A top five (of sorts)
Someone recently asked me what my five favourite places to eat in London are.
My top three places came to me quickly, without much thought:
Scotti’s Snack Bar
Quality Wines
The Eagle
Three places that came to mind before I’d even stopped for a moment to define what might constitute a “favourite” place, or what criteria you might adopt to help whittle down a top five.
Scotti’s is the place I eat at the most. Unfailingly, I have breakfast there once a week, sometimes twice, and some weeks I’ll go for lunch too. I like the service and the crowd of regulars here, but the food is genuinely quite exceptional. It’s the little touches. Black pepper and parmesan on top of the cappelletti in brodo, the brodo made fresh each week with beef and chicken bones. The little squeeze of lemon juice on hot chicken escalopes before they’re sandwiched in a soft ciabatta roll, the escalopes boned out chicken thighs that are crumbed by hand and cooked in batches throughout the day. That Al asks if you prefer vinegar or mayo on your breakfast BLT.
The food at Quality Wines is also exceptional. I’d go so far as to say it’s the best and most interesting we’ve eaten in London. The cooking is faultless. And I like that it works both for lunch - an express, 15 quid lunch of a plate of pasta with a glass of wine - and for dinner - plates of snacky things before more substantial plates to keep to yourself, or perhaps to share.
The Eagle is one of the places I first fell in love with in London. It’s the kind of pub I’d like to own myself - one that’s busy, buzzy and feels a bit like a big lounge and dining room. The food here is good too. It’s solid home cooking stuff, and I like that the menu changes depending on what the cooks can be bothered doing that day.
I think my fourth favourite place has to be The Yellow Bittern, even though I’ve only been once. You might’ve heard about The Yellow Bittern if you keep an eye on what’s going on in the London food scene. The restauant’s owner, Hugh Corcoran, caused a stir last year when (quite rightly, in my opinion) he chastised two customers for coming in, ordering a plate of radishes with butter to share and a glass of tap water and nothing else. His point was that restaurants should be more than just places to pop on your Instagram feed, but the media and half of London were seemingly outraged that someone could have the nerve to comment on how much people were and weren’t spending in restaurants. And then began what felt like a month-long debate about the idiosyncrasies of Corcoran’s restaurant - that you have to book by telephone, that they only take payment in cash, that they’re only open midweek for lunch - two sittings, one at midday, the other at two. Etcetera.
Putting aside the debate about The Yellow Bittern, which frankly has somehow managed to be both boring and a load of outrageous bullshit all at once, Corcoran’s cooking is delicious, and the space him and his business partners have created is special. I still think of the Irish soda bread with butter and bowls of Dublin coddle and rice pudding with a thick skin that we ate the day we went. And perhaps what I like most about The Yellow Bittern is that it’s not really a place for people who want to share radishes and don’t want to drink. I’d rather be without those people, anyway. The space, strangely, reminds me of my grandparents’ dining room, which is a very, very long way away.
My fifth favourite place to eat at is hard to land on. And this is where I start debating whether there ought to be a set of criteria to help me finalise this list.
The truth is, I don’t have a vast list of favourite places to eat in London at this point. Certainly it’s no where near as vast as my list of favourite places to eat in Melbourne. There’s a small handful of other places that I think are particularly good for an assortment of reasons, and so, I’m just going to share them. In time - once I’ve been here longer - the list of places from which to pick will have grown, and so I may revisit what’s here. And my fourth and fifth favourites may come to me more easily.
But one thing I’m fairly certain of: my top three will be a constant.
Other favourite places to eat in London
Towpath - the fair-weather cafe on Regent’s Canal that serves excellent breakfast dal, fried eggs with hummus and sumac onions, and good pan con tomate with zippy glasses of Greek white wine.
Dapur - for the best Malaysian food I’ve found in this city, which is a harder thing to come by than I expected.
Rochelle Canteen - for really good cooking and beautiful ingredients, though I really dislike the service.
Umut 2000 - a delicious, rowdy and fun Ockabasi - and I’m told no list of places to eat in London is complete without an Ockabasi.
Dumplings’ Legend - one week on I am still dreaming of the cucumber salad. And it’s fun!
Wong Kei - because in this town, an eight quid bowl of prawn wonton noodle soup with complimentary green tea and no service charge is a glorious thing.
The Plimsoll - the food is great, especially the Dexter Cheeseburger and the roast potatoes with aioli.
The Sekforde - listed here simply because it serves the best Sunday roast I’ve had so far.
Terroni’s - because I think their sausage, mozzarella and turnip top pizza is particularly delicious, and I like the Italian heritage of Clerkenwell, which is on show best here (and at Scotti’s).
Bar Italia - the best spot in the city for people watching with a glass of chardonnay and lime and pink peppercorn chips, and for very good bacon rolls.
Lahore Flavours - my go-to for work lunch in Wembley.