The 2016 Big London LT Meet Up 11 September 2016

The 2016 Big London LT Meet Up was held at Café Also, a lovely small "restaurant within a bookshop" in Temple Fortune, North London, which is just north of Golders Green on Finchley Road, about a mile north of the Golders Green station on the Northern Line of the London Underground. According to a recent article in The Independent, the bookshop, Joseph's Bookstore, is owned by Michael Joseph, a Czech-born Jewish lawyer, and has been in existence for over 20 years. The neighborhood has a sizable Jewish population, and the bookshop features an excellent selection of fiction and nonfiction by Jewish and Israeli authors, along with books of general interest. The café is run by co-owner Ali Al-Sersy, an Egyptian born chef who trained in Paris, who serves a unique and exciting selection of foods from the Mediterranean and Aegean regions. Café Also serves no meat, although it isn't kosher, and it features vegetarian and fish dishes only. This was my third time here, after Paul Harris (Polaris-) and I had lunch here in 2014, and I can say without hesitation that it's my favorite restaurant in London.

LT attendees and usernames:
Bianca (drachenbraut23)
Caroline (Caroline_McElwee)
Claire (Sakerfalcon)
Darryl (kidzdoc)
Debbi (walklover)
Joe (jnwelch)
Luci (elkiedee)
Paul C. (PaulCranswick)
Paul H. (Polaris-)

Non-LT guests:
Frida (friend of Paul & Hani)
Hani (Paul's wife)
Karen (Claire's sister)

First, some photos of the fabulous food we ate. (Warning: Hungry LTers may want to turn away from this post.)

Trout with spinach & sage butter, almond milk & smoked latka roulade (me):



Barbequed vegetarian burger, cheese, fried onions, spinach, flamed aubergine with red pepper paste, chips (Caroline and Hani):



Butternut squash, coconut, chilli, lemon grass, rice noodles, almonds with blueberry & physalis (Debbi):



Shakshouka: eggs, red pepper, tomato sauce, onion, cumin (Joe):



Claire's delightful onion tart:



Debbi's halloumi salad:

The group was quite, um, boisterous and spirited, and it was slightly short of miraculous that we weren't thrown out on our ears! Some photos, courtesy of me, Debbi and Hani:

Left to right, front to back: Paul C., Claire, Debbi, Bianca, Caroline, me, Joe (hidden), Karen, Paul H.:



Karen, Paul H., Frida, Hani, Luci, Paul C., Claire:



Frida & Hani:



Some women just don't know how to behave themselves in public:





...as compared to these two distinguished and refined gentlemen:

We spent a little over three hours in the café (our total bill for 12 people was just over £200 (roughly $275, which included drinks, appetizers, entrées, desserts and coffees), then several of us visited Joseph's Bookshop, where Paul C., Paul H. and I did some damage, and had enjoyable conversations with Michael Joseph, the very friendly bookshop owner. Not surprisingly, Paul C. was the clear winner, although Hani was a major contributor to his book haul.

A group photo taken as we were leaving the bookshop:



We (Debbi, Joe, Paul C., Hani, Frida and I) walked back to Golders Green station and took the Northern Line back to the King's Cross/St Pancras station, after saying goodbye to Frida at Camden Town. We sat down for drinks and a light meal at Le Pain Quotidien within St Pancras, the elegantly redesigned station across the street from King's Cross where Eurostar trains depart for Paris and Brussels. I've met Claire for lunch on a couple of occasions at the Le Pain Quotidien on Marylebone High Street, close to her work place, and I've enjoyed the meals I've had there:











Paul, Hani & I walked across the street to King's Cross after saying goodbye to Debbi & Joe, and I waited with them there until their train back to Wakefield was ready to board, a little before 9 pm.

I think that Hani summed up the day best with the comment she posted on Facebook: "Sometimes it's possible to meet old friends for the first time!" Paul and Hani, the only people I hadn't met before yesterday (other than their friend Frida) lived up to, and exceeded, the lofty expectations I had, and overall our day out was as perfect as the weather on a sunny and comfortably cool day in London. Yesterday's Big London LT Meet Up wasn't the largest one I've attended, but I think it was the best of them.

I bought three books from the bookshop, along with the Summer 2016 issue of Jewish Quarterly:

The Extra by A.B. Yehoshua: A novel set in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem centered around an older woman, who is recently widowed and has been placed temporarily in an assisted living environment; her daughter Noga, a harpist with an orchestra in the Netherlands, who returns to Israel to look after the family apartment; and her former husband, who loves her dearly despite a shocking act that Noga committed during their marriage.

Joshua: A Brooklyn Tale by Andrew Kane: A true love story and a tale of race and culture set in Crown Heights, Brooklyn involving three characters: Joshua, a young black man who moved to Crown Heights with his mother to escape the poverty and crime in Bedford-Stuyvesant; Paul, who decided to live there to study Judaism with the Hasidic Lubavitcher movement; and Rachel, the daughter of a respected rabbi, who is torn between her aspiration to become a doctor and her obligation to obey the insular restrictions of her religion. The neighborhood becomes increasingly tense in the 1980s as its different communities clash, which culminates in the Crown Heights riots in 1991.

Nutshell by Ian McEwan: A murder mystery involving a devious plan created by Trudy, who has betrayed her husband John, and John's brother Claude. The plan seems foolproof, except that there is one witness that hasn't been accounted for: Trudy's soon to be born baby.