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“Where To Eat (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Tea): London”

Our Strong Buzz correspondent Susan Kane Walkush spent a last-minute, cheap-ticketed weekend in London with one mission: pack in as many meals as possible into four days. She hit under the radar spots and chic destinations for everything from great coffee to the best Pakistani eats.

Feel free to bookmark this piece for your next trip and Share Your Two Cents on your favorite London eats below!

Lantana: You may or may not be familiar with the sincere breakfast-dedication in England, but it is both fierce and sweet. They care about breakfast. But you have to be a bit careful in finding a place that cares about the coffee as much as the food. London has a newly blooming coffee culture, but it’s not exactly entrenched, so I felt the burden of finding good coffee immediately after we landed.

We found it in the funky Fitzrovia neighborhood at Lantana. I’d read about Lantana on the owner’s blog, www.scramblingeggs.blogspot.com, where Shelagh Ryan, an optimistic Australian with no restaurant experience, has engagingly charted the opening of her small café. After walking up and down Charlotte Street, passing restaurants and shops of various ethnicity, we turned onto a tiny pedestrian road* and stepped down the few stairs into Lantana.

Immediately, I felt the coffee-lover’s calm take over, seeing everything as it should be. Small stubby candles topped the wooden tables, light filtered through broad glass windows at one end, people neighborly chattered with each other or typed away alone, and the rich smell of coffee mobilized every nerve cell in my body. Still jetlagged, the strong brew (served with warm milk so it stays hot enough – thank you!) reminded me I’m alive. Even better: toasted sourdough with garlicky, buttery sautéed field mushrooms, a smattering of fresh parsley and Parmigiano shavings on top. This is where you should start your day.

* The café is on Charlotte Place, which is at the end of Rathbone Street and not at the end of Charlotte Street, even though Places are customarily at the end of Streets. It took us awhile to figure this out.

La Fromagerie: The Marylebone neighborhood is paradise for anyone interested in food. Tree-lined streets are lined with food shops and good cafes, like La Fromagerie where we went for a lunchy breakfast. La Fromagerie is really part gourmet shop (including a huge temperature-controlled cheese cave) and part tasting room. Decorated like an extremely elegant farmhouse, everything around you—the homemade jams, chocolates and sausages—begs to be eaten and the fresh vegetables look good enough to wear. You could easily stop by here and pick up everything necessary for a picnic in one of London’s grassy parks, or, if it’s raining, a picnic on the floor of your hotel room. We had the farmhouse breakfast—prosciutto, speck, three ripe cheeses, fresh bread, and farmhouse yogurt that made me rethink my Greek yogurt preference.

Geales: You want fish and chips? I understand. If you are anywhere near Notting Hill, you should go to Geales, for the best fish and chips you can eat sitting at a tablecloth covered table. While the batter is quite thick, it is miraculous in that it stayed crisp and greaseless throughout, the cod fresh and flaky underneath.

Fernandez & Wells: If you are shopping in Soho, stop by Fernandez & Wells, a tiny coffee shop, for delicious sandwiches or homemade empanadas with chicken, hard-cooked eggs, and green olives with homemade chili salsa.

National Dining Rooms: You have to have afternoon tea in London, whether you want to or not. If you hate tea, just get cake. We went to the National Dining Rooms in the National Gallery, which sounds rather institutional but offers award-winning classic British food from celebrated chef Oliver Peyton. The rooms were redone in 2006 by starchitect David Collins, and the atmosphere feels exceptionally, carefully British while also being modern and inviting—huge windows, dark wood, large portraits, both chic young things and grannies at the surrounding tables. Looking out the enormous windows at the rain falling on Trafalgar Square, we had perfectly brewed Assam tea with the proper accoutrement: currant-laced, moist (!) scones, clotted cream and thick raspberry jam. I’d give a kidney to have this exact same tea as I write this.

Moro: I’d read about Moro, a Moorish-African-Spanish restaurant which opened about 10 years ago, and wondered if it still deserved its place in seemingly everyone’s hearts. We went, and it did. An unassuming, welcoming place on Exmouth Market, Moro serves absolutely wonderful food in the form of a weekly changing menu. We loved the raw artichoke and fennel with olives, and a plate of simply blanched asparagus with an inspired dressing of chopped egg, olives, pine nuts, and dill. We scraped that plate clean. Ditto the charcoal-grilled lamb was served with a cilantro puree, and slow-cooked carrots and dates over quinoa. We drained our rioja and left fully satisfied.

Hakkasan: Figuring we should do one at least one meal that required me to wear heels, we picked Hakkasan and were not disappointed. Alan Yau opened this Michelin-starred, Shanghai-in-the-30s restaurant almost 8 years ago, and it is still packed with Beautiful People. Yau’s food aims to combine both authentic and modern aspects of Chinese fine dining and it succeeds. The nearly hidden entrance is located at the end of a small crooked street, guarded by a few large bouncers and one small hostess. Down the stairs and into the sexy, noisy series of dining rooms, it feels like you’re doing something clandestine and glamorous. Somehow, the food doesn’t suffer for the glamour, although of course the prices do. We shared crispy, not greasy, duck rolls, Shanghai dumplings, and Peking duck stir-fried with chilis and onions. The best plate was braised lamb with five spices – lamb falling apart, all spices playing off each other; quite a memorable dish. One downside: where was the alcohol in the cocktails? Hate that.

New Tayyabs: Now for the best Pakistani meal of your life. Go way east to Whitechapel, walking past the men leaving the mosque after evening prayers. After some time along the quiet streets, pick up some beer or wine to bring to New Tayyabs. When you see the crush of people inside, clamoring for their food, don’t worry, they take good care of everybody in line. We ate samosa and chicken tikka and lamb chops (my god those were good) and roti and rogan gosht and chicken keema and spicy okra and prawn in a sweet sauce. The spices on these dishes provided extraordinary flavor rather than just heat, and were not drowned in butter or oil like so much Pakistani food here. It was crowded and they rushed us and I ate so much I didn’t sleep that night and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

 

Other Resources to Check Out:

www.ottolenghi.co.uk

www.thewolseley.com

www.benaresrestaurant.com

www.londonrandomness.org.uk -- This site lets you look up which pubs serve real ale, among other essential things.

www.londonreviewofbreakfasts.com -- Whoever is writing this site, you’re killing me.

 

—Susan Kane Walkush

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Posted: May 17, 2009

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