london restaurants

i've heard good things about http://www.naughtypiglets.co.uk/

not gone yet though - last time i was in brixton i was tremendously excited bc i finally got to eat at fish, wings & tings, and the cod fritters were as incredible as i'd been told

Salon in the market may be ok, the one time I went I thought it was good but not as good as some of the ecstatic reviews.

Nanban (Masterchef dude Tim Anderson's slightly experimental Japanese place) is really very good and could likely get expense account worthy if you get busy with some of the small plates and the sake menu.

Not sure either of these is the kind of luxe you might be looking for on the corporate card. Have also heard good things about Naughty Piglets but not been, fwiw.

Had a quick dinner at Barshu tonight - really good of course, so ~~tingly~~ too. Need to go back with a bunch of people so I can try lots of different dishes.

naughty piglets was p good when i went - good seasonal menu tho I'm struggling to recall what i had exactly.

vico was an excellent recommendation, suzy. good atmosphere and excellent food and unusually generous service - "thought you might like some bread with your pickled anchovies" etc. gelupo bar tucked in st the entrance.

Santo Remedio at Old Street straight up just made me realise what the fuss about Mexican food is. Puts everything else I've had in London to shame

that's just opened, right?

had a good meal in bone daddies shackfuyu on old compton st tonight. quite different and interesting - would be great for a large group, i just nipped in solo before a class.

went to smokehouse in islington saturday - it was kinda poor, which is a surprise as i thought it was excellent the first two times i went, prob once last year and once the year before. i wouldn't go back i don't think, i suspect a different chef or something.

yeah it opened in december. has three reviews on tripadvisor, all 5 stars. was empty when we showed up and stayed so. it's really out of the way - we only discovered it because we were taking a shortcut to a different restaurant - and it needs a boost, so everyone please go there at once, it is legit amazing. also they're apparently opening a proper mezcal bar upstairs in a week or so. might be a decent FAP location

This is excellent information since I work at Old Street.

If they've fucked up the Smokehouse then this is a straight-up disaster for London. I ate there in November and it was great then.

Also according to Tripadvisor some random trattoria in Sydenham is the sixth best restaurant in the whole of London, which is pretty exciting since I can walk there. I guess these kinds of things happen a lot but the last time I noticed it was with Meze Mangal in New Cross and that is excellent so hey.

Went to Otto's in Gray's Inn Road last weekend, which I guess is how posh French restaurants in London used to be. The people next to us had the canard a la presse which is an extraordinary piece of culinary theatre but fuck paying £140 for the pleasure.

i found trip advisor pretty useful when travelling in small cities or towns in europe - like when the reviews are sparse the town almost filters the morons away, so you get like two or three good reviews which appear to have been written by someone of average intelligence. that's often enough to point you towards a great place. it's also good for entertainment value - so many spanish towns and people are like "worst burger i ever had" reviewing the kind of 1 euro seaside tapas place that i would personally be happy to to die in.

never used it in london though. i always feel like someone needs to set up a version of it that isn't full of morons, like surely there's a way for design and promotion to somehow exclude the trip advisor people, but nobody has ever done this.

i heard about that duck presse at otto's - sounds hilarious. on smokehouse, maybe it was just a bad night - it was perfectly fine but i had been very impressed previously so it was an anti-climax. one or two of the dishes that i'd seen before had changed radically.

I think it's genuinely useful for filtering out can't-be-arsed tourist traps in large unfamiliar cities but I'd never rely on it as a sole recommendation engine, especially in London. In general it tends to balance out reasonably well if there's a critical mass of normal people amid the obvious street teamers/random dicks. When an unheralded place suddenly starts throwing up load of rapturous reviews it's worth paying attention to though. London restaurants, especially new openings, are so heavily PRed nowadays and food blogs etc don't tend to cover really good neighbourhood restaurants that could otherwise fly under the radar a bit.

Seems to me that most of the places high on the London tripadvisor list are fairly random (even ones I've heard of and love, like Zeret Kitchen in Camberwell).

tripadvisor can be useful in london when you want to eat in a specific area that doesn't have buzzed-about restaurants, though it wouldn't be my first research port of call

went to mamuska on elephant & castle roundabout the other day; hits the sweet spot between "cheap n cheerful pre-gig casual diner-style restaurant" and "actually very good, very hearty polish food to stave off these godforsaken temperatures that are still with us"

I loved Mamuska the couple of times I've been (when it was still inside the pink shopping centre). All the lovely carbohydrate!

Medium-range Brit/Euro cuisine in the city centre/Holborn/Farringdon for a birthday dinner, with good vegetarian options, anyone? Cheers in advance!

this was probably a far too generic request right? I booked a table at Salt Yard on Goodge St, anyone been there?

I have. I liked it; not as much as I expected to like it after reading ecstatic reviews on blogs but there was absolutely nothing wrong with the place. Perfectly sound choice.

nice one, thanks!

yeah it's nice for sure.

yeah it's good

thanks guys, looking forward to it now. Any recommendations?

It's a while ago but ISTR enjoying the octopus.

I am breaking a personal rule and going to the Bush Hall in Shepherds Bush on Friday night - any strong recommendations for local places to go before the show?

why is that a personal rule? it's one of the few gig venus in ldn i actively enjoy. i always go to abu zaad beforehand, sooooo delicious and so cheap

It's the getting home after that kills me! Agree it's a good venue but (as you know) I live in the SE and there's no good way to get back.

Abu Zaad, check, thanks!

You need a moped, Tim.

Shepherd's Bush always feels a lot more further out location-wise than it is. Just across the round about is Holland Park, and you're then only a short bus ride from Notting Hill/Bayswater/Marble Arch, whcih I regard as pretty central.

My issue is not how far out it feels (and I agree that it's not that far out, about on a par with Peckham I suppose), it's how long it takes me to get back home after a show. I am old, after all.

Madchen, the good people of London most certainly do not need to see me on a moped. Also: booze.

Uber?

Nah, I'll just get public transport and moan about it :)

Will it be too late to get Overground in/out of Clapham Jcn?

Could do it if we leave sharpish; we'll see.

it's on the central line though, right? prob about what, 20 mins from oxford circus, i'd say even less. i used to work in white city and commute from bethnal green and i reckon it took about 35 mins.

sorry - i'm talking about distance in general rather than specifically from your home, tim.

SE London -> West London or back is probably the most irritating public transport journey in London though, the Overground has made it a bit better but anything involving a change at either Clapham Junction or Victoria can be soul-crushing.

hi from someone who used to have to do hammersmith to homerton post-gig often having to write a review when i got back

the overground would be so amazing were it not for my knack of just missing the train 100% of the time and having to wait 10 or more minutes for the next one

Pretty sure they schedule it like that on purpose. Also, they (we?) don't call it the slowverground for nothing - compare journey times with actual rail where they cover the same stretches.

It's about 75 minutes from our Denmark Hill/Peckham Rye flat to SheBu by public transport, which is why there's a moped parked outside.

like how 'SE London' is being thrown around in this cavalier manner

like, if you're talking about that little patch from Brockley to Camberwell inclusive, be more specific. SE London public transport isn't as bad as you're all saying but then I am 15m bus + 5m walk from North Greenwich

Isn't Denmark Hill within 10 minutes by train from Victoria. Shepherds Bush to Victoria shouldn't take more than around 30 minutes?

Victoria trains are every 30 minutes though, so it's bloody easy to miss them, especially with the Central-Victoria hell-change at Oxford Circ.

Anyway, to answer the Q If you want to visit 1970s Poland, go eat at Patio. Abu Zaad also a v. good shout

And it's 75 mins to White City, would be a bit better to SheBu, though the Overground is infuriatingly slow and slack-scheduled, so you end up more frustrated going that way

SE London public transport is fine. Getting to West London from there is a nightmare. Mercifully I never really need to do it.

it's not a nightmare if you're near the jubilee line :P

"15min bus plus 5min walk from North Greenwich" doesn't sound especially convenient for anything frankly.

the now now now generation

should be sitting back and enjoying the delights of travelling in london

feels frivolous as fuck to be posting itt but this dim sum place in lower clapton is really nice.

http://www.myneighbourstheDUMPLINGS!.com/

anyone been anywhere good lately? was going to go to 40 maltby street with my cousin on friday but turns out it's closed for a summer break. kinda looking at holborn or kings cross but don't really mind travelling - i'm drawing a bit of a blank, was thinking about a wong in pimlico but it's a bit dead around there to have a drink after.