What is LondonEater?

LondonEater is a visual restaurant guide. Three restaurant reviews are released every week. (It is my hope that) You can use this website to keep up to date with the latest developments on the London dining scene.

Unedited by Kang

This website began life as just a hobby when I was marooned in West Wales for a job assignment. While there, I picked up a book about copywriting by Lindsay Camp titled “Can I Change your Mind?” and was rather inspired by Lindsay’s near conversational style of persuasive writing, it was a such a breeze to read, that it gave me a new found appreciation of the craft altogether.

So I started to pursue more written works about the art of copywriting, this led me to Brian Clark’s Copyblogger, an excellent daily blog which takes all the principles and slickness of copywriting, and applies it to the art of blogging. It seemed the perfect marriage of mediums, since the avid internet farer had a scant attention span, sexy copy was necessary to hold the fleeting moment of exasperated inspiration. I was enthralled with the idea of blogs driven by impact writing and sought out for more.

I noticed how witty writers often hosted their ramblings on acutely designed platforms. Chris Pearson as well as the chaps over at iA added a new interest to my internet clipping board, I wanted to know more about white space, typography and grid systems and how websites can be both functional and beautiful. That’s when I realised that the web was advancing at such a quick rate, that blogs weren’t just living room surfers shouting to the wind, but in fact, creative minds freed from the shackles of adhering to column widths, who had embarked on a digital quest to redefine the rules of publishing.

At the same time, I’d always been a slobbering glutton, inheriting an appetite to seek out good food from my dad. Food flowed in our DNA afterall. My grandfather was a (pastry) chef who owned his all day restaurant in Brunei (in the 70′s), opening for breakfast at 6am and turning his diner into a lounge-bar as the sun went down. Purportedly, his signature was White French Toast. That’s french toasts without the yolk. Rather reticent, but elegant.

It started with the 2002 Annual Time Out Guide at first, I used it like a bible to guide me to places to eat. I was new to London then. While there were other critics who wrote superfluously well, or were immensely erudite with their research, I found that I mostly agreed with Guy Dimond’s (and his team of writers by extension) palate.

Lunch hour meant three things for me: Ideas in Food, Midtown Lunch and World Foodie Guide. Three food blogs which varied wildly, the first was like a chef’s journal, the second, a daily blog of lunch gems in Midtown NYC, and the last was a London restaurant guide of sorts. Though the common trait amongst the blogs was the photography, in that you could actually see what the author was writing about. As much as it was interesting to imagine what food looks and tastes like through immaculately written critic pieces, a photograph was worth more than 1000 words because it fuelled appetite.

Back in my B&B in West Wales, feeling utterly morbid, lonely and always looking forward to the 4 days off back in London – after a gruelling 10 day rotation every fortnight – I started looking more into food blogs, copywriting and expanded my knowledge of photography. What came next was the realisation that millions of people were already self-publishing their thoughts and ideas on the web, and that there were more blogs out there than I could ever read in a lifetime. And I could create my own.

That’s how I started writing LondonEater.

My Photography

I sell licenses for the use of my images through Alamy. If there is a photograph you would like to license which isn’t on Alamy, please feel free to email me at kang.leong@londoneater.com and we can discuss.

My photographs have appeared across a range of National Papers including The Daily Telegraph, Metro, New York Times and Zeit ; and Magazines such as National Geographic, Delicious, Restaurant, Fire & Knives, Layer 7 and The Argus.

You can hire me for your up and coming project, and you can view my portfolio at kangphoto.com.

Sponsorship and pitches

This website receives 50,000 hits a month (August 2010) and the homepage has a google pagerank of 5. It is widely read by food lovers in London and afar. My statistics are freely available on Sitemeter and Quantcast. If you think we can work together, contact me at kang.leong@londoneater.com.

Freelancing

I actively take on freelance writing and photography opportunities and would be delighted to get involved in exciting projects, online and in print.

See my photography portfolio here.

Contact me at kang.leong@londoneater.com.

My online presence elsewhere:
Insider’s Guide to London for The Address Magazine
Redvisitor Contributor
Wikio UK Gastronomy Expert
The Lastminute.com Blog Contributor
Topsee iPhone app Contributor
Metrotwin Contributing Editor
Noir: Street photographs from London

Contact and connect

Email: kang.leong@londoneater.com or use the contact form
Follow the Twitter feed @LondonEater
Become my friend on Facebook
Get the Free (!) Monthly Email Newsletter
Grab the RSS Feed: RSS | Email

Mentions

“Critically astute reviews…” Nick Wyke, The Times, April 2010.
“Kang…he doesn’t do things by halves.” Charmaine Mok, Time Out London, February 2009.

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