london restaurants

Think Malletti's a bit overrated actually, lovely crisp base but way too salty.

Looking forward to trying The Gowlett as it's not far from me now, and I will of course continue to rep for the pizzas at Zerodegrees in Blackheath.

heading to gourmet san tonight...woop!

how was it? i think that when i've gone i've ordered the wrong dishes

I went to Gourmet San once, and I too think I ordered the wrong things. I would like to go back with a big group of people so we could order a stack of dishes and have a few delicious morsels of each - when there are two of you it's pretty hard to base your whole meal around a big plate of 20 chicken claws in sauce (or whatevs).

We went to Hibiscus on Saturday night, which was very, very good and very, very expensive. Did the latter justify the former? Probably, for a special occasion. Our wedding anniversary is precisely that kind of special occasion.

hmm yeah, it was really busy and extremely unpleasant to sit in, very hot and cramped and the service is appalling. i prob wasn't adventurous enough but had crab with spring onion and ginger, it was really good, we also got some szechuan ribs, the portions are gigantic but it wasn't ultra cheap. i'd be more inclined to order takeaway again than actually sit down in there, the service was truly awful, a waitress came over and without saying anything proceeded to move our table so someone else could be squeezed in beside us, while we were eating. the staff are mega rude too. i know you don't expect great service in a place like this but i'd expect even bare bones politeness when you're paying over 20 quid each by the time the bill comes...

the menu is intimidatingly large and my friend i was with wasn't keen to experiment much, i think if you were with a large group who were willing to order lots of things and go a bit wild it might be better, also my timing was poor, i was massively hungover and starving, hence the usually appealing thought of eating pig guts in eyewatering chilli didn't quite grab me.

x-post yep agree with Tim completely...you can't order lots of dishes with two people cos eg the ribs was this huge mountain of food.

i went to Franco Manca in Brixton recently and it was fine but not that much better than a decent standard pizza in a restaurant.

this is insane.

1 - they make their own sourdough crust in brick ovens. it is god-like! they also make fresh bread daily, which you can buy off them.

2 - they only offer like 5 different pizzas at any given time. none of them involve prawns and rocket. they all cost like £5.

3 - the only other things you can order are like, a salad, a fresh lemonade, and some dessert. so they can focus on just making great pizza.

that said, the queues on the weekends are so horrendous that it's sort of turned me against them :(

There's nothing wrong with rocket on pizza! The first time I ever had rocket on pizza was in Italy, it's fine. It also had horse on it, which I fear is sadly not availably in London.

you can get horse on pizzas in london, it's called "pepperoni"

"meat feast"

Donkey more like. I want my horse as close to thoroughbred as possible.

does anyone ever order pizza that isn't fucking horrendous and overpriced? i only eat cheese once every 2/3 months due to health but obv the usual suspects are all fucking horrible.

part of whats amazing abt franco manca is how cheap it is

To my knowledge there is no really good pizza delivery in London.

domino's

NO

the pizzas aren't all that but the delivery is spot on.

plus they give you a tub of sauce to dip your pizzas into.

xp Not when they don't come into your estate because of non-existent fears about getting mugged. And then call your female flatmate "sir" to her face when she comes out to get them.

and the option of cold wedges or chicken wings/chicken pieces x-post

last delivery i got was papa john's, there was a promotion and my friend and i both got a pizza. it was nothing more than okay at best. oven pizza probably nicer.

xp Oh no! The last time I went to Gourmet San the service was... normal? Meaning, not rude but leaning towards the 'shy' side and certainly not invasively bossy like you've described. You should have been rocking the green beans, lamb skewers and dan-dan noodles; the green beans in particular are a good gateway item for fussy/chiliphobic dining companions and all of these things are actually Szechuan. FWIW it gives me The Rage when I agree on a restaurant with a friend only to find they can't or won't eat what's served there, but only remark on same after five minutes of staring at a menu.

If you're not prepared to go back to Gourmet San on a less busy night (you can approximate that experience by turning up there at 7pm instead of any later), the service is always better at Chilli Cool in Bloomsbury and two people can eat for about £30-£40 if dinner is a shared fish hotpot, green beans, ribs/lambsticks and DUMPLINGS!/noodles. The Chinese people eating there seem to be grad students enrolled locally and the decor is much nicer.

Having said that, yesterday I went to Golden Day with a friend who isn't allowing herself to eat any pork. BAD IDEA: 1) you really need a group of four to take advantage of the Szechuan/Hunan family-size portions 2) lunch specials good value but otherwise not up to much.

The last time I went to Gourmet San the service was... normal? Meaning, not rude but leaning towards the 'shy' side and certainly not invasively bossy like you've described.

same here. green beans love also otm.

If Porchetta delivered pizzas I would be happy because I can't face the 100m walk to pick up from a restaurant that's inevitably filled with braying idiot post-work douchebags.

the food at sichuan-folk in spitalfields looked lovely, i cannot comment on taste as we were doing their hot-pot (steamboat) at the time.

haven't tried the chilli cool steamboat yet but then yeah, with a £18 for a fish "hotpot" (not steamboat) that is the size of the entire table why would you eat anything else?

and the service was great at that sichuan folk place btw, if you can get the guy who speaks english.

had some seriously disappointing pizza delivery from il bacio in stoke newington last night, which i'd previously repped for. dough which was practically stale and almost no sauce at all.

matt it's not rocket i object to (well, it is; "authenticity" be damned) it's the prospect of prawns AND rocket. well, prawns and anything, really.

do you dislike prawns? or you just want them unadulterated and on their own?

I am allergic to prawns so I consider their presence anywhere to be disgusting savagery of the highest order.

Prawn haters, just hand them over to me but not on my pizza. Sometimes there's nothing more satisfying than a supermarket prawn cocktail sandwich, but I don't know why.

I have to admit that I don't order much pizza in because I'm really lucky with finding high-end Waitrose ones priced to clear. I'll also tart them up once I get them home.

love prawns and can tolerate them on a pizza, i like the seafood pizza but partly because it's often served with no cheese, stretching the limits of what a pizza is but meaning i can eat it without having to worry about the consequences.

i actually tarted up my il bacio delivery with some feta. 100% improvement!

prawns are the shitty album tracks of the food world.

! prawns are delicious

(unless yr allergic)

that doesn't make any sense. if you're allergic to prawns, it doesn't mean you dislike the taste of them. i know a guy who's allergic to gluten but every now and again he has a beer, knowing the consequences, because he just can't resist.

well yes that is true. altho i was allergic to peanuts when i was younger + due to this i dont find them delicious

I actually find the taste, texture and even the thought of what prawns are to be kinda disgusting.

that is lucky.

xpost me too, jesus it's horrible.

anyway, it's not just a matter of taste with prawns, it's that they're politically/environmentally horrible. google prawns and vietnam some time, or prawns and mangrove destruction. even if the prawns are farmed in the UK, very often they're sent all the way to vietnam for processing, then BACK to the UK for packaging. that's how little the vietnamese get paid to clean them.

if i went down that road i'd probably stop eating lots of things.

yeah when i'm buying my own ingredients i try to be pretty ethical but when yr eating at places like gourmet san....

if i went down that road i'd probably stop eating lots of things.

everything is always compromised i agree, but we can still make distinctions. prawns are especially bad. of course that's easy for me to say, i hate them.

prawns are great but not sure about putting them on pizzas, waste of a prawn really.

best ones are the ones that are fried with the shells with like garlic or whatev and you can eat the shells.

prawns stu

Haha, beat me to it. :D

Cosign on Il Bacio's deliveries being poor - esp. weird because their sit-in Pizzas are great. What's that place that does pizza by the yard or whatever? I know lots of people who swear by them (although I think they're only alright).

Anyway as a lurker I'm popping my head above the parapet to say this has become my favourite thread over the last few months. In the last fortnight I've been to Franco Manca and the Banh Mi joint on old street specifically because of recommendations here, and they were both brilliant. Thanks guys!

this is easily my favourite thread

(welcome)

i took some friends to have the all you can eat hotpot at szechuan folk and they hated it. i thought it was ok though but nowhere near as good as when i've had it in china / chinese restaurants in japan. a lot of the seafood was frozen and it was a bit hard to know how long to cook everything. i went there once before and had the non-hotpot stuff and was pretty decent. definitely prefer my old place (middlesex st) for szechuan, the food maybe isn't quite as good as gourmet san but it's v. similar (same owners) and it's a bit more spacious and chilled out. staff still rude as ever but that's part of the fun no?

tried to go to keu a few weekends ago but it was shut and so we went across the road and had lunch at cay tre. huge bowl of pho sate for £6. so fresh + delicious and so much i couldn't even finish it!

i would kill for a good pizza delivery in east london. friends who live near finsbury park rave about some place but i can't remember the name. in my darkest hour sometimes i will get a dominos but immediately regret it afterwards bleurgh. pizza east is quite nice i reckon.

what are ppls favourite thai restaurants? east, central, wherever

oh i went to tayyabs for the first time recently too. those lambs chops oh god those lamb chops

x-post thai garden on globe road, about 2 mins from my flat, is really nice. mentioned loads on this very thread already. i was actually there for first time in a long time on friday night, it's always excellent. and won't break the bank either. only fish and vegetables tho, no meat. would be curious about where else people go for thai where there's meat on the menu.

hated il bacio ever since i went with a taste london card, confirmed before we sat down that i could use said taste london card, ordered plenty of tasty food, waitress was rude the whole time, food was rubbish, then they told us they didn't accept taste london cards nor did they take debit cards (???)

pizza by the meter is firezza right? really good takeaway pizza!