East London, United Kingdom

Where The Typing Room, Town Hall Hotel & Apartments, London

Cuisine Modern European

What's the inspiration for your cooking?
I let the produce and the seasons be the inspiration for my dishes.

Favourite ingredient right now?
Gooseberries.

Best breakfast?
Eggs Royale, fresh fruit and yogurt.

Where do you like to eat out?
The Clove Club, or The Ledbury.

This melting pot’s most appetite-arousing scents drift from its markets, which offer a soapbox for enthusiastic artisans to grandstand about farms their favourite meat and veg hail from.

What's cooking? Pulled pork, sliders, bratwurst and brisket: the London urban food scene is in the throes of carnephilia. Right now, if it ain't meat, it ain't street.

Don't miss

• Step aside Borough Market – London's serious epicureans make a beeline for Ropewalk on Maltby Street on Saturdays. Salt-beef on rye from Monty's Deli is de rigueur.
• Wannabe patty-flippers may as well give up – Lucky Chip have pioneered the 'dirty burger'. Pick up a bunful of juicy deliciousness at the Sebright Arms off Hackney Road or from a secret Dalston pop-up opening soon (check Twitter for clues). 
• We've achieved gladiator-level crowd skirting, bagging a whole sea bass from Portobello Market's Moroccan Fish Stall, but those who prefer their west a little less wild seek out Well-Kneaded Wagon's firebreads at Battersea Food Market (every Saturday), or Acton supper club Momma Goose's Dr Pepper ribs with mac 'n' cheese – BYOB, or two…

Stay at Town Hall Hotel & Apartments to take advantage of the scintillating East End street-food scene.

Stay at The Kensington Hotel London, where the Aubrey Restaurant's chef Russell Ford serves up appetite-kerbing Anglicised fare. Book here and you'll get a gratis gourmet cocktail-making class as your Smith extra.

Teal-hued velvet sofas, wood-panelled walls and mirrored countertops bestow a sophisticated, retro Mad Men-style air to the Aubrey Bar, so it's the ideal spot for some amateur mixology. When your cases have been whisked away and you've settled in to the jewel-box bar, you're armed with several glasses, petite bottles of spirits, quartered fruit and an array of metal whatsits and doohickeys that wouldn't look out of place in an operating theatre – albeit a lax one. Galvin Cup-holding cocktail maestro Alessandro Pizzoli gently guides you through addling techniques, spirit densities and the surprisingly complex choreography behind the all-important shake, diplomatically ignoring any spills or shakes along the way. You can choose to make a minty mojito, a passion-fruit-flavoured Truly Madly Deeply, a grown-up Campari-spiked Americano or a classic dry martini; you may not be able to pull off Tom Cruise's Cocktail spectacles – or his flowery attire – by the end of your session, but you'll have something decadent to drink that you'll be justly proud of.