london restaurants

xp Polpo might fit the bill, there's one in Soho, Venetian food and very good the time I went to their Clerkenwell branch, the only problem being the lack of booking.

Of course Woolwich is gentrifying. You look at the way the greenary near the station has been done up etc (I think it was around the time at the Olympics), then there was another piece of greenary (Just as you come out of Plumstead)...right there and then you knew it was all going to shit.

Ads for dockside flats.

The girl who cuts my hair is also moving out to Thamesmead, rents are going up.

It will get to the same shit as Dalston: KFC then two doors down some fucking tapas bullshit. Enjoy your lol 'food'.

xps
Bocca di Lupo? It's a couple of years since I've been but people love it p consistently.

(I had a birthday dinner there. It was great, but a bit hazy towards the end)

It will get to the same shit as Dalston: KFC then two doors down some fucking tapas bullshit. Enjoy your lol 'food'.

internet comment

It'll be Thamesmead village next - internet comment x2

Re: High end Italian, consensus pick is probably L'Anima if money is no object. Bocca di Lupo is lovely (and has a fantastic wine list), and slightly cheaper but still great are Trullo in Highbury and Zucca on Bermondsey St.

you'd probably really like the blue nile tbqh xp

I would, its just that its part of a thing so I had to make a comment on the internets.

Cosign Zucca, it really is excellent and not too expensive for high-end food.

As someone who was going swimming and hanging out in Woolwich on a weekly basis in the 90s it feels like a more run down and desperate place now than then. They have been trying to gentrify it for years without much success, I suspect its future is closer to Vauxhall than Dalston. At one point there were reports of unsold luxury flats being used as crack dens.

that's more like it

lol matt, there's an afrikan boy interview that i can't find just now where he makes a convincing case for woolwich as realness capital of london

clearly rising land values everywhere is a tide lifting all boats (submerging all those without boats) so renter flight is ubiquitous, but local govt prettification and insipid gleaming newbuild crap is often a bad indicator of gentrification, it won't all go for the brochure price and in any case it exists parasitically, in an area rather than of it

it is being sold to people with no connection to or love for the area, and whereas in 95 (iirc the peak year for crime in england?) they would have been more circumspect, there's less heroin related property crime and less violent crime in general which mitigates the most proximate disincentive to the middle class

and thanks for all your recommendations

We went for drinks in the Woolwich Equitable afterwards, the building society premises transformed into a pub, keeping much of the old decor and the curiously lofty, incongruous room shape...it was great, but if that's gentrification then it's a very strange, counterintuitive gentrification, with cheap drinks and an extremely unpretentious selection of books adding to the sense of haphazard improvisation. Posh gastropub it is not - its grandeur feels democratic and accidental, like anyone could walk in and feel at home. They didn't even have a beer menu!

do they have a crack menu instead?

See if I can score some 'greenery' next time I'm there

A lot of what people mistake for gentrification is actually businesses opening up to specifically cater to pockets of middle class people (and/or working class people with a bit of disposable income) that have been there all along. A tapas bar opening is not really a sign of gentrification given that fucking Catford had one in like 1990.

nor is a local business to blame for the housing crisis

It's also a consequence of the average age of parenthood creeping steadily upwards, something that is never mentioned in these debates - there have long been substantial communities of middle class people in areas that 90s North London chattering classes fuckwits like Alex Proud would never have thought about going to. But the ones with higher paying jobs are going out more than they used to because they're less likely to be at home with the kids. And that means more restaurants, and more of a certain kind of pub as well. I think people are more likely to take their kids are more likely to take their kids to those places than they were in the 80s and 90s as well.

These issues should be to an extent tangential but we have and have no chance of a government with an interest in countering the negative effects of rising rents.

probably a higher proportion of disposable income spent on eating out across all income levels these days? and more on food and less on drink

certainly if punitive duty rates are excluded, and the minority of people happy to pay ludicrous wine markups in fancy restaurants (eg £120 for a bottle i bought for £20 and readily available for £30)

That's true as well, casual eating out in Britain is a relatively recent phenomenon. And I'd guess that the emergence of online dating into the mainstream is a factor as well.

Fnarr.

I never said 'tapas bar' was the only thing, all rooted in the way the area looks and a comparison of this with the way other areas are now looking - sorry I don't have any figures of numbers moving out and migrating to Thamesmead or anything.

We'll see what the future brings for Woolwich and its fine new establishments, such as the equitable.

I really hate the idea of a gentrified Woolwich, especially if it meant some poor bastard had to commute from the arse end of Erith for a shitty manufacturing job that doesn't pay enough for a travel budget. Well that was the kind of narrative I was getting carried away with in my mind on here last night. And some of the horrific stories of local authorities evicting long term tenants with impunity. I probably shouldn't have waded in here considering it is about 18 years since I lived there!

that is happening all over london so in that sense woolwich like everywhere else is becoming gentrified, just not in the same way as happened in hackney which has changed very substantially, land values increased beyond even the london average over the last 15 yrs

if someone were looking for possible new dalstons then it probably wouldn't be the place 95% of people will associate with a soldier being murdered in the street by lunatics, and vigilantes gathered outside edl pubs in response

quite, although let's see

currently in The Gay Hussar. Hungary knows what's up

& Soho was gentrified a while back iirc

Someone needs to write the history of the regeneration of the Soho restaurant scene in the 1980s before it's completely forgotten, with key players in the scene in the scene such as Sue Miles having passed away.

on a tangential but related note, this is priceless and must be watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGpHpwD4_yA

Thanks for posting that - what a blast: the Colony Room, Molly Parkin, Ida etc... . I started university in '84 in London, and had discovered Soho from around '82 onwards or so. I remember the last days of the Marquee In Wardour Street, and things that are completely lost to google apparently such as the workers cooperative peep show (a big deal in the media at the time).

its wonderful, isn't it?

anyone been to smoking goat on denmark st? it's a little pricey but v good, basically a thai pitt cue.

Yes, and I agree. The sticky pork thing and the fried chicken were better than anything I've had at Pitt Cue (not that there's anything wrong with Pitt Cue as far as I'm concerned). I was also pleased with Janetira on Brewer Street in a similar vein; Thai which isn't the same as all the other thai restaurants in the UK, but Janetira is more cafe-restauranty, Smoking Goat more bar-trendygastropubby I guess.

the thai place in climpsons arch is really good - maybe better than smoking goat, a bit less hipstery. i actually like the smoking goat premises though, it works well as a place to have a beer in, you're not just dying to get out of there, which unfortunately is the case in many soho restaurants.

i must try janetira.

on a separate issue, i'm yet again at that time of year where i try to plan birthday drinks somewhere that also does food, dither a bit, and then end up going to the anchor and hope. though i am considering camberwell arms for a tiny deviation from this, or maybe smokehouse. not sure smokehouse doubles as a pub in the same way as the latter two though - v hard to combine informality with space and good food.

For some years now, J has kept a record of every time we eat out, and in the year-ish it's been open the Camberwell Arms has been by far our most visited place - this is a mixture of convenient location and us loving the place. I hesitate to say it, but for us it's an example of the no-bookings working well; we know that we'll get a seat unless we show up at 2 on a Sunday afternoon (and maybe 7.30 on a Friday night) so we're more inclined to drop in.

Score one to the Valentina in Mortlake being a high-quality, reasonably-priced Italian joint with very fresh ingredients and a broad range of choices

xpost yeah i loved it the one or two times i've been in, and the food was an interesting twist on gt queen st and the anchor. the actual gastropub as originally done is an all too rare thing.

just ate in the most fucking terrifying restaurant I may ever visit

more later

milquetoast

and rightly so

we went to pachamama, the new peruvian bar & restaurant just up from bond street station. we went there because my girlfriend went on a little walking tour after work and chanced upon it & its alluring if pretentious menu. have a go, y'know

we have to descend a strangely narrow wood-panelled staircase before it's even clear if we can eat. a suspiciously Karloffian maitre d' gives us the go-ahead, but we only have an hour and ten minutes and are positioned by the till. the hub, where all the servers come to roost.

right, so -

the place is heaving with exec class and their retinue - all business jackets and designer jeans, including the staff. feels like we don't have the mark, and that the servers know. nothing really seems too weird until our server, a ridiculously intense lady of uncertain but possibly japanese ethnic origin, drops by with a great grin and proceeds to animatedly plough through the menu choices. upon learning that my girlfriend is vegetarian, she recommends about 5 fish dishes, before giving me the heads-up about the foie gras, admitting with almost a chuckle what a great carnivore she is. more big flashy grins. something's not right.

she goes. about a minute later i start saying to my girlfriend 'well if that isn't the most terrifying server i've ev…' and she's BACK, with some tapwater, like at that exact instant. i'm freaked. give it about two more minutes, then start talking about her again - and she's THERE to pick up our orders. and right then, a man appears BENEATH her, saying 'if i may interupt' or something, to thrust - THRUST - our cocktails before us with something approaching contempt. then as quickly as they came, they go, together.

thirty seconds later she resurfaces, noticing that we have swapped cocktails (to taste, obviously) - she swoops upon my girlfriend and offers to exchange her cocktail (whose stick is crowned by a dried apple slice ornamented with a miniature meringue) for another one - 'I was watching, and I saw your face, and maybe you don't like it'. we assure her that the cocktails are great. off she goes again. but for how long?

we begin to notice the symmetrical mountain pattern on the menu, the masonic letter A, the loud dance music, the cavorting clientele, the glowing dark ambience, the chicken wire right by my seat behind which lurk bottles of wine, an orange bulb and a dilapidated map of south america...we begin to wonder if we're getting out of here alive, or at least if we haven't just entered the occultish lair of london's elite. later i am given to marvel at the sheer weight of 'creepy fuckers with money' in this particular zone of the world, but we thought this was an innocent peruvian restaurant, not a cash-voodoo spirit dive.

anyway, the drinks are extraordinary and the food is even better. small servings, exquisite flavours, aubergines that taste far too rich and creamy - souls have been sold for this, possibly our own. it's among the best meals we've had in a while. but that serving lady keeps coming back with her haughty contempt, her abruptness, her embodiment of the rapacious executive meat-shredding death-drive. it's almost too much.

the best (worst) (funniest) moment occurs when we turn down dessert. she thrusts a menu towards us, we say 'no, we're full' and she whisks it away with astonishing speed, turning on her heel just like that. but THEN, a MAN immediately comes and SLAMS DOWN a menu ON OUR TABLE, saying in a fairly uncompromising tone 'perhaps you want dessert'. It's a TEST. we say 'no' and he goes and we decide that maybe this is the worst place in the world

twenty minutes pass, and all our attempts to get the bill are ignored

finally I secure the lady, saying that I wish to 'pay and leave', which again provokes her amusement - a single, murderous 'ha'. she gets us the bill (again, plonked down on our table in passing and without so much as a look). when we get around to paying she tries to humanise herself by talking about the quality of food the serving staff receive, but it is too late. there is one final test - at least, my girlfriend theorises it might be so - she undercharges me £10 on the PDQ machine, and I correct her. we first speculate that this means we passed the test, but then it occurs to us that perhaps the reverse is true. we do not have the mark. we get up. we put on our coats. we flee. we take a few photos. we nearly get run down by a taxi just outside.

later we discover that giles coren had called it "the bizarre experience of eating London's best food in what may well be its worst restaurant" in the following paywalled review, which we agreed was a moment of clarity for the old fucker

Table booked.

sounds like hell xpost

was in mission in bethnal green last night, it's excellent.

i actually like the smoking goat premises though, it works well as a place to have a beer in, you're not just dying to get out of there

We went on Wednesday and tbh I was pretty much dying to get out of there from the word go. The room itself would have been nicely convivial with maybe two-thirds as many people in it but it was just way too cramped, waiters bumping into people all the time etc. The food was really very good but v expensive for what it was, although I kept wishing I was eating it in a more spacious environment like the Smokehouse.

Overattentive waiting staff who then promptly vanish and/or studiously avoid your eye at the exact point at which you are trying to GIVE THEM MONEY is a particular bugbear of mine though.

Mine too - especially in busy places where people are waiting to be seated.

Ate at Elliot's Cafe by Borough Market last night, which was as good as ever.

We are in Nandos now, recovering

i'd say 90 per cent of restaurants fail to bring the bill on time and ignore you once you've been served. people who've been served are least likely to complain i guess so that's where all the slack goes.

it's rare for this not to be the case.

i can imagine that about smoking goat if it was full, i was sat at the bar which i enjoyed, it felt like being in a pub.

the mains are a fiver too expensive.

I really want to go to the Peruvian place.

Not a restaurant, but if you find yourself in the vicinity of Peckham library on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday, there's a really nice bloke serving up very tasty Filipino burritos and I heartily recommend his wares.

What makes a burrito Filipino, Madchen?