Nathan's Food Tour of London and Surrounding Areas

The first day in London I had a sausage roll at Paddington station. It was pretty bad but it was cold and rainy so it hit the spot.

The second day in London we were in the city center and we went to the Borough Market. There were many delicious treats - we didn't wait in line for the viral strawberries with chocolate. Instead, we opted for sausage rolls at The Ginger Pig.

It was great, good quality everything, but I felt the sausauge was a little thick and made the proportions a bit off.

That night we had a reservation at Blacklock Soho for a sunday roast. I spent a long time researching before what the best sunday roast to get was in London, and I landed on this place because I really wanted to find a place that had a nice communal serving for the family, rather than individual plates.

Pretty epic. Everything was super tasty and all you could ever want in a sunday roast. My only complaint is the lamb had a lot of gristle, but chewing is fun. Also the white chocolate cheesecake dessert was delicious.

A couple nights later we went for dinner at Tayyabs, a byob punjabi spot in East London. We brought stella tallboys and the cold light beer paired wonderfully with the spicy, spiced food. It was also incredibly cheap.

We got the lamb chops and dry meat, as well as a load of garlic naan. I am salivating at the memory of it writing this.

I am losing the chronological order of things, but we then had a great meal at St. John Smithfield. This was a meal I had been anticipating for a long time, through various youtube videos and following their instagram. For those of you who haven't checked it out, I recommend. The captions for their photos have to be the best food writing out there. Anyway, we had dinner in the dining room. I loved the ambience of the dining room. Lately, I have come to the realization that the only reason I go to restaurants is for the food, and decorations are completely unneccesary and probably just raise the cost of the meal. I think Asian restaurants understand this, as many of them I see are very bare bones. St. John had an eloquent but bare bones interior as well, nothing to distract from the food. The bar area looked like a great place to sink a pint.

The food was all incredible, but some highlights for me were the famous bone marrow, these crabs in butter on special, the butterhead and lovage salad, the hare with this incredible sauce, and the greens they served. I really wanted to know what the greens were and how they prepared them. They seemed like a sort of boiled cabbage, but they had so much great flavor there had to be something else to them, maybe prepared in broth or something. Also, the puddings, can't forget the puddings. As said in the Instagram, "Far from being a grudging afterthought, Fergus believes that puddings are fundamental. And so they occupy a section on the St. John menu at least as long as the preceding courses." They were all incredible. The eccles cake with salty pungent cheese was such a great combo, the toffee cake with a little bit of ice cream I still think of. And incredibly fun one we had was sorbet with a shot of vodka to be poured on top or to be drunk "if the conversation was getting dry", says the waiter. You also have to get the madelines to go, my mom stuck them in her purse and we nibbled them on a car ride the next day. Everything there was just so pure and perfect and it seemed to embody everything a restaurant should be.

We also ate at The Plimsoll, a hip bar I found via an also very eloquent Instagram (I am a sucker for those). I had been anticipating this for a long time also. Bar had a cool feel but also felt like something you would find in Williamsburg. This was pretty much the only real pub experience we had in England unfortunately as my parents don't like drinking. When the waiter came over I asked them what beers they had and he said "oh our house beer is nice", and that is the first I've heard of nice being used like that and I loved it, going up to a bar and asking for "whatever's nice". Also, the beer was fantastic, wheaty, savory, lager (i think). They had a few great items: the fried potatoes with a garlic aioli were a perfect bar snack, and the truffle pasta was delicious, but that is pretty hard to mess up. They were supposed to have the best burger in London, which I guess isn't saying much. It was an alright burger, but I think they tried to season the meat before they formed the patties - they had a sausage like homogenization and taste, which I think could have been from the salt mixing through the meat. So that was a little disappointing. We basically ended up ordering the whole menu, and my takeaway was that it just didn't feel like a coherent menu, the items felt eclectic. Also everything was pretty damn expensive for the portions you get.

It was a 5 minute walk from Emirates Stadium though which was pretty lit.

The last big meal we had in London was at Brat, specifically Brat's Climpson Arch. This is another big London restaurant, but we didn't get a reservation far enough in advance for the main location, so we had to go to this weird pop up venue that was under an arch. Aside, I love the chairs they have in Brat, my mom says they are called Thonet Bentwood but I can't find the specific one online. They have a large emphasis on open fire cooking, and they do most if not all of their cooking on it. I sat facing the grill and it was really entertaining to watch, my sister had to move seats though because she was grossed out by the chefs touching the food. I was really excited for the turbot that they prepare like they do in the Basque country, as well as the ex-dairy cow with the yellow fat. All the apps we got were great, and we ended up getting both the steak and turbot. The steak was a little underwhelming: they didn't ask us how we wanted it cooked and it was really rare, which I am usually fine with but the steak had a lot of nice yellowish fat on it that was left kind of waxy instead of rendered due to how rare it was. Also, the meat was pretty chewy, but I don't know if that is just what is to be expected with ex-dairy cow. Still dogged it though. I think they should have sliced it a little thinner. The turbot was incredible, we devoured it. London has given me appreciation for whole fish cooking. It is really hard to justify spending 130 pounds on a fish though unless it is a really special occasion.

Two restaurants we unfortunately didn't get to were Rita's Dining, which I know from this sick chef's night out video and Willy's pies, whose Instagram led me to a lot of the places I went on the trip. I also didn't get a great full english at a lowkey cafe (breakfast set), but I did get a pretty great one at an inn we were at in the Cotswolds. I also didn't get to go to Bao London, but I had mixed feelings about it anyway.

The last great food I got was from a chippy in the Cotswolds. I had been wanting all trip to go to a proper chippy and get some proper fried stuff with some curry sauce. I also really wanted to get a spice bag, but turns out that is a Dublin thing and you can't get it anywhere in England. The fish was perfect, the chips were perfect, and the curry sauce was banging. This meal helped inspire this report. I regret not ordering more, we were saving space for a pub at our final destination that ended up being pretty shitty.

England gets a bad rep with its food but its really quite great. I could eat at St. John every day for the rest of my life.

November 25, 2023