london restaurants

My girlfriend took me to the Admiral Codrington for my birthday last year solely to try that burger.

I must have gone on an off night though as my burger was burnt on the outside and cold in the middle.

I've been meaning to go back.

How are the Goodman burgers?

Been wanting to try them based on this... http://youngandfoodish.com/london/top-10-burgers-in-london/

lucky chip now in residence @ http://www.sebrightarms.co.uk/

went to honest burger in brixton last week. £7 for burger & rosemary chips. good stuff. we were early though and there was a queue building as we ate.

lucky chip at sebright has been a bit of a mixed bag imo. long waits, not an amazingly nice pub either, crappy music.

How do y'all rate the Marquis of Cornwallis. I did some time in Russell Square not long ago and enjoyed it.

Peter G. (American)

Ate two of these last night - delicious!

http://youngandfoodish.com/burgers/the-best-1-50-steamed-burger-in-london/

Anyone got any London food blog recommendations?

i read these, but looking at them now i'm not sure why...

http://londoneater.com/
http://blog.city-eating.com/
http://londonreviewofbreakfasts.blogspot.com/

also covers food stuff sometimes:

http://www.greatlittleplace.com/

lucky chip at sebright has been a bit of a mixed bag imo. long waits, not an amazingly nice pub either, crappy music.

― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Monday, 6 February 2012 23:26 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dammmmn

I quite like this guy.

Ate two of these last night - delicious!
http://youngandfoodish.com/burgers/the-best-1-50-steamed-burger-in-london/
― Super Receptor (Barnaby, Hardly), Tuesday, 7 February 2012 09:28 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha i rememeber eating this before - was very good value for £1.50!!

went to the sebright for a friend's b'day the other week, was STARVING and looking forward to some lucky chip. got there just after nine and they'd just closed the kitchen. despite having an entire room booked out for a party. was so annoyed. and so hungry.

their customer service is a bit lacking imo. great burger though, and i appreciate the pickle

also, i am kind of over this whole post-meatwagon burger burger burger fixation. burgers are great but there is other food as well.

burgers are kinda shite tbh.

OMG THE BURGER BACKLASH HAS BEGUN

burgers are kinda shite except when they're amazing, which is p much the point of the burger burger burger fixation.

i am not over it, obv.

well i am on record as saying that it doesn't take much to make a great burger - good bread, good meat, it's not fucking rocket surgery - so why lucky chip need approx 15 minutes per order is beyond me

reaaaaally all london needs is an mf'ing in-n-out burger

Just had very good chicken soup with matzah balls, followed by a hot dog with sauerkraut at the Deli West 1. Probably not as frighteningly authentic as they claim, but the quality of the food was good. Wd like to try Kosher Roast as well, currently in Kensal Rise I think.

the burger fixation won't end while people still have to travel to get a decent burger, same as craft beer won't end as a big hype till you can get it everywhere.

i prob was a bit harsh upthread, others may disagree about sebright, i wouldn't warn you off it by any means but i dunno, i think i like the little netil yard, roll on summer for some burgers and ipa there...

i was in paris at the weekend and went to quite a few places i'd read about/researched, gotta say i was mostly disappointed.

the thing that got me most excited all weekend was a tea shop: http://www.dammann.fr/index.php

my entire room smells of rooibos oriental tea right now. they have an "autumn/winter collection" of tea.

ok london restaurants crew the sun is out and we want to sit out by the riverside in a nice pub garden

anyone ever been to 'the ship' in wandsworth?

or the docklands maybe? the captain kidd in wapping has good riverside patio but the food is terrible

i know some good places even further out into the burbs but don't want to travel too far

The Prospect of Whitby has the same awesome terrace/mediocre food problem as the Captain Kidd. There's a good one across the river in Rotherhithe whose name completely escapes me (it's not the Mayflower).

Whenever I go out west by boat there appear to be about 10 of them out near Hammersmith and most of them look good, although may well be packed.

The Old Brewery in Greenwich isn't directly overlooking the river but it has a big outdoor area and the food and beer are both fantastic, Meantime brewed on the premises etc. Also you could move along to the Cutty Sark and its big riverside cobbled terrace after.

Also The Gun out near Canary Wharf is meant to be excellent, never been in though.

The Grapes in Limehouse had great fish and chips last time I was there (last May). Delia Smith and David Owen were eating upstairs.

That doesn't surprise me at all, The Grapes is owned by Ian McKellan.

The Narrow in limehouse is alright, haven't eaten there but it's a Gordon Ramsay joint so you'd hope for good things.

Plenty of recommends round Dalston here but anywhere that hits around Cafe Oto at all that anyone can think of?

Had dreadful meal in the Narrow. Poor service, waiter kept trying to flog the specials it was embarrassing. It's in a good spot though.

xp there are a handful of really nice turkish grill places around the shacklewell lane junction (where stoke newington rd becomes kingsland rd) if that doesn't feel like too much of a shlep. Number 19 Bos Cirrik is particularly good.

yeah the best places in dalston are mostly the turkish ones (mangal is the "classic" i guess but cirrik and stone cave are good too) (and somine is a 24hr lifesaver if you find yourself around there in the early hours - a friend swears by the lentil soup as a hangover dodge tactic). the shanghai is good too, closer to cafe oto - people rarely talk about it when talking about good chinese places in london but it's excellent

LMNT on queensbridge rd is ok too

Erin Cave (with the big Eye on the front) down by the Rio is also amazing.

I'm not sure why I'd want to eat by the river - not if the river was the Thames!

Cleanest urban river in Europe etc etc. I heard that once. No idea whether it's true.

I've been trying to eat out less recently, mostly as an attempt to reduce personal lardiness. Nevertheless we've hit some good places the last few weekends:

RSJ - in behind the South Bank Centre. Really very good modern European business, nothing trendy but nothing shy of delicious, the £20 prix fixe was remarkably good value.
Azou - tagine restaurant in the odd hinterland where Hammersmith becomes Chiswick. The bread sticks in my mind, but the fish tagine was great too.
32 Great Queen Street - Covent Garden sister resto of the Anchor and Hope, with a similar (maybe slightly longer?) menu, i.e. totally great. Takes bookings, meaning avoiding the scrum to get into A&H.
Zeret Kitchen, in an unpromising concretey corner of Camberwell. They're incredibly friendly and nice in there, and their set meal ("Zeret Surprise", although they tell you what you're going to get) is genuinely the best value meal I've had in ages: £16.95 for two people. We arrived hungry and couldn't finish, massively enjoyed all of the food. I can't recommend this place enough.

(Zeret Kitchen is an Ethiopian restaurant btw.)

The Thames is pretty clean, it's just naturally muddy.

mud is not clean

RSJ looks like a very good tip, i'm often in the market for somewhere good to eat round there and as decent as canteen is, some variety is always appreciated

i was at shanghai on saturday night for dinner. it's the first time i've gotten something other than dim sum there and it was excellent.

yeah, somine is totally crucial. the staff are terrific as well, laconic, laid back yet on the ball.

Thx - went to Shanghai. Did the trick.

finally got to meatliquor, i was shopping yday and it appeared before my eyes at about 1300 so i nipped in. pretty great, though for me it's a real toss-up between it and lucky chip, couldn't say which is a better burger really. lucky chip better fries but the deep fried pickles in meatliquor are amazing. it's pricey enough for what it is i guess.

Cheap global eats I currently love:
Lahore Masala House on Kentish Town Road. Much cheaper than the excellent Bengal Lancer across the road. You can easily fill up two people for £20. Very good Pakistani food. Proper naan baking pit, and even the safest, dullest dishes come with a new tang. £7.50 for the whole tandoori chicken - much spicier than you expect - is a steal.
Abu Zaad on Uxbridge Road. Syrian restaurant with fantastic and very well priced range of kebabs plus mezzes and so on. Also: their juices. At £2.50 you'd assume strawberry juice would be one of those heavily sugared "nectars". It was proper strawberry juice: must have been a fiver's worth of strawberries to get that much juice. The cafe's tied to the very busy butcher just down the road, so the meat is likely all fresh. Been very well reviewed by Matthew Norman in the Telegraph.

Just been to what I think is a very good Italian restaurant, just off the Edgware/Marylebone Roads: Briciole.

INTERLUDE

I think, apart from the early-ish days of Valvolle & Crolla in Edinburgh, I've never had an even approaching decent Italian meal outside of Italy (V&C also got a lot worse quickly). God alone knows it can be tough enough in Italy (despite people banging on about it being impossible to eat badly there, that's simply not true, it's exceptionally easy to eat badly in Italy, esp if you are a tourist.)

The ristorante style places tend towards the extremely expensive small portions, the trattoria type places often don't have sufficiently good quality basic ingredients (or bases, like stocks and pastas).

La Semplice was poor, and expensive. Il Baretto was okay-ish the first time I went, but has got both a lot more expensive and a lot worse since. Haven't been to Locattelli, admittedly. Think Polpo is good-ish, but badly overrated, Latium was appalling and v expensive, Trullo was good! But less good the second time. I haven't been to Boca di Lupo and prob shd, seeing as fairly regularly go to Gelupo for ice creams opposite.

Anyway, Briciole is new. And I would strongly recommend anyone who is in the area go. I had the meatballs in hen broth - meatballs excellent, stock could have been clearer (also wd've preferred veal?), and some fagiolini in lemon and butter, v good, and a glass of wine. Wd like to try their pasta/meat/fish before giving it a proper seal of approval. I can't possibly imagine they'll stay open very long on these terms. The place is large, and the prices are extremely fair, and the menu is excellent (inc. grilled sausage and turnip top, gnocchi with tomatoes and scamorza, sausage polenta and pecorino, tagliatelle with artichokes, stewed cannellini, cod and potato + standards) . The bread is made on the premises (give a fuck about bread tbh, but i had a bit, and it was v good, and more importantly is indicative of their current frighteningly inefficient attention to detail), and the wine as far as this ingleterran paesano can tell was good. Go! I don't imagine it'll stay this good and reasonably priced for long.

was at 32 great queen street tonight, had roast leg of kid between two people, it was excellent. good starters too, cuttlefish with wild garlic and peas and smoked herring with broccoli and leeks.

Fizzles, you ever been to 500 in archway? it is p damn good iirc

Thanks C#M. Will head up there soon and report back.

I just moved to archway! will go check this out mmmhmm

not sure what else is good around there.. heard that sitara is good although not sure about this "jazz" business

but then since hillmarton tandoori deliver to us i don't see any reason to eat out.