Nick Harman

Lutyens Restaurant. 85 Fleet Street, London EC4Y 1AE www.lutyens-restaurant.com

Lutyens also designed park benches

Fleet Street isn’t what it was. As much a legend as a street, it was always shorthand for journos getting stories, getting drunk and getting laid. For finding news on the street and not rehashed from Google.

Walking down Fleet Street today you wouldn’t know it. The newspaper offices are now just offices, the bars and pubs quiet, smoke-free places for quiet, smoke-free people. Only the giant clock outside the old Express building seems to be intact and I’m not sure that it’s even telling the correct time.

There’s probably a clever metaphor there, if I could only think of one.  Damn you Twitter, you’ve shrunk my mind as well as my attention span.

Opposite the clock is a building once used by the mighty Reuters news agency. Reuters always seemed a bit strait laced but they did have two pubs in the building back then for thirsty newshounds, now there’s a bar and a restaurant – Lutyens Read more…

39 Great Marlborough St, W1F 7JG www.flatplanet.co.uk

Do today’s youth know what loudspeakers are? They seem to think music emerges only from earphones or mobile phones on buses.  The latter is apparently called ‘sodcasting’, as in ‘sod you’, and sociologists claim it to be a marvellous expression of individuality.  Of course sociologists don’t travel on suburban buses, forced to listen to violent, misogynistic lyrics whilst trying to read a book.

Flatplanet are definitely loudspeaker likers, they have classic, working, examples dotted around the room and even an essay about them on the menu. It’s funny how the people behind Flatplanet, the same people behind Leon, seem to idealise the 1970s. It’s like sitting in my teenage bedroom without the Yes posters and I’m no longer wearing flares, except to weddings and funerals.

The Flatplanet food idea is simple; various toppings on baked bread. This of course sounds like an idea that’s already been had, one that we food experts call a pizza, but there is a difference. Read more…