Kikujiro

Both. But me for longer.

Yesterday? Happy birthday, Jon. I'd say it's downhill from here but that's been true for some years now.

Yes it is.

Damian, this is exactly what I was trying to say too.

I would like to point out that this thread was created by moving posts from another one. I didn't come up with the title, and I can spell différence.

More on restaurants, from the perspective of a NY tourist/London native of course. Brunch here sucks with very few exceptions. And I don't care how for-tourists anybody tells me Barney Greengrass is, I miss it every Sunday. NY wins on scale and decor. Many places in NY just seem bigger than would be possible in London. There was (for all I know still is) a cafe in Soho (whoops, I mean SoHo) on something like Mercer (up from the John Varvatos store ) that had perfectly decent coffee and so on but I just sat there thinking: holy shit, this place is huge. In London it would be a hotel. And even sub-eGullet places can look amazing: the food at Kelley and Ping would not be any more exciting in London, but we could do with that kind of effort put into design. Lower-priced restaurants and mid-level seem preferable to me maybe for that very reason: the place, the vibe and the service can give food the edge. But at the upper-mid-level I began to notice the food more. I was uninspired by Gramercy Tavern and I'd much rather eat at, say, Alastair Little than Union Square Cafe. Except I wish AL looked and felt more like USC. Sudden thought: maybe this is at the root of the excitement I feel more in NY restaurants (over and above just being away from home): the same consumerist design pizzazz that gives its stores the edge. Maybe it's not the food at all. Bagels may not be real in NY any more but you should try them over here. Edit note: I joined eGullet just after my last visit to New York so I will be interested to see what difference it makes to my next trip, whenever that is.

ALW?

Unless you don't smoke.

I wouldn't bother. You get all the advantages now (policy run by Washington) without the drawbacks (us all coming over and taking your jobs).

I notice neither side made a claim for parks yet.

'All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep fuckin' everybody 'til they're all the same color.' -- Warren Beatty as Senator Jay Billington Bulworth

I tried to find some statistics on this but all Google offered was porn. However, this from the Beeb. 'Britain currently has one of the highest rates of inter-racial relationships in the western world, with 50% of all black children born having one white parent.'

You should come back. The Kings Road has gone downhill since your last visit, and we're not rioting outside the US Embassy any more, but otherwise things have improved

Wilfrid: I give you Mexican and Jewish without hesitation, but I think Italian is contestable.

I agree with all of Simon's last post, so why did he disagree with my original one?

Okay, so I ate some dumplings and had to respond. The green papaya is as yet un-mandolined. eG continues to ruin my life. Cheese: Simon agrees with me, Wilfrid doesn't. I'll leave them to fight it out. Ham: recent posts show US ham import regulations suck. Rep cinema: Wilfrid, yes, e.g. the NFT in London. I have on several occasions compared the rep listings for a week in TONY versus Time Out London. London is better served overall. Consumerism: Soba, I'm not, of course, saying it's not possible to live cheaply in NY. In fact, subjectively, as a tourist, NY feels cheaper to me because I think lower-mid-level dining is a lot better value (this changes as you scale up). And cheaper clothes are cheaper in NY, while expensive clothes are roughly the same price. What I'm saying is that retail and consumer culture NY is overall much better developed. There are very few stores in London that have anything like the ability to make you want to part with your cash than entire square miles of NYC. Even Harvey Nichols still ain't Barneys. Indian restaurants: this seems to be a widespread consensus, on the basis of which I've never even tried to eat Indian food in NY, so I can't personally comment. Subway: Wilfrid, I was also responding to Soba. Bagels: Wilfrid, Separatism: oh god, this is a long one that I can't get my teeth into now, but I do feel I'm right (and so do many others I've talked about this with). My sense is that because racism was more actively contested in the US (the civil rights movement, the million man march), versus the UK where it was kind of worn down over time, things have evolved quite differently. I think (as Spike Lee said when I saw him talk at the NFT once) that from an economic and societal point of view, black people have until recently had (and may continue to have) greater opportunity in the US than in the UK (you have, for example, more black judges and senior politicians). On the other hand, that need to actively fight has gone hand-in-hand with a stronger degree of separatism. One sees more mixed-race couples on the street of London than NY. London is not the UK and NY is not the US, of course, but I noticed the same thing in university in the States versus over here. (Light touchpaper, stand well back.) [edit: please note that this is not the same as saying racism is worse or more endemic in NY. It may well be the other way round. It's just different.]

SA: I'll respond later when I've stopped starving, but briefly, yes, of course these are the comments of a tourist, but: (i) there's an unarguable general difference between the US and Europe on both GM and organic food; I am definitely right about cinema differences (less sure about theatre); and you read the subway comment wrong: it's ours that's overpriced.

Almost certainly true, even though you're trying to wind me up. But I notice London came pretty well even out of my existing comparison.

[edit note: this post didn't come out of nowhere, it started on this thread.] SA: Like every single one of my close friends, I'd rather be living in New York. (pause while other London members delete me from their PM systems) Now, let me qualify that. I don't want to live there forever. I find when I'm there that I have a tremendous desire to spend vast amounts of money every minute. Friends who live there feel the place is even more consumerist than London. Food shopping-wise, I would miss organic foods (an obscure request over there) and the various imports that we get better in London, or you don't get at all (hams, cheese, for example). Restaurant-wise, I'd miss Indian places here particularly. But I'd get, you know, decent bagels and Blue Ribbon Sushi (I know there are better ones [Jewel Bako?], but I've been to BR a couple of times and there's nothing like it here) and so I guess it'd balance out. Plus the rep cinema scene is better here, and the Odeon Leicester Square beats the pants of the Ziegfeld, and London theatre arguably has the edge. But: I am fed up living in a city that pretends to be modern, but isn't. I am fed up with shops closing at five, and pubs closing at eleven, and the vast majority of restaurants closing at 10.30. I am fed up with our overpriced subway constantly breaking down, and with black cabs whose drivers may at least know where they're going but cost a farcical multiple of yellow taxis. Oy. On the other hand: I don't like the separatism over there. A very small number of years ago was walking in Greenwich Village with a black friend, and car went past and somebody shouted: sister, what are you doing with a white guy? (To which the answer was not much, but that's not the point). That wouldn't happen over here, ever.

I don't know whether to be pleased (because I get the better stuff here) or disappointed (because there's nothing to look forward to over there). Edit: I stick by my relative trashing of London sushi, however.

JJS You may well be right. I suppose I just feel there are more obvious areas in which London has relative strengths over NYC than Chinese food. I haven't heard the comparison made by HK friends, but I expect you know many more than I do. K

I've had the Buitenverwachting SB at Buitenverwachting and it was very nice (this is stretching my wine description vocabulary to it limit).

Macro Is this the Jun Tanaka place? Incidentally, if so, I notice there's a new branch of Matsuri in the flash new office block more or less opposite. No idea what it might be like as have never been to the older St James branch either.

mogsob, You mention Zaika but not Vama, also bang in your stomping ground. Have you tried the latter?

HR make a pinotage at the Southern Right winery, which they own and is close to the eponymous one. Has won the occasional award. But you're right, I was thinking of their pinot noir. Duh. Sorry. Bouchard Finlayson's Galpin Peak pinot is carried by Waitrose. Wineries that actually do make pinotage: Fairview, Kanonkop ... ?