London
Restaurants where we ate & other food spots
The last time I went to London was eleven years ago, and even though it’s a relatively easy trip, just two hours from Paris, I haven’t been back. But when a friend from San Francisco told me he was going to London, I decided it was time again to cross the channel, to meet up with him.
Since Brexit, most of us in France now need to go through formalities to get there, but once I got through the electronic gates at the Gare du Nord in Paris (they only had one that was functional, and all the others weren’t working), getting through security and border control was pretty quick.
The trains are not inexpensive and neither are London hotels. None of those €44 fares I saw advertised in those sidebar ads online were available (aren’t there rules against that?), and the last time I took the Eurostar, the trains seemed a little worn out around their edges. But it seems they’ve gotten their act together, and the train was nicer than I remember.
Since I booked a few months in advance, I only paid a little extra to go Standard Premier, which included what they call a snack but seemed to me to be basically a meal. The breakfast, above, wasn’t too glamorous (on the way back, there was a salmon salad or a vegetable plate — plus wine), but I’d already eaten so was mostly in it for the coffee, which came by moments later.
My friend was staying In London for more than a week and managed to find a hotel that was reasonable since he was staying for a while. People told me eating out in London was going to be expensive (I found prices on par with New York City and San Francisco, and even some places in Paris), but there aren’t a lot of budget lodging options in central London. We ended up staying in the well-located Premiere Inn, in Farringdon.
They have hotels all over England and what our hotel lacked in charm, the extremely nice staff members made up for it. I upgraded to a Standard Plus room (I guess there’s a theme here?), which had better internet and a few other amenities, such as a mini-fridge, a lounge chair, and a generous bedside table with USB ports. (Who knew a large bedside table would one day become a “perk”?) It was a lot nicer than I thought it would be and reasonable by London standards.
London is huge, and there are a few ways to get around: the Tube (the subway), buses, black cabs, ride-shares (Uber and FreeNow, the latter of which is cheaper), and walking. We took a combination of all of them. My friend has some mobility issues and not all Tube stations have elevators, so if that’s an issue, good to check which stations have them when planning your day. The buses are easier to manage, and the drivers we had were helpful with letting us know where to get off.
You no longer need to buy an Oyster card pass for London transit. You can just tap your smartphone to get on and off. (Why Paris hasn’t adopted the contactless system before the Olympics is beyond me.) But it’s very easy to use and a good way to get around town. The black cabs in London are wonderful, but the fares are on the high side.
I’m reading Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin (written in 1988) at the moment, and there’s a whole chapter called “English Food,” where she wrote about the fine food she remembered fondly from England, where some of the legendary and notable food writers are from, including Jane Grigson, Nigel Slater, Claudia Roden, Yotam Ottolenghi, and Elizabeth David.
Yes, you can have bad food anywhere—even in France—but eating out in London is a pleasure, with good service and delicious food. I forgot how polite people are, and servers were always happy to see us, always pleasant and naturally welcoming, and doing what they could to make sure we were having a good meal. A new British-themed restaurant in Paris may want to send their staff to London for a week of training.
And while eating out isn’t cheap, a few notable places where we ate, such as The Devonshire and The Quality Chop House (at lunch), have pre-fixe menus that are around 29 pounds ($35) for a three-course meal. London also has a lot of excellent multicultural restaurants serving Asian, Indian, Sri Lankan, and Middle Eastern foods. So there’s something for everyone. Here’s where we ate…
After my friends collected me at the train station, we went right to The Quality Chop House. When I walked in, like everywhere, we were warmly welcomed, and when I saw the tile floor and well-worn woodwork on the staircase, I knew that I was right where I wanted to be for my first meal in the city.
We started with an excellent smoked ham hock and chicken terrine with curry mayo. We loved the other starter, smoked cod roe with Padrón peppers, which didn’t seem to go with each other, but they were both so good we didn’t mind. Especially delicious were the pork shoulder croquettes with English mustard mayo, super crispy on the outside, with shredded, tender pork meat inside. Although the order was only two, they gave us an extra one, so the three of us could each have our own.
The famed confit potatoes were certainly a standout, and while we were trying to figure out how to make them—each block is miraculously composed of a series of paper-thin potato squares pressed together and later fried—a quick online look at the recipe in The Guardian revealed that the initial cooking of the potatoes and duck fat involves a three-hour period in the oven, which is just for the potatoes to get cooked. Then they’re weighed down overnight and fried the next day—I decided it was worth a trip back to London if I wanted to have them again, rather than make them at home.
We shared a bone-in ribeye between the three of us and that was plenty, although I would have eaten more if we weren’t having dinner in a few hours. The beef was aged so was extra-tender, and it was truly one of the best pieces of meat I’ve eaten in years. (The beef in France can be rather tough and is often served bleu, extremely rare, so it takes a bit of muscle, and a good knife, to get through it.) We don’t eat a lot of beef at home, so it was nice to indulge in good British beef.
Dessert was a rhubarb trifle with brandied almonds and a bit of sherry.
The Quality Chop House also has a more casual restaurant/wine bar on the corner, Quality Wines, that’s supposed to be very good as well. Next time!
At Mountain, we had the best waitress. Unfortunately, I could only hear 7% of what she said as the place was loud. But there’s plenty to see in the huge kitchen that opens up to the dining room, with wood fires roaring everywhere while cooks turned meats, plated up vegetables, and arranged salads, which was a great showcase of what was on offer.
I started with the house Martini, above, which (from what I could hear about it…) was made with both gin and vodka, a Minorcan (or Majorcan?) herbal liqueur, vermouth, and olive brine. For those scratching their head over an ice cube in a Martini, some Martinis are indeed served over ice. Either way, it was a very good cocktail.
The pumpkin fritto (above, center) was excellent—several types of squash deep-fried to a crisp, and we really enjoyed the toasts with freshly made cheese and anchovies. The waitress brought over a puffy wood-oven-baked bread just because she thought we’d like it…and we did.
I couldn’t convince my dining companion, who has extensive dining experience and has dined around the world, to order the wood pigeon with me, so we shared the roast duck instead with blood oranges and plums. Every table seemed to have the wood-fired rice on it (above center), which was good, but I would have liked just a bit more moist rice under the ultra-crunchy topping for contrast, like tahdig.
[Note: A number of places we ate at in London offered “shared” main courses, such as grilled fish, roast pork, beef, etc., for two or three, which I find a nice way to eat and more enjoyable than facing a giant slab of meat on your plate. It’s also more economical, too, as we found sharing a plate of meat, fish, or fowl wherever we ate to cost less than ordering two main courses.]
The ensaïmada from Mallorca (above, right), a pastry traditionally made with pork fat (although I didn’t taste it in the version served here), came with a scoop of excellent hazelnut ice cream. If I was going back, I would definitely try the kelp omelet, which looked divine and that a lot of other people were eating. And just to add, if you’re a solo diner, Mountain has two bars set up adjacent to the dining area, where you can dine and still be “part of the action.” It actually looked like a lot of fun to sit there.
After a visit to Neal’s Yard Dairy (more on that later…), I wanted to try pizza at Homeslice, where they use cheese from the famed cheesemaker to top their pizzas, but they were closed for a repair, so we jumped over to Hoppers. We also stopped at the nearby St. John bakery for Treacle Tarts, which are so good at the restaurant, but were disappointed they don’t sell them in the bakery.
At Hoppers, they serve food “inspired by Sri Lanka and South India.” We had a masala dosa filled with potatoes served with coconut chutney alongside, and chicken buriani (their spelling) with raita. I’m no expert on the foods of those regions, but everything was really nicely spiced, and it was a good break from the meat and martinis we’d been indulging in.
Considering the build-up, I imagined The Devonshire to be a staid gastropub. Instead, the crowd inside and outside the pub was having a grand time on the sidewalk and within, drinking pints of Guinness, as one would do at any number of pubs. And I was surprised at how laid-back and fun the restaurant upstairs was too.
The Devonshire is known for their “perfect pint,” and they are said to be the biggest seller of Guinness in the UK, which is served from a special machine that calibrates the nitrogen to carbon dioxide ratio, so it’s close to how it’s served in Ireland. (Here’s an article about it.)
My friend ordered one and quickly after, the server came back and said they were going to replace it because the foam wasn’t right. Being a polite American, my friend said it was fine and was happy to keep it…but I said to let them change it. After all, he’d come for The Devonshire Guinness experience, and he should have it, and they wanted to change it, so he let them.
Firing up the grill was the oven, above. Interestingly, most of the restaurants we ate in had wood-fired ovens. (In France, there’s concern about fires and also about food smells, which neighbors aren’t fond of, called nuisances olfactives.) But for those of us who grew up with BBQs and grilled foods, there’s nothing better than the smell, and taste, of food cooked over a fire.
When I went over to check out the grill, the heat from the burning beechwood was so intense that I could only manage to get within 4-5 feet (1,5m) of it before I could feel the skin on my face starting to sizzle. When I asked the young man manning it how he did it, he said at first it was a challenge, but now he was used to it.
I was happy to get back to our table, where we shared a crabmeat salad topped with a pile of well-dressed winter greens before our steak arrived, along with sides of fresh peas, onions, and bacon, and chips (French fries). A variety of sauces are available for the beef (£1,5 each), and we asked for green herb sauce and Béarnaise. Dessert was an excellent sticky toffee pudding, truly the best I’ve had, with custard to pour over it.
It’s notoriously not especially easy to get a reservation here, but they do take walk-ins. Online reservations open up three weeks in advance on Thursdays at 10:30am…and go fast. They do serve food at the bar, which is a lot quieter during the day, I imagine. (It wasn’t super noisy in the evening, but it is, after all, a pub.) The Devonshire also offers a set menu at lunch and dinner: two courses for £25, three for £29 (about $30/€30).
Located a short walk from the Portobello Road Market is Straker’s. Since it was our last dinner in town, I wanted my last London Martini, and this one was good, made with Noilly Prat vermouth, a bit of orange-based French apéritif liqueur and a touch of bergamot. Just as I was taking my first sip, one of the owners came over to introduce himself, saying he’d brought Drinking French with him on his trip to France and discovered some liqueurs and apéritifs that were new to him. It’s always nice to hear from the people in the spirits world since part of the reason I wrote the book was to introduce people to French liqueurs and liquors that they might not know about. And it’s gratifying that some of them are also enjoying, and learning something from, the book, as I did when I was writing it.
We started dinner with the flatbread with roasted garlic, mussels, and chilli, recommended by our waiter (who told us that he used to be a chef), which reminded me of one of the differences that became clear to me during the week, between dining in France vs. dining in Britain. Whenever something was served with chilis (or chillis), no one warned us not to worry, that it wouldn’t be too spicy. Diners around us seemed up for anything, whether it was a curry-flavored chickpea stew or garlicky flatbread. And cooks and chefs didn’t shy away from challenging diners with robust seasonings and boldly international flavors. France is changing, but many diners and chefs are still timid when it comes to certain seasonings and flavors.
We loved the flatbread, and the spicy oil, and liked the veal tartare with capers and anchovy dressing, which was a little overshadowed by the zesty flatbread we wolfed down just before. We considered sharing a pasta but instead went right for the sirloin steak on the bone, along with a pile of crispy zucchini fries.
Dessert was burnt honey ice cream, blood orange sorbet, and house-made donuts with crème fraîche and pear jam. My friend said I should try to re-create the burnt honey ice cream at home, but since I’m deep in the weeds with my own recipes for current book projects, my dance card is full. But I found recipes here, here, and here.
I’ve been wanting to go to Honey & Co. for years, well before I met owners Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich. Both are alumni of Ottolenghi’s restaurants, and I was thrilled to meet them years ago when they were in Paris.
I’ve also admired their cookbooks. And now that I was on their home turf, my last meal in London was going to be at…Honey & Co. Daily. I had a very fresh fattoush salad with tomatoes, za’atar, toasted bread, pomegranate seeds, and feta, with a lively dressing with lots of lemon, which really hit the spot. I followed that with Msbaha, a dish of warm chickpeas with tahini, baked eggs, urfa chilli butter, and served with homemade seeded bread.
For dessert, I had the best chocolate babka I’ve ever had in my life. People often use the words “life-changing” (sometimes to get clicks), but since you’ve already read this far, I’m going to say that their babka was, indeed, life-changing. It was unusually moist, rich, chocolatey, and a whole bunch of other adjectives that you’ve heard before, so they won’t do them justice if I use them.
But if you come to London, I urge you to stop by for a slice of babka. This location is also a bakery and take-out, so you can get a slice, or a whole one, to go. You won’t be as sorry as I was that I didn’t take the leftovers home with me on the train.
More of what I ate in London…
Breakfast in my hotel was a disappointment: an all-you-can-eat buffet for £12,99 ($16) served in the windowless basement, which felt like being in an airport. I’m not a food snob, but the “fresh” fruit salad had a vaguely bleachy taste, the crumpet had no flavor (yes, I slathered it with butter), and while the crisp bacon was good, I suspected the scrambled eggs were from a mix.
The coffee was fine, as was the Greek yogurt, but for the money, and the experience, Beppe’s next door to our hotel has a full English breakfast for about the same price, and I’d go there.
When Rita Higgins, cheffe at Kubri in Paris (one of my favorite restaurants here), saw that I was in London, she implored me to go to Dusty Knuckle bakery. I hesitated since I wasn’t all that hungry, and it wasn’t that close to us. But we hoofed it out there, and was I glad we did!
One of my friends isn’t into sweets—quelle horreur!—but he happily ate two sausage rolls. Since I was in charge of ordering, I added a sugar-crusted morning bun and a feta and honey swirl to our order, which was one of the best pastries I’ve had. The crusty spiral (above, right) was showered with what turned out to be mostly sharp-tasting black onion seeds, along with sesame seeds, and filled with feta. I’m not a big fan of very sweet morning pastries, so it hit all the right sweet-salty-savory notes for me.
Also enjoyable was the sourdough toast with excellent British butter and homemade jam. It was well worth the trek, although I saw on their website that on weekends, the place gets very busy (so you can put in a take-away order in advance online), so best to go during the week if you want to sit and enjoy your treats there, if you can.
I couldn’t go to London without stopping at Neal’s Yard Dairy for cheese. While I live in the land of amazing cheese, British cheeses aren’t well-known in Paris, so I wanted to stock up.
Neal’s Yard is an institution, a sliver of a shop and a place that you don’t want to miss. The extremely friendly staff will give you tastes, so you can find the perfect cheddar or Stilton, but there are also outliers, like Shropshire and Baron Bigod, brie’s British cousin, to try.
As mentioned, if you go, just around the corner is Homeslice pizza, which uses Neal’s Yard cheeses, and St. John bakery, for Eccles cakes and other British baked goods.
One British import that we do get in France is Nisbets, a restaurant supply store that has a robust catalogue. (And is a short walk from Neal’s Yard.) Since Brexit, we’ve been getting socked by customs and other fees when ordering anything from England. Somehow Nisbets has a presence in France, so not sure how that works. Or if I should put in a big order now before the authorities figure it out.
I purchased my stainless-steel kitchen shelves from them, and quite a few other things, but it’s fun to visit their actual store in London. Open to all, to the trade and to the public, they’ve got everything from cake molds and thermometers to spatulas and whisks, all of professional quality, at prices that may make you wish you brought an extra suitcase. And if you did, you also could have brought home a whole babka…
Hi, David. This post is one of your best-ever! The photos and descriptions are so clear and enticing that I, who have not been to London in many years, would love to return--before ending my trip in Paris, of course! The kitchen shop looks like one I would appreciate, and since we are doing a kitchen "refresh," wish I could hop over the pond to buy some new equipment. Sending best wishes to you and Romain for a happy spring!
Loved this newsletter, David. Reading about London, Hopper’s, and Laurie Colwin… three of my favorites. Greetings from Texas!