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Whenever Jackie and I are planning a trip to London (which is as often as possible), we check to see what’s playing at the Almeida Theatre in the Islington district just north-east of the city center. The show frequently appeals to us, either because of the play itself or because of the cast and director, so we generally find ourselves up there a couple of times a year.
For after-theater supper, we used to despair of the somewhat awkward French restaurant right across the street: The Almeida. Then a couple of years ago the owners – the D&D London restaurant group – revamped the dining room and engaged a new chef, Tommy Boland; the food and service blossomed, and with it our fondness for the place, as I wrote for HuffPost at the time.
Mr. Boland later moved on, and in April 2017, after a major renovation, everything changed again. The Calabrian-born chef Francesco Mazzei has taken charge of the kitchen at what is now called Radici (Roots). We were much taken with the cooking at his former restaurant l’Anima, though its stark décor and noisy acoustic were a deterrent for us. In 2015 he set up shop at Sartoria (on Savile Row and under the same D&D umbrella) and continues there to produce stylish Italian food that’s at once refined and gutsy in luxuriously comfy surroundings.
Radici, on the other hand, is more informal than luxurious, though the large space is comfy enough for me with its bare tables and its calculatedly mismatched chairs. It isn’t a hushed restaurant, but the noise is mostly that of people having a good time. The staff is able, quick-witted, well informed about food and drink – and exuberantly friendly: the woman at the front door greeted us like old pals, not in a hokey way but in a manner that made us feel welcome and comfortable.
The food is exuberant and friendly too, if this can be said of something to eat. There are certainly plenty of southern Italian flavors, and these tend to make people happy. To call it home-style cooking would not do justice to Mr. Mazzei’s professionalism, but some dishes have something of the Italian grandmother about them. There are, for instance, spicy meatballs – listed as an antipasto, and served in a portion easily large enough to share or to eat as a main dish with a side order of, say, potato gattò (from the French gâteau): a Calabrian/Neapolitan potato cake enriched with cheese. And there’s spicy chicken Calabrese, which in Little Italys across the United States would probably, and wrongly, be called chicken cacciatore.
There are pizzas, made with excellent ingredients and beautifully baked in a wood-fired oven (other dishes are cooked in it too). We had a plain Margherita, which had all the virtues of Neapolitan pizza, simultaneously soft and chewy, with a puffed rim leopard-mottled from the heat of the oven and a center that grew soft and juicy as it took in the oil and sauce (good sauce – not just the plain tomatoes that purists might insist on, which is fine by me). The other pizzas are more creative but not pushed over the top by excess. Next time we’re in the restaurant, I’ll have my eye on the Siciliana, which suggests the flavors of pasta alla Norma: eggplant/aubergine and salted ricotta, in this instance smoked. Or maybe the ’nduja-and-chili Calabrese, because we know from Mr. Mazzei’s other restaurants that he has a way with ’nduja. (There’s no reason you couldn’t come to Radici and order just pizza and a beer.)
If you haven’t guessed already, main courses tend toward the hearty: calf’s liver rolls stuffed with pancetta, garlic and sage; that spicy chicken; smothered salt cod and potatoes. There is a lighter side too: we ate perfectly grilled prawns/shrimp with a gentle herbed oil-and-vinegar dressing and a little salad of pea shoots. As a side dish, we tried, but failed, to finish a giant haystack of fried shoestrings of zucchini/courgettes – which stayed crisp throughout the meal, so canny was the coating and frying.
Of course there is pasta, including ricotta-filled cannelloni and a lasagna variant using beef ragù, as well as vegetable and seafood options. We didn’t eat any the night we were there, however, because that would have left no room for pizza, much less dessert. What we did eat was something I wouldn’t have ordered if a friend hadn’t told us not to miss it: a pre-antipasto snack of peas in their pods, lightly oiled, grilled and salted, with a spritz of lemon added at the table. These were fantastic and fun to eat: You slip the pod into your mouth, then pull it out, using your teeth and lips to ease the sweet peas out and simultaneously scrape and suck off some of the char, oil and salt on the surface of the pod.
We were wise to save room for dessert: a babà was soaked in an aromatic syrup flavored with bergamot citrus (the source of the perfume of Earl Grey tea), and a wedge of fragile pistachio cake had a true flavor of ground nuts.
We drank a house variant on the Negroni made with pale rather than red ingredients, followed by a carafe of what else but Calabrian wine, which is well represented on the appealing list.
Islington is full of places to eat and drink that are open late, most of them hectic and unreliable. But there are now several good options for post-Almeida-Theatre supper (or lunch or dinner without theater) in a real restaurant, including Bellanger, the deservedly popular Parisian-Alsatian brasserie a few minutes’ walk down the main street (as opposed to the 20-second walk to Radici). I suppose we’ll alternate between the two, or flip a coin before booking our table.
Radici. 30 Almeida Street, London N1 1AD; +44 (0) 20 7354 4777; http://www.radici.uk/. Pizza and pasta dishes £8 to £13 ($10 to $16.50); a big dinner for two, with some dishes shared, might total £80 ($100), not including wine. Closed Monday.
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Salma Hayek didn’t want me to leave before should could invoke Donald Trump.
We were chatting early last week at the New York junket for her new movie “Beatriz at Dinner.” As is standard in the world of Hollywood promotion, I’d been granted a criminally brief 10 minutes with Hayek. She waxed poetic about the melancholic film, and before we knew it, our time together ended.
I was well aware of the Trumpian undertones in “Beatriz at Dinner,” a dark comedy about a Los Angeles massage therapist slash spiritual healer exhausted by life. Beatriz is an immigrant with an abundance of love that the world often doesn’t reciprocate. When her car breaks down at the home of a wealthy client (Connie Britton), she’s invited to stay for a meal in honor of a billionaire real-estate tycoon (John Lithgow) whose luxury hotels are causing environmental mayhem in developing countries.
“Please help it,” she said, referring to the movie, as I stood up to leave. “Help us. We’re very small. It’s so strange, also ― we’re going to encounter a lot of pushback from the other side.”
I needn’t ask what she was referring to. Without using the president’s name or referencing real-life politics, “Beatriz at Dinner” indicts Trump’s values. As more guests arrive for the feast, Beatriz feels alone in a sea of money-hungry white faces, some of whom mistake her for the help. The women later mock a female reality star’s body. And in a moment evoking the Minnesota dentist who, in 2015, killed Cecil the lion, the aforementioned tycoon brags about having hunted and killed a rhinoceros for sport. He passes around a photo of the dead animal like it’s a trophy.
“My character, when the movie begins, she’s in despair about how human beings behave and in frustration about where the world is going and the fact that there’s nothing she can do about it, as hard as she has tried all her life,” Hayek said. “Some of the things we have learned to make ourselves interesting and popular socially are kind of sad. Going after another woman collectively like that and enjoying it ― it’s very sad.”
Written by Mike White and directed by Miguel Arteta, who are collaborating again after their extraordinary work on “The Good Girl” and HBO’s “Enlightened,” “Beatriz at Dinner” features a career-best performance from Hayek. In subtle ways, she telegraphs the complexity of feeling drained amid a clique that not only looks and thinks differently, but seems largely uninterested in her perspective. What starts as a comedy of manners becomes an aching drama about humanity’s segregation, and one of the finest roles of Hayek’s 29-year career.
Despite Hayek’s worries, “Beatriz at Dinner” isn’t likely to receive much Trumpian fuss ― it’s too small of a movie for any real controversy. And anyway, it’s too delicate to piss people off. But it should, at least, spark conversations about the way we treat one another and how to find hope in a world that doesn’t often prioritize equality. As a Mexican actress who has been outspoken about her distaste for the Trump phenomenon, it’s also a personal story.
“I related to this, but I think she’s not even that uncomfortable about being in a room looking different,” she said. “I think this deeper type of loneliness is being alone in a room with people that all think different than her, to the point that she can barely follow what they’re talking about. She’s like, ‘Wait, am I understanding? Is this really what they’re saying?’ And I think so many of us have experienced that.”
“Beatriz at Dinner” is now playing in limited release.
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This is the first installment of ScreenCrush’s new franchise Our Hollywood, a month-long series about the past, present and future of transgender visibility in film and television. Stay tuned throughout June’s LGBTQ Pride Month for in-depth profiles with photos shot by Amos Mac, essays and exclusive videos.
It would surprise few to learn that Hollywood history hasn’t been kind to the transgender community. From the earliest days of cinema up to today’s newest releases, film and television have used trans identities as punchlines and plot twists, to instill fear and disgust, and to erase trans and gender non-conforming1 people from the screen. In 2015 and 2016, only two trans characters appeared in major studio movies, and both were used as punchlines — Benedict Cumberbatch’s parody of a non-binary2 person in Zoolander 2 and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-her trans woman in Hot Pursuit. Beyond the crowning achievements of Tangerine, Transparent, and Laverne Cox’s Emmy nomination, the big and small screen have yet to cast trans actors in an abundance of authentic, substantial and ongoing lead roles.
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President Donald Trump fired U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara the day after the prosecutor refused to return a call from him, Bharara said on ABC News’ “This Week” Sunday.
Bharara said he viewed direct contact from the president to himself, as a law-enforcement official, to be an inappropriate breach of protocol and reported it to the office of Attorney General Jeff Sessions on March 9. “Twenty-two hours later, I was fired,” Bharara said.
Bharara’s account echoes the testimony of former FBI Director James Comey, who told the Senate Intelligence Committee last week that Trump contacted him directly by phone numerous times between the presidential transition and Comey’s own dismissal last month. Comey also testified about one-on-one meetings he had with Trump, some of which he said left him feeling uncomfortable
Bharara attended the Comey hearing.
“It’s a very weird and peculiar thing for a one-on-one conversation without the attorney general, without warning, between the president and me, or any United States attorney who has been asked to investigate various things,” Bharara said.
“In reporting the phone call to the chief of staff to the attorney general, I said it appeared to be that he was trying to cultivate some kind of relationship,” Bharara said.
Comey similarly told Congress he believed Trump wanted to establish a “patronage” relationship between them.
The number of times I would’ve been expected to be called by the president of the United States would be zero.
Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara
In all, Trump telephoned Bharara three times between December and March, the ex-prosecutor said Sunday.
“They were very unusual phone calls. When I’ve been reading the stories about how the president has been contacting Jim Comey over time, it felt a little bit like déjà vu,” he said.
“The number of times that President [Barack] Obama called me in seven-and-a-half years was zero. The number of times I would’ve been expected to be called by the president of the United States would be zero, because there has to be some kind of arms-length relationship, given the jurisdiction various people have,” Bharara said.
Likewise, Comey testified to just two one-on-one conversations with Obama during the more than three years their terms overlapped.
After winning election in November, Trump met with Bharara, who had been U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York since 2009, and asked him to remain in his position when the new administration took office. Bharara agreed, only to be fired on March 10 by Sessions, who had asked for the resignations of other U.S. attorneys across the country who hadn’t already stepped aside in deference to the new administration.
It is common for incoming presidential administrations to replace U.S. attorneys, though the abruptness with which Sessions handled the matter sparked criticism.
“To this day, I have no idea why I was fired,” said Bharara, who stressed he was not alleging a direct connection between his refusal to speak to Trump by telephone and his subsequent dismissal. Sessions dismissed Bharara after he declined to voluntarily resign.
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WASHINGTON ― Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Sunday demanded that if President Donald Trump continues to suggest that he has recordings of his conversations with fired FBI director James Comey, he should either “voluntarily turn them over” or receive a subpoena.
“This is an issue that the president should have cleared up in his press conference,” Collins said on CNN’s State of the Union. “He should give a straight yes or no to the question of whether or not the tapes exist, and he should voluntarily turn them over not only to the Senate Intelligence Committee, but to the special counsel.”
Trump and White House officials have repeatedly refused to confirm or deny whether the tapes exist.
“I’ll tell you about that in the very near future,” Trump said on Friday during a press conference in the White House Rose Garden.
“You’re going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer,” he added later.
A few days after he suddenly dismissed Comey in May, amid the FBI’s investigation into links between his campaign and Russian officials, Trump taunted the former FBI director on Twitter by suggesting that he had recorded their conversations.
During his dramatic Senate testimony, Comey revealed that he had written documentation of nearly every interaction he had with the president, fearing that the president “would lie about the nature of our meeting.”
Of particular importance is whether Trump obstructed justice when he allegedly told Comey to end the FBI investigation into former national security adviser Mike Flynn’s ties to Russian officials, an exchange which Trump continues to deny.
“Lordy, I hope there are tapes,” Comey said of his conversations with Trump.
Collins on Sunday said that Trump needs to set the record straight.
“I don’t understand why the president just doesn’t clear up the matter once and for all,” she told CNN.
Collins said that she supported issuing a subpoena to obtain the tapes if they exist, but noted that it would probably come from special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading an independent investigation into Trump and Russia, rather than from the Senate intelligence panel.
Following Comey’s testimony, Trump and his personal attorney accused the fired FBI director of committing perjury. On Friday, Trump claimed that he would be “100 percent” willing to testify under oath.
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Two senior administration officials told New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush on Sunday that President Donald Trump’s visit to the United Kingdom is currently off the president’s schedule.
That report follows a story in The Guardian that said Trump’s U.K. trip had been put “on hold” after he told British Prime Minister Theresa May he was worried about being met with mass street protests.
The conversation between the two leaders took place in recent weeks and was heard by “a Downing Street adviser who was in the room,” according to The Guardian.
The White House denied The Guardian report on Sunday.
“The President has tremendous respect for Prime Minister May. That subject never came up on the call,” a White House spokesperson said.
A spokesman for May said Sunday, “The Queen extended an invitation to President Trump to visit the UK and there is no change to those plans.”
The reported scheduling change comes just days after London Mayor Sadiq Khan reiterated last week that his country should not host a state visit in Trump’s honor.
“I don’t think we should be rolling out the red carpet to the president of the USA in the circumstances where his policies go against everything we stand for,” said Khan, who is London’s first Muslim mayor.
The president slammed Khan over his handling of the June 3 terror attack in London. Khan shot back, saying Trump had “deliberately” taken his assurances to Londoners “out of context.”
May sparked criticism earlier this year when she announced that Trump had been invited to visit the U.K. with full state honors. This week’s snap election in Britain, however, “threw the process into further doubt and Trump will be even more uncertain about a trip given the instability of May’s prospective minority government,” according to HuffPost UK.
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn welcomed reports of the visit’s “cancellation” on Sunday.
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Rape occurs in part because victims aren’t “empowering themselves” by packing guns. That was the recent message from a fiercely pro-gun rights member of Indiana’s House of Representatives.
But after a tsunami of criticism, Republican state Rep. Jim Lucas now say he’s sorry he said it.
Lucas last week sent a letter to a reporter at the Indianapolis Star Tribune who had written about a rape. He urged the journalist to produce a follow-up story on the “thousands of Hoosier women that are taking steps and learning how not to be a victim” and “empower themselves to mitigate their chances of being violently assaulted.”
Lucas told the newspaper in an interview: “That’s always been a concern and an issue of mine is women being able to defend themselves. I personally have paid out of my pocket for dozens of women to take firearms classes.”
Critics accused him of blaming unarmed victims rather than attackers, and using rape to push his pro-gun rights agenda. Even after the controversy erupted, he noted on Facebook that he had met with members of the Women Armed and Ready group. “It’s so exciting to see that the movement to educate and empower women to be able to protect themselves and family is absolutely exploding!” he said in a post.
He also posted a photo from the group One Million Moms Against Gun Control.
And he showed off his “latest purchase” on Facebook — a T-shirt reading: “Fem-i-nism: Woman’s right to carry whatever color or caliber gun she wants to. Cause a cop won’t in your purse.”
Lucas apologized Saturday after he said he was “publicly excoriated” when he posted his letter to the reporter on his Facebook page. The letter was embossed with Indiana’s state seal.
“I learned how common, everyday words can be so extremely sensitive to survivors of such horrible acts,” he wrote. But he also said he was “absolutely amazed at the “level of hatred” directed at him, and that his words, in his view, had been “twisted.”
Lucas has been in trouble before over women’s issues. Last year he posted a meme on his Facebook page with a caption asking: “Wanna know who loves you more: your wife or your dog? Lock them both in your [car] trunk and see who’s happy to see you when you let them out.”
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