sphamilton's Profile
Moving to London - Where to live for a die-hard foodie?
NB Kentish Town has a fantastic Lebanese supermarket and cafe: the Phoenicia Food Hall.
Moving to London - Where to live for a die-hard foodie?
Angel (Islington) isn't very exciting for restaurants, (leaving aside the ones mentioned above, plus the lovely Olga Stores) but has good cafes, an excellent street market (Chapel Market) with a wide range of cheap good fruit and veg, plus some Bangladeshi stalls last time I was there) and has a Waitrose (definitely the best local supermarket if you're serious about cooking). It also has an excellent butcher (Elliott's) and fishmonger (Steve Hatt's) more or less next door to each other on Essex Road. It's within easy reach of excellent Turkish shops and restaurants in Green Lanes and Dalston, Vietnamese shops and restaurants in Shoreditch, Ridley Road Market in Dalston for Caribbean/African food, Godfrey's butchers and La Fromagerie at Highbury Barn, and Clerkenwell for interesting high-end restaurants. It's also a short hop by tube from Borough, and cycling distance or a 15 minute bus ride from the Strand.
Cushendall Ballycastle recs???
I've never heard of a local beer - NI pubs are not strong on microbrews as a rule, but it's a few years since I've been in the area so maybe things have changed. Bushmills is the local north Antrim whiskey, definitely worth trying (you can also visit the distillery if you're interested - it's in the town of Bushmills).
Can't think of any foods particular to north Antrim in particular, but things worth trying in Northern Ireland generally include wheaten, soda and potato breads, and dulse (seaweed - sometimes to be found in greengrocers' shops - people don't really cook with it, just eat it straight from the bag). Bakeries sometimes sell 'bacon sodas' - a sandwich made from a soda farl with bacon in it (permutations with sausage and fried egg also on offer). Stodgy and greasy but delicious. If you're in Ballycastle round the time of the Lammas Fair, the other local delicacy is yellow man, a kind of sticky honeycomb-type sweet. Champ (mashed potato with scallions/spring onions) is often offered with pub food, usually with sausages. Irish stew offered in pubs and restaurants is usually pretty nasty, but you may want to try it if you're curious or if it looks like a good place.
Ethnic Cuisines in London
Turkish/Kurdish food is very good in London if you go to Dalston or Green Lanes (just north of Manor House tube). Avoid Turkish food in central London - haven't encountered any that isn't mediocre. I'd second the recommendation for Mangal or Mangal II in Dalston; also 19 Numara Bos Cirrik. Green Lanes has lots of good places - I like Antepliler, especially for its cig kofte (spiced raw lamb kofte).
Middle Eastern / Mediterranean in London
Green Lanes and Dalston are both good for Turkish and Kurdish food, and most places have an ocakbasi (charcoal grill). Dalston is a 20 minute trip on the 38 bus from Covent Garden. Mangal II or Numara 19 Bos Cirrik are good options, but there are lots of others in the area. Or a short Piccadilly Line trip to Manor House will bring him to Green Lanes.
Edgware Road is also worth checking out for food from all over the Arabic-speaking world, including Lebanese, Egyptian and Iraqi. Haven't eaten there recently enough to make any particular recommendations, I'm afraid.
Comfort Food Clerkenwell? [London]
Little Bay used to be good value for the (low) price, but the last time I ate there the food was awful. Vegetarian options seemed to be designed purely to use up vegetable leftovers, IMO. Also because of the cheapness not a place to linger for a few hours.
any suggestions for restaurants near the Roundhouse Theatre in Camden area of London?
Marine Ices' icecream is great, but they also do very decent cheapish trattoria-style Italian food - nothing groundbreaking, but fine.
Hakuba - Worst Mistake...Ever [London]
I ate there once, not long after it opened. Poor food, and the service was laughably awful in its gormlessness.
Cheap and delicious [London]
Pie and mash is not to everybody's taste, though Manze's is about the best of those remaining. I quite like it. It's cheap, stodgy and filling: don't expect much meat in the pie.
Another good cheap south Indian: Rasa in Stoke Newington.
Also don't forget Turkish food - Green Lanes and Dalston are the best bets. I'd go for Mangal II or Numara 19 Bos Cirrik in Dalston, or Antelpliler on Green Lanes (they do great cig kofte, a kind of spicy lamb tartare).
Rasa Samudra - Charlotte Street, London - Report
I understand Rasa Samudra does takeaway at lunchtime as well as Rasa Express - haven't tried it, but friends who have say the fish soup is good (about £4 I think).
Inexpensive places in Russell Square (and beyond) [London]
Glad you liked it - sorry for the typo!
Restaurant Supply Stores in London?
Also on Shaftesbury Avenue (west sideof Charing Cross Road, Pages is on the east side) is Leon Jaeggi.
Inexpensive places in Russell Square (and beyond) [London]
It's also worth taking a 38 bus from New Oxford Street to Dalston (currently v fashionable if you're a clubber). Walk north up Stoke Newington High Street and over the next three or four blocks you'll have an excellent choice of Turkish ocakasi (barbecue) restaurants. I like 19 Numara Bos Cirrik and Mangal II, but there are lots more. £15 will buy a starter, a vast plate of grilled lamb with accompanying bread, rice and salad, and a drink. 19 Numara will throw in a few free side dishes as well, including a fantastic grilled onion salad with pomegranate sauce.
starving student London SE1 for 3 months
Monkey - fair point, Booth's is very good, and so is the specialist tomato stall. Turnips is the worst offender IMO - I just think they're ridiculously expensive, and I've seen similar quality elsewhere for a lot less.
Inexpensive places in Russell Square (and beyond) [London]
La Porchetta in Boswell Street is a decent place for pizza or pasta, as is Ciao Bella in Lamb's Conduit Street. And there's a reasonable range of mid-priced if not exactly extraordinary restaurants (Carluccio's for Italian, Hare and Tortoise for noodles) in the Brunswick shopping centre. Osteria 51 on Gray's Inn Road looks like a very old school London trattoria, but the food is much better than this type generally are. You should be able to get a meal under £15 in any of these places.
NB none of these places are particularly extraordinary: venturing farther afield will take you to more exciting places, but IMO all of them are decent if you just want something in the neighbourhood (and there are quite a lot of bad tourist traps in the neighbourhood).
For cheap Korean, try St Giles' High Street next to Centrepoint. Various posters here have recommended Assa.
For nice coffee and cakes, try the London Review Cakeshop, next to the London Revew Bookshop.
For a cheap meal in a high-end place, try the tapas at Moro in Exmouth Market (a short stroll up Rosebery Avenue). Exmouth Market also has some good cafes.
Beware the cafe in Russell Square itself - the food is awful, though the location is great.
Friar's Delight on Theobald's Road is great for fish and chips.
Clerkenwell Area Suggstions?... [London]
I second the vote for Sedap on Old Street (Clerkenwell side of Old Street roundabout, almost opposite St Luke's church): very good, very reasonable Straits Chinese/Malaysian food.
Affordable vegetarian and fish in Kensington or Central London
For south Indian pescatarian in a more upmarket setting than East Ham, I'd recommend Rasa Samudra in Charlotte Street: http://www.rasarestaurants.com/UserPages/Viewrestaurantdetails.aspx?restid=36. And if your sister's prepared to venture as far as Stoke Newington, sister restaurant Rasa is even better and still very cheap.
starving student London SE1 for 3 months
Re: cheap places to shop - DON'T buy your fruit and vegetables at Borough Market, the places there are crazily overpriced and not particularly good. But you can get really good cheap cuts of meat there if you shop carefully (a while ago I bought a shank of pork which fed half a dozen people for about four quid). And cheese at Neal's Yard Dairy isn't cheap, but is worth splashing out on occasionally. Oh, and try a barbecued chorizo sandwich from the stall outside the Brindisa shop.
Other than Borough, street markets are by far the cheapest place to buy fruit and veg - check out East Street market on the Walworth Road (about ten minutes' walk south of Elephant and Castle), and people have already mentioned Brixton Market.
I recently ate at El Vergel, a Latin American restaurant in Southwark: excellent value and very good food: http://www.elvergel.co.uk/ (I wish I could say the same of the Colombian places in Elephant and Castle, which are in my experience uniformly dire except for empanadas - I'd be delighted if anybody has any recommendations).
looking for 1 day cooking class in London?
Other places to check out in London:
http://www.divertimenti.co.uk/Cookery_school
http://www.booksforcooks.com/programme.html
Billingsgate Fish Market also runs courses on fishmongery and fish cookery (haven't been to the market, but it sounds worth a trip just to see it):
http://www.seafoodtraining.org/general_public_courses_at_billingsgate_seafood_training_school.htm
Ireland national dish
You could probably argue that the national dish of Ireland is Irish stew - a lamb stew cooked with potatoes. It will turn up as pub food, but is often not particularly good so I wouldn't get your hopes up.
Coddle, mentioned upthread, is very Dublin-specific, and is again I think the kind of thing that tends to taste better home-cooked than when treated as cheap pub stodge.
Don't miss soda bread though (white or wholemeal - good with smoked salmon), and potato bread, and I second the vote for seafood if you're in a coastal area. If you're staying in a B&B, the cooked breakfasts will almost certainly be good. Try black pudding and white pudding if they're on offer (Clonakilty black pudding is particularly good).
Local cheeses can also be very good, but specialist delis or restaurants which actually stock them can be harder to find.
One other thing to look out for in Scotland at this time of year is that the raspberries are some of the best in the world. Just buy a punnet and try them.
If You Had to Leave, What Would You Miss?
Neal's Yard Dairy is the best place in London to try out really good English cheeses,. and they always give you a taste before you buy.
Game, if it's in season.
Strawberries and raspberries, if they're in season, or proper English apples if it's later in the year (Neal's Yard usually has an interesting selection of unusual varieties).
Good fish and chips is surprisingly hard to find - it's worth asking around.
Hotel curry
Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Bible has recipes for every conceivable kind of curry, authentic and otherwise, including a number of early English recipes which might fit the bill.
Cigkoftem - Vegetarian kofta wraps - Harringay Green Lanes [London]
I ate here recently: It was excellent - I had a £5 set which would easily have fed two people, and came with amazingly fresh salad and herbs. The Stoke Newington branch is at the north end of Stoke Newington High Street (closer to Stoke Newington than Dalston).
Happening Bagel Bakery - Finsbury Park [London]
It's excellent for bagels, similar in style to the Brick Lane ones, and it's very close to Finsbury Park station. They also do a wide variety of cake, mostly very heavy and in huge slabs, which I think might be more of an acquired taste.
Belfast, Northern Ireland - Restaurants, Bed & Breakfasts, etc.
The Saddler's House is a reasonably priced B&B in Derry - I think it's the only one within the walls, so good if you want to explore the city on foot. Friendly owners, breakfasts are good, and the houses are both Georgian and filled with antiques. The owners also own another B&B a couple of minutes away called the Merchant's House, plus a couple of flats they rent out: http://www.thesaddlershouse.com/.
I honestly can't in all conscience recommend anywhere to eat in Derry - it's an absolute black spot for restaurants, IMO. Things to see: walk around the walls, walk around the river, visit the Guildhall and the Cathedral. Have a look here for more suggestions: http://www.derryvisitor.com/. The Donegal hinterland is also beautiful: if you have a car you might like to visit Malin Head, the most northerly point of Ireland, or the Grianan of AileAch, a massive bronze age fort:
When you say you're visiting Antrim, I assume you mean the north Antrim coast rather than Antrim the (rather dull) town? It's lovely, and all the usual sights - Giant's Causeway, Dunluce Castle, Rathlin Island etc are well worth seeing. One very cheap place I'd highly recommend, as long as you have access to a car, is the backpacker's hostel at Downhill: http://www.downhillhostel.com/ (you don't have to sleep in a dormitory, they have single and double rooms as well). It's spectacularly located right at the edge of a very beautiful beach, and very close to a ruined bishop's palace: http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-downhillestate.
also in north Antrim, the Bushmills Inn has a very good reputation for both food and accommodation, but isn't cheap: http://www.bushmillsinn.com/
You'll find places to eat in Portrush and Portstewart on the north Antrim coast: the Harbour Bistro in Portrush was nice last time I went there, and Morelli's is an old-school seaside icecream parlour. You should be able to find good fish and chips if nothing else looks inspiring.
[London] Cheap lunches near the British Library
Drummond Street, just west of Euston, has a number of cheap Indian vegetarian places which do good masala dosas etc. Even better and even cheaper is Rasa Express, on the Euston Road just past Warren Street tube. It's part of the fairly upmarket Rasa chain of south Indian restaurants, but their vegetarian lunchbox (different every day) is about £3.
London: Harringay Food Festival, 20 September
North London chowhounds might like to know there's a food festival on Green Lanes this coming Sunday 20 September.
The road will be closed - it's the stretch north of Manor House tube - and there will be a street party with music, entertainment and around 90 food stalls. It's a great area for Turkish and Kurdish food, but there are lots of other things to try including a new Bulgarian place. Definitely worth a look.
Details here: http://www.harringayfoodfestival.com/
Name one food item not to be missed in London!
Thanks - didn't know that. You can also get it in the bar at St John, without going in for a full meal.
pljeskavice (Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian "hamburger") in London
Best Turkish pastries in Harringay are at Yasar Halim on Green Lanes (about 10 minutes' bus ride south of Turnpike Lane tube). It's also a great grocery and greengrocers'. Lots of borek, lahmacun (don't know if this has a Balkan equivalent), plus Cypriot specialities such as pilavuna, a sesame, raisin, cheese and herb bun.
London for a week - suggestions?
PS the Giaconda Dining Room is in Denmark Street, about two minutes from the Phoenix Theatre - haven't been, but it gets good reviews. One other nice place to check out is the Phoenix Garden, the beautiful community garden just behind the theatre - a peaceful haven if you decide you'd rather get a sandwich and sit in the sun before going to the show.
