On The Town: London – Part 1

I recently was fortunate enough to spend five days in London (England, not Ontario).  I visited London about 7 or 8 years ago while studying abroad in France but seeing as I was in broke student mode I didn’t get a chance to do London to its fullest.

This time around the plan was to see all the sights, shop and of course eat.  Usually when I travel I spend A LOT of time figuring out what I want to do and what I want to eat.  My theory about food while traveling is why eat mediocre food in a cities with such great culinary options?  Sure cities like New York, Paris and London are filled with restaurants but some quick research can point you in the direction of some of the cities best eats.

In planning my London trip I wasn’t too sure where to start. When I go to NYC I usually have a running list of places to check out, but with London there wasn’t a single restaurant that was on my radar (not for lack of restaurants, I’m just not that tapped into the London food scene).  Thankfully in the age of the internet it’s easy enough to find great options.  My main sources for compiling my London restaurant list were: GOOP (Gwyneth Paltrow’s most excellent newsletter), Time Out London and Chowhound.

A lot of my picks came from GOOP.  Say what you want about Gwyneth (or as I often refer to her, GP) and her recent culinary exploits, but she makes one hell of a city guide when GOOP does the travel editions.  Since Gwyneth lives in London for most the year she has the perspective of a Londoner (a very wealthy Londoner) rather than a culinary tourist.  I appreciate that.   I jokingly refer to my London feast tour as “Eating Like Gwyneth in London”. I checked out Time Out London for their “Best of” section and used Chowhound to validate my pics.

I ate VERY well while in London. Traditionally England has this reputation for crappy food but after my trip I can’t begin to believe it.  Similar to Toronto the trend of nose-to-tail eating is big as is the idea of local raised/source foods. One of my best travel tips is to set a realistic budget and stick to it (most of the time).  That way you can budget for the way you plan to eat.  I wasn’t into doing the city’s cheapest spots every day but also didn’t want to blow the bank so I worked with a daily budget as follows;

Breakfast £5
Lunch £15
Dinner £25
Snacks £5

It balances out because some meals end up cheaper and some end up more expensive.  A £7 lunch makes it easier to have a £33 dinner etc.  It always works for me.

This will be a two-part post. I’ll cover days 3-5 and snacks in a day or two.

Ottolenghi
287 Upper Street
London N1 2TZ
T:
(3 other locations as well)

I arrived in London pretty early on a Friday morning and after getting settled needed some food.  I wanted something local and strayed from my day’s pre-planned lunch.  My friend Robin suggested we check out a local spot whose name she didn’t know but she knew they always had meringues in the window.  When we got there and were waiting in line I started seeing a familiar name and logo – Ottolenghi.  Ottolenghi wasn’t on my list of places to check out but I was familiar with it from none other than GP.  In GOOP she mentions that she likes to stop into Ottolenghi when she’s hosting company but doesn’t have time to cook.  If it’s good enough for GP, it’s good enough for me.

Ottolenghi is part “takeaway” (buy food to take with you) and part eat-in restaurant.  When you enter they have a selection of very attractive baked goods lined up on one side and then their savoury salads, meats etc on the other side.  If you are getting your food for takeaway the items are weighed.  If you’re eating in (as we did) you get to choose the number of different dishes that you’d like to try.

For lunch I decided to pick the 3-item plate which was about £11 or £12. Everything on offer looked pretty scrumptious but I chose the sweet potatoes with spiced yoghurt, dukkah and chervil, Jersey royals (potatoes) and asparagus with samphire, parsley pesto, herbs and lemon and lamb kofta (yes I had two starches as sides). I loved the Middle Eastern flavours in the sweet potatoes and lamb. They were well spiced and had flavours that I definitely am not used to cooking with. One thing to note is that the food isn’t served hot, it’s at room temperature which is kind of odd (especially for the lamb) but works when everything is room temperature.

Since Ottolenghi was so close to where I was staying I good part of my breakfast budget went to them.  The banana-date muffin is probably the best muffin I’ve ever had (period), the pain or chocolat is pure buttery goodness and they make a pretty great chocolate-pecan cookie.

Pizza East
56 Shoreditch High Street
London E1 6JJ
T:
(2nd location on Portobello Road)

Pizza is easily one of my favourite foods so it’s no surprise that I wanted to check out one of the newish and popular pizza spots in London.  Located in the trendy Shoreditch area, Pizza East is a surprisingly large space (great for groups!) with a really Spartan, warehouse kind of look.  On a Friday night the place was packed with a mostly young group of trendy looking folks (and a wait of about 40 minutes for a table for two).

The menu features a variety of antipastos and what they call “boards” (think cheese and meat boards) which seemed really popular.  A number of tables were ordering the meat platter both while waiting to be seated and once at the tables.  They looked great but we just went right in for the pizzas.

We decided to order two pizzas. The first featured veal meatballs, prosciutto, cream and sage and the second featured a type of sausage with arugula strewn on top. The pizza was good but doesn’t compare with my fave pizza place in Toronto, Pizzeria Libretto. My main beef was that the crust was thin but too chewy in spots. The flavours and ingredients were great however, the crust didn’t stand up. Out of the two pizzas the meatball one was the clear winner.

 

 

 

 

Fish Club
189 St John’s Hill
Clapham Junction
SW11 1TH

(2nd location on Clapham High Street)

I heard about Fish Club through Time Out London and they ranked it as one of the best Fish and Chip shops in London.  Located in Battersea it’s not necessarily far from the city centre but it’s off the beaten path as there isn’t much around there in terms of sigh-seeing and the usual tourist activities.

When I arrived for lunch the place felt a bit unmanned.  There were a pair of customers eating at the picnic tables outside and eventually a man appeared behind the counter.  Given that the place was mostly comprised of stools (with maybe 4 or 6 tables in the back), I went to the counter to order and took a seat.  Eventually a server came around with real cutlery and to offer me water.  Not sure if this is a sitdown place or what, but it worked out in the end.

My first fish and chip experience in London was good but not amazing.  The fish was fresh and flaky and of substantial size. Fish Club gets bonus point for using sustainable fish.  The batter wasn’t too thick, but was on the heavier side of medium.  It was definitely crisp and golden.  The “chips” were not what I was expecting.  They were short and stubby, almost like “chip nuggets”.  Sure, the taste was good but I like more substantial fries.  But that’s just me.

I enjoyed the meal and if I lived I Battersea would probably hit up this place regularly.  After leaving, my general reaction was that I didn’t believe that it could possibly be the best fish and chips spot in London.  I thought some of my Toronto faves were at least on par with it.    I made the trek from Westminster Abbey to Battersea but would not do it again.

St. John Bar & Restaurant
26 St. John Street
London
EC1M 4AY

Oh St. John. This restaurant was on my list to try but then I took it off because the menu didn’t excite me.  Online they list a sample menu and it was a lot of random animal parts with what sounded like simple preparations.  I’m all for random animal parts, offal etc. but I wasn’t really feeling it for my trip.  After posting my tentative restaurant list on Chowhound however, a few people really urged me to try St. John.  So I did.

St. John was actually close to where I was staying, which was a bonus.  It is without a doubt an interesting space.  It looks industrial as you walk in and there are tables lining the hallway as you enter.  You then walk into a bar area which also has tables (they have a separate bar menu).  If you turn around and go up a few stairs you are taken to the dining room, which is where I sat.  On a Wednesday at around 8 the place was busy but not “wait for a table” busy which was nice.

Upon sitting down they bring over bread and butter. St. John also happens to be a bakery so I had a feeling the bread would be pretty stellar – and it was.  I decided to forgo an appetizer (saving room for dessert) and ordered a pair of Braised Slip Soles and a Green Salad.  Yup, I had no clue what Slip Soles were until I asked.  Apparently they are Dover Soles and in this case were braised in a brown butter.  I love brown butter pretty much anything, especially with fish so I was fully on board.

I totally made a rookie mistake when the dish arrived.  I cut off a piece of the end and literally met head- (or tongue) on with a mouthful of bones.  I have a very strong fear of getting a bone stuck in my throat so this was not ideal.  In my haste to consume my food I didn’t realize that I was given two whole fish and not two fillets.  I then ate my meal very leisurely as I got my Doctor Yang on and performed some serious surgery on the fish to remove every last microscopic bone.  Once I got into the fish I really enjoyed it.  For such thin fish it was nice to see that they weren’t overdone and dry.  The brown butter sauce was perfectly balanced and really complimented the fish.  The green salad that I purchased to go along with it (dishes arrive as described with no additional sides) was really refreshing and provided a nice break from all of the butter.

For dessert I wanted to try something uniquely British.  There were two things on the menu that I wasn’t too sure about which signaled “British” to me – Eccles Cake and Eton Mess.  When the waitress described the Eccles Cake to me I wasn’t that impressed. Its basically puffed pastry wrapped around a sort of dried fruit filling.  No thanks.  The Eton Mess on the other hand sounded delightful!  It’s essentially crushed meringue layered with whipped cream and berries, kind of like a parfait.  It was AMAZING.  I’ve pretty much been thinking about Eton Mess non-stop since and will be making it promptly.

My meal at St John was definitely a hit but I wish I had ordered a bit more adventurously. I think I ordered fish because I had been in Germany for 3 days prior and was kind of weighed down by the volume of pork and potatoes that I had consumed. St. John is worth visiting.

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Visit the blog in the next day or two for part 2 of my eating adventures in London.