Where to eat in London (My 10 Favourite Restaurants)

Member Name: Leolover

Product:	My 10 Favourite Restaurants
Date:	03/01/02 (2661 review reads)
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Advantages: Food!, Wine!, Friends!

Disadvantages: Ever increasing waistline

Bizarre – I find myself writing an op on my favourite restaurants on the same day that I’ve compiled another one on my new diet. Must be the masochist in me – I just can’t wait to torture myself with memories of all the scrummy food I’ve eaten in the past and am now forbidden to eat!

Anyway...Here are my current fave places to eat in London:

La Porchetta (Muswell Hill)

This is a fantastic Italian restaurant, the ideal place to get together with a group of close friends for some vino and the most delicious pizzas you can imagine. It’s a noisy, exuberant place, always packed with people, don’t bother booking a table because you’ll still have to queue for at least ten minutes while they frantically try and find you a table. But it’s all part of the fun! The waiting staff are gracious, entertaining and accommodating. The food is unbelievable – normally I’d opt for pasta but although the pasta here is lovely, the pizzas really are something else.

For a mouth watering starter, order a plate of mussels – and share it with someone else if you don’t want to fill yourself up too much for the main course – the portions are huge! I’ve never managed to save enough room for a dessert, but they look amazing, so skip the starter if you’re a sweet tooth.

This restaurant is extremely reasonable – expect to pay between £5 and £9 for a main course, house wine is about £7 a bottle and is perfectly acceptable. Not the place to take your loved one for a romantic meal for two...It’s a party place, a fun place. One visit and you’ll see why it’s constantly packed with people, even on weekdays.

Veeraswamys (Piccadilly Circus)

An ’up-market’ Indian restaurant where you can dine on Lobster Masalla and King Prawn with truffle mushrooms cooked in a clay oven. I went here on a work ‘do’
and loved it – the food is really different to anything you’d find in a conventional indian restaurant, and it’s a real experience. Expect to pay around £100 for a meal for two with wine – this is not the restaurant to try if you’re on a strict budget.

Hot Stuff (Vauxhall)

Another Indian establishment, but it couldn’t be more different to Veeraswamy’s. Hot Stuff is a tiny family run restaurant hidden away in the centre of Vauxhall, in South London. Raj knows all his customers by name and a visit to Hot Stuff is a social outing as well as a meal out. The food is good, solid Indian home cooking, with a few unusual offerings – the Masalla Fish is delicious, as is the ‘Daal n ‘Dudhi’ (lentils with marrow). You can get a starter, main course and rice or naan for about a fiver. It’s really worth hunting this one down. Luckily, I work in Vauxhall, so I can be found there most lunchtimes!

Mozarella E Pomodoro (Camberwell)

Another Italian, this is my favourite restaurant of the moment. I’ve had three exquisite meals there and can’t wait to go back for more! Try the steamed sea bass with vegetables – lovely!

Depending on what you order, this is one of those restaurants where you can eat cheaply if you want (pasta dishes are around £7 each) or push the boat out (most of the fish dishes are around £15). They have a superb wine list and the service is fantastic. A restaurant for any occasion.

Saigon (Finchley)

This is a lovely little Chinese restaurant about thirty seconds from Finchley Central tube station. The food is delicate and full of flavour, with none of that cloying gooeyness you sometimes get with chinese takeaway food. The service is good, the ambience is excellent, it can’t be faulted really.

Gourmet Pizza (Piccadilly Circus)

This is the place I head for with ‘the girls’ prior
to a night on the town. The pizza, pasta and salad dishes are surprisingly good, given the ‘café’ feel of the place. The waiters are chatty and friendly, and the home made ice cream is scrumptious! I’d recommend the thai chicken pizza or the chinese duck pizza – both generously topped and very tasty indeed. The chicken fettucine is also very good.

Pierre Victoire (Just off Oxford Street)

I’ve had a few great nights out here, and a few really nice lunches too. They have a piano player in the evening, and a constantly changing menu which offers consistently good French food such as lamb shanks in a red wine sauce, chicken chasseur and duck breast salad. The house wine is pleasant, the ambience is relaxed and mellow – who would believe that a few minutes away is the hustle and bustle of London’s busiest shopping street! There’s a set lunch menu for £6.90 which is well worth sampling.

Goya (Pimlico)

Another South London offering, this is a Tapas bar a few minute walk from Pimlico tube station. It’s also the place my current beau took me for our first date! Yummy spanish food in a lively yet relaxed setting. The seafood is superb, and I also remember a delicious chicken paella dish. Garlic haters should avoid this one though – a lot of the dishes were strongly laced with the stuff. Good job both me and my bloke love it!

Okay – that’s only eight, but I think that’s more than enough to mull over for the time being! Hmmmm...Italian and Indian seem to dominate a bit...Guess you can tell what my favourite types of cuisine are!

If anyone knows of any other nice restaurants in South London, which is where I work and have recently moved to, I’d love to hear about them. In the meantime, if anybody visits any of the ones I’ve recommended above, I hope you have a lovely time.

Happy chomping!

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