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Welcome back to Insta Stories, a column examining the London restaurant scene through the often-problematic medium of Instagram. This week’s filter is rotundone.
News of the week
For months now, the government’s treatment of the hospitality industry has been reminiscent of the long haul car journey backseat favourite “stop hitting yourself,” wherein an older, more powerful sibling takes hold of a younger, weaker party’s hands and uses them to inflict a relentless barrage of insults upon their person, all the while insisting that they have the power to halt the violence whenever they wish. In politics, as in long haul car journeys, though, sometimes the little guy fights back.
This week, there were multiple different examples of industry participants protesting against the latest wave of restrictions, making their voices heard both in formal demonstrations and in more guerrilla attempts to subvert the Kafkaesque rule of one household indoors / any number of households but only six people outdoors / but business meetings are fine. This much is increasingly clear: Without any meaningful relief, it’s going to be a winter of serious discontent.
Pivots of the week
And through it all, somehow, people are keeping going, trying to find new ways to make things work despite everything that has been thrown at them. Here’s what’s new this time round.
*Checks notes* ... Yes, new opening of the week
Kudos to the team behind the long-gestating Kol — it would have been much easier to abandon the project altogether, given everything that’s going on in the world, and to write the whole thing off as just a nasty dose of supremely bad luck and a l o t of investment down the drain. But Santiago Lastra and his business partners/investors are plainly made of much sterner stuff, and as a result one of the year’s most ambitious and singular restaurants has now opened its doors. The #invites are in: Now the even harder part starts.
Fruitful celebration of the week
Yesterday, 21 October, was Apple Day. It’s a thing, apparently. Here are some unconventional varieties. Thoughts?
Absolute units of the week
Down in one, right?
Absolute disgrace of the week
Why have these had their prices marked up by 58p?
Rustic masculinity of the week
In the immortal words of Instagram user @w_abondano, “Who the f*ck wants to eat pasta out of a tree stump?”
Yeast they could do of the week
Going to tell my kids this was the 2019 London sandwich scene.
Dish of the week
Ready Brek could never.
Shot of the week
Rucking beautiful.
