![]() ![]() ![]() All the best Greek and Cypriot restaurants in London run solely on takeaway orders It’s the modern equivalent of Victorian authors trying to write about the Americas based on drawings by 17th-century colonial explorers.ġ0. The people running them have only read about tacos in books. ![]() 99 per cent of Mexican food in London should be avoided They’re all keeping west London interesting one nasi lemak at a time.Ġ9. Putera Puteri, Tukdin, Melur, Warisan, Makan Café, Malay Fellas, Layang. With the very major anomaly of Malaysian food, which has a monopoly on reasonably priced canteens in areas of London more commonly known for high-stakes money laundering. You cannot find diasporic food in central London better than you can get in the suburbs The industrial estate is nature’s food hallĠ8. Did you have a bad meal? I thought not.Ġ7. Don’t believe me? Go to your local Ethiopian restaurant. This might seem like a sweeping statement, but I’ve run the numbers on this and it’s true. There are no bad Ethiopian restaurants in London There are people in Bromley who are still impressed by Pizza Express.Ġ6. The flipside to the “irate uncle Google review fallacy” is the “easily pleased suburbanite Google review fallacy”. If a restaurant like this is even edging a 3.5, then it’s basically The Ritz. For example, there is the “irate uncle Google review fallacy”, which means that pretty much all Indian and Pakistani restaurants in zone 4 areas of London are given incredibly severe ratings because they get marked down on things like “couldn’t feed my family of five for £10” and “waited three hours for food” (which means anything more than 10 minutes). And you could do a good job, up to a point.īut Google review star ratings need to be adjusted for where the restaurant is and who is reviewing it. Lifting critiques from users marked “Level 12 – Local Guide” like they’re some kind of Dungeons & Dragons mage. Google reviews have become so detailed that you could very easily become a restaurant writer sitting at your desk eating a fish finger sandwich, discovering new places with the click of a button. Google review star ratings need to be adjusted for where the restaurant is The queue in a central London restaurant is directly proportional to how much you’re about to get scammedĠ5. The proper wait time for a three-person queue should be at least 40 minutes and you should have learnt the life story of everyone in the queue before you pick up your patty.Ġ4. The wait at a Caribbean takeaway is directly proportional to how good the food will be New Malden! Edmonton! Croydon! (OK, maybe not Croydon.)Ġ3. Most of the best restaurants in London are in areas that would have got a shout out in a late-1990s DFS advert Mayfair is Soho for the worst humans alive.Ġ2. Chelsea is Soho for people who find Kensington “a bit rough”. Sohofication homogenises beyond Soho: Fitzrovia is Soho for people who don’t know what a Sichuan peppercorn is. The same landlord, just with a different cuisine attached. The same seasonal, British produce prepared with a modern edge. Here are some things that I have noticed…īy this I don’t mean that all restaurants in Soho are bad – some of my best friends are Soho restaurants – but that every restaurant in Soho is more or less exactly the same restaurant. Rather than telling you exactly what to eat and why, I have room to observe things about London, the idiosyncrasies of its boroughs and the changing eating habits and culture of Londoners, which I have done over 125 small restaurant profiles in the new book I’ve edited, London Feeds Itself. Instead, food just features in my guides like a particular sweet keyboard tone in the back of an ambient track. Not being a critic also means I don’t review restaurants exactly. Getting so many Tubes and buses that TfL should offer me sponsorship, putting together extensive guides to the types of restaurant that channel the saved energy in not having to know who Mr William Sitwell is (a small mercy) into actually serving their community. The actual London, not just the bit coloured in the most alarming shade of red on a London property map. As a lowly restaurant writer, I’ve spent the past few years eating around London. Good for them, but that’s not what I have to do. Restaurant critics, that rarefied breed of food writers, learn to take on even more rules that involve booking under assumed names, ignoring the fact your parents both have blue links on Wikipedia and trying to pretend you’re not Mr Jay Rayner when you are quite unavoidably Mr Jay Rayner. It will undoubtedly be the worst meal of your life and you’ll have to lie through your teeth about it later on Instagram Stories. “Never take a free meal” would be my first one. If you get into the habit of writing about restaurants for a living, then there are some general rules you soon realise that you should adhere to. ![]()
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