london restaurants

lot of places shutting for christmas right now. was hoping to get to 40 Maltby Street next week but it’s only doing home orders. Local Lewellyn’s closed likewise Quality Chop House. Really feel for them - dedicated staff who’ve worked incredibly hard throughout the uncertainty and financial strains of the pandemic.

Indeed. Although if 40 Maltby St manages to stay open for takeaway I can say that both of the sandwiches, the mince pies, and the cep/celariac gratin are all superb, though.

great. great. i will be getting those things.

yes, the veg sandwich was the best "christmas" sandwich I've had, despite not sounding appealing when just reading the ingredients. that's pretty consistent with them, I've learned to just give it a go and it's usually excellent.

gratin was surprisingly filling and delicious, enough for a meal for two with a salad, which made it good value.

Currently in Mes Amis, a Lebanese restaurant in Fulham. It has the greatest interior of any restaurant in the world, I think

Yeah this is the best restaurant in London I think

Opposite the River Cafe if I recall. Any thoughts on the food and service?

Very close to it, yes. The food was extremely good and the service was both pleasant* and attentive. Some would have found the constant tea refilling a bit much maybe? I was a big fan

*at one point the elderly proprietor told me I was eating the mezze too fast, and that 'mezze' is Arabic for 'slow', but I accepted it as entirely fair criticism

They did a tabbouleh but with beans instead of tomatoes. It was insanely great

'mezze' is Arabic for 'slow'

lol no it isn't

I have a cousin in london who, when asked by American tourists what the English call umbrellas, deadpanned "clooglehoppers".

I think elderly proprietor (who sounds rad btw) was similarly yanking your chain. afaik 'mezze' means the same thing to him that it means to you.

'slowly' in Arabic is 'ye'wash'.

You were right by here Louis!

xp
Reminiscent of yavaş in Turkish, and seems to be the same in Persian as well. What I see when I try to go to Arabic itself though, is, ببطء, which is completely different.

Lots of different varieties of Arabic of course.

I grew up in a Persian and Arabic-speaking household. So it's possible I'm getting the two mixed up, but I doubt it. Different dialect is much more likely.

Alas, I can't read the script. Mived here when i was like 5.

Anyway I do think the proprietor was kidding around :)

More good sandwiches from 40 Maltby St today, I don't love eggs but the fritatta sandwich was still pretty good. squash salad was excellent. Toby rated the fish finger salad.

Other places we've been that were really good recently were Tofu Vegan on Upper St (this place is so exciting to me and I want to try everything on the menu eventually), and also finally made it to Master Wei in Bloomsbury, which was also great (and we both noted that one bowl of noodles would have been plenty of food for a lunch, so potentially a nice weekend combo with the British Museum)

Interested to learn as I need a replacement noodle place in Bloomsbury. I made a nostalgic visit to the Hare and Tortoise at Brunswick Square- a staple of the early 2000s for me - and wasn't too impressed.

The laksa at H&T is still better than it has any right to be.

Try Chang’s Noodle on New Oxford Street too.

Anyone been to any of the Ottolenghi restaurants (or deli)?

We went to the one in Spitalfields a few years ago for lunch, it was good but expensive, kind of what I would have expected? I think we've also done takeaway from one of the delis and again, it's all very tasty but is more per person that I'd tend to expect for salad-y stuff. I seem to remember both were a kind of "pick three of our salad/dish of the day" plates.

I wish I liked bitty salads but I don’t; in other news, the space that was Cigala is about to open as another Honey & Co - also along Israeli/Levantine/Palestinian lines.

Ottolenghis are fine, but go to Honey & Co instead imo

went to chisuru in brixton last week and it was *v good*. best was probably Ebiripo (Celeriac, Mushroom Shitto, Bitter Leaves & Pickled Oyster Mushroom).

but the pickled carrots, fermented rice and tangerine sauce was a+ and Ekuru (Wild Watermelon Seeds, Black Eyed Beans, Pumpkin Pesto & Scotch Bonnet Sauce) also v good.

my date juice negroni also spectacularly good.

https://i.imgur.com/GtfiKDN.jpghttps://i.imgur.com/GtfiKDN.jpg

will that work i do not know

yes! handy.

that looks fantastic

ooh, that looks very good, thanks for sharing and reporting back

just been out walking over the walthamstow flats and we ate here under a pub umbrella on a rickety plastic table and stools. it was really good. i had sea bass which had been grilled with paprika and my friend had some of the best calamari she can remember having.

it does six week stints at tottenham hale, islington and hackney. today was its last day in walthamstow.

https://i.imgur.com/8IjeVzr.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/TOAbv9j.jpg

nice!!

I know, I always want to go when it's near me but I never do

They opened Christmas Day!

Really 'enjoying' the abolish restaurants discourse on twitter. In the discussion below this tweet is where I found the best articulation of it.

Mad how people can sign up to "the real movement which abolishes the present state of things" but will totally lose the plot when any actual specific thing is suggested. https://t.co/r45cjw6Ezy

— disturbed_down_with_the_sickness.wav (@MediocreDave) May 28, 2022

Taking a category like 'restaurant', which emerged distinctively in modern Europe, and applying it ahistorically to any practice of group food preparation, forecloses a critique of the particular kind of institution built on particular social relations that a restaurant is.

otm across several abolition discourses

definitely there's a need to combat exploitation of restaurant workers, but once you reach a point that the people in a restaurant are a) doing it because they want to, b) under less time pressure and c) sharing the profits equally, then frankly there's no further cause to challenge restaurants from a socialist perspective imo

this scenario would of course make restaurants smaller and would challenge fast food chain culture, which strike me as far more realistic goals than abolishing restaurants, which will of course not happen (given a broad yet accurate definition of 'restaurant')

anyway, good posting from renowned poster Arbeitology, you definitely achieved the target m8 (spread online muck of a weekend, get people arguing past each other)

the movie 'boiling point' was basically a horror movie about uk high-end restaurant culture, worth seeing

His point is almost nobody wants to work the punishing Labour for fuck all that people in restaurants are made to because they need to survive.

He is coming from actually abolishing money and the profit motive. That's why you don't get what he's saying and posting nonsense like b) xp = and watching docs that tell you the above but calling it a 'horror movue' instead of people's reality.

otm across several abolition discourses

― difficult listening hour, Sunday, 29 May 2022 bookmarkflaglink

The discussion between Dave and the Brazilian anarchist on canteens was really interesting and took it a step further.

I've worked as a Kitchen Porter/Dishwasher and it's fucking dogshit work and nobody in a sane state of mind would choose to do it for minimum wage.

Boiling Point is a one-take fiction piece w/ ilx favourite Stephen Graham as the chef.

'boiling point', while based on grim reality, was literally a work of fiction? (exactly xp) but yeah, the sort of necessary art that challenges the admittedly grotesque state of (some) UK restaurant culture (I wouldn't speak for it elsewhere)

Cool. Excuse me for tuning out halfway through imago's bullshit xp

What would challenge the restaurant culture is abolishing that culture lol.

calzino otm re: kitchen porter work.

i’ve probably told this before but i once replied to an ad for a kitchen porter without knowing what that term meant and showed up wearing a white button-up shirt! they sort of chuckled and led me back to the kitchen.

you are at the bottom of the Kitchen hierarchy and in my experience you end up amassing hours of unpaid overrun every week. hey .. but hey let's do it for team kitchen!

"people arguing past each other"

like yeah bro, I think nurses probably have a lot to say about how the workplaces in hospitals is organised, and we should listen to them! - but I really think it's a cheap trick to move 'abolish restaurants' to 'what about hospitals' lol https://t.co/pbx58zsKeU

— Arbeitology (@Arbeit_Fish) May 28, 2022

there isn't really an argument as far as i can see, if capitalism is ended - yeah i know - then the artefacts, institutions and relationships of capitalism have to end, even the ones people think are good

not really surprising that a number of people who consider themselves anticapitalist haven't really thought things thru that far

that was a lot of "really"s, some kind of Lacanian slip obv