london restaurants

Me too - they made us the most amazing Thanksgiving dinner last year and I was looking forward to making that a tradition. Hope and Anchor might be a possibility in future, maybe?

Right, Hope and Anchor and the Camberwell Arms continue to be excellent (the latter not part of the same company any more but the family resemblance remains), and I imagine the Canton Arms in Stockwell is good though I've never eaten there.

*Anchor and Hope, we both meant.

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Bibendum was hideous and don’t clean or shuck their oysters properly.

Not sure who owns it now but places that were once part of the Conran Empire have not fared well. I had the misfortune to eat in quaglinos last year and, whilst it was never that good this was weatherspoons level boil in the bag muck. (I did not choose it)

"you should have have gone to mabel's"
— bryan ferry

Had a very good, albeit somewhat drunken, meal at Maremma on Water Lane in Brixton (two doors down from Naughty Piglets). It's the second v good Italian restaurant to open in the area after the cheaper and v homely Franzina Trattoria on Coldharbour Lane.

the “albeit” there is basically a way of saying my quality vectors may have been a little wired.

not a suggestion that drunken dinners in italian restaurants are a bad thing or reduced experience.

This is good news.

Have you been to Naughty Piglets also? If so is it good?

i have. it is. small plates. natural wine list. both of those can be mixed blessings imo. i have had v good wines there, especially when i’ve asked for recommendations, and good food, v good food on occasion, tho for some reason it’s never been a place that i’ve properly warmed to. maybe the plates are a bit *too* small or it’s not quite a place you can relax into.

I went to Barra Barra in Elephant and Castle to eat their reputedly amazing Dominican Fried Chicken and it was gigantic and crispy and delicious buy I feel like I've shaved about three years off my life in the process.

also, across london where i work, reineta in ealing is a more a cafe than a restaurant exactly, but the guy running it really cares about what he’s doing. gazpacho is garlicky and amazing, they do great, proper spanish style tostada, and the various tapas look awesome - i had cod and potato brandade with walnuts and boiled egg.

pastries from the hendone bakery in chiswick are the best i’ve had outside france - pain au chocolat with proper hard, dark chocolate in.

it’s in a completely soulless strip of new development as well. feel the need to promote it because there isn’t really a lot of footfall there at the moment. as i say, talking to him, he really cares about both his cooking and his ingredients and it shows.

really great for lunch, and only a couple of quid more expensive than a pret or similar.

in the same strip us Riding Wine Bar which is supposed to be excellent as well.

https://london.eater.com/platform/amp/maps/best-value-restaurants-central-london-cheap-eats-not-cheap?__twitter_impression=true

I went to Barra Barra in Elephant and Castle to eat their reputedly amazing Dominican Fried Chicken and it was gigantic and crispy and delicious buy I feel like I've shaved about three years off my life in the process.

― Matt DC, Saturday, 17 August 2019 bookmarkflaglink

Same but I had no breakfast so somehow managed it. I also went to Sabor Peruano which was superb. Working through the Elephant list..

Gunpowder by Tower Bridge and The Shed near Notting Hill Gate both excellent.

I hadn't realised that the deep fried vaguely beefy stuff I left on the side of my plate at La Barra was actually lung jerky. No regrets.

Lol I forgot I left that out too, too much fat on that iirc

Any good London based youtube food channels?

Inspired by a Fizzles tweet about the fellow who does the “best cheap restaurants” thing on London Eater, we went on a bus odyssey to Woolwich to eat at the Blue Nile, am Eritrean place that was really excellent. Nice people, great food you could eat really well there very cheaply if you spend less on booze than we did.

The Blue Nile is tremendous, they've been smart with the decor as well, not changing too much of that old butcher's shop look really adds something.

It was #1 on TripAdvisor for a while and got the kind of press treatment these places usually do when that happens.

Was thinking of going to Lina Stores next week, and decided to see if there were any reviews. It's a shame that I did because I read this paragraph from the Evening Standard and now I can't go any more

There was a carnivalesque atmosphere in Soho when we went, on the summery Friday night that kickstarted the bank holiday. My boyfriend, Laurie, says he always thinks of Oasis’s (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? album cover when he walks through the area, and the proud swagger that comes with being in a part of London with a pulse.

Any alternative suggestions very welcome. Going to Wun's Tearoom for cocktails after dinner so walking distance to there. Anyone been to Sola?

TBF the cover shot was taken in Berwick Street...

TBF I’m less concerned by Laurie’s accurate identification of album cover locations and more worried that he might proudly swagger past a particularly pulsating Franco Manca and into the same room as me while I’m trying to eat my tagliolini.

Lina Stores is v good. the decor feels slightly like you're eating in a movie set, but it's not a bad movie.

lina stores looks really dolled up and fake idk if it seemed like an actual place at some point before london turned into a giant pret

lina food stores itself - as in the deli - is great, and i prefer it to camisa’s in the main these days for their homemade pasta.

haven’t been to the restaurant.

Still really miss the Italian deli on Farringdon Road next to the Eagle :-(((

Gazzano’s? Is Terroni’s in Clerkenwell any good?

Yes, Gazzano’s. The family owned the building but developed the upstairs into flats and sold up the business a few years ago to people who kept the name etc, but it shut and is now a Greek deli. Terroni’s is OK, but I miss the Gazzano family.

A few recent places I enjoyed:

Been to La Chingada in Surrey Quays 5 or 6 times in the last month - the only good tacos I’ve had in London, the guys who run the place are really nice too. Jonathan Nunn tweeted about them the other week and they got a mention on Eater so I’d avoid on Saturday nights for the time being.

Kudu in Peckham keeps getting better which is handy as it’s just over the road from me. They’re opening a cocktail bar at Queens Rd station this week.

Chinese Laundry in Brockley - so so good and only there for a few more weeks. £40 for basically the whole menu, no choice so don’t go with anyone who is too fussy or is allergic to anything.

Mei Mei at Borough Market - very delicious, get the chicken rice.

Trivet near London Bridge - great food (especially the sweetbreads and the chicken) and a really interesting wine list, but felt a bit stiff/formal. The potato dessert that was all over instagram was underwhelming.

Lorne near Victoria - had a fantastic lunch here just before Christmas, love this place, their fish cookery in particular is fantastic. Great wines by the glass.

Anyone been to Allegra?

It’s a 10 minute walk from my house. It’s very good food but very expensive and chi-chi to the max. I went there for an anniversary.

There's a nice little Italian deli on cross street in angel but probably not nice enough to be worth the schlep from Bloomsbury

I miss the three out of four delis that used to be in Clerkenwell (plus the Cally Road one and the one in Chapel Market) so badly, but I think the sausages that Gazzano’s sold are still available at McKanna’s on Theobald’s Road - the king of butchers.

Hey twitter! Not one to do this, but my dad owns the oldest Indian restaurant in East London and has been struggling with customers so please show some love! If you're in Aldgate come have a curry, I'm biased but it's the best! Below is my grandad in the 70s vs my dad now❤️ pic.twitter.com/DHFFFMiDBf

— Mehnaz 🙄 (@mehnazmeh) August 5, 2020

I love the top photo

Should have kept that decor!

This may or may not belong here? I found myself subscribing to Vittles, even though my palate is not very adventurous, because I really like the way Jonathan Nunn thinks and writes about food, and his recommendations are usually sound. On a more relevant note, this is about food, labour, culture and the intersection of all these and it’s so good. You want to read about Jewish Londoners’ thoughts on food, culture and family? It’s here. You want to read a brisk analysis of why restaurant critics are bloated and lazy (oh yah)? Here. You want to read about McDonalds where the article title is an obscure left Twitter Wes Streeting reference? It contains multitudes, friends.

But yeah, subscribe to Vittles. It’s good! (Really I should have subscribed after the rice cooker piece, but I always take a while to get around to things).

Seconded. Vittles is for real one of the few things that still make me excited to live in London. The beginner's guides to different ethnic supermarkets were great too.

I've held off because, as good a writer as he can be, his Twitter presence has become unbelievably annoying, also the idea of thinking about restaurants is torture right now. Maybe I'll give it a go.

Partially agree, but only because it’s significantly offset by both the sneering contempt and (in some cases) not so veiled racism directed at him by a lot of people in the industry!

Yeah Vittles is really good, though it gives me the problem I have with LRB, which is that I want to read it all and then never get round to doing so.

No that's true, I've just mentally filed him away with people like, say, Tom Whyman, where they're usually worth reading but you hate yourself for agreeing with them because of how pleased with themselves they are. (Also in JN's case it's just exhausting watching people constantly drag out arguments with people you don't know on Twitter). If there's none of that I'm probably in. (xpost)

Is Mr Nunn the unsigned voice of Vittles, then?

Never got anything out of reading Whyman (don't follow either of them on twitter). The piece he did on dril is one of those things that are better joked about than actually written up whereas Nunn I do like but then again I've never read much writing on food, and I like how it's a gateway to all sorts of life and matter.

Had dinner in a Shoreditch restaurant on Saturday. Quiet when we went in so felt fine, started filling up when we left. Shoreditch itself was pretty busy as you'd expect Saturday evening by now but there are so many places to eat it felt low enough risk.

Nunn is just such a good meeting of writer and subject (I've only read the odd bit from Vittles, assume he is the main contributor but also editor of other pieces). Seeing Whyman try and do culture industry takes is just really not needed and it's just painful in the end. Then again I don't have any patience for post Mark Fisher type writing.

Vittles really has been a consistently fascinating read. JN is seemingly slimming down his intro sections in favour of writing a weekly article of his own only available to people who are paying. He may well be planning to use that to carry on some of his personal beefs if the evening standard debacle of the last couple of days is anything to go by - long may he continue imo