LTH for London

Does anyone know of a website, blog, or anything else besides The Times, Fodors, TimeOut guide, or others like it that gives interesting takes on London restaurants, markets, dives, etc? Pretty much I'm looking for LTH, London-style.

Thanks!

I recommend Opinionated About

This is Steve Plotnicki's discussion forum and is very good for discussion of high-end restaurants throughout Europe (and the US).

You might also try eGullet which often covers a broader array of restaurants.

FYI, Opinionated About is not open to the general public.

Are you sure about OA not permitting non-members. I just went on OA and there were guests on-line. But of course it is easy to register and if you are interested in global dining, it is worth-while.

Okay, let me amend that.

You cannot read OA without being a member. (Unlike here or eGullet.)

However, it may be that becoming a member is easier than it was three years ago, when you had to be personally accepted for membership by Plotnicki.

Mike G wrote:Okay, let me amend that.

You cannot read OA without being a member. (Unlike here or eGullet.)

However, it may be that becoming a member is easier than it was three years ago, when you had to be personally accepted for membership by Plotnicki.

Although let it be noted that he accepted me as a member, so clearly it ain't such a big deal.

In any case, given the original question...

that gives interesting takes on London restaurants, markets, dives, etc?

...it's only a partial answer. OA is very much oriented to the high end.

if you are going to be in London, I would very much recomend trying London chinatown style food - not exactly authentic hong kong, but very much its own style and different from US chinese.

poon and Co and Canton in china town are both excellent examples. the crispy duck, crispy spicy beef and noodle soup with pork are very good examples of british style chinnese.


I am not a big fan of UK indian, but a lot of people are. I would recomend going to east london for indian, there is a better chance of fining more authentic.

You can't go to London without having a proper greasy brekkie:

http://russelldavies.typepad.com/eggbaconchipsandbeans/

Mouthfuls Food - lots of cheeky Brits
http://mouthfulsfood.com/

It's a blog, not a forum, but there's some good London stuff to be found here

i read quite a lot of London Delicious: http://kristainlondon.typepad.com/ before i visited.

the blogger is registered on our board: http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t= ... ght=london

other than that, http://www.guttereats.co.uk/ was interesting, but needed much more entries.

the best input came from Time Out in the form of Time Out Feb(?) '07 "Cheap Eats" issue (it's a quick read, i still have it if you wish to borrow), also in the form of Cheap Eats '07 which I had a chance to read at a local bookstore upon arrival.

personal suggestion: avoid Chinatown. expensive. underwhelming. touristy. only Cantonese food. underwhelming.

Thanks for the props! If you're looking for London restaurant blogs, I would recommend the following:

http://www.majbros.blogspot.com/
http://londonfood.typepad.com/
http://www.londonreviewofbreakfasts.blogspot.com/ (all breakfast)
http://ripelondon.typepad.com/

Krista
of
http://kristainlondon.typepad.com

Happy to provide suggestions/advice for London--e-mail me via my blog.

I just ran across this old thread, one which did not come up here in the search I did before my trip to London. It just happens that this thread seems to touch on the subject I have wanted to raise. In a nutshell, this: "Given the choice, how do you decide where to eat when visiting a cosmopolitan city?"

With local contacts one can eat well, but somehow, the thrill of discovery is lessened. With the help of blogs, one can distinguish one fine dining place from another. But I tend to be less interested in fine dining than many. So it seems that the first step is to acknowledge one's personal goals and to consider what investigative process might yield the best results.

For me, the first goal is to find the everyday food that people of a city eat to satisfy the particular hungers that emerge in the specific food framework that seems to take shape in a specific city. Briefly, "Find the best of the local specialties." The second goal is more difficult to achieve. It to find a "nice dinner" with wine that is excellent in its own way, but not toooo expensive. Upon reflection, it does seem that these two goals are embedded in many of the casual one-time posts on LTH from visitors to Chicago. Yet, as we have found on this board, it does not help us to answer these queries if no additional parameters are provided.

The other issue is that one needs inspiration. This is where the LTH factor comes in, (and I think this is what the OP was looking for). I noted today that the "Mother-In-Law" thread has had over 78, 000 views. Who would have thought that that local specialty would generate such interest? This is an example of the value a skilled local writer/investigator brings to a subject.

I had little time to research the London trip. It was not difficult for me to decide what local specialty to seek out, given suggestions from the members of this board. It had to be eels in East London. Based on previous visits, I had to go back to Fortnum & Mason and Harrod's Food Halls. But it was much much more difficult to find a "nice dinner."

Prior to the trip I did this: 1) a branching internet search, beginning with lthforum.com recommendations, including recommended blogs, 2) a search of blogs linked by bloggers, 3) an attempt to identify candidate restaurants recommended by both bloggers and print media, 4) an edit of the list of candidates, imposing constraints such as convenience and food preference. Finally, in the course of the trip, new constraints arose. These drove several new internet and random (walking around) searches and generated new choices. This account of Hits and Misses reflects lessons about the process.

The Hits: Hereford Road and Hawksmoor Seven Dials


Untitled by Josephine2004, on Flickr

Our favorite meal of the trip came the first night at Hereford Road, a bistro in the Notting Hill area. I’m pretty sure that if this restaurant were in Chicago it would become a board favorite. I might compare it to Avec, though the menu does not feature small plates. The atmosphere is unfussy, even stripped-down; the menu, grounded in simplicity, features the highest quality ingredients prepared with skill. The wine list is both interesting and inexpensive. Amid a pricey dining scene in London, Hereford Road is an oasis of delicious food, and an excellent value.

As the earliest patrons, we were welcomed warmly, although the restaurant was not yet open. Our server was delightful, full of smiles and helpful information about the menu. Glasses of sherry arrived as we contemplated the view:


Untitled by Josephine2004, on Flickr

With nostalgia for finnan haddie in mind, I ordered an appetizer of smoked haddock with rocket. My husband generously shared his lamb sweetbreads with green beans and mint. They tasted lamby and otherwise just like veal sweetbreads. I hope to encounter these delicious orbs somewhere in my future.


Untitled by Josephine2004, on Flickr

I have not eaten partridge since I was a kid. Asked about the source for these wild birds, I was told that they come from a hunter in the Midlands. That claim was bolstered when I found a tiny piece of shot in the bird- another nostalgic experience, linked to the first wild pheasant I ever ate, courtesy of my Uncle Jack. What I do not remember from my childhood is the Heresford Road setting for my partridge: woodsy mushrooms served on the green-grassy bed of lentilles de Puy

Ray had venison served with cubed celery root, a nice twist. The meat was perfectly seared and seasoned.


Untitled by Josephine2004, on Flickr

Cheese from Neal’s Yard finished the meal for Ray. I had a nubbly rice pudding topped with a deeply roasted fig, almost tasting of caramel. Brilliant.


Untitled by Josephine2004, on Flickr

The search/The lesson: Recommendations came first from Kang Leung of londoneater.com and second, from an article in an article from Departures that my husband had saved. I looked at the menu on the Hereford Road’s website and decided it looked very promising. While Departures, the Amex travel magazine, is not even on the list of print publications that I would normally consult, I must admit to a certain amount of magical thinking and confirmatory bias. I like finding two (presumably) independent opinions about a restaurant. What clinched it was my reading of the menu on the website, however. I like to think that I have well-developed menu assessment skills. In this case, I learned last about the background of the chef, a former head chef at St. John Bread and Wine, Spitalfields and about the author of the Departures article, Tom Parker-Bowles, though I might have guessed his pedigree, had I been paying attention. The truth is that it did not occur to me to pay attention to the identity of the author of an article in a magazine that has earned no reputation with me. I would be more likely to scan the bio of a blogger than to look into the background of a published food writer whose name I had heard only once upon the release of his book (The Year of Eating Dangerously).

Hawksmoor Seven Dials:

Hawksmoor Seven Dials is one of three steakhouses under the Hawksmoor name, which sounds a bit, well, posh to this untutored American ear. One fears the cigar-chomping upper-class twit and his chums. Fortunately, the atmosphere and welcome were anything but stuffy. Exposed brick and iron columns are what remains of the former Watney-Combes Brewery. Contemporary chairs in green leather were comfortable classic. The servers, wearing their own clothes and scruffy facial hair, look like minor characters from a Shakespearean comedy. In any case, service was friendly and professional, rather than rowdy. Steaks for sharing are listed on a blackboard, along with their weights. We chose a 600 gram Porterhouse, though we declined to have it sliced in the kitchen, as suggested. Presented whole, it was a thing of beauty.


Untitled by Josephine2004, on Flickr


Untitled by Josephine2004, on Flickr


Untitled by Josephine2004, on Flickr


Untitled by Josephine2004, on Flickr


Untitled by Josephine2004, on Flickr

Research/Lesson:
According to the Hawksmoor website, Esquire wrote: “The best steak we have ever eaten.” I selected Hawksmoor upon reading what Leong and and Parker-Bowles had to say. But the choice was primarily based on my husband’s love of good steak. We ordered steak. In so doing, we may have followed best practices, LTH-style: discover the strengths of a restaurant and order accordingly.

Cay Tre
Another recommendation of the londoneater blog, who nevertheless posted his wife’s preference for another Vietnamese restaurant over Cay Tre. The menu looked promising. The location was convenient. Could we have both an excellent meal and convenience? Not really. Perhaps the problem had to do with attempts at fusion that fell flat, but execution was also spotty. The seafood was soggy and sub-par as was the accompanying salad. Entrée portion soups fared about the same- a peanut-enriched broth was muddy tasting, rather than rich. Not an expensive meal, but expensive for the quality, this was a miss for us.


Untitled by Josephine2004, on Flickr


Untitled by Josephine2004, on Flickr

Bumpkin

Stranded on the Upper East Side in NYC, I might again resort to eating in a place like this. Stranded we were, given my limited stamina following a bout of food poisoning of indeterminate origin. We needed a restaurant close to our hotel for a relatively bland dinner. That should not be a challenge in London, should it? The search on Tripadvisor, Yelp, and the London equivalent of Open Table suggested Bumpkin. I wish they hadn’t.

You know the type: Upscale comfort food. Décor and patrons straight out of Ralph Lauren, or his British equivalent. I ordered dessert because the rest of the dinner was just bad. Dessert was OK. Quality to cost ratio: very lopsided: 1/8 on a scale of 1-10.

Lesson: If you don’t have specific information, either spring for a fine-dining meal or get upscale fast food at Paul, Pret a Manger, etc. Also, I broke a rule of my own due to appetite and fatigue. If I were to follow my own advice, I would warn visitors to London away from places destined by their unfortunate locations to serve only tourists.

Hereford Road
3 Hereford Rd, Westbourne Grove, London W2 4AB, United Kingdom
Tel. 44 20 7727 1144

Hawksmoor Seven Dials
11 Langley Street, London WC2H 9JG
Tel. 44 020 7420 9390
Hawksmoor Seven Dials is fully accessible to wheelchair users.

Cay Tre
301 Old St, London EC1V 9LA, United Kingdom
Tel. 020 7729 8662