london restaurants

Have you been to Little Georgia in Barnsbury Road? I've been meaning to go for about two years.

I haven't. This looks good for me in fact. Thanks! Will report back.

I quite like Pho - usually followed by the frozen yoghurt place Frae

thanks Bob. I'm not enormously keen on the Pho chain (if that's what it's part of). Think it stems from the time I lived close to a v good Vietnamese and on the one occasion I went to a Pho it didn't really stand up. Mentally placed them in the Strada/Carluccio's/Byron Burger level - fine in their way and useful at times but not places I'd actively seek out.

Sounds about right...on Vietnamese, has the Kingsland Road moment well and truly passed? I've eaten there in a couple of places recently and seems not as good as recent years.

yeah, other people here much better qualified to comment, but it can feel like it. the good one I was referring to was on the kingsland road - and when I started going there it was family run (cute kid running in amongst the tables), you'd see the kitchen staff grabbing the same things for their breaks that you were eating, and the broth was incredible.

then after about a year I went in one day and it was poor - watery stock and sketchy service + some ill-favoured heavies sitting where the staff had used to sit.

I liked it so much I didn't really have the heart to explore elsewhere and anyway moved out of the area soon after.

i went to sen viet last fri and it was terrific. thx lex.

Gobsmacked to see that the London restaurants blog that I follow - Cheese and Biscuits - rates the Viet Grill as the best of the Kingsland road set - "...the Viet Grill is, and always has been my own favourite" (in their latest review of the new 'Salvation in Noodles'.

This is the very one that I last tried recently and was particularly disappointed. I did have a massive case of the 'sunday sads' on a grey day- but pretty sure the food wasn't very good.

is it true that brasserie zedel gives you a 1/1.5hr time limit on your table?

that's half as much again as this place! http://www.opentable.com/hourglass-tavern

or, a new round of recommendations anyone? partic non-british food

is it true that brasserie zedel gives you a 1/1.5hr time limit on your table?

They gave one to us when we were there … but didn't enforce it (we were there quite a bit longer).

any good places in angel these days? i always get v frustrated trying to find places in that area, but suspect that's a lack of knowledge than some kind of Angel gustatory deadzone

The Pig and Butcher is really good, run by the same people as the Smokehouse in Canonbury.

The name should give you an idea what to expect.

after moving to stratford i've come to really appreciate the hackney pearl and the pizza at the white building

#bestpizzainlondon ?

certain blackheath old hand still unbeaten iirc (well I went there on monday & can confirm)

best pizza in london is peel & chimney mobile wood-fired pizza imho

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/oct/19/beast-restaurant-review-jay-rayner

If you follow the money behind the group back, it leads to some pretty interesting places.

G3org3 Bhuk0v is the face of the company but the main shareholder is M1kha1l Z3lm@n. He co-owns the company with Isk@nd3r M@khmud0v who is one of the richest people in Russia and has traditionally had very strong ties to M1sh@ Ch3rney, who is str8 gangster.

wow!

(lol jay rayner's review of the first goodman starts out like a dvd extra from red heat)

lock thread

http://www.london24.com/news/quirky-london/uk_s_first_cereal_cafe_in_shoreditch_will_sell_100_varieties_over_two_floors_1_3831985

people who have been to bar américain: they don't do table reservations, is walking in at 7pm on a friday evening gonna be a fool's errand do you think

I've been in at like 9pm on a Saturday and managed to get a table easily, it was like a hotel bar.

:) thx!

if any of you recall a small, cheap woolwich-based eritrean restaurant called 'the blue nile' streaking to the top of tripadvisor's london charts, well I am sitting there after a full vegetarian meal and can corroborate this lofty placement

injera bread might be the best culinary discovery in a long while

loads of good italian drinks and desserts too #proudofourcolonialisthistory

ok, with 2 glasses of honey wine each included, the meal, for two, cost thirty quid. srsly

bizarrely enough one of my bf's colleagues was raving about that place to me just this week. it sounds amazing. on an eritrean tip i can also recommend zeret kitchen in camberwell

Zeret Kitchen seconded. Yum.

Yeh zeret kitchen is so good

Lol at you posh people eating out in Woolwich, You wouldn't have even attempted that shit in the 90's!

fairly sure i did in the 1990s

I might have even have crossed paths with you at the time

But didn't see many "aspirational" types in the area at that time.

ha, this was at the birthday party of an amiable kid from a very aspirational asian family

anyway i think lj has the ability to move seamlessly between the ritz and and canning town burger king and to treat each with equanimiy

aw!

xelab obv shook at the prospect of the terriers wandering straight into the dragon's lair on the 28th, see just how damn aspirational this area is then

will give zeret kitchen a go if I'm in Camberwell too, cheers folks

Do you still get all the night-shift workers from the dockyard Emafyl factory converging at the market pub for for a 6am piss-up on Fridays ? That is a part of real Woolwich that is invisible to some of you folks. It depresses me when you get this whiff of gentrification going on in such a shithole as Woolwich, which I lived in for two years, well Plumstead for 6 months of it as well. Anyway peace to you all and enjoy your food, this isn't some ongoing feud, I was thinking aloud and probably not in a good way.

sorry dude

have lived on the edge of woolwicy for nearly 3 years now & have been to all sorts of places. am living in a rickety old basement terrace flat & I share your sadness at many aspects of gentrification, but good food is good food. at least this stuff was affordable. anyway, sat in a woolwich boozer rn, always glad to hear the history of this place, hope it doesn't turn into a characterless boutique row

is woolwich gentrifying?

I can recall someone telling me that that the area consists of 80% social housing and would consider it a tall order.

but slowly it will probably happen, until London becomes North Sea territory Hah!

yeah, probably not vastly more upmarket than in those days, just with a more mixed population than 20 years ago
the eritrean immigrants probably replacing erithrean emigrants

£500k or thereabouts for a 3-bed flat in a Woolwich development shown just this week to some horrible prannet and his fragrant wife on Location Location Loation.

jesus, although there are tower blocks in deptford that have been privatized and would sell for more than that, but they exist in a bit of a quarantine from the local area

anyway back to restaurants does anyone have recent experience of high end italian anywhere centralish (not my cheque thankfully)

xpIn the 90's there was a huge Somalian influx in Woolwich, so that sounds very correct.

during the conversation with bf's colleague (not remotely hipster, a slightly older teacher) in which she raved about the eritrean restaurant, and woolwich generally despite it being "rough", there was a gradual dawning that she was describing exactly the sort of place hackney was 20 years ago :(

woolwich retains a distinct character & despite the gaudy & looming riverside developments is not yet shorn of its caribbean & othersuch concerns (going into a cornershop today & buying both irish moss & sarsaparilla should confirm this) - (oh ffs just drank a drop of irish moss & am reeling, like a blancmange you drink, or choose not to. sarsaparilla ok tho, esp with pernod) - yeah, it's gonna be an auxiliary city dormitory given crossrail but cheap greasy spoons, morning pints & bereft charlton fans still present & correct. hackney minus 20 years? perhaps, although it's more remote & less prone to sudden invasion of the moneyed & their demands

my rent hasn't gone up too much although i'm a 7-minute bus ride out of central woolwich so this might not be a reliable guide

if people are priced out of the area it will be disgraceful, but whether a ridiculously cheap eritrean cafe in a barely-redecorated sausage factory is a sign of this process is yet to be clear, whatever tripadvisor might herald (can't we just believe in a championed underdog?) if their prices triple within the next 2 years we may have our answer

anyway back to restaurants does anyone have recent experience of high end italian anywhere centralish (not my cheque thankfully)

I'd have said Locatelli's, but it's still shut. My knowledge in this area is shamefully scant - I have a hunch expensive Italian in London might be more to do with location than quality of product, but it's only a hunch.