Francisco Garcia

Il Cucciolo Restaurant in Soho contains almost all of the things I love in an unflashy, utterly reliable central London eatery: a diverse clientele ranging from diminutive, vaguely glamorous septuagenarian Soho lifers, to wide-eyed tourists and sullen couples staring at their phones over bowls of steaming pasta. It has starched white tablecloths and well-worn hardback menus.  When it comes to food, my tastes are almost comically easy to satisfy. This isn’t a source of shame and, I’m happy to say, never will be. This simplicity is nicely distilled when it comes to eating out in central London. Good company, unfussy surroundings and basic edibility are my key criteria, in that order of importance. When I think about happiness – true, muted, everyday happiness – my mind conjures up a series of images. Dauntingly overheaped plates of blood-red, tomatoey penne. Artery-nuking cheesy garlic bread. Post-solo-cinema-trip bowls of steaming, exquisitely average Chinatown noodles and broth. The good stuff, done to the ideal pitch of comforting predictability. When it comes to food, my tastes are almost comically easy to satisfy But this dependable everyday eating is getting harder to come by than it used to be. It’s no secret that the last few years have witnessed various nasty crises for the restaurant business in London and the rest of the UK. The bad-news carousel of lockdowns and absurdist energy bills, spiralling rents and chronic staff shortages. One doesn’t have to look far to fi

Chris McQueer’s vision of working-class Glasgow rarely makes it into the guidebooks. But the 27-year-old author is giving a voice to the oddest, funniest and most quintessentially Glaswegian people and places – speaking to a certain immutable essence of the city that will hopefully never be lost. Here, he gives us the lowdown on some of his favourite Glasgow hangouts, taking in sticky-carpeted nightclubs, after-hours kebab shops and murals of the city’s most iconic son: The Big Yin.

Is there anything more tired than the jokes about Glasgow and fried food? Deep-fried Mars Bars! Hilarious, Jim – truly succulent patter. For those with a working knowledge of the city, it’s commonly understood that we’re living in a cruelty-free paradise. So here’s our hit list of the very best vegan restaurants in Glasgow. Destroying all those couscous salad and stuffed aubergine clichés, many of these meatless menus go full junk food with fry-ups, kebabs and burgers – vegans can have fun, you know. When you’re done at one of these, why not hit up one of the best pubs or bars in Glasgow? Ask politely and they’ll tell you what’s vegan-friendly there too.  RECOMMENDED: Full guide to the best restaurants in Glasgow

Head to the western fringes of freshly redeveloped Granary Square and you’ll find lines from an Aidan Andrew Dun poem built into the concrete. ‘King’s Cross, dense with angels and histories, there are cities beneath your pavements,’ it says. And it’s true – this locale’s history is layered with big changes. In the past few hundred years, the area has gone from being one of London’s most important industrial hubs to a graveyard of derelict warehouses to a red-light district and a clubbing hotspot. More recently, it has been repurposed as a shiny new shopping and eating destination complete with a Waitrose wine bar. The gloss of new developments exists within the framework of a still-tough area that also houses some of the city’s key cultural institutions, including the British Library and a branch of the Gagosian Gallery. ‘Dense with histories’ it may be, but its present is equally complex, fascinating and rich.

In the last of our special anniversary series, we celebrate 50 milestones in art, music, food, architecture, nightlife, theatre and more, from the 50 years that Time Out has been championing the capital. Here goes...  1960s Time Out launched in 1968 against a backdrop of worldwide protests, from student riots in Paris to Civil Rights battles and anti-Vietnam War demos in the States. In London, the lustre was wearing thin on the swinging ’60s. Although the decade had seen increased permissiveness, social liberalisation and the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality, much of the capital was still bleakly post-war. Conditions were ripe for some way for likeminded switched-on types to connect. It was time for a certain cultural listings magazine for London. 1. July 9 1968: The Hayward Gallery opens The ambitious young architects who designed the Hayward Gallery probably couldn’t have forseen how their brutalist South Bank marvel would lurch from state-of-the-art to outlier and all the way back to state-of-the-art again in the following 50 years. Since Queen Liz snipped the ribbon it has been host to the best of the contemporary art world – from seminal group shows (like landmark British conceptual art exhibition ‘The New Art’ in 1972) to iconic solo affairs (Tracey Emin’s first major retrospective). Newly refurbished in 2018, it’s still at the cutting edge. Photograph: Hayward Gallery 2. July 26 1968: The Theatres Act is repealed When US hippy musical ‘Hair’ opened in London