Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. Betjeman’s 44 Cloth Fair EC1A 7JQ Nearest Tube: Farringdon 0207 600 7778 12pm-3pm for Lunch(Monday-Friday) 6pm-9pm for Dinner (Monday-Friday) 12pm-11pm for drinks (Monday-Friday) Map Expect to Pay: £10 or more for lunch Rating: 8 out of 10 Across the street from celebrated Club Gascon (with a list of accolades out its coulis) and hardly more than a belly roll......

Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. Laxeiro 93 Columbia Road E2 7RG Reservations: 0207 729 1147 12pm-3pm, 7-11pm (Tuesday – Saturday) 9am - 3pm (Sunday) Map Expect to Pay: £5 for most tapas Rating: 9.5 out of 10 After last week’s lunch of very good but still not phenomenal tapas at Meson los Barriles, we were left desperate for some proper Spanish cooking. So, going......

Monday sees Portland, Oregon’s new indie-rock darlings The Thermals play Dingwalls with support from Siberia’s SonicFlyer. Tickets are still available from See Tickets at £8.50 each plus booking fees. Tellison play their “disarming melodies and big-hearted guitars” at the Camden Barfly, with support coming from Encyclopedia, The Xcerts and Gavin Osborn, with tickets only £6 each. Popular Canadian singer-songwriter Feist plays Scala on Tuesday night, though tickets are long gone unfortunately – Scarlet mist may......

Unless you’ve had your head buried in the sand since Blair morphed into Brown, the government has now put housing at the forefront of the political agenda, having realised that the current lack of residential units being built is totally inadequate. At the frontline of this campaign is the need to build more homes in brown-field sites in our cities so that we can edge towards those housing targets of about 200,000 a year.......

About half an hour ago this week’s Mercury Music Prize nominees were announced. As could be expected, they included a selection of some of this year’s biggest records along with a few more obscure ones that will keep everyone guessing. At the moment William Hill have last year’s winners Arctic Monkeys and also Amy Winehouse as joint favourites to win (at 4/1), though with the Mercury's you never know who could win. Jamie T, Amy......

Hot on the heels of their demi-donut, MAKE Architects have designed this swish new office block with a rippling glass frontage to stand opposite the Monument, on the site of the dilapidated 11–19 Monument Street in the City of London. The building will contain not only office space, but also a visitor center for the Monument and spectacular public roof gardens that will create a large open space exposed to the elements. At night,......

iTunes announced a few weeks ago that they'll host a month of gigs at the ICA throughout July. Tiny gigs for many of the bands, the ICA holds only 350 people, and each gig will be professionally recorded to be available on iTunes. The events features some of today's biggest bands, with the likes of Londonist favourites Mika along with Stereophonics, Amy Winehouse, Editors, Groove Armada and Duke Special all gracing the stage throughout......

And so the big day arrives with a bang! I'm up early and cycling through quiet city streets already dappled with sunlight, cameras slung around my shoulders. I switch to public transport to make my way over to the Red Start in Greenwich Park and due to various DLR difficulties don't make it there until a while after the mass start. I wander leisurely past the Royal Observatory enjoying the view and the buzzing......

The view shows Ludgate Circus looking east towards St. Paul’s Cathedral (1931 and today) The most impressive difference in the old photograph is the railway bridge - part of a route now taken by the buried Thameslink line. This was built in 1866, providing a cross-river route for the London, Chatham and Dover Railway. Despite obstructing the view to St. Paul’s, it provided a now absent feeling of romance. Imagine how dreamy a sight......

Austinist gets arty with an interactive guide to SXSW, loved some local art galleries and a new art exhibit and lamented the possible loss of "Friday Night Lights" production to New Mexico. Bostonist was happy they finally found an Anna Nicole Smith connection to their fair city and that an Apple Store was opening up. They were less happy that new rules have been established limiting underage shows and that their Governor spending a......

Conservatives are campaigning for more rights to deal with unruly teens in a physical manner, without fear of prosecution. Dominic Grieve, the shadow Attorney General, blames the rise of youth crime on the breakdown of the family unit and a lack of public confidence in getting support from the police or fellow members of the public: 'They take the view that if the matter gets out of control, there's a danger that if they......

So Tate Modern gets turned into a minimalist, brushed steel, grown-ups adventure playground and meanwhile, in Battersea, another London power station has a makeover... Like the bottle of olive oil in an Italy-shaped novelty glass bottle that has been in the kitchen cupboard since that trip to Florence in 2004, London has always been meaning to do something with Battersea Power Station. It just sits there. It shouldn't be wasted. It's still useful. C'mon, think.........

If you're fed up of looking at bus stops and seeing your bus will be here in a minute, only for it to show up in ten, then your problems could be solved. TFL are installing a new GPRS system on all buses to make stops more accurate. They'll be no state funeral for Thatcher according to number 10. Although given she's still alive, this is somewhat jumping the gun a little. Tall full......

We've been on at Will Luke, cricketing aficionado and all-round good egg, to write something for us for ages, ever since we spoke to him ahead of the last test of THAT Ashes series. Finally, he's relented, and given us a little snippet on where best to catch the sound of willow upon leather this summer. If you like what you read, please push the 'recommend' button and we can thus continue to pester......

We like our restaurant/bar review blogs with plenty of photos and a generous dollop of detail here at Londonist so when we came across Dos Hermanos we tucked right in. You just can't have a food review blog without pictures of the food. It's alright describing the gastronomic experience with a load of flowery adjectives but we need to see what wer'e going to get for our money dammit (when will the broadsheet restaurant......

This day in London’s History 1966: Arrests at Vietnam Rally in Grosvenor Square. Some 4000 people gathered to protest against the Vietnam war and things turned violent as scuffles broke out at the demonstration outside the US Embassy. The general secretary of the Communist Party, John Gollan, asked demonstrators to call it a day, but instead they knocked a police officer from his motorbike and set fire to petrol that leaked from the bike. This......

We had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Miss Kate Stables on a Southbound train from Clapham Junction. It was Christmas and we were, of course, packed in like sardines. So much for finding one's seat; this Londonista's bags - stuffed with presents for the family - was too heavy and cumbersome to move, let alone navigate down the all-too-narrow aisle (seriously, South West Trains, did luggage not exist when you built your......

This weekend is one of a selected few when London's City Hall gets opened up to the public. Home to the GLA and dear Ken since 2002, opinion on the asthetic pleasure of the buliding is always under discussion. We think it's pretty snazzy and hear the view across London from the top is pretty spectactular even if they have rather pretentiously named the top floor 'London's living room'. Opening between 10 and 5pm......

What are the Royal Family for? As an anachronistic reminder of our forelock-tugging, hierarchy-beholden, deferential past, they're about as welcome in modern Britain as the sticky can of Stella you find hiding behind the sofa six months after the party. The sticky can of Stella won't demand to be shuttled around the world in grand style with an endless supply of gin, either. As Londonist is always loathe to miss a chance to slag......

When Londonist heard that Chris Roberts, the man behind the excellent Heavy Words Lightly Thrown (the hidden meanings behind nursery rhymes), had written a book on London's Bridges we knew we had to get in touch and force him to complete the Londonist questionnaire. So we did, and here are the results. Age, occupation, where are you from, where are you now? Older than I look. It’s the restful library jobs I’ve had over......

In a reversal of the usual pessimist's view that the sun only shines once you're back at work, this weekend was full of sunsheeeeine but the view from the tiny little air hole provided for us in Londonist Dungeons shows a distinctly gloomy Monday. It's particularly fortunate because Londonist spent the weekend chasing the sun around our postage stamp garden like a cat and any continuation of the good weeather would have kept us out......

Will Alsop made his mark in London with the prize-winning Peckham library, a nicely style bit of architecture in an area that sorely needed it. Now, according to Building Design magazine (registration required, but it's free), he is set to return to south London with an arts centre across the way from the library. But the big story here is the toilet facilities. Seriously - that's the scheme's unique selling point.Part of the project's......

You might think the Olympic bid is a pile of pants - Londonist doesn't - but the London 2012 campaign has done something we can all get firmly behind. As a press release on the London 2012 site trumpets, they are putting the "back" into "Back the Bid" by advertising on runner Jade Johnson's rear end. It's a cunning strategy, since that's the view most of the brilliant Johnson's competitors get of her, which......

In a move to cut down on Cash Machine related crime (such as shoulder surfing) Lambeth Council has proposed the creation of "safe zones", a painted area around the machine that only the card user is allowed in. But Ken says no. More specifically "Labour talks about cutting crime yet its Mayor's transport quango is blocking ways to stop it", at least that’s the view according to Lambeth Councillor Darren Sanders. Transport for London......

The restoration of the West Front of St Paul's Cathedral is at last complete and the scaffolding has come down. This returns to the capital one of its most delightful prospects, the view down Ludgate Hill towards St Paul's, and means that visitors will at last be able to enjoy the full ceremonial effect of approaching Wren's masterpiece without being confronted with an eyeful of unlovely hoardings. But Londonist has a few concerns. The......

Nelson Mandela hasn't had an easy life: growing up fighting for change in apartheid South Africa; that whole prison thing; not to mention having to meet the Spice Girls; and now his life of political turmoil looks set to continue. A proposal to put a 9ft high bronze statue of Mandela on the north terrace of Trafalgar square has met with resistance and has had its planning permission turned down by Westminster Council "on......

You thought you were dong a good thing. You particpated in the ill-fated Guardian letter writing campaign. You sent off for the John Kerry campaign pack and stuck the stickers on your fridge. And you even try and watch the Daily Show via satellite telly. But now you're told that a vote for John Kerry is a nail in the coffin for London's 2012 Olympics bid. What is a woolly-liberal Limey supposed to do? The......