Welcome to The Clicker, your Sunday round-up of suggested links curated by me just for you, my lovely paid subscribers!

Boy oh boy do I have a bumper crop of links and vids for you this week! I’ve basically put together a playlist of Lego AI propaganda videos, as I can’t get the songs out of my head and I continue to be impressed by Iran’s ability to spe…

Read more

I know we normally stick to cocktail bars in this slot, but it might surprise you to learn that I also drink in other establishments that serve alcohol! Pubs, wine bars, cafes, airplanes, theatres…

This week we’re taking a look at a roadside bar in Hội An’s An Bang Beach, glamorously situated over the road from a mini golf centre. It’s the sort of place you might end up in after walking the length of the main drag ‘checking out the vibes’, drawn in by the large open terrace and the promise of craft beer. And if you’re anything like me, it becomes a place you return to again and again whenever you happen to be in the area.

Read more

Tokyo is one of the world’s greatest cities,a chaotic metropolis that’s always on the move. Over a dozen trips (and counting!) under my belt and I can only say I’ve started to scratch the surface — as much as it’s the capital of a country with rich traditions and heritage, Tokyo is also dynamic and ever-evolving, favourite haunts regularly replaced by hot new things. But whatever you’re into, Tokyo has you covered, from food and drink to esoteric hobbies. This month we’re exploring Ueno, which is famous for its park (and cherry blossoms in season), but which is also home to a major train station, which means it boasts a wide variety of places to eat and drink because the Japanese work insanely long hours and then have to end their evenings socialising with the boss. It’s not got the red light district reputation of Shinjuku, but it is absolutely heaving with bars and restaurants at every price point.

Read more

Welcome to The Clicker, your Sunday round-up of suggested links curated by me just for you, my lovely paid subscribers!

I’m pretty chuffed with this week’s Clicker, and I hope you are too! I’m trying to stay away from stories that are too depressing in light of how heavy the world is in general, but I’m also trying to point you in the direction of intere…

Read more

Yes, this week is another edition of me raving about one of my favourite restaurants in the world. And yes, it’s an expensive Michelin-starred joint with tables booked out months in advance. But it’s also just about possible to score a walk-in (as we did) and then use that opportunity to book your second meal (there is a very good reason to do this which we shall get into shortly) at the restaurant for a date that suits you.

Pujol is one of the reasons I don’t have much faith in the 50 Best list — it keeps coming in behind Quintonil, which I’m fairly sure is because it’s a lot easier to get a table at Quintonil because objectively it’s just not as good of a restaurant.1 Whereas a meal at Pujol is a life-changing experience, one that turns you onto Mexican cuisine in a whole new way, respectful of the past while paving the way to the future.

Read more

Tokyo is one of the world’s greatest cities,a chaotic metropolis that’s always on the move. Over a dozen trips (and counting!) under my belt and I can only say I’ve started to scratch the surface — as much as it’s the capital of a country with rich traditions and heritage, Tokyo is also dynamic and ever-evolving, favourite haunts regularly replaced by hot new things. But whatever you’re into, Tokyo has you covered, from food and drink to esoteric hobbies. This month we’re exploring Ueno, which is famous for its park (and cherry blossoms in season), but which is also home to a major train station, which means it boasts a wide variety of places to eat and drink because the Japanese work insanely long hours and then have to end their evenings socialising with the boss. It’s not got the red light district reputation of Shinjuku, but it is absolutely heaving with bars and restaurants at every price point.

Read more

Welcome to The Clicker, your Sunday round-up of suggested links curated by me just for you, my lovely paid subscribers!

This has been a decent week for links, I think — a weird and wonderful mix of stories from around the internet with very little rhyme or reason to my selections. But that kind of mirrors the week I’ve had, because what is life but a str…

Read more

I’m going to be straight with you. I normally write my bar and restaurant reviews on the Wednesday of the week I publish them, but it was 23 degrees (73.4°F) in London on Wednesday this week and so I spent the morning lying in the sun in my favourite park before meeting up with a couple of friends for beer in the sun that turned into a long and painful Thursday in which there was no way I was going to look at photos of cocktails or acknowledge the existence of alcohol.

So instead of reviewing a bar this week because I just don’t have it in me, you’re getting a review of something bar-related that I have found to be more than a little bit life-changing.

Read more

Tokyo is one of the world’s greatest cities,a chaotic metropolis that’s always on the move. Over a dozen trips (and counting!) under my belt and I can only say I’ve started to scratch the surface — as much as it’s the capital of a country with rich traditions and heritage, Tokyo is also dynamic and ever-evolving, favourite haunts regularly replaced by hot new things. But whatever you’re into, Tokyo has you covered, from food and drink to esoteric hobbies. This month we’re exploring Ueno, which is famous for its park (and cherry blossoms in season), but which is also home to a major train station, which means it boasts a wide variety of places to eat and drink because the Japanese work insanely long hours and then have to end their evenings socialising with the boss. It’s not got the red light district reputation of Shinjuku, but it is absolutely heaving with bars and restaurants at every price point.

Read more

Welcome to The Clicker, your Sunday round-up of suggested links curated by me just for you, my lovely paid subscribers!

We’re ALL OVER THE PLACE this week because I am too. Some weeks I feel like a pinball in a machine, careening from one thing to another only to bounce off a wall and change direction again, and this has been one of those weeks. No rhyme…

Read more

Anyone who has spent more than twenty seconds on the internet knows that bad news travels faster than good, that take-downs have more staying power than anything positive or uplifting. And I am far from immune — there’s a certain schadenfreude in a scathing review, the carefully chosen phrasing like jabs from a needle you know will live on in the subject’s head in the early hours of the morning for years on end. It’s brutal, but you can’t look away, like a lion chasing down a gazelle in a nature documentary.

But I’m always far more excited to share my good adventures with the world than the bad ones, so here’s a rave review of one of my favourite restaurant discoveries of 2025.

Read more

Tokyo is one of the world’s greatest cities,a chaotic metropolis that’s always on the move. Over a dozen trips (and counting!) under my belt and I can only say I’ve started to scratch the surface — as much as it’s the capital of a country with rich traditions and heritage, Tokyo is also dynamic and ever-evolving, favourite haunts regularly replaced by hot new things. But whatever you’re into, Tokyo has you covered, from food and drink to esoteric hobbies. This month we’re exploring Ueno, which is famous for its park (and cherry blossoms in season), but which is also home to a major train station, which means it boasts a wide variety of places to eat and drink because the Japanese work insanely long hours and then have to end their evenings socialising with the boss. It’s not got the red light district reputation of Shinjuku, but it is absolutely heaving with bars and restaurants at every price point.

Read more

Welcome to The Clicker, your Sunday round-up of suggested links curated by me just for you, my lovely paid subscribers!

Things are looking up! Not, like, in the world at large or anything important. But London has seen multiple days warm enough to be outside in a teeshirt as long as you are directly in the sun at all times and have a jumper for any momen…

Read more

On the surface, Jigger & Pony should be everything I hate in a bar. It’s in a hotel, the 50 Best list loves it, and it’s expensive and scene-y despite having been around for what amounts to a lifetime in cocktail years.

But the staff are wonderful and the drinks even better (and the food even better still!), to the extent that I can’t help but suck up the high prices and enjoy at least one night out there whenever I pass through the Lion City.

Read more

Bologna is both paradise and hell, and the city you will experience depends entirely on when you choose to go. Year-round, Bologna is a great food city in theory, the heart of Emilia-Romagna and home to a lot of what the world thinks of as classic Italian food (the world is wrong). The centro storico is a rabbit warren of places to eat and drink, and while you might think that sounds like good news it actually means there’s an awful lot of crap aimed at tourists to identify and avoid. Go in mid-winter, and you’ll fall in love with the red city. Go in high summer and the combination of sweltering heat and crowded streets will probably drive you round the bend.

Read more

Welcome to The Clicker, your Sunday round-up of suggested links curated by me just for you, my lovely paid subscribers!

I’m tired. Drained, zonked, depleted. And I’m a privileged person in a temperate climate not currently being bombed, so I have no idea how people with real problems are getting through this dumpster fire of an epoch. I’m both horrified …

Read more

Sometimes you get very lucky indeed, and beauty is born of chaos. This week I’d intended to write about one of my favourite restaurants, a place I’ve eaten at countless times over the past 25 years, a spot that is reliably excellent and very comforting indeed.

But a quick search of my camera revealed I’ve never taken a single photo of anything I’ve eaten there, so I arranged to meet a friend for dinner and jumped on the bus to Oxford. Naturally, they were closed, so we changed course but plan B was packed, no chance of a table.

So we stumbled into what hadn’t been plan C and should have been plan A, an unassuming Malaysian kopitiam on a north Oxford side street, imaginatively named Kopitiam.

Read more

Bologna is both paradise and hell, and the city you will experience depends entirely on when you choose to go. Year-round, Bologna is a great food city in theory, the heart of Emilia-Romagna and home to a lot of what the world thinks of as classic Italian food (the world is wrong). The centro storico is a rabbit warren of places to eat and drink, and while you might think that sounds like good news it actually means there’s an awful lot of crap aimed at tourists to identify and avoid. Go in mid-winter, and you’ll fall in love with the red city. Go in high summer and the combination of sweltering heat and crowded streets will probably drive you round the bend.

Read more

Welcome to The Clicker, your Sunday round-up of suggested links curated by me just for you, my lovely paid subscribers!

Last week’s spring-like weather was a false dawn, and I write this missive trapped in boggy sludge and grey skies because the UK is so grim for the 360 days of the year wherein weather follows stereotype. I’d give my eye teeth to be jum…

Read more

At some point late last year I started seeing references to a new bar pop up across my various London food media sources. The place was described as a metal bar, which was what first piqued my interest, and then the reviews started coming out and there was a general consensus among the tastemakers I trust that the drinks were actually bloody good and very cheap to boot.

So what took me so long to get there, I hear you ask? For one thing, I spent most of the end of last year endlessly scrubbing the pit of filth I’d bought, and had neither the time nor the budget for cocktails, no matter how cheap. But the main reason was that the bar is in Bethnal Green, which is all the way across London for me and if I’m going to travel I’d much rather just go to Asia.

Read more