Cheap eats in London and Edinburgh?

Dustbins.

Unlikely to find anything cheap near the RAH... but if you're up for curry, Paul and I can take you and your lovely wife out to Brick Lane for yummy cheap eats! (that is, if we have the money to eat at all, after our tour is over...)

Not too many places around the RAH. There are a couple of pubs up towards High Street Ken, also a Wok Wok & Wagamamma's - both good places to get huge bowls of noodles for about £8.

Best cheap Italian place in London is the Pollo Bar on Old Compton Street, Soho - fantastic place, looks like a greasy spoon, does every pasta and every pasta sauce imaginable. None of the waitresses speak English and everyone is crammed in together, so you get to make lots of friends. Also lots of entertainment as you get all sorts in there, theatre goers, strippers, transvestites, clubbers...two can have a meal and wine in the Pollo Bar for about £15.

If, from RAH, you go up to Notting Hill Gate (52 bus), there's a lots of good restaurants and bars up there.

Not that I'm local or nuffin'.

Oh dear, Stevie T told me a cockroach story about Pollo. Sorry...

I went to Carluccio's Cafe on Market Place (round the back of Oxford Circus, Top Shop side) for the first time this week and it was jolly good and not badly priced. I had fettucine with wild boar salsa. The pasta was fresh, perfectly cooked and the sauce was nice too and it cost £5.65. Not as cheap as Pollo but a lot cleaner :)

Salsa? I meant sauce. Ragu. You know what I mean.

Ahh, my other helpful specialty besides gastroporn. Your dollar is stretchy just now, so cool. By RAH is really tourist-trappy and overpriced with exceptions (below), so try to range out and see the city. The rules are: if you can make it at home, don't order it out in London, you'll just get narked.

RAH area: Daquise Polish restaurant near South Kensington tube. The chicken Kiev at the Stockpot behind Harrods rules and it's like £4.50 with chips and two veg. There is also a Marco Pierre White bistro which does amazing cheap prix fixe in the same area, ask your hotel folks for it. All SW7/3

Kensington: Churchill Arms pub serves masses of great Thai food, Kensington Church Street. Bowl and Stick is kitschy Cantonese on Ken High Street. You'll like Wagamama, it's across the street. All W8

Further afield: Dim sum on Queensway (other side of Hyde Park), W2 - most are good, follow Chinese folks density rule. Otherwise Harbor City, Gerrard Street, Chinatown WC2 or Poons, Lisle Street WC2. Mandalay Burmese retaurant in the 400s on Edgeware Road W2. Kate is right about Brick Lane (E1); she lives in one of the other hyooge Indian/Asian areas and Aladin and Nazrul are cheapest there, Sweet and Spicy most Bangladeshi 'realness'. New Seoul Korean on Clerkenwell Road EC1 is great, and close to my humble abode. If you are homesick for that touch of MN try the cheap Vietnamese places like Viet Hoa on Kingsland Road in London's Trendy Shoreditch (E2). Others on the road good, some even cheaper, all family-run and NICE. Amazing sushi to be had at Kulu Kulu in Brewer Street (W1). Don't use any other conveyor belt sushi places.

I will not divulge my fave cheapo Japanese here, because I'm trying to keep it from going trendy. My usual MO is to take friends there, who must promise public secrecy, communicating location of restaurant only by bringing other friends there without saying where they are going. It's working: they haven't raised the prices for ages. Mail me direct and I will divulge (BTW check your mail Dan, I sent the Vikings skinny to you).

You are all very lovely people. Except Emma. :P

The hotel we're staying at in London is on Harrington Gardens (Millenium Gloucester, which is apparently across from the Gloucester tube stop). Anyone know anything in that area?

I'm still waiting for info on Edinburgh. What, is there no one on here from Scotland? Hell, while I'm at it, anyone got any dirt on Lucerne, Switzerland and Lubeck, Germany?

Also, most important question: what's the best pub in the area? Or should we not even bother trying around there?

Pub: Churchill Arms, as above. Pubs in this area tricky otherwise, very transient and touristy. Gloucester Road area is a little bit like that

If you can sneak into the Royal College of Art bar right next to the RAH you'll be onto a winner, it's subsidised.

(Suzy, forgt to mention: I did get the email, and wrote you back. I assume you haven't noticed it yet 'cuz it was from my super-secret AOL account.)

I'll second Suzy's recommendation of Daquise.

Very cheap, and really nowhere near RAH (but near lots of other interesting stuff): Tai on Greek Street (WC1?). All-you-can-eat veggie chinese buffet for a fiver. And the tea refills are free too.

Mentioned this in the Edinburgh thread a while back but my sister's boyfriend has a cafe (AJ's) on the royal mile. Excellent marshmallow cake.
Otherwise you have to try a white pudding supper with salt'n'sauce from one of the many reputable chip shops.

I know it may be tragic and the atmosphere is near zilch but for value there hard to beat.

Any JD Wetherspoon Pub. Nearest one I think is the Tyburn tree at Marble Arch. £3.50 for a pint of beer with burger and chips. Or two meals for £6.50. More then enough food. On thursday curry deal is pretty good too.

Pancho Villas in Edinburgh (Canongate, Royal Mile) is great for top notch mexican food at a reasonable price although not dirt cheap. Also Clever Dicks is a good bar/restaurant also in Royal Mile. Loads of Pubs selling good nosh. The Hogs Head on the corner of Rose Street produces good fayre..also does a two meals for £5.99 at certain times.

reason # 1 why cinemas fucking suck: if you're not with people, and not so many folks i know want to accompany me to second-tier soviets of the '20s, what to do re. eating?

i think i'm going to eat chinese, while walking.

oh just grow one balls and dine alone

oh, ok.

I'd much rather dine alone than go to a movie alone!

what theatre are you talking about?

i love going to movies alone, actually.

going to movies alone is FINE. eating not so much, but anyway i don't have time to eat properly, so the loneness doesn't change the problem here of cheap, good fast food.

yes, yes - but where?

nft

whose -- frankly nbg -- bar/restaurant is closed ce soir.

bah. that's a tricky area.

sarf lunnun innit.

couple of good, cheap places on belvedere rd. just behind south bank. truly excellent bagel emporium and ok noodle place round the 6 quid mark.

thx, am googling

Isn't there a Wag in the RFH these days?

go to the ICA then walk down. maybe

the main thing is, count yrself lucky you live in london where you can wnader down to these sort of things of an evening. Without having to take time off work, book train tickets, and spend 40 quid doing so.

Or alternatively, fret about how you would have done all this, had you not missed the thing you wanted to see by a week, a week too late to hear about it (hello, Alexie Guerman retrospective @ cine lumiere)
ps i am v v unhappy about this btw!
at least Soy cuba has dragged itself to the provinces...

this is the thing: i did more of this shit when i lived outside longer! i somehow managed without food till the bus dropped me home about 1am, whereupon i would get kebab van chips. age has fucked me up.

but excellent point re rfh, mind had gone blank.

National Theatre pre-theatre food is pretty okay also. Whenever I go to the NFT alone though I usual have a couple of pre-show cocktails in the OXO Tower and nosh at the Peoples Palace.

well, for a 6.20 screening there wasn't time for that (or money, really -- oxo tower!!!!) but this wasn't quite the harrowing experience i'd for some reason anticipated.

In the market in Lower Marsh, near The Cut, are all sorts of caffs, sandwich places, noodle bars and junior gastropubs. Or you could always go to Konditor and Cook in The Cut, their hot dishes are around the £4 mark.

i'd forgotten that being an indie boy meant never having to eat -- easier times.

suzy, is K&C down there open late? that is the best thing ever. I

Pete, how much would be a pre-show cocktail at OXO? not too pricey?

Even the one in WC1 is open until 7.30 so I would assume theSE1 K&C are intelligent and have an eye on curtain times nearby, seen?

Depends if you go to the bar, have table service or mix it up yourself in the toilets pretending to be swish. Not cheap, last time I went it was probably about seven quid to be fair. But I don't go to the NFT that much: it doesn't tend to show my particular speciality in films.

You're also v. near the Anchor & Hope which is jam tasty too. (Hmm, I fancy some gastropub action soon).

it's an odd place: i go months without visiting, then have to go three times a week.

K&C in the Cut is no more, until the Young Vic reopens in the autumn, mebbe. Their sandwich shop nearby (Cornwall St) is still there, but I don't think it's open in the evenings.