london restaurants

Has anyone been so Sesame on Garrick Street yet? It's a fast food place from Noam Bar / Yottam Ottolenghi.

The sabich is ok, though expensive at £6 for a glorified egg sandwich, but there's 50% off this week with Time Out:

http://now-here-this.timeout.com/2015/05/14/get-half-price-middle-eastern-street-food-at-new-covent-garden-restaurant-sesame/

yum yum Maoist propaganda.

I went to Salt Yard last weekend and thought the food was high quality, but overall probably didn't justify the price.

While I'm here I note that Koya, which is by some distance my favourite noodle place in London, is due to close because the main chef's leaving. Whether this means the same team will do something else I don't know, but I'd guess so because the similarly excellent Koya Bar (next door) apparently stays.

when i was at salt yard my friend had 50 per cent industry discount. it was still pricey in the end.

the room is a bit of shabby too, for an expensive place. some great dishes tho for sure.

Thanks to Tim and others for the Ragam recommendation, which totally did the trick. The food was spot on and they were happy to let us carry on drinking for a couple of hours after we'd finished eating, so could have a merry time catching up without having to negotiate rammed central London pubs on a warm bank holiday Friday evening.

Has anyone been to Lima yet? We are going on Friday and from the photos alone the food looks incredible.

have a couple of hours to kill near leicester square tonight (going to see john goodman in american buffalo at wyndhams) - i was going to go into greenman and french horn but it seems it's no more. i know some places in soho but thought i'd pick the brains of this thread anyway. anywhere good for a drink or something light to eat? i'll probably read until my friend arrives for the show so a pub or bar could be a separate option to eating.

i prob could have just asked this on the pub thread but i'm kind of asking for both

I was gutted to see that Green Man and French Horn has become a The Real Greek. Bah. Guess Terroirs should be a decent substitute and that's just around the corner. Smoking Goat in the other direction?

Ah is there a Terroirs there? I didn't know that.

Smoking Goat probably would be tolerable enough for a pint if I'm there about 5.30ish, as I plan to be.

I really loved Green Man - it was the best place to go after being at a show, they were really friendly and the room was great.

Me too.

Yeah Terroir is just around the corner from the Harp, on William IV St.

Smoking goat pretty insane place to try to read a book though, even at half 5. If I'm killing time round that part of town I go to Antidote because the wine is fantastic and it's pretty chill. Also the bar snacks are good (the restaurant upstairs is overseen by the Hedone guy and is really very good, but not exactly cheap). Just round the corner from Pitt Cure too if you fancy a tiny bit of tasty pork for like £17

'Cue' obvs

Oh man I have been wanting to go to Antidote for some but completely forgot its name and in my head it was on Kingly Street so my searches were turning up nothing. Thanks!

Smoking goat pretty insane place to try to read a book though, even at half 5. If I'm killing time round that part of town I go to Antidote because the wine is fantastic and it's pretty chill. Also the bar snacks are good (the restaurant upstairs is overseen by the Hedone guy and is really very good, but not exactly cheap). Just round the corner from Pitt Cure too if you fancy a tiny bit of tasty pork for like £17

haha - if you avoid the specials in pitt cue it's significantly cheaper than that. i have been stung like that before though.

i was in smoking goat on a sunday afternoon before and it was very tranquil, but that's probably not the case generally. curious about this antidote place.

Yeh I'm pro Pitt Cue but they really fucked me with my smoked pork jowl the other week.

Will try smoking goat at lunch sometime, only ever been early evening and it's always been fairly raucous. Love it though.

Antidote is a good wine bar and a great restaurant - they get their bread from Hedone and it's the best I've ever had, and they get a lot of their produce from Hedones suppliers - it's pretty serious stuff but has like no hype at all for some reason.

Haha that smoked jowl is exactly the dish I had the same issue with, I think.

I think a winebar would be good for tonight, I may well try Antidote.

Just seconding leong's Legend as a really great place, but bring cash! Insane surcharge on the card.

dunno how many of you are living east these days but there's a v good chinese place opposite stepney green station called tian tian. similar to gourmet san (which is now really poor imo) or top taste (still really good). it has some singaporean dishes too. v big portions as you'd expect. also a bit cleaner than the usual place like this, albeit the decor isn't particularly nice.

speaking of chinese places, has anyone tried Xi’an Impression in Holloway?

http://www.fuchsiadunlop.com/a-taste-of-xian-in-north-london/

been meaning to go ever since I read this review. might see if i can get there this weekend in fact.

I haven't but I too have been reading stellar reviews.

We decided to celebrate a special occasion by going to Shiori in Bayswater, which was in no sense cheap but was completely brilliant, in a quiet, delicate Japanese way.

I'm organising a dinner in Clerkenwell for about 20 people from differnet countries.

From the list of suggested restaurants below, what would you recommend? Is there a better suggestion.

It's a business type networking dinenr, but with no formal agenda or presentations.

Granger and Co

Modern Pantry

The Artisan

The Peasant

St John

Thanks.

not been to any of the others but st john is so terrific

has anyone ever been to hunan or a.wong? and which did you prefer?

There's someone pushing strongly for St John, but I'm not sure offal appeals to everyone.

A Wong and Hunan both terrific, the dim sum at A Wong is incredible, I'd go there for lunch or a more relaxed dinner and Hunan for more of a blowout.

Xp only been to St John and Modern Pantry of those, was slightly underwhelmed by MP but it's a lovely space and would be good for a big group with more diverse tastes

i really want to go to both hunan and a wong - been working in westminster for 15 months but i finish there soon, not that i guess that has to stop me. i have the hunan book and it's p good though not a daily use thing.

st john need not involve offal i'd say...

fish, game, offal, non-offal, and vegetarian all represented in st john's current dinner menu. it's really not that radical a place.

yeah last time i was there (in spitalfields) it felt almost traditional.

Thanks - that's really useful to know.

The other thing about St John is that they'll let you use the private room up front for the dinner, and they will let you organise a 'feast' menu everyone likes. I went to an amazing publishing lunch there with a mountain of langoustines and a whole turbot, and it was absolutely astonishing.

if you order the sweetbreads, st john may well convert even the most anti-offal (non-veg obv) diner to offal

Belatedly, thanks all for your advice. I am indeed going for St Johns and the private room "feast" option.

I'm looking forward to trying it (even if I will have to make polite conversation about innovative finance models, from a very low understanding, all evening-long).

after working in shepherd's bush, tunbridge wells, hammersmith and westminster, I started a job in holborn this week. lunch options overwhelming - any tips? i know the restaurants but not so much day to day places

I've worked in Holborn for years and the sandwichy options are all much of a muchness really, but Red Lion Street is your friend here, the Caradell Deli is good. The aptly named Bountiful Cow just tucked away behind the Crossrail site is good for a Friday lunch blowout.

There used to be an incredible Malaysian cafe on High Holborn but is sadly gone. Depending what end of Holborn you're at, Leather Lane has all the street food you could possibly want and loads of it is excellent, really good old-school Lebanese and Indian cafes there as well.

Sure I posted about a couple of the stalls in Leather Lane upthread. Really the best, not sure why anyone would settle for Pret.

At the end of Leather Lane there is a good Korean place too.

Asadal, the Korean place under Holborn tube, really is excellent as well.

The private dining room at St John worked out really well by the way.

Particular highlights were the simply enormous baked fish (which I didn't manage to identify - turbot?), the pulled pork and rabbit, and the incredibly rich dessert (chocolate mousse and black berries).

It came to around £650 for 10 people.

>I started a job in holborn

btw you clearly didn't receive the induction pack - it's branded 'Midtown' now.

i went to this incredible place the other week

http://www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/mes-amis

and it might be one of my favourite restaurants in london...the kitchen space is right in the dining space, every square inch of the walls is covered with decorations, the food is completely perfect

There is an extraordinary Malaysian in the little cut between Red Lion Street and Red Lion Square next to an also-good Argentine steak sandwich place. Also try the Polish bar/restaurant and the Thai take-away place in Little Turnstile, or decent coffee at Fleet River Bakery.

I worked on HH until June. My favourite places - the aforementioned Malaysian cafe and an old-skool jacket potatoes/soup/chilli/pasta place - are gone. I often ended up at the salad bar in Sainsbury's which is very good value and the queue moves faster than you'd think, but I'm guessing that's not the kind of suggestion you're after! Fleet River Bakery on Lincoln's Inn Fields has a long and slow-moving queue but their product is pretty good. There's a Kimchee (everything half price in January) and lots of independent Koreans towards Clerkenwell Road. Lamb's Conduit Street is also handy.

must try some of these - i'm very close to the station, aviation house.

the queues are pretty crazy - lol at me suburb man in the big city but my utopian ideal of working centrally and a 15-minute tube from my flat is tempered mildly by the huge volumes of people, i was only used to that in the mornings before this.

was at the richmond on queensbridge road friday night - really impressed by it.

Similarly, was in Naughty Piglets on Water Lane, Brixton, the other day, and it was excellent, twee name aside.

anyone been to oldroyd? Thinking of going in a couple of weeks..

I went to Berber & Q, just behind Haggerston station, last night and it was fantastic. Usual tossy East London no-bookings policy but they have at least made an effort to make the place a pleasant environment to wait in, we sat at the cocktail bar and the drinks were excellent.

Food was really top quality, one of those places where you get a huge pile of grilled meat on a tray and share it out amongst yourselves, but the range and subtlety of the flavours set it above most of these places. Like, everything was delicious, especially the clove smoked pulled lamb.

it's not a restuarant, but the groundnut chicken stew at spinach and agushi in exmouth market i had for lunch today was exceptional.

i was at smoking goat on thurs -been there before, maybe it's gone up too, but i consider it really expensive unless you maybe have four people to share the unlimited rice/salad - but the food there is excellent, and besides somsaa, hard to match.