Showing posts with label rory sutherland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rory sutherland. Show all posts

Thursday 15 October 2009

Rory Sutherland


Advertising is in good shape with Rory at the helm of the IPA. Possibly the best-fun lunch companion a bloke could hope for (or at least he covered my disreputable ass, with deliciously wobbly London Underground noises, while I was bunking off one memorable afternoon from JWT in Docklands). Thanks for doing the, I'm-on-the-tube background-noises-blag, when my boss called to ask where the hell I was Rory.


 Anyway, you can find out for yourselves with this TED video quite why he's a true anarchical thinker. Exactly what we need..... and just in the nick of time.


NB: I also saw Rory speak at the launch of Stephen King's book where he turned up with ostensibly no notes and cleaned up with the crowd in JWT's bar at Knightsbridge. Here's more of one of Adland's best. We're lucky.

Friday 23 November 2007

Food 2.0

One of my favourite twitterers is noodlepie who blogs over here. I really like it when he decides to cook something in the evening and nips out to the market to buy the fresh produce. I find it inspiring and I'm a wee bit jealous till I get my kitchen sorted out.

In the meantime all I can do is take the occasional picture of the food I'm eating and blog it. This has made me think I need to get stuck into Jaiku again now that Google have bought the company and temporarily put a hold on new members.

It does feel like the future is heading into a Jaiku/Facebook and location based contextual information mashup. I can't wait for that day. The day when I'm waiting for a plane or train and I can hook up with likeminded individuals who have time to kill and who can also teach me more in 20 minutes conversation than any book could. Now I like books, I'm currently rereading The Master and Margarita but I don't think there is any other better face to face time than chewing the fat with someone I know a little bit about as a result of blogs or whatever other social media is available. Even a few pictures can tell me a lot. So here is my Haggis moment at Heathrow.


Then my favourite Turkish joint in Croydon which does all this for a fiver


I had lunch with Rory the other day. It was a much grander affair and well worth the trek over to Docklands for the best conversationalist in town. No time to snap the food but I can vouch for First Edition's yummy Lamb. Here's the layout I caught while waiting for the great man to arrive.


Then there was that awesome Scone on Picadilly that stopped me outside the window and lured me inside with thick cream and heaps of fresh berries too.


Then there was that Champagne and Chips moment last night. I went for the Rock at the Rock & Sole in Covent Garden with dirty hand cut chips. It was lovely


And no food post would be complete without a pic of Lloyd Davies of Perfect Path tucking into a Breakfast Club Breakfast of Champions


At this rate I'm going to be resembling the Pied Piper pork-pie-star himself Rob Campbell which I guess means I should get on the Diet Tangos ASAP

Update: Quite by coincidence Graham Holliday of Noodle Pie has blogged about a response I made to his twitter over here on his Guardian Blog for food.

Monday 30 July 2007

Food of the Gods



I first came to live in London via Norbury, and so in a whimsical way even though I've lived all over the capital, including Belsize Park, Bloomsbury, Shepherds Bush, Camden, Clapham and more, there's a piece of me which always be a Sarf London boy. Recently its the massive South Indian community in this part of London that is pricking up my planning barometer trend antenna.

On my last business trip to Chennai (formerly Madras) in India I wandered around the back streets trying to observe and breath in a bit of the culture in a way that might contribute meaningfully to a market entry strategy report that I would later be writing for a multinational client. I've found that luxury hotels are the same all around the world, good for networking but awful for grasping how a country ticks and so on this particular sortie I found myself hungry for food but completely at a loss to even describe what may possibly have been a Tamil script menu in a clean but simple, open-front shop house. I plumped for the tried and trusted method of food adventurers around the globe and pointed vaguely at a bunch of ordinary Indians, indicating I'll have a bit of what they're having; and that's when my first dosa was brought to me.

Really good food should be simple and delicious. That's not actually as easy as it sounds and so ever since my first dosa I've been a proselytizing this simple but astonishingly tasty South Indian Fare. Its the "food of the Gods" as Mohammad Iqbal of Bangalore and I like to say. On my latest return to London I was really pleased to discover that a 'fast food format' of dosa food was available in my locale. When I say fast food, I'm sure the owners of this briskly expanding chain of restaurants would be a little annoyed at the term but what I'm getting at is an unfussy way of ordering and eating. The Chennai Dosa is a no nonsense, food-from-heaven kind of joint that I probably like to dive into and out of quicker than most of its patrons. The south Indian community in particular are some of the best and most welcome immigrants this country has ever had - and their cuisine is practically worth body-popping over, as its a little different from the Punjabi cuisine that most people associate with Indian food. Although this is a little like saying that European food is pretty much represented by Italian pasta and pizzas.

Southern Indians I find are hard working, family focused, low key and modest people. There's nothing I like more than dining at my local Chennai Dosa and studying this ethnic group of people who for me bring nothing but welcome diversity to this country. I've since worked my way through the Chennai Dosa menu and buffets over many visits and I think they've accepted me as a fan boy. Their food is inexpensive, tasty, healthy and all importantly; freshly made. Pretty much everything that Western (fast) food has moved away from and I pity the blinkered folk around these parts for whom the height of eating pleasure is either a Subway (sub way. I always think thats ironic) or other junk food fare, when world class eats are dotted all over the map in this neighborhood.

By complete coincidence, shortly after my discovery I thought I'd do a twitter search of my area and came across someone plugging the exact same Chennai Dosa I'm fanatical about, called Rory Sutherland. I thought I knew the name from somewhere and while adding him to my Twitter discovered that not only did he blog but that we were also in the same game - I've since discovered that he's a really top thinker in our business but more frequently Rory writes commercially dispruptive pieces for Brand Republic now, than the crafted and more literary posts I first came to enjoy . We've since had some twitter banter along with Giles about great Indian food spots as we're all Indian food fans but interestingly, Rory believes as do I, that the dosa food could quite possibly be on the cusp of something larger.

So I'm unashamedly plugging and suggesting bigger things for The Chennai Dosa Group. You heard it here first (think McDosa) and I believe their next outlet is opening in Tooting. Try also their Idli or the Idiyapam) and more importantly for UK planners I'll be wrapping this up later into a broader post about third millennial cultural observations and trends that I've found both provocative and inspiring this time round in these parts of London.