london restaurants

How hard is it to get in? I've been tempted for ages but fear the queues.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, 19 September 2012 15:30 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not sure... a friend made the booking

it can't be that bad if you go at 3am or whatever, now it's 24-hour.

I really want to rock up there when I'm in the area at 2am or whatever.... but when am I ever out at 2 am? Never, that's when.

I'm not sure I'll be able to cope with negotiating whatever security there is at 3am, although I'm kind of up for giving it a try.

i'd love to do the 2am thing though it's not really a...three-course meal time of day, is it, and what one wants to do at that point tends to be quite...spontaneous

duck & waffle is easy to get in, i presume, if you book, but i don't know how far in advance you need to do that. a week wasn't enough at the end of aug

where did you go in the end, tim?

In the end I had the opportunity to have a quick bite to eat with my lovely wife, which meant the Tottenham Court Road area, and I had a tasty-but-unremarkable burrito at Benitos Hat. Thanks for your help though! I like the sound of the popup burrito place.

Afterwards I got DRUNKED as part of the M&T closing ceremonies (last day on Sunday fwiw).

half-price i read... danger will robinson, danger! reckon i might pop in alright.

where did you end up in the end on Saturday Tim? They only just "downsized" our table from 8 to 5 about 30 mins before you arrived!

We went to the Japanese place a few doors down the road, and I ate an entirely serviceable Chicken Katsu curry. It was good.

Other places I wenton what was quite an eat-y weekend:
Cay Tre Soho, which has a very different, fancier menu than its Hoxton counterpart (I had squid stuffed with confit duck, and ox cheek. It was good.
St John bar: pretty quiet for a Sunday lunchtime, I had ridiculously delicious and ridiculously fatty lamb breast (£7), J had a £5 egg mayonnaise sandwich that was beautiflly made and the size of at least two regular sandwiches. Quality and value, for real.

We did wind up at M&T last night also, though not to eat (they'd ruyn out of food so we had salt beef baagels with our beer). Danger indeed.

went to sichuan folk on friday night, really liked it - maybe more than chilli cool? altho i was a bit drunk. staff were v friendly

We did wind up at M&T last night also, though not to eat (they'd ruyn out of food so we had salt beef baagels with our beer). Danger indeed.

managed to be more well-behaved this weekend, in bed at 2130 both on friday and tonight, so no m&t unfortunately.

Anyone else been to the newly raved about Meze Mangal on Lewisham Way? Shits rad.

Hardly newly raved about, the place is a stalwart, although it looks like parts of the media have only just taken notice. I'm usually pretty wary of Turkish restaurants due the high probability of dry, nasty meat, but this place is always excellent. Probably the best Turkish food I've had in London.

I agree that Petrus is better than Meze Mangal though.

sichuan folk had nice food as i remembered.. more comfortable than eating at chilli cool, definitely. can't remember if price is similar or not.

was going to go down to M&T but then it was bloody freezing and the last leg of open house was a 5 min bus ride away from home so never made it. was the bar all dry by the end?

I'm delighted to say I didn't stay to the end. I feel ropey enough as it is.

Curious what you all do when you need to eat in a hurry or on the move, especially in the evenings?

Lately I've got a few evenings a week when I have about an hour after work before a rehearsal to relax or get something to eat, around the Blackfriars/Chancery Lane area, but options are few and far between. Leon is nice and relaxing but fairly expensive for what it is. Other than that there's hardly anything.

Feel free to use this to talk about how you deal with getting lunch at work too. I bring my own as much as possible but otherwise it's a grim trudge to Pret.

The White Swan on Fetter Lane is pretty good, it's a gastropub but they manage to turn food around pretty quickly. Cafes that actually open in the evening are really few and far between.

yeah it's really annoying, it's a cafe i'd want really. as i say, leon on ludgate street was really nice and it's not criminally expensive, but if it's going to be 2/3 times a week it would add up.

had really good indian food at zaza's in whitechapel next to the mosque, would go again, cheap cheap cheap, good service, good alternative to tayyabs if you can't be bothered with all that

It's a happy skip to Eat for me.

(or Itsu, but that shit costs a fortune)

If I turn left out of my office it's 104 paces to an Eat. If I turn right it's 104 paces to a Pret. They do well enough for me four days out of five (fifth is usually the pub).

Pret is great.

no Eat near me. I like Pret, sort of, but not a big fan of any of the sandwiches and avoid baguettes, so it tends to be soup on a daily basis, which I'm sure has more salt than the sea.

Having to rely on Pret and Eat for lunch strikes me as incredibly depressing, there are at least six standard deli/sandwich shops within a 5min walk of my office. They're not exactly much cheaper but at least you're not subject to the tyranny of gloopy mayonnaise and red onion in everything.

there's a noncorporate sandwich shop right next door to me and their plastic tubs filled with chicken and mayonnaise and mystery vegetables make me sad.

I think there is like one non-corporate shop near me, I might hunt for one today.

had a GREAT meat and potato pie from Co-Op the other day, washed down with a can of Pepsi Max - you can't beat that.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-It3ECdVZyXc/UH1IoS5hm6I/AAAAAAAAB7g/1xB8btS45Sk/s640/DSC_4626.JPG

... in Hendon??

http://www.hamburger-me.com/2012/10/pop-up-day-in-n-out-burger-came-to.html

so weird. why would anyone bother?

I think that's kind of awesome. Why not?

I've heard a lot about in-n-out, I'd like to try one.

Why not?

absolutely, although "for four hours only" and "in hendon" is a bit o_O

That's what awesome about it really, that it wasn't somewhere on-trend.

I like the idea of pop-ups which are blink-and-you'll miss it.

I really like the idea of pop ups which are blink-and-you'll-miss-it AND the press aren't told but that really would be so perfectly pointlessly potlatchy that there's no point in hoping.

we are still not over burgers, it seems

can the next food trend be something vaguely INTERESTING please?

(it's going to be fried chicken ;_; ;_; )

I did see something elsewhere about an effort to crowd-source an In-N-Out in London. Not sure if that's related.

the fried chicken thing is just a part of the same thing as burgers/fast food etc. there seem to be a lot of dedicated blogs etc but who cares really? it's not as if you can't read about other things or indeed eat them.

I agree with both the Lex and with LG. I am not excited abpout burgers but I like them. I do not find the trendiness of poshified street food to be especially troublesome because there's so much else to explore and be excited about, food-wise.

(one of the things about in-in-out is that apparently they are very high quality but cheap)

(ie not poshified, fwiw)

That sums it up for me, if the burger thing means the standard of burger is forever greater then all the better. I'd feel the same about any other type of food, or trend. EG craft beer bars is now at saturation, but if this means I can drink better beer, generally, then all the better. there are lots of micro-trends anyway, at a given time, that improve the basic accepted level of things across different cuisines, I think.

I try not to be annoyed by other people's enthusiasm for things I don't like, difficult and all as it can be.

xpost to your first post

Yeah - I remain much more excited at the prospect of getting a train to New Malden and continuing to try the various Korean places there, or keeping going to the Ethiopian in Camberwell which I totally LOVE than I would be to get a train to Hendon for the best burger in the world. But some random place in Hendon serving a burger for a fiver which duffs up all the £10 fancified numbers available across London now is all good as well.

My main reaction to the tweets about it today is that I am generally jealous of people who can just drive off and go for lunch anywhere they feel the need to on a weekday.

Even then though - sod lining up for gawd knows how long, even for the sake of a really good burger. It's probably nice to know you're doing a thing which is being talked about on twitter, and here.

I dunno, there's a load of pubs that have jumped on the post-Lucky Chip/Meatwagon, erm, bandwagon and whacked their burger prices up by several quid without making them any better. I am very pro-burger but I've had a couple of 'gourmet' £10+ burger and chips of late where the burger is too big to physically eat properly, it drips grease everywhere and the bun falls apart in your hand.

I also quite like that they've stuck it in Hendon. It shows imagination.

I've had a couple of 'gourmet' £10+ burger and chips of late where the burger is too big to physically eat properly, it drips grease everywhere and the bun falls apart in your hand.

isn't this the standard that pre-dates the fad?