure you get to eat here, then yes. I have never booked but it’s always been super busy when I’ve been, and I’ve always been very lucky to arrive just as a table has come free.
Easy to find? Yes, it’s near the back of the Minster.
Accessible? Not really. The ground floor is up a step and then inside, the first floor dining area and loos are only accessed via a tiny, winding staircase. That’s York and it’s tall, narrow, listed buildings for you.
Best bit? It’s all great: lovely friendly staff (of course, it’s Yorkshire!), great meals at any time of day, great cake, nice space… it’s a magical place.
They could improve: this is a note for management. Hire more staff. Your waitstaff are all lovely but they always seem super frazzled! One more body could make all the difference!

LUNCH

The 78, Kelvinhaugh Street, Glasgow

Fully vegan? Yep!
Specialism? Burgers. This is very much a burger place. But they’re good burgers, and the specials change daily. That beast up there ^ is a mushroom and tarragon burger and OMG it was good.
Prices? Reasonable.
Do I need to book? I doubt it — they have loads of seats. Maybe on a weekend night for dinner as I can imagine it would get busy then.
Easy to find? Honestly? No. Lovely Boyfriend and I wandered around a bit in the rain before eventually getting there… and it’s a fairly long way from either a station or a Subway. There are buses along Argyll Street, though.
Accessible? Fully! Hooray!
Best bit? It’s a cool space: light and bright with lots of windows, but also somehow cozy. Great Glaswegian hospitality… oh, and they have vegan desserts, too, like chocolate brownie and sticky toffee pudding!
They could improve: nowt! Well done, The 78!

Stereo, Renfield Lane, Glasgow

Fully vegan? Yep!
Specialism? Piles and piles and piles of food. Also their chips are just a little big magical.
Prices? Reasonable.
Do I need to book? Possibly. I tend to go early evening and usually manage to get a seat, but it starts filling up rapidly after 6pm.
Easy to find? Ish. It’s right in the middle of Glasgow, literally a two-minute walk from Central Station. However, it’s also in an alleyway, and if you approach from a certain angle it looks perpetually closed. Give the doors a shove, though… they’re open!
Accessible? Nope, the alleyway is kinda dark and cobbled and narrow, and the restaurant itself is up a ton of steps. They do have unisex bathrooms though, which I appreciate!
Best bit? Eating in this place makes you feel super cool and with it, as you can throw a stone in any direction in this place and hit an art student, poet, or beardy hipster man in a lumberjack shirt. Personally, I like this. It’s good people watching. Plus, Stereo also has a venue downstairs which hosts painfully hip nights — the last thing I went to there was a circus-themed cabaret with loads of nudity (for some reason, they booked me to read poems there. I’ll admit, I was scared).
They could improve: the menu, maybe… it’s a tad limited. I go only occasionally. I’d appreciate some new options!

SUNDAY LUNCH

Norman’s Coach & Horses, off Greek Street, Soho, London

Fully vegan? Nope, this place is veggie and vegan. But like Goji above, veganism is very much part of the ethos and there are loads of vegan options.
Specialism? Their “tofush” and chips (pictured in the second photo above). It’s a tofu fish supper, and really very good.
Prices? Bordering on cheap, for London!
Do I need to book? We went on a Sunday at 1pm (classic Sunday lunch time), and there were free tables, so probably not.
Easy to find? Yep, it’s in the middle of Soho and near to various tube stations. We walked there from the South Bank and found it fine.
Accessible? Yes, although the bathrooms are not.
Best bit? I had the vegan Sunday roast, which is what that stuffed aubergine thing is.
They could improve: the staff. Sorry! I hate slagging people who work difficult jobs. But… smile and be nice, please! I know it’s London, but come on. You can do it.

Goji (again), see above.

I already praised these guys to the sky at breakfast, I know… but I just had to show you their vegan lentil loaf Sunday roast. It was perfect, folks. Get thee to York, already!

TAPAS & SHARING

Veggie Garden, Carrer des Angels, Barcelona

Fully vegan? Yes!
Specialism? Juices. They have literally hundreds of amazing juice, smoothie and shake options on the menu. Worth going there for this alone.
Prices? Cheap.
Do I need to book? Maybe. It does get busy around typical lunch/local dinner hours. I’ve now been three times — booked the first time and then chanced it the last two. If you’re eating at UK dinner time (e.g. before 8pm) though, you’re likely to be OK.
Easy to find? Yes. It’s near Liceu Metro, too, which is one of the major stations.
Accessible? Not really. Most of the seats are upstairs, but in good weather you can eat on the terrace outside. The bathrooms are very cramped.
Best bit? It’s one of those places where you can order anything and know that it’s going to be amazing. Even the guacamole is a cut above the usual. The staff are lovely, too, and are happy to put up with terrible Spanglish from the likes of me. Oh, and the walls are covered in amazing, brightly coloured murals!
They could improve: the loos are a bit grim. Nothing utterly gross, but you know, loo roll on the floor, no hand towels, stuff like that. Sorry, Veggie Garden!

El Piano, Grape Lane, York

Fully vegan? Yes, AND gluten free, too!
Specialism? Being FOOD SAINTS. Not only is everything vegan, cruelty free and gluten free, they also really value keeping their meals locally-sourced. Every dish has a circle next to it with a number inside, telling you what percentage of that meal was sourced within ten miles of the restaurant. Most of the dishes are 70% local or more.
Prices? Cheap. The portions are huge. You get so much bang for your buck here.
Do I need to book? YES. A thousand times yes. York folks are not stupid: they know this is the best place to eat in the entire county! It’s always been packed whenever I’ve been and I have always needed to book.
Easy to find? Yep, it’s a stone’s throw from the Minster.
Accessible? The ground floor is, yes. The loos, maybe not.
Best bit? Definitely the two sharing platters (one is pictured above). Their mains are also great… but the sharing platters give you chance to taste the whole range of amazing food they make.
They could improve: the desserts. I was legit shocked that a place that does such utterly amazing savoury food could turn out such average desserts! Perhaps my expectations were too high. But they do get brownie points for having desserts at all.

DINNER

Bonsai, Broughton St & Richmond St, Edinburgh

Fully vegan? Nope. This is actually your regular restaurant with plenty of meat and fish on the menu… they just have a lot of veggie things that also, happily, happen to be vegan!
Specialism? Sushi.
Prices? Reasonable.
Do I need to book? Only if you’re dining with a party of more than four, I’d say.
Easy to find? Yep.
Accessible? The Broughton Street one probably is, yes. I’ll hold up my hands and say I have never been to the Richmond Street one!
Best bit? The food is really lovely… it’s just the right amount of experimental, with cool specials like butternut squash maki, or oyster mushroom tempura. The service is also very fast and efficient, and the waitstaff are all lovely.
They could improve: more vegan specials on the specials board, more often! Most times I go all the specials are fish-adjacent.

Itadaki Zen, King’s Cross Road, London
(fun fact: they also have a seasonal outpost in, of all places, Oban!)

Fully vegan? Yes. In fact, this is the first all-vegan Japanese restaurant in the whole of Europe!
Specialism? Flavour-balancing. Seriously, the chefs here are magicians. Everything you eat tastes clean, crisp, never too salty or spicy or plain. The menu goes into detail about how they try to waste nothing and ask that diners do the same — they discourage the addition of soy sauce or wasabi to their sushi, because it doesn’t need it. And it really doesn’t! Every mouthful is perfect.
Prices? Very reasonable, especially for London, especially for food so good.
Do I need to book? Yes, always. The place is always full to the top, sometimes with a queue out the door.
Easy to find? Yes. Just remember it’s on King’s Cross Road, not Gray’s Inn Road. The two roads look very alike, as Lovely Boyfriend and I discover every time we go here!
Accessible? No, and it’s very small, too! Prepare to get a bit cozy with your fellow diners!
Best bit? The four-course set meals (we tried the Itadaki course and the Tempura course). You get an amazing starter, then sushi, then a bento box-ed main, then dessert, all for a very reasonable price, and it’s literally the perfect size for a meal. You leave feeling the most pleasant kind of full!
They could improve: the loos. Nothing terrible, but a bit scruffy.

COFFEE & CAKE

The Chocolate Tree, Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh

Fully vegan? No, but lots and lots of tasty vegan options. They value their vegan customers and some of the staff are vegan!
Specialism? They’re probably the only legitimate chocolatier (a company that makes their 100% of their chocolate themselves, from the bean) in the UK. Most companies who call themselves ‘chocolatiers’ are actually ‘confiseurs.’ In other words: these guys are serious chocolate specialists.
Prices? Very reasonable.
Do I need to book? Yes. The cafe recently cleared out some tables to make space for merch instead, so there are only about ten seats in the whole place. Booking is basically essential. However, if you can’t get a table you can always take your chocolate goodies to a bench on the nearby Bruntsfield Links — a favourite pasttime of mine!
Easy to find? Yes. It’s on tons of bus routes or you can take a nice stroll through the Meadows and then the Links to get there.
Accessible? Yes.
Best bit? Their hot chocolate drinks. That chocolate cake above is definitely lush, but it’s also impossible to finish a whole piece in one sitting and then walk away! The hot chocolates, however, come in lots of different flavours and levels of intensity and all of them can be made with soy milk. Yay! Oh, also, on a hot day not much beats their sorbet counter! Vegan chocolate sorbet, be mine.
They could improve: I’ll admit, I liked it better when there were more tables. Sigh.

RAW at La Suite West, Inverness Terrace, Kensington, London

Fully vegan? No, veggie — but with a big emphasis on vegan, dairy free and raw.
Specialism? Their all-vegan-all-the-time afternoon tea. I never dared to dream of such a thing existing!
Prices? OK, you knew this one was going to be pricey, right? Afternoon tea for two will set you back almost £50. But actually, as afternoon teas go, that isn’t bad — it compares favourably to the famous Balmoral one. And afternoon tea is a big meal… we left barely able to walk and we didn’t even finish everything!
Do I need to book? Nope. We did, but then the place was pretty quiet.
Easy to find? Yes — it’s a stone’s throw from Kensington Gardens and literally thirty seconds’ walk from the Bayswater tube.
Accessible? Fully!
Best bit? The coconut cream that came with the scones. I know that’s mega-specific, but it was that good.
They could improve: by turning the lights up a little! The mood lighting — not only in the restaurant, but also in the corridors when you’re trying to find the loo — is er, a little too moody! I like to be able to see the cake I am eating!

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Like shiny things? Check out Edinburgh Vintage, a totally unrelated ’sister site’ full of jewels, treasures and trinkets. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

Remember my 30 before 30 promise? #6? Get out more. I already started out pretty well… and I am keeping it up! I’m just home from two back-to-back autumnal jollies:

First, to York!

I’ve written about the magic of York — and my favourite places there — before. Unsurprisingly, I returned to all those places on this trip, too! I also scoffed my own weight in amazing vegan food, trawled the thrift shops (of course), and perused many a bookshop. Basically my typical weekend.

…then London!

I didn’t take many photos in London, and I’m kinda kicking myself. I wish I had photographed the super-cute sleeping pod-room we stayed in at Z Victoria, for example, or some of the millions of cute dogs we saw all over the place! Still, here’s a tiny taster of what I got up to…

This was the main reason we headed south in the first place: to see Speed-The-Plow. Yes, that is Lindsay Lohan’s face (and yes, I look like a madwoman). It’s her West End (in fact, her stage) debut. However, she is in no way the reason we went. The reason is her co-star, the amazing Richard Schiff, aka Toby Ziegler, my favourite character from my favourite show ever, The West Wing. Here’s my favourite nine seconds of Toby, to give you a flavour of his character:

Needless to say, he was bloody excellent in this role. I may be biased, but even in spite of my bias, he was excellent. I believe that critics have been needlessly snotty about the play — and especially backhandedly unpleasant about Lohan. (If your whole review boils down to “it wasn’t as good as when Kevin Spacey did it,” then you’re a shite critic — especially if only sentences beforehand you’ve been rude about the casting of movie stars as a ploy to get butts on seats.) Personally, I absolutely loved it. But then (perhaps surprisingly, for those of you who know me) I love Mamet. Not everyone does.

Many of the cute dogs we saw were in Kensington Gardens. I had never been to Kensington before but holy wow, it is swanky. Everyone there has really good shoes.
(I went there to have afternoon tea in a pOAsh hotel, wearing my moth-holed skirt and a charity shop t-shirt that I’d sawed the hem off. Fortunately, they seemed to take pity on me and did not throw me out.)

Finally, here is a photo of me with a plushie Moomin I found in Foyles on the South Bank. I really wanted him, but I’d already bought a megaton of poetry books and there was just no space in my hand-luggage. I will just have to stare sadly at this photograph instead.

What are YOU loving this week?

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Like shiny things? Check out Edinburgh Vintage, a totally unrelated ’sister site’ full of jewels, treasures and trinkets. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

In August, One Night Stanzas played host to an exclusive spoken-word gig at the end of George Watsky’s Nothing Like The First Time tour. I started a write-up for it, but got bored: it was my own gig after all, and I spent the last three months or so organising it. The man himself is far more interesting. See if you agree.

THE FIRST TIME I saw George Watsky, he was stepping onto the stage at Camden’s Barfly, ready to launch into the penultimate gig of his twenty-four-city Nothing Like The First Time tour. Initially, I couldn’t get over how small he was – at 26, he looks more like a geeky high-schooler than a hip-hop wunderkind. For the gig, he wore an outsize t-shirt with goofy slogan – “dreamers think with their heart” – and a San Jose Sharks cap which he constantly fiddled with, turning it backwards, forwards, backwards again. But if boyish awkwardness has been a difficulty for Watsky in his efforts to get noticed as a hip-hop artist – one of his lyrics registers the complaint, “I’m the best rapper alive / who gets mistaken for Michael Cera everywhere that he drives” – then it doesn’t show. This tiny, funny-looking guy has become one of the genre’s fastest rising stars, thanks in part to the gawkiness that makes him stand out in a scene all too often characterised by macho posturing.

Watsky began to be noticed as a talented performance poet, winning over a dozen slams in the San Francisco area between 2005 and 2006, and scooping top titles at the Youth Speaks Grand Slam and the Brave New Voices International Poetry Slam. He was contacted by HBO’s Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, and his performance of “V for Virgin,” a poem that advocates remaining chaste in spite of peer pressure, aired in the show’s sixth season. Subsequently, Watsky toured campuses across America, and in 2007 released his first record, the “barely-heard” Invisible Inc. This laid the foundations for the 2010 album Watsky, an eclectic mix of tracks dealing with everything from George’s struggle with childhood epilepsy to his thoughts about the privileges and challenges that come with being a white rapper.

“I spent pretty much all my time and all my money for the last two to three years [making Watsky],” he said at the time. But the hard work paid off: it’s a brilliantly unique hip-hop record, layering whip-smart lyrics over slickly produced, usually collaborative, tracks. ‘Seizure Boy,’ the album’s fourth track and one of the opening numbers at Barfly, starts out as a teenage epileptic’s lament, poking fun at the condition with lines like, “you don’t remember whether you were wetting your gym shorts / in front of Amanda / the girl you’re after / who already thought you were a fucking disaster.” But the song turns into a call-to-arms for all youngsters whose lives are touched by illness: “this is for my sick kids / time to quit this shit / Depakote, Adderall, Ritalin, Pixie Sticks / I don’t give a fuck what you’re writing to the setting sun / use it as a weapon when it’s said and done.” ‘Who’s Been Loving You?’ was also on the Barfly set-list: a real crowd-pleaser, the track serves up floor-filling Northern Soul horns and lyrics like, “this insanity? That’s hereditary / but it’s my family, so we can let it be / wish I’d pretended that my mom and dad are dead to me / but I love my dad, that motherfucker read to me.”

As copies of Watsky began to move, George worked to boost his profile online, building up his Youtube channel by posting self-made videos for the album’s tracks. The video for ‘Who’s Been Loving You?’, which now has 1.5 million views, features home movies of Watsky as a small child. Gradually, these music videos got snazzier, and previously unheard tracks appeared on the channel beside them. One of these was the one-and-a-half minute ‘Pale Kid Raps Fast,’ in which Watsky delivers his lyrics at truly breath-taking speed. The song includes the lines, “I want everybody focussing on getting me to Letterman / to kick it for the betterment of innocent Americans,” and just days after it was uploaded, he pretty much got his wish. The track went viral – it now has over 21 million Youtube views – and Watsky was invited to perform on Ellen de Generes’ TV show on 24th January 2011.
“It’s a video that kind of changed the course of my life,” he recalls. “It gave me this following of people who actually for some reason want to watch my stuff… when I look back, I’m still so excited that it happened.”

Watsky’s appearance on Ellen gave him the boost he needed to take his career to the next level. To meet suddenly-increased demand, he released a flurry of new tracks, most of them collected onto his 2011 “mixtape” – essentially a serialised digital album – A New Kind of Sexy. In early 2012 came a digital EP, Watsky and Mody – but far more exciting for fans was the confirmation that, over summer of 2012, George would be setting out on tour and bringing his music to twenty-two smallish venues across America.
“I don’t know if I can describe to you how stoked I am,” he gushed, confirming the tour in a vlog on March 15th. “This is a dream of mine… a proper national tour. We’re not going to be playing stadiums, but… playing live is the reason I get up in the morning.”

Five months later, I watched George Watsky climb onto Barfly’s fogged stage. Somehow in the intervening period, he’d found a way to get his band across the Atlantic, and added two London dates to the end of his tour. An admirer ever since the Def Poetry appearance hit Youtube, I could hardly contain my excitement as a fairly mediocre DJ warmed up the crowd. I was desperately hoping that everything I’d seen online – dazzling lyrical originality, self-deprecating wit, effortless performance – would translate into real life. Although I was momentarily thrown by the tiny stature of the man who took to the stage, the doubts didn’t stick. Visibly tired from a month on the road and the weight of jet-lag, Watsky kicked off with an emotional thank you to everyone who’d turned out to see him. This was no ordinary hip-hop gig – there was no ego on display, no swagger. This was a scrawny kid who couldn’t quite believe his luck: a bundle of nervous energy delivering a smart, fast-paced, hugely engaging set to an audience almost rabid with adoration. As I glanced around, I realised why he cultivates the goofy teen Michael Cera look. The vast majority of my fellow audience members were shy young blokes, nodding and singing along to lyrics about girl trouble, social anxiety and secretly really loving your parents. My favourite moment was probably mid-set, when the band took a break and Watsky stood alone in a column of spot-lit dry ice, reciting a poem. “Who here likes poetry?” he asked the crowd, and the resounding cheer was accompanied by a forest of skinny adolescent hands. I felt a warm glow envelop me. George Watsky isn’t just a rising star in the hip-hop solar system: he’s making a whole new kind of masculinity acceptable to a new generation of listeners. George Watsky is a hip-hop game changer.

The second leg of the Nothing Like The First Time Tour starts on 3rd November. See http://georgewatsky.com/tour for more details.

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You can also visit Read This Press for more poetry (and typewriter paraphernalia!). Alternatively, check out Edinburgh Vintage, our sister site. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

(Photo credit)