Most of our male readers won't really comprehend this, but the launch event for new posh shoes can be a big deal. A really big deal. So when Harrods yesterday hosted a launch event for some ruby-sapphire-and-diamond-encrusted Rene Caovilla sandals (value - £62,000), they took security concerns a little bit more seriously than normal. Not for them a security guard in a cap borrowed from the nearest Asda. Instead they hire a live Egyptian......

Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. Gourmet Burger Kitchen Locations throughout London Contact specific locations for hours Expect to Pay: Around £10 Rating: 8 out of 10 Burgers of Scooby Doo proportions; milkshakes from another era; chips of substance and weight; Gourmet Burger Kitchen is the sort of restaurant chain that makes Londonist happy. Developed by three New Zealanders craving for a taste of home,......

...get the hell out of Gordon Ramsay’s effing-and-blinding kitchen. Former restaurant manager Martin Hyde of Dillons, an Indian eatery in Manhattan, is suing the British chef in an attempt to stop footage of Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares” being shown on television in the US. The show’s premise is for Ramsay to enter a failing restaurant and turn it around in one week. Accusations have been put forth that "Kitchen Nightmares" hired actors to patronize the......

Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. Benugo Throughout London Average Lunch Price: £5 Rating: 7.5 out of 10 Snoop around the Internet and you’ll find several references to sandwich shop Benugo’s free WiFi. For example, this post by Gavin Bell suggests that other cafés ‘should take the lead from Benugo and offer free WiFi like they offer free sugar’ because the ‘cost per month of......

Well, ish. Don't get too excited. On Saturday night ITV went to film PRIMEVAL (the sci-fi series) in Kingson's branch of John Lewis - and paid them £5,000 for the privilege. We're not sure how many actual real live dinosaur models were used (if indeed any, in fact). These days the best dinosaur sequences are sadly worked out in some clever dick's imagination and then straight to CGI - so having a man run......

Not only does the fantastic French dance music and fashion label Kitsuné have a foxy new compilation hitting the shops next week, but they're crossing the channel just to celebrate its release with you. From 8 p.m. this evening, Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen will play host to a record release party for the aptly-named "Kitsuné Maison Compilation 4". With exclusive tracks from Dragonette, Feist and Hadouken, this disc's dirty disco will certainly soundtrack......

Robyn, the pint-sized pocket rocket popstar from Sweden, plays Cargo in Shoreditch this coming Thursday evening. Looking for all the world like a little blond girl that ate too much sugar crossed with a woman dosed to the tits on electric (it says here), live on-stage Robyn bops and pulls punches with a cutesy-filth attitude. In a word, she's ace and we think you should see her. Check out our review of her Hoxton......

We're all so busy running about preparing for Xmas that it's easy to forgot today is the start of Jewish festival Chanukah. Chanukah isn't really that big a deal holywise in Jewish festival-land, it's just kind of got the most famous reputuation from being near the Christian present-giving festival and lots of Jewish children over the years looking sad without presents. As such it's probably the best known festival, recognisable by the lighting of......

Ace Swedish pop-star Robyn played the second of two up-close-and-personal London gigs at Puregroove at the Hoxton Bar & Kitchen on Friday . Her name might sound familiar because Robyn is best known in the UK for her late-90s pop hit Show Me Love, a Britney/Christina-in-pop-mode song co-produced by Swedish pop-supremo Max Martin. After its release, Robyn returned to Sweden where fame continued with two further albums. Then Robyn established her own Konichiwa Records......

There might have been no 'donkey cocks' this week, but Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares is still essential viewing in this post-Hell's Kitchen USA times. If you didn't see it, Gordon went to Lancashire and shouted at the landlord of The Fenwick Arms for buying too many plates and having a crap menu. As ever on Kitchen Nightmares the solution was simply to cut the menu down to simple dishes and to use good ingredients. As......

There was a strong display of British talent at the International Emmy Awards. Graham Norton was there too. The success of Brit shows has sent the Americans into a remake frenzy according to The Times: Life on Mars, the BBC time-travel drama starring John Simm about a Manchester detective who is catapulted back to the 1970s, won the best drama award. David E. Kelley, the producer behind Ally McBeal, is now writing an American......

... is pretty fugly. Judging by how it chooses to be presented on the small screen, at any rate. Take Gordon Ramsay's F Word (Wed 9pm C4): We're not denying that it's entertaining. It is hugely entertaining, especially when Gordon picks on twattish City trader boys from Essex and reduces them to tears, much as he reduces all sorts of delicious juices to make a lovely concentrated sauce. Mmm, we're hungry just thinking about......

LinkMachineGo has been keeping us up to speed with the fallout over Alan Moore's Lost Girls: Comic row over graphic Peter Pan / Sex acts' Wendy is Panned / Hospital worry at "porn" take on Peter Pan's Wendy / Alan Moore's erotic Lost Girls / Rich Johnson on Lost Girls / Rich Johnson Reviews Lost Girls You know already then that this is going to be awesome. Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children has......

Gordon Ramsay has 'accepted' £75,000 from the Evening Standard over false claims made in the paper that he and the makers of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares 'cynically faked scenes'. And just when you thought this story couldn't get any better, it turns out the offending member of the Standard staff was....Victor Lewis Smith. Hurray! We hope they make him pay the fine out of his overinflated paypacket. Apparently the double barreled arsewipe and sometime TV......

Haute cuisine, Pimlico style. This little recipe is carved into parallel bars on the Lillington Gardens Estate. You won't find that on Saturday Kitchen.......

Last week, as The Sultan's Elephant brought theatre and spectacle onto the streets and straight to the people, an apt debate titled West End Theatre Should Be Sunk In The Atlantic. took place at the Menier Chocolate Factory in Southwark. Time Out’s Deputy Theatre Editor, Rachel Halliburton. David Rosenberg, Director of the Shunt Collective and Phil Willmott, Artistic Director of The Steam Industry represented the non-West End theatre side and argued for the swift......

A day earlier than usual, here's the Londonist skinny on next week's giggage. Tonight: Not just the Blang night we mentioned last week but also a night of aMIGO's blues-funk, courtesy of Tim Staffell, the man whose band became Queen, at the George IV, 185 Chiswick High Road. Friday: So on the one hand we have glitterpunks Lorca at Purple Turtle making lots of noise and on the other Whirlwind Heat return with new......

TV Troll is in a bit of a domestic mood this week; it must be the horrible cold weather. So, to celebrate this, here are a couple of programmes guaranteed to make those of a foodie bent quiver with joy. First up is Gordon Ramsay, whose Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares (Tue 9pm C4) started up last week, but apparently really hits its stride this week. As a What Not To Do In The Kitchen, it......

Table of Four went all radical this week and became two tables of, er, two. We went in search of old favourites, just to check in and make sure they were still performing to standard as recent voyages into the unknown had taken us off the beaten track. Besides some things are better the 10th time round – to name a couple of examples Upper Street’s Pasha’s mixed meze and grill – brilliant value and......

Seven days to go until the London Film Festival opens its doors. Here's another two of the films on offer. It turned a few heads when it was announced that Bent Hamer (Kitchen Stories) was going to direct the film adaptation of Charles Bukowski's Factotum, but any misgivings can be more or less laid to rest - perhaps because if anyone knows a thing or two about drinking it's the Norwegians. Not that Buk's......

Fast becoming the alternative to the Notting Hill Carnival, the Brick Lane Festival is a street carnival, food festival and outdoor music shindig all in one. It's going to be big, noisy and tasty... Contributing to the music element of this mela is the ever-hip Vibe Bar providing chilled live blues in its courtyard and spiky punk inside the bar. DJs and bands will perform on the Allen Gardens Stage throughout the day as......

There's lots and lots and LOTS on TV for a square-eyed troll to watch this week. Tonight, for example, we go from the serious (The Battle For Islam, Mon, 9pm BBC2) to the 'not so serious but still thought provoking' (Tottenham Ayatollah Revisited, Mon 8pm C4), to the frivolous (Greatest TV Comedy Moments, Mon 9pm Five), to the frivolous-and-plain-insulting (Bring Your Husband To Heel, Mon 7pm BBC2). Oh yes, and we've heard very good......