london restaurants

when you asked for small noodle soup it was as big as yr head (if yr head was liquid and in a bowl); i never dared ask for large noodle soup, in case the seas ran dry and it was my greedy fault

As the WCDS is starting soon I will be able to give more info, but Ethiopian Merkato on Caledonian Road is good, Crouch End (wherever the fuck that is) is full of top restaurants but latest discover of BYO curry house just off Marchomont Street in central London has had me going back 4 times in 2 weeks.

The Gate in Hammersmith is better than the one next to my house. Rasa in Stoke Newington is better than the one near Oxford Circus. But the best vegetarian restaurant in London is Manna, on Erskine Road, near Primrose Hill. I love this place (it equals The Gate for tastiness of food, and has a much better atmosphere).

Kulu Kulu sushi in Brewer Street.

Mandola in Westbourne Grove.

Churchill Arms pub thai in Kensington.

but then im with some other people later in the week and we need another recommendation.

They recommend the place you mention sarah

sushi-say is like 15mins walk from my house...

Sarah, sushi-say is fantastic, and the chef thre is very very cool.

I've heard far too many stories about Pollo ever to go back there, which is a shame as I used to like it.

this thread is gonna work its way along Camberwell Church St one establishment at a time

Next up: KFC

Was gonna say McDonalds. Stood at that bus stop many a time.

there's a decent turkish on the other side of the road before you get there.

Yes! FM Mangal, that delicious onion thing they give you! (Or used to? Haven’t been in a while). I like Camberwell Arms a lot also.

yes to the onion thing! is the CA still good? for some reason i had it in my head they’d changed ownership.

The main chef was still there as of a few months back when he e last went, and it was still really good. My only gripe is the front bit has been changed to being more reatauranty and less pubby.

I've always been a bit put off by how snooty that place looks, but might give it a go. Tbf have also been put off by Nandine's price to dish size ratio but if you're saying that's good then

I forgot to say, we went to Forza Win a couple of weeks ago and they were charging £15 for a bowl of spaghetti pomodoro.

now that's a place we've long sworn never to set foot in lmao

Co sign, Forza win pricing to portion size is awful, and will never go back. Camberwell arms is pricey, but no more so than any London restaurant, and I've been about 10 times and nobody I've dined with has ever had a bad plate of food.

also 'forza win' is the worst restaurant name maybe in london

Ok has anyone been to the Yellow Bittern..

https://www.vittlesmagazine.com/p/once-yellow-bittern-twice-shy

Was wondering how that row would spill out but tldr'ed out of that article. I was curious about going but two things stopped me, firstly I read a bad review from a place I trust, and secondly they don't have a wine list, you have to say "oooh i want something sleazy" or whatever and they choose for you.

So I won't be going, I like choosing my own wine, seems a basic facet of eating out.

Even a few lines into that article you can feel the contortions as the writer desperately tries to decide which side they should take.

I think the pie will be amazing...but I don't think anyone should pay 50 quid for pie though. Sounds wack.
Still remember wonderful, fairly cheap, game pie that was served at the Royal Oak five years ago. Need to find that again.

I might go. Aristos in the Cally Road, whatever next?

that if you don’t drink “because you have done so to such excess that it cannot be permitted any longer” that you should order more food to make up for it

It’s such a weird contradiction to be like:
- working people should be able to afford spending £40-100 on a restaurant once a month
- only open for lunch for four hours a day
- insist you’re in the business of promoting “long boozy lunches”

Like if you want people to drink and linger dinner is your best bet, not lunch? It’s not as though the space is shared with another business that needs it for the evening, this is entirely a matter of choice.

I would assume the pie is between two at that price but idk. Not cheap either way but eating out in general has become p expensive, don't think any restaurants are making millions.

Honestly he does himself zero favours every time he talks

https://www.interviewmagazine.com/food/hugh-corcoran-of-the-yellow-bittern-wants-to-bring-back-boozy-lunch

Eating out is still reasonable to me, depends where, but I often don't drink alcohol when I eat out.

Maybe I should go there and have a cup of tea with my pie and mash.

Even in casual places the prices have rocketed, have you not found that? Like all my usual casual cheaper places, and I mean like tiny Chinese restaurant or whatever have noticeably spiralled. Was in a pub just now that was the post uni pub when I studied at night recently and the main courses are 20 quid, this is average basic pub food.

I have a day off on a Monday next week and was considering that place until reading more. Feel it's aimed in the sort of space I enjoy but like an evil twin of that Amarante restaurant we all went to in Paris from the Paris restaurants thread.

Might just go to Sweetings instead.

He also slags off St John for their pies but although expensive St John is St John and I’ve never heard of anyone who went there feeling unwelcome or whatever

Last thing I went to was Pepper Tree in Clapham (a lovely Thai restaurant that has never disappointed) and it was around 20 per head with non alcoholic drink.

I am going to my favourite Chinese (Uncle Wrinkle) as I happen to be around New Cross tomorrow. See if the prices have gone up xp

Still not been there but would like to check it out. I guess depends on areas also with rent etc.

Yeah I think Pepper Tree has been in Clapham for many many years so maybe they have a different rent agreement.

Honestly he does himself zero favours every time he talks

https://www.interviewmagazine.com/food/hugh-corcoran-of-the-yellow-bittern-wants-to-bring-back-boozy-lunch

― gyac, Saturday, 16 November 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Reading it now and if this goes under in a year he'll blame it on the woke.

HOGEVEEN: Can you say more about your vision for lunch? This idea of the boozy lunch seems like a pivot back to the late ’80s culture that you mentioned.

CORCORAN: Yes, but also to the 1700s. It’s going back to the idea that we’re only here once, so you may as well have a good time. Get drunk in the middle of the afternoon if you can afford to. Don’t spend it in the gym. Have a bit of fun and let your hair down and stop taking yourself so seriously. In terms of what lunch is, I also have quite strong opinions on what should be served in a restaurant. I think that lunch and dinner should have a structure. I don’t like that shared plates thing that basically becomes a posh tapas bar.

---

Obviously this line on gyms is insane because gyms aren't harking back to a fascist cult-of-the-body but I think the line on shared plates feels correct, which is much more of a thing in the last year or two?

But yeah feels like he is swimming against a few tides with no margin for error.

Fresh off the press: Etta's Seafood Kitchen in Brixton Market is sooooo good

(I got the Jamaican brown stew fish and it absolutely owned. Incredibly friendly in there too and mains for well under 20 quid if you like)

Yeah, a lot of mains from very average places that were £18/20 or so a few years ago/pre-Covid are now £30+! With most Chinese/ESEA places, the mains are supposed to be shared family-style, which mitigates the higher price slightly, but £12 for banh mi or one of those takeaway brown cardboard bowls of bùn vermicelli with not enough topping or sauce is kind of a pisstake.

Yellow Bittern seems to be very self-consciously evoking a rationing-era 1950s aesthetic I’d call Lucian Freud Eats Pie. But working aristos love that shit.

One place I do miss loads that did this kind of thing well is Great Queen Street, home of the £45 lamb shoulder for two (or more).

The shared plates criticism feels more omnipresent and solidified than restaurants that do shared plates by now, feel like I've been reading for about a decade. Sure it's based on a kind of truth but most of the bigger popular restaurants now and a lot of the smaller ones are bistros. That seems to be the big trend again.

And there were always plenty of places that did starter and main in that fashion even whenever the height of shared plates was.

Some things gain traction as opinions due to how easy they are to understand rather than actual deeper truth.

The Yellow Bittern is reviewed today in the Guardian... Leaves you muttering about school dinners

Can I just say that with a one year old who really likes to eat, shared plates are the business. He’s basically eating off our plates anyway and shared plates really work.

As for these cally road aristos, they just make me feel like I left London a long time ago. There’s a cognitive dissonance about a 40 quid pie on a street with a prison that I associate with the first time I ate Ethiopian food (and the swimming pool for that matter). More than that though, dictating how people eat your food and only doing lunchtime service seems like something you have to earn your stripes to do. It’s a bit I’m sure but they don’t seem like they are overly concerned with making this restaurant pay which is the biggest affront to everyone grafting in hospo.

Anyway you can all guess which one of them I went to school with. (Hint - it’s the poshest one)

lmao

they don’t seem like they are overly concerned with making this restaurant pay which is the biggest affront to everyone grafting in hospo

yep, defo feels very forced.

There are so many great restaurants at the bottom of the Cally Road - Hawker’s Kitchen, Supawan Thai, the plov place which is (ISTR) Azeri, the Ethiopians, Tamil Prince on the Barnsbury side etc etc, where two people can eat well for the price of that Guinea fowl pie.

Those would all still be recognisably London for you, Ed. I take it your classmate (for the 6th form) was Snowdon’s daughter?

Yellow Bittern definitely nailing the PR game. I doubt I'll ever go but I enjoyed the Vittles writeup (as I usually do).

When I do go to hyped places it's usually 5 years after everyone else. Finally made it to Mangal 2 the other week. Very enjoyable, would go back, even if the meal started stronger than it finished. Highlights were the deeply comforting pides. At the end we went across the road for a straightahead kunefe.

Supawan or the Tamil Prince are not much cheaper than 20 quid a main course which is what the lie works out, if any cheaper at all. Every main at Supawan is about 19 quid without rice so basically the same or more expensive.

Tamil Prince is more like a small plates model, heaven forbid.

Had a great fried mussel sandwich at Midyeci today.

Ads for there keep appearing in my feed on Instagram, no idea why. Maybe I should give in.

The American diner vibe is kind of a random choice but who knows, maybe there's dozens of places looking like that in Istanbul.

I never even knew fried fish like that was a thing in Turkey but I guess we only see certain types of food as the dominant or popular imports.

Ed. I take it your classmate (for the 6th form) was Snowdon’s daughter?

― guillotine vogue (suzy), Monday, November 18, 2024 1:15 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

It was one of those eton avenue crammers for the nice but dim and to undiverge the divergent - so up to the age of 12 or so.

Went to Nobel Rot this last week and for the first time it... really wasn't very good. service was really friendly but really bad (things arriving in wrong order, waiting ages for a drink, wrongly described dishes) which is a difficult combination, food was mainly *ok* but in one case indifferent to the point of being like school dinners. wines still good and i still love the lamb's conduit dining room, and it was *really* busy. but still. made me wonder if they'd over-reached with their additional openings. hoping it's just a blip.

OMA last night was fantastic however. Inside dining room had been all booked up, so we were on the external terrace, which was preferable tbh. You're high up under the general structure of Borough market, you have the trains clattering away on the high line above you over to one side, the acoustics and the general design mean it felt really lively and fun. the food was amazing – salt cod with labneh and the scallop in chilli oil butter were highlights, but it was consistently of a really high standard, wines also, and was just a really enjoyable, relaxed evening. my boring line that restaurants should *restore* you as per the name rather than just refuelling was delivered exactly.

that's interesting - the first one or two times i went i thought it was good but more for the wine, and my cousin who i eat out with a lot was insistent i'd been a bit unlucky or something, though obv you'd want it to be consistently great. the last three times i've been i've found it as good as anywhere really, very impressed. only ever done lamb's conduit one.

must give oma a go.

yeah, noble rot has been a stalwart standby - my kind of place, so i'd be disappointed if it *has* lost a step. it's earned enough credit though for me to be back next year.