Food Special: Luton Officially Eight Times More Special Than Dunstable

If your new year’s resolution is to eat less, lose weight and save money on eating out, you’ve come to the right place. Only one week in to 2014, Luton has delivered generous municipal support designed to galvanise your intentions for post-festive restraint in the form of news, released yesterday, that no fewer than 16 of our local eating establishments achieved a round and umami-rich zero in respect of food hygiene, as assessed by Luton Borough Council in conjunction with the Food Standards Agency. Continue reading

Yoga World & Pesto: The Pre-Christmas Not Unreasonably Priced Yoga News Special

Why, hello there, dear reader. You’ve been feeling a little neglected of late, and not without cause. I didn’t mean to go away for so long, and you were always on my mind.

I’ve had a very interesting few months – happy, busy and life-changing – and now I bring you news. Continue reading

Art Attack! Art, Loho and Lutopia

In a way I take comfort from the way that some people readily presume that I am dead if I haven’t posted in a while. Certainly, that’s the approach taken by my mother, who recently got quite worried given that I hadn’t posted on Facebook for a couple of days, and hadn’t updated this blog in over a month. I apologise to all: I’ve been busy (rather than dead), and my conscience is all the more pricked for having missed this year’s annual High Town Festival over the weekend of 15-16 July, which I learn from the Friends of High Town was super-plus good.

High Town (or 'Hightown') Festival sign in front of the now sadly fire-ravaged premises of the former pub, the Railway Tavern.

High Town (or ‘Hightown’) Festival sign in front of the now sadly fire-ravaged premises of the former pub, the Railway Tavern.

Continue reading

Luton: Café Capital of South Bedfordshire: Part 2

We return to matters gastronomical, this time focusing on two of Luton’s finest tea and chips emporia: the Scandinavia Café and Restaurant, on High Town Road, and Tim’s Kitchen, now tucked away, ‘near the pram stall’, at the back of the indoor market in the Arndale.

Tim's Kitchen: near the pram stall.

Tim’s Kitchen: near the pram stall.

Continue reading

Luton: Inadvertently Hipster

It’s dawned on a number of us Lutonian lifers that Luton may well be the hippest place outside of Shoreditch, quite without intending to be. Local friend Grumbly Bob (who not only works in Shoreditch but owns a number of checked shirts) put it succinctly with respect to local favourite, the Scandinavia Restaurant and Café: ‘The Scandi is hipster without even trying. In east London, people work really hard to design cafés that look exactly like the Scandi.’

The Scandinavia Café

The Scandinavia Café

Continue reading