Adam S.'s Profile

My favourite of the London Underground lines. I live in Uxbridge which is on the far end of the line and when it comes to that tough choice between the Metropolitan and Piccadilly line for getting into Central London there's no competition for me. Metropolitan every time.

Despite only living here for about 8 months the line holds many good memories. Watching the late summer's light flit in between the trees when going out to the Amersham just so I could see the countryside. Drunkenly bumping up and down on the way back from New Year's Ever. Using one of the posters in the carriage to make a welcome sign for my friend coming to visit us from home.

Those tall, comfortable carriages, much nicer than the ones on the deep level tube, the empty last car in the evenings. The really springy suspension so that when it gets up to 60mph between Finchley Road and Wembley Park you end up bouncing all over the place. The fact you can kind of put your feet up on the seats if you put down a sheet of newspaper first.

Ok, so, it's always shut at the weekends and I have to take the Central Line and I mean, an hour is still a long time to get to Central London but it skips past all those stations and it feels a lot faster than the other lines which is what really matters I guess. I also seem to have the good luck of turning up on a platform shared by the Met, H&C and Circle lines and getting the first train to be an "UXBRIDGE (ALL STATIONS)". Maybe I've been lucky with the Met but I don't think it deserves the 2 stars it has at the moment.

The Met is a line with heart. One without automated announcements or fancy stations. I love the Met.

I live about a 20 minute bus ride away from Heathrow Airport so I'm very familiar with it's layout having spent many days wandering around aimlessly wishing to go somewhere more interesting than back home on the U3. I am a transport geek afterall and this is what I do.

I got the chance to fly out of Heathrow about 2 weeks ago and was fairly pleasantly surprised. I flew out of Terminal 4 with Continental. It was fairly easy getting there even if I had to wait 15 minutes for a Heathrow Connect train from the Central Station. Terminal 4 itself is fairly standard to be honest, if you've ever been to Newark or SFO's domestic terminals you know the drill. Check-in was very, very easy and no queue (but I did arrive 3 hours early in all fairness), security took around 10 minutes to get through and was pretty friendly.

Inside there was your standard smattering of Starbucks, McDonalds, crappy Duty Free and WH Smiths. I wasn't exactly expecting a shopping mall of delights and I certainly wasn't surprised. I had a coffee and waited away from my gate watching the planes take off. When I got to my gate I found there was a secondary search (this being a trans-Atlantic flight in the wake of the Christmas Pants Bomber I was expecting it). The queue was quite long but people were in a good mood and the staff were brief and friendly. We were penned into our gate once searched but they were human and they let me go get a magazine and go to the toilet as long as I didn't take my hand luggage with me.

My major gripes with Heathrow? It takes a long time to get from Terminal 4 to 5 (up to half an hour sometimes). The walk from the train station to the bus station can be torturous and there are always queues for the lifts up to the bus station. The older terminals; 1 and 3 are pretty miserable but I've never been airside so I'm not in a position to comment. Unless you fancy losing an arm and a leg to ride the Heathrow Express it can take anywhere up to an hour to get into central London on the tube. The baggage claim in Terminal 4 on the way back was pretty slow and there weren't any staff around to help.

Things I like about Heathrow? Terminal 5. It's freaking beautiful, it really is. I mean it's essentially a big shed but .. wow. I've never had the pleasure to have flown from there but I've heard good things. It may take an hour to get into Central London but it's still closer than Gatwick, Stansted and a hell of a lot closer than "London" Luton.  The signage is very clear and consistent. I can't stand airports where the signage is in about 12 different fonts and very confusing. But then I'm also a design geek so ..

Yes, so, very long review I know. Conclusion? It's not as bad as people make out but it's not as good as it could be but then were you expecting it to be good? It's British.

I can't believe I haven't reviewed this place before. It's really one of the restaurants I just keep coming back to.

Just round the corner from the Prince Charles Cinema and squeezed in between those Chinese restaurants with the greasy duck in the window Okawari was a welcome break when I was looking for something to eat in Chinatown a few months back. I glanced in through the window and it didn't seem that busy and the menu seemed reasonable.

My friend had Yakitori for starters and I had a few pieces of sushi. I really, really enjoyed the nigiri sushi especially the seabass one where the fish was still hot. Really, really nice. My friend's starter was equally delicious. For the main I had one of their bento boxes, for £10 I got some fried chicken with a really nice sauce, steamed rice, salad and 6 pieces of sashimi (something I'd never tried before but now really like). My friend had the ramen which was a bit too spicy for me but still really, really nice.

50p for green tea and none of that snarky attitude when you ask for tap water makes this place a more favourable place for me to eat than Chinese restaurants nearby. The staff are, on the whole friendly, the restaurant is clean and compact with a sunken area with benches at the back. The sushi is made fresh at the front of the restaurant and the  hot food downstairs. Anywhere I can get a whole meal I really enjoy for less than £15 certainly gets a tip of the cap from me.

I've been back about 5 or 6 times and each time the food has been delicious. I would 100% recommend this place if you are stuck in Chinatown and fancy something that isn't drenched in sweet and sour sauce.

Just horrendous. I mean you can just look at the outside of it to see it's going to be horrendous. A really tatty sign advertises a Chinese buffet for £4.95 and some stairs lead down to a basement. I have to say by this point one of my friends was about to collapse and being students we had to find somewhere cheap.

When you walk through the door you notice straight away that it's almost impossible to stand upright in any part of this restaurant if you are over 6 foot tall. Infact the table where we were sat was through an arch which was around and about 5 foot tall. The table cloth was dirty, the seats were rickety, the staff were rude and the tea was cold and that's just the start.

Now for the food. Wow. Just wow. I'll start at one end of the buffet and move down. You've got hot water and cabbage masquerading as soup. I ate this with three sachets of pepper. Then there are some cold noodles. Sweet and sour chicken which was really chewy and chemically. There are some more cold noodles. Then some Won Ton which I didn't have, some pretty nasty spring rolls. The black bean beef did not taste anything like black bean beef should. Oh actually just talking about this food is making me feel sick and I haven't even got to the sauce that was about 15 shades brighter than anything I've ever eaten before.

I know £4.95 for an all-you-can-eat buffet right by the museums is an offer that might seem too good to pass up but even McDonalds would have been better. Go to Chinatown, go to Mr Wu's Chinese buffet, pay the extra £2 and eat better food or just go round the corner to Subway or any of the tonnes of sandwich shops. Just avoid the Paper Tiger.

An already successful chain in Australia with over 100 branches Oporto is clearly making small steps into the UK market with a branch here and one in Dudley.

Pretty handy location in the food court of Victoria Place and, to be honest, it doesn't have a great deal of delicious competition surrounded by the Stone Cold Pizza Company, a McDonalds and the over-priced Café Rouge. It shares a seating area with the rest of the chains and it's pretty standard in terms of how miserable it is. They seem to be utterly intent on playing a PA that invites you to "Grab a bit in our food court" when you are already doing so and it repeats it over and over again every five seconds. You do want to stab yourself in the face.

Now with that aside Oporto really is very good for fast-food. Imagine, if you will, Nando's but without the fuss. I got a chicken burger, chips and a bottle of coke for around £5 (standard fast-food price) and I was very impressed. The burger came with really lovely chilli sauce, a well done bun, lots of nice salad and the chips were really very nice.

I'd certainly recommend this place if you were stuck in Victoria Station because it sticks it's head above the terrible parapet of fast-food restaurants in the area. However, if you're going for a meal out it really should go without saying that you should be looking harder for somewhere nice to eat than Victoria Place Food Court.

We went for dinner at Wagamama on the South Bank and afterwards wanted to go somewhere to get a drink so I suggested the BFI bar which I'd heard good things about, presumably that would have been the other BFI bar which is at the back of the BFI but we settled on this one as it was nearer.

The major contributing factor for us going here? The Monopoly set we spotted on the shelves near the entrance. We grabbed ourselves a table ordered a few drinks (a tea, Sailor Jerry & Orange and a coke) and played a great game of Monopoly.

The atmosphere was lovely, very little music which is always great so you can actually talk to one another, the bar staff were really friendly as was the group of Canadians at the table next to us. There were also these delicious corn chilli things that we got from behind the bar.

My two major problems were; there were no community chest or chance cards in the Monopoly set, sorry only 4 stars until that gets fixed. Also sitting fairly near the doors on a late-autumn evening meant it got pretty chilly pretty fast.

Overall though it's a friendly, hip place to go and have some drinks and maybe play a game.

If it wasn't for Yelp I'd never have discovered this place so "thanks Yelp".

Trying to avoid peak fares I found myself wandering around London Bridge at about 6pm and noticed the word Monmouth out of the corner of my eye. There was no way I could pass up a chance to go somewhere with such good reviews so I popped in got a filter coffee and my friend got a mini-filter coffee.

Wow. The coffee was (as everyone else has said) perfect. It tasted absolutely amazing with this hint of dark chocolate. I love the fact they grind the beans infront of you when you order and use a proper filter to make it. The store is set up really nicely with a big bench to sit at (very communal, ended up chatting to a Canadian couple). There's bread and jam on the table which looked nice but at £3 I passed. There are also a few stools dotted around but I expect when this place gets busy there's never anywhere to sit.

Luckily I missed these fabled queues as I arrived a few minutes before closing. The staff were super-friendly which is unusual for a busy coffee shop and the customers were equally nice. Just great. A perfect little find, once you've gone here Starbucks will never taste the same again.

If you've ever been to SF think of Blue Bottle Coffee but better and cuter and friendlier.

Trust me, just go.

Wow. It's changed. It used to be an amazing, quirky, cheap place to get good food. Really simple meals gave the place a "proper" feel. I went in there today and I was really disappointed. The whole place has been blanded out, the posters taken down, the walls done in magnolia and even the menu lacks the same character it did. It feels like a hospital canteen in Stoke-upon-Trent.

The prices have gone up too from what I can remember. I had a bottle of water, mushroom soup and scampi and chips for £10.20 today. Now, don't get me wrong that's London-cheap. But it's not really Stockpot-cheap and the food wasn't particularly amazing either (but then it never was before, it was just hearty). I suppose I might be being a bit cruel with 2 stars but it really has gone downhill and I just can't forgive it for that. If you want my advice seek out the other Stockpot on Old Compton Street and give this place a miss.

Sorry Stockpot. You shall be mourned but I won't be coming back any time soon.

Ok it's Hipster-tastic but there is nothing that says Hipsters don't have a damned good taste in music. This shop is just .. wow. Coming from a small town I've always bought my music online or in somewhere like HMV, I've never had the real experience of a proper record store with proper records, not until I started getting into vinyl and proper music a few months ago.

For me Rough Trade is the epitome of everything that is good about independent music. It's quirky, it's geeky, it's such an exciting adventure to find new music rather than just picking it out of the charts. Hand written reviews give way to mesmerising records, friendly, knowledgeable and helpful staff can give a hand if you find yourself totally lost. Oh and don't forget the free Wifi, awesome book collection, café and the recent installation of a black and white photobooth for the most hipster of hipsters. It's like they took all the good bits of Amoeba records in San Francisco and distilled it, cleaned it up and made it London.

Great taste in music, really comfortable spaces to sit, free Wifi, good coffee, great design, amazing Lego condiment holders, fantastic location (on Brick Lane, obviously), light and airy surroundings. Seems to attract a hipstery crowd but I've seen a few architects and artists working on their scribbled wares. I would 100% recommend this place to anyone wanting an alternative to Starbucks around Shoreditch.

To be fair it's worth going just to check out the super-hot customers and the Lego condiment holders but once you go you'll be hooked, I know I'm going back pretty sharpish.